Monday, February 21, 2011
Data Mining
Monday, January 3, 2011
China's online population rises to 450 million - Yahoo! News
"By the end of November, the number of netizens had reached 450 million, a rise of 20.3 percent compared to the same period last year," Wang Chen, minister for the press office of the State Council, China's cabinet, said.
The figure marks an increase of 30 million -- more than the population of Peru -- since the number of web users was last given in July.
"The coverage rate of the Internet in China is 33.9 percent -- above the world average of 30 percent," Wang told a press conference.
"These figures show the environment for the development of the Internet in China is sound," he said.
China's spiralling online population has turned the Internet into a forum for citizens to express their opinions in a way rarely seen in a country where the traditional media is under strict government control.
The Internet has also become a lucrative marketplace. The value of online payments is expected to hit one trillion yuan (151 billion dollars) for the year, Beijing-based research company Analysys International said in a note.
The growing strength and influence of the web population has prompted concern in Beijing about the Internet's potential as a tool for generating social unrest, and authorities have stepped up surveillance in recent years.
The government blocks web content that it deems politically sensitive in a vast system dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".
by AFP December 30, 2010
China's online population rises to 450 million - Yahoo! News
Sunday, October 17, 2010
U.S. studying Australian anti-hacking program
Obama administration officials have met with industry leaders and experts to find ways to increase online safety while trying to balance securing the Internet and guarding people's privacy and civil liberties.
Experts and U.S. officials are interested in portions of the plan, set to go into effect in Australia in December. But any move toward Internet regulation or monitoring by the U.S. government or industry could trigger fierce opposition from the public.
The discussions come as private, corporate and government computers across the U.S. are increasingly being taken over and exploited by hackers and other computer criminals.
White House cybercoordinator Howard Schmidt said that the U.S. is looking at a number of voluntary ways to help the public and small businesses better protect themselves online.
Possibilities include provisions in the Australia plan that enable customers to be warned by their Internet providers if their computer gets taken over by hackers via a botnet.
A botnet is a network of infected computers that can number in the thousands, and that network is usually controlled by hackers through a small number of scattered PCs. Computer owners are often unaware that their machine is linked to a botnet and is being used to shut down targeted websites, distribute malicious code or spread spam.
If a company is willing to give its customers better online security, the American public will go along with that, Schmidt said.
"Without security you have no privacy. And many of us that care deeply about our privacy look to make sure our systems are secure," Schmidt said. Internet service providers, he added, can help "make sure our systems are cleaned up if they're infected and keep them clean."
But officials are stopping short of advocating an option in the Australian plan that allows Internet providers to wall off or limit online usage by customers who fail to clean their infected computers, saying this would be technically difficult and likely run into opposition.
"In my view, the United States is probably going to be well behind other nations in stepping into a lot of these new areas," said Prescott Winter, former chief technology officer for the National Security Agency, who is now at the California-based cybersecurity firm, ArcSight.
In the U.S., he said, the Internet is viewed as a technological wild west that should remain unfenced and unfettered. But he said this open range isn't secure, so "we need to take steps to make it safe, reliable and resilient."
"I think that, quite frankly, there will be other governments who will finally say, at least for their parts of the Internet, as the Australians have apparently done, we think we can do better."
Cybersecurity expert James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Internet providers are nervous about any increase in regulations, and they worry about consumer reaction to monitoring or other security controls.
Online customers, he said, may not want their service provider to cut off their Internet access if their computer is infected.
But they may be amenable to having their Internet provider warn them of cyberattacks and help them clear the malicious software off their computers by providing instructions, patches or anti-virus programs.
They may even be willing to pay a small price each month for the service - much like telephone customers used to pay a minimal monthly charge to cover repairs.
Lewis, who has been studying the issue for CSIS, said it is inevitable that one day carriers will play a role in defending online customers from computer attack.
Comcast Corp. is expanding a Denver pilot program that alerts customers whose computers are controlled through a botnet.
U.S. studying Australian anti-hacking program
Sunday, October 3, 2010
New rules may grow names for Internet domains
A proposal that could add hundreds of new Internet domain names to the network beginning as early as next year has industry insiders concerned about confused users, squabbling businesses and security.After years of study, a guidebook for registries that want to acquire new generic top-level domains is in its fourth draft. Generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, are typically the three letters at the end of Internet addresses, such as.com, .net and .org.
Those who follow the addressing issue say the new domain rules likely will be approved next year or early in 2012.
The proposal has created a brouhaha in Internet circles, with some arguing the market should decide what addresses are acceptable, and others worried the expansion could increase cyber crime.
"It (the expansion) looks like it's on the horizon," said Brad White, a spokesman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the non-profit based in Marina del Rey, Calif., charged with coordinating the worldwide addressing system. The group is considering expanding generic top-level domains beyond the 21 it now allows, arguing there is no reason to artificially set limits.
Some examples include addresses that end in .eco, for use by environmentalists, .food for foodies, or .sports for sports enthusiasts.
The expansion also could allow business names, such as .ford, and place identifiers, such as .nyc or .paris.
At least one proposed domain name is already controversial: .xxx, which would create a sort of red-light district on the Internet.
Those in favor of the changes say opening up the system would allow like-minded groups to find each other more easily and would help companies improve their online identities. ICANN is also considering adding more characters to international domains, now restricted to Latin characters. It aims to add characters in the Arabic, Japanese, Cyrillic and Chinese alphabets that would add significantly to the 1.5 billion estimated Internet users.
The ICANN board is expected to take up domain-name expansion at a meeting in December in Cartagena, Spain, where board members may decide to begin processing new registry applications or say they need more time.
"The technology is there" to go beyond 21 top-level domains, White said.
Still, some that worry opening up Internet addresses will lead to criminals duping consumers.
The International Trademark Association says the plan will lead to higher levels of trademark and intellectual-property abuse.
Others say there will be disputes over the addresses.
Coordinating body
Few people know much about ICANN, formed in 1998 by the U.S. government to coordinate the Internet-addressing system. The plan was to grow ICANN under the U.S. Department of Commerce. Eventually, the government would pull out.
Last year, the Commerce Department transferred the group to a multi-stakeholder, private-sector-led model.
Besides generic top-level domains, ICANN also controls country code top-level domains, such as .us for the United States and .eu for the European Union. Generally reserved for the countries, the domains can be used for other purposes.
For instance, Scottsdale-based Go Daddy, a domain-name registrar, recently began marketing .co, a country code introduced during the summer for Colombia.
A domain-name registry is the wholesaler in the process. It applies for top-level domains. For example, VeriSign Inc. is the registry for.com and .net.
ICANN makes 18 to 20 cents annually for each registration name, additions, transfers and renewals. The revenue covers its administrative functions.
The group estimates it will cost a registry as much as $185,000 in application and legal fees to start a new top-level domain.
The registrar in the addressing process is akin to a retailer. Those looking to buy a.com or .net address deal with a registrar such as Go Daddy.
