U.S. Stocks Trim Losses as Utilities, Technology Shares Gain August 20, 2010, 3:04 PM EDT
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By Michael P. Regan
Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks pared losses as gains in utilities and technology companies helped the market recover from an earlier tumble fueled by growing concern the economic recovery is faltering.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 0.3 percent to 1,072.22 at 2:47 p.m. in New York after plunging as much as 1.1 percent earlier. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 57.29 points, or 0.6 percent, to 10,213.92.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Regan at mregan12@bloomberg.net
Cyberactivists unblock Wikileaks for Thai NetizensBANGKOK (AP) _ A group of anonymous Internet activists has set up a website to display information about Thailand that comes from the whistle-blower site Wikileaks, which is blocked to some viewers in the Southeast Asian country. The group calling itself Wikicong said Friday it set up the thaileaks.info site as a tool to break the censorship _ an apparent reference to alleged efforts by the Thai government to block access to the material, which includes a private video of the countrys Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn.
Google defends its Street View in GermanyBERLIN (AP) _ Google Inc. is defending its Street View feature against sharp criticism in Germany saying it has gone a long way to address peoples privacy concerns. Googles vice president for Northern and Central Europe, Philipp Schindler, told Thursdays mass circulation daily Bild the company had found a unique data security agreement with German agencies as early as last year.
Intel buys McAfee for $7.7B in push beyond PCsSAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Talk about a new meaning for Intel Inside. Intel Corp. wants to be inside your television. And your cell phone. And your car. And pretty much any other device that could one day connect to the Internet and require a computer chip.
HPs 3Q numbers solid but could fuel doubtsSAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Now that Mark Hurd is out as CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., the worlds biggest technology company is trying to prove to Wall Street that it can thrive under the sweeping changes he set in motion. Its numbers for the May-July quarter _ the last full quarter under Hurd _ were solid. Profit matched analyst estimates, and revenue slightly exceeded them. But uncertainty about who will be picked as Hurds replacement, and doubts about the overall health of technology spending, weighed on HPs stock.
Dell 2Q net income rises 16 percentSEATTLE (AP) _ PC maker Dell Inc. said Thursday its net income improved 16 percent in the fiscal second quarter as businesses replaced aging technology, though a key profit measure fell. The majority of Dells revenue comes from selling technology to other companies, so its results offer a gauge of the economic recovery in the form of business spending on technology.
Facebook checks in, adding location-based featureNEW YORK (AP) _ Facebook users carrying their smart phones will soon be able to check in to real-world locations such as bars, parks and live concerts as the social network makes its first foray into the location services craze. Where are you? is joining Whats on your mind? as Facebook lets its users declare their whereabouts to their friends and people nearby.
Can Orwell, Vonnegut, Austen lead you to love?NEW YORK (AP) _ Chin Ma is 25 and looking for love. He paddles regularly in the dating pools online, paying fees to navigate millions of profiles based on lengthy checklists and compatibility formulas. So howd he find his latest prospect? Through a book by Andy Warhol on Alikewise.com, a newcomer looking to connect people free of charge based on their favorite reads. Its a unique approach in a recession-hardy industry that has dozens of niche sites serving potheads to pet owners, millionaires to Mac lovers.
(c) 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
SAN FRANCISCO– Google Inc. (GOOG) has acquired visual search engine Like.com, a startup that has applied computer vision and learning technology to online fashion shopping.
The acquisition was announced on Like.com’s homepage late Friday. Financial terms …
Science, Technology Aid Today’s Wars, Gird for Tomorrow’s
By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20, 2010 The Defense Department’s science and technology effort has two overarching missions: to help today’s warfighters and prepare capabilities for tomorrow’s servicemembers.
The trick is to put these two missions in synch, said Zachary J. Lemnios, director of defense research and engineering.
During a Defense Writers’ Group breakfast yesterday, Lemnios said the Defense Department faces a range of challenges. When he arrived as director last year, he said, he framed four imperatives to ensure the office gets it right.
“The first is accelerating delivery of technical capabilities to win the current fight,” he said. Second, he added, is to prepare for an uncertain future.
These two imperatives are at the heart of the organization. The office must get technology to servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan to win today’s fights, but no one knows what type of threat will face the nation in the future, and science and technology money must be spent to combat as yet unknown enemies.
