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Weiye Loh

IPhone and Android Apps Breach Privacy - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4694004576020083703574602.html

Mobile Privacy

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real name—even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off.
  • An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.
  • The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • iPhone apps transmitted more data than the apps on phones using Google Inc.'s Android operating system. Because of the test's size, it's not known if the pattern holds among the hundreds of thousands of apps available.
  • TextPlus 4, a popular iPhone app for text messaging. It sent the phone's unique ID number to eight ad companies and the phone's zip code, along with the user's age and gender, to two of them.
  • Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender, location and phone identifiers to various ad networks. iPhone and Android versions of a game called Paper Toss—players try to throw paper wads into a trash can—each sent the phone's ID number to at least five ad companies. Grindr, an iPhone app for meeting gay men, sent gender, location and phone ID to three ad companies.
  • iPhone maker Apple Inc. says it reviews each app before offering it to users. Both Apple and Google say they protect users by requiring apps to obtain permission before revealing certain kinds of information, such as location.
  • The Journal found that these rules can be skirted. One iPhone app, Pumpkin Maker (a pumpkin-carving game), transmits location to an ad network without asking permission. Apple declines to comment on whether the app violated its rules.
  • With few exceptions, app users can't "opt out" of phone tracking, as is possible, in limited form, on regular computers. On computers it is also possible to block or delete "cookies," which are tiny tracking files. These techniques generally don't work on cellphone apps.
  • makers of TextPlus 4, Pandora and Grindr say the data they pass on to outside firms isn't linked to an individual's name. Personal details such as age and gender are volunteered by users, they say. The maker of Pumpkin Maker says he didn't know Apple required apps to seek user approval before transmitting location. The maker of Paper Toss didn't respond to requests for comment.
  • Many apps don't offer even a basic form of consumer protection: written privacy policies. Forty-five of the 101 apps didn't provide privacy policies on their websites or inside the apps at the time of testing. Neither Apple nor Google requires app privacy policies.
  • the most widely shared detail was the unique ID number assigned to every phone.
  • On iPhones, this number is the "UDID," or Unique Device Identifier. Android IDs go by other names. These IDs are set by phone makers, carriers or makers of the operating system, and typically can't be blocked or deleted. "The great thing about mobile is you can't clear a UDID like you can a cookie," says Meghan O'Holleran of Traffic Marketplace, an Internet ad network that is expanding into mobile apps. "That's how we track everything."
  • O'Holleran says Traffic Marketplace, a unit of Epic Media Group, monitors smartphone users whenever it can. "We watch what apps you download, how frequently you use them, how much time you spend on them, how deep into the app you go," she says. She says the data is aggregated and not linked to an individual.
  • Apple and Google ad networks let advertisers target groups of users. Both companies say they don't track individuals based on the way they use apps.
  • Apple limits what can be installed on an iPhone by requiring iPhone apps to be offered exclusively through its App Store. Apple reviews those apps for function, offensiveness and other criteria.
  • Apple says iPhone apps "cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used." Many apps tested by the Journal appeared to violate that rule, by sending a user's location to ad networks, without informing users. Apple declines to discuss how it interprets or enforces the policy.
  • Google doesn't review the apps, which can be downloaded from many vendors. Google says app makers "bear the responsibility for how they handle user information." Google requires Android apps to notify users, before they download the app, of the data sources the app intends to access. Possible sources include the phone's camera, memory, contact list, and more than 100 others. If users don't like what a particular app wants to access, they can choose not to install the app, Google says.
  • Neither Apple nor Google requires apps to ask permission to access some forms of the device ID, or to send it to outsiders. When smartphone users let an app see their location, apps generally don't disclose if they will pass the location to ad companies.
  • Lack of standard practices means different companies treat the same information differently. For example, Apple says that, internally, it treats the iPhone's UDID as "personally identifiable information." That's because, Apple says, it can be combined with other personal details about people—such as names or email addresses—that Apple has via the App Store or its iTunes music services. By contrast, Google and most app makers don't consider device IDs to be identifying information.
  • A growing industry is assembling this data into profiles of cellphone users. Mobclix, the ad exchange, matches more than 25 ad networks with some 15,000 apps seeking advertisers. The Palo Alto, Calif., company collects phone IDs, encodes them (to obscure the number), and assigns them to interest categories based on what apps people download and how much time they spend using an app, among other factors. By tracking a phone's location, Mobclix also makes a "best guess" of where a person lives, says Mr. Gurbuxani, the Mobclix executive. Mobclix then matches that location with spending and demographic data from Nielsen Co.
  • Mobclix can place a user in one of 150 "segments" it offers to advertisers, from "green enthusiasts" to "soccer moms." For example, "die hard gamers" are 15-to-25-year-old males with more than 20 apps on their phones who use an app for more than 20 minutes at a time. Mobclix says its system is powerful, but that its categories are broad enough to not identify individuals. "It's about how you track people better," Mr. Gurbuxani says.
  • four app makers posted privacy policies after being contacted by the Journal, including Rovio Mobile Ltd., the Finnish company behind the popular game Angry Birds (in which birds battle egg-snatching pigs). A spokesman says Rovio had been working on the policy, and the Journal inquiry made it a good time to unveil it.
  • Free and paid versions of Angry Birds were tested on an iPhone. The apps sent the phone's UDID and location to the Chillingo unit of Electronic Arts Inc., which markets the games. Chillingo says it doesn't use the information for advertising and doesn't share it with outsiders.
  • Some developers feel pressure to release more data about people. Max Binshtok, creator of the DailyHoroscope Android app, says ad-network executives encouraged him to transmit users' locations. Mr. Binshtok says he declined because of privacy concerns. But ads targeted by location bring in two to five times as much money as untargeted ads, Mr. Binshtok says. "We are losing a lot of revenue."
  • Apple targets ads to phone users based largely on what it knows about them through its App Store and iTunes music service. The targeting criteria can include the types of songs, videos and apps a person downloads, according to an Apple ad presentation reviewed by the Journal. The presentation named 103 targeting categories, including: karaoke, Christian/gospel music, anime, business news, health apps, games and horror movies. People familiar with iAd say Apple doesn't track what users do inside apps and offers advertisers broad categories of people, not specific individuals. Apple has signaled that it has ideas for targeting people more closely. In a patent application filed this past May, Apple outlined a system for placing and pricing ads based on a person's "web history or search history" and "the contents of a media library." For example, home-improvement advertisers might pay more to reach a person who downloaded do-it-yourself TV shows, the document says.
  • The patent application also lists another possible way to target people with ads: the contents of a friend's media library. How would Apple learn who a cellphone user's friends are, and what kinds of media they prefer? The patent says Apple could tap "known connections on one or more social-networking websites" or "publicly available information or private databases describing purchasing decisions, brand preferences," and other data. In September, Apple introduced a social-networking service within iTunes, called Ping, that lets users share music preferences with friends. Apple declined to comment.
Weiye Loh

