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Janja Petek

Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Are Found Using Internet Search Data, Study Finds - NY... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...internet-data-study-finds.html

effects internet search data

shared by Janja Petek on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Using data drawn from queries entered into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University have for the first time been able to detect evidence of unreported prescription drug side effects before they were found by the Food and Drug Administration’s warning system.
  • Using automated software tools to examine queries by six million Internet users taken from Web search logs in 2010, the researchers looked for searches relating to an antidepressant, paroxetine, and a cholesterol lowering drug, pravastatin.
  • The new study was undertaken after Dr. Altman wondered whether there was a more immediate and more accurate way to gain access to data similar to what the F.D.A. had access to.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • He turned to computer scientists at Microsoft, who created software for scanning anonymized data collected from a software toolbar installed in Web browsers by users who permitted their search histories to be collected.
  • The researchers said that they were now thinking about how to add new sources of information, like behavioral data and information from social media sources. The challenge, they noted, was to integrate new sources of data while protecting individual privacy.
Anja Vasle

Even Google won't be around for ever, let alone Facebook | Technology | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...acebook-nothing-lasts-for-ever

google facebook

shared by Anja Vasle on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • At the moment, the four leading monsters are Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. Yet 18 years ago, Apple was weeks away from extinction, Amazon had just launched, Google was still three years away from incorporation and Facebook lay nine years into the future.
  • We understand pretty well the factors that determine the fortunes of companies that make things people buy – which is why, for example, one can predict thatApple won't be able indefinitely to sustain its huge profit margins on its iDevices.
  • This leaves Facebook, a company that has one billion products (called users) and earns its living by selling information about them to advertisers.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The two key factors that will determine Facebook's future are the power of network effects and the "stickiness" of its service – ie, the extent to which it can dissuade users from leaving.
  • he key determinants of success or failure were (i) the average number of friends that users have and (ii) whether the difficulty of using the site comes to outweigh the perceived benefits.
  • Facebook users will constitute a captive market and will be correspondingly exploited. And the company will be regulated as a monopoly.
  • How much exploitation will users tolerate before they decide to quit?
  • n fact, it is now so dominant that millions of people around the world think that Facebook is the internet.
  • At one point in the conversation, the Google boys noticed that their collaborator had suddenly gone rather quiet.
  • But the number of commercial companies that are more than a century old is vanishingly small.
  • in the technology world one can go from zero to hero is a very short time
  • Google has a well understood and currently profitable business model and a huge technical infrastructure but ultimately is vulnerable to a well-resourced competitor armed with better search technology.
  • A telephone network with a million subscribers is infinitely more valuable then one with only 10. In technological ecosystems, network effects are very powerful: they explain, for example, how Microsoft came to dominate the market for desktop operating and office systems.
  • If you put your faith in network effects, therefore, Facebook looks like a good investment because it'll be around for the long term.
Janja Petek

Forty years of the internet: how the world changed for ever | Technology | The Guardian - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...internet-40-history-arpanet