The third imperative is reducing the risk, time and cost of acquisition systems, Lemnios said. “And the fourth is to make sure we have the underlying math, science and technology foundation that we need.”
Responding to the needs of servicemembers in the field, Lemnios said, is the most important imperative. Lemnios said he has met with all 10 combatant commanders, and it has helped him shape how the department looks at science and technology base.
“We are trying to put in place a science and technology portfolio that isn’t there just for fundamental science, it’s there for the combatant commanders and services and to support the future needs of the department,” he said.
Lemnios receives joint urgent operations requirements directly from the combatant commanders. A requirement is a need that is “so urgent it has to be addressed in order to save lives,” he explained.
“There have been several hundred of these requests,” he said. Lemnios’ office connects the science and technology community with the combatant commanders so they understand the art of the possible.
Right now, these needs are centered on the fight to counter improvised explosive devices, on persistent surveillance and on body protection and armor, Lemnios said. “All [of the combatant commanders] want the 80 percent solution today rather than perfection five years from now,” he said.
Examples of an urgent need rushed to the front are Aerostat balloons that contain surveillance cameras and other hardware to help in protecting forward bases, the director said. Forward operating bases in isolated areas need perimeter surveillance, he said, noting the balloons loft up to 1,500 feet and don’t take much manning to operate.
“We’re now delivering these [balloons] to all forward operating bases,” he said.
The office also is moving a helicopter alert threat system along. This system answers the need to protect helicopters from small-arms fire, and it was adopted from a system in place for Humvees. Sixteen microphones mounted on the choppers can pinpoint where ground fire is coming from. The system now is mounted on Black Hawk helicopters at Fort Drum, NY, and will deploy to the combat theater in October, he said.
“Both systems were fielded in less than six months,” Lemnios said. “We blew through a bunch of barriers to make this happen.”
The office also is working to detect improvised explosive devices - the leading killers of US personnel. “Think of the IED problem as a system, in which the enemy has a vote,” Lemnios said. The department is addressing the threat through technology, foiling the triggers, attacking the networks and coming up with new tactics, training and procedures. Science and technology can help in all of these areas, Lemnios said.
“This is less about individual technology and more about the system construct,” he added.
All of this IED technology and surveillance results in tera-bytes of data, and sorting through it is a major stumbling block, he acknowledged. Lemnios said the department is going to tackle the data-to-decision challenge head on. His office has a tight tie with trainers at Twenty-nine Palms in California and Fort Polk, La., to see “where technology really does supply a lever and how do we supplement that technology concept with tactics, techniques and procedures.”
But personnel 20 years from now will need capabilities, and the seed corn for these ideas is the basic research paid for today, Lemnios said. Industry looks for payouts and generally doesn’t fund basic research, he noted; historically, the federal government or universities do that.
The Defense Department generally funds basic research when the department needs to have a pre-eminent position for a long time or when private industry finds the risk too high to fund it. A large effort is under way in the Air Force to open the next frontier in propulsion, Lemnios said. The Air Force is developing an engine that will use 25 percent less fuel at Dayton Lab in Ohio.
Lemnios said he wants the department to fund the high-risk, critical technology development, then for industry to optimize the results and provide the technology back to the department. A simple example is the way the global positioning system was put in place 23 years ago. “That was a [Defense Department] investment,” he said. “Today, that’s a shrink-wrapped product that … is ubiquitous.”
Another example is microelectronics. Originally, the Air Force drove that investment. Today, it’s private industry.
The partnership still works. An example is the all terrain mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle that has been deployed to Afghanistan in the thousands and is going to coalition partners also. It went from the idea to industry producing 1,000 vehicles a month in less than a year.
“This was sort of on par with what the department did in World War II to produce aircraft,” Lemnios said.
With consumers looking for alternative ways to connect computers and peripherals, including mobile devices and smart meters, inside homes, powerline communications is fast becoming a networking technology of choice for connected homes. As a result, more and more semiconductor suppliers are entering this space. Latest announcement comes from integrated silicon solutions provider Marvell(News - Alert) Semiconductor (www.marvell.com).
