Spring 2013 - Faces, Conversations, Cyber Footprints & Maps

I missed an installment last fall, so some I am reaching back a bit to cover things that I notice at the end of last year and then moving forward into this year:

I've Just Seen A Face

One of my favorite ways to keep up with technology is to listen to the daily podcast from Marketplace Tech Report.  Back in October they ran an interesting story about facial recognition scanning at a shopping mall in South Korea.

This new commercial application of face-recognition technology combines digital photography with computer search algorithms.  A digital camera captures a photograph of your face as you walk by and the search engine searches for your image on the various databases, including social media, like Facebook and Google+ or new photographic social applications such as Instagram.  The objective is to identify the individual in the original image and any associated data available for that person.  Put  more simply, the objective is to cash in on your identity.

In this context, identity means facts about you that people will pay money to know.  Who would pay for this information?  People who want to use those facts to sell you something.  Follow the money.

Thus, the Korean shopping mall installed these facial recognition kiosks.  After capturing and searching a person's image, there follows an instantaneously display advertising directed specifically to person's interests when matched to the products sold at the mall.  The technology matches a person's likely shopping interests with the retailers located in the mall.  If you like the books, it could display an ad for mall's bookstore (if there still is one in the mall).  If the search finds that you have an interest in outdoor activities, it may display on ad for sporting goods or outdoor activities store.  If a birthday or anniversary is coming up in your family, it could display gift suggestions -- jewelry, ties, toys.

The facial recognition technology is out there, although you may think it exists only in movies or with secret government anti-terrorist squads.  And, you may doubt that you put this kind of bankable personal information out there to be found by an search engine.

Maybe that is true.  Maybe if you are Luddite who lives off the grid (and therefore are unlikely to be walking into a shopping mall in any event).  True, there are some out there who have resisted the temptation of Facebook or Twitter or Google+ or Instagram, etc.  But there are millions upon millions out there using social media.  And, what about LinkedIn?  Or, does your firm or business have a website with your picture and profile on it?  What about your children? Have they "tagged" you in photographs that they posted on Facebook?  Or perhaps your loving parents are on Facebook and have posted some of their family pictures?

It is not easy to remain obscure and faceless these days.  You may be surprised to find out what information about you is out there.  Search engines are able to search it and advertisers are able to use those searches to identify you and your likes.  How do you think Google makes its money?  It is not a non-profit.  The information that you search for through Google reveals your interests and Google channels search results and advertisements to your search result page based on those interests.  So do not be surprised if you walk into a mall or shopping center in the near future and find a kiosk flashing pictures of products directed specifically to your attention.

Big Brother Part I

The Baltimore Sun reported last fall that the Mass Transit Administration (MTA) has been eavesdropping on its drivers and passengers.  The stated purpose is to achieve greater security and safety on public transportation.  The MTA believes that this technology will aid in investigating crimes on public transportation.

"We want to make sure people feel safe, and this builds up our arsenal of tools to keep our patrons safe," said Ralign Wells, MTA administrator. "The audio completes the information package for investigators and responders."

Of course, this is often the stated goal of surveillance of all kinds.  The legal issues with other types of surveillance also are engaged here:  privacy and possible misuse of information.  Arguably, privacy is addressed by the fact that this is public transportation, so there should be no expectation of privacy.  In application, however, it may not be so clear.

More of a concern, however, is what the MTA does with the information that it gathers.  Much of it will have nothing to do with a crime, intended or perpetrated.  Much of it may be everyday conversation about mundane affairs.  Somewhere in the middle, however, is likely to be information of a sensitive nature, something that people did not intend to be public knowledge.  What if the conversation has nothing to do with safety on the MTA, but does involve criminal activity elsewhere?  What if it deals with something very personal to the passenger or driver, something that they may have told another in confidence, but now finds its way into the MTA surveillance database?

Buses have had surveillance cameras for years.  Voice recording microphones are now being incorporated.  Signage on the business lets drivers and passengers know.

The State's Attorney Office thinks that the system passes legal muster.  The ACLU disagrees:

"People don't want or need to have their private conversations recorded by MTA as a condition of riding a bus," said David Rocah, a staff attorney with the Maryland chapter of the ACLU. "A significant number of people have no viable alternative to riding a bus, and they should not be forced to give up their privacy rights."

State legislators have indicated that they will look at this issue.  Next, time you ride the MTA, be careful what you say and do.

Big Brother II

If you are worried that the MTA is listening to your conversations on the bus, you have some sympathy for what happened to General David H.Patraeus, who resigned last year as Director of the CIA after disclosure of an extra-marital affair.  The extra-marital affair part is certainly scandalous enough, but what maybe more shocking is how Patraeus was undone by a series of events when law enforcement and government investigators looked into his activity in cyberspace.  The New York Times covered the details in a News Analysis piece last November.  The Times correctly noted that cyberspace investigations can rapidly escalate far beyond their original, often limited, scope simply because of the wealth of information that is exposed by even a relatively focused inquiry.  All of the data and information that we have sitting on our computers and online suddenly may fall under the eyes of investigators looking for something entirely different.  The Times article notes that the ACLU seems to be lamenting Patraeus undoing, at least as to the investigate methods used and the privacy rights trampled (if not an endorsement of Patraeus himself, with whom the the ACLU may have other concerns).  It is also highly ironic that America's spy chief (the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency) was undone by cyber investigators combing through his email.  Perhaps, as the Times notes, it is better that our law enforcement folks caught up with Patraeus before another country's spies did.

Lost

Since passing of Steve Jobs, Apple has moved forward under new leadership.  No doubt some new Apple developments were in the pipeline before Jobs died and he had some degree of influence and role in the decision making.  I doubt, however, that he would have approved of the launch of the Apple Maps application.

This is old news now for many of us who have Apple devices and for those you follow Apple's latest product changes and development.  For those who need a quick summary, last year Apple launched a new version of its operating system for iPods, iPhones and iPads, designated iOS 6.0.  This new operating system brought may improvements to Apple mobile devices.  It also brought a significant change is a key default application that Apple installs in all its devices.

When you get a new iPod, iPhone or iPad now, it comes with these native applications pre-installed.  They include basic Apple apps for email, text messaging, the Apple App store, contacts, and now Apple's application for finding places and getting directions, simple called Maps.

Until iOS 6.0, Apple had used Google Maps as its native geographic application.  Each of these applications has several basic functions: looking up addresses or points of interest, in your locality or around the world and displaying them on a map; using Geo-positioning software ("GPS") in the device to coordinate with your current location and provide a set of directions to your destination.  The new generation of these applications competes directly with commercial GPS devices by adding a voice-over that narrates step by step instructions for reaching you destination.

The Google Maps mobile application came with a long track record of success behind it from similar software on Google's website.  Many people (including me) loved Google Maps online and loved its mobile app on devices.

Apple, however, had a kind of love/hate relationship with the Google Maps app.  It was a wonderful addition to the native applications that came with your Apple device, but Google was competing with Apple in the mobile device arena by developing and promoting its operating system for Android  mobile devices.

So Apple began the development process to replace Google Maps on its devices with a native Apple Maps app.  Apple even went so far as to eliminate the choice to use Goggle Maps.  Everyone knew this was coming, including Google.  It was no surprise that Apple wanted to do this.  The surprise came in how poorly Apple Maps performed its basic function, finding where you are and where want to go.

Apple's interface for its Maps app is somewhat different from the Google Maps app that customers knew and loved.  Arguably, Apple made some improvements in the interface, which is somewhat easier to read and use, particularly if you are driving and trying to follow the directions, either visually or audibly.  Apple also took advantage of its Siri voice feature to give verbal versions of your directions.

The problem, however, is that very often the directions that Apple Maps provides are wrong.  Within days of the release of iOS 6.0, commentary in print and cyberspace was buzzing with complaints and examples of how faulty the Apple search results were.  One example sticks clearly in my mind.  The Apple Maps misplaced an Apple store in a major U.S. city, putting in on the wrong side of the street.

Here is my own personal comparison.  By chance, before in downloaded iOS 6.0 on my iPhone, I took a trip to Maine with my wife to attend a wedding and then vacation and site see, as we had never been to Maine before.  As we were renting a car, we took along a GPS and we had our iPhones.  It turned out that the GPS was set on a "minimalist" setting for verbal directions and did not update you frequently with repetitive step by step instructions.  Instead, it would remain silent for long periods and then suddenly announced "In 200 feet, turn right".  As we had borrowed the GPS, neither my wife or I wanted to changes the settings, least we forgot to set them back (or forgot how to set them back) when we returned it.

