Archive for January 21, 2011

| January 21, 2011
Comments Off on Wireless Spends Big Bucks Lobbying Congress

Wireless Spends Big Bucks Lobbying Congress

Wireless Spends Big Bucks Lobbying CongressCTIA, the Wireless Association, CTIA is the wireless industry’s largest trade group spent $2.4 million in the third quarter of 2010 to lobby federal officials. Bloomberg cites a quarterly disclosure report filed with the U.S House of Representatives.  This marks a new high in CTIA lobbying spending. CTIA spent $2 million spent in the second quarter and $1.3 million that it spent on lobbying in the third quarter of last year, reports Bloomberg. Bloomberg says the trade association lobbied Washington on:

  • MCTIA, the Wireless Associationore radio spectrum for wireless Internet services.
  • The FCC’s recently adopted “network neutrality” rules, which prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic traveling over their systems.
  • The FCC’s legal framework for regulating broadband.
  • “Bill shock” rules, which would require wireless companies to alert subscribers before they run out of minutes, hit data usage or text messaging caps, or start racking up international roaming charges.
  • The CTIA which represents wireless carriers, like AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile, says it now generates annual revenues of $155.8 billion.

rb-

Not only is the wireless industry lobbying group, CTIA spending millions every year to buy influence legislation, but the wireless companies are also the leaders in lobbying spending. I wrote about AT&T and Verizon (VZ) both spending over $3 million on lobbying in 2010 here. I wrote about AT&T’s (T) long tradition of spreading its money around to buy influence legislation here. The rational business use of this money says that these firms are getting more benefit by lobbying lawmakers than investing it in their networks, paying a dividend, or putting the money in the bank, but are the best decisions for the rest of us?

Who do you think the politicians are really looking out for?

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| January 17, 2011
Comments Off on Mobile Apps Sending User Data

Mobile Apps Sending User Data

Mobile Apps Sending User DataThe Wall Street Journal has continued its excellent work on data privacy. The WSJ is reporting that like many Facebook applications, many popular mobile apps are sending user data from phones to third parties. They found that most of the popular apps running on Apple (AAPL) iPhone‘s and Google (GOOG) Android systems, had sent the phone’s unique device ID to other firms without asking the user’s permission.

Big Brother WatchTechEye says that the iPhone was much worse than Google’s Android, although both Apple and Google have promised not to let such practices take place. Michael Becker of the Mobile Marketing Association told TechEye there is no anonymity. Alex Deane, director for Big Brother Watch, said  “This is alarming news. Most users of these apps don’t know this is happening and many of them wouldn’t use the app if they did know,” Mr. Deane told IT PRO. “Importantly, lots of these apps are mainstream ‘normal’ apps. It’s not just shady operators doing this ”

The WSJ reports that mainstream mobile productivity, games, and music apps are sending user data elsewhere. The data is mostly sent to ad companies so they can tailor ads to the user’s history for better results. The paper found that 56 of the apps in the investigation sent unique information to other companies without the user knowing or agreeing to the sharing. 47 of the apps sent the mobile phone’s location to third parties, and five of the apps sent age, gender, and personal details to outsiders. Eighteen of the 51 iPhone apps sent information to Apple.

The Journal found:

  • iPhone appThe app that shares the most personal info is an iPhone app called TextPlus 4. The app sent the unique ID of the device to eight ad companies and sent the zip code, user’s age, and gender to two more firms.
  • The free and paid versions of the wildly popular Angry Birds app on an iPhone. The apps sent the phone’s UDID and location to the Chillingo unit of Electronic Arts Inc., which markets the games.
  • The popular music site Pandora was a big offender,  sending age, gender, location, and phone identifier to various ad networks.
  • Google AndroidBoth Android and iPhone versions version of Paper Toss sent the phone ID number to at least five ad companies.
  • The Android app for social networking site MySpace sent age and gender, device ID, user’s income, ethnicity, and parental status to Millennial Media, a big ad network.