Marvell, which has been enjoying significant growth in mobile and wireless markets lately, has acquired the intellectual property and assets of Spains Diseno de Sistemas en Silicio S.A or DS2(News - Alert), a supplier of high-speed semiconductor solutions for powerline communications. By converting any existing electrical power wiring into an intelligent, high-speed networking medium, powerline technology enables consumers to quickly and affordably create a connected home that can stream virtually any personal or subscription-based digital content to and from any room at high speeds, said Marvell. However, financial terms of this deal were not disclosed.
Under this agreement, Marvell will continue to sell DS2 products and support existing customers. Concurrently, the company will also develop and integrate DS2 core technology into its existing IP portfolio to provide complete home networking products. With this acquisition, approximately 75 DS2 employees have joined Marvells worldwide development team, according to Marvell.
In a company statement, Marvells Gani Jusuf, vice president of product development for Communications and Consumer Business Group, commented With the industry ready to standardize on powerline technology and consumer demand for new home networking options rising fast, now is the time to drive innovation in this space. He added, Powerline technology makes sense for many reasons, even for consumers who already have existing wired or wireless networks. By enabling any wall outlet in your home to serve as a broadband network connection that can send and receive data at high speeds, consumers can extend the capabilities of their existing networks or construct a totally new stand alone network optimized for streaming media.
According to Marvell, powerline technology is one of the easiest and most reliable methods to meet this growing market demand by offering a ubiquitous broadband solution that optimizes networking over existing power, coaxial cable, phone lines and other wiring. And consumers have begun to see powerlines advantages over existing wired and wireless technologies that cannot provide the transmission speeds necessary for streaming digital video and other multimedia content, noted the manufacturer.
Founded in 1998 in Valencia, Spain, DS2 is regarded as a technology innovator in next-generation wireline technology based on the G.hn standard, which aims to combine, powerline, coaxial, and phoneline wiring within a single wired home network. The company globally supplied advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solutions and universal powerline association (UPA) compatible circuits for digital home, smart grid and Ethernet over coax applications.
Ashok Bindra is a veteran writer and editor with more than 25 years of editorial experience covering RF/wireless technologies, semiconductors and power electronics. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
The chip maker Marvell Technology Group forecast strong revenue growth in the third quarter, despite a tough hard-drive market, as it came out of an inventory overhang, sending its shares up 8 percent. The company, whose chips are used in devices like smartphones, more than tripled its second-quarter earnings, which met Wall Street estimates, as strength in its wireless market offset the recent weakness in the hard-drive industry. Net income for the second quarter, ended July 31, rose to $219.8 million, or 33 cents a share, from $58.5 million, or 9 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 40 percent, to $896.5 million. Shares in Marvell rose $1.25, to $16.16.
The Seattle Sounders were deadlocked 1-1 with host CD Marathon in the group stage opener of CONCACAF Champions League play Thursday night at Estadio Olimpico Metropolitano in San Pedro Sula, Honduras when the deciding play of the evening occurred in the 45th minute.
Sounders veteran defender Tyrone Marshall had been tenaciously battling Marathons Nicolas Cardozo all evening when the two players collided on the Sounders edge of the pitch. Marshall sought to clear the area with a kick.
What followed was Marshall receiving a yellow card and Cardozo coolly delivering a penalty kick from the box that gave the home team a hard fought 2-1 victory.
The most experienced player on the field, Sounders two time All-Star goalkeeper Kasey Keller, sized up his view of the collision with the expertise of an international professional soccer veteran of 40:
The ball came over the top and it took a bad bounce. I didnt expect it to bounce that way. I called for Tyrone [Marshall] to head it to me but it didnt get there. I dont know how it was a penalty.
The seasoned veteran then tackled the essence of the issue, stating, I havent seen the tape but it didnt look like a penalty to me. It looked like two guys swing and kick each others legs and next thing you know the ball is in my hands and he [the referee] is signaling a foul. I dont know what he saw. It may have been good play by the striker but I dont know. That was frustrating.
The initial reaction by Marshall was stunned silence. Meanwhile his teammates rushed to the scene and protested the call.