So we followed the maps on the GPS, but I also used my iPhone and the Google Maps app to locate our designation and directions, so we could anticipate where we were going.  The Google Maps app did not replace the GPS, but it was unfailingly correct in determining our destination and plotting us a course that led exactly to the place were were going.  We used this repeatedly all over Maine and into Canada without an error.

When we returned home, I downloaded iOS 6.0 with the Apple Maps app.  In its initial performance, it was batting about .250.  It can get you to the general vicinity of your destination, but it errs frequently when it tries to close in on the exact location.  And the errors can be somewhat dangerous.

Here is the most egregious example.  I was going to a client's house for a meeting.  I had not been in several years, so I put the address into my iPhone and Apple Maps provided a set of directions.  All was fine until I was nearly at the client's home.  Apple Maps indicated that I should make a left turn onto the client's street from the road on which I was traveling.  I slowed down looking for the left turn, but did not see it.  I reached another street that looked familiar, but it was not the client's street.  The app said that I had passed the client's street, so I turned around and back tracked, still looking for the client's street, now on the right.  No turn appeared.  I reversed direction again.  No luck.  I finally turned down the road that looked familiar and found the client's street about a quarter mile down this road, which was not in Apple Maps directions.

When I finished my meeting, I went down the client's street a little further in the direction of the main road, looking again for the intersection where I was supposed to turn.  All I found was a dead-end.  The client's street did not intersect the road that the Apple app said it did.

Apple finally had to make a public apology for these glaring defects in its search functions and mapping directions.  It scrambled to improve Apple Maps, with some success.  More recently, Apple finally conceded and brought back the new and improved free Google Maps application on the Apple platform.  I recently used both Apple Maps and Google Maps on another trip to new places, this time Southern California, sometimes using them simultaneously. Apple Maps is greatly improved and I will concede that I am not as familiar with it, as I have gone back to Google Maps since it became available.  Still, I would give Google Maps a higher rating.

Many people said that this would have never happened if Steve Jobs was still around.  May be so.  This was a major embarrassment for Apple and at least one key Apple executive responsible for the Apple Maps launch departed Apple in the wake of its rudderless debut.  Apple has fixed Apple Maps and it is a more respectable piece of software now.  But Apple also had to concede a place to Google Maps in the Apple Apps Store and on Apple devices.  In the end that was probably better that than have users defect to Android phones to find there way to destinations new and old.

Piracy, Privacy and Money, Money, Money - Part III

This is the third and final part of a series.

Money. Money, Money

Deep Throat: Follow the money.
Bob Woodward : What do you mean? Where?
Deep Throat : Oh, I can't tell you that.
Bob Woodward : But you could tell me that.
Deep Throat : No, I have to do this my way. You tell me what you know, and I'll confirm. I'll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that's all. Just... follow the money. 

All the President's Men

Social networking, Internet businesses and technology are big business today.

Facebook has $4 Billion in cash and has filed papers to go public with speculation that its initial public offering price may put the value of the company at $100 Billion.  Facebook recently made an offer to acquire Instagram, photo sharing social networking site, for a reported $1 Billion.

"I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook."  Mark Zuckerberg

Apple, once counted out as an interesting piece of technological history, has seen its market capitalization eclipse the once mighty Microsoft and oil behemoth Exxon.  It is the biggest company on the planet.  If you go to the link at the beginning of this paragraph, the list of market capitalization includes Microsoft (now No. 4), followed by IBM (No. 5).  Google is at No. 11, just ahead of Warren Buffet's Berkshire-Hathaway.  Remember when we thought IBM was relic of the past?  There may be hope still for Yahoo!

Money makes the world go round
The world go round, the world go round
Money makes the world go round
It makes the world go round.

Money, Money, Money - Cabaret

This surely could be the sign of another technology bubble in the stock market, but it also is a sign of how important technology has become to our economy as well as the world economy.

Let's reflect a bit more.  In a prior column, I wrote about a new the new music service Spotify.  Spotify did not start in the U.S.  It started in Europe and became very popular there before coming to America.  Spotify had to negotiate first with the Neolithic music industry in this country, which seems unable to grasp the potential and power of digital distribution of music and unable to figure out how to fashion a new business model to capture that potential and power.  The U.S. music industry (and its global counterparts) seem to want the money, but only if they can collect it in the old fashion way -- one record, cassette tape, compact disk, song (??) at a time.  The music (and film) industry seems to be spending more time and money fixated on digital piracy.  It has failed again and again to realize that times have changed.  To paraphrase Satchel Paige, looking backward is likely to reveal that someone is catching up with you.

Most technological successes  did not start out as the product of trickle-down capitalism.  Whether you were named Hewlett or Packard, Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak, Zuckerberg, or Gates, or Paige or Brin, their first was an idea, then there was a lot of  scrambling and tinkering and writing code, some fortuitous opportunities seen and taken, and, finally, in the modern era, a form of trickle-down capitalism:  venture capital firms.  NPR recently did an interesting series of reports on the rise of Silicon Valley, including a timeline and a profile of the early venture capitalists.

Venture capitalists started out driving around Silicon Valley almost literally trying to give money away (in return for a piece of the action).  Now, the investment side of the technology business is more like a tech version of American Idol, with bright innovators auditioning their start-ups to see if they can get funding from the venture capitalists.

So what are the venture capitalists looking for?  What, for that matter, is Mark Zuckerberg looking for when Facebook acquires Instagram for $1 Billion?  Look in the mirror.  Money is chasing money, specifically the money that we ("we" being the great huddled masses, the 99%) have.  We are were the real money is, and all of this consumer-based or social networking technology, in one way or another, is looking for us as users so that it can get to our dollars.  And in order to get to our dollars, these businesses need to know a lot about us; they need to create profiles of our likes, dislikes, interests, questions, searches.  From this information , these businesses can create a picture of us, so that, either directly or indirectly, someone can sell us something.

There are easy illustrations that I have used before.  Facebook posts ads on our pages that result from knowing what we "like" and, thus, are targeted to sell us something we are predisposed to like or want.  Facebook is being paid to broker this kind of advertising.  Amazon recommends products to us based on our shopping history, knowing that we are predisposed toward these items based on what we bought in the past.

Here is a more interesting example reported by Marketplace Tech in late April.  When we think of Walmart, the most immediate imagine may be of a mom & pop store gone wild.  The old  5 and 10 cent stores of another era on steroids.  (Interestingly, in typing this, I noticed that the modern computer keyboard no longer as key for the cent sign; you have to select it as a symbol and Google's Blogger does not seem to have this function.)

Well, Walmart also sells things online.  Walmart noticed an interest fact about its in-store shoppers.  Many of them pay in cash.  (Many Walmart shoppers are a true part of the 99%, part of a cash based economy, which the Walmart spokesperson described as:

unbanked or underbanked, “meaning they either don't have access to a bank or they have limited banking services or they don't have credit."

Walmart also figured that many of these customers would like the convenience of shopping online but for one small, but important problem:  you cannot stuff cash into your computer to pay for your purchases.  So, Walmart is now letting people order online, then come into a Walmart store and pay in cash and have the items purchased online shipped to them.  This, of course, also gets the customer into the store and may result in them wander around and spending more money.  (Presumably, as the customer has to go to the store to pay, Walmart has enough stuff available online that the customer cannot simply buy in-store or that the customer may purchase online more readily than they would want to wander around the store looking for.)

Let's go a bit further.  Let's examine the concept of "free."  If you have a iPhone or Android smartphone, an iPod Touch, or a iPad or other tablet computer, you probably have apps (short of applications), those tiny little titles which take you to all kind of stuff.   iTunes tells me that I have 155 apps on my iPhone, iPod Touch and one that I purchased for an iPad that my partner loaned to me.  Some of these cost money, like the Brian Eno ambient music apps, Bloom and Trope, or the Notetaker HD app that I purchased for my partner's iPad.

Many apps are "free," which encourages you to grab a big handful of them each time go to the app store.  It seems like there is an app for nearly everything, so why not try these free apps and see how they work.  After all, they are "free."  Not exactly.

Most free apps do one or both of the following:  (1) try to sell you upgraded versions that cost money or other related apps and/or (2) mine your activities for data on you and your usage of the app.  This still may seem like a sweet deal, because you can ignore the ads and who really cares if you just played "exhalent" in Words with Friends for a ton of points (a word which the spell checking in Google Blogger does not recognize, but Words with Friends accepts, much to the delight of my wife, who played it in a game with me.)

