WebProNews

Tag: Data

  • Mexicans Well Overcharged Billions In Phone Web

    Mexico is the second largest Latin American economy, but it seems the cost of phone and internet bills are holding it back. From the years of 2005-2009, consumers in mexico spent 13.4 billion dollars per year excess for phone and internet. Also it seems the highest fees impacted the poorer families. This overcharging ended up costing the country 129 billion dollars over a five year time span.

    The telephone market is dominated by Slim Telefonos de Mexico A.K.A. Telemex which provides nearly 80 percent of the services, while billionaire Carlos Slim controls around 70 percent of the cellphone market with America Movil.

    Dionisio Perez-Jacome, minister of Communications and Transport had this to say, according to one source:

    “This is a critical study…that exposes the weakness of the telecommunications sector in Mexico.”

    In the year 2008, Telemex had a profit margin of nearly 50 percent, while countries like Canada and the UK only had close to 30 percent. Mexican Government is, in the mean time, trying to increase broadband speeds in mexico, which apparently they feel will soften the blow of thee high prices. Evidently in their opinion broadband speed trumps ridiculous price.

    In your opinion, does speed outweigh price or do steep prices steer you elsewhere? Should speed and price equal each other? With this economy who can afford expensive internet anyway? Leave your opinions in the comments section

  • Megaupload Data Could Be Erased By Thursday

    The Megaupload saga continues with the potential erasure of data on their servers.

    Data belonging to users of Megaupload could be deleted as soon as Thursday according to federal prosecutors. CBS is reporting that the company is defending itself by saying that their service was primarily used to store data like family photos and personal documents. Those users hoped they would be able to get their data back.

    Megaupload hired two outside companies to store the data. As part of the investigation, the federal government froze the company’s account so they can’t pay the hosting fees.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia filed a letter in the case Friday saying that the storage companies, Carpatha Hosting and Cogent Communications Group, may begin deleting data Thursday.

    The letter went on to say that the government copied some data from the servers. They have executed their search warrants so they have no right to access the data. The servers belong to the two companies so any inquiries need to be brought up with them.

    Megaupload’s attorney Ira Rothken said that the company is working towards an agreement to keep the data from being erased. Not only is the data important to the 50 million customers that used the service, but it is essential for the company’s defense as well.

    “We’re cautiously optimistic at this point that because the United States, as well as Megaupload, should have a common desire to protect consumers, that this type of agreement will get done,” he said.

    This could complicate efforts by the Pirate Party to bring a formal complaint against the FBI for the many users who used the service for legal file storage.

    We’ll keep you up to date on any developments in the Mega saga.

  • Hawaii Could Force ISPs To Log All Browsing History, Indefinitely

    In the current political climate, with all the buzz about SOPA & PIPA and now H.R.1981 & ACTA, Hawaii state representative John Mizuno has to be outside of his mind to introduce a comical piece of legislation like H.B. 2288.

    Take that back. In any climate, John Mizuno would have to be outside of his mind to introduce a bill like this. That is, unless it passes – in which case we will all feel like we’re the ones taking the crazy pills.

    Anyway, the idiotic and dangerous bill that I’m referring to was proposed on Friday and would basically require all internet providers to retain customer records for a time “no less than two years.” The “customer records” would not only include each subscriber’s personal information, but their entire browsing history.

    Seriously. The language is as plain as it is vague. Check it out:

    Recordkeeping requirements for internet service providers. Any internet service provider that provides internet service to a consumer in the State shall retain consumer records for no less than two years. The required data for the consumer records shall include each subscriber’s information and internet destination history information. Destination information shall include any of the following:

    (1) Internet protocol address;
    (2) Domain name; or
    (3) Host name.

    This is the only directive included in H.B. 2288. Nothing else to describe motivations, or specific clarifications either. When a politician introduces legislation this moronic, one immediately thinks about ulterior motives. But what could Rep. Mizuno have to gain from this?

    The bill simply requires ISPs to log all of this data and makes no mentions of how they can use it or who they can give it to – the police? Advertisers?

    And as CNET points out, if passed, this could end up affecting more than just Hawaiian citizens:

    Because the wording is so broad and applies to any company that “provides access to the Internet,” Mizuno’s legislation could sweep in far more than AT&T, Verizon, and Hawaii’s local Internet providers. It could also impose sweeping new requirements on coffee shops, bookstores, and hotels frequented by the over 6 million tourists who visit the islands each year.

    The bill is being heard in the House today. A companion bill has also been introduced in the Hawaii State Senate, with no hearing yet scheduled.

    I’m not sure that I’ve heard legislation so dangerously vague in quite some time. What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments.

  • NASA’s U.S. Tree Map: Woody Biomass Density Never Looked So Cool

    NASA is awesome for a variety of reasons, most prominently their role in everything space related. But NASA is also a great source of wonders of the more terrestrial persuasion, as is demonstrated in this new project about trees.

    Key takeaway: If you really love trees, just stay away from the middle of the United States.

    Although most of you probably already knew that little tidbit, I bet you’ve never seen a map of the U.S. based on “woody biomass” before.

    This tree density map, released by NASA, is a product of a collaboration between Josef Kellndorfer and Wayne Walker of the Woods Hole Research Center, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. As a lover of woodlands, I must say, it’s nice to live near the Appalachians. Check it out below:

    The visualization above was created with data from the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset. What you’re really seeing is concentrations of organic carbon, which is stored in the trees. More carbon concentration = more trees.