The penalty call illustrated once more the issue discussed frequently during recent World Cup television coverage by commentators and experts. Officials can only expect to see so much. In bygone days it was recognized that this was an imperfection that needed to be accepted since there was no viable alternative beyond officials spot decisions.
With the advent of video technology a viable alternative is now present. Thursdays call further illustrates the need of reviewing plays with the benefit of video evidence.
The replay in this instance illustrated how and why an official would make such a call as well as the importance of having the cameras all-seeing eye to review action. In this case Marshalls leg was in motion. He did make contact with the oncoming player, but it appeared as if his leg was already in motion.
This begs the following question. Wasnt this a play like one of those many instances in the National Football League where two players are going for the ball? In American football the prevalent rule is Both players have an equal right to pursue the ball. In such instances, given that acceptance, no penalty is called.
In the game of soccer this was a similar circumstance and the same result should obtain. The only reason, based on review of video evidence, why Marshall made contact was due to the rushing of the Marathon player to the scene. This contact occurred due to both players making a play for the ball, as Kasey Keller noted.
The official, therefore, seeing Marshall making contact with an opposing player could easily make a penalty call absent the advantage of seeing the play clearly through video technology. This would have put the issue in a different context.
Sounders Coach Sigi Schmid was tactful, but obviously disappointed by the call that resulted in the evenings deciding goal. The penalty, I thought, was a harsh call, Schmid said, but it is what it is.
Schmid thought that his team performed better in the second half, warming up in the humid evening to the task at hand. Statistics bear him out in the shot department as Seattle, bolstered by a stronger second half effort, ended the match with a 15-10 overall advantage.
Schmids post game comment underscored his belief that the Sounders improved as the game progressed:
I think our effort in the game (was that) we didnt do well at the outset with [Carlos] Palacios on the one side and [Randy] Diamond on the other side. I think we were disjointed offensively. The last 20 minutes, 25 minutes of the game I thought we had very good energy. In the beginning of the game we didnt have good energy and we didnt see an awful lot of the ball. If you want to see the ball a lot you need to play hard. We need to be better next time.
Despite Sounders difficulties in getting untracked early, one of the most beautifully executed goals of the season occurred in the 17th minute culminating with a score by Roger Levesque, whose last previous goal had been the game winner at DC United in the 89th minute July 18.
Levesque was put in a position to deliver a goal producer based on two superb assists. The first came on a cross from right to left by the irrepressible Fredy Montero, who has provided yeoman duty as the season has progressed both as a scorer and score generator as an assist master.
The assist was the Colombia Comets 10th of the season. This means that he has achieved his earlier stated goal to provide 10 assists this campaign.
Monteros well orchestrated cross moved into the middle, the territory of Seattles veteran midfielder Blaise Nkufo. A less experienced player may well have either let the ball go or given it a harder kick that would have driven it beyond Levesque.
Levesque needed help to have a shot at a goal, but of just the right kind, which Nkufo provided. With his body facing forward Nkufo delivered a gentle swipe with the back of his foot. The ball accordingly landed at Levesques feet, he drove the ball into the back post, and the Sounders were on the scoreboard with a 1-0 lead.
The equalizer was provided in the 27th minute as Orvin Paz took a pass from Randy Diamond and touched it once before driving a low scoring shot to the near post.
The controversial penalty kick of Nicolas Cardozo in the 45th minute closed out not only first half scoring but that of the remainder of the game, but that does not mean that the equally hard fought second half was devoid of thrills and scoring opportunities.
Two Sounders opportunities stand out, both coming near the end of the match. Nathan Sturgis corner in the 78th minute found a darting Michael Seamon near the 6-yard box. Seamons resulting header hit the crossbar.
Montero nearly scored in the 89th minute. He struck a bouncing ball in the box with just the right light touch. Fate was not on Seattles side as Monteros effort rolled just wide of the far post.
Keller commented afterward about the Seattle opportunities that failed to connect with the net.
We had multiple chances at the end of the game to get something out of this, Keller acknowledged. Once again, usually you would put in nine of 10 of them but it was just one of those days when it just wasnt going to happen. And that was probably the most frustrating. We know we were better and we should have done better.
The 2-1 setback generates added pressure on the Sounders to defeat CF Monterrey of Mexico in the next round of action, which resumes August 25 on the Xbox Pitch at Qwest Field.