Criminal opportunity
The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry association combating identify theft and fraud from phishing and e-mail spoofing, said a larger number of top-level domain names would allow more opportunities for organized crime to gain a foothold in registries.
They point to a registrar that was convicted in 2008 of cyber crime, including credit-card and document fraud. Officials said the registrar was a haven for cyber criminals who wanted to register websites that supported a range of criminal activity.
"Some members of our community assert that anyone running such a TLD should come under particularly heavy scrutiny and perhaps even regulation or audit to ensure the TLD is run meticulously," the group wrote in a draft report on the issue.
The trademark association argues that the proposal does not protect businesses from cyber squatters, entities that register and traffic Internet domain names with the intent to benefit from another's trademark by confusing consumers.
Experts say it's fairly easy to determine who should get, for example, .ford. Ford Motor Co. could make strong arguments that it owns the copyright and that the creation of the domain is an intellectual-property issue.
But what about a domain such as .delta? Should it go to the airline or the water-faucet manufacturer?
The process for deciding is complex, White said.
"Is it going to make everybody happy? Probably not," he said. "It's the closest we can come because nobody has ever done this before."
Warren Adelman, Go Daddy president and chief operating officer, said he was unsure how consumers would react to so many name combinations.
Go Daddy has had some success with some newer top-level domains, including .co and .me. For instance, the address used for the movie "Despicable Me" was despicable.me.
"Today in the world there are just about 198 million top-level domain names, " Adelman said. "If you look at a world population of 7 billion, it's still a pretty small number."
Generic top level domains
• .aero, (air-transport industry) sponsored by Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques.
• .arpa, (Reserved exclusively to support operationally critical infrastructural identifier spaces as advised by the Internet Architecture Board) sponsored by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
• .asia, (From Asia, for Asia) sponsored by DotAsia Organisation.
• .biz, (businesses), operated by NeuStar Inc.
• .cat, (Catalan linguistic and cultural community) sponsored by Fundació puntCat.
• .com, (unrestricted but intended for commercial registrants) operated by VeriSign Inc.
• .coop, (cooperatives) sponsored by Dot Cooperation LLC.
• .edu, (U.S. educational institutions) sponsored by EDUCAUSE.
• .gov, (U.S. government) sponsored by the U.S. General Services Administration.
• .info, (unrestricted use) operated by Afilias Limited.
• .int, (Organizations established by international treaties between governments) sponsored by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
• .jobs, (reserved for the human-resource-management community) sponsored by Employ Media LLC.
• .mil, (U.S. military) sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense Network Information Center.
• .mobi, (reserved for mobile providers and users ) sponsored by mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd.
• .museu, (museums) sponsored by the Museum Domain Management Association International.
• .name, (for registration by individuals), operated by VeriSign Information Services Inc.
• .net, (unrestricted but intended for network providers) operated by VeriSign Inc.
• .org, (unrestricted but intended for organizations that do not fit elsewhere) sponsored by Public Interest Registry.
• .pro, (professionals) sponsored by Registry Services Corp.
• .tel, (reserved for individuals and businesses to store and manage their contact information in the domain-name system) sponsored by Telnic Ltd.
• .travel, (travel and tourism community) sponsored by Tralliance Registry Management Co LLC.
by John Yantis The Arizona Republic Sept. 26, 2010 12:00 AM
New rules may grow names for Internet domains
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Flash-Sales Trend Providing New Spark For E-Commerce - IBD - Investors.com
Consumers have been shopping online for years. Lots of e-tail sites tout similar items, with standard perks like moderate discounts and free shipping.
So the name of the game increasingly is differentiation. How can a company set its e-commerce offerings apart from rivals?
This is spurring the rise of offbeat e-commerce sites that sell products online with an unusual twist to separate them from the pack — "flash sales," or deals that expire in a few hours or days.
"These sites succeed because they have interesting products for sale for a limited time. That hooks people," said Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.
"Consumers are voting with their wallets and showing they really like these flash sales concepts," said Scot Wingo, CEO of e-commerce software and services provider ChannelAdvisor. "It's about the steep discounts."
The trend gained steam on June 30, when e-commerce king Amazon (AMZN) bought tiny flash-sale e-tailer Woot.com. The purchase price wasn't disclosed. Woot has 2.75 million registered users.
Seattle-based Amazon has been buying a lot of unique e-commerce sites. Its biggest buy in the space took place last year, when it paid $900 million for online shoe seller Zappos.com.
Woot was founded in Carrollton, Texas, in 2004 by Matt Rutledge, an Internet entrepreneur known for his offbeat sense of humor. Woot offers a single unique and steeply discounted online deal a day, often in electronics. One recent deal was a set of M-Audio recording studio gear for $59.99 plus $5 shipping. The site has discussion boards, articles and other data about items offered.
The idea is to get consumers so psyched about the product that they buy it.
Can such a limited repertoire succeed? Online news site Business Insider says Woot posted $164 million in sales for 2008, the most recent figure available. Market tracker Compete says Woot drew 2.2 million unique visitors in May. More than 10% of the traffic is said to have been referred by Facebook, underscoring Woot's links with other social media networks.
There are theories about Woot's popularity. One is that online shoppers get overwhelmed when they visit huge online emporiums like Amazon.com, much as some offline shoppers prefer specialty stand-alone stores to big malls.
Focus, Simplicity, Discounts
Woot has focus and simplicity on its side, analysts say, not to mention frequently a deep discount.
Analysts say Amazon did well to keep Woot and Zappos as their own sites, rather than as part of the larger Amazon.com site.
By DOUG TSURUOKA, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY August 13, 2010
Flash-Sales Trend Providing New Spark For E-Commerce - IBD - Investors.com
Sunday, August 1, 2010
The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets - WSJ.com
Hidden inside Ashley Hayes-Beaty's computer, a tiny file helps gather personal details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny.
The file consists of a single code— 4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37—that secretly identifies her as a 26-year-old female in Nashville, Tenn.
The code knows that her favorite movies include "The Princess Bride," "50 First Dates" and "10 Things I Hate About You." It knows she enjoys the "Sex and the City" series. It knows she browses entertainment news and likes to take quizzes.
"Well, I like to think I have some mystery left to me, but apparently not!" Ms. Hayes-Beaty said when told what that snippet of code reveals about her. "The profile is eerily correct."
Ms. Hayes-Beaty is being monitored by Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company that uses sophisticated software called a "beacon" to capture what people are typing on a website—their comments on movies, say, or their interest in parenting and pregnancy. Lotame packages that data into profiles about individuals, without determining a person's name, and sells the profiles to companies seeking customers. Ms. Hayes-Beaty's tastes can be sold wholesale (a batch of movie lovers is $1 per thousand) or customized (26-year-old Southern fans of "50 First Dates").
"We can segment it all the way down to one person," says Eric Porres, Lotame's chief marketing officer.
One of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found, is the business of spying on Internet users.
The Journal conducted a comprehensive study that assesses and analyzes the broad array of cookies and other surveillance technology that companies are deploying on Internet users. It reveals that the tracking of consumers has grown both far more pervasive and far more intrusive than is realized by all but a handful of people in the vanguard of the industry.