Among all the mobile apps tested by the WSJ, the most widely shared detail was the unique ID number assigned to every mobilephone. It is effectively a “supercookie,” says Vishal Gurbuxani, co-founder of Mobclix Inc., an exchange for mobile advertisers. The “UDID,” or Unique Device Identifier is set by the phone makers, carriers or makers of the operating system and typically can’t be blocked or deleted.

The WSJ has released a short video explaining its investigation,

Super Cookies“The great thing about mobile is you can’t clear a UDID like you can a cookie,” Meghan O’Holleran of Traffic Marketplace told the WSJ. Traffic Marketplace which is an Internet ad network that is expanding into mobile apps uses UDID’s, “That’s how we track everything.” Ms. O’Holleran told the WSJ that Traffic Marketplace monitors smartphone users whenever it can. “We watch what apps you download, how frequently you use them, how much time you spend on them, how deep into the app you go,” she says.

According to the WSJ, Mobclix matches more than 25 ad networks with 15,000 apps seeking advertisers. The company collects mobile phone IDs, encodes them, and assigns them to interest categories based on what apps people download and how much time they spend using an app, among other factors. By tracking a phone’s location, Mobclix also makes a “best guess” of where a person lives, says Mr. Gurbuxani, the Mobclix executive. Mobclix then matches that location with spending and demographic data from Nielsen Co.

Mobclix logoMobclix uses the data to place a user in one of 150 “segments” it offers to advertisers, from “green enthusiasts” to “soccer moms “to “die-hard gamers.”  “Die-hard gamers” are 15-to-25-year-old men with more than 20 apps on their phones who use an app for more than 20 minutes at a time. “It’s about how you track people better,” Mr. Gurbuxani told the WSJ.

Google was the biggest data recipient in the WSJ tests. Its AdMob, AdSense, Analytics, and DoubleClick units collectively heard from 38 of the 101 apps. Google’s main mobile ad network, AdMob lets advertisers target phone users by location, type of device and “demographic data,” including gender or age group. Google, whose ad units work on both iPhones and Android phones, says it doesn’t mix data received by these units.

Google AdmobApple operates its iAd network only on the iPhone. Apple targets ads to phone users based largely on what it knows about them through its App Store and iTunes music service according to the WSJ article. The targeting criteria can include the types of songs, videos, and apps a person downloads, according to an Apple ad presentation reviewed by the Journal. The presentation named 103 targeting categories, including karaoke, Christian/gospel music, anime, business news, health apps, games, and horror movies.

According to the WSJ, the ad networks offer software “kits” that automatically insert ads into an app. The kits track where users spend time inside the app. A developer quoted in the WSJ article says ads targeted by location bring in two to five times as much money as untargeted ads. In its software-kit instructions, Millennial Media lists 11 types of information about users that developers may send to “help Millennials provide more relevant ads.” They include age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political views.

Apple iAd networkThe WSJ also claims that most of the apps don’t have written privacy policies. Forty-five of the 101 apps didn’t offer privacy policies on their websites or inside the apps at the time of testing. Neither Apple nor Google requires app privacy policies. Both Google and Apple say that they require apps to ask permission to send information to third parties. However, many app developers skirt the rules the WSJ reports.

Apple says iPhone apps “cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user’s prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used.” Many apps tested by the Journal appeared to violate that rule, by sending a user’s location to ad networks, without informing users. Apple declined to discuss with the WSJ how it interprets or enforces the policy.

