Thursday, March 29, 2012

The Viral Kony 2012 Video | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

The Viral Kony 2012 Video | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project:

The 30-minute video released last week by the San Diego-based group Invisible Children calling for action against Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony provided striking evidence that young adults and their elders at times have different news agendas and learn about news in different ways. Those ages 18-29 were much more likely than older adults to have heard a lot about the “Kony 2012” video and to have learned about it through social media than traditional news sources. Indeed, a special analysis of posts in Twitter showed that it was by far the top story on the platform.

The Future of Apps and Web | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

The Future of Apps and Web | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project:

The Web Is Dead? No. Experts expect apps and the Web to converge in the cloud; but many worry that simplicity for users will come at a price.

Tech experts generally believe the mobile revolution, the popularity of targeted apps, the monetization of online products and services, and innovations in cloud computing will drive Web evolution. Some survey respondents say while much may be gained, perhaps even more may be lost if the “appification” of the Web comes to pass.

New U.S. Research Will Aim at Flood of Digital Data - NYTimes.com

New U.S. Research Will Aim at Flood of Digital Data - NYTimes.com


The Obama administration is set to announce on Thursday a major initiative regarding big data computing, which will involve several government agencies and departments, with commitments totaling $200 million.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

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Geosocial networking: The secret sexism of social media | The Economist

Geosocial networking: The secret sexism of social media | The Economist:

According to Pew, a research outfit, geosocial services like Foursquare and Gowalla attract twice as many men as women. What makes this finding striking is that, in general, women use social media more heavily than men do. (The pop-psychology explanation: women are more social then men.) So why do women lag men in geosocial media?

Social Media Wallflowers - NYTimes.com

Social Media Wallflowers - NYTimes.com:

While many consumer goods companies have embraced social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as new avenues to reach customers, financial institutions, and especially private banks, have been reluctant.

A Surge in Learning the Language of the Internet - NYTimes.com

A Surge in Learning the Language of the Internet - NYTimes.com


The market for Web sites, night classes and online lectures in computer programming is booming, as demand grows for knowing how the digital pieces of the Internet fit together.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Hashtag Activism, and Its Limits - NYTimes.com

Hashtag Activism, and Its Limits - NYTimes.com


Online movements are probably not as effective as real world engagement, but occasionally they are powerful beyond the computer.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Uganda, After ‘Kony 2012,’ Tries to Emphasize the Positive - NYTimes.com

Uganda, After ‘Kony 2012,’ Tries to Emphasize the Positive - NYTimes.com:

KAMPALA, Uganda — In its own way, Uganda is trying to claim its moment in an unfortunate spotlight.

A video posted online this month,“Kony 2012,” which is trying to call attention to the brutality of the Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Konyand his penchant for kidnapping and killing children, has turned the eyes of more than 100 million people to this developing, landlocked country.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Teens, Smartphones & Texting | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

Teens, Smartphones & Texting | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project


Teens are fervent communicators. Straddling childhood and adulthood, they communicate frequently with a variety of important people in their lives: friends and peers, parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, and a myriad of other adults and institutions. This report examines the tools teens use to communicate, with a particular focus on mobile devices, and then places the use of those tools in the broader context of how teens choose to communicate with people in their lives.

The volume of texting among teens has risen from 50 texts a day in 2009 to 60 texts for the median teen text user. In addition, smartphones are gaining teenage users. Some 23% of all those ages 12-17 say they have a smartphone and ownership is highest among older teens: 31% of those ages 14-17 have a smartphone, compared with just 8% of youth ages 12-13.

Game Makers Give Away ‘Freemium’ Products - NYTimes.com

Game Makers Give Away ‘Freemium’ Products - NYTimes.com:

Still paying 99 cents to download a smartphone game? That’s far too much. More developers are now giving their games away — and then charging for extra features.

The strategy is known as freemium, as in free meets premium. 


And it is being adopted even by giant game makers like Electronic Arts that might once have sneered at the idea because free games had the reputation of being low quality or full of annoying ads.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Germany Trying to Cut Publishers In on Web Profits - NYTimes.com

Germany Trying to Cut Publishers In on Web Profits - NYTimes.com:

Under the proposal, Internet aggregators and search engines would have to pay the publishers if they wanted to display all or parts of their articles — even small snippets like those that are shown in search links.