The App Store Moral Quandary - 0 views

gizmodo.com/#!5784923/the-app-store-moral-quandary

Apple App Mobile Morality Ethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • the App Store is Apple's world. They rule it, and can pull or approve whatever they want. They'll keep selling tons of apps regardless of what they remove or don't remove, or what some people find offensive. There's little consequence for Apple in the end. But as long as Apple makes itself the arbiter of App Store morality, or concerns itself with what one group finds offensive versus another, this stuff will never stop.
  • Who's to say where it ends? Everybody finds something offensive, and everything offends somebody.
  • a handful of senators are calling on Apple to pull apps that allow users to self-report DUI (and speeding and other law enforcement) checkpoints, like Trapster and FuzzAlert. Which, on the face of it, sounds almost like a no-brainer-the apps facilitate breaking the law. On the other hand, the data is entirely user reported. Somebody could tweet all of it, theoretically. Should Apple take down apps comprised entirely of user-generated data? Both of those apps are still in the app store.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Apple occasionally places itself in an awkward position. Like, for instance, when Exodus International, one of those ministries that promotes "gay cures," released an iPhone app. People complained that it was offensive (I don't like it myself), and Apple removed it, saying it violates their "developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people." Just last year, Apple repeatedly rejected the app Gay New York: 101 Can't-Miss Places-basically a gay sight-seeing app. The creator found Apple's rejection of the "PG-13" app to be "homophobic and discriminatory to the point of hostile," since, he claims, that "far racier photographic material is routinely available on other apps."
  • Apple doesn't want people to perceive the App Store as a seedy place (which the Android Market kind of seems like sometimes!), or a place where kids can get their hands on stuff they shouldn't. It's family friendly, mostly. (Apps that could lead to bad stuff, like browsers, carry 17+ warnings and can be blocked via parental controls.) And it keeps regulators and Congressmen off their back
Weiye Loh

'Gay cure' Apple iPhone app: more than 80,000 complain | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...gay-cure-apple-iphone

Apple Homosexuality Religion Technolgoy

shared by Weiye Loh on 21 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Ben Summerskill, chief executive of gay rights group Stonewall, said: "At Stonewall, we've all been on this app since 8am and we can assure your readers it's having absolutely no effect.
  • A new petition letter addressed to Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive, posted on the Change.org site last week said: "Apple doesn't allow racist or anti-Semitic apps in its app store, yet it gives the green light to an app targeting vulnerable LGBT youth with the message that their sexual orientation is a 'sin that will make your heart sick' and a 'counterfeit'.
  • The technology giant is notoriously efficacious in deciding which apps it allows on to its popular iPhone and iPad handsets. Last year Apple withdrew a similar anti-gay iPhone app called Manhattan Declaration after Change.org, the online activism site, handed over an 8,000-strong petition.
Weiye Loh

Android software piracy rampant despite Google's efforts to curb - Computerworld - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...spite_Google_s_efforts_to_curb

Piracy Open Source Android

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Some have argued that piracy is rampant in those countries where the online Android Market is not yet available. But a recent KeyesLabs research project suggests that may not be true. KeyesLabs created a rough methodology to track total downloads of its apps, determine which ones were pirated, and the location of the end users. The results were posted in August, along with a “heat map” showing pirate activity. 
  • In July 2010, Google announced the Google Licensing Service, available via Android Market. Applications can include the new License Verification Library (LVL). “At run time, with the inclusion of a set of libraries provided by us, your application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users,” according to a blog post by Android engineer Eric Chu. “It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records.”
  • Justin Case, at the Android Police Web site, dissected the LVL. “A minor patch to an application employing this official, Google-recommended protection system will render it completely worthless,” he concluded.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In response, Google has promised continued improvements and outlined a multipronged strategy around the new licensing service to make piracy much harder. “A determined attacker who’s willing to disassemble and reassemble code can eventually hack around the service,” acknowledged Android engineer Trevor Johns in a recent blog post.  But developers can make their work much harder by combining a cluster of techniques, he counsels: obfuscating code, modifying the licensing library to protect against common cracking techniques, designing the app to be tamper-resistant, and offloading license validation to a trusted server.
  • Gareau isn’t quite as convinced of the benefits of code obfuscation, though he does make use of it. He’s taken several other steps to protect his software work. One is providing a free trial version, which allows only a limited amount of data but is otherwise fully-featured. The idea: Let customers prove that the app will do everything they want, and they may be more willing to pay for it. He also provides a way to detect whether the app has been tampered with, for example, by removing the licensing checks. If yes, the app can be structured to stop working or behave erratically.
  • Weiye Loh on 29 Sep 10
     