Stop playing Words with Friends for a minute and think a bit more.  Like many newer apps, Words with Friends is designed as social interaction with others and pretty much requires that you connect through social networking sites like Facebook so that you can connect with your friends who also have the app.  (I admit that I took the easy way of connecting through Facebook, which allows me the joy of regularly being beaten by my youngest daughter.  There may be a way to connect using Facebook or other social networks, but is not likely to be as easy to use.)  This tie-in fosters more users for Words with Friends and for Facebook.

The dark side is in the details when you decide to connect to Facebook.  In a brief notice before you connect, you are told that in making the connection, you are allowing the app and Facebook to access your personal information and usage records.  You want to play the game with your friends, so you click and move on thinking that one day you will have to go review those privacy setting in Facebook.

There’s a saying that’s used a lot in the online world: if you’re not paying anything, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

Where is all this going?  Go over to Marketplace Tech Report and listen to/look at this linked report:  Send a $5 gift card to your friend free? What’s the catch?  It tells the story of a new app called "Wrapp," which enables you to send "free" gift cards to your friends.  What a deal!  "Free" right?  Not really.  Wrapp requires that you allow access to your data on Facebook.  The social networking connection here is essential.  Merchants are not giving away free gift cards; they are buying customers much more cheaply and effectively than an old fashion sales ad in the newspaper.  As the Marketplace report states:

So instead of the newspaper bringing the product to the consumer, you bring the product to your friend.  “We already know that ties between people in social networks can be power channel for marketing a product or brand,” says Alessandro Acquisti, co-director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Behavioral Decision Research. “This new application takes things one step further, effectively enlisting your friends as their own marketing agents.”

So you are really selling yourself and your friends in return for those "free" gift cards.  Are you at the crossroads about to sell your soul?  May be not, but before you agree to the "access my personal information" deal the next time, thing a bit more about what that means and what your are sharing.  Perhaps all of that personal information results in a small window to your soul.

The best things in life are free
But you can give it to the birds and bees
I need mon-ey
(That's what I want)
That's what I want, hey!
(That's what I want)
I need money, that's what I want
That's what I want

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/m/madmoneylyrics/moneythatswhatiwantlyrics.html

Piracy, Privacy and Money, Money, Money - Part II

This is the second in a series.

PRIVACY

I have written here before about privacy and likely will again.  It has been an important area of  American constitutional law since the drafting of the Bill of Rights.  Since that day when Alexander Graham Bell summoned Watson with words spoken over his telephonic invention, we have becoming increasing concerned with protecting various forms of telephonic and electronic communication.

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled United States v. Jones that the government needs to obtain a search warrant to track the public movements of a person by attaching a GPS device to the person's vehicle.  Antoine Jones was a suspected drug dealer who lived in DC.  Authorities had a warrant for Jones in the District of Columbia and attached a GPS device to his car to follow his movements.  Information on Jones' movements in Maryland was collected, however, and authorities had failed to get a warrant in Maryland. The Court split 5-4 on how the 4th Amendment applied in this situation.  Here is a link to a further discussion of the case at Marketplace Tech Report. 

The  Jones decision may become landmark of constitutional law.  It certainly will be important in understanding the current interface between technology and privacy.  We have seen societal situations that raise significant questions in this area. In recent political movements from the "Arab Spring" to the "Occupy" movement, electronic means of communication such as Twitter and Facebook have been used to organize protest. In response, Arab governments first tried to shut down these communications.  More recently, and more ominously, governments have been monitoring these communications in order to find dissidents and suppress protest.

The Jones case may begin to tell us where constitution protections attach in a world where we are revealing more and more about ourselves through electronic communications.  Consider, however, that we now reveal a great deal of information about ourselves willingly on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking services.  If Antonie Jones had been checking in on Facebook or FourSquare, would government monitoring of his postings and travels been protected?

One important question continues to be what expectation of privacy we have when we use such social networking services.  When people sign-up for these services, they must agree to contractual agreements that provide the terms under which the service is provided.  These terms of service agreement set out important legal rights to material posted and privacy policies.

Of note recently is that both Google and (yet again) Facebook have changed their privacy policies.  These changes have received wide publicity. As we provide more and more personal information on such services, including using such services to reach  or interact with others online destinations, these policies are very important to our online privacy.  These policies, however, are not really intended to protect our privacy as much as they are to govern what information Google or Facebook or other service providers can access and use for their own business purposes.

Remember that Google, Facebook and other online services are businesses looking to make a profit. 

These social networks want you to post personal information on their services.  Such sharing is fundamental to the business model on which such services are built.  The information that you share encourages your friends to join to see your posts and to share their own information.  This cycle brings more and more people onto the network.  Participants keep the treadmill of information spinning round and round by providing the product for the social network.  In one way or another, good Internet businesses use our information and usage history to make money.

Not only are the users the product, but they are also a potential customer. Let's take a look at a simple scenario.  You go to Google and search for information on the book, "The Devil and the White City".  You find links to various bookseller's sites and go to them.  Google now knows that you may be interested in books, even the type of book, and can place paid advertising for a booksellers on your search pages.  Or you go to Amazon and buy the book.  Amazon knows that you purchased this book and will recommend similar books to you in the future when you visit Amazon.

In one sense this is good for you.  You may get "better" search results or better service, because the search engine or the vendor knows something more about our preferences.  This is certainly a critical element that makes such services "smarter" and, thus, faster in getting us to the things we are trying to find.  What you may not realize, however, is that your activities are leaving behind a kind of electronic footprints or fingerprints, showing where you have been on the Internet and what you have been viewing.

Technologically, much of this deals with little pieces of code called "cookies" that you leave behind in your travels in cyberspace.  These markers allow sites to recognize you next time you visit and improve your use of sites, but they are digital signposts as to where you have been and what you have seen or done.

Do we want this kind of information available?  If we do, to whom -- Google? Facebook? Amazon? The government?  What limits are there?  Privacy policies and terms of service are designed to protect this information from general dissemination.

There is a conflict of interest, however, because most commercial sites want to use such information to target you for advertising or products when you use the sites.  Such sites do not want to give up the use of such information entirely, because it would mean cut off a significant source of their revenue and profit -- advertising or sales.  Once the site has the information, however, when should it be made available beyond the reach of the terms of service to which you agreed?

These are important societal questions deeply embedded in the technology that we use today.  It will not be easy to draw lines here, especially because of the money involved.  More on the money in the final post in this series.

Smartphone Security

Even if you are not worried that one of Rupert Murdoch's publications is trying to hack into your cellphone, you may be interested in information on how to security your smartphone and the personal information that you keep on it.  Here is some good advice on the subject from the good folks at the Maryland State Bar Association:

TIPS FOR SECURING YOUR SMARTPHONE

Here are some basic tips for securing your smartphones. 

1.  Make certain that all your mobile devices have passcodes.
2.  Disable interfaces that are not currently in use, such as Bluetooth, infrared, or Wi-Fi.
3.  Set Bluetooth-enabled devices to non-discoverable.
4.  Delete all information stored in a device prior to discarding it.
5.  Do not “root” or “jailbreak” the device.

These tips and more were taken from Cyber Threats to Mobile Phones published by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

Check out the links above for more information.  Thanks to Pat Yevics and her staff at the MSBA.  Go to this link:  February  2012 MSBA Tech Tips and find all of the MSBA 2012 Tech Tips.  There are posts on protecting your computer from tracking cookies and Google's new privacy policy.

More on privacy issues in an upcoming post here at Reality Bytes.

Piracy, Privacy, and Money, Money, Money! - Part I

This post is the first part of a round-up of significant developments in 2012.

Piracy

"Well, yes mate. See, I’m dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you need to watch out for, because you never know when they’re going to do something incredibly… stupid."  Captain Jack Sparrow (IMDb Link; captainjackblog.com Link)

In January, the Justice Department took down one of the largest file sharing services on the Internet, Megaupload, for alleged piracy of copyrighted material.  The colorful cast of characters involved in Megaupload will guarantee a forthcoming movie to rival Social Network.  You can read more details, including endorsements of Megaupload by celebrities, its purported rapper CEO, and its founder Kim Dotcom and his $6 million worth of automobiles in these linked reports from Marketplace Tech Report and The New York Times.