    Here’s how NASA describes the effort:

    Over six years, researchers assembled the national forest map from space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models, and a massive amount of ground-based data. It is possibly the highest resolution and most detailed view of forest structure and carbon storage ever assembled for any country.

    Forests in the U.S. were mapped down to a scale of 30 meters, or roughly 10 computer display pixels for every hectare of land (4 pixels per acre). They divided the country into 66 mapping zones and ended up mapping 265 million segments of the American land surface. Kellndorfer estimates that their mapping database includes measurements of about five million trees.

    Bonus Takeaway: the tree density map really looks like a population density map of the U.S. Go figure.

  • IBM Fits A Bit Into Twelve Atoms

    IBM Fits A Bit Into Twelve Atoms

    Science can sometimes just blow my mind. This is one of those times.

    Researchers at IBM last week stored a bit, the smallest form of computer memory, into 12 atoms. They make the point of saying that this is significantly less than today’s hard drives that use about one million atoms to store a single bit of information. They say that the ability to manipulate matter by its most basic components could lead to our ability to build smaller, faster and more energy-efficient devices.

    The usual route of technological advancement is to start out big and work your way down to smaller devices. The team at IBM flipped that notion on its head and started at the smallest they could go: a single atom. From there, they tested it to see how many atoms they could get before it would take to a single bit.

    The researchers demonstrated magnetic storage that is at least 100 times more dense than today’s hard drives and solid state drives. Think of the load times off of something that compact. It would create a huge advancement in computing!

    The team thinks that future applications of nanostructures built one atom at a time that apply their unconventional form of magnetism called antiferromagnetism could allow people to store 100 times more data in the same space of today’s disk drives.

    “The chip industry will continue its pursuit of incremental scaling in semiconductor technology but, as components continue to shrink, the march continues to the inevitable end point: the atom. We’re taking the opposite approach and starting with the smallest unit — single atoms — to build computing devices one atom at a time.” Andreas Heinrich, the lead investigator into atomic storage at IBM Research – Almaden, in California, said.

    For those wondering how they did it, IBM used ferromagnets which have similar properties to the magnets inside refrigerators. The ferromagnets align the spins of all of bound atoms in a single direction. The problem came from the bits on the atomic level that could strongly affect their neighboring bits. It took precise control on the part of the IMB researchers to control the interactions between the bits.

    The researchers then used a scanning tunneling microscope to atomically engineer a group of twelve coupled atoms that stored a bit of data for hours at low temperatures. Taking advantage of their magnetic spin directions, they were able to pack the magnetic bits much closer together than was ever previously thought. They did all this without the atom structure becoming unstable.

    The lead image shows a magnetic byte imaged five times in different magnetic states to store the ASCII code for each letter of the word THINK, IBM’s corporate mantra since 1914. The team achieved this by using 96 iron atoms, one bit was stored by 12 atoms and there are eight bits in each byte.

    For those who want to know more or would prefer an audio-visual explanation of how they did it, IBM has you covered.

  • Facebook Will Share Your Data – Including Private Messages – With Politico

    Facebook announced last week that they will be mining your posts and messages for your thoughts on the GOP presidential candidates, and they will share that info with Politico.

    From that announcement:

    “Facebook will compile mentions of the candidates in U.S. users’ posts and comments as well as assess positive and negative sentiments expressed about them. Facebook’s data team will use automated software tools frequently used by researchers to infer sentiment from text.”

    As an example of the kind of data this mining will reveal, they offer this. Here are some screenshots:

    (image)

    (image)

  • Wolfram Proposes .data TLD

    Stephen Wolfram, the scientist behind Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, says he’s been involved with the worldwide data community in coordinating the creation of a .data top-level Internet domain, which would highlight the exposure of data across the Internet, “and providing added impetus for organizations to expose data in a way that can efficiently be found and accessed.”

    In a post on his blog, he says:

    In building Wolfram|Alpha, we’ve absorbed an immense amount of data, across a huge number of domains. But—perhaps surprisingly—almost none of it has come in any direct way from the visible internet. Instead, it’s mostly from a complicated patchwork of data files and feeds and database dumps.

    But wouldn’t it be nice if there was some standard way to get access to whatever structured data any organization wants to expose?

    Right now there are conventions for websites about exposing sitemaps that tell web crawlers how to navigate the sites. And there are plenty of loose conventions about how websites are organized. But there’s really nothing about structured data.

    …

    There are product catalogs, store information, event calendars, regulatory filings, inventory data, historical reference material, contact information—lots of things that can be very usefully computed from. But even if these things are somewhere on an organization’s website, there’s no standard way to find them, let alone standard structured formats for them.

    He goes on to express the idea of creating the “data web” to “parallel” the ordinary web, bug geared toward computational use.

    Essentially, there would be a data-driven .data alongside a site’s .com.

    Wolfram says they’re seeking input and partners for the effort. He appears to be taking a leadership role for the initiative.

    Would do you think of this concept?

  • QR Codes: Do You Care Anymore?

    QR Codes: Do You Care Anymore?

    Say you’re walking down the street and you see the unmistakable black and white pattern of a Quick Response code, what is your immediate reaction? Do you have the uncontrollable urge to find out what kind of secrets are contained in its design? Do you quickly fumble to find your smartphone, hoping that activating the code will lead you to a secret website – maybe a special deal?

    Or do you just walk by, unable to burden yourself with one more thing to do in your busy day?

    According to some research by QR skeptic youth marketing agency Archrival, there is at least one important group of the population that’s failing to muster any excitement for QR codes.

    They asked over 500 students across 24 different U.S. college campuses about the technology and found that although recognition of the codes was pretty high, interaction was just the opposite.

    Students were shown a picture of a QR code and then asked questions like: Can you identify what this is? Do you know how to use it? How likely are you to engage with these in the future?

    Here are just a few of our findings:

    • 81% of students owned a smartphone
    • 80% of students had previously seen a QR code
    • 21% of students successfully scanned our QR code example.
    • 75% of students said they are “Not Likely” to scan a QR code in the future.

    Apparently, these college kids know all about QR codes and have the smartphones they need to interact with them, but really have no desire to investigate further when they encounter one.

    It looks like one of the big problems is actually a lack of comprehensive understanding of the process. Some of the students thought that their smartphone camera in some way included a native QR code reader, and had no idea that a 3rd party app was necessary to read the code. Many just thought the whole thing took too long and abandoned the process before completion. Either way, that 75% figure of students who said that don’t plan to scan a QR code in the future is an interesting one to marketers and promoters.

    QR codes can be used effectively for viral marketing – for instance when a team constructing an underground art show sticks QR stickers all over town, and scanning them leads directly to the show’s website. Still, even this interesting promotional concept requires curiosity from the public.

    And of course QR codes have simple data storage purposes, which are very practical in daily life. Take for instance airlines that use them for electronic boarding passes. Some entering the work force have also taken to putting QR codes on their resumes, providing employers with a way to access more information. Hospitals are even using the codes to help women schedule mammograms.

    But as far as college kids are concerned, Archrival has some advice for those wanting to use QR codes for marketing purposes: “Unless QR codes become easier, more nimble, and can provide content that engenders a more meaningful connection to the brand or product, students will continue to shower them with apathy.”

    Check out the infographic below and let us know your feelings about QR code marketing and promotion in the comments.

    [Lead Image courtesy Wikipedia]

  • Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon? Try Four Degrees Of Anyone On Facebook

    Do you subscribe to the “it’s a small world out there” philosophy? If so, you recognize that even though there are billions of people in the world, the chance that you share some sort of odd connection with any random stranger out there is at least reasonable.

    Everyone’s heard of the “Six Degrees of Separation,” or maybe its more pop-culture oriented cousin Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Both of those theories state that any two humans on the planet are separated by only a few jumps. For instance, I could somehow connect myself to some random girl in Siberia through six degrees, or six people between us. This would result in about seven jumps, or connections.

    Or, as my Uncle likes to tell during the holidays, his friend’s cousin’s kid takes a karate class with a guy who worked on Goodfellas with Robert de Niro.

    Apparently, things are a little different when you look at the Facebook community. The Facebook Data Team has an interesting post about the connections that Facebook’s 721 million+ active users have across the network.

    First off, the study found that Facebook’s 721 million+ active users have over 69 billion friendships represented. The average amount of friends that any given person has on the site is 190.

    Using an algorithm developed at the Laboratory for Web Algorithmics of the Università degli Studi di Milano, it was determined that folks on Facebook are closer to one another than the “six degrees” of common thought:

    We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops). And as Facebook has grown over the years, representing an ever larger fraction of the global population, it has become steadily more connected. The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops, while now it is 4.74.

    So it’s highly possible that you can pick any random person on Facebook and there would only be 4 people between you guys.

    And if that person is in the same country as you, there’s probably an even smaller degree of separation – 3 people (4 jumps).

    It’s a small world of social media, after all.

  • Should Google Be Worried about Google+?

    Should Google Be Worried about Google+?

    What’s up with Google+? One day, reports say how much the service has grown, and the very next day, they say just the opposite. The unfavorable reports about the social network have even gone to the extreme to call it dead.

    Do you use Google+ regularly? We’d love to know.

    While the fact of declaring it “dead” is debatable, there are some definite signs that should cause Google to be concerned. For instance, Dan Reimold, the Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Tampa, wrote a post entitled “Google+: Social Media Upstart ‘Worse Than a Ghost Town,’” in which he not only called the social network dead, but he also gave a bleak prediction:

    “At worst, in the coming months, it will literally fade away to nothing or exist as Internet plankton,” he wrote. “At best, it will be to social networking what Microsoft’s Bing is to online search: perfectly adequate; fun to stumble onto once in awhile; and completely irrelevant to the mainstream web.”

    In an interview with WebProNews not long ago, Reimold told us that he came to this conclusion after he realized that he wasn’t finding anything on Google+ that was more interesting or different from the information he was already finding on his other social networks.

    Also, a chart released by Michael DeGusta showing the inactivity of Google’s own management on Google+ has done nothing but add to this negative outlook. However, since this chart was released, Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, has begun to use the service.

    Google+” class=”aligncenter” width=”565″ height=”527″ />

    The biggest blow for Google and its social network was probably last week when Steve Yegge, one of its own software engineers, accidentally published a not-so-flattering post about Google+ on the network itself. In the post, Yegge essentially pointed out what his employer was doing wrong with Google+, making statements such as:

    “Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it.”

    And this: “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.”

    Yegge’s post was intended to only go out to his Google circle but was instead shared publicly.

    More recently, data analytics firm Chitika released some research that gives Google yet another reason to be concerned. The company looked at Google+ before and after its public launch in late September. Even though Experian Hitwise reported that Google+ grew 1269 percent in the week following its public launch, Chitika’s data shows this surge was only temporary.

    Gabe Donnini, an analyst with Chitika, explained to us that the traffic to Google+ grew to peak levels immediately after the public launch but then fell over 60 percent shortly after.

    “We just looked at the stats to investigate this trend, and as it turned out, there was a sharp spike and then a sharp decline almost immediately after the days following Google+‘s public beta,” he said.

    Google+ Public Launch” class=”aligncenter” width=”616″ height=”366″ />

    Donnini told us that he believed the traffic spike was driven by the publicity surrounding the public launch. However, Chitika decided to investigate further and extend the research period beyond the week after Google+ opened publicly. What it found was that the downward trend actually got worse. According to its research, the largest drop in traffic for Google+ was more than 70 percent.

    Google+ Research” class=”aligncenter” width=”616″ height=”366″ />

    Last week in Google’s Q3 earnings report, CEO Larry Page proudly said that Google+ had surpassed 40 million users.

    “Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark,” he said. “People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!”

    This is a large number especially considering that the network has only existed for a few months. But, as Chitika data shows, it doesn’t mean that all these users are active.

    According to Donnini, the lack of activity from users is due to many reasons. First of all, users can’t import or sync their existing networks into their Google+ network.

    “There’s very little incentive to share if you don’t have anyone to share with,” he said.

    He also believes that users are inactive because it took Google a long time to make its API available to developers. As he explained, a large part of the success of social networks is due to the network of services that are built on the overall platform.

    “By not providing a developer API in which a useful network of services could be built for their users, Google basically made it much harder for their users to find a way to (a) stay on the site, and (b) they kind of lowered the utility of Google+ as a site for their new userbase,” he said.

    He also pointed out, “They don’t need to become Facebook, they need to become what Facebook is going to become.”

    Interestingly, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Google+ czar Vic Gundotra spoke about the social network at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday. Both indicated they were pleased with the progress of Google+, and Brin even said, “I’m not a social person myself… [but] Google+, I instantly found compelling.”

    Gundotra also said that Google+ would allow support in the near future for pseudonyms as well as for Google Apps users to be able to log into Google+ with their accounts. He also indicated that brand pages would be coming too, but not as quickly as the other features.

    Are these additions enough to save Google+?

  • Sprint iPhone 4S To Launch With Unlimited Data

    A month before Tuesday’s Apple iPhone event, before everyone was 100% sure that Sprint would be acquiring the new iPhone, rumors surfaced that Sprint would be launching the new iPhone with an unlimited data option.

    Just two weeks ago, speaking at GigaOm’s mobilize conference, Sprint’s CTO Stephen Bye said that Sprint was committed to unlimited data.

    Now we get confirmation that Sprint will indeed offer unlimited data plans for the iPhone 4S.

    Sprint spokeswoman Michelle Leff Mermelstein told All Things D that the carrier will offer unlimited data plans starting at $69.99. This plan will include unrestricted data as well as 450 voice minutes and unlimited mobile-to-mobile. If you want unlimited everything, data and voice, you’ll need to shell out $99.99 a month.

    On top of those base prices, you can also expect to add a $10 smartphone surcharge.

    This is undoubtedly a big draw for Sprint. They are now offering something that both AT&T and Verizon don’t offer anymore – unlimited data on an iPhone. New customers signing up with AT&T or Verizon will learn that their data plans now work on a tiered pricing structure.

    Will Sprint be able to keep unlimited data plans? Back in September, analysts speculated that Sprint might not be able to offer unlimited indefinitely – that they might opt to switch to a tiered structure once they have pulled a number of users away from AT&T and Verizon.

    As far as all the new traffic that will come from gaining the iPhone – Sprint says they can handle it: “We have every confidence in the ability of our 3G network to handle the influx of devices we expect to get,” said Mermelstein.

    Sprint CTO Stephen Bye, last month at the mobilize conference, said that there was “clearly a cost to support unlimited,” but they were committed.

    The iPhone 4S will drop on October 14th on the Sprint network.

  • iPhone 5 Rumor: Sprint Committed To Unlimited Data?

    Today we got confirmation that Apple is in fact holding a big media event on October 4th to discuss the new iPhone. It had been rumored for a little over a week, and today an invitation was sent out that announced the time, date, location and simply said “Let’s talk iPhone.”

    If the iPhone 5 is unveiled on October 4th, it has been theorized that the actual device will hit shelves sometime in mid-October. We know, of course, that AT&T and Verizon will have the device. But what about the guys in third place – Sprint?

    Here’s why people think Sprint will be getting the iPhone 5 –

    Of course, there has been no direct confirmation from Sprint regarding the next-gen iPhone, but many speculate that the network will offer the device when it finally launches. And when they do, it might come with an unlimited data plan.

    At GigaOm’s mobilize conference, Sprint’s CTO Stephen Bye said that Sprint was committed to unlimited data plans.

    From CNET –

    “There’s clearly a cost to support unlimited,” Bye admitted, adding that not every unlimited subscriber is as high a data user as his or her neighbor. At the same time, Bye emphasized the simplicity of supporting an unlimited data plan, citing the hidden cost for customer care and support related to tiered data plans

    Bye acknowledged the pressure of sticking with an unlimited data plan, however. “There’s a challenge for all engineers to work on how we get the cost structure down,” he said.

    If it actually comes to pass, having the new iPhone on its network could strain Sprint’s attempts to keep the unlimited data option for customers. But for now, they say they are committed to keeping it that way.

    Earlier this month, inside sources quoted by Bloomberg said that there was most definitely going to be an iPhone coming to Sprint. They also said that it would, in fact, come with an unlimited data plan.

  • Google+ Traffic Grows 1269% After Ditching Invitations

    New data from Experian Hitwise suggests that Google+ has exploded since Google decided to open the social network to the public.

    Last week, Google began allowing users to join Google+ without an invite. And according to the Hitwise data, this led to a massive influx of users all wanting in to the new service. From the week ending September 17th to the week of September 24th, traffic to Google+ grew 1269%. It received around 15 million total visits in the U.S. last week.

    They also note that this data does not even reflect mobile traffic or traffic from the Google Notification Bar (Google’s little black personalized bar).

    This massive growth catapulted Google+ into the top ten of Experian’s “social networking and forums” category. Before opening up to the public, Google+ was the 54th most visited site in that category. Now they are the 8th most visited site, just behind MySpace. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are the top three in that category.

    Google+ still seems to be dominated by what they describe as “influencers” and “early adopters.”

    This is undeniably good news for Google. Not everybody has been that optimistic about Google+‘s chances of survival and growth lately.

    Adding to the good news, “unofficial Google+ statistician” Paul Allen released his estimates regarding total users. He projected that Google+ has surpassed the 50 million user mark and that they are adding 2 million new members every day since allowing everyone to join.

  • iPhone 5 Rumor: Releasing On Sprint With Unlimited Data Plan?

    Today’s iPhone 5 rumor bypasses the “if” it’s going to launch on Sprint question and jumps right ahead to specifics of that launch.

    According to sources “familiar with the matter” as quoted in Bloomberg, the iPhone 5 will most definitely be arriving on Sprint. And when it does, it will come with an unlimited data plan.

    This move would make Sprint the only wireless carrier to offer the iPhone with an unlimited, flat-rate data plan. Carriers like AT&T used to offer the unlimited plan, but have since moved to a tiered data structure.

    The sources also confirmed the mid-October release date, the most widely accepted rumor nowadays regarding the upcoming device. To prepare for the iPhone 5 launch, they said, Sprint has postponed the debut of a rival 4G phone that was supposed to launch this month.

    It’s pretty easy to understand why Sprint would take this step. They are in 3rd place among wireless carriers, a good deal behind AT&T and Verizon. This kind of offering could make a splash right when the iPhone 5 drops, but could it really draw a significant amount of customers away from the big two?

    CNET quotes an analyst who thinks the unlimited offering, if accurately predicted, would only last for a brief time.

    “There’s a good chance they will use this to pull subscribers from AT&T and Verizon,” said Maribel Lopez, an analyst at Lopez Research. “After a certain time, they won’t offer the unlimited option any more.”

    It remains to be seen if that would actually be an effective strategy.

    Here’s everything we know about the iPhone 5 coming to Sprint:

    • Early reports indicate that the phone will launch sometime in mid-October.  That source named an actual date – October 7th.
    • Late last month, an internal memo leaked that showed Sprint upper management directing employees to keep mum regarding the iPhone 5 release.  They were specifically instructed to give a “no comment” response when any customer asked them directly.
    • Earlier this week, a Best Buy document surfaced detailing a probable early October release date for the iPhone 5 as well as a release on Sprint.
    • Last, we heard that Sprint was installing network repeaters in Apple stores in order to boost signal quality for next month’s release.

  • Your iPhone Apps Are Leaving You Vulnerable To Identity Theft

    It’s always something when it comes to mobile devices, privacy and security.

    Along with geo-tracking and the fear that your phones might be logging your every move, you can add this tech-worry to your list of concerns: Your smartphone apps are really bad at storing your sensitive data.

    According to a mobile app security study by viaForensics, “there is a serious potential threat for identity or financial theft if a lost smartphone should fall into the wrong hands.” Their “appWatchdog” study focused on data stored on your devices – usernames, passwords, and other private app data. They looked at both iPhone apps and Android apps.

    What they found was that many apps currently store sensitive, private user data without encryption. Of all the apps that they looked at, only 17% scored a “pass” rating. 44% scored a “warn” rating, meaning that private data was “recoverable.” 39% scored a “fail” rating, meaning that private data like account information and personal communication were stored in plain text.

    As you can see, it was quite easy for viaforensics to recover usernames from the apps and 10% of passwords they encountered were stored in plain text. For most apps and services, if you know the username and password, you’re in.

    The strongest apps from a security standpoint were the financial apps. Of the 32 that they tested, 14 received a passing rating. Of the 8 financial apps that “failed,” they say that they “were able to recover payment history, partial credit card numbers and other transaction-related data. Others cached security PIN or username/password.”

    On the other end of the spectrum, social networking apps were the worst. They tested 19 apps from 9 different companies and none passed the username test – everyone’s username was stored in plain text. Both LinkenIn for Android and Foursquare for Android failed their password test – users’ passwords were stored in plain text.

    Retail apps scored 0% pass, 86% warn and 14% fail while productivity apps like K-9 Mail and WordPress scored 9% pass, 49% warn and 43% fail on the whole.

    Since a good amount of people use the same usernames and passwords for multiple services, it’s not hard to foresee the possible dangers here. Someone with bad intentions gets hold of one username or one password and they could have access to quite a bit of personal stuff.

    Pair that with the fact that most smartphone passcodes are depressingly simple and you’ve got a security nightmare.

    Of course, nobody wants to sound alarmist, but consumers “should recognize the risk,” says viaForensics.

  • LivingSocial Reacts to Recent Studies about Daily Deals

    A couple of recent studies brought out some interesting, but contradictory data pertaining to daily deals’ providers. The first study from Rice University found that the business model behind daily deals’ sites was unsustainable and predicted “tough times ahead for daily deal sites.”

    The study specifically examined Groupon, LivingSocial, OpenTable, Travelzoo and BuyWithMe. If you remember, the New York Times questioned Groupon’s business model in a report earlier this year as well.

    “The major take-away from the study is that not enough businesses are coming back to daily deals to make the industry sustainable in the long run,” said Utpal Dholakia, an Associate Professor of Management at Rice University. “And our results from three studies and close to 500 businesses surveyed show that the deals are nowhere close to the rates of financial success for participating businesses that some companies claim to be having.”

    Interestingly, a second study was released even more recently that revealed just the opposite. The study from ForeSee Results found that new customers were, in fact, coming in and purchasing offers through daily deals’ sites, namely LivingSocial and Groupon.

    Larry Freed, the President and CEO of ForeSee Results, wrote this regarding their findings, “31%, are brand new business (new customers who weren’t aware of the company before the deal plus those with some brand awareness), 27% were infrequent customers, and 4% were former customers. That’s at least 35% and arguably 62% of deal buyers that represent NEW business.  This is compelling data, and these are the customers that provide what the daily deal model is supposed to provide: bringing you new customers to try your business or products out.” (No emphasis added).

    Needless to say, these studies have resulted in some confusion in the industry. Should merchants and consumers put their trust in Rice University, ForeSee Results, or neither?

    What do these studies tell you about the daily deals industry? We’d love to know your thoughts.

    In hopes of clearing up some of the confusion, WebProNews reached out to Maire Griffin of LivingSocial. According to her, the studies help to enforce checks and balances on the industry, but they don’t dictate what the real goals of LivingSocial are.

    When we spoke to Aaron Batalion, co-founder and CTO of LivingSocial, earlier this year, he pointed out that LivingSocial’s focus was on “local commerce” and not daily deals. Griffin spoke further to this point and said that the company worked with merchants on an individual level to create deals that not only encourage consumers to buy, but that would also help move the merchant’s business forward.

    “We’re confident in what we’re putting together for all local merchants in all of our different product sections,” she added.

    She also brought up another important point regarding LivingSocial’s approach. She said, “Daily deals are an important part of our business, and they will continue to be an important part of our business; but one thing that LivingSocial is really great at is innovating our products… our different lines, be it Families, Instants, Escapes, build on what we know and we’ve really perfected from a daily deals’ perspective to help more and different kinds of merchants all around the globe.”

    Even though Rice University’s study shed some pessimism on the future of daily deal’ providers, it found that 83 percent of LivingSocial’s customers were new customers. Griffin told us that internal data from LivingSocial shows a similar high influx of new customers and also an increasing number of secured relationships between the company and its merchants.

    “Our tremendous growth has really reinforced that we are putting the right steps in place,” she said. “We really believe in creating relationships with our merchants; that’s why we have actual employees in every single one of our markets, so we can learn that merchant’s business.

    In terms of the overall space, she additionally stated, “The industry has proven that it is good for local businesses.”

    Do you agree with LivingSocial and believe that daily deals are beneficial to local businesses?

  • Osama Bin Laden’s Compound Yields “Motherlode” of Computer Data

    What in the world could be on Osama Bin Laden’s hard drive?

    We might find out in the coming weeks. The Navy SEALs who carried out the mission that resulted in the death of Bin Laden left the Pakistani compound with more than a body. According to Politco, the SEALs were able to recover hard drives, CDs, and flash drives from the raid that U.S. officials are calling “the motherlode of intelligence.”

    Currently, the data is being combed through by hundreds of people at a secret location in Afghanistan. Everyone in Washington is understandably excited to see what kind of information, if any, is usable. “It’s going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable,” officials said to Politico.

    The first thought has to be about the contents. Exactly what kind of information could be on these drives? It has been reported that Bin Laden’s compound lacked phone lines or internet in order to keep a lower profile – so it’s hard to guess the contents.

    About 5 years ago it was famously unearthed that Osama Bin Laden had a soft spot for some aspects of American pop culture. A woman named Kola Boof wrote a tell-all book where she claimed to be a former sex slave/ girlfriend of Bin Laden. In the book, she detailed the Al Qaeda leader’s obsession with Whitney Houston among other things such as The Wonder Years.

    I guess it’s possible that all they could find is the finale to The Wonder Years, you know, the one in the barn where Winnie…ah I can’t talk about it. Talk about depressing on multiple levels.

    But hopefully something of use can be taken from the drives, some sort of data that can be used effectively.

    The second thought has to be about encryption. Gizmodo has an interesting take on accessing the data:

    We don’t know if “the mother lode of intelligence”—as that official called it—in the hard drives and memory sticks is encrypted or not. Given Osama’s level of confidence—the circumstances appear to indicate that he was very comfortable and felt very secure in his lair—the idea of some of the data not being encrypted is not that crazy.

    But even if it is, the US intelligence agencies have the necessary computing power and the expertise to crack the information open, even if the terrorists are using the AES-256 standard. You can be sure that, if there are any encrypted files, they are now being processed by supercomputers at CIA’s headquarters. The only question is how fast they can access the information. That’s the critical part: the fastest they get it, the more actionable that information would be, leading to the fast capture or killing of other leaders and operatives in the al Qaeda network.

    Yesterday, video and photos surfaced from the raid of the inside of the compound. The graphic images were of blood-spattered rooms in total disarray. Today, we await the possible release of photos of Bin Laden’s body. The White House is currently debating the pros and cons of that action.

  • Now That’s A Lot of Information Consumption

    Considering the fact we are living in The Information Age, the figures concerning information consumption shouldn’t be surprising, but yet, they are. In fact, eye-popping would be a better adjective than surprising, because one thing’s for certain: Internet users go through so much data, the numerical amounts are staggering.

    According to research conducted by a three scientists from UC San Diego, each year, Internet users consume something in the neighborhood of 9.57 zettabytes of information per year. How big is a zettabyte? 1000 exabytes, one of which equals 1000 petabytes, one of which equals 1000 terabytes, of which there are 1000 gigabytes for one terabyte.

    Another way to look at the amount is one zettabyte equals one million gigabytes. In other words, a whole lot of information is being consumed on a yearly basis.

    More Bytes
    Image courtesy

    Written out, the estimated amount of consumed Internet information per year looks like so: 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Considering the research findings come from 2008 levels of consumption, the 9.57 zettabyte total could be over 10 zettabytes per year by now. If you consider the increase in mobile computing as well as access courtesy of mobile applications, such an increase seems reasonable.

    In a report by PhysOrg.com, the details of the research are discussed:

    The first-of-its kind rigorous estimate was generated with server-processing performance standards, server-industry reports, interviews with information technology experts, sales figures from server manufacturers and other sources… The study estimated that enterprise server workloads are doubling about every two years, which means that by 2024 the world’s enterprise servers will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system in the Milky Way Galaxy.

    As for the current level of consumption in relation to book-stacking, the article reveals that, with current levels of consumption — 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes per year — the equivalent would be a stack of books that extended over 5.6 billion miles, large enough to go to Neptune and back.

  • Like Privacy? You May Have Some Opting Out To Do.

    Have you ever looked at Spokeo? If not, you might want to check it out – that is if you’re concerned about your online privacy. There’s a good chance they have a profile on you, and it may have more information than you care to have publicly accessible in any one place. And that’s just the free part, if you pay, you can get access to even more information. 

    Do you approve of Spokeo hosting this information? Tell us what you think. 

    Spokeo would not let us interview them, but they did tell us: 

    "The driving force behind our product was to create a more efficient and user-friendly people-search engine that would allow users to locate information and keep up with their friends more easily."

    "It’s important to understand, however, that offering a more efficient mechanism by which to pull together information is not the same as providing greater access to personal information."

    We spoke with privacy advocate Dr. Larry Ponemon, founder of privacy research firm, The Ponemon Institute. "From a privacy perspective, it’s kind of a scary event when you, as in individual don’t have control over your personal information," he tells WebProNews. "In a nutshell, we all feel like we should somehow be involved in making that decision – whether information about us is being shared with third-parties and organizations. And Spokeo is in the business of selling information about people, as I understand it, without getting any consent or any advanced opt-in or opt-out. We are basically powerless against organizations like Spokeo."

    By the way, your home address is likely included in your Spokeo profile, which is conveniently aided by Google Maps Street View, so anyone searching for you can virtually go right up to your front door. Street View itself has had plenty of privacy battles over the years on its own. Those worried about that should just love Spokeo’s integration. 

    "There’s also a secondary issue, which is really equally as scary," says Ponemon. "That’s the possibility that information used and collected about you, by companies like Spokeo, is in fact inaccurate information…can you imagine information that is inaccurate, and then people making decisions about you on the basis of not the truth, but inaccurate information? And you again, as a consumer, are powerless to do anything to even change the information known to be inaccurate."

    By browsing the profile created about me on the site, it is clear that there are indeed plenty of inaccuracies in the information, which really makes me wonder how many more inaccuracies are available for paying customers. 

    As our own Abby Johnson mentions in the video above, the inaccuracies of Spokeo’s information likely stem from public databases that are not maintained.

    "I understand the business model that Spokeo is in, and I’m sure they’re going to make a ton of money if they have the legal right to continue what they do, but from a privacy and an information and ethics perspective, this is is a big problem," says Ponemon. 