    Android software piracy rampant despite Google's efforts to curb
Weiye Loh

EdgeRank: The Secret Sauce That Makes Facebook's News Feed Tick - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...facebook-edgerank

Facebook News Feed

shared by Weiye Loh on 21 Feb 11 - Cached
  • but News Feed only displays a subset of the stories generated by your friends — if it displayed everything, there’s a good chance you’d be overwhelmed. Developers are always trying to make sure their sites and apps are publishing stories that make the cut, which has led to the concept of “News Feed Optimization”, and their success is dictated by EdgeRank.
  • At a high level, the EdgeRank formula is fairly straightforward. But first, some definitions: every item that shows up in your News Feed is considered an Object. If you have an Object in the News Feed (say, a status update), whenever another user interacts with that Object they’re creating what Facebook calls an Edge, which includes actions like tags and comments. Each Edge has three components important to Facebook’s algorithm: First, there’s an affinity score between the viewing user and the item’s creator — if you send your friend a lot of Facebook messages and check their profile often, then you’ll have a higher affinity score for that user than you would, say, an old acquaintance you haven’t spoken to in years. Second, there’s a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment probably has more importance than a Like, for example. And finally there’s the most obvious factor — time. The older an Edge is, the less important it becomes.
  • Multiply these factors for each Edge then add the Edge scores up and you have an Object’s EdgeRank. And the higher that is, the more likely your Object is to appear in the user’s feed. It’s worth pointing out that the act of creating an Object is also considered an Edge, which is what allows Objects to show up in your friends’ feeds before anyone has interacted with them.
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  • an Object is more likely to show up in your News Feed if people you know have been interacting with it recently. That really isn’t particularly surprising. Neither is the resulting message to developers: if you want your posts to show up in News Feed, make sure people will actually want to interact with them.
  • Steinberg hinted that a simpler version of News Feed may be on the way, as the current two-tabbed system is a bit complicated. That said, many people still use both tabs, with over 50% of users clicking over to the ‘most recent’ tab on a regular basis.
  • If you want to watch the video for yourself, click here, navigate to the Techniques sessions, and click on ‘Focus on Feed’. The talk about Facebook’s algorithms begins around 22 minutes in.
Weiye Loh

Cancer resembles life 1 billion years ago, say astrobiologists - microbiology, genomics... - 0 views

www.lifescientist.com.au/..._years_ago_say_astrobiologists

Cancer Evolution Life

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • astrobiologists, working with oncologists in the US, have suggested that cancer resembles ancient forms of life that flourished between 600 million and 1 billion years ago.
  • Read more about what this discovery means for cancer research.
  • The genes that controlled the behaviour of these early multicellular organisms still reside within our own cells, managed by more recent genes that keep them in check.It's when these newer controlling genes fail that the older mechanisms take over, and the cell reverts to its earlier behaviours and grows out of control.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The new theory, published in the journal Physical Biology, has been put forward by two leading figures in the world of cosmology and astrobiology: Paul Davies, director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Arizona State University; and Charles Lineweaver, from the Australian National University.
  • According to Lineweaver, this suggests that cancer is an atavism, or an evolutionary throwback.
  • In the paper, they suggest that a close look at cancer shows similarities with early forms of multicellular life.
  • “Unlike bacteria and viruses, cancer has not developed the capacity to evolve into new forms. In fact, cancer is better understood as the reversion of cells to the way they behaved a little over one billion years ago, when humans were nothing more than loose-knit colonies of only partially differentiated cells. “We think that the tumours that develop in cancer patients today take the same form as these simple cellular structures did more than a billion years ago,” he said.
  • One piece of evidence to support this theory is that cancers appear in virtually all metazoans, with the notable exception of the bizarre naked mole rat."This quasi-ubiquity suggests that the mechanisms of cancer are deep-rooted in evolutionary history, a conjecture that receives support from both paleontology and genetics," they write.
  • the genes that controlled this early multi-cellular form of life are like a computer operating system's 'safe mode', and when there are failures or mutations in the more recent genes that manage the way cells specialise and interact to form the complex life of today, then the earlier level of programming takes over.
  • Their notion is in contrast to a prevailing theory that cancer cells are 'rogue' cells that evolve rapidly within the body, overcoming the normal slew of cellular defences.
  • However, Davies and Lineweaver point out that cancer cells are highly cooperative with each other, if competing with the host's cells. This suggests a pre-existing complexity that is reminiscent of early multicellular life.
  • cancers' manifold survival mechanisms are predictable, and unlikely to emerge spontaneously through evolution within each individual in such a consistent way.
  • The good news is that this means combating cancer is not necessarily as complex as if the cancers were rogue cells evolving new and novel defence mechanisms within the body.Instead, because cancers fall back on the same evolved mechanisms that were used by early life, we can expect them to remain predictable, thus if they're susceptible to treatment, it's unlikely they'll evolve new ways to get around it.
  • If the atavism hypothesis is correct, there are new reasons for optimism," they write.
  • Weiye Loh on 17 Feb 11
     
