- North Oaks tells Google Maps: Keep out – we mean it (Star Tribune) — A suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota has demanded that Google remove all images from Street View, citing its laws against trespassing. The city’s roads are privately owned by its residents. Google has complied with the request. In other Street View news, Google is experimenting with face blurring technology to quell privacy concerns and avoid embarrassing incidents.
- Corn price is factor in rising movie ticket prices (Kansas City Star) — Yet another weird way in which high oil prices are causing inflation. As increased demand for ethanol raises the price of seed corn, movie theaters are raising prices for popcorn. Which means fewer people will buy popcorn. The fewer people that buy popcorn, the lower the profit for movie theaters, who make up to 45% of their profit selling overpriced junk food. The lower the profit on concessions, the more they charge for tickets. Regal Entertainment’s CEO claims, “If we didn’t charge as much for concessions as we did, the tickets to the movies would cost $20.” Some theaters are going beyond that — a Redmond theater opening this fall plans to charge $35 per ticket. And the popcorn is extra.
- Economist traces height trends (Chicago Tribune) — What does height have to do with economics? A German economist claims that it reflects a nation’s wealth and income equality. He finds that the tallest people are in countries with universal healthcare. “Today the average height for Dutch males is a shade less than 6 foot 1, making them the tallest people in the world. Scandinavian males run a close second.” He doesn’t seem to take into account the effects of immigration, which undoubtedly lower U.S. averages. via Erica Schlosser
- Designer of Pringles can is buried in his invention (AP/CNN) — Frederic J. Baur was so proud of the Pringles can that he designed that he chose to have his ashes buried in one. Talk about devotion to your work. Baur was granted a patent for the can design. Although that patent is too old to for the USPTO’s online database, a search for “pringles” finds 35 patents that mention the snack, including a chair that uses a “PRINGLES potato chip shape,” “Electron source for food treating apparatus and method,” “Method for preparing sauteed vegetables,” and “ Method and apparatus for vending food products from a roller-type grilling apparatus.” I think you might be able to find that last one at the Kwik-E-Mart. via Molly Stevens
June 3, 2008
Occasional reader – Saying no to Google, popcorn prices popping, economics and height, Pringles
March 1, 2008
Occasional reader – Jon Stewart, privacy and Fauxbama
Some interesting items from the last few weeks:
- Jon Stewart’s pre-Oscar interview on Larry King Live (CNN) – This interview is a perfect example of why people like me are watching The Daily Show for news. Stewart is sharper and more analytical than most of the chattering classes on the cable networks and reporters on network news. In addition to politics, Stewart talks about the writers strike and the inanity of the core argument. (Whether writers should be compensated for online usage of their work.) Oddly, the podcast version I saw is 10 minutes longer than the version on CNN’s site.
- The Anonymity Experiment (Popular Science) – Think you can hide from prying eyes? Think again. A Popular Science writer tries to avoid leaving a trace for a week. The piece looks at the myriad ways in which our movements can be tracked, including credit cards, Internet access logs, phone calls, email, security cameras and toll transponders. With the lack of effective privacy regulations and virtually no punishment for privacy breaches, American businesses have little incentive to protect consumers. All the incentives go in the other direction — collect, merge and sell as much data as you can. The government? They’re just as interested in collecting all these data. via Doris Truong
- Did ‘SNL’ Go Beyond the Pale With Fauxbama? (Washington Post) – Paul Farhi looks at the decision to use a white/Asian actor to play Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live. Lorne Michaels responds that Fred Armisen was the best man for the job; critics counter that it’s ironic that at a time when an African American might be headed to the White House, SNL doesn’t do enough to develop black talent.
Kudos to washingtonpost.com for embedding the video instead of making readers guess what is being talked about. It’s the first time I’ve seen an embedded hulu video player. Good video quality with related content post-roll. If you’re in the hulu beta, check out this video for Neutrogena Coin Slot cream. A lower quality version is embedded below. via Kimberly Davis
December 15, 2007
Weekly reader – December 15, 2007
Interesting reads from this week:
Why Lane Hartwell Popped the ‘Bubble’ Video (WIRED) – The hilarious video by the Richter Scales parodying the Web 2.0 bubble to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” disappeared from the Web after photographer Lane Hartwell filed a takedown request with YouTube. A picture she took of Valleywag’s Owen Thomas was used for a fraction of a second in the parody video. Although she’s gotten a lot of flack for it, it’s hard to fault her for protecting her rights as a photographer.
The issue also brings up the challenge that the Web and amateurs pose for people like Hartwell. It’s easy to steal commercial content and it’s easy to find freely usable “good enough” amateur content. When flickr makes it so easy to find pictures that you are free to use, why go through the hassle of improperly using a commercial image? (The picture in this post is a Creative Commons image from Telstar Logistics.)- Amazon Ordered to End Free Delivery on Books in France (IDG News Service) – The French high court rules that Amazon is selling books too cheaply because free shipping constitutes an illegal discount. Under French law, booksellers can’t discount a book by more than 5% off the list price. (Discounts of 50% on bestsellers aren’t uncommon in the United States.) via Dave Smith
- Search: 2010 – A Review (WebProNews) – A look at the future of search with Marissa Mayer from Google, Larry Cornett from Yahoo!, Justin Osmer from Microsoft and Daniel Read from Ask. More of the usual stuff. Usability consultant Jakob Nielsen speaks of moving from “relevance” to “usefulness” to evaluate search. Good luck measuring that. via Jim Simmons
- Dodd Challenges Google to Provide Leadership in the Digital World (WIRED) – Presidential Noshot Chris Dodd speaks at the Google campus about providing leadership in the new information driven economy. He chastens Google for their approach to China and encourages them to stand up to governments (including our own) when they seek to trample the rights of their citizens.
October 3, 2007
People tagging on Facebook
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a big proponent of geotagging. As I’ve gotten deeper into Facebook, I’ve also become a big fan of people tagging.
People tagging allows you to uniquely identify people in pictures. Tagging can also be a collaborative effort. When I’ve uploaded pictures with people I don’t know, my friends have filled in the gaps.
Viewers can rollover the picture and the names are displayed.
It’s surprisingly addictive and it forms the basis of the real power of Facebook photos. More on that later.
It also raises privacy issues, beyond those that I discussed yesterday. On flickr, I deliberately don’t include last names because I don’t want the pictures to be searchable in general purpose search engine. I’ve been more comfortable uniquely identifying people in Facebook’s more closed environment.
Still, I wonder about the database that I’m helping to create. Given the enormous popularity of Facebook photos — it’s the number one photo sharing site — it’s likely that Facebook has the largest privately held database of individually identifiable pictures in the country. It would make a great training set for image recognition software. You’ve got uniquely identifiable people in a variety of situations and camera angles.
So far, most public efforts at image recognition haven’t been very successful. Riya, which started out as a visual people search tool, used tags and other metadata to help improve the results. Even that wasn’t good enough. Riya has largely refocused on identifying merchandise.
October 2, 2007
Flickr and privacy rights
Flickr is one of the treasures of the Web. You can find high quality images on just about every topic imaginable. It’s great for sharing with friends, planning vacations and illustrating blog posts. It also raises a lot of issues relating to intellectual property, privacy rights and publicity rights.
The New York Times has a piece on the intersection of social networks, privacy rights and intellectual property. Virgin Mobile in Australia used a picture of Alison Chang posted on flickr as part of a billboard. The picture had been uploaded by photographer Justin Ho-Wee Wong, who assigned a Creative Commons license, allowing for commercial use of his picture.
Under U.S. law (which I don’t think would apply in this case), there are two separate issues. One is the rights of the photographer who took the picture. It seems that in case, the license provided by Wong allowed for use by Virgin Mobile. The other issue is the the rights of the person in the photo. Generally speaking, your picture cannot be used for commercial purposes without your consent. It can however be used for editorial purposes; if you’re at a news event, a newspaper or TV station doesn’t have to have your permission to show you.
Of course, this brings up the issue of defining “commercial purposes” and “consent.” Is Google Street View a commercial use? What if they put ads around the Street View images? Many semi-public places like sports arenas and theme parks state (often in fine print on the back of your ticket) that you give consent to commercial use of your likeness by entering. These same places prohibit you from using pictures that you take inside for commercial purposes.
I’ve thought a lot about these two issues as I’ve uploaded pictures to flickr. I typically post pictures with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. People are free to use my pictures for noncommercial purposes, as long as they credit me. They can also make derivative works, as long as those works are also shared. In two cases that I know of, my pictures have appeared in print publications.
The other issue is privacy. I try to edit out (or at least mark private) any images that might be embarrassing to my friends. I don’t include people’s last names in the tags or descriptions to prevent directed searches. I’ve had a couple of requests to take down or edit images of friends, which I honor.
June 1, 2007
Reading license plates with Google Street View
The New York Times’ Miguel Helft has a piece this morning on the privacy implications of Google’s Street View. I found this picture of a Civic Hybrid parked near Google headquarters the other day. You can clearly read the “I (heart) 51 MPG” vanity plate.
License plates are among the possible privacy concerns Helft cites:
There was the picture of a clearly identifiable man standing in front of an establishment offering lap dances and other entertainment in San Francisco. The site LaudonTech.com showed an image of a man entering a pornographic bookstore in Oakland, but his face was not visible.
