Google tracks the flu

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 11/12/2008 - 14:37.

It may be benign and even mildly useful, but SEEMS creepy. Google has announced it now tracking the flu by using searches for keywords like "flu," "fever," "thermometer," and so on. It uses information gleaned from your browser and computer (IP address, MAC address, service provider) to identify an approximate location. The data will then be passed on to the Center for Disease Control. A test last year was apparently good enough that they are doing it again this year.

Google swears the data is anonymized, but don't be surprised to see ads for pharmacies and Theraflu (TM) pop up as you search the Web for a flu remedy. Google and the CDC both announced, "...this is just the beginning." What's next? Google dispatches an order of chicken soup to your house? The Feds send you a quarantine order telling you to stay home for three days? Your data is sent to the TSA (Transportation Safety Agency) which then meets you at the airport and forbids you to fly because you might give others on the plane the flu?

Will Twitter really change your life?

Submitted by acohill on Thu, 10/30/2008 - 10:34.

It is a bit difficult to take any article seriously that claims in the title that "this technology will change your life." But Twitter, a strange cross between blogging and text messaging, may "a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/136443/2008/10/twitter.html">finally be growing up. Twitter may actually have some real value with respect to public safety, because you can have lots of people subscribed to a Twitter feed that can then quickly send a message to a lot of cellphones all at once. Twitter may also have some uses as an internal messaging systems for businesses and organizations, both for some kinds of routine messages ("the staff meeting starts in 5 minutes") and non-routine messages ("fire in the supply room, evacuate immediately).

Long term, it is hard to guess just how many different communications channels we A) want, and B) can manage. Most of us already suffer from email fatigue. It has taken nearly one hundred years for the automobile to evolve into the trouble-free, powerful transportation systems we take for granted today, and they are still changing and improving. We are barely out of the Model T era of computer and communications technology.

YouTube accelerates transition to IP-based TV

Submitted by acohill on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 08:26.

YouTube has inked deals to start offering full length TV shows. The Google-backed company intends to go head to head with Hulu, which has several deals with networks to carry TV shows.

These kinds of alternatives are quickly making it quaint to sit down in front of the TV at a certain time on a certain day to watch a particular show. I'm a fan of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, but I could not tell you what network it is on, what day new shows air, or what time it plays. I simply go to the iTunes Store when I have a little extra time, pay $2, and watch the show at my convenience. For that $2, I enjoy it without commercial interruption.

Cable and satellite TV are rapidly becoming anachronisms.

Google has its own satellite

Submitted by acohill on Fri, 10/10/2008 - 07:53.

Google now has its own satellite, or at least exclusive access to one. The firm made a deal with the U.S. government to help finance a new image mapping satellite in return for exclusive commercial rights to the images. It was probably cheaper than paying for images from other commercial and government satellites.

AT&T and Verizon say "No" to customer tracking

Submitted by acohill on Fri, 09/26/2008 - 08:34.

Verizon and AT&T deserve congratulations for endorsing an opt-in approach to tracking online behavior. This means they won't try to build dossiers of where you go online unless they get your permission. The online dossier information can be valuable, as data can be mined and sold to advertisers.

Internet radio may finally take off

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 09/24/2008 - 08:36.

Back in 1995, I foolishly proposed a project for the Blacksburg Electronic Village that would have us partner with the local public radio station to begin broadcasting over the new Internet thingy that was just beginning to take off. It was very modest, and involved streaming audio news reports over the Internet--5 to 10 minutes of mostly local news a day, but in four languages, because of the large international population in Blacksburg.

No one believed anyone would ever be interested in listening to audio over the Internet.

A few years later, streaming radio and podcasting took off in a big way. But streaming radio got knocked down almost immediately by huge increases in royalties that made it financially impossible for small start-up Internet radio stations to develop a market, and even for bigger operations, the cost of royalties was difficult.

A tentative agreement has been reached between the RIAA, which controls music royalty, and the radio industry. For Internet radio operations, they will pay 10.5% of annual revenue instead of a per song fee. This makes perfect sense, as it will allow small niche Internet radio operations grow without high royalty fees that are not linked to actual income. And musicians and songwriters will still get compensated in some indirect proportion to the number of people actually listening (radio stations with a large audience will have more revenue, and will so the royalty revenue will be higher).

This approach is identical to the revenue sharing models adopted by broadband projects like nDanville and The Wired Road. Revenue share models allow many new and innovative services to start up inexpensively because the fees to content owners or the network are paid in proportion to success.

Colleges check MySpace and FaceBook

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 09/22/2008 - 07:28.

FaceBook and MySpace have been interesting experiments in the social uses of the Internet. As the use of these social networking sites evolves, a better understanding of the effects of those uses also evolves. Not only are employers using the sites to evaluate potential employees, it turns out that a significant number of colleges are also using the sites to evaluate potential students. So if you have a child in high school who is beginning to apply for admission to college, it might be worth taking a few minutes to check their FaceBook and MySpace pages to see just what they have posted.

As the world becomes less and less private through the widespread use of online services and applications, privacy is going to become more and more valuable. The good news is that we still have some control--we can choose to be prudent about what we post about ourselves online, and we can be prudent about using "free" online services that give the service provider the right to use whatever we create, write, or email with those services.

Google owns your pictures

Submitted by acohill on Tue, 09/09/2008 - 08:40.

The debate over the terms of Google End User License Agreements (EULAs) continues. Last week there was much discussion online about the EULA for Chrome, the new Google Web browser, which resulted in a change to the EULA that no longer gave Google the right to use anything you uploaded with the browser.

However, the broadly worded license terms still remain in other Google products, including Picasa (Google has the right to all your photos), Google Docs (Google has the right to use all your word processing and spreadsheet documents), and Blogger (Google can use all your blog posts).

I suspect that at the current time, Google is doing something relatively benign--using the license terms to build advertising dossiers about users of their services. But the license terms give Google very broad rights to their customer-created content.

NBC upset that people use on demand video

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 08/11/2008 - 08:15.

NBC, which has exclusive rights to broadcast the 2008 Olympics in the United States, is apparently upset that people are simply not bothering to wait for prime time to watch NBC's repackaged broadcasts. Instead, viewers are simply going to the Internet and watching the Olympics on the Web sites of media outlets in other countries.

The Olympics is a long and complex series of events that has never fit neatly into a two hour evening broadcast, but in olden days (say four years ago), that was about all we had. The much wider availability of broadband connections and the widespread use of online video sites like YouTube provides people with alternatives to broadcast and cable TV. Right now, the video folks are watching is of generally low quality, but demand for HD online video is going to increase rapidly, and more and more people are going to want to watch live events in real time, not NBC time, and will want those broadcasts in HD format. And the current DSL and cable modem systems simply don't have the horsepower to deliver it.

How cool is Cuil?

Submitted by acohill on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 08:27.

The new search engine Cuil (pronounced 'cool') aims to take on Google, like a bunch of other search engines that have tried and failed to dislodge Google. But Cuil is designed and owned by a former Google staffer and her husband who just may pull it off if they have the financial staying power to slug it out over the next couple of years.

Cuil promises better search results by not just counting inbound links but by actually trying to parse whether or not the contents of a Web page are a good fit for the search terms. Cuil also promises a more usable format for results, which wouldn't take much, given that Google has not bothered to give itself a face-lift since the company started. Finally, the Cuil founders promise not to snoop around and store everyone's search results, a refreshing change from Google's policy of developing dossiers on everything you have ever searched for.