Millennial MediaGoogle doesn’t check the apps running on Google’s Android operating system because third parties build the phones. Google requires that before users download Android apps that the developer identifies the data sources the app intends to use. Possible sources include the phone’s camera, memory, contact list, and more than 100 others. If users don’t like what a particular app wants to access, they can choose not to install the app, Google says. Google told the WSJ that app makers “bear the responsibility for how they handle user information.” “Our focus is making sure that users have control over what apps they install, and notice of what information the app accesses,” a Google spokesperson says.

rb-

The trade in your personal information grows as technology evolves. The WSJ says that Apple has recently filed a patent for a system for placing and pricing ads based on a person’s “web history or search history” and “the contents of a media library.” For example, home-improvement advertisers might pay more to reach a person who downloaded do-it-yourself TV shows, the document says. The patent application also lists another possible way to target people with ads: the contents of a friend’s media library.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
| January 15, 2011
Comments Off on Happy B-Day Wikipedia

Happy B-Day Wikipedia

Happy B-Day WikipediaWikipedia is 10 years today. The “multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project,” was launched on January 15, 2001. The New York Times says Wikipedia will celebrate its 10th anniversary with conferences and parties across the globe, including in New York, Boston, and San Francisco, organized by its community of users.

An early example of crowd-sourcing, allowing regular people to shape the content of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia went live with no fanfare in 2001. There were doubts whether people would contribute or if the information they submitted would be reliable. 10 years later, Wikipedia, is an important source of information for millions of topics according to the NYT. Although it has suffered its share of inaccuracies and hoaxes, Wikipedia remains among the Internet’s most visited sites.

The percentage of all American adults who use Wikipedia to look for information has increased from 25% in February 2007 to 42% in May 2010. This translates to 53% of adult internet users according to the Pew Internet report. Pew says that using Wikipedia is more popular than sending instant messages (done by 47% of internet users) and the NYT says Wikipedia is more popular than eBay.

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees Wikipedia, told the NYT, “Wikipedia is modest. It isn’t a beautiful site. It looks a little awkward — sometimes the writing is a little bit awkward.” But she added that people still have “a deep and abiding affection for it.”

Wikipedia is working to improve the site. Among the initiatives the NYT points to are:

  • Opening its first overseas office in India
  • A partnership with 16 universities to have professors assign students to write about public policy,
  • Increasing the number of experts who contribute, and
  • Recruiting museums, which could offer better images for the site.

Wikipedia’s plan is to make it easier to add new articles and photos to the site. Tweaks to the underlying software are intended to streamline the service, although Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia told the NYT the site would never become flashy. “We are not going to become Facebook, we are not going to become MySpace or YouTube.”

Do you use Wikipedia? Does Wikipedia need to become more like Facebook?

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Social Networking | Tags: , , ,
| January 12, 2011
One comment

Social Media Going to the Dogs

Updated 11/30/2011 – The BusinessInsider called Puppy Tweets one of the 10 Stupid Gadgets That We Can’t Believe Exist. Sometimes BI needs to lighten up.

—

Social Media Going to the DogsIn 1993, the New Yorker declared, “On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog.” Now your dog can be on social media. Toymaker Mattel (MAT) has developed a way for your pooch to have his own site on Twitter. Fido can now send you the usual 140 characters tweets. These messages are reportedly the same brief comments about his doggies activities that humans post on social media network Twitter.

New Yorker declared, "On the Internet no one knows you are a dog." According to an article in Psychology Today, by Stanley Coren, psychologists have beenstudying the human-canine bond. They  have long understood that dogs improve our lives. Dogs do this by providing a social presence. Humans interact with dogs in much the same way that they interact with other people, or at least with children. We talk to our dogs, and their presence relieves feelings of loneliness. Research suggests that this is why people who live alone, especially seniors, are much less likely to become clinically depressed if they have a dog as a pet.

Puppy Tweets make it possible for Internet-connected owners to benefit from social contact with their dogs. The social media device has two parts. The first is a USB receiver which connects to a computer. The second part is a sensor, which looks like a big pink or blue dog tag. The tag has a microphone to pick up any sounds the dog makes and a motion sensor that detects movement and acceleration as Fido goes about its daily activities. Based on the sound and motion readings the programming then analyzes makes a guess about what the dog is doing and at random intervals tweets about Spot’s activities. Mattel claims that it can detect 500 different activities and then send a clever tweet that updates Fido’s Twitter page.