history web changed world

shared by Janja Petek on 06 Mar 13 - Cached
pina bitenc liked it
  • In October 1969, a student typed 'LO' on a computer - and the internet was born
  • Towards the end of the summer of 1969
  • a large grey metal box was delivered to the office of Leonard Kleinrock, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles.
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • At 10.30pm, as Kleinrock's fellow professors and students crowded around, a computer was connected to the IMP, which made contact with a second IMP, attached to a second computer, several hundred miles away at the Stanford Research Institute, and an undergraduate named Charley Kline tapped out a message.
  • It's impossible to say for certain when the internet began, mainly because nobody can agree on what, precisely, the internet is.
  • It's interesting to compare how much has changed in computing and the internet since 1969 with, say, how much has changed in world politics.
  • On the other hand, the breakthrough accomplished that night in 1969 was a decidedly down-to-earth one
  • Twelve years after Charley Kline's first message on the Arpanet, as it was then known, there were still only 213 computers on the network; but 14 years after that, 16 million people were online, and email was beginning to change the world; the first really usable web browser wasn't launched until 1993, but by 1995 we had Amazon, by 1998 Google, and by 2001, Wikipedia, at which point there were 513 million people online. Today the figure is more like 1.7 billion.
  • on New Year's Day 1994 – only yesterday, in other words – there were an estimated 623 websites.
  • On the one hand, they were there because of the Russian Sputnik satellite launch, in 1957, which panicked the American defence establishment, prompting Eisenhower to channel millions of dollars into scientific research, and establishing Arpa, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, to try to win the arms technology race. The idea was "that we would not get surprised again,"
  • "In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face," they declared.
  • The few outsiders who knew of the box's existence couldn't even get its name right: it was an IMP, or "interface message processor"
  • It was already possible to link computers by telephone lines, but it was glacially slow, and every computer in the network had to be connected, by a dedicated line, to every other computer, which meant you couldn't connect more than a handful of machines without everything becoming monstrously complex and costly.
  • The solution, called "packet switching" – which owed its existence to the work of a British physicist, Donald Davies – involved breaking data down into blocks that could be routed around any part of the network that happened to be free, before getting reassembled at the other end.
  • Still, Kleinrock recalls a tangible sense of excitement that night as Kline sat down at the SDS Sigma 7 computer, connected to the IMP, and at the same time made telephone contact with his opposite number at Stanford. As his colleagues watched, he typed the letter L, to begin the word LOGIN.
  • One of the most intriguing things about the growth of the internet is this: to a select group of technological thinkers, the surprise wasn't how quickly it spread across the world, remaking business, culture and politics – but that it took so long to get off the ground.
  • In 1945, the American presidential science adviser, Vannevar Bush, was already imagining the "memex", a device in which "an individual stores all his books, records, and communications", which would be linked to each other by "a mesh of associative trails", like weblinks.
  • And in 1946, an astonishingly complete vision of the future appeared in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. In a story entitled A Logic Named Joe, the author Murray Leinster envisioned a world in which every home was equipped with a tabletop box that he called a "logic":
  • Instead of smothering their research in the utmost secrecy – as you might expect of a cold war project aimed at winning a technological battle against Moscow – they made public every step of their thinking, in documents known as Requests For Comments.
  • Deliberately or not, they helped encourage a vibrant culture of hobbyists on the fringes of academia – students and rank amateurs who built their own electronic bulletin-board systems and eventually FidoNet, a network to connect them to each other.
  • n argument can be made that these unofficial tinkerings did as much to create the public internet as did the Arpanet. Well into the 90s, by the time the Arpanet had been replaced by NSFNet, a larger government-funded network,
  • It was the hobbyists, making unofficial connections into the main system, who first opened the internet up to allcomers.
  • This was the software known as TCP/IP, which made it possible for networks to connect to other networks, creating a "network of networks", capable of expanding virtually infinitely
  • Nevertheless, by July 1992, an Essex-born businessman named Cliff Stanford had opened Demon Internet, Britain's first commercial internet service provider.
  • After a year or so, Demon had between 2,000 and 3,000 users,
  • the @ symbol was introduced in 1971, and the first message, according to the programmer who sent it, Ray Tomlinson, was "something like QWERTYUIOP".
  • A couple of years later I got my first mobile phone, which came with two batteries: a very large one, for normal use, and an extremely large one, for those occasions on which you might actually want a few hours of power
  • For most of us, though, the web is in effect synonymous with the internet, even if we grasp that in technical terms that's inaccurate: the web is simply a system that sits on top of the internet, making it greatly easier to navigate the information there, and to use it as a medium of sharing and communication.
  • The first ever website was his own, at CERN: info.cern.ch.
  • The idea that a network of computers might enable a specific new way of thinking about information, instead of just allowing people to access the data on each other's terminals, had been around for as long as the idea of the network itself: it's there in Vannevar Bush's memex, and Murray Leinster's logics.
  • Web browsers crossed the border into mainstream use far more rapidly than had been the case with the internet itself: Mosaic launched in 1993 and Netscape followed soon after, though it was an embarrassingly long time before Microsoft realised the commercial necessity of getting involved at all. Amazon and eBay were online by 1995. And in 1998 came Google, offering a powerful new way to search the proliferating mass of information on the web.
  • Google, and others, saw that the key to the web's future would be helping users exclude almost everything on any given topic, restricting search results to the most relevant pages.
  • It is absurd – though also unavoidable here – to compact the whole of what happened from then onwards into a few sentences: the dotcom boom, the historically unprecedented dotcom bust, the growing "digital divide", and then the hugely significant flourishing, over the last seven years, of what became known as Web 2.0.
  • The most confounding thing of all is that in a few years' time, all this stupendous change will probably seem like not very much change at all.
  • Will you remember when the web was something you accessed primarily via a computer? Will you remember when there were places you couldn't get a wireless connection? Will you remember when "being on the web" was still a distinct concept, something that described only a part of your life, instead of permeating all of it? Will you remember Google?
Sandra Hribar

