Interesting perspective
It's
Not All About You: What Privacy Advocates Don't Get About Data
Tracking on the Web
People condemn targeted advertising
for its "creepiness" but the real issue is that we are
giving private companies more power.
Jonathan Zittrain noted
last summer, "If what you are getting online is for free, you
are not the customer, you are the product." This is just a
fact: The Internet of free platforms, free services and free content
is wholly subsidized by targeted advertising, the efficacy (and thus
profitability) of which relies on collecting and mining user data.
… Most of us, myself included, have
not come to terms with what it means to "be the product."
In searching for a framework to make sense of this new dynamic, often
we rely on well established pre-digital notions of privacy. The
privacy discourse frames the issue in an ego-centric manner, as a
bargain between consumers and companies: the company will know x,
y and z about me and in exchange I get free email, good
recommendations, and a plethora of convenient services. But the
bargain that we are making is a collective one, and the costs will be
felt at a societal scale.
Ubiquitous surveillance – It's much
easier when you gather and annotate for us – and we want to sell
you the tool!
Microsoft
Builds a Browser for Your Past
Mining personal data to discover what
people care about has become big business for companies such as
Facebook and Google. Now a project from Microsoft Research is trying
to bring that kind of data mining back home to help people explore
their own piles of personal digital data.
Software called Lifebrowser processes
photos, e-mails, Web browsing and search history, calendar events,
and other documents stored on a person's computer and identifies
landmark events.
You grant Amazon the right to record
what you highlight. Do you suppose that is more valuable than
logging the websites you visit?
"Today
Amazon announced that a
science fiction writer has become the Kindle's all-time best-selling
author. Last June Suzanne Collins, who wrote the Hunger
Games trilogy, was only the
fourth author to sell one million ebooks, but this month Amazon
announced she'd overtaken
all her competition (and she also wrote the #1 and #2
best-selling ebooks this Christmas). In fact, 29 of the 100
most-highlighted
passages on the Kindle were written by Collins, including 7 of
the top 10. And on a
separate list of recent highlights, Collins has written 17 of the
top 20 most-highlighted passages."
It's pretty interesting to go through
the top-100 list and look at the passages people think are worth
highlighting. Taken out of context, many of them could be patched
together and re-sold as a self-help book. None are quite so eloquent
as #18 in the recent highlights.
(Related?) Where is their list of most
highlighted?
Is
the iPad helping women read erotic books?
It seems that
sales of female-targeted erotica are pointing up. One report
attributes this to the additional privacy offered by tablets. Yes,
people think you're reading Jane Eyre, but you're not.
“Greed is good” Gordon Gekko Greed
is God” RIAA, et al Will someone please slap these guys?
"People with a healthy interest
in fundamental freedoms and basic human rights have probably heard
about SABAM, the
Belgian collecting society for music royalties, which has become one
of the global poster children for how outrageously
out-of-touch-with-reality certain rightsholders groups appear to be.
This morning, word got out in Belgian
media that SABAM is spending time and resources to contact local
libraries across the nation, warning them that they will start
charging
fees because the libraries engage volunteers to read books to kids.
Volunteers. Who – again – read books to kids."
Maybe I can make some money teaching
after all... (Can I patent “lecturing students?”)
Loss
of Control
Jeff MacSwan and Kellie Rolstad, a
husband-and-wife team at Arizona State University, heard rumors last
year that courses they designed for an online program were being used
without their permission.
So in the summer of 2011, MacSwan
registered as a student in an English as a Second Language program
for which the couple, both tenured professors, had developed courses.
In his telling, he logged on to discover that the courses he and his
wife, an associate professor of linguistics, had created were being
used without attribution or authorization.
A lawsuit is now likely as MacSwan and
Rolstad claim damages for alleged violation of copyright laws and
university rules.
Somehow I doubt things will be
returned...
Paperwork
goof may mean Kim DotCom can reclaim assets
Incorrect
court order was issued to seize assets of the MegaUpload founder and
that is now "null and void." As a result, the New Zealand
government may be required to return his belongings.
… New Zealand police filed for the
wrong kind of restraining order--the kind that didn't allow for
DotCom to have a court hearing prior to the seizure--and that was a
mistake, according to a report
in the New Zealand Herald.
Free is good (If you downloaded the
whole thing, would it be as useful as Wikipedia?)
Encyclopedia Britannica offers access
to its online collection for free this week only as it moves from
printing books to an entirely digital format.
… Perhaps you didn’t even know
that there was an online edition, which is precisely why they’re
giving out this freebie. You can access the free content simply by
going to britannica.com.
There is no sign-up required, not even a basic email/password
registration.
For my students (It's not just for
“Troubleshooting Miss Daisy”) Works with any device with a
browser!
Screen
Leap is a free screen sharing service that I recently learned
about through a post by Vicki
Davis. To share your screen using Screen Leap just visit the
site, click "share your screen," enable the Java applet,
and send the sharing code to the person you want to view your screen.
The person receiving your invitation code will be able to see your
screen when you have Screen
Leap activated.
Applications
for Education
Screen
Leap could be a handy little tool for those times when it is
easier to show someone how to do something than it is to tell them
how to do it. I'm thinking it could be particularly useful when
you're trying to walk someone through setting up an account on a
new-to-them web service.
Here are some other screen sharing
services you might want to try:
Interesting how few Internet education
resources address the Adjunct...
A
pixelated portrait of labour
… LinkedIn … the social-media
website for professionals can tell you that one of
the fastest-growing job titles in America is “adjunct professor”
(an ill-paid, overworked species of academic).
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