League play will resume August 28 with Freddie Ljungberg and the Chicago Fire visiting Qwest Field. After that the Sounders face Chivas USA in a US Open Cup semifinal September 1 at Starfire Sports Stadium in Tukwila.
Team Captain Keller summarized Thursday nights action along with Seattles ongoing participation in CONCACAF Champions League activity philosophically:
We thought we had changed it already but our energy in the first 20 minutes was a bit more selective. We have got to get more pressure on them. We all learn from experiences. Its a long trip. Its hot, humid, we are on a very slow pitch and we just couldnt figure it out. We have got five more games left in this competition and theres nothing to fear playing these teams. We can line up with these teams quite comfortably.
Seattle stands at 10-9-7 overall this season. Its unbeaten streak of nine matches (6-0-3) over all competitions has ended.
Facebook Places harnesses the GPS function of the latest smartphones to enable users to track each other down. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
Are you in a relationship? What are your political views? And where did you go for breakfast this morning? What would once have been details of our lives known only by those we know and trust, many of us now willingly display online.
From the surveillance entertainment of Big Brother to CCTV and celebrity magazines, the boundaries of what is regarded as appropriate to put in the public domain are shifting dramatically. But nothing is challenging our notion of privacy more than social networking, with 26 million of us using Facebook to share the minutiae of our lives every month in the UK alone.
Facebook has proved irresistible to many because we are lured into joining by friends and family. Browsing, reading, comparing and nosing is instinctive, impulsive and reflects our tendencies offline, our social graph, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to call it. Having executed the social networking business idea better than its rivals - MySpace, Bebo, Friendster and Hi5 have been left for dust - Facebook has seen astonishing growth, from a Harvard dorm project in 2003 to a global phenomenon that had 500 million monthly users by July this year. Thats already one in 13 people on Earth, and Zuckerberg recently predicted it was almost a guarantee that his site would reach 1 billion users, with growth in relatively untapped markets such as Russia, Japan and Korea doubling every six months.
On Thursday, Facebook unveiled its latest gambit in the battle to remain top of the social networking heap with a move into geolocation services, which harness the GPS functionality of increasingly powerful mobile smartphones. Facebook Places will launch first in the US and later in the UK, allowing users, if they choose, to share their location with friends on the site by checking into public venues. Sensitive to intense public scrutiny of its privacy controls, Facebook was careful to make the service opt-in but every geolocation service - including Googles Latitude, Gowalla and Foursquare - has prompted renewed debate about the protection of personal details online.
This is a seminal moment where were seeing new thinking and new practice starting to emerge around the issue of privacy, says Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute and member of Facebooks safety advisory board. The battle lines are being drawn between generations. Facebook is headed by someone who hasnt hit 30 yet, but has very different perceptions and assumptions about what is private and what is not. We need to recognise that with social networking, geolocation and digital technology, the privacy bar is being reset.
Facebook has come under significant pressure to make its site safer for users. Incidents of serious crimes facilitated by the internet such as the murder of British teenager Ashleigh Hall by Peter Chapman earlier this year, are tragic but rare. More common is the embarrassment from a compromising tagged photo of a drunken night out.
The rapid pace of development by technology companies often throws up new cultural and ethical challenges. Googles Street View has frequently been challenged by privacy campaigners who question whether the logistical and commercial benefits of making every property in every street visible on the web are worth the sacrifice of the individuals right to privacy. Facebook users first raised their pitchforks in 2006 when the site introduced a news feed for each user, summarising their friends activity. More recently it came under pressure to simplify its privacy controls with some high-profile commentators and groups - organised on Facebook pages, naturally - encouraging others to remove their profiles. It responded in May with simplified privacy settings.
Richard, now Lord, Allan is a former Liberal Democrat MP and Facebooks European policy director. The internet is here to stay as a ubiquitous way for every individual citizen to capture and share information. The challenge is how you manage that increasing flow of information and thats where Facebook is at the bleeding edge, allowing people to navigate that world. Expressions of concern and criticisms are really of that direction of travel, rather than any particular product, like Facebook.