    Feature: Inside DNA vaccines bioMD makes a bid for Andrew Forest's Allied Medical and Coridon Alexion acquires technology for MoCD therapy More > Most Popular Media Releases Cancer resembles life 1 billion years ago, say astrobiologists Feature: The challenge of a herpes simplex vaccine Feature: Proteomics power of pawpaw bioMD makes a bid for Andrew Forest's Allied Medical and Coridon Immune system boosting hormone might lead to HIV cure Biotechnology Directory Company Profile Check out this company's profile and more in the Biotechnology Directory! Biotechnology Directory Find company by name Find company by category Latest Jobs Senior Software Developer / Java Analyst Programm App Support Developer - Java / J2ee Solutions Consultant - VIC Technical Writer Product Manager (Fisheye/Crucible)   BUYING GUIDES Portable Multimedia Players Digital Cameras Digital Video Cameras LATEST PRODUCTS HTC Wildfire S Android phone (preview) Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GH2 digital camera HTC Desire S Android phone (preview) Qld ICT minister Robert Schwarten retires Movie piracy costs Aus economy $1.37 billion in 12 months: AFACT Wireless smartphones essential to e-health: CSIRO Aussie outsourcing CRM budgets to soar in 2011: Ovum Federal government to evaluate education revolution targets Business continuity planning - more than just disaster recovery Proving the value of IT - Part one 5 open source security projects to watch In-memory computing Information security in 2011 EFA shoots down 'unproductive' AFACT movie piracy study In Pictures: IBM hosts Galactic dinner Emerson Network Power launches new infrastructure solutions Consumers not smart enough for smartphones? Google one-ups Apple online media subscription service M2M offerings expand as more machines go online India cancels satellite spectrum deal after controversy Lenovo profit rises in Q3 on strong PC sales in China Taiwan firm to supply touch sensors to Samsung HP regains top position in India's PC market Copyright 20
Weiye Loh

Skepticblog » Education 2.0 - 0 views

skepticblog.org/...education-2-0

Education Technology

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 11
     
    For education 2.0 to become a reality, the use of the internet and computer technology in primary education needs to become more than an afterthought - more than just an obligatory added layer, and more than just teaching students computer skills themselves. We need a massive effort to develop a digital infrastructure dedicated to computer and internet-based learning. We need schools and teachers to experiment more, to find what computers will do best, and what they are not good for. Primarily, I think we just need the development of dedicated programs and content for education. We need the equivalent of Facebook and Twitter for primary education - killer apps, the kind that are so effective that after their incorporation people will look back and wonder what they did before the application was available.
Weiye Loh

There Is Such A Thing As A Free Coffee | The Utopianist - Think Bigger - 0 views

utopianist.com/...-such-a-thing-as-a-free-coffee

Social Media Starbucks

shared by Weiye Loh on 15 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Overall, the ratio of people taking versus giving is 2-1. Stark has a truly grand vision: “It’s literally giving people hope. Ultimately the goal is for more people to do this kind of thing. I admit it seems a little frivolous to give away coffee to people with iPhones. But imagine if you had a CVS card and you could give someone $10 for their Alzheimer’s medication. The concept of frictionless social giving is very attractive. And this is just the beginning of that.” It’s easy enough to text a number to make a donation during times of disaster, and many do it, but the concern may still exist over “where” the money is going; systems with re-loadable cards are straightforward and in some way more transparent (after all, the users probably have their own, personal, cards), serving to spur people into donating even more. I say let’s expand this — I cannot wait to see it act elsewhere — some sort of school card, perhaps? Download the full-sized card here; before you go, check the balance on Twitter — updated every couple of minutes, Stark wrote the program himself. “Like” Jonathan’s Starbucks Card on Facebook to spread the word; and when you want to donate, simply log on to the Starbucks website and reload card number 6061006913522430.
  • Weiye Loh on 15 Aug 11
     
    Programmer Jonathan Stark, vice president of Mobiquity, has begun a truly cool experiment: sharing his Starbucks card with the world. While researching ways one can pay-by-mobile, Stark took an interesting perspective on Starbucks' system. He realized there was (at the time) no app for Android users, so he simply took a picture of his card and posted it online. He loaded it with $30 and then encouraged others to use it - and reload it, if they see fit. Not surprisingly, people took him up on it. Since those $30, the card has seen over $9,000 worth of anonymous donations. Stark says that "every time the balance gets really high, it brings out the worst in people: Someone goes down to Starbucks and makes a huge purchase. I don't know if they are buying coffee beans or mugs, or transferring money to their own card or what. But as long as the balance stays low, say $20 to $30, it seems like it manages itself. I haven't put any money on it in a while. All the money going through the card right now is the kindness of strangers."
Weiye Loh

Google Chrome OS: Ditch Your Hard Drives, the Future Is the Web | Gadget Lab | Wired.com - 2 views

www.wired.com/...d-drives-the-future-is-the-web

Google Privacy

shared by Weiye Loh on 20 Nov 09 - Cached
  • With a strong focus on speed, the Chrome OS promises nearly instant boot times of about 7 seconds for users to login to their computers.
  • t will not be available as a download to run and install. Instead, Chrome OS is only shipping on specific hardware from manufacturers Google has partnered with. That means if you want Chrome OS, you’ll have to purchase a Chrome OS device.
  • Chrome OS netbooks will not have traditional hard disk drives — they will rely on non-volatile flash memory and internet-based storage for saving all of your data.
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 20 Nov 09
       
      So who's going to own my data? me? or Google? is it going to be secure? what happens when there's a breach of privacy? Do i have to sign a disclaimer before  I use it? hmm. 
    • Jun Jie Tan
      Jun Jie Tan on 23 Nov 09
       
      on the internet, google owns you
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • All the applications will be web-based, meaning users won’t have to install apps, manage updates or even backup their data. All data will be stored in the cloud, and users won’t even have to bother with anti-virus software: Google claims it will monitor code to prevent malicious activity in Chrome OS web apps.
  • Weiye Loh on 20 Nov 09
     
    Chrome OS netbooks will not have traditional hard disk drives - they will rely on non-volatile flash memory and internet-based storage for saving all of your data.
Weiye Loh

MSDN Blogs - 0 views

blogs.msdn.com/...why-i-left-google.aspx

Google Innovation Advertising Capitalism Social Media

shared by Weiye Loh on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more about those people. Advertisers and publishers cherish this kind of personal information, so much so that they are willing to put the Facebook brand before their own. Exhibit A: www.facebook.com/nike, a company with the power and clout of Nike putting their own brand after Facebook’s?
  • As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn’t part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.” Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn’t invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google’s party became the elephant in the room.
Li-Ling Gan

