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The iPhone platform elegantly solves the design problem of small screens by greatly intensifying the information resolution of each displayed page. Small screens, as on traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information--too often leaving users with "Where am I?" puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time.

Users can now access their matchmine MatchKey, a colorful sphere that represents a person's interests, with the single-sign-on OpenID, import user preference information from Web sites, and export their MatchKey user preference information. Users can share their MatchKey with any Web site in matchmine's "media discovery network." Each time someone uses their MatchKey, it "learns" preferences and retrieves information that matches preferences.

Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"Increasingly, there are no limits technologically as to what a company can do in terms of collecting information . . . and then selling it as a commodity to other providers," said committee member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who created the Privacy Caucus 12 years ago. "Our responsibility is to make sure that we create a law that, regardless of the technology, includes a set of legal guarantees that consumers have with respect to their information."

Markey said he and his colleagues plan to introduce legislation next year, a sort of online-privacy Bill of Rights, that would require that consumers must opt in to the tracking of their online behavior and the collection and sharing of their personal data.

The Web site Patientslikeme.com recognizes the importance of shared experiences and information and allows for those with a particular condition to interact with each other, again validating the findings of the HSC study.

Last week, the FDA announced that it will team with WebMD to provide consumer health information. Health insurer UnitedHealth launched its myoptumhealth.com site, akin to Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, aimed at consumers seeking and managing healthcare information online.