Allan thinks it is an exaggeration to characterise privacy as a natural state of man, citing societies before mass transport where a large community would know every intimate detail of each others lives. The modern sense of privacy came much later, with modern transport and cities. Notably with new technology, you end up with a utopian viewpoint and a dystopian viewpoint, but a lot of things those dystopians feared did not come true. To say youre living in Facebook rather than the real world is a complete misreading of whats happening. The reason it is so compelling is because it is so connected to the real world. With every wave of technology we need to get used to it.
Our personal information can broadly be categorised as trivial data such as music preferences, behavioural information about our activity and connections, and confidential information including credit card numbers. But even seemingly innocuous information can be used against us, says security expert Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro. In isolation, much of this data may be trivial but from a hackers perspective, any information is good information, he says. Use search engines to discover the extent of your online footprint and tailor it. Keep tabs on yourself before anyone else does.
Balkam describes the internets two biggest privacy problems as reputational damage - inadvertently posting drunken photos that your boss might see, for example - and physical safety, the latter being the issue for women particularly wary of location tools. Burglary is another concern, when users of location services announce they are out of the house; in February three developers built PleaseRobMe.com to raise awareness about the implications of broadcasting location to a public audience.
Currently location games such as Foursquare, where users check in at public venues to earn points and prizes, tend to have a small, enthusiastic and largely trustworthy group of dedicated users comprised of so-called early adopters. For them, this period of intensive invention and opportunity is a golden age. Christian Payne - who describes himself as a social technologist - abandoned a career as a photographer in early 2008 when he had a car crash epiphany. Within minutes of tweeting a video of his crashed Land Rover, he had an offer of help from a local crane operator, his AA membership number sent to him and a call from BT asking for the serial number of the telegraph pole hed crashed into. He worries that spirit of helpfulness will dilute as social media becomes more commercialised, and its users more sceptical.
Well never see it like we do now - more nefarious people will come later, he says. But it would be more risky for me not to take the chance of building meaningful connections with acquaintances who then become friends when one of you needs some help.
Payne seems to put a lot of intimate information into the world, but still skillfully manages to keep his personal life, and that of his partner and son, almost completely private. Its up to the user to decide what they want to keep private, he says, though hes uncomfortable with the idea that he is unknowingly creating a public persona for himself. Id hope Im doing this naturally and not thinking about it. But then asking me that is like taking me out of the play Im acting in as myself - and asking me to direct it.
Online privacy is intrinsically linked to identity. Author Peggy Orenstein lt;a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2010/aug/02/twitter title=wrote in the wrote in the New York Times recently that her reflexive compulsion to tweet a pleasant moment with her daughter had also spoilt the moment, and mused that our online personas are elaborate constructs that we, knowingly or unknowingly, craft into an identity we want the world to see. The internet has provided a platform that seems to challenge us to present a single identity to the world, yet we struggle to balance the profiles we share with family, friends and work colleagues.
Stories of employers sacking staff for drunken Facebook photos will be replaced by an acceptance that drunken university pictures are the norm, says Dr Joss Wright, Fresnel research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. He hopes sites will develop more intuitive ways to share information with the appropriate people; when his grandmother joined Facebook it severely curtailed what he could share with his friends.
Id like to believe people will learn how to guard their privacy, but were more likely to see societal shifts in what is seen as acceptable for privacy, Wright adds. Privacy has tended to be something quite intrinsic, and there hasnt been a mechanism for privacy violation in general society until the arrival of the internet. The rise of Facebook and Foursquare show we dont really understand privacy or what it means to preserve it, and dont have an ability to understand the consequences of violating it either.
Regulators struggle to keep up with the pace of technology and enforcement of what rules there are is weak, meaning the onus for education should be on the services themselves, says Wright, who doesnt think they are closely scrutinised enough. Though sites like Facebook have a duty of care, the economics are against that, because their entire business model is built around getting us to share as much information as possible.
But there are upsides, too. Sharing personal information is beneficial in giving insights into different aspects of society. If you can see the details of peoples lives, when you can see someones actual persona, its harder to be biased and bigoted, said Wright. But a balance has to be struck between the amount we share for the positive and negative.
Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive, recently reiterated his suggestion that internet users may one day be able to change their identities in order to distance themselves from personal information shared so freely in their formative years. I dont believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time, he told the Wall Street Journal.
