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The Federal Trade Commission has finalized a proposed settlement that it announced in June 2010 with social networking site Twitter, which resolved charges that Twitter deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information.
The FTC alleged that serious lapses in the company’s data security allowed hackers to obtain unauthorized administrative control of Twitter, including both access to non-public user information and tweets that consumers had designated as private, and the ability to send out phony tweets from any account. The privacy policy posted on Twitter’s website stated that “Twitter is very concerned about safeguarding the confidentiality of your personally identifiable information. We employ administrative, physical, and electronic measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access.” In addition, Twitter offered its users privacy settings that enabled them to designate their tweets as private. The FTC’s complaint alleged that between January and May of 2009, hackers were able to gain administrative control of Twitter on two occasions. Under the terms of the settlement, Twitter will be barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information, including the measures it takes to prevent unauthorized access to nonpublic information and honor the privacy choices made by consumers. The company also must establish and maintain a comprehensive information security program, which will be assessed by an independent auditor every other year for 10 years.
FTC Accepts Final Settlement with Twitter for Failure to Safeguard Personal Information
Dare I say we might have reached the tipping point in technological universal design? There's a number of new apps that could be of help to people with disabilities:
•D2u Transcriber provides dictation and transcription on a mobile phone.
•SendStuffNow offers cloud-based storage.
•Conf provides help for conference attendees by tracking each session, list speakers, lists panels/discussions, and even provides GPS to show how far away you are from each event (Note to self: Download for CSUN conference!).
•ClearRecord Premium is an audio recording app that is able to suppress background noise.
•Wallet Advanced manages your website logins, credit card info and other private information. It has strong encryption so that this information is safe.
•Similarly, there is Password Keeper, which is a simple tool that stores your password and is also secure.
•Flashcards App, teaches new vocabulary, then tests you, and even checks your daily progress.
•Voice Cards are Not Flashcards!! allows you to create voice flash cards with an autoplay and shake option.
•WordWarp (which I actually have) is a game where you create as many words as possible from a selection of letters. If you’re stuck, just press the “warp” button and it will help you out. Also, a very useful game for persons with head injuries.
•Pill Time reminds you to take your medications, and breaks up your medications by medication type, ailment concerned, dosage, frequency and the specific time of day. It also provides a medication countdown, which counts what medicines you have taken, and what you have left to take in a day.
•Living Well with Arthritis provides helpful tips to manage your arthritis. This app was rated superior for usability. It has many features, including routines, basic understanding of your type of arthritis and how it affects your body, and teaches how you can deal with your arthritis better.
•iCanBass offers a guitar interface and allows you to pull strings. This app made me think of Paul Schroeder of the American Foundation for the Blind, who is an avid guitar player.
•Music For Users provides ambient music to affect your brainwaves. This app has is programmed with certain tasks, which act as an “alarm” for project management.
•LocateMeNow provides you with your location, and is user friendly and fast. If I had only had this when I first moved to DC!
•MobileRSS gathers and manages your selected feeds and presents them in one place for easy monitoring.
•Breaking News with Push delivers breaking news. This reminds me of a story Al Sonnenstrahl, a life-long Deaf telecommunications advocate, told me of how, despite being in a car pool and working all morning with colleagues, when RFK was shot after midnight in 1968, he had no idea. His deafness had pushed him out of the information loop..
•PhotoDiary enables you to track your day with photographs, and allows you to add captions to the photos, and date and time-stamp the photo. I would love to see user testing on how people with cognitive disabilities who need help with their daily routine could use this app!
•PhotoMashup has great potential for people who are Deaf and to other visual learners by allowing you to arrange your photos, make montages, rotate, enlarge and move photos, and even provides the ability to include drop shadow and customize border colors.
•iStuff is a highly visual method of managing tasks by providing 12 categories that are named based on time and function. It provides simple calendar views, an in-box for new tasks, tags to work on several tasks together, and overdue tasks, which require you to pay attention. This task-management app is rich in features, and rated high on usability. Another project management tool that is also highly rated is SideTacts, which integrates phone, e-mail and SMS into a single app. It also provides audio, text and video notes, while continually synching with the basic apps on every off-the-shelf iPhone.
•Easy Group Text allows you to group your contacts and text everyone in that group at the same time. There is a similar app, GroupSMS!, which does the same for SMS. Another app is FogHorn, which is a simple and user-friendly app that allows you to enter phone numbers for multiple people, and hold text chats where everyone sees all the messages. FogHorn also allows you to store your chats, archive your chats online, and add extra information about the participants.
•Today Screen can simplify your day by taking all of your appointments in the iPhone calendar, and putting them into a user-friendly view. It even color codes past, present and future events;
•15,000 Useful Phrases is perfect for those whose English is a second language. It can provide assistance in the much needed gap between ESL and real English conversations--a great social skills app.
