Monday, January 23, 2012


For my Statistics students. Give me all your phone records and I'll model your life? Where do they get these records? “Opt in for Credit approval?” Perhaps US banks will want access to phone records if you borrow money – so they can see when your “pattern” changes to “Likely to Default”
"A new startup is revolutionizing the way financial service companies meet the needs of an estimated 2.7 billion people worldwide with a mobile phone but no access to formal financial services by developing sophisticated modeling software that can look at usage data from consumers' mobile phones and make predictions about credit risk. 'There's a vast market of consumers in countries like Brazil, China, India, and the Philippines who want access to financial services like credit cards, loans, or insurance,' says Jonathan Hakim, chief executive of Cignifi. 'But while they may have jobs, and some have bank accounts, there really is no credit history for them.' The way you use your phone is a proxy for your lifestyle say the developers. 'We're looking at things like the length of calls, the time of day, and the location you make them from. Also things like whether you top up [a pre-paid SIM card] regularly. We want to see how stable the patterns are. When you look at that, you can create these behavioral clusters that give you information about users' appetite for new [financial] products, and their ability to repay a debt.' Currently operating in Brazil, Cignifi doesn't plan to deploy the technology in the US. in the near-term. 'The business opportunity is so much bigger in Brazil, India, China, and Mexico, where you have around half a billion people in those four markets alone who have a mobile phone but no banking relationship.'"

(Related) Wasn't this obvious from the start? It is basic iEconomics...
What if when you bought a new Macbook, the price was higher because your tweets constantly referenced your love and devotion for Apple? What if Orbitz used the fact that your Facebook Likes include “Party Rocking in Miami” to charge you more for a flight to Miami?
This is called online behavioral pricing. It’s a consumer’s worst nightmare as it uses the traces of your online identity to maximize prices on the products and services you want most. It’s also an ecommerce merchant’s dream.


I'm sure there is a simple explanation for this...
"Not so long ago, a legal video was taken down by repetitive DMCA requests to YouTube. In response, Megaupload filed a lawsuit against Universal Music. This past week, Megaupload was raided by US authorities and forced offline, which is costing Megaupload millions of dollars in damage. Today; while employees are in U.S. custody, Megaupload has mysteriously dropped their lawsuit against Universal Music."

(Related) Looks like RIAA got the “Chilling effect” they wanted.
"In the wake of the Megaupload takedown, Filesonic has elected to take preventative measures against a similar fate. The front page and all files now carry the following message: 'All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.' Whether or not this will actually deter the U.S. government from taking action remains to be seen."

(Related) “Damn politicians won't stay bought!” Would the investigation include determining how much direct RIAA involvement there was in the Megaupload bust?
"Chris Dodd's recent statements complaining that congressmen who receive donations from the RIAA and MPAA should toe the line has spawned a firestorm of anger on the internet. Among the bits of fallout: a petition on the White Houses "We the People" site to investigate him, the RIAA, and the MPAA for bribery! This petition gained more than 5000 signatures in 24 hours and is still growing. When the petition reaches 25,000 signatures the White House is obligated to respond to it in an official capacity."


If we gotta, we gotta.
TCTV Debate: What SOPA & PIPA 2.0 Should Look Like
As the debate continues over the best way to shield copyrighted material from being pirated, we invited David Sohn, General Counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology and Viacom’s General Counsel, Michael Fricklas to discuss language that should be included in any future SOPA/PIPA legislation.
Part I of their debate is here. Part II is here.


Wow! Merry Christmas
January 22, 2012
Tablet and E-Book Reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period
  • "The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period. The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January. These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets and e-book readers. However, as the holiday gift-giving season approached the marketplace for both devices dramatically shifted. In the tablet world, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet were introduced at considerably cheaper prices than other tablets. In the e-book reader world, some versions of the Kindle and Nook and other readers fell well below $100." [Think of it as a vindication of Economics 101 Bob]


A mis-perception? Doesn't remembering the thousands of links to information count as memory? And wasn't this argument used when we moved from “Oral History” to writing?
Here's How Google Search Is Destroying Our Memory
"We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing [i.e. Remembering? Bob] where the information can be found."
This sentence comes from the findings of a new study conducted by psychology professors at Columbia University, the University Of Wisconsin-Madison, and Harvard University.
Essentially, the study asserts that internet search is destroying our "internal memory."

(Related) This is an “I don't remember where I saw the article, but I can picture the webpage in my mind” kind of search engine...
Oolone is a visual search engine that displays all results graphically. This search tool is quick and very nice looking, plus it works great with all multitouch devices including iPads and Interactive White Boards. This is another great alternative to Google search, and one that may be particularly helpful to students with learning differences or younger students who are not able to search via traditional text.


For my Math students
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Desmos, a free online graphing calculator that I've written about a couple of times in the past (here, most recently), has updated their offerings again. The most significant update is a switch to HTML5 which means that Desmos will now work on iPads. The second significant enhancement is the option to register for an account and save your work online or share your work online.
For an overview of Desmos, watch the video below.

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