Announced today over at the Google Public Policy blog is "DataLiberation.org: Liberate your Data!"

We're a small team of Google Chicago engineers (named after a Monty Python skit about the Judean People's Front) that aims to make it easy for our users to transfer their personal data in and out of Google's services by building simple import and export functions. Our goal is to "liberate" data so that consumers and businesses using Google products always have a choice when it comes to the technology they use.

I may be wrong, but I do believe this is the first time I read about an entire team within such a big firm entirely dedicated to the issue of data portability. The irony here is that Google's track record in the past hasn't been perfect - as I've highlighted more than once - and as much as the decidedly non-Googlish branding and informal tone seem to conspire to lend the project a certain dissociation from the big G, it is very much real, as noted by the aforementioned Public Policy post and the wealth of information on how to delete / export your data from Google services.

Pretty old news, but I was tipped off a couple of weeks ago that Kentucky Fried Chicken - KFC, or "PFK" as they are known here in Le Québec - was market testing out a new 'sandwich' that does away with the bread buns, replacing them with two pieces of fried chicken. I'm trying to think of something witty to say here, but the video promo speaks for itself:

I tend to mostly stay away from American Fast Food - especially anything that could potentially hurt my chances of gittin' with Pam Anderson - but this extreme concoction is too, uhhh, extreme to pass up. If they release it here, I'm definitely going to have to try it.

Image courtesy of http://foodgeekery.com

As a foodie, the fact that it's a sandwich held together with chicken and not bread is pretty cool, although I suppose that basically just makes it a large chicken strip with the sauce. Of course, the fact that it's a KFC / mass marketing product generally means that most of all the conversation about it will be on blogs and forums complaining about how gross it looks. If it were the product of some independent, forward-thinking chicken joint in Seattle, SF or New York you'd have hipsters posting about it on Flickr and Twitter praising it for its originality.

At any rate, you have to hand it to KFC for one thing - they just put back in question everything it means to be a sandwich:

Sin títulos...

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc. from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

C'est trop bon, as I've been saying over the past few months. PS - I'm back. From Paris, from the real world, and from myself.