Kreativraschen has an English language blog entry on how Germany’s new data retention law is altering human behavior when it comes to using telecommunications systems, such as the phone. Germany enacted a data retention law that requires telecommunications companies to log who called who and store that information for six months so that law enforcement could use the data if they needed to.
The Forsa institute did a survey of a little over 1000 people to see how the data retention law altered their behavior if any. Their results are very interesting.
* 73% know about the data retention
* 11% said that they had already abstained from using phone, cell phone or e-mail in certain occasions
* 6% believe to receive less communication since the beginning of the data retention
* 52% said they probably would not use telecommunication for contacts like drug counselors, psychotherapists or marriage counselors because of data retention
And the sad fact: 48% still think that data retention is a necessary step for crime prevention.
What is interesting is one of the side bar comments on the entry about people not calling their therapists, which can be bad depending on how much the person under therapy is in trouble mentally or emotionally. There is also the argument that beyond crime, this information can be used to determine what journalist broke what story, and that if using the phone, journalists should not be doing so when contacting confidential or private contacts.
In all this is an interesting survey, well worth taking a look and dumping it into babel fish to get the full translation and the full impact.
In the “about time” department, Techmeme announces that they now have a search capability locally on site. This is good, bit late, but better late than never. Gabe Rivera posted on the techmeme blog today some cool information about the feature, this one caught our attention.
What’s next? Search for Techmeme’s sister sites are planned but not active as of today. Also on the way are RSS feeds for search results, the simplest kind of search “API”. Source: Techmeme
So if I want, and many folks I know are going to do this right off the bat when the Search RSS goes live is sit there like a voyeur and watch what other people search for on techmeme, not only to help us figure out what is important this moment, but using some neat programming, make a flex based feed, mapping, and just about any other kind of “twitterish” process as techmeme search helps other folks figure out what is important this moment.
This could be interesting, can we have the RSS feed now, or should we just hang out for 36 months waiting for that feature set? (This is problem, you give someone something, then they always want more, never should have posted “what’s next”).
Tags: techmeme, search,rss,watcher, people, fun
With ISP profiling for advertising companies, as well as other ways that the ISP’s can work out a profile of who you are, there are some likely ways that you can pollute the results just to make some poor advertising executives day, and your ISP’s day just a tad bit more annoying.
This is akin to going to the grocery store, using your grocery tracking card and buying beer, diapers, and ice cream, when you never bought diapers before. This is very effective when you don’t have kids, as you will get advertising for diapers, which people pay for, that has no chance of getting you to make a purchase for diapers ever again.
Earlier on ITToolbox I wrote about AntiPhorumLite, a way to automate your browsing habits as a back end never to be seen process that can pollute the results of phorum which is being used in the UK for the same concerns, ISP’s monitoring your surfing habits, all to make a profile, sell better advertising, and make money off your habits.
Lets be realistic as well, when Google is showing that the number four most searched for thing today (the 18th of May 2008) is “Asian Lady Boys”, this might be something you don’t want to have known about yourself, or your porno selections late at night when the rest of the family is asleep.
Thinking on this line, the use of AntiPhorumLite might be a way for everyone else to have an automated system to alter and make the results of ISP monitoring useless to marketing folks.
The idea is to let the program run and do its thing in the background to make it look like you are into things that are totally bogus about you. This will get advertising to be bogus because the profile and the majority of the data about you is bogus as well.
Here is the thought:
ISP spends money on monitoring equipment to track where you go via the Web
ISP sells that tracking to a marketing company thinking the data is accurate
Marketing company spends money to market you high end gorilla suits which you will never buy
Marketing company starts wondering why they are not selling more stuff
Doubt is raised as to the accuracy of the ISP profiles
ISP can’t sell profiles because the data is bogus
ISP is out money on the monitoring equipment that they bought
Marketing company is out money for the profiles and the advertising they bought
You still get to do your thing. In other words, pollute the data stream with crap, and make the data bogus. This might work out really well, because odds are likely that these systems are going to become more and more prevalent over time as ISP’s look for ways to monetize better. If we can’t get anyone to help people not be monitored, then the only way around it is to pollute the data stream, and call into question the data itself.
Jason Calcanais posted on twitter the question “Question of the day: Can you copyright your Twitter stream? Can anyone republish anyone’s twitter stream? Thoughts?” It is an interesting idea, how ephemeral is 140 words or less, and if they are pulled and reproduced like in the image below, who owns what? Does it in the longer run really matter?
One of the reasons that this is a good question, is that with passage of the Pro-IP act, the way that the DMCA has been subverted for illegal take downs (with evidently no back action on that issue), and the host of other copyright issues that seem to be touching on everything we do, someone coming along and copyrighting their twitter stream is not far fetched.
The idea of ownership, what we own, and what we don’t own, we merely rent is as complex and as convoluted now as they have ever been. America was built on piracy, the theft of intellectual property is a time honored tradition since the start of the country. China is now doing a one over on America, and building their country on the time honored tradition of IP theft. What we can’t create we steal. Been that way for a while now.
This brings us back to twitter stream and copyright. I like the question, but evidently this answer does not fit into another twitter stream, it is more pontificating on the idea. If Jason copyrights his question, which he can do, with or without merit, as well as all the answers that I screen capped above, who owns that? Does it matter?
Yes it does matter, because no one wants to be sued for doing something, while I am taking the question and running with it, at this point with blogging, and RSS feed scraping, and the host of other ways that the content off by pro and personal blog are used, the effort that I would have to go into policing the use of the stuff I write is well beyond me, and the recovery of any money would be pretty slim.
Add to that the twitter stream, and no one single person could hope to police the Internet for their own content, in or out of context. The copyright would not matter, the words will move too fast onto other sites, which would cause a logistical nightmare, huge costs, and little recovery. I know this sounds like the MPAA/RIAA copyright terrorism, but if we end up there with twitter, what a waste of time, resources, and people to hunt down 140 words or less.
If you have ever tooled around archive.org it has some of the most fascinating materials that are available to you to watch. We ran into this video featuring Guy Kawasaki from 1996 and just about fell over laughing. You can walk away from this thinking that Guy is one of the smartest kids on the block, you can also wonder why we are dealing with the same issues 12 years later.
The video covers different ways to manage the glut of information showing up on computers and other storage devices. Demonstrations include DayTimer Organizer 2.0, Em@iler, Personal Journal, and DataTimes Summarizer. Originally broadcast in 1996.
The fun times early on in the dot com boom that was a fun time, this is a great flashback to some of the wildest times ever.
Tags: guy kawasaki, computer chronicals, dot com boom, silicon valley, fun, humor
Anything that can have me riveted at 5:30 in the morning on a Saturday is worth taking a look at if you do nothing else today. As bloggers, marketeers less wholesome creatures like SEO weasels all try to figure out how to get the most bang for the buck on what they are doing, Jake Luciani over at third rail has done some impressive statistical analysis of when is the best time to post a blog entry.
Before you roll your eyes, the numbers do not hurt, and the conclusion is strikingly easy to get, he finds that
It’s pretty clear that Tues - Friday between 10am - 2pm PST are the “hot times” for popular blog posts. Now, I didn’t filter out non-english posts and this doesn’t account for the time it took for the posts to get to the front page of these sites, but I do think it’s clear posting late at night or on the weekends + Monday is a bad idea. Your post will most likely go unnoticed. Third Rail
And just in case, Jake has a handy graphic that is starting to show up in other places, like Read Write Web (who does a great summary + bonus material on their web site here).
Mashable also has a summary + bonus material that is interesting to read as well right here.
In the longer run, it is Saturday at 6AM, meaning no one will read this according to the statistics. The other interesting thing is that if you look at my friend feed, I’ll tend to be a statistical out lier on what Jake found. I’ll post in the morning usually, my pro blog gets over 1100 people per day on average (thanks long tail), but you will see me active between say 5 AM and say 5PM (hey gotta take some time off from those social networking pressures). I’ll read, post, and comment on anything, well just about.
So take this with a grain of salt, not all is illuminated on the path of statistics, but if you are interested in human behavior models, this one makes some sense.
Tags: jake luciani, aidrss, r, best, time, post, blog, blogger, statistics, hot times, popular, posts
Rational Security reports that southwest airlines is monitoring twitter streams to see what people are saying about their brand. This along with twitter spam is not a surprise, what is surprising is that anyone would be surprised at all. Many companies should be monitoring the social networks looking to see what people are saying.
The wonderful part about twitter is that it is transitory, it is hard to get a DMCA take down when the meme’s fly by so fast, and are collected in only a handful of sites, those will probably get the take down notice.
Social spaces are going to be monitored by companies, this should never come as a surprise. While it makes for some interesting news, and sensational headlines, smart companies are doing this, and working out the public relations spin machine to counter act negative PR. What will be interesting to see is if companies start flooding twitter with overly bright positive reviews of their service, oh wait, too late already, it is called twitter spam.
Keywords: public relations, twitter, monitoring, south west airlines, company, corporate, social graph, social networks
