Google: U.S. Demanded User Info 3,500 Times in 6 Months | Threat Level | Wired.com

• Google: U.S. Demanded User Info 3,500 Times in 6 Months Threat Level Wired.com

Search Engines and Internet Service providers have never released the statistics on how many times the government requests or forces them to hand over user information. Google has now done this. Google is the first search engine to compile a list that provides users with how many times the government request user information or have asked Google to remove content from their site, removed content from their search index and where in the world it occured.

Its called the government request tool. "The answer for U.S. users is 3,580 total requests for information over a six-month period from July 2009 to December 2009." Google has decided to display this information in hopes of eliminating censorship. They are currently censored in 25 countries.

Microsoft has no plans to reveal any statistics in regards to government requests. Yahoo did post the following comment.

"“In support of both user privacy and public safety interests, we do not generally discuss the details of law enforcement demands,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. “As a general matter, Yahoo! Inc. and its subsidiaries around the world receive law enforcement demands relating to only a tiny fraction (less than one one-hundredth of 1%) of the Yahoo! user base."

How user information is stored and shared should be transparent. Google is the first company to provide these numbers but I certainly hope they are not the last.

Email currently loses its legal protection after 6 months but for how long? Lately, Facebook has seemed all too eager to share user information to the public. Facebook no longer demands that 3rd party applications trash user information in 24hrs. They share your information and they continue to extend the duration of time that companies can have access to your information.

We need to have more transparancy in our ISPs, search engines, etc. I want to know where more data is. After i delete an email how long is it stored on Yahoo servers? In this case what users do not know may continue to be....what they don't know.

Social Marketing

Douglas Karr was a guest speaker this week in class. He did a great job! He was entertaining, informative and you could tell he was passionate about what he was lecturing about. I would love for him to do another lecture or to have more guest speakers in all my classes. Guest speakers are a rare thing in my experience at IUPUI. This past Thursday was a refreshing change.

I liked that Douglas really got into the subject. It was hillarious how he was "disqualified" in an online competition. He knows really knows his stuff. He was able to get traffic to that business's website and also his own.

Douglas mentioned how important networking is in our profession. Especially now with the economy. It seems like your chance of getting hired for a job with out knowing someone is slim. I added Douglas to my Twitter and Facebook account and because I really found his lecture fascinating and thought he was a good communicator I passed his information along to my manager. Who knows. We currently work with a different company for marketing but I would recommend Doug if we started looking for a replacement.

There are so many different ways to get your name out on the web. You can have a professional image or a beer drinking image. Its up to you. I haven't perfected my image online yet. Obviously I want a professional image but I haven't devoted enough time to really cultivate exactly what I want. This past lecture renewed my enthusiasm for social marketing and marketing yourself.

I want to have a profile online that I can point to at any given moment. If a potential employer, friend, fellow classmate, or family want to learn more about me I think it would be worthwile to have a link to send them. Plus, it would be fun!! I'm thinking this may become a summer project for myself.

Twitter Hits Its Stride, Plans New Features - PCWorld

• Twitter Hits Its Stride, Plans New Features - PCWorld

  tags: no_tag

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Google Offers Twitter Replay -- InformationWeek

• Google Offers Twitter Replay -- InformationWeek

  tags: Twitter, Archived

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Google is providing both a time-line chart that displays the volume of tweets on previous days and the ability to replay these past tweets.

Google product manager Dylan Casey says "Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into what's happened and how people have reacted. We want to give you a way to search across this information and make it useful."

The Library of Congress is going to archive all the tweets that have been posted since Twitter began in March 2006. The amount of tweets since then is in the billions. That is a LOT of data. When people signed on to twitter did they know that their tweets were going to be archived at the Library of Congress? Is there an option to opt out? What if I like to tweet but I don't want my posts to be search-able by Google?

Its fascinating to be able to look back at events like Obama being president and reading his tweet. Obama used twitter when he was inaugurated! Twitter updates can now be cited as sources in upcoming reports.

I think that as long as Twitter is clear on their privacy regulations and make it obvious to users that their data will be public then its a great idea. So many times Facebook will make updates to their privacy statement and it confuses the users. It should be clear and concise. There should always be an option to opt out of a new option if you do not want to participate.

Can you imagine your great-grandkids doing research on a topic and discovering a tweet that you had posted in regards to it?

RIP

Dr. Henry Edward Roberts passed away on April 1, 2010. He had lost his battle with pneumonia after a long struggle. Dr. Henry Edwards Roberts revolutionalized technology. He is the inventor of the personal computer in 1975. It was called the Altair 8800. Without him Bill Gates and Paul Allen would not have created Microsoft. It was Dr. Roberts who gave Bill Gates and Paul Allen a chance to write a program for his personal computer. Bill Gates made a statement in regards to Dr. Robert's passing.

"Ed was willing to take a chance on us -- two young guys interested in computers long before they were commonplace -- and we have always been grateful to him... The day our first untested software worked on his Altair was the start of a lot of great things. We will always have many fond memories of working with Ed in Albuquerque, in the MITS office right on Route 66 -- where so many exciting things happened that none of us could have imagined back then."

Thanks to Dr. Henry Edwards Roberts we are able to enjoy desktops, laptops, netbooks and other devices that derived from the first personal computer and the microprocessor that went into it. He made several major contributions to technology such as the 4 bit calculator.