I'm tracking you, but at least you know it?

I kicked off my morning with a ho-hum daily web surfing ritual and a stout cuppajoe, but before the caffeine kicked in, I perked up a bit when I noticed that All Things Digital had a big front and center notice about their use of cookies. They even provided information about opting out.

Very interesting. Is this a sign of things to come? In an era of where widgets, mashups, viral video and analytic services are invading the web, should more disclosure be occurring? Should we be doing more to educate and inform those who look to our sites for news and information?

Might we see library web sites that enrich their sites with data from services like Amazon or Syndetic Solutions include such notices?

Might we see university web sites that use Google Analytics or other such services give a heads up to its constituents about awareness of the activity? Will that become (should that) become an ethical norm if institutions choose to use third party solutions where information floats about from one site to the next? I don't know, but it sure is an intriguing prospect.

Anyway, back to ATD ... Their notice was was presented in a fairly elegant way ...

There was the typical "read more" link which, to my surprise, provided a nice little in-line sliding div for more details. No pop-up windows, no loading a new page and loosing my context. I really appreciate small little touches like that! Nice work, ATD.

While it might be a while for even more progressive policies to emerge or for some type of universal "do not call" list to develop, I think these are steps in the right direction. I'd be interested in your thoughts.