• The study found that the nation's 50 top websites on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with no warning. A dozen sites each installed more than a hundred. The nonprofit Wikipedia installed none.
• Tracking technology is getting smarter and more intrusive. Monitoring used to be limited mainly to "cookie" files that record websites people visit. But the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. Some tools surreptitiously re-spawn themselves even after users try to delete them.
• These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months.
The new technologies are transforming the Internet economy. Advertisers once primarily bought ads on specific Web pages—a car ad on a car site. Now, advertisers are paying a premium to follow people around the Internet, wherever they go, with highly specific marketing messages.
In between the Internet user and the advertiser, the Journal identified more than 100 middlemen—tracking companies, data brokers and advertising networks—competing to meet the growing demand for data on individual behavior and interests.
The data on Ms. Hayes-Beaty's film-watching habits, for instance, is being offered to advertisers on BlueKai Inc., one of the new data exchanges.
"It is a sea change in the way the industry works," says Omar Tawakol, CEO of BlueKai. "Advertisers want to buy access to people, not Web pages."
The Journal examined the 50 most popular U.S. websites, which account for about 40% of the Web pages viewed by Americans. (The Journal also tested its own site, WSJ.com.) It then analyzed the tracking files and programs these sites downloaded onto a test computer.
As a group, the top 50 sites placed 3,180 tracking files in total on the Journal's test computer. Nearly a third of these were innocuous, deployed to remember the password to a favorite site or tally most-popular articles.
But over two-thirds—2,224—were installed by 131 companies, many of which are in the business of tracking Web users to create rich databases of consumer profiles that can be sold.
The top venue for such technology, the Journal found, was IAC/InterActive Corp.'s Dictionary.com. A visit to the online dictionary site resulted in 234 files or programs being downloaded onto the Journal's test computer, 223 of which were from companies that track Web users.
The information that companies gather is anonymous, in the sense that Internet users are identified by a number assigned to their computer, not by a specific person's name. Lotame, for instance, says it doesn't know the name of users such as Ms. Hayes-Beaty—only their behavior and attributes, identified by code number. People who don't want to be tracked can remove themselves from Lotame's system.
And the industry says the data are used harmlessly. David Moore, chairman of 24/7 RealMedia Inc., an ad network owned by WPP PLC, says tracking gives Internet users better advertising.
"When an ad is targeted properly, it ceases to be an ad, it becomes important information," he says.
Tracking isn't new. But the technology is growing so powerful and ubiquitous that even some of America's biggest sites say they were unaware, until informed by the Journal, that they were installing intrusive files on visitors' computers.
The Journal found that Microsoft Corp.'s popular Web portal, MSN.com, planted a tracking file packed with data: It had a prediction of a surfer's age, ZIP Code and gender, plus a code containing estimates of income, marital status, presence of children and home ownership, according to the tracking company that created the file, Targus Information Corp.
Both Targus and Microsoft said they didn't know how the file got onto MSN.com, and added that the tool didn't contain "personally identifiable" information.
Tracking is done by tiny files and programs known as "cookies," "Flash cookies" and "beacons." They are placed on a computer when a user visits a website. U.S. courts have ruled that it is legal to deploy the simplest type, cookies, just as someone using a telephone might allow a friend to listen in on a conversation. Courts haven't ruled on the more complex trackers.
The most intrusive monitoring comes from what are known in the business as "third party" tracking files. They work like this: The first time a site is visited, it installs a tracking file, which assigns the computer a unique ID number. Later, when the user visits another site affiliated with the same tracking company, it can take note of where that user was before, and where he is now. This way, over time the company can build a robust profile.
One such ecosystem is Yahoo Inc.'s ad network, which collects fees by placing targeted advertisements on websites. Yahoo's network knows many things about recent high-school graduate Cate Reid. One is that she is a 13- to 18-year-old female interested in weight loss. Ms. Reid was able to determine this when a reporter showed her a little-known feature on Yahoo's website, the Ad Interest Manager, that displays some of the information Yahoo had collected about her.
Yahoo's take on Ms. Reid, who was 17 years old at the time, hit the mark: She was, in fact, worried that she may be 15 pounds too heavy for her 5-foot, 6-inch frame. She says she often does online research about weight loss.
"Every time I go on the Internet," she says, she sees weight-loss ads. "I'm self-conscious about my weight," says Ms. Reid, whose father asked that her hometown not be given. "I try not to think about it…. Then [the ads] make me start thinking about it."
Yahoo spokeswoman Amber Allman says Yahoo doesn't knowingly target weight-loss ads at people under 18, though it does target adults.
"It's likely this user received an untargeted ad," Ms. Allman says. It's also possible Ms. Reid saw ads targeted at her by other tracking companies.
Information about people's moment-to-moment thoughts and actions, as revealed by their online activity, can change hands quickly. Within seconds of visiting eBay.com or Expedia.com, information detailing a Web surfer's activity there is likely to be auctioned on the data exchange run by BlueKai, the Seattle startup.
Each day, BlueKai sells 50 million pieces of information like this about specific individuals' browsing habits, for as little as a tenth of a cent apiece. The auctions can happen instantly, as a website is visited.
Spokespeople for eBay Inc. and Expedia Inc. both say the profiles BlueKai sells are anonymous and the people aren't identified as visitors of their sites. BlueKai says its own website gives consumers an easy way to see what it monitors about them.
Tracking files get onto websites, and downloaded to a computer, in several ways. Often, companies simply pay sites to distribute their tracking files.
But tracking companies sometimes hide their files within free software offered to websites, or hide them within other tracking files or ads. When this happens, websites aren't always aware that they're installing the files on visitors' computers.
Often staffed by "quants," or math gurus with expertise in quantitative analysis, some tracking companies use probability algorithms to try to pair what they know about a person's online behavior with data from offline sources about household income, geography and education, among other things.
The goal is to make sophisticated assumptions in real time—plans for a summer vacation, the likelihood of repaying a loan—and sell those conclusions.
Some financial companies are starting to use this formula to show entirely different pages to visitors, based on assumptions about their income and education levels.
Life-insurance site AccuquoteLife.com, a unit of Byron Udell & Associates Inc., last month tested a system showing visitors it determined to be suburban, college-educated baby-boomers a default policy of $2 million to $3 million, says Accuquote executive Sean Cheyney. A rural, working-class senior citizen might see a default policy for $250,000, he says.
"We're driving people down different lanes of the highway," Mr. Cheyney says.
Consumer tracking is the foundation of an online advertising economy that racked up $23 billion in ad spending last year. Tracking activity is exploding. Researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute last fall found tracking technology on 80% of 1,000 popular sites, up from 40% of those sites in 2005.
The Journal found tracking files that collect sensitive health and financial data. On Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.'s dictionary website Merriam-Webster.com, one tracking file from Healthline Networks Inc., an ad network, scans the page a user is viewing and targets ads related to what it sees there. So, for example, a person looking up depression-related words could see Healthline ads for depression treatments on that page—and on subsequent pages viewed on other sites.
Healthline says it doesn't let advertisers track users around the Internet who have viewed sensitive topics such as HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, eating disorders and impotence. The company does let advertisers track people with bipolar disorder, overactive bladder and anxiety, according to its marketing materials.
Targeted ads can get personal. Last year, Julia Preston, a 32-year-old education-software designer in Austin, Texas, researched uterine disorders online. Soon after, she started noticing fertility ads on sites she visited. She now knows she doesn't have a disorder, but still gets the ads.
It's "unnerving," she says.
Tracking became possible in 1994 when the tiny text files called cookies were introduced in an early browser, Netscape Navigator. Their purpose was user convenience: remembering contents of Web shopping carts.
Back then, online advertising barely existed. The first banner ad appeared the same year. When online ads got rolling during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, advertisers were buying ads based on proximity to content—shoe ads on fashion sites.
The dot-com bust triggered a power shift in online advertising, away from websites and toward advertisers. Advertisers began paying for ads only if someone clicked on them. Sites and ad networks began using cookies aggressively in hopes of showing ads to people most likely to click on them, thus getting paid.
Targeted ads command a premium. Last year, the average cost of a targeted ad was $4.12 per thousand viewers, compared with $1.98 per thousand viewers for an untargeted ad, according to an ad-industry-sponsored study in March.
The Journal examined three kinds of tracking technology—basic cookies as well as more powerful "Flash cookies" and bits of software code called "beacons."
More than half of the sites examined by the Journal installed 23 or more "third party" cookies. Dictionary.com installed the most, placing 159 third-party cookies.
Cookies are typically used by tracking companies to build lists of pages visited from a specific computer. A newer type of technology, beacons, can watch even more activity.
Beacons, also known as "Web bugs" and "pixels," are small pieces of software that run on a Web page. They can track what a user is doing on the page, including what is being typed or where the mouse is moving.
The majority of sites examined by the Journal placed at least seven beacons from outside companies. Dictionary.com had the most, 41, including several from companies that track health conditions and one that says it can target consumers by dozens of factors, including zip code and race.
Dictionary.com President Shravan Goli attributed the presence of so many tracking tools to the fact that the site was working with a large number of ad networks, each of which places its own cookies and beacons. After the Journal contacted the company, it cut the number of networks it uses and beefed up its privacy policy to more fully disclose its practices.
The widespread use of Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash software to play videos online offers another opportunity to track people. Flash cookies originally were meant to remember users' preferences, such as volume settings for online videos.
But Flash cookies can also be used by data collectors to re-install regular cookies that a user has deleted. This can circumvent a user's attempt to avoid being tracked online. Adobe condemns the practice.
Most sites examined by the Journal installed no Flash cookies. Comcast.net installed 55.
That finding surprised the company, which said it was unaware of them. Comcast Corp. subsequently determined that it had used a piece of free software from a company called Clearspring Technologies Inc. to display a slideshow of celebrity photos on Comcast.net. The Flash cookies were installed on Comcast's site by that slideshow, according to Comcast.
Clearspring, based in McLean, Va., says the 55 Flash cookies were a mistake. The company says it no longer uses Flash cookies for tracking.
CEO Hooman Radfar says Clearspring provides software and services to websites at no charge. In exchange, Clearspring collects data on consumers. It plans eventually to sell the data it collects to advertisers, he says, so that site users can be shown "ads that don't suck." Comcast's data won't be used, Clearspring says.
Wittingly or not, people pay a price in reduced privacy for the information and services they receive online. Dictionary.com, the site with the most tracking files, is a case study.
The site's annual revenue, about $9 million in 2009 according to an SEC filing, means the site is too small to support an extensive ad-sales team. So it needs to rely on the national ad-placing networks, whose business model is built on tracking.
Dictionary.com executives say the trade-off is fair for their users, who get free access to its dictionary and thesaurus service.
"Whether it's one or 10 cookies, it doesn't have any impact on the customer experience, and we disclose we do it," says Dictionary.com spokesman Nicholas Graham. "So what's the beef?"
The problem, say some industry veterans, is that so much consumer data is now up for sale, and there are no legal limits on how that data can be used.
Until recently, targeting consumers by health or financial status was considered off-limits by many large Internet ad companies. Now, some aim to take targeting to a new level by tapping online social networks.
Media6Degrees Inc., whose technology was found on three sites by the Journal, is pitching banks to use its data to size up consumers based on their social connections. The idea is that the creditworthy tend to hang out with the creditworthy, and deadbeats with deadbeats.
"There are applications of this technology that can be very powerful," says Tom Phillips, CEO of Media6Degrees. "Who knows how far we'd take it?"
The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets - WSJ.com
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Our fragile Internet: An unfixed glitch could leave you stranded / LJWorld.com
New York — In 1998, a hacker told Congress that he could bring down the Internet in 30 minutes by exploiting a certain flaw that sometimes caused online outages by misdirecting data. In 2003, the Bush administration concluded that fixing this flaw was in the nation’s “vital interest.”
Fast forward to 2010, and very little has happened to improve the situation. The flaw still causes outages every year. Although most of the outages are innocent and fixed quickly, the problem still could be exploited by a hacker to spy on data traffic or take down Web sites. Meanwhile, our reliance on the Internet has only increased. The next outage, accidental or malicious, could disrupt businesses, the government or anyone who needs the Internet to run normally.
‘Hijackings’The outages are caused by the somewhat haphazard way that traffic is passed between companies that carry Internet data. The outages are called “hijackings,” even though most of them are not caused by criminals bent on destruction. Instead the outages are a problem borne out of the open nature of the Internet, a quality that also has stimulated the Net’s dazzling growth.
“It’s ugly when you look under the cover,” says Earl Zmijewski, a general manager at Renesys Corp., which tracks the performance of Internet data routes. “It amazes me every day when I get into work and find it’s working.”
How information travels
When you send an e-mail, view a Web page or do anything else online, the information you read and transmit is handed from one carrier of Internet data to another, sometimes in a long chain. When you log into Facebook, your data might be handed from your Internet service provider to a company such as Level 3 Communications Inc., which operates a global network of fiber-optic lines that carry Internet data across long distances. It, in turn, might pass the data to a carrier that’s connected directly to Facebook’s server computers.
The crux of the problem is that each carrier along the way figures out how to route the data based only on what the surrounding carriers in the chain say, rather than by looking at the whole path. It’s as if a driver had to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh without a map, navigating solely by traffic signs he encountered along the way — but the signs weren’t put up by a central authority. If a sign pointed in the wrong direction, that driver would get lost.
That’s essentially what happens when an Internet route gets hijacked. Because carriers pass information between themselves about where data should go — and this system has no secure, automatic means of verifying that the routing information is correct — data can be routed to some carrier that isn’t expecting the information. The carrier doesn’t know what to do with it, and usually just drops it. It falls into a “black hole.”
