August 2015

A 21st-Century Migrant’s Essentials: Food, Shelter, Smartphone

The tens of thousands of migrants who have flooded into the Balkans in recent weeks need food, water and shelter, just like the millions displaced by war the world over. But there is also one other thing they swear they cannot live without: a smartphone charging station.

Technology has transformed this 21st-century version of a refugee crisis, not least by making it easier for millions more people to move. In this modern migration, smartphone maps, global positioning apps, social media and WhatsApp have become essential tools. Migrants depend on them to post real-time updates about routes, arrests, border guard movements and transport, as well as places to stay and prices, all the while keeping in touch with family and friends. The first thing many do once they have successfully navigated the watery passage between Turkey and Greece is pull out a smartphone and send loved ones a message that they made it.

Cell Carriers Battle for Wi-Fi Airwaves

A battle is brewing among tech giants over the future of Wi-Fi, the ubiquitous and unregulated wireless connections at the core of the mobile Internet. Verizon Communications Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. are preparing to broadcast cellular signals over some of the same free airwaves currently used by Wi-Fi networks. The wireless carriers plan to begin rolling out the technology in 2016.

That worries startups like Republic Wireless as well as companies like Google and Cablevision that have built services that rely on Wi-Fi networks. They argue Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s signals could take up space Wi-Fi services normally use and crowd them out. Wi-Fi networks—in homes, offices, airports and coffee shops—already carry more than half of mobile data usage globally. Google officials wrote a letter in June to the Federal Communications Commission urging caution.

A rule for online news: Errors are inevitable; lack of transparency is not

[Commentary] In the digital realm, there are no hard deadlines. Editors can tweak a story and reporters can update it at any moment. The ability to revise without limit — virtually instantaneously — has, of course, revolutionized journalism. But most publications still haven't figured out a good way to alert readers to substantive changes and alterations.

If there's an error of fact, publications may amend the digital text and add a correction, usually at the bottom of the Web page. Editors often put through non-factual changes without bothering to notify readers at all. Rarely do corrections or clarifications carry any kind of explanation: how the reporter got the wrong vote count for an important bill; why the editor decided that the penultimate paragraph wasn't really necessary. There's a stunning lack of transparency.

[Anthony De Rosa is the former editor in chief of Circa, a mobile news start-up.]

How High Schoolers Spent Their Summer: Online, Taking More Courses

Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, were originally intended as college-level work that would be accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. But among the millions of people who have signed up for these classes, there are now an untold number of teenagers looking for courses their high schools do not offer and often, as a bonus, to nab one more exploit that might impress the college of their dreams.

College admissions directors, as well as administrators of the Common Application used by many schools, say that such online classes — for which students are not likely ever to see credit — are popping up on college applications, adding to the list of extracurriculars, like internships and community service projects, that have helped turn summer vacation into a time of character and résumé building.

Caroline Kennedy Used Personal E-mail for State Department Business, Report Finds

Caroline Kennedy, the United States ambassador to Japan, and several other senior American diplomats there have used personal e-mail accounts to conduct State Department business, the inspector general for the department said in a report.

The inspector general, Steve A. Linick, identified instances in which “sensitive but unclassified” information was sent and received on personal email accounts, the report said. The report also said the inspector general’s office “has previously reported on the risks associated with using commercial email for official government business.” It added that “such risks include data loss, hacking, phishing and spoofing of email accounts, as well as inadequate protections for personally identifiable information.” The State Department’s policy, the report said, “is that employees generally should not use private email accounts (for example, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo and so forth) for official business.” It added that “employees are also expected to use approved, secure methods to transmit sensitive but unclassified information when available and practical.”

China’s Party-Run Media Is Silent on Market Mayhem

After China’s stock markets crumpled, prompting a global sell-off, People’s Daily, the premier newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, had other things on its mind.

There was no mention of the market mayhem on the newspaper’s front page on August 25, when it featured a report about economic development in Tibet. Indeed, there was not a single reference to the stock markets throughout the entire 24 pages of the paper, which dwelled instead on the forthcoming 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. The silence continued on Aug 26, when the paper again did not report on the stock market upheavals, although it did have articles about Chinese central bank decisions and Prime Minister Li Keqiang’s restatement of confidence in the broader economy, despite the effects of what he called global “market volatility.”