Google Loses German Copyright Cases Over Image-Search Previews - 4 views

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=a_C1wVkCvPww Summary This case revolves around Google being sued for copyright infringement over displaying photos and artworks as thumbnails w...

copyright

started by Li-Ling Gan on 25 Aug 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Crowdsourced curation, reputation systems, an... - 0 views

blog.p2pfoundation.net/...10

Mobile Technologies Open Source

shared by Weiye Loh on 18 Aug 10 - Cached
  • A good example of manual curation vs. crowdsourced curation is the competing app markets on the Apple iPhone and Google Android phone operating systems.
  • Apple is a monarchy, albeit with a wise and benevolent king. Android is burgeoning democracy, inefficient and messy, but free. Apple is the last, best example of the Industrial Age and its top-down, mass market/mass production paradigm.
  • They manufacture cool. They rely on “consumers”, and they protect those consumers from too many choices by selecting what is worthy, and what is not.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • systems that allow crowdsourced judgment to be tweaked, not to the taste of the general mass, which produces lowest common denominator effects, but to people and experts that you can trust for their judgment.
  • these systems are now implemented by Buzz and Digg 4
  • Important for me though, is that they don’t just take your social graph as is, because that mixes many different people for different reasons, but that you can tweak the groups.
  • “This is the problem with the internet! It’s full of crap!” Many would argue that without professional producers, editors, publishers, and the natural scarcity that we became accustomed to, there’s a flood of low-quality material that we can’t possible sift through on our own. From blogs to music to software to journalism, one of the biggest fears of the established order is how to handle the oncoming glut of mediocrity. Who shall tell us The Good from The Bad? “We need gatekeepers, and they need to be paid!”
  • The Internet has enabled us to build our social graph, and in turn, that social graph acts as an aggregate gatekeeper. The better that these systems for crowdsourcing the curation of content become, the more accurate the results will be.
  • This social-graph-as-curation is still relatively new, even by Internet standards. However, with tools like Buzz and Digg 4 (which allows you to see the aggregate ratings for content based on your social graph, and not the whole wide world) this technique is catching up to human publishers fast. For those areas where we don’t have strong social ties, we can count on reputation systems to help us “rate the raters”. These systems allow strangers to rate each other’s content, giving users some idea of who to trust, without having to know them personally. Yelp has a fairly mature reputation system, where locations are rated by users, but the users are rated, in turn, by each other.
  • Reputation systems and the social graph allow us to crowdsource curation.
  • Can you imagine if Apple had to approve your videos for posting on Youtube, where every minute, 24 hours of footage are uploaded? There’s no way humans could keep up! The traditional forms of curation and gatekeeping simply can not scale to meet the increase in production and transmission that the Internet allows. Crowdsourcing is the only curatorial/editorial mechanism that can scale to match the increased ability to produce that the Internet has given us.
  • Weiye Loh on 18 Aug 10
     
    Crowdsourced curation, reputation systems, and the social graph
Weiye Loh

How should we use data to improve our lives? - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine - 0 views

www.slate.com/...2274809

Data

shared by Weiye Loh on 16 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • The Swiss economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer argue that people do not appreciate the real cost of a long commute. And especially when that commute is unpredictable, it takes a toll on our daily well-being.
  • imagine if we shared our commuting information so that we could calculate the average commute from various locations around a city. When the growing family of four pulls up to a house for sale for in New Jersey, the listing would indicate not only the price and the number of bathrooms but also the rush-hour commute time to Midtown Manhattan. That would be valuable information to have, since buyers could realistically factor the tradeoffs of remaining in a smaller space closer to work against moving to a larger space and taking on a longer commute.
  • In a cover story for the New York Times Magazine, the writer Gary Wolf documented the followers of “The Data-Driven Life,” programmers, students, and self-described geeks who track various aspects of their lives. Seth Roberts does a daily math exercise to measure small changes in his mental acuity. Kiel Gilleade is a "Body Blogger" who shares his heart rate via Twitter. On the more extreme end, Mark Carranza has a searchable database of every idea he's had since 1984. They're not alone. This community continues to thrive, and its efforts are chronicled at a blog called the Quantified Self, co-founded by Wolf and Kevin Kelly.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • If you've ever asked Nike+ to log your runs or given Google permission to keep your search history, you've participated in a bit of self-tracking. Now that more people have location-aware smartphones and the Web has made data easy to share, personal data is poised to become an important tool to understand how we live, and how we all might live better. One great example of this phenomenon in action is the site Cure Together, which allows you to enter your symptoms—for, say, "anxiety" or "insomnia"—and the various remedies you've tried to feel better. One thing the site does is aggregate this information and present the results in chart form. Here is the chart for depression:
  • Instead of being isolated in your own condition, you can now see what has worked for others. The same principle is at work at the site Fuelly, where you can "track, share, and compare" your miles per gallon and see how efficient certain makes and models really are.
  • Businesses are also using data tracking to spur their employees to accomplishing companywide goals: Wal-Mart partnered with Zazengo to help employees track their "personal sustainability" actions such as making a home-cooked meal or buying local produce. The app Rescue Time, which records all of the activity on your computer, gives workers an easy way to account for their time. And that comes in handy when you want to show the boss how efficient telecommuting can be.
  • Weiye Loh on 16 Nov 10
     
