It appears that with the launch of Windows XP, us bloggers are going to have to add a line of code to our source which disables Microsoft’s frightening smart tags technology… unless that is, we actually want Microsoft to edit our site for us - because of course, we are all too stupid to decide what should be hyperlinked [I recommend that you read this before you read on here]. It seems as though now that Microsoft has swept away the competition like an irritating fly on it’s Hamburger™, they’re unleashing these new technologies to really start controlling what we see and how we experience the web. I certainly don’t want this site to be altered by new hyperlinks that I haven’t authorised, especially ones which link back to content that I don’t know about on the Microsoft site. It’s us independent content producers that should be most concerned as it threatens our freedom to write what we want and link to what we want. Besides, I consider the creation of hypertext to be a very creative and personal process: once I have written something, I take care in choosing what should be linked and where it links to. I consider this to be just as important as the writing itself. In defending this technology, Microsoft state that the “feature will spare users from “under-linked” sites”. Surely a better way of achieving this is to educate people about hypertext and the importance of creating it properly. In light of all this, it’s important to stop Microsoft taking control of the web, so my suggestion is that you download and try out Opera, iCab or Mozilla if you haven’t done so already.