Strategic Social Networking - Archive

Twitter Develops Censorship Technology

Reporting from Beijing, The Wall Street Journal announces, “Twitter Can Censor by Country.” The news must please censorship proponents the world over, perhaps even a few in the US Congress.

Journalists Loretta Chao and Amir Efrati inform us:

“Twitter Inc. says it can now make content selectively available to users based on geography, and plans to use that ability to enter countries with ‘different ideas’ about freedom of expression as a human right—reflecting the difficult ethical questions facing Internet companies.

“The effort underscores thorny issues for Internet companies as their websites become more global and interconnected among different countries, and as they must cooperate with diverse views on Internet content control. For websites like Twitter as well as social-networking site Facebook, this has meant being blocked in countries like China where controls are more aggressive.”

To be fair to Twitter, the issue of censorship in other countries is indeed a tricky one. Refuse to play ball at all, and you’re banned completely. Will that really help the end users, the citizens who struggle to obtain information? Perhaps a little censorship is a small price to pay for allowing them even limited access to the information superhighway. At least, that seems to be the tack Twitter has embraced.

The company is not caving completely, however. They have been blocked in China for over two years, and are unlikely to be allowed back in as a result of this announcement. Why? Because that government doesn’t even want its people to know that content has been blocked; Twitter insists on giving them at least that courtesy. It is interesting to note that the company is working with Chilling Effects, an Internet freedom advocacy group, to draft its take-down notices.

You’d have to live in a cave to not realize that right now, in our famously freedom-loving country, we are in the middle of our own Internet censorship battle. Here, money is at the center of the fight. Specifically, corporations want to stop the sale of pirated goods. Corporations are people too, don’t you know?

These companies do have a valid concern, but I don’t have to tell you that the wildly unpopular SOPA and PIPA Acts propose enforcement through ham-fisted tactics that leave no room for due process. (If you didn’t know that, do some research. Right now. I’ll wait.)

The article notes that Twitter has been a crucial facilitator of political protest and revolutionary action around the world. The company also has a history of supporting transparency and free expression. However, it must do what it has to do if it wants to keep expanding. At the least, it must protect its employees from prosecution for breaking the rules in foreign lands. Yes, that would be important.

Cynthia Murrell, February 02, 2012

Ho Hum CES

January 24th, 2012 | Posted by admin in marketing | mobility | News | smartphone - (0 Comments)

Usually, nothing quickens the pulse like mobile highlights from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). But this year – not so much. InformationWeek’s “5 Mobile Trends from CES 2012” highlights the show’s mobile offerings.

“Dozens of new LTE 4G smartphones and tablets were announced by manufacturers and carriers. LTE will become a mainstream technology this year.” “Some of the week’s most exciting handsets boast screens ranging between 4.7 and 5.3 inches. It won’t be much longer before phone screens reach tablet proportions — if they haven’t already.” “There were hardly any feature phones announced at CES 2012.” “The vast bulk of devices announced at the show lack near-field communications (NFC), and lack the ability to make mobile payments. This all but assures that NFC and mobile payments won’t start to take off until nearly halfway through 2012.” “The mobile industry continues to thrive on innovation and competition”

None of this is exactly news to those of us following the mobile industry, and there was a decided lack of headline-grabbing demos at this year’s CES. With all the bad economic news from other industries, maybe for the mobile sector the best news is old news.

Rita Safranek, January 24, 2012

Gadgets of Note from 2012 CES

January 19th, 2012 | Posted by admin in app | marketing | News | smartphone - (0 Comments)

Maybe it is the slow economy, but the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) definitely lacked the sizzle of previous years. There were some notable introductions, as detailed in BostonHerald.com’s “Cool Gadgets Make Splash.”

In Microsoft’s final CES, the company showed the Windows Phone 7 operating system, which

“sports a striking design of flat, colorful squares containing information from different apps. Nokia demonstrated the Lumia 800 and 900 smartphones running the OS.” “Intel made a big push with its Ultrabook concept — a category of slim laptops, similar to the MacBook Air, powered by Intel chips, and made by several manufacturers.”

Microsoft’s late to the smartphone party, and it doesn’t sport features that provide an overwhelming reason for existing iPhone and Android users (often locked into multi-year contracts) to switch. The thin Ultrabook will appeal to users needing the functionality of a laptop and the totability of a tablet. Wilocity demoed WiFi technology that could help drive the trend to slimmer devices. Samsung also unveiled a technology to watch – the Galaxy Note, a 5.3-inch mobile device dubbed a “phablet.” Combining functionality so that users only need one device is a trend that has left pagers and two-way messaging in its wake. This could be the next wave.

Rita Safranek, January 19, 2012

Android App Joins Censorship Fight

January 17th, 2012 | Posted by admin in News | Privacy | security - (0 Comments)

When are lawmakers going to learn that techies are a resourceful group that is no fan of Big Brother regulation? In “Android Barcode Scanner App Detects If a Product’s Maker Supports SOPA,” Forbes details the efforts of a group of students at the University of British Columbia to solidify opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

According to the app makes it easy to identify SOPA-supporting companies.

No More SOPA, a free Android application … allows users to scan any product’s barcode and determine if it was made by a company that officially supports SOPA, or even a parent company or subsidiary of a SOPA supporter. The app … uses a public UPC database to find a product’s manufacturer then queries a remote server to compare the manufacturer with a list of 800 firms with lobbying ties to the bill.” “As a Senate hearing on SOPA looms later this month, hackers and engineers have been busy building tools to cripple or defeat the bill, which many see as imposing widespread censorship on the Internet as well as potentially holding back advances in security.

If corporate lobbyists thought they were going to be able to quietly slide this through, it looks like they’ve got another thing coming. This is an interesting test case that bears watching – to what extent mobile technology coupled with social media can impact the creation of public policy in the US.

Jim Daniels, January 17, 2012

Podcast Brings Experience to Social Media Questions

Presaging their inaugural Social Media Analytics Summit in April, Text Analytics News has posted the podcast of their recent Social Media Analytics Panel.

The panel brings together Bill Touhig of J.D. Power & Associates, Robin Seidner of Radian6, and Beyond the Arc’s Steven J. Ramirez. The social media analytics experts share their insights in the 55 minute podcast. The description describes the discussion content:

Analytic technologies and techniques being used to make business sense of the flood of user-generated content
The cutting edges of social media and sentiment analysis – what works, where improvements are being made, and which platforms are leading the way
The comparison between proprietary and do-it-yourself tools for social media analysis
Effective ways for leveraging social media information to get a leg up on your competition

I can’t fit my two pages of notes here, so do yourself a favor and check out the podcast for yourself. A couple of observations stuck with me.

First, with social media data, more is not better. This may seem obvious to some, but it is not the case with other data types, where more volume produces more accurate results. Instead, analysts find that they must narrow the data to exclude the vast amounts of irrelevant input that social media provides. That process adds a lot of complexity.

Second, text analytics is experiencing a talent gap. As Ramirez quipped, if you know young people just starting out, advise them to go into this as-of-yet-low-competition field. Many companies would prefer to save the cost of hiring a consultant, and most business users can probably figure things out. If the analysis needs are comparatively simple, that is. However, companies must invest in tools and training for the best in-house results.

Do yourself a favor: invest in attendance to the Social Media Analytics Summit this spring.

Cynthia Murrell, January 10, 2012

Safety First?

December 22nd, 2011 | Posted by admin in guidelines | mobility | News | smartphone - (0 Comments)

Suggesting a middle-of-the-road approach, The Times Leader maintains, “Wholesale Ban on Mobile Devices in Cars Unlikely to Succeed.” Writer Nick DeLorenzo recognizes that mobile device distraction behind the wheel is a serious problem, but insists that human nature will hinder attempts to make it universally illegal. Besides, new cars are coming equipped with interactive devices; the more of these wired wheels that make it onto the roads, the more difficult it will be to ban their gadgets.

Instead of waging that battle, DeLorenzo proposes a compromise of sorts. The write up explains:

“Many new cars have systems that can detect driving conditions — traffic around the car, speed, location and more. If the vehicle is exceeding a certain speed, road conditions are unsafe, there is heavy traffic, the area has a high rate of accidents or driving becomes erratic, begin disabling features, starting with hands-free calling.

“Make this function optional, allow it to be disabled, and work with insurance companies to ensure penalties if an accident takes place and the system is disabled.”

Interesting suggestion; it may be too reasonable to get anywhere, though.

We have a hard time seeing our tech dependent readers giving up mobile devices in standstill traffic but, for our longevity, please be safe with your tech. With or without the regulations.

Cynthia Murrell, December 22, 2011

PolySpot Managing Director Gilles André: Search and Business Wizard

December 13th, 2011 | Posted by admin in business process | Features | Knowledge management | News - (0 Comments)

As a regular component of Beyond Search, the Search Wizards Speak section features “PolySpot: An Interview with Gilles André”. In addition to holding the title of “Search Wizard,” it would also be fitting to identify PolySpot Managing Director Gilles André as a “Business Wizard.” While he spoke about the company’s exposure to open source and the differences between PolySpot and their competitors, we learned much about his background and savvy in the business world.

PolySpot delivers an agile enterprise search infrastructure + apps for organizations facing the challenges of big data. As the chief executive officer, André has much experience in content processing, which he elaborates on in the interview:

I set up what is now known as an extract, transform, and load or ETL company in 1997. After two fast-growth years, my team and I had hit $20 million in annual revenues. Then we made a decision that looked highly attractive for our investors. We sold the company to the Canadian firm Hummingbird. Looking back, I think we sold too early.

From this endeavor, he learned there were many substantial opportunities in the digital information market. Several years ago, the conversation with CEO Olivier Lefassy began, and the two discussed the opportunities unstructured data presented to the PolySpot leading to Lefassy joining the team in 2011. Ultimately, the conclusion was to the following plan:

[PolySpot] could deliver a solution to organizations wanting to gain access to information which answered a business question. Our approach was to leapfrog the study, plan, implement, customize, and upgrade approach that most enterprise vendors force upon their licenses. PolySpot’s agile framework, its use of open source technology like Lucene, and a focus on putting information in the business work flow.

With this business model, PolySpot is poised for success. It is one thing to have a current working model, but it shows this company is operating on another level as we see evidence that PolySpot has its eyes on the future monitoring trends in entity extraction: relationships between entities and apps in the enterprise. Both PolySpot and Gilles André will remain on our radar.

Megan Feil, December 13, 2011

With Mobile Workforce, It’s iPhone over Blackberry

Once the mobile workforce’s darling, Blackberry has lost its appeal, having been trumped by Apple’s iPhone. Red Orbit’s “iPhone Tops Blackberry as Top Enterprise Phone” details iPass Inc.’s quarterly Mobile Workforce Report that charts the device’s downfall.

“Among mobile employees, the iPhone has captured 45 percent of the market share and overall business smartphone usage has increased to 91 percent. “ “The report discusses the emotional attachment that workers have toward their smartphones, 59 percent would feel disoriented, distraught or lonely without their smartphone for even a week. “ “According to iPass, Blackberry usage is on the decline with their market share dropping from 35 percent in 2010 down to 32 percent today. Android usage has doubled year over year and jumping into the number three spot with 21 percent market share.”

The results aren’t exactly a surprise, particularly given that the good iPhone news is coming from iPass. While Blackberry’s slide to technological irrelevance continues, the rise in android usage is noteworthy. Almost half of the smartphones AT&T sold in the third quarter of 2011 were androids. The mobile workforce technology market is now a two-horse race.

Rita Safranek, December 9, 2011