    Data for a better planet
Weiye Loh

Justin Bieber Swears Off YouTube For Facebook, Unwittingly Steps In Copyright Minefield... - 0 views

blogs.forbes.com/...y-steps-in-copyright-minefield

Copyright Youtube Social Social Media

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Internet pop sensation Justin Bieber went to upload the music video of his new song called “Pray” to his personal YouTube site. He was in for a rude surprise: YouTube automatically blocked his video upload on “copyright grounds” that the video contained content from Universal Music Group (UMG), parent company to Bieber’s record label, Island Def Jam records.
  • “yo youtube…how u gonna block my own song?!?!?!” wrote an outraged Bieber on his Twitter account. In another Twitter update, he wrote, “dear youtube…we started this journey and now u r cheatin on me with this vevo chica…i see how it is…i will be over here with facebook [sic].” (Vevo is the music video website responsible for Bieber’s official YouTube syndication, and is a joint venture between music giants Sony Music Entertainment, UMG and Abu Dhabi Media.)
  • YouTube wrote back to Bieber on its Twitter account, “sorry about the upload pain around ‘Pray’. That’s between you and your label but we love you [both] so let’s figure this out!”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Frustrated with the Google-owned video site, Bieber instead uploaded his video using Facebook’s video app onto his Facebook page. “no one keeps my music from my fans. nobody,” he wrote on Twitter.
  • There’s a level of irony to the situation. Bieber got his start on YouTube, where home videos of him on his account singing covers of hip-hop songs
  • You would think if anyone deserved to be able to upload his own music videos to YouTube, it would be Bieber. So why couldn’t he? The answer lies in the complicated legalities behind copyright law and new media. It comes down to the question: who owns the video? In Bieber’s case, the answer depends on who you ask.
  • According to the YouTube website where Bieber’s upload was blocked, it appears that UMG has ownership. YouTube has a Content ID copyright protection system in place. Content ID automatically detects whether new content being uploaded to the website infringes on any copyrighted material in YouTube’s vast video database, using video and audio recognition techniques. The rights-holder can preselect what YouTube should do to the video in response: A) block it outright, B) monetize it by overlaying an ad on the video or C) do nothing, but be able to track the video’s viewership.
  • And why was Bieber able to upload his video to Facebook with no problems? Facebook also says it has a copyright protection scheme in place. But if it has a similar Content ID system to YouTube, it doesn’t have the same amount of video content that YouTube does, meaning a given uploaded video to the social network is less likely to automatically ring warning bells.
Weiye Loh

Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...13search.html

Search Engine Optimization SEO

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Search experts, however, say Penney likely reaped substantial rewards from the paid links. If you think of Google as the entrance to the planet’s largest shopping center, the links helped Penney appear as though it was the first and most inviting spot in the mall, to millions and millions of online shoppers.
  • A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on average, 34 percent of Google’s traffic went to the No. 1 result, about twice the percentage that went to No. 2.
  • The Keyword Estimator at Google puts the number of searches for “dresses” in the United States at 11.1 million a month, an average based on 12 months of data. So for “dresses” alone, Penney may have been attracting roughly 3.8 million visits every month it showed up as No. 1. Exactly how many of those visits translate into sales, and the size of each sale, only Penney would know.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • in January, the company was crowing about its online holiday sales. Kate Coultas, a company spokeswoman, wrote to a reporter in January, “Internet sales through jcp.com posted strong growth in December, with significant increases in traffic and orders for the key holiday shopping periods of the week after Thanksgiving and the week before Christmas.”
  • Penney also issued a statement: “We are disappointed that Google has reduced our rankings due to this matter,” Ms. Brossart wrote, “but we will continue to work actively to retain our high natural search position.”
  • She added that while the collection of links surely brought in additional revenue, it was hardly a bonanza. Just 7 percent of JCPenney.com’s traffic comes from clicks on organic search results, she wrote.
  • MANY owners of Web sites with Penney links seem to relish their unreachability. But there were exceptions, and they included cocaman.ch. (“Geekness — closer to the world” is the cryptic header atop the site.) It turned out to be owned and run by Corsin Camichel, a chatty 25-year-old I.T. security analyst in Switzerland.
  • The link came through a Web site, TNX.net, which pays Mr. Camichel with TNX points, which he then trades for links that drive traffic to his other sites, like cookingutensils.net. He earns money when people visit that site and click on the ads. He could also, he said, get cash from TNX. Currently, Cocaman is home to 403 links, all of them placed there by TNX on behalf of clients.
  • “You do pretty well,” he wrote, referring to income from his links trading. “The thing is, the more you invest (time and money) the better results you get. Right now I get enough to buy myself new test devices for my Android apps (like $150/month) with zero effort. I have to do nothing. Ads just sit there and if people click, I make money.”
Weiye Loh

Sex: New York City unveils condom finder for smartphones, users satisfied - National Cu... - 0 views

www.examiner.com/...or-smartphones-users-satisfied

Social Media Mobile Sex Education

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • he application uses GPS technology and is available for the iPhone and Android devices. The over-the-air (OTA) downloadable app has access to New York City's more than 1,000 free condom outlets. When a user launches a search for rubbers, the nearest five locations are shown, allowing for enough time to act before the mood is lost.
  • The smartphone application that locates free condoms was a huge hit for New Yorkers this Valentine's Day, users said Tuesday, Feb. 15. The program was launched by the New York City Health Department to help the turned-on find protection at a moment's notice--no matter where they are.
  • The health department has come under significant fire for its free condom initiative. Parents have complained that it urges children to experiment with sex. "We're not promoting sex," Sweeney said. "We're promoting safer sex. In New York City and around the country, adolescents and pre-adolescents have sex whether you give them condoms or not."
Weiye Loh

Why the Net Matters; The Net Delusion: reviews - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...-The-Net-Delusion-reviews.html