Pinterest Aims at the Collector Hidden Inside All of Us - NYTimes.com

Pinterest Aims at the Collector Hidden Inside All of Us - NYTimes.com:

Pinterest, the most talked about start-up of the spring, did not take that approach. Instead, the company went after a different crowd when it introduced its service in 2009. The site lets users create “boards” where they can collect images from around the Web and share them with friends and strangers.

Social networking sites and politics | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

Social networking sites and politics | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project:

Friends disagree with friends about political issues and usually let their disagreements pass without comment. Among the SNS users whose friends post political content, 25% always agree or mostly agree with their friends’ political postings; 73% of these SNS users “only sometimes” agree or never agree with their friends’ political postings. When they disagree with others’ posts, 66% of these SNS users say they usually ignore the posts; 28% said they usually respond with comments or posts of their own; and 5% said it depends on the circumstances.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Hacker, Informant and Party Boy of the Projects - NYTimes.com

Hacker, Informant and Party Boy of the Projects - NYTimes.com:

On the Internet he was Sabu, a notorious celebrity who led a scattered tribe of politically motivated “hacktivists,” revered as the sly mastermind of brash computer attacks. Then, when he was caught, he slipped into the role of federal informant.

But always he was Hector Xavier Monsegur, party boy of the projects.

The multiple worlds of Sabu converged on Tuesday when court papers revealed his real identity.

As an informant, he helped bring down a batch of prominent fellow hackers in Europe and the United States. They were indicted on a charge of computer crimes that the authorities said affected one million victims, along with major companies and government agencies.

New Apps Connect to Friends Nearby - NYTimes.com

New Apps Connect to Friends Nearby - NYTimes.com: to find friends, and friends of friends, whenever they were nearby? Is that unnerving? Or is it terribly beneficial?

Many companies say it is beneficial and that their apps will help people forge new connections and meet someone they perhaps should know. App stores have been flooded with such tools in recent weeks. Kismet, Glancee, Highlight, Ban.jo, Meeteor, Pearescope, GetGauss, Intro, Qrious, Mingle and Sonar, hope to transform the smartphone into a social dowsing rod that delivers an alert when it detects other people nearby who share interests, friends or career goals.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

I Paid a Bribe and Similar Corruption-Exposing Sites Spread - NYTimes.com

I Paid a Bribe and Similar Corruption-Exposing Sites Spread - NYTimes.com

The going rate to get a child who has already passed the entrance requirements into high school in Nairobi, Kenya? 20,000 shillings.

The expense of obtaining a driver’s license after having passed the test in Karachi, Pakistan? 3,000 rupees.

Such is the price of what Swati Ramanathan calls “retail corruption,” the sort of nickel-and-dime bribery, as opposed to large-scale graft, that infects everyday life in so many parts of the world.

Ms. Ramanathan and her husband, Ramesh, along with Sridar Iyengar, set out to change all that in August 2010 when they started ipaidabribe.com, a site that collects anonymous reports of bribes paid, bribes requested but not paid and requests that were expected but not forthcoming.

Mr. Ragui in Kenya is working to develop a system to enable reporting of bribery by mobile phone that he hopes to have ready in time for elections later this year. The idea is to allow people to report vote-buying in real time that will be connected to a map. “It could be really powerful to have real time, granular data to analyze how much corruption affect the election,” he said.

“My real goal, though,” he added, “is to change just one government department and how it does business.”

That is what happened in Bangalore, where Bhaskar Rao, the transport commissioner for the state of Karnataka, used the data collected on I Paid a Bribe to push through reforms in the motor vehicle department. Some 20 senior officers in the department were “cautioned,” Mr. Rao said, and many others received ethics counseling.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Et Tu, Google? Android Apps Can Also Secretly Copy Photos - NYTimes.com

Et Tu, Google? Android Apps Can Also Secretly Copy Photos - NYTimes.com:

It’s not just Apple. Photos are vulnerable on Android phones, too.

As Bits reported this week, developers who make applications for Apple iOS devices have access to a person’s entire photo library as long as that person allows the app to use location data.