Study: Facebook Is Your Frenemy - Megan Garber - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...272728

shared by Sandra Hribar on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Facebook is terrible. But Facebook is, at the same time, wonderful. We love it, we hate it. We love to hate it, hate to love it, etc. It is our best friend. It is our worst enemy. Facebook may be friending the world, in other words, but it is also frenemy-ing us, one click at a time. This, according to new research from the Skype-like service Rebtel, which regularly surveys its users about their habits. The company recently queried U.S. users aged 18 and older, garnering responses from 1,632 mobile device owners. Among its questions: What social networking sites cause you the most stress? Which have the most negative effect on your mood? Which have the most positive?  The survey's major finding was unsurprising: Most social networks seem to have very little negative effect on those users' overall moods or stress levels. However: Of the users who did implicate social networks in stress and general mood changes, the overwhelming majority of them pointed their collective fingers at one network in particular: Facebook. Asked "what social network causes you the most stress?," 18.4 percent of Android users and 21.4 percent of iPhone users replied, "Facebook." By comparison, the next-most-named network, Twitter, was called out by only 5.9 percent of Android users and 4.4 percent of iPhone -- and the next-most-named, LinkedIn, clocked in with 4.0 percent and 3.2 percent of users, respectively.
Jan Keček

Microsoft fined €561m for 'browser choice' error | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...microsoft-fined-browser-error

microsoft ipraktikum internet

shared by Jan Keček on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Microsoft has been fined €561m by the European commission for failing to give users a choice of web browser when they logged into Windows computers in Europe between May 2011 and July 2012 – breaking a binding commitment it had made in 2009.
  • Microsoft made a five-year commitment in 2009 to offer users a choice of different browsers, after the EC's competition commission determined that the combination of its dominance on the desktop – where Windows runs around 95% of machines – gave the pre-installed Internet Explorer browser an unfair advantage over rivals
  • The commission implemented the "browser choice" system to create a level playing field - and said that once in use, it was very effective: "The choice screen was very successful with users," Joaquín Almunia, the competition commissioner, said in a statement. "For example, until November 2010, 84 million browsers were downloaded through it."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "We provided the commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake – or anything similar – in the future."
  • Microsoft said it took "full responsibility" for the technical error that caused the problem and that it had apologised for it.
  • ource close to Microsoft explained: "It was a single line in the code that triggered the browser choice program. It had a list of versions of Windows to test against: if the version was found in that list, the program would run. They didn't include Service Pack 1, which is effectively a different version of Windows, in that list. And so the program didn't run.
sintija

BBC News - Viewpoint: Changing the way the internet is governed is risky - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-18440558

internet bbc governence control

shared by sintija on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Viewpoint: Changing the way the internet is governed is risky
  • the US Department of Commerce has the power to decide how the internet works
  • internet is already governed
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • It's important to realise that without governance the internet could not function.
  • avoid two different web sites having the same name
  • International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann)
  • governance of the internet is effectively done by multiple stakeholders
  • WGIG would report on a solution acceptable to all but would move governance to an international body.
  • US government ultimately "controls" the internet
  • The internet overseers
  • UN summit
  • US refused to relinquish control of the Root Zone file, which is basically the key to governing the internet.
  • formed the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG).
  • in 2003 in Geneva
  • Russians
  • International Telecommunications Union (ITU), another UN agency, to be given responsibility for internet governanc
  • A great advantage of the current governance structure is that it supports rapid developments, provided that the US Department of Commerce remains at arm's length
  • internet governance needs to help the internet evolve rather than dictate how it must develop.
Gabrijela Vrbnjak

BBC News - Web code weakness allows data dump on PCs - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-21628622

clevercode html5 browser bug

shared by Gabrijela Vrbnjak on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The loophole exploits a feature of HTML 5 which defines how websites are made and what they can do.
  • Developer Feross Aboukhadijeh found the bug and set up a demo page that fills visitors' hard drives with pictures of cartoon cats. In one demo, Mr Aboukhadijeh managed to dump one gigabyte of data every 16 seconds onto a vulnerable Macbook. Clever code Most major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, were found to be vulnerable to the bug, said Mr Aboukhadijeh. While most websites are currently built using version 4 of the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), that code is gradually being superseded by the newer version 5. One big change brought in with HTML 5 lets websites store more data locally on visitors' PCs. Safeguards built into the "local storage" specification should limit how much data can be stored. Different browsers allow different limits but all allow at least 2.5 megabytes to be stored. However, Mr Aboukhadijeh found a way round this cap by creating lots of temporary websites linked to the one a person actually visited. He found that each one of these associated sites was allowed to store up to the limit of data because browser makers had not written code to stop this happening. By endlessly creating new, linked websites the bug can be used to siphon huge amounts of data onto target PCs. Only Mozilla's Firefox capped storage at 5MB and was not vulnerable, he found. "Cleverly coded websites have effectively unlimited storage space on visitor's computers," wrote Mr Aboukhadijeh in a blogpost about the bug. Code to exploit the bug has been released by Mr Aboukhadijeh and he set up a website, called Filldisk that, on vulnerable PCs, dumps lots of images of cats on to the hard drive. So far, no malicious use of the exploits has been observed. In a bid to solve the problem, bug reports about the exploit have been filed with major browser makers. More on This Story .related-links-list li { position: relative; } .related-links-list .gvl3-icon { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; } Related Stories Firefox smartphone partners revealed 24 FEBRUARY 2013, TECHNOLOGY Flash Player exits Android store 15 AUGUST 2012, TECHNOLOGY HTML 5 target for cybercriminals 02 DECEMBER 2011, TECHNOLOGY $render("page-see-also","ID"); $render("page-newstracker","ID"); Related Internet links Feross Aboukhadijeh The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites $render("page-related-items","ID"); Share this pageShare this page1.4KShareFacebookTwitter Email Print In association with $render("advert","advert-sponsor-module","page-bookmark-links"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); More Technology stories RSS Computer glitch hits Mars rover Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover is put into "safe mode" after a computer glitch caused by corrupted files. US plans small-ship drone launches Hackers breach Evernote security $render("advert","advert-mpu-high"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); Top Stories http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/6618
  • found the bug and set up a demo page that fills visitors' hard drives with pictures of cartoon cats.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • because browser makers had not written code to stop this happening. By endlessly creating new, linked websites the bug can be used to siphon huge amounts of data onto target PCs.
  • found a way round this cap by creating lots of temporary websites linked to the one a person actually visited
  • Most major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, were found to be vulnerable to the bug
  • was not vulnerable
  • Mozilla's Firefox
  • bug reports about the exploit have been filed with major browser makers.
petra funtek

Social networks: after privacy, beyond friendship | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...fter_privacy_beyond_friendship

facebook social networking my space personal details

shared by petra funtek on 06 Mar 13 - Cached
  • irst, research shows that social-networking sites are a serious risk when accessed at work.
  • Facebook at work". It may sound ridiculous, but the purpose is to ensure that employees are not putting their personal and corporate data out to tender.
  • The second reason is that once uploaded, personal details can become public possession - and not just for now but, effectively, forever. News Corp bought MySpace to exploit what previously had been unthinkable to advertisers: customers telling you what they want without you even asking.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • he irony in all this is that Facebook - which in September 2007 overtook MySpace in Britain as the preferred site for individual users - was originally set up to mirror rather than overturn the "intimacy" and exclusiveness of real-world, face-to-face networks. Andrew McCollum, one of the founders of Facebook, explained to me that they based the project on a pretty closed community, namely university colleges.
  • Social networks: after privacy, beyond friendship
Katja Jerman

Digital rights advocates wary of new 'six strikes' initiative for online piracy | Techn... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ital-six-strikes-online-piracy

piracy CAS ISP online

shared by Katja Jerman on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The Copyright Alert System (CAS) was devised by a coalition of internet service providers (ISPs), content owners and the US government to curb illegal downloading by alerting "casual infringers" when illegal filesharing is detected on their IP address
  • Initially, the alerts are intended to be educational. They tell the customer what happened and how they can prevent it from happening again. If pirating continues to happen through the IP address, users will receive the message again, followed by messages that ask them to confirm they have seen the alerts. The fifth and sixth alert are called mitigation alerts and will temporarily slow users' internet speeds, depending on the ISP.
  • CAS has also been criticized because the person who audited the MarkMonitor software to ensure that it fairly identifies copyright violations is a former lobbyist for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), one of the industry groups fronting money for system.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Jill Lesser, executive director of the Center for Copyright Information said in an interview with On the Media that the program is meant to abet the "casual infringer".
  • McSherry said that people engaged in wholesale commercial infringement wouldn't be fazed by the system because they are familiar with ways around the system.
  • The newest attempt to thwart illegal filesharing in the United States launched Monday and while the "six strikes and you're out" initiative seems to offer light penalties, digital rights advocates are concerned that it lacks transparency.
  • Copyright Alert System (CAS)
  • was devised by a coalition of internet service providers (ISPs), content owners and the US government to curb illegal downloading by alerting "casual infringers" when illegal filesharing is detected on their IP address.
  • Initially, the alerts are intended to be educational.
  • . If pirating continues to happen through the IP address, users will receive the message again, followed by messages that ask them to confirm they have seen the alerts. The fifth and sixth alert are called mitigation alerts and will temporarily slow users' internet speeds, depending on the ISP.
  • It's certainly not how we should be doing copyright policy,
  • it's a private copyright system and it doesn't have the protections and balances that the public copyright system has.
  • to ensure that it fairly identifies copyright violations is a former lobbyist
  • McSherry said that people engaged in wholesale commercial infringement wouldn't be fazed by the system because they are familiar with ways around the system
  • This failed to have a significant effect on pirating, and the industry stopped suing these type of casual users several years ago.
  • Katja Jerman on 06 Mar 13
     
    article 1
inesmag

Google and competition: searching for a solution | Tom Watson | Comment is free | guard... - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...competition-searching-solution

google competition searching solution comment

shared by inesmag on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Some time later this month we are expecting the European commission to decide how it will proceed with its investigation of the search giant Google, following the latter's submission of proposed remedies at the end of January over allegations that it has engaged in a range of anticompetitive practices.
  • Google is a global company and its activities will require a global solution.
  • Google's global revenues were £23.5bn in 2011. Those are its revenues before tax, although Google's approach to tax is another and equally interesting story. Those vast revenues do not come from those who search, but from those who bid to place advertisements alongside the search results. This means that Google has a clear interest to arrange the rankings in a way that maximises its profits and faces a stark conflict of interests when it does so. It has every incentive to demote other companies, who might actually be offering answers or services that are more relevant to the user queries, and to advance its own services.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • There is no reason why an appropriate remedy that introduces fair rankings should in any way impair the user experience.
  • that Google, with more than 90% of the search market in Europe, is overwhelmingly dominant.
  • Effective remedies will aim to protect competition for the future but need also to acknowledge the past. Google has continued to expand and exploit its position during the period of the investigation and it will be necessary to find a solution that tackles that past misbehaviour and reintroduces something approaching a level playing field.
sintija

BBC News - US internet 'six strikes' anti-piracy campaign begins - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-21591696

internet bbc campaign anti-piracy

shared by sintija on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • US internet 'six strikes' anti-piracy campaign begins
  • Five of the country's leading internet service providers (ISPs) are taking part in the Copyright Alert System (CAS), which they say is designed to educate rather than punish users.
  • "Over the course of the next several days... our content partners will begin sending notices of alleged peer-to-peer copyright infringement to ISPs, and the ISPs will begin forwarding those notices in the form of copyright alerts to consumers,
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Consumers whose accounts have been used to share copyrighted content over P2P networks illegally (or without authority) will receive alerts that are meant to educate rather than punish, and direct them to legal alternatives. And for those consumers who believe they received alerts in error, an easy-to-use process will be in place for them to seek independent review of the alerts they received.
  • Meanwhile the UK has favoured a proposed "three strikes" policy
  • Under telecom regulator Ofcom's draft code, users who receive three warnings within 12 months would have anonymous information about their activities passed to copyright holders which could then seek court orders to discover their identities.
  • The policy had been due to come into effect in March 2014, but has been delayed after a House of Lords committee queried whether the Digital Economy Act - which the code is part of - complied with Treasury rules.
Nuša Gregoršanec

BBC News - Child safety measures to protect against internet threats - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-16305561

safety internet threats children parental supervision

shared by Nuša Gregoršanec on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Child safety measures to protect against internet threats
  • In a poll of over 19,000 parents and children conducted by security firm Norton, 7% of UK parents said they had absolutely no idea what their kids were up to on their computers and phones.
  • Even more worryingly, 30% (39% worldwide) said they had suffered a "serious" negative experience. This included, among other things, invitations to meet online "friends" in real life and exposure to indecent pictures of someone they did not know.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The ever-growing adoption of social networks, instant messages and mobile communication leaves the door open to more subtle attacks - both of a technological and psychological nature.
  • "Parents must realise that technology alone can't keep children safe online," Deborah Preston, the company's internet security advocate.
  • "To be truly safe it requires not only technology, but also a combination of open and ongoing dialogue and education between parents and children."
  • On social networks, account hijacking - where a child's account is accessed for a practical joke or more sinister purposes - can cause considerable distress.
  • A poll by Virgin Media suggests that 38% of parents whose children have suffered from cyberbullying feel unable to protect them due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of how the online world works.
  • This, Mr Abdul argued, could only be solved through greater education and a more honest understanding from parents about how real and damaging the effects of online bullying could be.
  • Mr Abdul added, the correct software, education and parental supervision means children can also be protected both at home and away.
Urška Cerar

BBC News - Court orders UK ISPs to block more piracy sites - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-21601609

court piracy illegal music

shared by Urška Cerar on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Opponents have argued that blocking sites in this way was ineffective.
  • Data seen by the BBC suggested that the blocking of The Pirate Bay had only had a short-term effect on the level of pirate activity online
  • there had been a large reduction in the number of users illegally downloading music
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Blocking illegal sites helps ensure that the legal digital market can grow and labels can continue to sign and develop new talent.
  • The UK has now handed the power over what we see on the internet to corporate lobbyists
Nuša Gregoršanec

BBC NEWS | UK | Online networking 'harms health' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7898510.stm

interaction internet health problems

shared by Nuša Gregoršanec on 07 Mar 13 - Cached
  • Online networking 'harms health'
  • Online networking 'harms health'
  • Dr Aric Sigman says websites such as Facebook set out to enrich social lives, but end up keeping people apart.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • A lack of "real" social networking, involving personal interaction, may have biological effects, he suggests. He also says that evidence suggests that a lack of face-to-face networking could alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and influence mental performance.
  • This, he claims, could increase the risk of health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia.
  • Dr Sigman says that there is research that suggests the number of hours people spend interacting face-to-face has fallen dramatically since 1987, as the use of electronic media has increased.
  • Dr Sigman also argues using electronic media undermines people's social skills and their ability to read body language.
Kaja Horvat

BBC News - Internet shopping: What makes the online consumer tick? - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...business-17619022

internet shopping consumer

shared by Kaja Horvat on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Data can be used at every stage of a marketing campaign from planning how it will run, to effective implementation, to measuring how successful the campaign was
  • data also shows us what really influences people online.
  • What does this mean? It means that today's savvy shoppers are taking their time when it comes to making a purchasing decision - often checking out online forums, blogs and social networks such as Facebook before they invest.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • In March 2012, UK retail websites received an additional 8.5 million visits through social networks and forums compared to March 2011, representing a 2.3% increase year-on-year.
  • two in every five visits to online retailers now come from a search engine.
  • Recently, we conducted some anonymous research into the way that people engage with brands and social networks - specifically Facebook. We looked at the top 100 online retailers, and benchmarked that against the number of fans those retailers had on their Facebook page. The correlation showed that the more fans a retailer had on Facebook, the more visits the website received, to the extent that for every additional fan acquired a retailer could expect to see an additional 20 visits to their company website from Facebook over a 12-month period.
  • As Facebook has evolved, it has become more than a source of traffic for retail websites; in some cases it has also become the digital shop front.
  • 4% of the UK's Facebook population have purchased a product from a brand's Facebook page
  • social media in particular offers companies a huge opportunity to expand their brand equity and profile, engage with consumers and influence their customers.
  • A recent poll conducted by Experian showed that 5% of consumers have actively sought feedback on a purchase made in store on Facebook or Twitter, while 24% of people would be positively influenced to buy a product after seeing an advert on Facebook.
donnamariee

Better Policy Through Better Information | John O. McGinnis | Cato Unbound - 0 views

www.cato-unbound.org/...icy-through-better-information

shared by donnamariee on 20 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Can Internet activism work?
  • is importantly correct that the Internet can help redress the balance between special and more encompassing interests by reducing the cost of accessing information. Such reduction redounds to the advantage of diffuse groups more than concentrated groups because reduced costs can temper the former groups’ larger problems of coordination.
  • earing that more information may enable citizens to better organize to attack their privileges, they have tried to restrict emerging technologies of free communication as long as these technologies have been around.
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  • In a democratic state like ours, the primary interest groups are not authoritarian cliques, but private actors, like public sector unions and trade associations, which have the leverage to pressure politicians to use public power on their behalf. And, like authoritarian leaders, such groups are desperate to avoid transparency to retain their benefits. A case in point is the opposition of teachers' unions to publishing evaluations of schools and teachers on the Internet. And many interest groups have tried to prevent laws requiring Internet disclosure of campaign contributions.
  • Yet the results of policies are contestable. And it is often hard for citizens who are distracted by many enterprises more interesting than politics to find good information about policies' likely outcomes. Most people also have a better intuitive sense of how policies will affect their short-term interests than the long-term interests of society, even if the long-term effects may be of great personal as well as social benefit.
  • The Internet provides an important mechanism of such social discovery. Because of the greater space and interconnections that the Internet makes available, web-based media, like blogs, can be dispersed and specialized and yet connected with the wider world. As a result of this more decentralized and competitive media, the web generates both more innovative policy ideas and better explanations of policy than were available when mainstream media dominated the flow of political discussion.
  • In short, over time the Internet and allied aspects of the computational revolution can create more focused and more accurate knowledge about the consequences of social policies. This knowledge in turn can help more citizens focus more on what they have in common—their shared goals and policies that may achieve them—rather than on the unsupported intuitions or personal circumstances that may divide them. Of course, some citizens will remain ideologues, impervious to updating on the facts. But democracy moves by changing the middle, not the extremes. Like other mechanisms that increase common knowledge, the Internet can give wing to the better angels of our nature.
  • donnamariee on 20 Mar 13
     
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donnamariee

How social networks have changed our world | Techi.com - 0 views

www.techi.com/...etworks-have-changed-our-world

shared by donnamariee on 17 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • How social networks have changed our world
  • social networks have evolved from simple communication hubs to veritable agents of change; galvanizing thousands of people over political discourse, creating and changing industries, and all in all, transforming people’s lives
  • Today, more than 600 million users worldwide are active on this website. Approximately 200 million people are active on twitter
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  • None of these social networks even excited at the beginning of the decade. While these figures may be mere numbers for many people, the impact of social network goes far and deep. Here are a few areas in which social networks have had lasting and arguably permanent effects.
  • social networks have altered the operational model of politics and public service
  • Facebook
  • touchstone for how non-profit organizations, environmental activities, and political factions reach out to thousands of potential volunteers and donors
  • Twitter is being used by almost all progressive politicians to promote their causes. Thanks to the social networks, politics is no longer limited to the political elites; people voice their opinions, share their ideas, and even communicate with politicians on a one-on-one basis. It’s a technology lesson that progressive politicians have to learn or else, risk losing to the tech savvy youth of today.
    • donnamariee
      donnamariee on 17 Mar 13
       
      Twitter is being used by almost all progressive politicians to promote their causes. Thanks to the social networks, politics is no longer limited to the political elites; people voice their opinions, share their ideas, and even communicate with politicians on a one-on-one basis. It's a technology lesson that progressive politicians have to learn or else, risk losing to the tech savvy youth of today.
  • Marketing and advertising are transforming themselves from industries reliant on mass market channels to those that must embrace the power of the customer, and attempt to engage in conversations with them. Often, a “middle man” (such as news paper reporter) ultimately determined that what was written or said. The ability to bypass gatekeepers and facilitate direct interactions with consumers and communities is very important.
  • Some news websites already present visitors with a list of stories recommended by their friends because they realize an endorsement from ‘someone you know’ carries extra weight
  • From traffic updates, to natural riots, anyone and everyone who has access to social networking sites can report his/her version of such events. Sifting through the humongous amount of news, speculations and analysis are abilities that a New Media user must now possess.
  • It is not uncommon to see small or home grow businesses that operate solely through their Facebook accounts. In fact, for businesses, interaction via social network has almost become a yardstick to test out their customer service
  • With Google+ being launched recently, it is clear that all technology giants have realized the critical role that social networks will lay in shaping our lives. It is no longer about implementing the latest, cutting edge technology; it is about how seamlessly and organically a social network merges in our lives, and affects every aspect of it. The lines between real and virtual lives have now blurred to the extent of becoming invisible
  • donnamariee on 17 Mar 13
     
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