Internet Liberation Democracy Effects Social Media

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The Net Delusion is a stinging rebuke to the power of the internet. Born in Belarus and now working in Washington, 26 year-old Evgeny Morozov reminds us that the web will not make us free.
  • He makes plain the difference between our hopes of what the internet can be and the reality of what it does. He shows us that the enemies of freedom are just as smart as the rest of us in using the internet for their own ends. Thus China encourages blogging in order to monitor the activities of dissidents; dictators are happy for their citizens to watch YouTube, because most people are more likely to watch Lady Gaga than foment revolution. In the most powerful chapter of the book, he convincingly proves that the uprising following the 2009 elections in Iran had very little to do with social media. The book is a wake-up call to those who think that the internet is the solution to all our problems.
  • However, because Morozov completed it before the WikiLeaks controversy, the website only gets a passing reference. This is a serious omission.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Since the arrest of Julian Assange in December, the US government that protested against the censorship policies of rogue states has now called for similar acts for its own protection. If anything, this proves that while the political uses of the internet are in question, so is the definition of freedom that underpins it. The internet proves that you can’t have it both ways.
  • In contrast, while David Eagleman’s Why the Net Matters might sometimes suffer from what Morozov calls “cyber-utopianism”
  • The content is organised so that it can be navigated in any number of ways, and each page is accompanied by impressive images and graphics, sometimes with little connection to the text.
  • This new work, an enhanced app available only in digital form, is not quite a book – more an essay with added features. It is one of the first enhanced ebooks to come from a mainstream British publisher and offers some insight into what the future book might look like.
  • Looking at six different ways the internet might save us from disaster, Eagleman buys into the Clinton doctrine without question. He shows how the internet will help us to combat epidemics, preserve knowledge and respond to natural disasters with websites such as www.ushahidi.com, which came into its own after the Haiti earthquake, and allowed aid workers on the ground to pinpoint in real time, using email, Twitter and SMS, where help was most needed.
  • What these two books prove is that we still don’t know what the internet is and what it is for. This is no bad thing. The web is a tool that may liberate the future, if not quite delivering the type of freedom that Eagleman proposes. It is at its best when it grows from grass roots and responds to immediate concerns.
Weiye Loh

McKinsey & Company - Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business tren... - 0 views

