August 2011

The Leaky Nature of Online Privacy

The day when we all sport stress monitors is probably not looming. But we may already be unintentionally volunteering that information.

Recent research by Ming-Zher Poh, Daniel J. McDuff, and Rosalind Picard of that same Affective Computing Group has found that pulse information can be gleaned from a basic webcam. It turns out that blood changes the skin's color slightly with each pulse, in a way that can be recovered from a video signal using a technique called independent component analysis. Though the technology has not yet proven itself outside the lab, where controlled lighting conditions can make such analysis easier, it is not hard to imagine that pulse could be recoverable from video recordings of normal teleconferences. Pulse therefore joins the long list of information that we are leaking all the time over the Internet without really knowing it. It's clear at this point that anybody can take a photo of you and post it on the Internet; once it's there, it is nearly impossible to remove all copies. But increasingly, pattern recognition software has made it possible to learn about someone not based on what he has shared about himself but by examining what his friends have made public.

At Last, a Label Goes Digital

Putumayo World Music developed a multimillion-dollar franchise around the idea of making the sounds of distant corners of the planet accessible to everyday Western shoppers. World music releases often end up as a particularly low-selling species of esoterica, but Putumayo’s colorfully decorated, novice-level compilations, like “Acoustic Brazil” and “French Café,” have sold 27 million copies around the world. The label’s CDs are sold in record stores, as well as through a network of thousands of clothing boutiques, museum gift shops and Whole Foods markets. Until now, however, Putumayo has been behind the commercial curve in one important aspect: as one of the last holdouts on digital music, it has made none of its albums available as downloads. That will finally change on Aug 30, when the label releases its first two digital albums, “African Beat” and “Latin Beat.”

Libya, Irene, Quake Led News

In a week in which two powerful natural disasters rocked the East coast media capitals, the rebel victory in war-torn Libya led the news.

The end of Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year grip on the North African country was the No. 1 story for the week of August 22-28, accounting for 25% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Unrest elsewhere in the Mideast, particularly Syria, filled another 2% of the newshole. The extensive coverage of the takeover of Green Square in Tripoli by NATO-backed rebels came after a dramatic decrease in recent media attention to the conflict and the region. The week the U.S. and NATO forces entered the Libyan fighting (March 21-27), coverage of Mideast turmoil spiked to 47% and remained very high (38%) the following week. But it fell to just 5% in the month leading up to the deposing of Gaddafi. As the week went on, however, coverage of that international story diminished as the media turned to two potent acts of nature—Hurricane Irene and a 5.8 magnitude earthquake—both of which occurred in the greater Eastern seaboard region. Combined, those stories amounted to 30% of the newshole, more than Libya-related coverage.

Hurricane Irene highlights need for smarter grid

Hurricane Irene wasn't exactly the raging monster that some forecasters expected, but it has left millions of people across a whole bunch of communities in the dark, and potentially without power for days, and even weeks, at a time. The outages due to major storms like Irene could likely be far shorter, and could be easier and cheaper to fix after the next-generation of smart grid technology is installed. ComEd has said publicly that if smart grid technology had been in place for previous storms this summer, the impact of those storms would have been minimized. Smart grid tech can allow utilities to know when specific customers are without power without the customer having to call the utility, and digital automation tech can also reroute power to customers in need.

FCC says 6,500 cell sites down in four states in wake of Irene

Hurricane Irene knocked out 6,500 cellular communications sites in four states from Virginia to Vermont, where 44 percent of the sites remained down August 29, the Federal Communications Commission reported.

Neil Grace, an FCC spokesman, said 35 percent of the cell sites in Connecticut, 31 percent in Rhode Island and 25 percent in Virginia were down in the wake of the storm. Wired phone lines serving 210,700 customers were out, along with cable TV service for 1 million subscribers, Grace added. Army coordination officers continued to work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the Northeast, as Vermont faced the worst floods in 75 years due to rains spawned by Hurricane Irene and outages in the power grid that could take weeks to fix.

USDA Smart Grid Funding for 14 States

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that rural electric cooperative utilities will receive funding for smart grid technologies and improvements to generation and transmission facilities.