•Lonely Planet San Francisco Guide is a one-stop resource for visiting a city. It is said to be even more helpful than a travel book and received rave reviews. It includes detailed maps (online and offline). I personally love the Lonely Planet guides, and the San Francisco guide is just one of many cities offered. Maptual allows you to view various points of interest on a map using the Open Street Map interface. Like Lonely Planet, Maptual provides information about cities all around the world.
•Find A Pharmacy will locate a pharmacy for you based on your geographic location, indicate how far the pharmacy is, and provides a Google Map to direct you to the pharmacy.
•QuickPaste ranks very high on usability and allows you copy multiple records (the iPhone app limits you to one record at a time) for pasting into other apps. A good tool for everyone, especially for those with hand dexterity issues.
•Pic-Z Tag is great for conference or meeting attendees, especially people with speech disabilities. It lets you design a name tag (templates provided). When you meet someone new, you can just flash your iPhone to introduce yourself.
•Ring Finger is a great speed dialing program that you can program time and automated calling. For example, if you needed to call in to your job coach each day at 1:30 p.m., it will automatically connect you with your job coach at 1:30.
App Accessibility: Are We at a Tipping Point?
Comcast now offers its 100 Megabit per second high-speed Internet service to businesses in its Northern California and Richmond (VA) regions, positioning the DOCSIS 3.0-based services as much faster alternative to telcos' traditional T-1 lines.
The 100 Mbps download/10 Mbps upload tier -- one of the fastest broadband services available in the U.S. -- is as much as 60 times faster than the download speeds provided by a 1.5 Mbps T-1 line. The 100 Mbps service tier is available to Comcast Business Class customers for $369.95 per month (on a standalone basis), which includes Microsoft Communication Services and Norton Business Suite software for up to 25 PCs. The MSO also offers special bundled pricing with video and voice services. Comcast offers the "Deluxe 100" service in several other markets including: Colorado, Minneapolis/St. Paul, parts of New Jersey; Philadelphia and surrounding counties; Harrisburg, Pa., and parts of central Pennsylvania; northern Delaware; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Memphis, Tenn.; Augusta, Ga.; and Washington State and Oregon.
Comcast Rolls 100 Meg Business Internet In California, Virginia
Could there be something of a turf tussle brewing over the issue of online privacy?
The leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee have written to Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) saying the newly created Privacy, Technology & Law Subcommittee appears to exceed judiciary's scope and overlap with legislative matters "squarely within the jurisdiction of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee." Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) pointed out that their own committee has been focused on consumer privacy issues, as well as data security. In fact, protecting kids online privacy has been one of Rockefeller's signature issues. He pointed out that the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) originated in the Commerce Committee. He also pointed out that the Federal Trade Commission's consumer protection authority is "fully under the jurisdiction of Commerce," where oversight hearings are held. The FTC is one of the government's lead privacy protection mechanisms and is currently recommending or considering proposed changes to online privacy protections, including COPPA.
They said they were "puzzled" by the online description of the subcommittee's jurisdiction, which is described as:
"(1) Oversight of laws and policies governing the collection, protection, use and dissemination of commercial information by the private sector, including online behavioral advertising, privacy within social networking websites and other online privacy issues; (2) Enforcement and implementation of commercial information privacy laws and policies; (3) Use of technology by the private sector to protect privacy, enhance transparency and encourage innovation; (4) Privacy standards for the collection, retention, use and dissemination of personally identifiable commercial information; and (5) Privacy implications of new or emerging technologies."
Senate Commerce Raises Issue Of Privacy Jurisdiction
[Commentary] Come on now: Let's take a breath and put this NPR fracas into perspective.
Just as public radio struggles against yet another assault from the its long-time nemesis -- the right-wing machine that would thrill if our sole sources of information were Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and ads paid for by the Koch Brothers -- it walks into a trap perpetrated by one of the sleaziest operatives ever to climb out of a sewer. Sure, public broadcasting has made its share of mistakes, and there have been times when we who practice our craft under its aegis have been less than stalwart in taking a stand and speaking truth to power. We haven't always served well our original mandate to be "a forum for debate and controversy," or to provide "a voice for groups in the community that may be otherwise unheard," or helped our viewers and listeners "see America whole, in all its diversity." But for all its flaws, consider an America without public media. Consider a society where the distortions and dissembling would go unchallenged, where fact-based reporting is eliminated, and where the field is abandoned to the likes of James O'Keefe, whose "journalism" relies on lying and deceit. We agree with Joel Meares who, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, expressed the wish that NPR had stood up for themselves and released a statement close to the following: "Ron Schiller was a fundraiser who no longer works for us. He had nothing to do with our editorial decision making process. And frankly, our editorial integrity speaks for itself. We've got reporters stationed all over the world, we've won all sorts of prizes, we've got an ombudsman who is committed to examining our editorial operations. If you think our reporting is tainted, or unreliable, that's your opinion, and you're free to express it. And to look for the evidence. But we will not be intimidated by the elaborate undercover hackwork of vindictive political point-scorers who are determined to see NPR fail."