Zuckerberg takes a different tack. You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity, he was quoted as saying in David Kirkpatricks book, The Facebook Effect.
Part of Facebooks success has been to demand peoples real identities. In that way, it represents the maturation of the internet where the previous norm had been a wisecrack pseudonym and a world of trolling, where faceless, nameless commenters could easily post abusive messages and attack each other. The improvement in the quality of communication and debate online is in no small part down to the trend towards using real identities. However, anonymity still has its role in whistleblowing sites such as Wikileaks, or in debates where a contributor to a discussion on rape, for example, deserves protection.
If you think the current internet landscape is frightening, dont think too much about whats coming next. Already served with targeted ads based on keywords in our Google email, or picked out by our age and interests on Facebook, the future is more personalised still. Sites will get much better at filtering information and predicting our behaviour, serving us what we want to buy and finding new ways to share information, like location. Three years ago, people wouldnt even have dreamed of sharing their location, says Wright. While the sensitivities and sensibilities of managing our online data still need to be clarified, there will be benefits in personalisation, which promises more meaningful, relevant advertising for consumers and consequently, for advertisers, far more effective bang for their buck.
So what next? Three years ago, rival social networking site MySpace seemed invincible. Could Facebook still lose its edge? Anything is possible.
Balkam recently suggested Facebook recruit a philosopher to help interpret some of the demanding and unprecedented ethical and sociological challenges it faces.
No company in the world has ever attracted 500 million users, and they are having to come to terms, at lightning speed, with what is good and what is abhorrent behaviour. Aristotle and Plato struggled with that - and the average age at Facebook is 28.
Where the Twitterati draw the line
Zoe Margolis, blogger
While Im very active on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, Ihave so far avoided all the location-based tools on my phone. Primarily, this is because I do not want to publicly announce where I am - I wish to protect my privacy and safety - but also because I dont want to bombard people with incessant, dull, information; Ive unfollowed people on Twitter and Facebook due to their too-frequent (and, might I say, very annoying) Foursquare updates being fed through to their timelines.I can see the point of location tools - theyre an easy way to connect peoplewho might otherwise be unaware of their proximity to their friends - but given the amount of information we already share using social networking sites, it almost seems like overload to add yet another method of input, and its pretty much redundant if not all of your friends/social circle are using the same tool.
I have some major concerns with Facebook Places though and believe it is a huge threat to peoples privacy. It is already live in users settings(though the feature has not yet been rolled out in the UK) and while there is the option of limiting the location info to friends only, they have to de-select the automatically enabled Include me in People Here Now after I check in box in order to opt outof their location being included on a public list for all to see.
In addition to this, peoples friends can check them into locations, so even if someone has limited the information about themselves that they are sharing, there might still be a breach of their privacy from others.
Most of my friends on Facebook have never heard of fourSsquare or Gowalla, let alone used a location-based tool on their mobile phones; I assume the majority of people who use Facebook are similar. Given this, it concerns me that Facebook Places appears to be lacking transparency about privacy. The ability to change the settings to ensure personal information is protected seems more geared to the tech-savvy, than the lay-person; I fear many people will discover their privacy has been breached only after the event.
Privacy on any social networking site or location-sharing tool should start off being intact: 100% protection, with the chance to opt-in to less privacy, should you wish to share information with others. Facebook seems to take the opposite view, making the default position little/no privacy with the need to opt-out; I wont be using Facebook Places any time soon.
David Nobbs
I dont believe total privacy is possible so Inever telling anybody anything on line that I wouldnt be happy for the nation to know (if it was interested!).
I think some people are so hungry for celebrity theyre happy not to have a private life at all. Im very careful with my tweets. People can never be quite sure whether theyre true or false, and Inever reveal when Im going to be away.
Sorry this is so short but Im off to Portugal now for five months. Only joking.
Max Tundra, musician
I probably spend too much time online, sharing details about my life with anyone who has the remotest interest in my music. I dont like the idea of letting people know exactlywhere I am right this second, but as my fans tend to be fairly sane and unstalkerish, I feel comfortable letting them know what Im up to in a general sense.