Here is what I find interesting about this story:

• There seems to be little dispute that Megaupload was trafficking illegally in copyrighted material.
• Megaupload was wildly popular, being ranked in the top 20 of Internet sites.
• The Justice Department had to reach across the waters to take down Megaupload, which is based outside the United States, and to arrest some of the indicted principals.  Kim Dotcom (a.k.a. Kim Schmitz) was living in New Zealand.
• The Justice Department’s action prompted a retaliatory protest from Anonymous, a loosely organized group of Internet hackers (more on which can be found at this NYT link).  In what the Times called "digital Molotov cocktails," Anonymous appears to have launched digital denial of service attacks on computers at the Justice Department and major entertainment companies as protest over the shutdown of Megaupload.
• The scope of action taken by the Justice Department is significant.  The Times reported:

As part of the crackdown, more than 20 search warrants were executed in the United States and in eight other countries.  About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names that formed Megaupload’s network of file-sharing sites. 

Concurrent with the Megaupload take-down, Congressional consideration of legislation to stop Internet piracy came under attack from major Internet players.  Two bills were before Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the House, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA, in the Senate.  The day before the Megaupload take-down, major Internet sites such Wikipedia and Google launched campaigns in opposition to the legislation, arguing that it would result in serious impairment on the freedom to share information on the Internet.  Wikipedia actually "went dark" for a day, taking down access to its site, one of the most widely used on the Internet, and posting instead a message to users who accessed the site asking them to oppose legislation and to contact their representatives in Congress to pass the message along.

The SOPA/PIPA protest is notable for several reasons.  It marks an historic moment when Internet giants like Google and Wikipedia set aside commercial and competitive differences and acted in concert to express a political view.  More importantly, they did so in a way that demonstrated again the considerable power that the Internet has to reach people, communicate ideas and organize political action.

These Internet companies are expressing valid issues about the provisions of SOPA/PIPA, particularly whether the measures to prevent piracy go too far and would impede legitimate exchanges of information.  That does not mean, however, the the proposed legislation is wholly wrong or the that Internet companies, most of whom have commercial interests to protect as well as the freedom of information sharing, are completely right.  New York Times columnist David Pogue has a good commentary on this protest of SOPA/PIPA.

In that commentary Pogue points out that the opposition to SOPA/PIPA falls into two different groups that are not really in agreement with each other.  The first group would agree the piracy of protected intellectual property should be stopped, but takes issue with the steps that SOPA/PIPA would take to stop such piracy.  The concerns of this group could be addressed by re-writing the provisions of the legislation.  The second group really believes that piracy is good, a kind of an Internet variant of Gordon Geko’s famous "Greed is good" statement from the movie Wall Street.  This second group wants to be able to have free Internet access to copyrighted material, whatever its nature.  The second group wants no legislation or enforcement efforts at all.  In this respect, the people protesting the take-down of Megaupload, including Anonymous, also may represent those who want free information without cost, even if it is protected by copyright or other intellectual property rights.

With these two developments occurring side-by-side, it is also most interesting to note that the existing laws that were used to take down Megaupload appear to have rather far-reaching enforcement powers already.  If you believe that the artists and businesses who create music, film, literature, photograph and other forms of intellectual property should have their rights protected and that fair compensation should be paid for use of such material, then it would seem important to improve the existing laws that protect such rights in a way that does not threaten the free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

Spot You One: Spotify vs. Pandora

 One recent evening, a colleague sent me the following email:

Sitting at desk at office finishing up a few things, playing my U2 Pandora station, enjoying Radiohead’s “High And Dry”!

Pandora is a"free" Internet music service. It allows you to create "channels" by selecting one or more artists of your choice.  These artists can be popular, rock, rap, folk, classical, jazz; you name it.  Even local artists may show up on Pandora if they have an identifiable musical style and recorded music available. Pandora then streams music to you from those artists and other artists that it deems similar to the ones that you selected.

I use Pandora.  As I began writing this column, my Bela Fleck (Click here for link to belafleck.com) channel was playing and the current selection was a piece by the preeminent jazz bassist Stanley Clarke (Click her for link to stanleyclarke.com) called "Rite of Strings". (Bela Fleck is a banjo player extraordinaire whose work has spanned genres from bluegrass to folk to jazz fusion to classical.  He has been nominated for Grammys in more different categories than anyone else.  His band the Flecktones (Click here for link to flecktones.com) features another preeminent bass player, Victor Wooten (Click here for link to victorwooten.com).  This may give you some idea how well Pandora's software works at finding affinity between your musical selections and its suggestions.)

I have numerous Pandora channels.  You can use different Pandora channels to create a musical backdrop while using your computer at work or at home or on the move.  You can add different artist together to "mix" a channel to your tastes.  These channels can be shared through Pandora with your friends.

You get to listen for 30 hours each month free with advertising announcements occasionally dropped into your music stream.  For a monthly payment you can upgrade to unlimited service and no advertising.  You do not get to "keep" this music, either by download or playlist, but you can take Pandora anywhere for free and play your channels or create new ones because there is a mobile application for iPhones and Android phones.  (See the discussion below about the potential costs of streaming music on a mobile device.)

Pandora has been in the financial news lately because it is very popular, but has not found a way to "make money".  In other words, advertising revenue (often a key source of Internet revenue) and user fees are not paying for the cost of the service.

Spotify, which has proved wildly successful abroad,  finally has entered the U.S. market.  You need an “invitation” to get it, but you can request one online from Spotify.com.  Spotify is a separate music player that loads outside your browser, like iTunes.  (Pandora runs inside your web browser as a separate tab.) Spotify recognizes and plays your iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries as well as its own music catalog.

Spotify also recognizes mobile devices that you have connected to your computer, such as an iPod and iPhone and Android phones, so you can sync MP3 files.  (You will need to have the Spotify app on these devices to take advantage of this feature.  To sync with a mobile phone you must us a WiFi connection.)

Spotify lets you listen to tons of steaming music, even new releases, without downloading.  You can create playlists or listen to entire albums. And Spotify is "FREE"!  That's right, the basic service is free and you get access to all kinds of music that the record companies have previously tried to hold back.  (Yes, there are exceptions:  no Beatles, Led Zeppelin, etc.)

This is a BIG step forward with respect to Internet music distribution.  For more on this development, see David Pogue's column in the New York Time at this link (David Pogue's column on Spotify).

There are paid upgrades for Spotify.  Like Pandora, the upgrades remove commercials, but the free player is great.  The only negatives I have found so far are that you have have a premium service plan at $10 a month to stream music on your phone or other mobile device and that search  function on the player for finding music could be better at getting you to the music that you want to hear.  The premium plan for mobile streaming likely will hold down mobile usage.

A note of caution about streaming music on a mobile device:  streaming music on a mobile device usually sucks up significant bandwidth.  No matter what device you use, if you are using your cellular carrier's data service to stream the music and you do not have an unlimited data plan at a monthly fee, you may see significant data charges on your bills.  With the predicted demise of unlimited broadband plans from cellular services, mobile users could be paying a lot more than $10 a month to stream music when data plan charges are considered.  If you are streaming music on a mobile device, it is best to do it over a WiFi network to avoid cellular data charges.

Finally, you may want to consider your personal listening preferences.  I like lots of different music, but I generally like to select music from a wide range of sources.  In earlier columns I have written about the music on my iPod.  To get music onto an iPod, you must use iTunes.  Whether you use iTunes as a music player on your computer is up to you, but it is a very good music player.  By default, I end up using iTunes as a music player as well as a way to make playlists for my iPod or for burning to disks.

I generally have my iPod on the "shuffle" setting and I get a very interesting music mix.  Let's first compare this approach with my experience with Pandora.

Recently my iPod was playing "New South Africa" by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, a rather jazzy banjo driven song, with strong bass lines from Victor Wooten.  My iPod then shuffled the following songs (remember that shuffle is a random selection):  "Back in the U.S.S.R." by The Beatles from the Love soundtrack, "Send in the Clowns" by Frank Sinatra, "For the Turnstiles" by Neil Young (which features a banjo), "Blackbird/Yesterday" by The Beatles from the Love soundtrack, and "Beeswing" by Richard Thompson.  I was quite pleased with all of this and the random selection did not bother me.  (Please note that iTunes now has a "Genius" feature that goes through your music library and makes intelligent suggestions for playlists.)