Puppy Tweets logoThe article explains that after a session of fast movements and turns there might be a Tweet like, “It’s not the catching of the tail, it’s the chase.” A short period of moderate movement but no acceleration might result in the message “Guess what I’m licking right now.” A bout of barking might yield the message, “I bark because I miss you – there, now hurry home.” There is even a tweet to show that Spot is sleeping.  A Mattel representative told the author  that the degree of processing of sounds and activities was “not very high-powered.” According to the Mattel representative Puppy Tweets, “determines if sounds are coming in, and how much movement there is, and then selects from a set of candidate messages. So if you get a tweet saying that he is chasing a squirrel, he might actually be chasing a cat, running to the door, or digging a hole.”

The Tweets are not totally random according to the article. The Mattel rep continued, “The device is paying attention to the sound and movements to some degree. However, its accuracy should not be an issue. Look at it this way, several times each day the dog’s owner will get a message posted that the dog is doing something. Whether the tweet reflects what is actually going on at the moment or not, it gives his owner the feeling that the dog is connected to him or somehow near to him, and his loving owner then thinks about his dog for a moment or two. This makes the person feel good, and loved, even if it is more of an illusion than reality. That’s what toys are supposed to do – make people feel good and happy even if it is just for a short time and even if they are merely based on fantasy.”

rb-

Dog tweetingThis product gives Mattel a unique entry into the social media market. It also capitalizes on the emerging trend of machine-to-machine computing. Puppy Tweets also opens new opportunities to develop canine content filtering software and parental control applications to check who Fido is tweeting with “Hey is there an app for that?”

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Social Networking | Tags: , , , , , ,
| January 10, 2011
Comments Off on Apple, Google Picking Nortel 4G Bones

Apple, Google Picking Nortel 4G Bones

Apple, Google Picking Nortel 4G Bones– Updated 04-04-11 – Google has offered Nortel $900 million for its patent portfolio. According to the Google Blog, Nortel selected the Google bid as the “stalking-horse bid,” which is the starting point against which others will bid prior to the auction. They hope that the Nortel patent portfolio will “create a disincentive for others to sue Google.” I wrote about the litigation-happy nature of the mobile telecom market here.

—

Nortel NetworksBankrupt Canadian telecom giant Nortel Networks is auctioning off its patents to the highest bidder. The sale of the patents is the last gasp of a bankrupt networking giant. Nortel, which Reuters says had a market capitalization of more than $250 billion and more than 90,000 employees. The bones of the one-time king are scattered across the landscape.

But now Sweden-based network equipment maker Ericsson owns most of Nortel’s North American wireless operations, its multi-service switch business, and a Chinese joint venture. Ciena Corp. bought Nortel’s optical networking and carrier Ethernet business, while the Canadian government is taking over Nortel’s Ottawa campus.

Apple ComputersNortel had more than 4,000 patents, with a market valuation of about $1 billion. Nortel owns seven of the 105 patent families likely to be likely components of 4G wireless technologies to LTE and Service Architecture Evolution (SAE), research firm Fairfield Resources told Reuters. Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) are both eying the patents in their escalating wireless wars, Reuters reported.

Research in Motion logoCiting unnamed sources. Von|Xchange says Research In Motion (RIMM) and Motorola (MOT) are also said to be eying the intellectual property.  Potential buyers will study how widely Nortel’s 4G-related patents have been licensed, since the company went into bankruptcy protection before 4G was commercially viable warns Reuters.

Google logoThe due diligence for the Nortel Wireless patent pursuers may not be necessary because the ITU has redefined 4G all the way back to HSPA+, rubber-stamping the marketing claims of the operators according to Connected Planet. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has changed its definitions of 4G, bringing not just WiMax and long-term evolution (LTE) under the umbrella of 4th generation, but also evolved 3G technologies like high-speed packet access plus (HSPA+).

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »