Amazon in the Clouds

In addition to everything else, Amazon is launching an online cloud storage service, according to Rachel Metz in the article Amazon Launches Online Media Storage Service.  This service will take two forms: storage for files (video, music, photos) that users upload and store on Amazon's servers.  The second form is for music that users have uploaded to their computers or Android smartphones.  This article also states that both Google and Apple are working on similar projects.

Currently, Amazon is offering 5 gigabytes of storage to current account holders--something like a teaser to hook customers and get them to buy more storage.  Customers can purchase 20 gigabytes for a $20 annual fee.  This is cheaper (initially) than an external hard drive and more convenient.  However, I do worry about the information being held by a company, so I'm interested in the privacy aspect.  I'm also interested in how the information can be removed from the storage space once people decide to stop using the service.

Pretty cool, though.

Telecom Companies.. the Next Big Brother?

Malte Spitz, a German Green Party politician, went to court to obtain the information that the cell phone kept about him.  In It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know from nytimes.com, Noah Cohen discusses what Spitz discovered, as well as potential implications of this data-gathering.  According to the Deutsche Telekom documents, Spitz's location had been recorded 35,000 times in the six months that the records are kept.  After a legal battle, the company would not give Spitz additional information about the records kept about his account.


In the US, telecom companies are not required to publish what kinds of information they are collecting.  Additionally, most people don't know that the companies are even collecting information based on their locations.  One argument is that tracking people through their cell phones is valuable to law enforcement.  This makes me wonder how long it will be until marketers get their hands on this information.

Parts may be Greater than Whole Nowadays

People are receiving their information in parts and pieces nowadays.  The growing trend is away whole works in favor of quick information in bits and pieces.  Yes, perhaps quantity over quality.  In this article from NPR, We Are Just Not Digging the Whole Anymore by Linton Weeks, many experts weigh in on this phenomenon.  Some people say that "cognitive overload; information paralysis; techno stress; and data asphyxiation" (some of the terms dealing with the overabundance of information) cost us our attention spans.  For example, if people receive most of their information from Twitter, they may have trouble sitting down and reading a whole book. 

Adam Thierer, though, believes that this is not making us stupid or decreasing our love of books.  Instead, it's the price we pay for an overabundance of information: not as much time to spend reading, viewing, and consuming informational wholes.  Others believe the pendulum will swing back and people will long for the whole.  We'll see.

Teens, Cell Phones, Addiction, and Withdrawal

This article, Teen experience withdrawal without their cell phones by Brandon Bryce, talks about how as people use their cell phones more, they become more dependent on them.  A recent study found that, using a biofeedback monitor, teens showed some signs of withdrawal when they did not have their cell phones.  Michelle Hackman, the researcher, explained that cell phones are "inherently stimulating" so that when people no longer have their phones, they are understimulated and may not know what to do with themselves.

This study has some interesting implications and begs for more research on the topic.  The findings make sense to me, at least the dependency issue, but it is a bit alarming.  As we become more technologically "savvy" as a society, what will this mean for our ability to function without these gadgets?  The more we use these things, the shorter our attention spans become.  What will this mean for the monograph?!

Open in the Netherlands

Another gem from Reddit, this article, called "Moving to open source would save government one to four billion" by Gijs Hillenius from the Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations, discusses a report by the Dutch government that found that open source software could save the Dutch government billions of Euros.  That's a lot of money, especially for a smaller country.


This report came from a civil administrator in the ministry of the Interior.  However, later, the ministry removed links from the report after it was demanded by members of parliament.  It all sounds a little sketchy; maybe this has something to do with how the report blamed proprietary software companies with their unfair prices and vendor lock-in.  Ah, politics.  Governments are supposed to play nice with these companies, right?


While this report was removed and negated by the government, its findings are powerful.  As we're learning in class from firsthand experience (and experimentation), open source software often works as well as proprietary software.  But guess what?  It's free and more customizable.  Go, Netherlands!  One of the socialist MPs (Rik Janssen) has been pushing for open source.  I don't know much about how other governments approach this issue but this could be an interesting case study.

A More Customizable Google Search

When I saw the link to this article on Reddit, called Hide sites to find more of what you want by Amay Champaneria and Beverly Yang from the Official Google Blog, I thought it was about Google blocking sites from appearing in searches because Redditors title their threads inconsistently from the actual title of the article.  So, I was a little outraged.  Alas, this article is about how Google is adding the capability of blocking sites from appearing in search results.  This is useful if a certain site(s) continually appear in the search result list but is unhelpful or irrelevant to the user.  Or you know the times when the top eight results are from the same website and equally irrelevant to your purposes?  No longer!  You can block that site faster than you have to click onto the second page of search results.  Genius!

These blocked sites lists are tied to a user's Google account if the user is signed in.  Users can manage the blocked sites list easily.  Google says that it will use information about which sites are frequently blocked to evaluate its search results.

Shame on you, Mr. Zuckerberg

Once again, with the F-b.  I just can't help it: I am drawn to all the weird shit surrounding Facebook and that greedy Mr. Zuckerberg.  According to this article by Brett Michael Dykes, Facebook is rolling out plans to sell user information to third parties.  That's scary because people put some personal information up there.  Anyone with an email address, phone number, or home address, please remove it from Facebook!  As far as I can tell, there is no opt-out in the privacy settings (as if you could find the privacy settings) so the only way to prevent this is to delete your Fb account or remove any personal information from it.  Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass) and Joe Barton (R-Tex) expressed concern over Facebook's decision; the company replied that they will leave it up to the users to decide what information to provide.

Yikes.  Anyone who hears about this should remove personal information from their pages, yes.  But what about those others who don't hear about this?  This is an invasion of privacy (not surprising given the company) and shame on that greedy Mr. Zuckerberg.  Can't he just stop?  Or work toward making the Fb better?  Jerk.

And the Survey Says...

I found this article through Reddit, titled 70% of the Public Find Piracy Socially Acceptable, about a study in Denmark that found that, as the title says, 70% of the public found piracy to be socially acceptable. Additionally, this number has not changed over the past ten years.  And this is important because it appears that all of this anti-piracy rhetoric by the entertainment industry hasn't changed peoples' minds.

Okay, one could argue that because this is not based on Americans, this study is not legitimate when talking about copyright laws here in this country.  I disagree.  I believe that this echoes an international attitude toward anti-piracy laws: that they are unfair, restrictive and irrelevant.

Another important attitude to consider is that while the survey participants found piracy for personal use to be socially acceptable, 75% believed that piracy for personal gain was socially unacceptable.  See, people have morals about this!  They just do not coincide with the major players in the entertainment industries.  I think (hope/wish) that the era of overly strict anti-piracy/copyright and intellectual property laws is coming to an end!  It's a losing battle for the entertainment industries.

PS: check out the comments, they're almost as interesting as the article!