Pandora operates differently.  You cannot decide to listen to an entire recording by Bela Fleck or just music by Bela Fleck. When you create a channel, Pandora will play music from the artist or artists that you have selected each time that you start playing that channel and then intermittently as the channel continues to play.  It will select other similar artist to play in between.  So, my Bela Fleck channel will follow a song by Bela Fleck with music from Stanley Clarke, David Grisman, Jerry Douglas, or Edgar Meyer or groups that I have not heard, like Quintet Of The Hot Club Of San Francisco, which share thematic elements with Bela Fleck.  You can skip forward on Pandora, but not backwards.  Pandora also provides a wealth of information about the artists and the recording from which the music comes.  Most importantly to Pandora's business model, it provides links to buy the music to which you are listening.  Pandora's deal with the music industry in providing this music free is that in return it will promote sales of the music.

Spotify has a different approach.  It is similar to going into a large music library (like the iTunes online music catalog) and listening to whatever you want.  For free.  "Free" is the big difference between the Spotify music catalog and the iTunes music catalog.  You can sample things online with iTunes, but you have to buy to listen to the complete recording.

On Spotify, you can pick one song by an artist or a whole album and listen as much as you want.  Recently, I listened to Emmylou Harris' latest release Hard Bargain in its entirety.  Someone recommended the group Airborne Toxic Event to me.  I went and listened to its most recent release on Spotify.  My daughters and I were going to an O.A.R. (Of a Revolution) concert.  Never having heard any of O.A.R.'s music, I listened to a live concert recording on Spotify.  You can build playlists of songs you like on Spotify, just as you can in iTunes.  Over time you can build your own library of music by creating such playlists.  (When I first connected, Spotify sent me a link to a playlist that it has created called "Hello America" that I could download in Spotify to get started.)

Spotify does not let you move this music around unless you buy it.  You cannot download your online playlists to a mobile device.  You cannot burn them to disk.  As with iTunes, you have to own the mucis to do that.

Also, Spotify does not have is a shuffle feature.  This makes sense as Spotify offers you the whole universe of music, unlike iTunes which shuffles only the the songs that you have loaded into a library.

So Spotify is the next big thing with respect to Internet music.  The question remains whether it will make money.  Spotify does have the distinction, however, of finally getting the music industry to loosen up and let people access great music on the Internet.  Let's hope that lasts.

Baidu-Bing!

The Marketplace Tech Report had an interesting story (click here)on Wednesday, July 6 about Microsoft's deal to provide Bing searches to China's biggest search engine, Baidu.  Here is what is interesting:

The second line of the web post makes one thing very clear: 

"That arrangement means going along with the Chinese government's censorship policies."

If this all sounds a bit familiar, it is because Microsoft is following a path previously blazed by Google:

"Google operated a Chinese version of its engine, based in China, and went along with the government's censorship of results. But that approach never really sat well with a company dedicated to the idea of finding information and bringing it to web users.

Google eventually moved its Chinese search engine to Hong Kong, where the laws aren't as restrictive."

So Microsoft must have a better idea how to deal with these issues, right?  Wrong:

"For its part, Microsoft says that it respects the laws of the countries where it does business and complies with them accordingly."

Rebecca MacKinnon from the New America Foundation is quoted in the report as saying:

"The Chinese government expects Internet companies to censor and police user content," she says. "So, with all of these companies, including Baidu, they're expected to exercise what the Chinese government calls 'self discipline' and they actually give out an award for this."

Meet the new Baidu, same as the old Baidu!  Baidu-Bing! To listen to the full report, click here.

Supreme Court Protects Violence - - - In Video Games

The Supreme Court has struck down a California law that barred the sale of violent video games to minors as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. Justice Scalia writing for the majority said: 

“Like the protected books, plays and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas — and even social messages — through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world) . . . That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.”

Grand Theft Auto appears was compared (and protected) under the same principles that shield the gory elements of stories like Hansel and Gretel in Grimm's Fairy Tales. See more complete coverage by going to this LINK at The New York Times.

Mini-Byte: Cyber-Afterlife?

Professor Gerry Beyer posted an interesting item this morning about a cyber-afterlife on his blog, Wills, Trusts & Estate Prof Blog.  It involved a Twitter user who posted the following:

 If I die, I want you to use this password to get into my account and tweet “So this is what it’s like being a ghost”.

To see Prof. Beyer's full post and the link to the original story at use this LINK.

On and Off the Cloud

On the heels of my last column about cloud computing, there is plenty of confirmation that the cloud is here and that some clouds may be dark and stormy.

Platform Wars
A couple of days ago, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google discussed the "Platform Wars" at D9, the annual All Things Digital conference.  Schmidt referred to four dominant players who have used their distinctive platforms to dominant the web:  Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.  What about Microsoft?  Forget about Microsoft, says Schmidt; it isn't a player on this field.

Store It In My Cloud
This comes close on the heels of Amazon's move to get us to upload our music and other files (with encouragement to buy more from Amazon) onto its "Cloud Drive".  Apple responded with its own cloud storage initiative, named (who would have guessed) iCloud, which debuted on June 6 at the Apple's World-Wide Developers Conference.  It is clear that the platform players are jockeying to get you on their cloud (and tied to content that they sell or make money through advertising).  So the Cloud Wars are heating up too.

It's Security, Stupid!
Now for the dark side.  As discussed in my last column, the "cloud" is really using someone else's computer.  Instead of computing or storing things on your desktop, or your laptop, or your smartphone, you using computers and servers on the Internet and storing information, documents, financial records, music, videos and other data on someone else's computer.  When you use Facebook, you are piling up personal comments, pictures and information on Facebook's servers.  If you play on XBox Live or some other online gaming platform, you are leaving information with the servers for those gaming platforms, whether it is gaming preferences and history or financial information to pay for the service.  Think about the computing that you do on the "cloud" and what you leave behind.  Think about it again when you are prompted by an app on Facebook that requests permission to access your Facebook personal information, friends and other data that you have left behind.  What do you think those apps are doing with that information?  Building you a better cow in Farmville?

It turns out that other people's servers may be no more secure than your own.  Servers for major platforms on the Internet may be even bigger targets than your computer for security breaches.  As the story goes, when bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, said he did it because banks "where the money is".  In cloud computing, big computer servers are where the information is.

Recently we have seen hackers breach Nintendo's servers.  Now comes a more frightening wave.  Computers at major defense contractors have been breached.  Big time defense contractors: Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3 Communications.  The report just linked is even grimmer in that it says that prevention of such breaches by serious hackers (who may include foreign governments) is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.  One weakness:  People.  Servers are attached to networks and networks connect people, and people are the weakest link.  People can be convinced to "leave the door unlocked" and let the bad guys in.

So, cloud computing is here to stay, but be careful, because you may be the weakest link.

Where Are We Going? (Part II): Clouds

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all.
                          Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now

In Part I of this series, I explored the idea that the desktop computer (whether PC or Mac) is becoming less important as we increasing are turning to other devices, such as smartphones, netbooks, tablet computers, and other digital devices to do what we used to use desktop computers to do.  This evolution has given us greater freedom.

What are the components that make this new freedom possible and are their dangers or weaknesses in this new step?  One component is new hardware.  Whether a smartphone or a netbook  or a tablet computer, devices have gotten smaller and more functional.  More importantly, a wider range of these smaller devices that will connect us to the Internet.  We can take them with us and use them in more and more places.

Size is not the only thing that matters, however.  Another critical component is the compartmentalizing of tasks.  Desktop computers are viewed  as a revolutionary shift in the history of technology from the massive mainframe computers of the past.  They offered full-scale computing power in a smaller package.  The desktop still functions that way today.  We load our desktop computers at work or at home with a whole host of full-scale programs to do word processing, bookkeeping, gaming, media functions and many other tasks.  We will continue to use desktops for those functions.  We increasingly have discovered, however, that the desktop computer encourages us to put more and more programs on it.  Those programs get larger and larger as developers try to offer newer, more powerful versions of old software or new software products.

We are enticed by each new version of Word or Quicken, but do we actually need everything in these increasingly blotted versions of a program or operating system?  Some, because of very specialized needs, would answer affirmatively.  Those involved in publishing or graphic design or other fields will continue to want a computer that can run robust programs needed to produce their work.  For most of us, however, particularly for our personal needs, we do not need more and more computing power on a single computer.  We have a series of various, discrete tasks that we want to do and that can be accomplished very well with smaller devices.

So, the new evolution in technology leverages off this interest in more discrete computing.  In place of massive desktop programs, we now have "Apps," short for applications.  These are little programs that operate on the new range of smaller devices that go anywhere.  They specialize in doing one thing well.  Apps also have opened up avenues for developers to offer increasingly eclectic software for selected audiences.  Because apps are less complicated software, they can be developed at much lower cost and tailored to very specific needs and interests.