Past incidents
On April 25, 1997, millions of people in North America lost access to all of the Internet for about an hour. The hijacking was caused by an employee misprogramming a router, a computer that directs data traffic, at a small Internet service provider.
A similar incident happened elsewhere the next year, and the one after that. Routing errors also blocked Internet access in different parts of the world, often for millions of people, in 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2009. Last month a Chinese Internet service provider halted access from around the world to a vast number of sites, including Dell.com and CNN.com, for about 20 minutes.
In 2008, Pakistan Telecom tried to comply with a government order to prevent access to YouTube from the country and intentionally “black-holed” requests for YouTube videos from Pakistani Internet users. But it also accidentally told the international carrier upstream from it that “I’m the best route to YouTube, so send all YouTube traffic to me.” The upstream carrier accepted the routing message, and passed it along to other carriers across the world, which started sending all requests for YouTube videos to Pakistan Telecom. Soon, even Internet users in the U.S. were deprived of videos of singing cats and skateboarding dogs for a few hours.
In 2004, the flaw was put to malicious use when someone got a computer in Malaysia to tell Internet service providers that it was part of Yahoo Inc. A flood of spam was sent out, appearing to come from Yahoo.
“Hijacking is very much like identity theft. Someone in the world claims to be you,” said Todd Underwood, who worked for Renesys during the Pakistan Telecom hijacking. He now works for Google Inc., trying to prevent hijacking of its Web sites, which include YouTube.
Routing reform
In 2003, the Bush administration’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board assembled a “National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace” that concluded that it was vital to fix the routing system and make sure the “traffic signs” always point in the right direction.
But unlike Internet bugs that get discovered and fixed relatively quickly, the routing system has been unreformed for more than a decade. And while there’s some progress being made, there’s little industry-wide momentum behind efforts to introduce a permanent remedy. Data carriers regard the fallibility of the routing system as the price to be paid for the Internet’s open, flexible structure. The simplicity of the routing system makes it easy for service providers to connect, a quality that has probably helped the explosive growth of the Internet.
Risks skyrocket
That growth has also increased the risks exponentially. Fifteen years ago, maybe 8,000 people in the world had access to computers that use the Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP, which defines how carriers pass routing information to each other. Now, Danny McPherson, chief security officer at Arbor Networks, believes that with the growth of Internet access across the world and the attendant increase in the number of carriers, that figure is probably closer to 1 million people.
Peiter Zatko, a member of the “hacker think tank” called the L0pht, told Congress in 1998 that he could use the BGP vulnerability to bring down the Internet in half an hour. In recent years, Zatko — who now works for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — has said the exploit would still work. However, it would likely take a few hours rather than 30 minutes, partly because a greater number of Internet carriers would need to be hit.
Authority issues
Plenty of solutions have been proposed in the Internet engineering community, going back as far as 1995. The U.S. government has supported these efforts, spurred in part by the Bush administration’s 2003 strategy statement. That has resulted in some trials of new technology, but adoption by data carriers still appears distant. And the federal government doesn’t have any direct authority to force changes.
One reason is that the weaknesses in the system are in the routing between carriers. It doesn’t help if one carrier introduces a new system — every one it connects with has to make the change as well.
“It’s kind of everybody’s problem, because it impacts the stability of the Internet, but at the same time it’s nobody’s problem because nobody owns it,” says Doug Maughan, who deals with the issue at the Department of Homeland Security.
Our fragile Internet: An unfixed glitch could leave you stranded / LJWorld.com
Thursday, April 29, 2010
China's Alibaba Now Accepting PayPal Payments - PCWorld Business Center
Alibaba Group, the biggest e-commerce company in China, is accepting payments made using PayPal on one of its e-commerce sites, even though the company runs its own competing payment platform called AliPay.
The site, called AliExpress, targets small to medium-sized retailers and wholesalers outside of China that want to source products from Chinese companies, said Linda Kozlowski, a spokeswoman for Alibaba in Hong Kong.Unlike Alibaba.com, the company's main site where customers typically order large quantities of customized goods and make payments offline, AliExpress was set up to handle smaller orders of goods that suppliers already have in stock. Payments can be made using PayPal, Visa, MasterCard or bank transfer.
While AliPay isn't offered as a payment option on AliExpress, the payment platform is still used to provide an escrow service on the site, she said.
Alibaba is offering users the ability to pay with PayPal because the company believes users benefit from having a choice of payment options. "It's simply another option for payment," Kozlowski said.
The announcement that Alibaba is accepting PayPal as a payment method is notable given the competition between the two companies, as well as with PayPal's parent, eBay.
Alibaba's Taobao consumer e-commerce and auction site dominates the Chinese market, having built its success there largely at eBay's expense. In addition, Alibaba executives have said they're committed to expanding AliPay internationally, a move that will inevitably lead to greater competition with PayPal.
Earlier this month, Alibaba announced plans to invest 5 billion yuan (US$702 million) in AliPay over the next five years to fund its international expansion plans.
How the partnership between Alibaba and PayPal will play out remains to be seen. Kozlowski declined to comment on whether or not Alibaba plans to expand the availability of PayPal to its other e-commerce sites.
China's Alibaba Now Accepting PayPal Payments - PCWorld Business Center
Sunday, April 11, 2010
FCC to push ahead on broadband plan despite court setback
WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that it intends to move forward quickly with key recommendations in its national broadband plan - even though a federal appeals court this week undermined the agency's legal authority to regulate high-speed Internet access.
The FCC needs that authority to push ahead with many parts of the broadband plan, which it released last month. Among them: a proposal to expand broadband by tapping the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural areas.
The FCC laid out its 2010 "broadband action agenda" without indicating how it will proceed in light of the court ruling. But the agency says it will ensure it has the legal authority it needs for its sweeping plan to increase broadband usage and Internet speeds.
"Does the FCC still have a mission in the Internet area?" FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick wrote in a blog post following Tuesday's court decision. "Absolutely."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled Tuesday that the FCC lacks authority to impose "network neutrality" obligations. Those require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all traffic over their lines. Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, had challenged the rules in court after the FCC ordered it to stop blocking its subscribers from using an online file-sharing service called BitTorrent.
Although the FCC could appeal the decision or ask Congress to give it the authority it needs, many public-interest groups are instead calling on the agency to impose "common carrier" regulations on broadband providers. Those rules, which have traditionally applied to phone companies, prohibit carriers from discriminating against certain types of traffic, among other things.
But even as the agency contemplates its next move on that front, it made clear Thursday that the broadband plan remains a top priority. The FCC said it will focus on a number of major proposals including:
• Reforming the Universal Service Fund by phasing out subsidies for phone service and instead using the program to pay for broadband.
• Freeing up more wireless spectrum to deliver mobile broadband services.
• Establishing a nationwide wireless network for public safety that will help firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers communicate.
• Seeking ways to drive more competition in the market for network connections used by business customers, cellular towers and other big bandwidth users.
