The thermometer tells us it’s only 84, but it feels like a bath of humid, sticky goo out there. Hurry up inside, then get inside these links:

Simplify, man! Over on the Official Google Blog, they’re fed up with the “growing patchwork quilt of state privacy laws, disparate industry-specific privacy laws…and a similarly-mixed bag of data security laws.” Therefore, Big G, Microsoft, eBay, and several other large firms have banded together to form the Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum, which has released a statement today urging the creation of a federal consumer privacy law that would supersede the “complex, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory” privacy regulations on the books in various localities, hopefully making eCommerce somewhat more practical. Read the whole statement (in .pdf) here.

Finally, something to help us find Waldo There are lots of social question and answer sites on the web, driven by knowledgeable folks happy to help out with users’ queries. No matter how much you know, though, it’s tough to tell someone just how to, say, kick a field goal just by writing instructions. Answerbag is hoping to change that with its new video answers, recorded and uploaded by camera-equipped people in the know. A site very much like Yahoo! Answers (without the rest of Yahoo! attached to it), answerbag hopes its new feature will help people learn the answers to puzzlers like “How do you tie a tie? How do you do a wheelie?” and “How can I get my hair to look like David Lee Roth’s?” Two more questions: Doesn’t the site’s icon look a bit much like a garbage bag? and When are we going to be able to ask video questions? (via Search Engine Journal).

Then the robots came, and they outlawed rock n’ roll Attention robot makers: whatever devious plans you have in mind for your (slowly) building army of mechanical servants…Microsoft is here to help! Ars Technica says that they’ve partnered with a number of leading robot hardware makers in developing Microsoft Robotics Studio, which provides a visual programming environment that should make it easier to write the code that makes our robot friends go. The press release says it’s made for robotic pursuits by “academic, hobbyist and commercial developers,” and no doubt evil scientists as well.

Not that Lindsay Lohan would be interested… TechWeb.com reports that Georgia Tech engineers have worked out a way to block digital video recorders and digital cameras, to help snuff out “piracy and espionage” (and maybe some other more innocuous activities). Their device detects the light reflected from digital image sensors, then sends a beam of white light, “blinding the camera and destroying the recording.” They’ve got to work the kinks out first, though, so it doesn’t mistake the light reflected from your jewelry (or, say, your eyes) for a camera and shoot that blinding light accidentally.

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