Healthy Blog Reviews

While we are all quick to open up on Google with both barrels for a variety for reasons including privacy, service speed and more privacy there are some things happening that are not all bad. Google has announced the that they have awarded about $4 million to about 75 projects “full time faculty pursuing research in a areas of mutual interest” for Q2. In other words, there are people doing things that can help Google who aren’t Google employees. As a result, of course, Google wants in. While admittedly some of the listed projects are a bit beyond my scope of understanding, it is interesting to see this list from the Official Google Blog to get a glimpse of what is being done with data to help get more mileage from it. Jeremy Cooperstock, McGill University. A Spatialized Audio Map System for Mobile Blind Users(Geo/maps): A mobile audio system that provides location-based information, primarily for use by the blind and visually impaired communities. Alexander Pretschner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. Towards Operational Privacy (Security and privacy): Provide a framework for precise semantic definitions in policies for domain-specific applications to give users a way to define the exact behaviour they expect from a system in application-specific contexts. Erik Brynjolfsson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Future of Prediction – How Google Searches Foreshadow Housing Prices and Quantities (Economics and market algortihms): How data from search engines like Google provide a highly accurate but simple way to predict future business activities. Stephen Pulman, Oxford University Computing Laboratory. Automatic Generation of Natural Language Descriptions of Visual Scenes (Natural language processing): Develop a system that automatically generates a description of a visual scene. Jennifer Rexford, Princeton. Rethinking Wide-Area Traffic Management (Software and hardware systems infrastructure): Drawing on mature techniques from optimization theory, design new traffic-management solutions where the hosts, routers, and management system cooperate in a more effective way. John Quinn, Makerere University, Uganda. Mobile Crop Surveillance in the Developing World(Multimedia search and audio/video processing): A computer vision system using camera-enabled mobile devices to monitor the spread of viral disease among staple crops. Allison Druin, University of Maryland. Understanding how Children Change as Searchers (Human-computer interaction): Do children change as searchers as they age? How do searchers typically shift between roles over time? If children change, how many of them become Power Searchers? If children don’t change, what roles do they typically demonstrate? Ronojoy Adhikari, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, India. Machine Learning of Syntax in Undeciphered Scripts (Machine learning): Devise algorithms that would learn to search for evidence of semantics in datasets such as the Indus script. We report on what the market has been given but we don’t often think about what is being worked on for the future. Helping the blind with mobility and the prediction of future business activities based on search is interesting stuff for sure. I wonder what other companies do in these areas? Have you heard of other programs like this?

Tags: children, children-change, cooperstock, drawing, highly-accurate, learning, Massachusetts, Research, technology, traffic, words
Posted July 23, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Google must be pretty excited that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have been under intense scrutiny as of late regarding privacy. Why would they celebrate that other than it being a stumbling block to a “frienemy”? The more that Facebook gets the privacy stink eye from the world the less attention can be paid to Google’s own battles over their alleged breaches of privacy. Google has been under scrutiny by Germany regarding their collection of wireless network data that occurred while their little Google Maps mobiles went around taking pictures of the world. Now Canada can be added to the list of countries that are looking into this practice. We know from past experience that Canada fights hard when it comes to privacy concerns ( just ask Facebook ). Reuters reports : Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said on Tuesday that she was concerned about the privacy implications stemming from the collection of data from wireless networks in Canada, the United States and other countries. “We have a number of questions about how this collection could have happened,” she said in a statement. “We’ve determined that an investigation is the best way to find the answers.” The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has already begun an informal inquiry into the matter. Google said in a statement that it would cooperate with authorities to answer their questions and address their concerns. It has previously denied any wrongdoing. Google has been on the fringes of the “too much information” argument with its Street View product since its inception so this is familiar territory to a degree. Lately, though, the additional revelation that data from wireless networks has been collected along with the ‘accidental’ collection of data run on those networks has raised new red flags about Google’s policies. Canada is not alone in its concern. Suits have been filed in Washington D.C., California, Massachusetts and Oregon by people who accuse Google of violating their privacy by collecting data from open Wi-Fi networks. U.S. lawmakers have asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to look into the matter, and a district court in Portland, Oregon, has ordered Google to make two copies of a hard drive containing data from the United States and turn them over to the court. So where should we as marketers stand on all of this? I notice that most of our readers stay mum on these discussions and my suspicion is that everyone is dying to get their hands on more data but doesn’t want to be known for having it. It’s the Internet marketers’ ultimate Catch-22. You need the data but having the data puts you and your company at risk of being labeled a privacy violator in the name of a few more sales. Ask Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook crew how that is working out for them these days. So where is the line? Is there really a line yet or are we just going to be continually pushing the current privacy boundaries to loosen people’s tolerance for these ‘breaches’ to the point where everyone just rolls over, plays dead and goes along with the Google party line? That comes from their CEO who has said “”If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”? Oooops, sorry, that was from December of 2009. As of May 2010 in response to this current flap his take as reported by the Guardian is: Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has defended his company’s record on privacy in the wake of the discovery that its Street View camera cars had accidentally recorded data from unsecured domestic Wi-Fi networks, insisting that Google has the “most consumer-centric privacy policy of any service online”. Gee, it’s so hard to keep up with what needs to be said at any given moment to do the corporate CYA dance, isn’t it?

Tags: answers, California, collection, commissioner, countries, data, facebook, internet, Massachusetts, Oregon, street, united, United States
Posted June 3, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

One of the latest rumors that is swirling around Google and its continued efforts to expand into just about everything, is suggesting that the search giant is eyeing ITA Software. The company that is based in Cambridge, MA could be asking in the $1 billion range. Not bad for a company that most have never heard of. Of course, when you learn what they do you can see where the value lies. Bloomberg BusinessWeek tells us more Google Inc. is in talks to acquire ITA Software Inc., a maker of travel programs used by companies including Orbitz Worldwide Inc. and Microsoft Corp., three people familiar with the matter said. ITA Software, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, may seek about $1 billion, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions haven’t been made public. The talks may not lead to a transaction, said the people. With tools that help users find flight information online, ITA Software may help Google compete with travel-search features offered by Microsoft. The companies are tussling for share in the U.S. market for online travel, which generated $88.4 billion in sales last year, according to Sherman, Connecticut travel consulting firm PhoCusWright Inc. Those on the ITA side of the fence that include General Catalyst Partners and Sequoia Capital are not talking. What that means is anyone’s guess but the folks at ITA are staying mum as well. The wisdom behind such an acquisition by Google is that there may be concern that search market share is being lost to Microsoft because of bing’s travel search capabilities. While nothing was stated about margins etc, one would figure that any industry generating $88 billion in sales is going to make Google take notice. Once Google takes notice these days it seems like their next move is to take over as well. And hey, what better way to rain on Microsoft’s advantage than to buy the company that is powering the back end of Microsoft’s offering?! Classic Google. Even if they weren’t making money from the search angle they would still get some MS bucks through fees and licensing. Even more interesting is if this went through and Microsoft decided they needed to do something different it would be a huge hassle to Microsoft. Just that kind of business disruption to a major competitor alone may be worth Google’s investment. This is purely rumor at this point but as they say “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”. Maybe that phrase should be changed to “Where there’s money, there’s Google”.

Tags: Business, Cambridge, cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, from-the-search, Massachusetts, Microsoft, people, said-the-people, Search, sequoia capital
Posted April 21, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media