That's our cue. Come on, people: Speak up!
In Defense of NPR
Google has been hit with a second potential class-action lawsuit for allegedly violating people's privacy by serving contextual ads to users of the 6-year-old Gmail service.
The complaint, filed by Texas resident Kelly Michaels, alleges that Google violates federal wiretap laws by "scanning and capturing the contents of every email sent and received through Google's Web-based email program." Michaels, who has used Gmail since February 2007, additionally argues that Google was "deliberately silent" about the fact that its email program "discovers the 'concepts' and identifies keywords in every private email that every Gmail user sends or receives in order to market and target advertisements." Google has not yet responded to a request for comment about Michaels' lawsuit. But the company says in an online privacy statement that its scanning process "is completely automated and involves no humans." The company adds: "Neither email content nor any personal information is ever shared with other parties as a result of our ad-targeting process." This latest lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, is similar to one brought against Google last November by Texas resident Keith Dunbar. That case, however, focused on whether Google is violating the privacy of non-Gmail users by allegedly scanning their messages in order to determine which ads to serve Gmail users.
Google Sued For Violating Wiretap Law
In the eight months since its debut, the improved Federal IT Dashboard, which rates U.S. agency technology projects and posts the results on the Internet for the world to see, has not won the hearts of all IT project managers.
Putting cost and performance data "on a public website was not warmly received by every agency," said Beth Ward, head of IT program and portfolio services at the Federal Aviation Administration. "My agency wasn't fond of it either." Managers worry about who will see the ratings their projects receive -- green for "normal," yellow for "needs attention," or red for "significant concern" -- and the amount of money they are spending on information technology. Governmentwide IT costs $80 billion a year. Agencies worry most that low ratings will catch the eye of Congress, or investigators at the Government Accountability Office, several government technology officials said. But it turns out, Ward said, "Everybody's looking at this data," including IT companies, watchdog groups, and particularly the Office of Management and Budget, which operates the dashboard and has substantial influence over technology spending. Poor dashboard ratings can lead to a TechStat, which is a detailed examination of a program followed by a face-to-face meeting between the agency chief information officer and the chairman of the agency's investment review board.
Federal IT dashboard not winning manager hearts
Federal agencies are racing toward a deadline to get broad telework programs up and running and must develop detailed guidance on working remotely. This could be tricky because when it comes to preparing managers and employees for the expectations of telework, observers say government still has a ways to go. There's little room for failure.
In a December 2010 executive order, President Obama gave agencies until June to establish a policy on working outside the office, identify eligible employees and inform them of the option. The law also requires leaders to name an official to oversee telework programs and to incorporate the policy into plans for continuing essential services during natural disasters or other emergencies. Agencies are required to develop written agreements that outline telework terms and conditions with authorized employees. Some have established telework programs and have contracts in place, while others are just beginning to identify eligible employees and face a steep learning curve, says Adam Cole, director of government practice at the Corporate Executive Board.
Dialing Up Telework
After a major disaster like the 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, the first thing virtually everyone shaken by the event wants to do is send out a message or place a call letting loved ones know they’re fine. How did mobile networks in Japan, one of the world’s most mobile societies, hold up during the tragic and hectic day?
No network appeared unaffected, according to reports out of Japan, with slowdowns, disruptions, and outages widespread across the nation, especially in northern Japan where the tsunami destroyed entire villages and in the populated center of Tokyo. The problems are obvious: severe congestion as millions of people flocked to voice and data services within minutes of each other, downed cellular towers and power lines in key locations, and disruptions to the back-end data centers that make the whole system run. Interestingly, DoCoMo did say that data connections were not affected, meaning that many could have turned to Web access in order to send out e-mails or updates to social-networking services in order to communicate with families and friends. IDG News Service in Tokyo also reported that regular Internet connections seemed unaffected by the quake, tsunami, and resulting network congestion. The three leading mobile carriers—DoCoMo, KDDI, and Softbank—all set up the text-message equivalent of bulletin boards where subscribers could send text messages that were then placed on a Web page and accessible to anyone who has the texter’s phone number.
Massive Japan Quake/Tsunami Hobbles Mobile Voice, But Data Holds Fast
WeFi is the latest vendor to launch a carrier WiFi offload product, but unlike the other dozen or so solutions on the market, WeFi’s platform doesn't require the operator to purchase any access point or gateway. Rather, WeFi’s new WeANDSF platform allows operators to hitch a ride over the millions of access points already built worldwide without spending a dime for access. WeANDSF builds upon WeFi’s global WiFi database, which has the skinny on 85 million access points worldwide. Using a client on the handset and policies set on the network, operators can manage their customers’ access to WiFi networks as if they were their own.
WeFi turns global WiFi database into a mobile data offload platform