FCC to push ahead on broadband plan despite court setback
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Test of Google offers peek at China's Internet filters
by Gillian Wong and Jeremiah Marquez Associated Press Mar. 28, 2010 12:00 AM
BEIJING -- Type "Falun Gong" in Chinese into Google's search engine from Beijing, and the Web browser suddenly becomes unresponsive for about a minute. Make the same search from Hong Kong, and you'll get plenty of links to the spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government.
Internet users in mainland China and Hong Kong now share the same Google search site, but their experiences continue to widely differ, particularly on topics deemed sensitive by China's Communist leaders. The difference is that the government, rather than Google Inc., is now doing the censoring.
The findings in a recent Associated Press test offer insights into the sophistication with which China uses its complex "Great Firewall" to filter its citizens' online view of the world.
Recent searches for taboo topics from Beijing generally produced "page cannot be displayed" errors. The user's browser stops working for about a minute, longer if one tries to access forbidden sites in quick succession. It's not just the links to those sites that don't work; the results don't come back at all.
Yet the filters aren't exact, and English-language sites have a greater chance of slipping through, partly because the government is more concerned about the vast majority of citizens who speak only Chinese. And even as the Great Firewall blocks Twitter and sensitive blog postings, excerpts do show up on Google's search-results page.
The findings illustrate how China's vast government-run network of Web filters works. When a user enters a sensitive term in a search, it triggers a brief blockage that affects subsequent searches - even those on innocuous topics - by that user or anyone else at the same numeric Internet address. That can be one computer or an entire cybercafe.
Chinese-language searches for missing Chinese activist lawyer Gao Zhisheng, jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, Chinese President Hu Jintao and "June 4 incident" - known elsewhere as the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown - all led to the Web browser in Beijing hanging for a minute or longer.
Before Google killed its mainland search service Monday and redirected "Google.cn" traffic to its existing Hong Kong-based site, Google returned censored results with a note explaining that some items had been removed. Google needed to comply with Chinese laws, but it wanted users to know about the omissions in hopes they would pressure their government to lift restraints.
But Google announced Jan. 12 that it was no longer willing to censor those results after it discovered it was the target of hacking attacks originating from China. Unable to reach agreement with the ruling party on running an uncensored search service, Google decided to send mainland users to Hong Kong, a Chinese territory that is semiautonomous because of its past as a British colony.
Some Google searches produce the same results whether from Beijing or Hong Kong. Among them: "Michael Jackson" and "March 14 incident," which refers to the 2008 anti-Chinese riots in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.
In other cases, results appear the same, but the text ads alongside them differ.
Google routinely uses a computer's numeric Internet address to determine the visitor's location and adjust search results and ads accordingly. Even within the United States, sites for some local businesses may show up higher or lower in the results depending on where you are.
Thus, despite Google's decision to give mainland users the Hong Kong site, at Google.com.hk, visitors from Beijing still see differences having nothing to do with China's filters.
With the change, Hong Kong's site began displaying search results in the simplified Chinese characters that are used in mainland China, but Hong Kong visitors still get a page in the traditional Chinese script, with links to versions for English or simplified Chinese.
Beijing visitors get the simplified version first, and their Hong Kong page looks much like the old Google.cn.
The Google-owned online-video leader YouTube is typically blocked on the mainland. In Beijing, searches on a separate Google video service are directed to a Google.cn site where the company is still censoring results. Video, music and maps are among the features that Google continues to operate in China. In Hong Kong, however, video searches go to the Hong Kong site, where results are not censored.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong users can reach a China-only music service, but unless you're on the mainland, you get this advisory when you try to listen to a song: "Music streaming/download services are not available in your region."
The Great Firewall isn't an exact science, but it's meant to keep most of the sensitive content from most of the citizens most of the time.
China's censors roll out blockades
by Jessica Mintz Associated Press Mar. 28, 2010 12:00 AM
SEATTLE - Now that Google is sending Web surfers in mainland China to a Hong Kong-based site, the company is free to display complete search results on any topic without the self-censorship Beijing had required.
But that doesn't mean people in China are getting more information.
The Chinese government's own Web-filtering tools are blocking people from seeing the results of sensitive searches made on the Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk. And if it wants to, Beijing could keep people on the mainland from even connecting to the Hong Kong site.
Some questions and answers about the situation:
Question: What was Google.cn? Why would someone in China use that instead of Google.com?
Answer: Google operates a Chinese-language search site that people from all over the world can access.
But starting in 2002, Google learned that when Web users in China typed in words deemed sensitive by Beijing, such as "the '89 student movement," referring to the Tiananmen Square massacre, the requests for information didn't always reach Google's servers because of blocking by the Chinese government. The users' Web browsers would stop working or show an error message. Sometimes Google.com was slow or completely unavailable to mainland Chinese users. Or people were even redirected to a competing search site.
The company launched Google.cn, using the Internet domain for China, in 2006 so people in China would have a faster and more reliable site.
To be allowed to offer the service, Google had to agree to abide by Beijing's mandate that information deemed subversive or pornographic be omitted. But Google could tell people when it was excluding results.
Q: Can China take away Google.cn and stop visitors from being sent anywhere else?
A: Yes. The China Internet Network Information Center
, which answers to China's Ministry of Information Industry, controls the master "directory" of ".cn" Web sites. It could erase "google.cn" from its domain-name registry, which means people hunting for the search engine would be told "site not found."
The government also could change what happens when someone types "google.cn" into a Web browser.
Go Daddy ends new sign-ups in China
by Max Jarman The Arizona Republic Mar. 28, 2010 12:00 AM
The Scottsdale company known for its racy Super Bowl commercials has taken a tough stance on the heavy-handed surveillance practices of the Chinese government.
Internet domain-name registrar GoDaddy.com said it will no longer register new Web sites in China in response to new government rules that require it to provide additional personal information on its customers.
"The Chinese government is focused on using the Internet for monitoring and surveillance, and we are no longer comfortable with that," said Christine Jones, Go Daddy's executive vice president and corporate counsel.
It's a bold and possibly costly move for a company whose notoriety is tied to a string of sexy "Go Daddy Girls," including race-car driver Danica Patrick.
But, it's a move other companies may have to consider as oppressive governments step up Internet monitoring to censor content and keep tabs on users.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association in Washington, D.C., counts about a dozen countries, such as Egypt, Iran and Tunisia, with objectionable Internet-monitoring practices.
Catherine Sloan, the organization's vice president of government relations, said the number is expected to increase as Internet use grows in developing countries.
Go Daddy's move follows Google's recent announcement that it would no longer comply with the Chinese government's rules that it censor offensive search results. Google is sending Web searchers in mainland China to Hong Kong, where censored results are not legally required.
Sloan called the moves courageous and said they will hopefully result in governments softening their restrictive Internet-monitoring practices.
Go Daddy is the world's largest clearinghouse for Internet addresses, with more than 40 million domain names under management. Its biggest competitor, Network Solutions of Herndon, Va., also has stopped registering new .cn domain names in China.
Jones said that there are a number of Chinese companies registering names, but they are under even greater scrutiny and have no choice but to comply with the government rules.
Go Daddy has been registering domain names in China since 2005 and manages 27,000 names there for 1,200 customers.
Some customers have Web sites that the Chinese government could object to, said Jones, who told members of Congress on Wednesday that she was concerned for their security.
Jones was testifying before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which was meeting to discuss the ramifications of Google's decision earlier in the week.
Go Daddy's Chinese domain names are a fraction of those in a country with an estimated 350 million Internet users and represent a small portion of its annual revenue. But the Chinese market holds significant potential, and Go Daddy plans to continue to service its existing accounts there in hopes the government backtracks on its reporting requirements.
Initially, Go Daddy was required to obtain only the first and last names of the registrants, their physical addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.
But in December, the Chinese government implemented new rules that also required applicants to provide a color photo ID, Chinese business-registration numbers and certain signed registration forms.
Then in February, it required Go Daddy to obtain the additional information from existing domain-name registrants and submit it to the China Internet Network Information Center, or CNNIC, for it to review before the Web site was activated.
Jones said that operators of existing Web sites that failed to submit the additional information could have their sites deactivated by the government.
She testified that the action will have a "chilling effect" on the free exchange of information over the Internet and asked Congress to put pressure on the Chinese to rescind the reporting rules and crack down on Internet abuses, such as spam and payment fraud.
Jones said Go Daddy is constantly repelling cyber attacks against its security systems in China, in addition to dealing with prolific spammers and payment-fraud schemes.
"China today is basically the only major market where spammers can do just about anything they want," Jones testified.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Companies race to tap Internet TV audience
by Louie Villalobos The Arizona Republic Mar. 17, 2010 12:00 AM
Photo courtesy of Boxee Inc.
The concept of Internet TV is also the driving force behind Boxee, an internet-based piece of software that serves as an aggregator of publicly available television content.
Technology companies are going after a specific segment of television viewers.
It's a group of consumers that will sacrifice access to some live programming for the ability to view shows from any computer connected to the Internet.
Officials from two of the companies leading the way said it's technology that has been around for years but is just now maturing to the point of mass appeal as users expand on how they consume entertainment.
Joe Chauvin, program manager for Microsoft's Media Center, said consumers have rallied around the idea that Web-based streaming can be a viable alternative to television.
With that idea in mind, he said, Microsoft launched Windows 7, which includes an upgraded version of the Media Center program, with various video-streaming capabilities.
The concept of Internet TV is also the driving force behind Boxee, an Internet-based application that serves as an aggregator of publicly available television content.
Andrew Kippen, vice president of marketing for Boxee, attributed the product's growth in popularity since its public debut in January to a grass-roots movement to change the way entertainment is consumed.
"It's a market that's very heavily guarded," he said. "But we're at a point where consumers are dictating what they want."
Both companies also acknowledged that TV manufacturers, such as Samsung, are releasing Internet-ready televisions that can also stream Netflix offerings. Those could attract consumers who aren't comfortable with Boxee or Media Center.
Media Center and Boxee have similar goals, but each takes a completely different approach.
Through Windows 7, Media Center offers two ways to view television shows. The first is for people with an Internet connection only.
It provides content from partners. CBS, for example, offers shows from a "prime time" lineup and a "classics" lineup. Those shows are displayed via the guide and available for viewing at any time.
Then, Media Center provides a live-TV option that runs through a TV tuner purchased separately. This device, when attached to a computer running Media Center, captures the public transmissions from area stations. Media Center can record and store on the host computer.
Boxee currently works with content already available publicly through the Internet by gathering and displaying TV shows in a centralized place.
Much of its free content comes from Hulu.com, which is widely known as having a large library of both TV shows and movies available for viewing.
When users click on a show in Boxee, they are sent to the source page but within the Boxee browser. The software also features applications that focus on specific content, such as Pandora, YouTube, and MLB.TV.
The applications are currently free, but users will have to subscribe to certain services, such as Netflix, to use the corresponding application.
Both Chauvin and Kippen said their services are meant to at least complement existing cable or satellite packages to which consumers subscribe.
"If you're somebody who is superpassionate about being up to date, then you're probably going to keep that cable connection and use Boxee as a companion," Kippen said.
Windows 7, Chauvin said, improves several aspects of what Microsoft offered in previous versions.
Chief among them is the Internet TV feature and the improvement to the software's digital-recording capabilities.
"Originally, we thought it would be a great service for dorm rooms because it's an all-in-one product," he said.
"But we've found that a lot of retired people were using it because they already had a PC."
Kippen said Boxee is working with D-Link, a computer-networking company, to create hardware for running the Boxee software.
The Boxee Box is expected to debut this year for $199. Kippen said the eventual goal is to have the Boxee software running on as many devices as possible.
"I think it's something that people would really go for," he said. "The balance is slowly shifting."
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Google facing many risks in China standoff
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's near-silence and seeming inaction since its bombshell announcement it may exit China reflects the Internet search leader's fear of running afoul of the law and jeopardizing a multi-pronged strategy for the world's top Internet market.
Google sent shockwaves across the business and political worlds when it declared on January 12 it would stop censoring Chinese search results. But in the three weeks since, the Web giant has trod cautiously.
Despite early reports suggesting Google had lifted filters on certain search results, the company insists it has made zero changes to its Chinese search engine and that it remains in dialogue with Beijing. Otherwise, executives have mostly been tight-lipped about the entire affair.
That guarded, restrained approach reflects the thorny legal issues surrounding the situation and the high stakes involved in its standoff with China, the world's No. 3 economy and largest Internet market by users.
Many analysts believe the Chinese government would have no qualms shutting down an uncensored search engine. But experts on Chinese law warn that Google employees in China could also face prosecution for breaking the law.
China's detention of four Rio Tinto employees including Australian Stern Hu in July on accusations of illegally obtaining commercial secrets amid contentious iron ore contract negotiations has underscored the risk when business matters cross into politically sensitive areas.
"If they have a lot of personnel in China and they suddenly decide to change what they're doing in a way that was not permitted by the Chinese government, then that could lead to problems," said Donald Clarke, a professor of Chinese law at George Washington University Law School, noting Google staff could be at risk of everything from arrest to harassment.
And with political momentum building -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Senate have voiced strong support for freedom of expression on the Internet -- Google has room to sit back and let others advance its cause.
"As long as individual actors, even ones as large as Google, are doing this alone as opposed to collectively, then these risks are going to be much more pronounced," said Arvind Ganesan, director of business at Human Rights Watch.
STATE SECRETS: A CATCH-ALL
A sudden move by Google to lift search censorship in China could hurt other business interests in the country, including its fast-growing Android cell phone products, advertising sales and its research and development operations.
"Both parties probably want to reach some sort of a solution, so I think both have been careful in their public statements," UBS analyst Brian Pitz.
Websites in China are prohibited from publishing content that jeopardizes the security of the nation, divulges state secrets and disturbs the social order.
"It would be normal for anybody running a high-profile, politically controversial operation in China to anticipate worst-case scenarios, and to do everything possible to guard against them," said Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the Open Society Institute who has written extensively about Internet censorship in China.
