Privacy.org reports on the buzz regarding a new iTunes feature recently added in version 6.0.2 may be communicating information on the song you are listening to Apple, raising privacy concerns. A "Mini Store" pane has been added to the main…
Author: Michael Zimmer
Experimenting with a “StatCounter” counter on michaelzimmer.org
To get a better sense of how michaelzimmer.org is being utilized, I have decided to experiment with a StatCounter counter. This was a difficult decision, being that StatCounter utilizes web cookies to help provide information about what IP addresses access…
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Schneier on Security: Data Mining and Amazon Wishlists
Bruce Schneier points to an amazing article by Tom Owad, "Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists". In it, Owad reveals how simple it can be to use data mining techniques to profile people based on their public Amazon…
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Should Search Engines Help China Filter & Track Searches?
Dan Solove points to this Salon article that reveals how Google, Yahoo and Microsoft help the Chinese government not only filter out search results that they want to censor, but also help track down the individuals engaging in criticism and…
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Universal Automobile Surveillance in the UK
Bruce Schneier points us to the latest steps the UK is taking to embark on wholesale surveillance of citizens driving on the public roads: Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles…
danah boyd on the Seigenthaler-Wikipedia Controversy
danah boyd has an excellent post on the recent Seigenthaler-Wikipedia controversy, focusing particularly on the academic community's response: What pissed me off more was how the academic community pointed to this case and went “See! See! Wikipedia is terrible! We…
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Governments Tremble at Google’s Bird’s-Eye View
The New York Times finally picks up on this discussion about how some governments are concerned over the detailed images of sensitive sites Google Earth makes available to the public.
Bias in Google-AOL Deal; “Unethical,” says Microsoft
I'm late (due to end-of-semester grading) to the discussion of the recent Google-AOL deal. The key points:Google spends $1 billion to gain a 5% stake in AOL;Google offers special promotion and links to AOL (as sponsored links) for searches which…
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The Value Implications of Paid Search
PSU information science scholar Jim Jansen was guest editor for a special issue of the Bulletin for the American Society for Information Science and Technology on the practice of paid search. Jim was kind enough to ask me for a…
Google Increases Ad Font Size
Google announced that they are increasing the font size of the AdWords paid search results becuase "The more similar the type, the higher the CTR [click through rate]." You can view the difference: before vs. after. By making the paid…
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