Published In Today’s SF Chronicle
Privacy concern in Google Voice call recording
Monstrous privacy concerns loom: What information will Google collect from the calls it connects, and what will it do with that information? Google's privacy policy says it will store and maintain recorded conversations. Is it preserving the numbers called, the duration of the call and even the name and address of the person the Google Voice user called? When I call a person who uses Google Voice or he or she calls me, what control do I have over what information Google collects about me or about how Google will use that data? Apparently none.
Many thanks to Prof. Tuthill for the opportunity, collaboration and guidance. I'd never shopped an idea around to different publications -- the entire process was interesting.
Penguins Can’t Fly!?!
The Critic was Jon Lovitz at his best. Quotable, random, detailed, smart, layered, funny. While in college, I'd watch the back-to-back episodes of The Critic and The Tick every week, cracking up at the animated antics.
Unfortunately for me, I know almost no one else who watched these shows. I suppose the animation turned them off to experiencing comedic genius, which is really too bad. And, of course, I'd walk around using the genius one-liners and referencing jokes that no one else knew. I'm sure they thought I was crazy, but I don't really care -- it was funny for me.
One of the best jokes on the show involved Lovitz's character's adoptive father, an alcoholic millionaire who loved to get hammered and dress up as Baby New Year. (Hilarious already, no?) During a flight, the drunkard's plane started jumping around wildly so, fed up, he sprung to action. In a rule-breaking move that only the absurdly wealthy would think to attempt, Baby New Year burst into the cockpit, only to find a drunk penguin at the controls.
"A penguin. And you've been drinking! Wait a minute, penguins can't fly..."
So. Funny.
The Critic: Penguins Can't Fly
the penguin is probably the Dame Judy Dench of cartoon cameos. he’s in this episode for like 40 seconds total, and its probably the funniest thing i have ever seen. i’m sorry. i have a really weird sense of humor and an alcoholic penguin who cant fly a plane (where did he get those goggles? has he really bagged all those stewardesses? and most importantly, where did he get the idea to try to fly it from, the drinking?) is probably one of the funniest things in the entire world.
PhotoSketch Finds An Image For You
Wow. With PhotoSketch, you just draw a sketch, label each item, and then the system goes out, finds photos that match the sketched items and their labels, and automatically pastes it all together into one composite image.
F.C.C. Chairman Seeks to Protect Free Flow of Internet Data
F.C.C. Chairman Seeks to Protect Free Flow of Internet Data - NYTimes.com
Wolfram Alpha Wants To Change Software [& Abuse Copyright]
InfoWorld recently posted an article about search engine Wolfram|Alpha entitled How Wolfram Alpha could change software.
Wolfram Research is claiming that each page of results returned by the Wolfram Alpha engine is a unique, copyrightable work, like a report or term paper. That makes Wolfram Alpha different not just from classic search engines, but from most software. While software companies routinely retain sole ownership of their software and license it to users, Wolfram Research has taken the additional step of claiming ownership of the output of the software itself. It’s a bold assertion, and one that could have significant ramifications for the software industry as a whole.
What a terrible, horrible, awful idea. Copyright protection exists, in large part, to provide an incentive for people to produce creative work. Were there no copyright, the argument goes, then people wouldn’t pursue artistic endeavors. Others would copy and cash in, making the time/energy/skill investment a waste. Granting and enforcing copyright protection, then, can be seen as society recognizing the value of such work and forcing a period of exclusive use to reward effort with an opportunity to profit.
Protecting automated results as creative output absolutely defeats the incentive mechanism, for then not only is the underlying software protected, but so too is that software’s output… even if all that software is doing is filtering and/or re-ordering and presenting others’ content.
Start allowing this sort of protection and an infinite loop is quickly created. Great for Wolfram|Alpha, terrible for everyone else.
Happy Star Wars Day!
"Always in motion is the future." -- Yoda
From my friend Brett:
May 4 is called Star Wars Day because of a pun or play on words based on the similarity between "May the 4th be with you" and "May the force be with you", a phrase often spoken in the Star Wars movies. In common usage the joke might be presented:
1: Happy Star Wars Day!
2: What?
3: May the fourth be with you!
Seeing as how this is a holiday and all, below are a few of my favorite bits of recent, Star Wars related humor...
Second Circuit Promotes Confusion Regarding Trademark
How much TM protection is too much?
When you use any "free" Google product (search, email, YouTube, etc.) Google displays some sponsored ads -- AdWords -- most notably on the right side of the screen. Other websites (most commonly blogs) also include these text-only ads on their websites.
AdWords is an incredibly successful program. Google's innovation has been to mine anonymous user data to narrowly target the ads, displaying only ads relevant to a user's search or the content of an email or blog post. Both Google and the site owner gain revenue from displaying the ads, the advertiser gains access to the narrow subset of consumers most likely interested in what the advertiser is promoting via the ad.
As an example if you email your friend about coaching little league baseball, and you happen to mention that you live in San Francisco, you'll likely see AdWord ads for the Giants, Major League Baseball, and maybe someone like Easton, a maker of baseball bats. Old news, right? This all makes sense. The baseball emailer isn't stuck skimming ads about perfume or a shoe sale at Neiman Marcus or low-cost flights to London -- those ads would feel irrelevant, and would be a waste of everyone's time and money.
More controversially, Google also made a practice of selling ad space based on the user's input of trademarked terms. So if I did a search for "SF Giants," the official trademark of a professional baseball team, an ad for the Giants' hated rival, the LA Dodgers, or for MLB fans against steroids might show up. Makes sense, right? Why always preach to the converted; sometimes it's most effective to spread a message to those who might be directly opposed.
More importantly, because Google was willing to sell the rights to any term to the highest bidder -- regardless of who owned the trademark -- to anyone who wanted to buy those rights, Google removed the need for them to make any decision about who should or should not be able to advertise to whom. As such, Google refrained from refusing to allow anyone to speak (so long as they were willing to pay for the ad). In so doing, they also refrained from infringing on any person's First Amendment right to speak and express themselves freely.
Problems arise because there is only a limited amount of real estate available for ads on any given web page. As such, company A's competitor, company B could, theoretically, buy up all access to A's available ad space in order to promote B's product. So while a search for A would show A's website as the first search result, all of the ad's next to that link would point to B's products... and there would be nothing that A could do to stop it.
When this started happening, a number of companies in A's situation felt that their opponents were playing dirty. Worse, they felt that Google, in selling their trademarked company or product name, was violating their right to control those words, which they owned. So, of course, they sued Google.
Trademark law, fundamentally, balances the need of a company to develop a brand and the need of consumers to know the source of a product (important when evaluating aspects such as quality or reliability) against constitutionally-protected free speech.
The first court to hear this challenge to Google's practice felt that Google was balancing free speech and trademark rights in an acceptable manner. The plaintiff appealed, and the Second Circuit this week overruled the lower court's decision. In seeking a middle-ground, however, the Second Circuit muddied the waters.
Today's ruling does not say that buying or selling a trademark as a search keyword necessarily infringes the trademark. The trademark owner still must prove that consumers are confused. The Second Circuit seemed to think that was shield enough for the likes of Google.
But this ignores the financial realities of litigation, and how those realities condition the business decisions of intermediaries. Google and advertisers who participate in the AdWords program have been targeted nationwide in a large number of lawsuits. The Second Circuit's ruling today makes it difficult for these defendants to get rid of these cases on purely legal grounds. Litigating a trademark case past this point, to summary judgement or trial, requires a substantial financial investment that most companies simply won’t want to make, even if they are confident they will win in the end. (Witness Blockshopper’s decision last month to settle with Jones Day after BlockShopper lost its motion to dismiss Jones Day’s trademark suit, even though the case was was widely ridiculed as preposterous.)
Check Please Loves The Dumpling King
All hail the King!
A few weeks ago, C and I ate at one of our favorite San Francisco restaurants, the Shanghai Dumpling King. We knew something was different as soon as we walked in -- the cute family that owns and operates the King were dressed up and coordinated. Very odd. We moved through the small entry way and into the larger eating area and what do we see but a gent with a giant video camera!? We knew right away -- it must be Check Please!
We had no idea when the episode would air, but C's parents called tonight and shouted into the phone "you're on TV!" Thanks to PBS' tech saavy, the episode is also available online. Check it out ... that's C eating the first Xiao Long Bao (2:25), and then the two of us eating the Ma Po Tofu (4:50). We also had the Green Onion Pancakes -- great for dipping in the Ma Po:
Not only did the great little restaurant get some excellent publicity, but all three reviewers loved the place! I'm so happy for the King -- that family works hard, and they deserve the love.
If you're ever hungry and want company, we're always up for a trip to the Outer Richmond. But you'll need to order your own dumplings -- C won't share her Baos.
Best Of Internet April Fools 2009
Keep warm using intestines and The Force.
As has become tradition, Internet-based companies and web celebrities (webbrities?) answered Halloween's treat with April Fools tricks. Some favorites from 2009...
Internet Killed The Publishing Industry
The best article I've read in a while on the topic of the Internet's value and transformative effect, and it's relationship to the death of the newspaper. (via kottke and Daring Fireball)
With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.
. . .
Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it’s been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it’s been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it’s you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can’t be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case.
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.