The age of the "App" is here.  Oprah is giving iPads to her staff.  Oprah uses an iPad and Apps while she exercises, accessing CNN, ABC News, Scrabble while she is on the treadmill.  Oprah even has her own App coming out. America and the world will surely follow.

The final component is "cloud computing".  This refers to the use of the Internet as part of the computing experience.  Software on mobile devices can be more minimal because some the the functionality is provided by programing features resident on the Internet.  Let's take this blog as an example.  Instead of writing this column on a full word processing program on my computer, I write this text using Google Blogger.  I connect to Google's website, open this blog and create or edit posts.  The word processing software is resident on Google's site, as is the finished product.  I do not have to have software on my computer or iPhone or hard drive memory to store the text from this columns.  The Google software has spell-checking, formatting and other functions for creating a blog.

There certainly are more robust programs for creating blogs, but Google's Blogger is more than adequate.  More importantly, it frees me to work on this column at work, at home, and on the road.  I wrote some of this blog at an ACTEC meeting in Pennsylvania.  I am also free to work on this blog on all kinds of devices, from my desktop computer at work or at home, my laptop on the road, or even my iPod Touch  or iPhone (although typing significant text on the iPod or iPhone itself is somewhat difficult).  The simple fact is that this column "lives" in the cloud.  It is available first on the Internet.  You can read it there as it is finished by going to http://technobytesmd.blogspot.com/ (or CLICK LINK HERE).  You can find prior posts.  You can find links to material cited in the blog posts.  Why wait months to get a stripped down, printed version?

Cloud computing thus has opened up a wide variety of activities.  The Internet's social media juggernaut, Facebook, is almost complete an activity in the cloud.  While you can upload pictures or graphics or some other items to your Facebook page, almost everything else is created on Facebook's servers on the Internet.  You can create short status updates or longer notes and use a significant number of apps that function within Facebook.

The Internet is increasingly become the primary resource for information.  We have seen the disappearance of encyclopedias as Google and Wikipedia have risen.  Venerable print publications are disappearing into the Internet.  The Oxford English Dictionary is discontinuing its printed edition and will be available only on the web.  The telephone white pages are going too, with customers being give an option to request a printed telephone directory.

Is there a dark side to cloud computing?  First, when functionality is dependent on the Internet, you need to be able to connect to the Internet.  People with iPhones and other smartphones now are required to have data service plans from their cellular network, so they have access to the web.  If they are out of range of a cell tower or a WiFi hotspot, however, they may not connect.  A more major problem, however, is whether the cellular networks will be able to keep pace with the demand to connect to the Internet.

Until recently, one of the major disincentives to buying an iPhone was that it was only available from ATT and ATT,s network proved unsatisfactory in meeting the rising demand for Internet connections.  Apple finally end this exclusive arrangement this year by making the iPhone available on the much stronger Verizon's network.  Eventually,Verizon too may struggle to provide bandwidth to a legion of new customers.

Broadband usage has been steadily increasing.  Exponential growth is expected in coming years.  Reports from the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2010 highlight this issue.

Given this trend, vendors at MWC outdid each other in predicting traffic growth over the next five years: Cisco claimed that global data traffic will increase by a factor of 39 between 2009 and 2014, while Ericsson predicted fiftyfold growth by 2015. NSN plumped for forecasting an equally round, but rather more ambitious, hundredfold rise. Analysys Mason is currently working on its own forecast of global traffic, which will be published in April. The consensus within the industry is that there will be substantial growth in demand for wireless traffic over the next five years.

The message from MWC 2010: indoor coverage and subscriber management are the keys to dealing with exponential growth in wireless traffic

Matt Hatton, Research Director
Terry Norman, Principal Analyst

4 March 2010

Meeting this growth is going to require further technological development. Bandwidth is going to have to be sacrificed from other parts of the spectrum.  "Subcriber management" points in the direction of getting folks to pay for the bandwidth being used for data transmission.  Right now, I can use my laptop or my iPhone without a wireless plan from my cellphone carrier, but I have to depend on finding a WiFi connection.  I have one at home through the modem for our Internet service, so I am paying for that service, but there is no price structure base on data usage (yet).  I use as much or as little as I want, moderated only by the speed of the connection (and whether my son is also on the computer; more users on the same connection slows the speed).

On the road, I must depend on hotel WiFi networks, which can range from excellent (at the Bedford Springs Resort where I typed part of this piece) to non-existence, or other free WiFi connections.  Of course, this wireless isn't "free".  The establishment providing it is paying for it, and is passing along the cost in the price of the goods and services they sell (room rates or the cup of coffee at Starbuck or food at McDonalds).  As broadband demand increases, the issue of net neutrality will be hotly debated.  The danger is that some of us will be able to afford the direct or indirect cost of access and faster connections and others will be shut out.

There are other concerns with cloud computing.  One of the critical elements in the use of smaller computing devices is the use of programs and storage on the Internet.  Your iPhone or iPad does not have to be load with all kinds of programs, just apps, many of which function as a simple interface for programs that are on the Internet, not your device.  Similarly, your work or results is often stored on the Internet, not on your device.

Let's return to the example of Facebook.  You type your updates on the web.  You up load pictures on the web.  You share material already on the web with others through Facebook.  You type and store notes on the Facebook site.  None of this is on your computer unless you choose to save it in some way on your own on your computer.


Of course, there is the big question of who has the legal right to all this stuff that you put up on the Internet.  Are all of the personal things you share on Facebook still yours, or does Facebook have rights to keep them and use them for its purposes.  Facebook implicitly "shares" what you post, but use what you do online to market products to you or promote other activity on the web.  Ingeniously (or insidiously), we are Facebook's "product"  We generate the content that drives more and more users and activity to Facebook.  Facebook, in turn, sells "us" to advertisers and marketers.

Increasingly,  we are turning to the cloud to store information.  We are backing up our computers.  We are storing the work product from programs that we use.  Amazon recently announced a new service to combine music that you purchase at Amazon and storage of the that music on its servers (Cloud Drive).  It is even selling a music player that you can use on the web or on one of your devices (Android devices only right now).  This is a blast of competition of Apple, who also wants you to buy music from the iTunes Store, but has no integration yet for storage.

Another example is a cloud based service called Evernote, available for your full computers and for mobile devices like smartphones.  It is really a clipping and copying service for the Internet.  You see an article or posting that you like or want to retain.  Evernote lets you copy and save or cut and paste this items and saves it on its server.  You also can create your own notes -- shopping lists, books to read, pictures, etc.  It is intended to cut down on paper and to work across platforms.  You synchronize whatever device that you are using to the Evernote servers online.  You can then access your notes from another device, including a mobile device.  I use it for reservations, confirmations, notes, articles of interest, directions, and many more things.  It is free and can be upgrade to a premium service.  Its attraction, however, is its accessibility through the cloud.


What happens if Amazon or Facebook or one of new storage services goes out of business?  What happens to your "stuff"?  If you actually store large amounts of information in the "cloud", there are also issues about security and privacy of that information.  Whatever information you are storing or creating on the Internet in fact is stored somewhere on someone's server.  So you have to be careful about the security of those servers.  If hackers can get to the information on those servers, you may be in big trouble.  Recently, Sony admitted that hackers had breached its servers twice within a short period of time and made off with significant information, including credit card numbers, stored on those servers as a result of Sony's online PlayStation gaming network.

There is also increasing concern about the security of the Internet itself.  I have reported here before about cyber-warfare between nations.  Recently, there were news reports about a new Internet "18 minute gap".  For approximately 18 minutes in April of 2010 15% of the world's Internet traffic  was mysteriously routed through servers in China.  According to ComputerWorld, just as puzzling was that the intercept:

affected U.S. government and military networks, including those belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Commerce, NASA and the U.S. Senate.

Now The Wall Street Journal reports that we are embroiled in a rash of "hackactivism" in the wake of WikiLeak's release of classified diplomatic cables. Having released the classified cables, WikiLeaks suffered a back lash.  Hackers attacked and shut down or slowed the WikiLeaks servers to try to slow or stop the disclosure.  Amazon, which had been providing WikiLeaks with server space, turned them out.  Credit card companies announced that they would stop transferring money to WikiLeaks.  Hackers supporting WikiLeaks have struck back.  So we had a WikiLeaks cyber-war.  What is ominous here, however, is that individual hackers, not governments, appear to be launching this attacks and causing chaos, at least briefly, on parts of the Internet.

