More technical background on the Facebook app privacy problem I noted earlier. Again, go into Facebook Privacy -> Applications to adjust what info gets shared from your Facebook acct via apps.

Your private Facebook info can be made public to friends thru apps you do NOT use. Go into Facebook Privacy -> Applications to adjust what info about you gets shared through apps. I was appalled to see this.

"One of the conclusions that Altman draws is that scientists conducting risk analyses need to think about the context/starting assumptions that people have regarding scientific exposure data. Specifically, it’s not enough for scientists to think about how to present uncertainty in the data; they also need to understand the “unique social and historical setting” in which the data are interpreted. These stories make a compelling case that sociologists are (should be) an important part of the risk analysis process."

Demand Media is a database of human needs, and if you haven’t stumbled on a Demand video or article yet, you soon will. By next summer, according to founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Demand will be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year. Demand is already one of the largest suppliers of content to YouTube, where its 170,000 videos make up more than twice the content of CBS, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera English, Universal Music Group, CollegeHumor, and Soulja Boy combined. Demand also posts its material to its network of 45 B-list sites that manage to pull in more traffic than ESPN, NBC Universal, and Time Warner’s online properties (excluding AOL) put together. To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.

"We've received lots of feedback from Wavers that the public waves they read were clogging up their inboxes. Today, we've introduced a new concept to Google Wave–"following" waves. Now, clicking on a public wave no longer causes it to appear (and stay) in your inbox; you have to explicitly choose to "follow" the wave."

"Apple’s rejection letter notes that the app contains content that “ridicules public figures.” If you follow the link above, you will see that these drawings are not defamatory nor ridiculing. They are simply caricatures. Big heads, exaggerated features. Do we really think that lawmakers, who deal with talk radio, bloggers and TV talking heads calling them all sorts of heinous things day in and day out, really care about a drawing?

"This looks like a private company protecting public officials by refusing to allow drawings of them to be shown on mobile phone devices. Apple is lobbying Congress on a number of issues and has already spent over $1 million. Perhaps, they are treading too lightly to keep from disrupting their legislative activities."

It could be argued that the disclosure of lobbyist contacts could lead to further disenchantment with government in the eyes of the public. Decontextualized information can often lead the acceptance of insinuations. Some may interpret any lobbyist contact as a corrupt activity, but this simply isn’t the case. What we need is a fuller picture of who has influence in a given lawmaker’s office. This doesn’t imply corruption, just who has influence. The later actions of a lawmaker will provide the context that reporters and others can research to find the actual context of a contact.

Because some people have more than one phone line, they end up being double-counted. This results in overstated audience figures and penetration rates that approach and eventually exceed 100% of the population. For marketers, the number of mobile users is a more useful figure because it more accurately describes the audience, and thus potential reach.

How big is the actual US mobile audience? Taking into account people of all ages, eMarketer estimates that mobile penetration is 76.5% in 2009, or 235 million people. This is expected to rise gradually to 255.4 million in 2013, or 80% penetration.

Predictably, this estimate is much lower than figures from CTIA – The Wireless Association, which measured 276.61 million mobile subscribers (subscriptions) as of June 2009. Using data from the US Census Bureau, this equates to 90% of the total US population.

Gmaps blog: "Our mobile users also got special treatment. With the launch of Google Maps for Mobile 3.2, the transit layer is available on Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and the new Motorola DROID, and transit directions were added to the Palm Pre. This means now transit directions are available in Google Maps on all major smartphone platforms"

Interesting graphic from the NYT. Graphs usually bore me, but this is engaging and relevant. Nice, subtle use of animation and background to add context.

A social network for zombies! I am SO THERE!!!!

"I’m not saying to give up. I’m not saying to purposefully fail. I am saying try that fucking impossible thing that you’ve wanted to try, but haven’t, because you’re afraid of failure. If you succeed, rock on. But if you fail, then that’s better. Because you will have learned something. Yeah, someone else succeeded, got to the top of the mountain before you, but maybe you stumbled into the cave full of gold beneath the mountain.

"Or maybe you stumbled into the cave full of monsters. Shit! What now? Don’t worry; they’re made of delicious monster meat, so go to town on them. Slay the monsters. Corner the market on monster meat, and then laugh at the people at the top of the mountain saying, “What? Monster meat? That’s the new thing? What are you talking about?”

"Failure. It makes monster meat.

"In the past few years, as newspapers’ economic fortunes have steadily declined, they have been more and more likely to emphasize their special role in America’s democratic system. (For the moment, I’m not making any argument about whether or not these claims are true. They may very well be. I’m just pointing them out.) The origins of this increasing tendency to emphasize the special democratic function of newspapers might be seen in these early debates about the federal shield law."