It turns out that Google, maker of the Android mobile operating system, takes it one step further. Android apps do not need permission to get a user’s photos, and as long as an app has the right to go to the Internet, it can copy those photos to a remote server without any notice, according to developers and mobile security experts. It is not clear whether any apps that are available for Android devices are actually doing this.

Impatient Web Users Flee Slow-Loading Sites - NYTimes.com

Impatient Web Users Flee Slow-Loading Sites - NYTimes.com:

Wait a second.

No, that’s too long.

Remember when you were willing to wait a few seconds for a computer to respond to a click on a Web site or a tap on a keyboard? These days, even 400 milliseconds — literally the blink of an eye — is too long, as Google engineers have discovered. That barely perceptible delay causes people to search less.

People will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second).

“Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web,” said Harry Shum, a computer scientist and speed specialist at Microsoft.

The hunger for speed on smartphones is a new business opportunity for companies like Akamai Technologies, which specializes in helping Web sites deliver services quicker. The company sees the mobile Internet as the next big challenge. “Users’ expectations are getting shorter and shorter, and the mobile infrastructure is not built for that kind of speed,” said Tom Leighton, co-founder and chief scientist at Akamai, who is also an M.I.T. professor. “And that’s an opportunity for us.”

Digital Skills Can Be Quickly Acquired - NYTimes.com

Digital Skills Can Be Quickly Acquired - NYTimes.com:

knowing how to use Twitter, update your timeline on Facebook, pin on Pinterest, check in on Foursquare and upload images on Instagram are among the digital skills that some employers expect people to have to land a job or to flourish in a current role.

“Six months ago, Pinterest wasn’t on everyone’s radar,” she said. “Because I am taking these courses, I am not behind.”

Pamela Tate, president and chief executive of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, based in Chicago, said digital literacy, including understanding social networking, is now a required skill.

“They are essential skills that are needed to operate in the world and in the workplace,” she said. “And people will either need to learn through formal training or through their networks or they will feel increasingly left out.”

For most people looking for a job, she said, it is vital that they understand how to use LinkedIn and other social tools to network and present themselves online. “If you don’t have a LinkedIn or Facebook account, then employers often don’t have a way to find out about you,” she said. To help bridge the gap, major universities, community colleges, online educational businesses from Lynda.com to ed2go.com offer continuing education classes in digital media, including social media skills, Web design, search optimization and Web analytics.

Harvard’s Extension School has a social media marketing course for $1,900 aimed not at midcareer executives, but at younger marketers who need help learning how to integrate social media at their companies.

Facebook Paves Way for Huge Growth in Advertising - NYTimes.com

Facebook Paves Way for Huge Growth in Advertising - NYTimes.com:
Facebook’s hundreds of millions of users could soon be faced with a lot more advertising — in their newsfeed, on their mobile devices and even when they log off.

Andy Kessler: When Will Social Media Elect a President? - WSJ.com

Andy Kessler: When Will Social Media Elect a President? - WSJ.com:

should we believe the hype about social media's impact on the 2012 election?

Pew Research says no. "Cable leads the pack as campaign news source," it concludes in a recently released 35-page report. "Twitter, Facebook play very modest roles."

Too bad that misses the point. New technologies have always altered campaigns and usually in mysterious ways. Party conventions were first televised in 1952 and soon lost their relevance, becoming scripted theater. Richard Nixon lost votes by sweating under harsh lighting during his televised debate with JFK. Bill Clinton bypassed the traditional news media, playing "Heartbreak Hotel" on his sax on Arsenio Hall's late-night show. MoveOn.org used the Internet to accumulate small donations and host a virtual primary won by Howard Dean, who in turn was brought down by a scream, which in turn went viral on the Web. YouTube was soon created and in 2008 hosted "Obama Girl" and other user-generated campaign ads.


In November 2008, Twitter had about four million users, and 100,000 followed candidate Obama. Today, President Obama has more than 12.5 million followers (while Mitt Romney has about 350,000 and Rick Santorum about 150,000). In 2008, Facebook had roughly 50 million users—nowhere near today's 845 million—and Google+ didn't exist.