I dont use Ffoursquare or any applications which might reveal my geographical co-ordinates, although I am often easily locatable, as I play advertised concerts. I did, however, recently delete my personal Facebook profile, as that seemed to be a cluster of unnecessarily pertinent information about my life and the people I share it with, as well as being a colossal waste of time which could be better spent telling people on Twitter that I prefer the Henry vacuum cleaner to the Dyson.
Graham Linehan, comedy writer:
I always hated Facebook because it made me very uncertain about what I was and wasnt sharing with the world. The privacy settings were, famously, a bit of a maze, and seemed subject to sudden changes that you hadnt agreed to. I felt like one day Imight open up the site to see a picture of myself in bed asleep with my wife, like in Hidden.
Twitter is different because it forces you to be very selective with what you choose to share, and so forces social media back to a more private place. I personally dont tweet much stuff about my home life, because I dont want to accidentally tweet something stupid like Holiday starts tomorrow! along with a geotag to my home address. So my tweets are generally links to things I find funny or interesting, and my home life only gets a look-in when something truly interesting or funny happens.
Once I made a mistake and posted my home number while trying to send a direct (private) message to someone and we had to change it, but that was a valuable lesson to learn early on, because now Im a lot more careful with what I put out there. It wasnt too much of a problem, though. We only got two or three callers who hung up as soon as my wife said Hello, Dreambeds. I asked her who Dreambeds were and she said Dunno. I suppose they sell beds.
I think people should start to claw back as much privacy as they can. Services likesuch as Twitter show that its possible to share selectively. Sharing selectively should be the default setting on every social network service. Which, again, is why you wont see me on Facebook any time soon.
John Prescott, politician
Twitter has been arevelation. In the past if I needed to get message out Id have to convince a paper to publish it. Now I can tweet my thoughts and, if interesting, itll get pick up. My Milburn tweet was running on rolling news within 10 minutes.
I share a lot of content like my blogs and vlogs along with links to stories and virals from others Ilike. Twitter is also great to run campaigns and organise tweetups.
We did the first pastiche of the Cameron airbrushed posters, which then inspired mMyDavidCameron.com. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of people were doing their own versions. It destroyed Ashcrofts poster campaign and cost nothing.
And when the founder of the National Bullying Helpline said people were bullied in No10, someone tweeted me a link to the industrial tribunal which proved she was accused of bullying herself! It killed the story within 24 hours.
Ive found Twitter to be a fantastic way to communicate, learn from others and show the real me, not the distorted view peddled by the media.
But Im not convinced about geolocation applications. You have to have some privacy.
Suzanne Moore, journalist
Dont mistake personal information for honesty. Personas are created and people play as well as tweet their hearts out. Ifyou dont want to bare your soul you dont have to, but the dividing line between public and private is now generational, one that neither mainstream culture nor government appears to understand.
I dont much care what people think of me and was wondering who some guy on MasterChef was the other day on Twitter and wondering if I had slept with him. Turns out I hadnt which was a relief. And a joke!
ByJeffrey Burt on 2010-07-29
Intel researchers have created a prototype interconnect that uses beams of light to send and receive data, a development that could pave the way for significant changes in the way information moves between PCs, servers and mobile devices. The current method of using copper wires to transmit electrons is reaching its limits, according to Intel CTO Justin Rattner. It currently is hitting speeds of 10G bps, and with copper, the faster the speed, the greater the limits on distance. That wont do, particularly with the rapid growth of electronic devices and the data moving between them. Intel officials said that through photonics, data can move with much faster speedmaybe as much as 1 terabyte per secondat much longer distances. The prototype can move data at 50G bps. Rattner and other Intel officials say products with optical interconnect technology could start hitting the market by the middle of the decade. Read the story here. (Photos courtesy of Intel)
Rentrak Plans to Present at 2010 Oppenheimer Annual Technology, Media Telecommunications Conference
Jul 30, 2010 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) –
Rentrak Corp., a company specializing in multi-screen media measurement serving the advertising and entertainment industries, announced that David Chemerow, the companys Chief Operating Officer and CFO, will give an overview of the company and its growth strategies, and conduct one-on-one investor meetings, at the 2010 Oppenheimer Annual Technology, Media amp; Telecommunications Conference on August 11, at 2:30 pm ET at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts.