Thursday, June 16, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
How Private is Private Online?
To date, Facebook has 500 million users. Of those users, how many opt-in for Facebook’s new face-recognition technology? All of us- until we opt-out, that is.
The technology, Facebook claims, was created to assist users in tagging their friends in photos that they upload. But, before you go thanking them, experts say there is a different motive. "Facebook users thought they were simply tagging their friends. Turns out Facebook was building an image profile database to automate online identification," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of a privacy group based in Washington called The Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The company claims that, "If for any reason someone doesn't want their name to be suggested, they can disable the feature in their Privacy Settings.” Still, news of the new technology has some experts feeling uneasy about user privacy online. "Our concern, as usual, is that Facebook is making changes to its privacy and creating new features without giving people sufficient notice and giving them a choice as to whether they want to participate," says Chris Conley from the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
Privacy is an assumed right to many internet users. However, users may not be as private as we think we are when we’re online. Many companies bank on the fact that the average Joe isn’t going to read through the short novel that they call their “Terms & Conditions.” That initial lack of interest in your own privacy when signing up for anything online could cost you more than you’re willing to pay.
Aside from those sites and services you willingly opt into, did you know that lack of online privacy can even be linked to freeware that you download to avoid breaching your privacy? That’s right. Some freeware anti-malware, anti-spyware programs do just that: download their own spyware to collect your data to sell in order to make a profit.
What can you do?
-Best thing? Don’t put your personal information online.
-The second best thing you can do is READ! When you sign an agreement, they are legally allowed to do whatever you granted them permission to do- whether you like it or not.
-Create a dummy email account to use for sites that you’re unsure of, that require your email address.
-Update your privacy settings on any and all sites that have the option. If they give you the option, chances are your settings aren’t as protective as they could be as a default.
-Always look to make sure the address bar reads https://www…. Before you enter any login or personal information, not just http://www…. The “s” after the http tells you that the site is secure, meaning it’s a lot safer than without.
-The Privacy Alliance has tips and tricks on how to maintain your online privacy and keep you safe while surfing the net.
Always remember the golden online rule, when it comes to protecting yourself and your personal information online: you are only as safe as you allow yourself to be.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Make Music, Not War.
Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc., announced Apple's latest and greatest innovation: the iCloud. The new "cloud" allows users to wirelessly access apps, files, media and email- on various devices, via the internet... automatically. The aim? Jobs says today's launch was developed with one purpose: "to move the center of your digital life into the cloud."
As a MobileMe account holder, this sounded great to me at first: all the perks of my current account, but $75 less a year! As I read on, the deal got sweeter. Along with the services that I was used to and some other new cool bonuses, Apple has once again figured out a way of staying ahead of the game with the iCloud's iTunes "Match" app.
The "Match" app is revolutionary because it allows users to upload all their music into the iCloud, whether pirated or purchased on iTunes. The app will automatically (and in a matter of minutes) match all your songs, pirated or purchased, to the songs in the iTunes store and add them to your library automatically. The only potential drawback being for those who don't want to pay $25, which is the only way to keep your library available.
This move, according to TuneCore CEO and founder Jeff Price, will monetize piracy and revolutionize the music industry. “This puts together a model that allows people to make money off of pirated music,” says Price, “The gap between those two things have never been bridged before - the needs of the consumer and the rights holders.”
But, why is this so important? Since the popularity of Napster around 2000, one of the biggest conflicts of the digital age, music piracy skyrocketed. Developments like this led the ‘big five’ music publishers to completely rethink their business (Shirky, 2001), while still fighting back in the war against piracy by avidly suing file-sharing websites. Ironically, during their fight to stay alive, many music publishers (like Time Warner with Gnutella) found themselves getting their own hands dirty in the file-sharing community.
The fight wasn’t just between those stealing and those producing the music, though. While piracy became increasingly popular, the IT industry kept coming up with the best technology to illegally reproduce the pirated media- allowing the vicious cycle to continue. The early convergence strategies that alluded to perfect competition in a global marketplace began to veer the ugly face of reality: that the Internet isn’t as easily controlled as we once imagined.
Media’s convergence opened Pandora’s box; it was only a matter of time before the opportunity was exploited by rapidly advancing technologies to feed the greedy public’s mouths (and ears, in this case). Today, Apple gave a glimmer of hope back to media producers by creating a system that could potentially change the way media consumers’ access music. Though all that glimmers is not gold, will media consumers' adoption of streaming save the music industry’s conflict in the digital age? Only time will tell.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The Gutenberg Divide
Computers Help Children Learn Computer Skills, But What Else?
There is a huge problem in America today, that’s effecting everyone from students who will be soon entering the job market to experienced professionals who fear the loss of their job- and it’s not the economy. That problem, is the Digital Divide.
The Digital Divide refers to the gap between people with and without access to information and communication technologies, namely the internet, as well as the knowledge of how to use it. The Digital Divide is a global issue that affects individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels
According to an ABC affiliate’s article last week about a study at The University of Michigan, it’s a gap that is soon closing in the US. The reason? Teenagers who live in low-income housing, that haven’t had access to the internet previously, are using their smart cell phones to gain internet access. “The research shows that 27% of all teenagers use their cell phone for internet. But more than 40% of those who live in homes that have income levels less than $30,000 a year will use their cell.”
Researchers Rich Ling, Katie Brown and Scott Campbell were interviewed in the story adding that, "The willingness of poor people to pay for Internet access underscores the idea that net access is not just "nice to have" but that it is increasingly seen as a necessity."
That all seems nice, but there’s no question that the Digital Divide is a huge problem globally. In Dr. Wysocki’s class we talked about the fact that only a small percentage of the world is connected to the internet, and of those, most aren’t connected with the same kind with the same speed: be it fiber-optic or broadband(or whatever their government allows). This can only mean one thing: the Digital Divide isn’t closing anytime soon.
In David Gauntlett and Ross Horsley’s “Web.Studies,” the Digital Divide in the US is referred to as a hot button political and academic issue that has been used in policy debate since 2001. The political debates stem from the UN’s global policy talks in the 1970’s about developing nations calling for a ‘New World Information and Communication Order’ (NWICO) to even out the playing field of the media industry to prevent the richer nations of ‘the West’ from domination, a topic that overlapped with years of academic debate.
After the 90's, those debates turned into what we know today as the Digital Divide. Since then, at the G8 Summit in Okinawa, Japan in July of 2000, a Charter for the Global Information Society was issued and a task force called the ‘Digital Opportunity Force’ was formed (DOTforce). The Summit aimed to focus more on the opportunities that face us with the divide, rather than simply focusing on the issue itself.
11-years later, here we sit: divided, as we’ve always been. But, the real question remains unanswered: what is REALLY dividing us? Yes, there are social and economic and geographical barriers, but what is all the hot debate about? If the Digital Divide is about education and fair opportunity for citizens of the world, why are those hot debates to close the divide centered around on figuring out how to allow more access to the internet (and other media), when studies show that computers help children computer skills- and significantly lower their test scores? According to Nicholas Carr, the author responsible for the widespread attention to the cognitive effects of the Internet and ICTs, "We need to be concerned about the Digital Divide, to be sure. But perhaps we should also be thinking about the Gutenberg Divide,” and I can’t help but agree with him… What do you think?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
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