Others pointed to pictures of cars whose license plates were clearly readable. One pointed to images captured inside the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, a controversial location for photography in this high-security era. On Lombard Street in San Francisco, various tourists who had come to photograph the famously curvy street were photographed themselves.
He notes that Google worked with the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence to remove pictures of shelters.
I think the privacy issues here are limited. The images are devoid of most context. You don’t when or why someone was in a particular place. From the picture above, all you can tell is that someone who drives a Civic Hybrid with the plates “I (heart) 51 MPG” parked near Google.
But you could get the same information (and more) driving down the street.
As it turns out, I found the same car on flickr. That picture includes a time stamp. (It’s possible the two were taken the same day; a black Acura TL is parked in front of it, just like in the picture above.)
Yahoo! employees have been using flickr to embarrass bad parkers. This picture of a scooter parked in a carpool spot is one of my favorites.
Still, from a privacy standpoint, I prefer the fuzzier images that appear in Google’s Street View outside the Bay Area. Google did its own imaging in the Bay Area and licensed images from Immersive Media for other markets. In New York, I had a much harder time making out faces or signs. The pictures are clear enough to get a feel for an area without the high level of detail you find in San Francisco.
April 12, 2007
On search and privacy
Today’s Search Engine Strategies panel discussion on search and privacy was easily the least attended session I went to, with fewer than 24 people in the audience throughout the session.
If the turnout was any indication of people’s interest in privacy, privacy is a lost cause. Why the low turnout? My bet is that it’s because there isn’t a direct ROI. The privacy session was competing with sessions like how to game (read: spam) social networking sites to increase your profits.
That’s too bad. There was a lot of thoughtful discussion in the session on privacy issues. Among the speakers was David Gallagher, a New York Times editor who talked about the process the paper used to find Thelma Arnold. Lance Cottrell from Anonymizer discussed products individuals can use to protect their personal data.
March 26, 2007
Your car’s computer – friend or foe?
Today’s WSJ has a story that vividly illustrates the tradeoffs that technology can offer between privacy and security (subscription required). The story explores how the increased data that cars collect can be used:
That data could be crucial to guiding an ambulance crew’s decision about whether to rush you to a fully-equipped level one trauma center, says Dr. Richard Hunt of the Center for Disease Control. Research by the CDC has shown that a severely injured person who is transported quickly to a level one trauma center has a 25% better chance of survival.
“I know from clinical experience as an emergency physician, this is a life or death decision,” Dr. Hunt says.
But what if, after you survived the wreck, that same technology turned tattle-tale, and divulged to police or the insurance company that you were speeding or driving recklessly?
That same data can also be used to save you money.
In Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon, Progressive offers a discount of up to 25% on your car insurance for letting them track you. The TripSense connects to your car’s on-board computer and records data on how fast, how far and what times you drive. The technology lets them rate risk in ways never before possible – for example, greater discounts if the bulk of your driving is between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on weekends.
If you drive more than 75 mph more than 0.75% of the time, you get a negative 5% discount, which can offset the other discounts. Progressive claims that “your data will never cause your rate to increase.”
March 14, 2007
Xeroxing your identity
Computerworld has a story on the threat that the new generation of copiers poses to your identity.
We’ve got a fancy copier at the office that I use when submitting expenses. Instead of making copies, it will scan the receipts and send them to me as a PDF. I love it. The first time I used it, I wondered how long the file was stored, where it was stored and who had access to it.
It was more out of curiosity than worry. The identity theft buzz is largely the result of fearmongering by media outlets and companies with a vested interest in getting you to buy shredders and identity theft insurance.
As I read the Computerworld story, I kept thinking “Why is a copier maker pointing out the problems with copiers?”
The answer came at the bottom of the story:
Sharp was one of the first photocopier makers to offer a security kit that encrypts data on the hard drive and “shreds” each copied document by overwriting the image after it’s printed.
They even have a six-page full color brochure on document security solutions (PDF).
March 9, 2007
Please don’t send to a friend
One of the key ways I get around the spam scourge is to use a separate email address for close friends, family and important business contacts. I don’t use this address for anything else. As a result, the people closest to me don’t have to worry about their messages getting caught in spam filters and I can easily zero in on the most important messages.
I’ve started getting spam to this address. It’s a complex address, so it’s not really prone to dictionary attacks. As far as I can tell, someone entered my address on a third-party site.
A lot of sites are pushing users to email a link or to invite their friends as part of the sign up process. Some even go so far as to offer to import your address book from Outlook, Gmail or AOL.
Please just say no. When you’re signing up for a service, you often have very little information about how that site will use the data. If you want me to read a story or sign up for something, just shoot me an email or IM the old-fashioned way.
You wouldn’t write your friend’s email address on a bathroom wall, would you? Giving it to a Web site operator is even worse. You don’t know where that address will end up.