Finally, some think that this new "freedom" is nothing of the sort.  If we are constantly connected, we may find that our work follows us 24/7, that we no long have purely leisure time to ourselves.  This, of course, depends on how the user uses and manages technology, not something that technology imposes on the user.  You can always turn off the device, leave at home, or simply choose to use it or not.  One way to separate your work and personal life is to be clear where the line is, when you are available for work activities and when you are not.  This applies when you in the office and do not want to be disturbed.  You forward your telephone to voice-mail or have your calls answered; you stop reading email.  This type of focus should apply beyond the physical confines of the office.  Some people have to be "on-call", but there should be a clear understanding for all of us as to when we are not on-call.

These changes are rapidly occurring.  They are changing our lives.  There are significant issues to consider, but I doubt that any of these issues will halt the growth of the cloud and the rise of the Internet as the primary arena for the technology now and in the future.

The New York Times Wants You To Pay (Sort Of)

If you read articles from The New York Times online, you may have established an account with the Times in order to get greater access to the material posted online.  Until now, The New York Times online has been more or less free.  If you have established an account, you should have received a copy of the following email in March from the NYT, letting you know that this is about to change:

Dear New York Times Reader, Today marks a significant transition for The New York Times as we introduce digital subscriptions. It’s an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in The Times, one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism to readers around the world and on any platform. The change will primarily affect those who are heavy consumers of the content on our Web site and on mobile applications. This change comes in two stages. Today, we are rolling out digital subscriptions to our readers in Canada, which will enable us to fine-tune the customer experience before our global launch. On March 28, we will begin offering digital subscriptions in the U.S. and the rest of the world. If you are a home delivery subscriber of The New York Times, you will continue to have full and free access to our news, information, opinion and the rest of our rich offerings on your computer, smartphone and tablet. International Herald Tribune subscribers will also receive free access to NYTimes.com. If you are not a home delivery subscriber, you will have free access up to a defined reading limit. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. This is how it will work, and what it means for you: On NYTimes.com, you can view 20 articles each month at no charge (including slide shows, videos and other features). After 20 articles, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber, with full access to our site. On our smartphone and tablet apps, the Top News section will remain free of charge. For access to all other sections within the apps, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber. The Times is offering three digital subscription packages that allow you to choose from a variety of devices (computer, smartphone, tablet). More information about these plans is available at nytimes.com/access. Again, all New York Times home delivery subscribers will receive free access to NYTimes.com and to all content on our apps. If you are a home delivery subscriber, go to homedelivery.nytimes.com to sign up for free access. Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles. The home page at NYTimes.com and all section fronts will remain free to browse for all users at all times. For more information, go to nytimes.com/digitalfaq. Thank you for reading The New York Times, in all its forms. Sincerely, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Publisher, The New York Times Chairman, The New York Times Company

Like many American newspapers, The New York Times has grappled with the age of the Internet, where the overwhelming amount of "free" content has often pushed aside established journalism, whether print or broadcast.  The internet has spawned whole new methods for people to get the news:  the "blogasphere", social networking sites like Facebook, media sites like YouTube, and global instant messaging via Twitter.  Of course, these new media have weaknesses.  The Internet voraciously demands to be fed 24/7 with the news, latest, most interesting stories.  Fact checking and analysis sometimes get left behind.  Stories run like wildfire before they are fully investigated and often end up misrepresenting what actually happened.  In the end, however, once a version of something has spread around the world on the Internet it is difficult to convince people that there is a more nuanced, more difficult truth to be told.  The Internet provides us with the illusion that we know everything there is to know with a few clicks or touches.

The Canadian trial run went well, so in the NYT has rolled out this program in the U.S.  After encountering some announcements online, in early May I received the following e-mail offer:

Dear NYTimes.com reader,

As a valued NYTimes.com reader, you are invited to enjoy unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps at a special introductory rate. Subscribe today and save 50% for 26 weeks.*

Unrivaled coverage. Unlimited access.
Visitors to our site get 20 free articles a month, but that’s fewer than 1% of all the published articles on NYTimes.com each month. Subscribe now at our introductory rate and enjoy unlimited access to all the breaking news updates, video, audio, multimedia and more. The finest reporters in their field keep you informed 24 hours a day on your computer, smartphone and tablet.

Exclusive offer — save 50% for 26 weeks.
This limited-time offer is available only to select NYTimes.com readers like you. Subscribe today and choose from packages that include unlimited access to NYTimes.com, plus our smartphone and tablet apps. And enjoy access to the world’s finest journalism — any way you want.

Clicking on the link, I got the following pricing summary:

NYTIMES.COM + Smartphone App

Unlimited access to NYTimes.com and the NYTimes smartphone app.
See details $1.88 / WEEK for 26 weeks

NYTIMES.COM + tablet app

Unlimited access to NYTimes.com and the NYTimes tablet app.
See details $2.50 / WEEKfor 26 weeks

All digital access

Unlimited access to NYTimes.com and the NYTimes tablet and smartphone app.
See details 4.38 / WEEK for 26 weeks

Doing a little math, the unlimited package costs you $277.60 for 52 weeks (one year).  A year of home delivery of the actual paper costs $384.80 and it also gets you unlimited access to NYTimes.com.

The New York Times is not the only premium publisher trying to figure out how to price itself in the digital age.  Try accessing content online at The Wall Street Journal.  You will get some pieces without any sale pitch.  Increasingly, however, you will find messages that direct you to subscribe to get the full article that you are looking for.  The New Yorker recently announced that it is selling subscriptions on the iPad.  Other premium publishers are in the this market.  As we all move increasingly to the use of iPhones and other smartphones and iPads or other tablets, we are abandoning the traditional paper publishing products.

I have a regular subscription to The New Yorker.  I have cherished this magazine since discovering it somewhere in my youth.  I know that people get it in the mail (before it hits the newsstands) and devote a evening to reading it.  I have never been able to do that.  I think many others have reached that point.  We subscribe to support a distinctive and distinguished publication to keep it alive, as we would a worthy charitable cause.

On the evening of May 1 President Obama announced the U.S. forces finally had located and killed Osama Bin Ladin.  In the ensuing days, the media was filled with details, analysis and commentary.  (The Internet also was full of scams trying to capitalize on the enormous interest in this story.) The New Yorker was no exception.  Online by way of my iPhone, I was able to read insightful reporting and commentary from The New Yorker and other publications, coverage that would have taken hours, days or weeks to reach me in print.  In fact, the online publications and the print publications are becoming very different things.  The Internet requires that the best online content must be timely and incisive.

So The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York, Wired and many more print publications, all of which still hold to some central principles of traditional journalism, have struggled to preserve their distinctive brands.  Economically, they cannot continue to give everything away for free on the Internet.  The advertising revenue that fueled print journalism for years just isn't there on the Internet.  Most of these publications have to offer something for free to draw an audience to their online sites, but they have to draw a line somewhere and try to collect some revenue for "premium" content.  Let's hope for the sake of the internet as a medium that informs and educates us that these publications and others like them find a way in the new technological world.  We desperately need analysis and intelligent discourse on the Internet, to counter-balance the error-filled flood of spectacle and scandal and sensationalism that too easily can prevail.

Update: Microsoft and iPhones

Dead Money

Readers in the MSBA Estate & Trust Law Section Newsletter just saw it in print a month or so ago, but in October I wrote a column in the online blog version of Realtity Bytes entitled Where Are We Going? (Part I): The PC is Dead! (Or Is It?)  [Click Online Link Here].  In part, the article took Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to task for lack of vision and lackluster leadership in Microsoft's battle to compete with Apple and Google.  One of my favorite tech commentators (and all around curmudgeon) John Dvorak has come to much the same conclusion in his Second Opinion column on The Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch website.  Entitled Microsoft is Dead Money for Investors. Dvorak notes a string of "failures to launch", such as:

• Microsoft's indecisiveness over smart-phone operating systems (late to enter the field, then letting the Windows Phone 7 wither (even though it appears to be a strong product) (a deja vu of The Zune).
• Microsoft's dismal efforts in the tablet computer wars (despite the fact that Microsoft was a pioneer in tablet computing long before was an iPad).

Dvorak adds another example of stumbling indecisiveness:

Somewhere along the line, Redmond has gotten gun-shy.  . . .The most telling example of this was the short-lived Kin phone, which Microsoft released then killed just about six weeks later, before it could even attempt to get traction. 