These loans will benefit more than 19,000 rural consumers in 14 states. The $900 million in loans are provided by USDA Rural Development's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to help electric utilities upgrade, expand, maintain and replace rural America's electric infrastructure. RUS funding will help build nearly 1,500 miles of line and improve more than 1,700 miles of existing line in rural areas. More than $19 million will finance smart grid technologies. USDA Rural Development also funds energy conservation and renewable energy projects.

Internet advertisers begin offering new Do Not Track icon

Privacy and consumer advocates are lambasting the online advertising industry's version of a Do Not Track mechanism, slated to take world wide effect.

August 29 is the deadline for members of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to embrace use of a turquoise-colored triangle with a lowercase letter 'i' at center, referred to as the Advertising Option Icon. The IAB is calling on its members to voluntarily display this innocuous icon on web pages that are actually embedded with tracking cookies, web beacons and other stealthy tools that help advertising networks track precisely where you go and with whom you associate on the Internet.

Google Shuts Kids Out of Email Accounts

Over the weekend my friend's email account was shut down by Google. He can't access anything that's there -- his contacts, any Google Docs, old e-mails, nothing. Why? Because he's 10.

Gabriel is the son of two of my closest friends, and they have always encouraged him and his sister to communicate with adults and friends over email. But according to Google's policy, only people 13 and older and have Google accounts. There are two aspects of this that are particularly infuriating: The first is being shut off from writing and photos that you have created -- the archives of email conversations with grandparents and the stories kids have written on Google Docs, for examples. Google could at least rectify this problem by allowing people one last chance to access and download their data. Google has said in its forums that it is "actively investigating" this option. The second is being shut out of email for all future communication. There are countless places on the Internet I would want to keep far away from a kid. Email is not one of those things. The Internet is full of strangers; your InBox is full of people you know. Email is a way to communicate with grandparents, teachers, and friends. Moreover, writing well and using email are fundamental skills necessary for functioning in the modern world.

Project Classroom: Transforming Our Schools for the Future

In 2003 the iPod was a relatively new gadget for listening to music. Billboard ads showed young people dancing, iPods in hand. Few people would have pinpointed this newfangled Walkman as a powerful teaching tool.

Cathy N. Davidson, a professor at Duke University, believes that classrooms aren't keeping up with the kids. She thought, what is the untapped educational potential of the iPod? She and her Duke colleagues worked with Apple to give every entering freshmen an iPod, and then they sat back and watched as students and teachers developed innovate and collaborative ways to incorporate iPods into their work: med students could listen to recordings of heart arrhythmia, music students could upload their compositions and get feedback from other students, environmental studies students interviewed families in a North Carolina community about lead paint in their town, and then shared their interviews online, for other students to download. No one could have predicted all the ways the iPods enhanced learning once they were in the hands of students and teachers -- and that's a central point of Cathy Davidson's new book Now You See It. In it, Davidson argues that though our lives outside of the classroom are changing rapidly, our classrooms remain stuck in an earlier era.

Four key things Google admitted to the Feds

In one of the largest settlements of its kind in U.S. history, Google agreed to pay the U.S. government half a billion dollars for allowing its advertising system to be abused by Canadian Internet prescription drug peddlers illegally importing their wares into the country. The size of the settlement wasn't the only eye-opener in the case. The settlement agreement contained some surprises, too, especially in some admissions made by the company whose motto is "Do no evil."

Here are four of them.

  1. Google knew Canadian pharmacies using its AdSense advertising platform were illegally selling prescription drugs to U.S. consumers and improperly assisted the drug peddlers in doing it.
  2. Although Google knew the Canadian pharmacies were illegally selling drugs to Americans, the settlement revealed that Google "provided customer support to some of these Canadian online pharmacy advertisers to assist them in placing and optimizing their AdWords advertisements and in improving the effectiveness of their websites."
  3. When Google did take action against online pharmacies selling prescription drugs to U.S. buyers, it ignored the fact that the system was being beaten by some pharmacies.
  4. Google was aware that online pharmacies were exploiting the company's keyword system to end-run its pharmacy certification program but dragged its feet in cracking down on those exploiters.