Google is therefore more likely to voluntarily shut down its search operation if it is unable to reach a compromise with China, rather than unilaterally lift censorship, she said.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said last month the company was still censoring search results in China, but that it would be making changes in a "reasonably short time." He added that Google was committed to having some presence in China.
The company does not disclose the size of its business in China, where it has several hundred employees and is the No. 2 search engine after Baidu Inc. Analysts estimate it generates $200 million to $600 million a year in revenue.
While many experts believe Beijing is unlikely to let Google operate an uncensored website, some say last summer's "Green Dam" software episode could offer a lesson for the company as it looks for a way forward.
Beijing backed down from a controversial plan that would have required personal computer makers to install special Internet filtering software on PCs in the face of opposition from industry groups, activists and Washington officials such as U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
"What you saw is a pretty much global pushback on what were pretty onerous and odious regulations on the part of the government. And guess what? As of today, there is no requirement" to install filtering software, said Ganesan of Human Rights Watch.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Richard Chang)
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Birth of the Virtual Assistant
In the near future, anyone who lives a connected lifestyle will be able to delegate their everyday tasks to intelligent virtual assistants that will coordinate, execute and simplify users’ lives.
We will look back on these days and ask ourselves how we ever got by without our trusted assistants, the same way my kids ask in amazement about how we ever got things done before laptops and the Internet.
What Constitutes a Virtual Assistant?
For a long time, Hollywood has been portraying machines that humans can converse with, delegate tasks to, and command. Remember the HAL 9000, KITT the car, COMPUTER from Star Trek, or even the brilliantly conceived and visualized Apple “Knowledge Navigator” from over 20 years ago?
They have symbolized our desire for trusted machine assistants that can help make our lives easier. They have persisted in the creative works of science fiction writers for decades. But have you ever asked yourself why that is? Looking beyond the theatrical and dramatic value of these ideas, the reality is simple — we have always desired more help, less hassle, and higher productivity in our lives.
What about search engines? Aren’t they the modern day version of this? No, at least not the search engines of today.
Search is a fantastic tool to help you find information on the Internet, but try to ask a search engine to actually do something for you. Try typing “get me a seat on the next flight from Chicago to Seattle” and see what happens. Or ask your favorite search engine to book you a table for three at Gibson’s steakhouse in Chicago for the day after tomorrow. Today’s paradigm of 10 blue links doesn’t cut it, and we need a new tool to help.
We need software that is specifically designed to help you get things done — a “Do Engine” rather than a search engine: A virtual assistant.
Intelligent Cohesion of the Tools We Already Use
Here is the good news: The elements, technology and ecosystem needed to build machines and software that can automate many of the mundane tasks of our lives are here already.
We just need to add a little intelligence. It will take some time, maybe 3-5 years, for the concept to mature. But when it does, it will emerge as the most frequently used and trusted online tool. It will make the most common actions on the web as simple as having a conversation. It will integrate into your life, get to know you, and be proactive.
In some sense your smartphone is starting to work like this already. There are already tens of thousands of services, apps, and sites that help you find and do things on the web and in the world. The problem is that they are all islands unto themselves, typically focused on a limited domain, and don’t often work together. They rarely share data or context with each other, have different user interfaces, and require users to spend a good amount of time to discover them, sign up, and get started. In terms of unified personal services, it’s not ideal.
Virtual assistants will help unify these and get them work together at your command. It would be nice to simply pull out your phone one day and tell it to move your 3 p.m. meeting to 5 p.m. and alert everyone invited of the change. That day is coming sooner than you think.
A New Chapter for the Web
There is a direct relationship between simplicity and user engagement on the web. Less clicks means more users — period. When combined with tools like smartphones, virtual assistants will migrate user interactions towards a far more frictionless e-commerce, consumption and collaboration model.
You will soon pick up your phone and start asking your assistant things like “take me to live CNN news,” “send my dad the latest John Grisham book,” or “tell Adam I am running 20 minutes late,” and you will then watch it all happen. This evolution towards simplicity of interaction will reduce the barrier to almost everything you use your mobile device to do.
Furthermore, the device is always with you. The combination of simplicity, impulse opportunity, context, and preference will create the most explosive market opportunity in ages.
This will be a market in which every player along the line wins. Users will be able to click less, enjoy simpler interactions and receive much-needed help getting things done and managing their day. Participating service providers get simpler discovery, more transactions, and higher consumption rates. This then drives more data dollars to networks, fueling infrastructure expansion.
As proof, witness what a cool device called the iPhone() has managed to accomplish through a snappy and simple interface with shiny buttons and creative apps. That one device and the competitive response we are now seeing has created a complete transformation in computing.
The Anatomy of the Virtual Assistant
The OS of virtual assistants will be the Internet itself, as Kevin Kelly postulated years ago. The brains will be AIs that are developed by software companies for both general purpose and targeted domains. The arms and legs will be web APIs (many of your favorite brands and services), and the connective tissue will be authentication protocols like OAuth and Open Social, and trust circles like those of Facebook().
The rapid maturation of technologies that enable free-form interaction such as natural language processing and speech recognition have vastly improved, to the point of gaining real adoption in many applications today (e.g. Google Speech, Nuance Dragon Dictation, Ford Sync for cars). Virtual assistants will leverage these inputs and begin to integrate them with conversations for a simpler, more natural way to get things done. This concept was best described by the late pioneer from MIT, Michael Dertouzos, who called it “human-centric computing.”
Over the long term, this paradigm will expand to many (or most) of the online services and tools we use to manage our lives like booking, buying, reserving, reminding, and scheduling. As we build trust in our digital “partner” we will put more and more onto its to-do list.
Trust is Key
The vague promises of contextual awareness, personalization, and other generalizations have rarely materialized in real products on the web. We are wary of what personal information we share online, in search engines, and the the never-ending fear of credit card fraud still looms. But this game is changing with the open web.
Mark Zuckerberg is indeed correct that privacy is dead on the Internet among the digital generation. Hundreds of millions of people spend a great deal of time telling the world all about their personal interests and information that forms their “digital face” on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn(), Twitter() and others. This will only expand as the demonstrable benefits of this effort become more apparent.
The paradigm shift we will see with virtual assistants is that providing them with access to your preferences, tastes, accounts and more will be the cornerstone of the simplicity they will enable (within a very secure environment, of course). In other words, where we once feared how long search engines kept our personal information, we will now go out of our way to expend time and effort to specifically provide our trusted assistant detailed information about ourselves.
This will be done both manually and via syncing with existing sources of our personal data such as Facebook profiles, iTunes() music lists, and contacts. The point is that you will make your virtual assistant definitively yours.
2010 and Beyond
The experience will be like hiring a new assistant that doesn’t yet know you, but eventually becomes so familiar that you can’t live without him or her. Keep your eyes on this space, try out these products as they emerge, and prepare to make your life a bit simpler over the next few years.
As John Battelle has said: “The future of search is a conversation with someone you trust.” 2010 will be the year in which we start to see real progress towards this vision, on many fronts.
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