Dvorak concludes that Microsoft is so worried about failure that it is paralyzed and investors should take note, because an investment in Microsoft is "dead money".  Read his full comments at this Online Link.

iPhones

While rest of the world was swooning this week over Steve Jobs' re-appearance from another medical leave of absence to announce the second generation iPad, I was celebrating the third week of my very own iPhone. As you probably know by now, Apple finally struck a deal with Verizon and has released a version of the iPhone on America's largest cellular network.  As our family has a Verizon wireless plan, this was the perfect opportunity to replace my aged, but trusty Palm Treo.  (A nice follow up to the Microsoft comments above would be to note that Palm's Treo appeared to have been the leading rival to RIM's Blackberry smart-phone at one point, and Palm failed badly in bring out succeeding generations that could compete.)

I was aided in my acquisition of an iPhone by my daughter's boyfriend, who wanted to surprise her with one for Valentine's Day.  So he stayed up into the earlier hours of the morning when the iPhone first became available to Verizon customers and placed an order for two iPhones.  After about a week of gingerly getting to know the iPhone, I was ready to try to duplicate what I had on the Treo.  On my Treo, I could synchronize by calender, contacts and other information from the Palm Desktop program on my office computer.  I did this for years with a cable wired to the the computer.  I could only do it when I was in the office.

After about an hour or so on the telephone with our firm's IT support, I am please to say that I can synchronize that information from TimeMatters, where most of it is stored, to Mircosoft Outlook.  This is still a manual sync, but once completed, I can access Outlook remotely from my iPhone by going through Microsoft Exchange.  Whatever I change in Exchange, synchronizes into TimeMatters the next time I manually synchronize the programs.  I also get my office email through Exchange, as Outlook is our office email program.  (Until now, I have not used Outlook much, but I now see its true potential and must say that it works rather well as a integrated email, contacts, and calendaring program.  It also works well with the iPhone.  So Microsoft can still make good products.  Outlook demonstrates what it can do in the changing technological environment.  Microsoft has the money and the talent to compete in this new environment; it just needs better leadership before its too late.)

I am quite pleased now this remote access  pretty much everywhere there is Verizon service.  And, that is a lot of places.  Verizon has a much better network than ATT, the iPhone's exclusive home network until now.  The Verizon network seems to be holding up to the influx of new iPhone users.  Partly that may be because Verizon has not been overwhelmed yet by a tidal wave of new iPhone customers.  New iPhone customers may come more gradually to the Verizon, but I suspect they will come eventually.

The best part of having an iPhone is that it is a mini iPad.  So now I am ready to start checking out the new generation of iPads.

There's No App for Confession

In case you were wondering, The Catholic Church does not sanction an new app for confession.  On February 9, 2001,The New York Times' Laurie Goodstein reported in App Can't Replace Confession, Vatican Says  that:  the Vatican has turn thumbs down on "Confession: a Roman Catholic App."

Goodstein further reports that the application is being sold on iTunes and

was developed by American entrepreneurs with the help of two priests and the blessing of a bishop. It features a questionnaire of sins, and is promoted as a tool both to revive interest in confession and to help Catholics prepare for the sacrament.

Touted "as a 'virtual priest' for Catholics who do not have time for church," a Vatican spokesman responded, “One cannot speak in any way of ‘confession by iP

Publish Post

hone.' "

The iPhones are Coming, The iPhones are Coming (to Verizon)!!

This is old "news" even to the online readers of this column, but the deal is done.  Apple and Verizon have come to terms and the iPhone will be available on the Verizon network, starting February 10.  See David Pogue's piece in the New York Times yesterday, which highlights two immediate differences in the operation of the iPhone on Verizon vs. ATT (no surfing the internet while calling and no usage abroad), and one significant advantage that Verizon has:  far better coverage on its more extensive network here at home.

Pogue cautions, however, that the influx of new iPhone users and the spike in data demand  may sap Verizon's network.  It is too early to tell. Marketplace Tech Report had a report on whether Verizon's network is up to the challenge.

The Wall Street Journal's Smart Money reports that you can expect some marketing changes at Verizon that are designed "encourage" existing customers to move to the iPhone.  Verizon will be discontinues its popular upgrade program.  Meanwhile, ATT and other businesses in the smart-phone wars are bracing for the effects.

I will have to look at details of the service contract, but this Verizon customer is ready to end his long wait to get an iPhone.

Mini-Byte: The Social Science Research Network

For those interested in finding academic papers on estate planning topics (or a wide variety of other topics), a fine resource is the Social Science Research Network ("SSRN").

Here is a year-end post that I received from Gregg Gordon, the President of SSRN, which gives you some background:

SSRN's 16th year was "sweet". The eLibrary (http://ssrn.com/search) has delivered over 41.3 million downloads to date and grown to over 314,000 documents from 149,000 authors. Our CiteReader technology, developed with ITX Corp, has captured 6.4 million references and 6.5 million footnotes. The technology has been expanded to extract references from within footnotes and those references will be displayed on the abstract pages in early 2011. Scholars are finding the links in the References and Citations tabs, on the abstract page, excellent ways to access both the past and future literature in a discipline.

In the near future, we will release Search Within functionality that finds specific information in an existing search result or taxonomy classification. We will also release simplified access to all of the SSRN Rankings of papers, authors and organizations. Over the next few months, we will create subject area networks in Innovation, Religious Studies, and Music and Composition; continuing our interdisciplinary growth in the social sciences and humanities.

Our year-end distribution break is scheduled for Monday, 20 December 2010 through Sunday, 2 January 2011. During the break, SSRN's abstracting eJournals will not be distributed so that we can improve the performance of our servers. We will continue to provide support for downloads, submissions, and subscriptions. For any requests during the break, please contact customer support at UserSupport@SSRN.com or call toll free 877-SSRNHelp (877-777-6435). Outside of the United States, call +1 585 442 8170. We are open Monday through Friday between the hours of 8:30AM and 6:00PM, United States Eastern.

I am always interested in your feedback about SSRN and our team loves to hear stories about how SSRN has impacted your life. Please contact me at Gregg_Gordon@SSRN.com or use our "Feedback to SSRN" link on most SSRN web pages.

Thank you for your continued support and Happy Holidays to you and your family!

Gregg Gordon
President
Social Science Research Network

Sixth Circuit on Warrantless Searches of Email

The federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that emails are protected under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution from warrantless searches.  The case is U.S. v. Steven Warshak.  Here is a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Mini-Byte: Another Pogue Crusade?

As recently reported here , New York Times Technology writer David Pogue was part of a successul crusade against Verizon for predatory billing practices.  Verizon was billing customers for accidental connections that did not involve any air time.  That campaign ultimately resulted in Verizon paying $92 million in refunds.

A reader has given Pogue a suggestion for another campaign:  roll-over megabytes. AT&T has roll-over minutes, which allow a customer to carry forward minutes that the customer paid for, but did not use.  Pogue and his reader are suggesting the same concept for megabytes of data that go unused.  Read Pogue's comments here and join the crusade.

Mini-Byte: Favorite Tech Reports

I have mentioned in other columns additional, probably better sources for information about technology.  I thought that I would you a short list of these sources, as there has been at least one change of name recently,  The many of the names below are hyperlinks in the online version of this column, so you can click on them and go to the websites:

Marketplace Tech Report -  This is a five minute podcast each day on technology issues.  It was formerly called Future Tense and hosted by Jon Gordon.  It has changed its name to become part of American Public Media's series of financial and business reports.  It is now hosted by John Moe and provides excellent coverage of a wide range of technology topics.  (American Public Media also distributes Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac.

John Dvorak's Second Opinion - Distributed by The Wall Street Journal's Digital Network, this column features sharp criticism and iconoclastic views of John Dvorak, who is tech journalism's equivalent of Andy Rooney.  For another side of Mr. Dvorak, see his blog, aptly named Dvorak Uncensored.


All Things Digital - Also distributed by The Wall Street Journal's Digital Network, this website includes a wide variety of contributors, including the Journal's excellent Personal Technology columnist, Walt Mossberg and Boom Town's Kara Swisher.

TWIT - TWIT (This Week in Tech) is a website for commentary on technology assembled by Leo Laporte.  One of its primary features is a weekly podcast of roughly an hour in length, TWIT (podcast).

Pogue's Posts - a central site for accessing the columns of David Pogue, technology columnist of The New York Times.

TechnoLawyer Blog -  A site for those who want technology commentary specifically for the legal profession. Sign up for the e-newsletters.