"Thanks to the American Society of News Editors, we can now read the compromise shield law hashed out last week by the White House, news-industry lobbyists, and the Senate Judiciary Committee. There are plenty of moving parts here, but I’ve been focused on the law’s definition of a journalist, as have others. The compromise takes an expansive view, covering amateur bloggers and student journalists as much as professional reporters."

OTM segment in which Nieman Lab blogger CW Anderson mentions that current shield law draft does *not* specifically cover reporters notes, only info that makes it into the story. I've asked for clarification of this. If true, then that seems to be a big gaping hole that anyone who publishes news/info should be concerned about. Most information gathered in course of reporting never gets published.

"Oct. 31 TechCrunch broke a big story called "Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell" about how Zynga was making money by selling scam ads.

"Arrington packaged his story with a video of himself taking on Anu Shukla, CEO of one of the scam-ad distributors. He also ran an "insider's confession" piece by a former scammer. He followed with a story on how Zynga CEO Mark Pincus acknowledged the problem & said Zynga would stop running those ads, & another story about how Anu Shukla was pushed out of her company, and another story about Shukla's replacement admitting that the company had, indeed, been running scammy ads. On Friday Arrington posted a video clip where Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, told a laughing audience of scumbag developers about all his scumbaggy things.

"A Sat piece on Zynga (and other FB game companies) with the headline, "Virtual Goods Start Bringing Real Paydays." The two reporters interviewed & quoted Pincus, but included not a single word about the scammy ads."

December 7-8, 2007—This weekend, 30 open government advocates gathered to develop a set of principles of open government data. The meeting, held in Sebastopol, California, was designed to develop a more robust understanding of why open government data is essential to democracy.

The Internet is the public space of the modern world, and through it governments now have the opportunity to better understand the needs of their citizens and citizens may participate more fully in their government. Information becomes more valuable as it is shared, less valuable as it is hoarded. Open data promotes increased civil discourse, improved public welfare, and a more efficient use of public resources.

The group is offering a set of fundamental principles for open government data. By embracing the eight principles, governments of the world can become more effective, transparent, and relevant to our lives.

"UNICEF Innovations Unit is spearheading the RapidSMS project, an Open Source platform for SMS application development. UNICEF, the Millenium Villages Project, and others have successfully used RapidSMS to augment malnutrition prevention programs in Malawi and Kenya, document the status of refugees in Somalia, promote women’s literacy in Senegal, distribute malaria resistant bednets in Nigeria, and more. We will present the lessons on using ICT for international development learned through these deployments, and discuss how SMS can be used to make government and quasi-governmental efforts, like international development, more efficient and accountable."

"Mr. O’Rourke’s production style is precise and dry; he creates a sound picture in which tiny sonic details matter. But where his Drag City records are concerned, everything matters: the pacing, the length, the sound, the cover images. For this reason he won’t allow “The Visitor,” or any of his albums, to be sold as downloads, on iTunes or anywhere else. He’s taking a stand against the sound quality of MP3s; he’s also taking a stand in favor of artists being able to control the medium and reception of their work.

“You can no longer use context as part of your work,” he said, glumly, “because it doesn’t matter what you do, somebody’s going to change the context of it. The confusion of creativity, making something, with this Internet idea of democratization …” he trailed off, disgusted. “It sounds like old-man stuff, but I think it’s disastrous for the possibilities of any art form.”

"Mr. O’Rourke’s production style is precise and dry; he creates a sound picture in which tiny sonic details matter. But where his Drag City records are concerned, everything matters: the pacing, the length, the sound, the cover images. For this reason he won’t allow “The Visitor,” or any of his albums, to be sold as downloads, on iTunes or anywhere else. He’s taking a stand against the sound quality of MP3s; he’s also taking a stand in favor of artists being able to control the medium and reception of their work.

“You can no longer use context as part of your work,” he said, glumly, “because it doesn’t matter what you do, somebody’s going to change the context of it. The confusion of creativity, making something, with this Internet idea of democratization …” he trailed off, disgusted. “It sounds like old-man stuff, but I think it’s disastrous for the possibilities of any art form.”

"Mr. O’Rourke’s production style is precise and dry; he creates a sound picture in which tiny sonic details matter. But where his Drag City records are concerned, everything matters: the pacing, the length, the sound, the cover images. For this reason he won’t allow “The Visitor,” or any of his albums, to be sold as downloads, on iTunes or anywhere else. He’s taking a stand against the sound quality of MP3s; he’s also taking a stand in favor of artists being able to control the medium and reception of their work.

“You can no longer use context as part of your work,” he said, glumly, “because it doesn’t matter what you do, somebody’s going to change the context of it. The confusion of creativity, making something, with this Internet idea of democratization …” he trailed off, disgusted. “It sounds like old-man stuff, but I think it’s disastrous for the possibilities of any art form.”