www.mckinsey.com/...ten_of_the_best.asp

Cloud Computing Crowd-Sourcing Data

shared by Weiye Loh on 20 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • 1. Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstreamIn the past few years, the ability to organise communities of Web participants to develop, market, and support products and services has moved from the margins of business practice to the mainstream. Wikipedia and a handful of open-source software developers were the pioneers. But in signs of the steady march forward, 70 per cent of the executives we recently surveyed said that their companies regularly created value through Web communities. Similarly, more than 68m bloggers post reviews and recommendations about products and services.
  • for every success in tapping communities to create value, there are still many failures. Some companies neglect the up-front research needed to identify potential participants who have the right skill sets and will be motivated to participate over the longer term. Since cocreation is a two-way process, companies must also provide feedback to stimulate continuing participation and commitment. Getting incentives right is important as well: cocreators often value reputation more than money. Finally, an organisation must gain a high level of trust within a Web community to earn the engagement of top participants.
  • 2. Making the network the organisation In earlier research, we noted that the Web was starting to force open the boundaries of organisations, allowing nonemployees to offer their expertise in novel ways. We called this phenomenon "tapping into a world of talent." Now many companies are pushing substantially beyond that starting point, building and managing flexible networks that extend across internal and often even external borders. The recession underscored the value of such flexibility in managing volatility. We believe that the more porous, networked organisations of the future will need to organise work around critical tasks rather than molding it to constraints imposed by corporate structures.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • 3. Collaboration at scale Across many economies, the number of people who undertake knowledge work has grown much more quickly than the number of production or transactions workers. Knowledge workers typically are paid more than others, so increasing their productivity is critical. As a result, there is broad interest in collaboration technologies that promise to improve these workers' efficiency and effectiveness. While the body of knowledge around the best use of such technologies is still developing, a number of companies have conducted experiments, as we see in the rapid growth rates of video and Web conferencing, expected to top 20 per cent annually during the next few years.
  • 4. The growing ‘Internet of Things' The adoption of RFID (radio-frequency identification) and related technologies was the basis of a trend we first recognised as "expanding the frontiers of automation." But these methods are rudimentary compared with what emerges when assets themselves become elements of an information system, with the ability to capture, compute, communicate, and collaborate around information—something that has come to be known as the "Internet of Things." Embedded with sensors, actuators, and communications capabilities, such objects will soon be able to absorb and transmit information on a massive scale and, in some cases, to adapt and react to changes in the environment automatically. These "smart" assets can make processes more efficient, give products new capabilities, and spark novel business models. Auto insurers in Europe and the United States are testing these waters with offers to install sensors in customers' vehicles. The result is new pricing models that base charges for risk on driving behavior rather than on a driver's demographic characteristics. Luxury-auto manufacturers are equipping vehicles with networked sensors that can automatically take evasive action when accidents are about to happen. In medicine, sensors embedded in or worn by patients continuously report changes in health conditions to physicians, who can adjust treatments when necessary. Sensors in manufacturing lines for products as diverse as computer chips and pulp and paper take detailed readings on process conditions and automatically make adjustments to reduce waste, downtime, and costly human interventions.
  • 5. Experimentation and big data Could the enterprise become a full-time laboratory? What if you could analyse every transaction, capture insights from every customer interaction, and didn't have to wait for months to get data from the field? What if…? Data are flooding in at rates never seen before—doubling every 18 months—as a result of greater access to customer data from public, proprietary, and purchased sources, as well as new information gathered from Web communities and newly deployed smart assets. These trends are broadly known as "big data." Technology for capturing and analysing information is widely available at ever-lower price points. But many companies are taking data use to new levels, using IT to support rigorous, constant business experimentation that guides decisions and to test new products, business models, and innovations in customer experience. In some cases, the new approaches help companies make decisions in real time. This trend has the potential to drive a radical transformation in research, innovation, and marketing.
  • Using experimentation and big data as essential components of management decision making requires new capabilities, as well as organisational and cultural change. Most companies are far from accessing all the available data. Some haven't even mastered the technologies needed to capture and analyse the valuable information they can access. More commonly, they don't have the right talent and processes to design experiments and extract business value from big data, which require changes in the way many executives now make decisions: trusting instincts and experience over experimentation and rigorous analysis. To get managers at all echelons to accept the value of experimentation, senior leaders must buy into a "test and learn" mind-set and then serve as role models for their teams.
  • 6. Wiring for a sustainable world Even as regulatory frameworks continue to evolve, environmental stewardship and sustainability clearly are C-level agenda topics. What's more, sustainability is fast becoming an important corporate-performance metric—one that stakeholders, outside influencers, and even financial markets have begun to track. Information technology plays a dual role in this debate: it is both a significant source of environmental emissions and a key enabler of many strategies to mitigate environmental damage. At present, information technology's share of the world's environmental footprint is growing because of the ever-increasing demand for IT capacity and services. Electricity produced to power the world's data centers generates greenhouse gases on the scale of countries such as Argentina or the Netherlands, and these emissions could increase fourfold by 2020. McKinsey research has shown, however, that the use of IT in areas such as smart power grids, efficient buildings, and better logistics planning could eliminate five times the carbon emissions that the IT industry produces.
  • 7. Imagining anything as a service Technology now enables companies to monitor, measure, customise, and bill for asset use at a much more fine-grained level than ever before. Asset owners can therefore create services around what have traditionally been sold as products. Business-to-business (B2B) customers like these service offerings because they allow companies to purchase units of a service and to account for them as a variable cost rather than undertake large capital investments. Consumers also like this "paying only for what you use" model, which helps them avoid large expenditures, as well as the hassles of buying and maintaining a product.
  • In the IT industry, the growth of "cloud computing" (accessing computer resources provided through networks rather than running software or storing data on a local computer) exemplifies this shift. Consumer acceptance of Web-based cloud services for everything from e-mail to video is of course becoming universal, and companies are following suit. Software as a service (SaaS), which enables organisations to access services such as customer relationship management, is growing at a 17 per cent annual rate. The biotechnology company Genentech, for example, uses Google Apps for e-mail and to create documents and spreadsheets, bypassing capital investments in servers and software licenses. This development has created a wave of computing capabilities delivered as a service, including infrastructure, platform, applications, and content. And vendors are competing, with innovation and new business models, to match the needs of different customers.
  • 8. The age of the multisided business model Multisided business models create value through interactions among multiple players rather than traditional one-on-one transactions or information exchanges. In the media industry, advertising is a classic example of how these models work. Newspapers, magasines, and television stations offer content to their audiences while generating a significant portion of their revenues from third parties: advertisers. Other revenue, often through subscriptions, comes directly from consumers. More recently, this advertising-supported model has proliferated on the Internet, underwriting Web content sites, as well as services such as search and e-mail (see trend number seven, "Imagining anything as a service," earlier in this article). It is now spreading to new markets, such as enterprise software: Spiceworks offers IT-management applications to 950,000 users at no cost, while it collects advertising from B2B companies that want access to IT professionals.
  • 9. Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid The adoption of technology is a global phenomenon, and the intensity of its usage is particularly impressive in emerging markets. Our research has shown that disruptive business models arise when technology combines with extreme market conditions, such as customer demand for very low price points, poor infrastructure, hard-to-access suppliers, and low cost curves for talent. With an economic recovery beginning to take hold in some parts of the world, high rates of growth have resumed in many developing nations, and we're seeing companies built around the new models emerging as global players. Many multinationals, meanwhile, are only starting to think about developing markets as wellsprings of technology-enabled innovation rather than as traditional manufacturing hubs.
  • 10. Producing public good on the grid The role of governments in shaping global economic policy will expand in coming years. Technology will be an important factor in this evolution by facilitating the creation of new types of public goods while helping to manage them more effectively. This last trend is broad in scope and draws upon many of the other trends described above.
Weiye Loh

Can Real-Life $150 Spy Glasses Make Societies More Transparent? | The Utopianist - Thin... - 0 views

utopianist.com/...ake-societies-more-transparent

Spying Privacy Camera Transparency Panopticon

shared by Weiye Loh on 10 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The Roy Orbison looking Eyez will feature a 720p HD recording camera, microphone, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, 8 GB flash memory, and three hours of battery life. Using an iPhone or Android app you can transmit what your Eyez record directly to the web, or you can save and upload it later using a microUSB port. Here’s a promo clip of the glasses from ZionEyez, the start-up company developing them:
  • At $150 a pair, these glasses are cheap enough to become invaluable tools for journalists in volatile regions, especially those living under regimes who restrict free speech and press — where being seen recording video can be dangerous
  • the notion of more and easier surveillance will draw the inevitable comparisons to Big Brother — and certainly, the notion that our deeds could be surreptitiously captured by strangers, even friends, without our knowledge is an uncomfortable one. But some would argue that given the amount of surveillance we now face by the state, the amount of information we willingly volunteer about ourselves to corporations and on social media sites anyways, pervasive video-taking goggles seem like a natural stage in the evolution towards something like David Brin’s transparent society.
  • Weiye Loh on 10 Jun 11
     
    So what's Utopianist about some fairly snazzy, semi-affordable spy glasses that allow their users to furtively record video of the goings-on around them?
Weiye Loh

Do You Know Who Has Access To Your Twitter Account? Check Your Application Settings - A... - 0 views

www.mediabistro.com/...ur-application-settings_b10666

Twitter Privacy App

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 28 Jun 11
     
    Who Has Access To Your Twitter Account? Check Your Application Settings - http://t.co/WSLF3Kf
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