The San Francisco Chronicle’s Verne Kopytoff has this article about Google’s winning Wi-Fi bid in San Francisco and the privacy concerns it raises. Google, as the company has long maintained, wants to offer free Wi-Fi service in order to sell more advertising. As it turns out, Wi-Fi is a technology particularly useful for geo-tracking users, something that advertisers appreciate.
It’s no surprise, then, that Google plans to develop rich data on users’ Internet activities based on location.
The Mountain View search engine intends to use the geographic data to match users with advertising so that they would see marketing messages from neighborhood businesses such as pizza parlors, cafes and book stores. Google plans to use technology that would allow it to track users’ whereabouts within a few hundred feet. The company said in its bid that it would retain the data for up to 180 days before deleting it, as part of an effort to “maintain the Google Wi-Fi network and deliver the best possible service.”
EFF, among other privacy advocates, fear this accumulation of data, but not because of worries that Google itself might misuse the information. The fear is whether other people (read: law enforcement and the Feds) will start asking for the data. It’s a good thing, then, that Google put up such a fight when the DOJ subpoenaed its search data.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:45 PM | Print | Comments (0)With the National Cable & Telecommunications Show kicking off today (I’m getting a late start and will head there tonight), Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield has prepared a very good list of ten questions facing the cable industry. (Richard will appear on a panel of financial analysts at the show.)
While all of these are great questions (with the possible exception of question one), Greenfield raises a real dilemma for cable in question six regarding the idea of an IP-based cable bypass network arising. He points in particular to the launch tomorrow of a service called Virtual Digital Cable (VDC), a programming delivery service which plans to skip the cable operator altogether with its own multichannel video programming line-up.
The Northbrook, IL-based company plans to offer 16 to 20 digital video channels, with on-demand features, to PCs for a monthly fee of $11.95/month. Although few customers will drop their cable subscriptions in favor of VDC’s line-up, which includes The Pentagon Channel, MavTV and ShopNBC, the service is a sign of things to come. As Greenfield points out:
…technology is moving so fast, we view this as only the beginning (for VDC and others we expect to develop) as online video content explodes, broadband speeds accelerate and broadband penetration increases.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:25 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The New York Times’ Steve Lohr has this interesting piece today about how search engine bots, which scan text at rapid speed and place emphasis on “just-the-facts” writing, are perhaps watering down journalistic creativity.
Nic Newman, head of product development and technology at BBC News Interactive, pointed to a few examples from last Wednesday. The first headline a human reader sees: “Unsafe sex: Has Jacob Zuma’s rape trial hit South Africa’s war on AIDS?” One click down: “Zuma testimony sparks HIV fear.” Another headline meant to lure the human reader: “Tulsa star: The life and career of much-loved 1960’s singer.” One click down: “Obituary: Gene Pitney.” “The search engine has to get a straightforward, factual headline, so it can understand it,” Mr. Newman said. With a little programming sleight-of-hand, the search engine can be steered first to the straightforward, somewhat duller headline, according to some search optimizers.
Later in the piece, however, Search Engine Watch’s Danny Sullivan says that journalism schools should start teaching this concise, straightforward form of writing and I agree. While the boiled-down headlines and summaries make take some artistry out of writing, they at least ensure that the articles will get read.
With millions of sources out there to choose from, readers have little time to sift through “artful” headlines to determine if the subject matter interests them. The more abstract or playful or satirical a headline gets, the less likely targeted readers are going to pick that article to read when scanning their RSS readers or searching the web.
So, straightforward, to-the-point headlines are just one way of capturing readers who are faced with endless choices of material. It’s kind of like text-based triage for the digital era — a headline that screams “this is the subject you want” will get picked over one that whispers “well, maybe this is the subject you want but you have to dig deeper to find out.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:06 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Hollywood studios have mostly stayed out of the net neutrality fight, but Tinseltown’s hometown paper, the LA Times, has this prominent piece today on the whole net neutrality debate. Penned by James Granelli, the article clearly favors the net neutrality proponents.
“The Internet has to be open,” said CinemaNow President Bruce Eisen. “Any user can go to any site now, and people have come to expect that. If the telcos charge the sites, that cost will ultimately fall on the consumer. And the consumer has other choices for Internet service.”
It’s not really a question anymore about broadband providers flexing their muscles to block applications. The question has slipped into the murky territory of “tiered” service; but proponents don’t even like that.
Internet phone service pioneer Jeff Pulver, however, said that such a tiered system — one for content providers willing to pay for a super-highway to the home, the other for those who stay on increasingly crowded freeways — could effectively relegate basic broadband to the backwaters and end up blocking the chances of success for tomorrow’s Googles and Amazons. By Pulver’s reasoning, the broadband providers would, in effect, be picking winners and losers among the creators of videos and other content and among search engines and aggregators that collect and sell that content to consumers. “It’s not like we’re free riders,” said Pulver, who co-founded Vonage and whose Pulver.com oversees more than a dozen Internet companies involved in radio, video and phone service. “We’re actually paying somebody for Internet access too.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:39 AM | Print | Comments (1)
Blogs We Read