    "The general issue in privacy litigation is that you have to establish harm, and the problem in many of the cases – and this is why a lot of cases get dismissed early – is because it’s hard to demonstrate harm, when in fact your information is inaccurate or it’s misused or you’re not involved in the decision for the organization to collect and use that information. It seems that the key issue is demonstrating harm," he continues. "The problem is that you can’t look at harm in a short timeline, because right now you have inaccurate information, so what’s the harm? Maybe there’s almost no harm to you. But mabye five or six or seven years from now, there will be an employment decision made based on the infromation contained today in Spokeo. Maybe you’ll be denied a job or maybe you’ll be denied a loan…"

    He thinks organizations like the FTC will take a close look. 

    A Spokeo spokesperson told WebProNews, "As part of our commitment to privacy, Spokeo offers an opt-out feature that is faster and easier to complete than most other people search sites. All that is required of users is an email verification process, not submitting hard copies of driver’s licenses, Social Security Numbers, or other forms of identity via fax or mail."

    The opt-out process does appear to work. I went through it, and my profile disappeared. Given that Spokeo’s such a household name, this should set everyone’s mind at ease.  (sarcasm intended, in case that wasn’t obvious) 

    I’ll have to remember to check back from time to time and make sure it stays gone. 

    You can read Spokeo’s privacy policy here. 

    By the way, Spokeo’s traffic has been skyrocketing, with over 9 million unique visitors in January, according to Compete.

    Do you find Spokeo’s practices to be a violation of privacy? Share your thoughts.

  • Google Wants You To Upload Your Data

    Google announced today that it’s opening up its Public Data Explorer tool to everyone, meaning you can use it to upload your own datasets. 

    "We’re making a new data format, the DataSet Publishing Language (DSPL), openly available, and providing an interface for anyone to upload their datasets, so they can benefit from the same powerful, animated visualizations that we provide with our existing datasets, and then share them with other people to explore and understand," the company explains. 

    Public Data Explorer - Upload your own data

    "Over the past two years, we’ve made public data easier to find, explore and understand in several ways, providing unemployment figures, population statistics and world development indicators in search results, and introducing the Public Data Explorer tool," says Omar Benjelloun, Technical Lead of the Google Public Data Team. "Together with our data provider partners, we’ve curated 27 datasets including more than 300 data metrics. You can now use the Public Data Explorer to visualize everything from labor productivity (OECD) to Internet speed (Ookla) to gender balance in parliaments (UNECE) to government debt levels (IMF) to population density by municipality (Statistics Catalonia), with more data being added every week."

    There will certainly be a whole lot more added every week now that it’s open to the everyone. 

    The dataset upload feature is available as a Google Labs feature.

    It’s all part of "organizing the world’s information" right?

  • Twitter Sells Data, Provides Analytics, Gives Users “Reputation Scores”

    There are some interesting things going on with Twitter this week, and while they may not be as sexy as Facebook’s news, they could have a pretty big impact on the way Twitter is used by developers and marketers. 

    The Data

    For one, Twitter has partnered with social media data provider Gnip to sell large amounts of public Twitter data. This will come in three sizes: the Twitter Halfhose, the Twitter Mentionhose, and the Twitter Decahose. 

    The "Halfhose" will be comprised of 50% of Twitter’s full firehose, and according to Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb, who interviewed Gnip CEO Jud Valeski, the price will be $360,000 a year. The "Decahose" is comprised of 10% of the full firehose and costs a reported $60,000 a year. The "Mentionhose" provides a realtime stream of all Tweets that mention a user, including @replies and retweets. Pricing for that one is unclear. 

    "We expect this to be very interesting to businesses studying the conversational graph on Twitter to determine influencers, engagement, and trending content," says Valeski in the announcement.

    "There’s enormous corporate demand for better monitoring and analytics tools, which help companies listen to their customers on Twitter and understand conversations about their brands and products," he says. "Twitter has partnered with Gnip to sublicense access to public Tweets, which is great news for developers interested in analyzing large amounts of this data. This partnership opens the door to developers who want to use Twitter streams to create monitoring and analytics tools for the non-display market."

    The Analytics

    In June, Twitter acquired analytics company Smallthought Systems. In September, a Twitter employee indicated that Twitter would release a free real-time analytics dashboard sometime this year. 

    Mashable’s Adam Ostrow reports that Twitter has now started inviting a select group of users to test the product. He also has a couple screenshots like the one below. 

    Twitter Analytics Image Credit: @mongoosemetrics via Mashable.

    Frankly Twitter analytics are long overdue, and should ultimately solve that problem of "How do I use Twitter?" for a lot of businesses. This will help them understand what’s working and what’s not and allow them to adjust their strategies accordingly. Facebook has offered analytics for quite some time, and provides a great deal of insight into user engagement with Pages. It will be nice to have that kind of look at Twitter engagement.

    Twitter co-founder Evan Williams also revealed at the Web 2.0 Summit that the company calculates a "reputation score" for all Twitter users. This is used to help determine things like which users to suggest to others. Hat tip to Jennifer Van Grove on that one.

    Twitter seems to be maturing as a service, even since Williams recently handed his CEO throne over to Dick Costolo, which has allowed him to focus more on Twitter itself and Costolo to focus more on the business side of things. If these early weeks since that transition are any indication, we can probably expect a lot of useful Twitter features down the road.