How to Make Privacy Policies Better, in Two Easy Steps

[Commentary] The agita over Spotify’s privacy policy resembled disputes in 2015 over other companies’s privacy policies -- like Samsung’s and Uber’s -- as well as the the cyclical fretting over Facebook’s reach. These scandals have attained a degree of predictability: They are almost as formulaic as the legalese of the policies themselves. But beyond the cycle of discovery, outrage, and apologetic adjustment, there are deeper problems. The way lawyers, executives, and developers address user privacy just doesn’t work that well. Neither consumers nor corporations benefit from our current amend-then-freak-out regime.

The situation could be improved with two different specific adjustments, one legal and one technical. Legally, the tech-policy writer Logan Koepke advocates that companies should announce a new privacy policy whenever they change. If a regulatory change looks unlikely, though, there is a technical intervention that Apple and Google could make. Imagine if, right before a run, Spotify asked for 60 minutes of access to your GPS location. If you still seemed on the move 55 minutes later, it would ask for another hour of access. That seems to me like a better trade: Not all the access, all the time, wherever; but access right now, for a little while, here. Apple or Google could encourage this practice simply by making that feature possible at the operating-system level. It would be more seamful, and it would be more trustworthy.

Pay-TV operators ditching lower-income customers, driving up average revenue per sub, analyst finds

A focus on higher-income customers by pay-TV operators is driving both cord-cutting and average revenue per customer, said Strategy Analytics analyst Jason Blackwell. "Over the past few quarters we have seen price increases from Dish Network and DirecTV as well as other Pay TV operators," Blackwell said. "But, there is also evidence from our primary research that cord-cutters could actually be driving up the ARPU (average revenue per user) as well. We are finding that a large number of those people who have dropped a pay TV service have lower household incomes."

In a report issued the week of Aug 17, Blackwell noted the contrast between a record-setting second quarter for cord-cutting and sharp increases in per-customer revenue. DirecTV, for example, lost 133,000 subscribers during the second quarter, but saw per-customer revenue increase by 6.4 percent to $109.93. Dish Network lost 81,000 customers in the second quarter but had a 4.4 percent increase in per-user revenue to $87.91.

As legacy media cuts back on FOIA, digital-only news outlets step in

[Commentary] Ask any journalist and they’ll tell you the Freedom of Information Act process is broken. Denials are at record highs, navigating the bureaucracy can be a nightmare, and the federal agencies recently killed a modest reform bill. But a series of FOIA lawsuits also have just shown how the 50-year-old transparency law can still be indispensable. And absent any change in the law, the best way for news organizations to make sure it stays relevant is to use it innovatively and aggressively.

A study by Syracuse’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse showed that, with the exception of The New York Times, no legacy news organization sued the government under FOIA in 2014. But where print newspapers have largely faded away, digital-only news organizations -- including some that are foolishly caricatured as mere meme generators and gossip mags -- are thankfully starting to spend the time and money to fill the gap.

[Trevor Timm is the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation]

Farm Computer Usage and Ownership

When US producers were asked to respond to questions for the US Department of Agriculture - National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS)’s biennial report, 70 percent report having access to the Internet, up 3 percentage points from 2013. A DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connection is the most common method of accessing the Internet, with 30 percent of the farms in the United States using it, down from 35 percent in 2013. A wireless connection, at 29 percent, and a satellite connection at 21 percent, increased 5 and 4 percentage points, respectively. Other reported methods of accessing the Internet include cable modem service (12 percent), dial-up service (3 percent), and other or unknown (5 percent).

Farms with computer access at 73 percent is slightly higher than the 71percent of the farms that reporting owning or leasing a computer. Computer access by sales class is 71 percent for sales class $1,000--$9,999; 70 percent for sales class $10,000--$99,999; 73 percent for Sales Class $100,000--$249,999; and 85 percent for Sales Class $250,000 or more. Computer usage for farm business at 43 percent nationally, is up 3 percentage points from 2013. This compares with usage by the four geographic regions: West (48 percent), North Central (46 percent), Northeast (45 percent), and the South (36percent). Comparing computer usage by crop and livestock farms, 47 percent of the crop producers use the computer for farm business compared to 39 percent of the livestock producers.

Benton

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