Facebook Is Using You

LAST week, Facebook filed documents with the government that will allow it to sell shares of stock to the public. It is estimated to be worth at least $75 billion. But unlike other big-ticket corporations, it doesn’t have an inventory of widgets or gadgets, cars or phones. Facebook’s inventory consists of personal data — yours and mine.

Facebook makes money by selling ad space to companies that want to reach us. Advertisers choose key words or details — like relationship status, location, activities, favorite books and employment — and then Facebook runs the ads for the targeted subset of its 845 million users. If you indicate that you like cupcakes, live in a certain neighborhood and have invited friends over, expect an ad from a nearby bakery to appear on your page. The magnitude of online information Facebook has available about each of us for targeted marketing is stunning. In Europe, laws give people the right to know what data companies have about them, but that is not the case in the United States.    Full article

What You (Really) Need to Know

A PARADOX of American higher education is this: The expectations of leading universities do much to define what secondary schools teach, and much to establish a template for what it means to be an educated man or woman. College campuses are seen as the source for the newest thinking and for the generation of new ideas, as society’s cutting edge…

…Nonetheless, it is interesting to speculate: Suppose the educational system is drastically altered to reflect the structure of society and what we now understand about how people learn. How will what universities teach be different? Here are some guesses and hopes.  Full NYT opinion article

The Beginning of American Internet Censorship: SOPA Bill

The Stop Internet Piracy Act or SOPA is a bill being voted on soon (or voted on yesterday?) and is one of two pieces of legislature being introduced which threatens the very foundation of the internet. I’m sure that you have already ready plenty of rantings online, but let me tell you a one more time. The internet is under attack!

The SOPA and Protect IP Act will enable the American government with the power to censor international websites that have users who post copy righted content. The type of censorship method proposed is the same used in countries like Iran, China and Syria. A very interesting and informative data visualization video about the Protect IP Act can be found here.  Article with graphic

Quietly, Google Gets Its View of the Park

As gold leaves drifted to the ground in Central Park on Monday, a strange-looking vehicle joined the park’s stream of pedicabs, bicycles, baby carriages and skateboards. It was straight out of Roald Dahl’s imagination, at once sinister and innocent — an ungainly contraption cooked up by, say, Good Humor and the K.G.B.

It was, in fact, Google’s Trike, a panoramic camera system with nine lenses mounted on an oversize tricycle. The company, which already offers 360-degree street-level views of New York City and other cities, has turned its attention to parks, as well as other locations inaccessible by car. The Trike has been wheeling through hard-to-reach places across the globe, mapping them and then offering online Street View tours on Google Maps that let the would-be parkgoer mouse-click along a path.   Full story

What’s Really Next for Apple in Television

“I’ve finally cracked it!” Steven P. Jobs, co-founder of Apple, told his biographer, Walter Isaacson.

Although Mr. Jobs was referring to Apple’s plans to build a full-fledged television, he was not actually referring to the TV set, which is how the comment has been widely interpreted. Instead, it is becoming clear that Mr. Jobs was talking about Siri, Apple’s new artificial intelligent software on the iPhone 4S.

Apple engineers and designers, spurred by Mr. Jobs, have been struggling for years to find a new interface for the television. One of the biggest hurdles, according to people with knowledge of the project, has been replacing the television set’s annoying best friend: the awkward and confusing remote control.  Apple would give people a way to choose the content on their television that is as easy as choosing the content on their iPod, iPhone or iPad.

Alternative remote ideas floated by Apple included a wireless keyboard and mouse, or using an iPod, iPhone or iPad as a remote. None of these concepts worked. But there was one “I finally cracked it” moment, when Apple realized you could just talk to your television.

Enter Siri.  Full story

LinkedIn’s Social-Ad Misstep

Move over Facebook. It’s time to pay attention to privacy on LinkedIn.

That was is the message of last week’s mini controversy over LinkedIn’s quiet effort to introduce a new type of advertising on the site that would commandeer users’ names and pictures for product endorsements.

LinkedIn first announced the new “social ads” in an upbeat blog post in late June. The ads would include the names and photos of people’s LinkedIn contacts if they were connected to the advertiser in some way and the company had changed its privacy policy. At the end, it mentioned that users may opt-out of the ads.

Full story.

Fighting a Clickjack Attack

By J.D. Biersdorfer

Q.  I often see links posted on my friends’ Facebook pages that I know are some sort of virus, even though it says my friend “liked” the page. Can I get infected myself if one of these links shows up on my Facebook News Feed or Wall?

A.  Many of those links promising a look at outrageous videos or photos are part of a “clickjacking” scam. In this situation, the user is typically tricked into clicking on a provocative link, but hidden code within the page posts a copy of the tainted link to the profiles of all the user’s friends.
     According to a post on a Facebook security page, if you or your friends have been clickjacked, you should be able to remove poison posts on your Facebook Wall and News Feed by moving the mouse cursor to the top-right corner of the unwanted item and clicking the X button to get the “Remove and Unlike” option.
     As a further precaution, check the Info page on your profile and remove any unwanted pages from your lists in the Activities and Interests area. As a general rule, do not click on strange links, even if it appears that close friends have shared them on your Facebook page; horrendous grammar or odd phrasing in the post should be an instant tip-off.  Full story     (Wikipedia article on Clickjacking)

Eric Schmidt Predicts a Smartphone-Fueled Future

BARCELONA, Spain — In a keynote address here Tuesday evening at the Mobile World Congress, Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, outlined his vision for the future of search, which he said would become easier, more intuitive and more serendipitous.

He called the concept “autonomous search,” and described a scenario in which a smartphone might ping a person wandering around Barcelona to alert them that a building designed by Antonio Gaudi was within walking distance, because Google knows the person has a love of Spanish architecture and history.

Full story.

Does Facebook Make Someone Social Offline?

THE GIST Facebook makes people more social in their lives offline.

THE SOURCE “Got Facebook? Investigating What’s Social About Social Media,” by S. Craig Watkins and H. Erin Lee, the University of Texas, Austin.

Were you creeped out by the ominous trailer for “The Social Network” (“I want you to notice, when I’m not around …”) and what it may say about you? Does logging on to Facebook for the fourth time today make you feel like a soulless shut-in?

If so, fear not: According to a cheery report out of the University of Texas, Austin, Facebook actually makes us more sociable. Surveying 900 current and recent college graduates nationwide, Craig Watkins and Erin Lee of the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas examined the impact of Facebook on users’ social lives, concluding that “social media afford opportunities for new expressions of friendship, intimacy and community.”

Full story continues here.

Whoops! F.C.C. Chairman Spams Facebook Friends

Facebook scam artists have closed out 2009 by snagging a prominent victim: Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

On Thursday at around 10:30 a.m., Mr. Genachowski sent his Facebook friends this puzzling message: “Adam got me started making money with this.” It was followed by a link to a Web page that is no longer active. The message blitz indicated that Mr. Genachowski’s account had been taken over by a malicious program that was using it to send out spam.

Full article link here.