Stanford Center for Internet and Society

David Cancel just created a wonderful privacy enhancing technology for Firefox---up there with Ad Blocker Plus in my view. In a simple and straightforward way, Ghostery reveals who is tracking your views of a page on the Internet according to a common but under-examined method: web bugs.

As David explains, "[w]eb bugs are used to track your behavior on the web in order to help the sites you visit to understand their own audiences and to allow advertisers to target ads at you." To expand a little, web bugs are tiny (generally one-pixel) pictures on a web page that tell a host or third-party when and by whom they are being loaded, which in turn reveals that the page itself has been loaded. David's elegant plug-in "scans the web pages you visit to find web bugs" and displays their owners in the upper right hand corner of the page. Ghostery is easy to install, use, and shut off.

I just created a group on facebook to discuss this topic further... I'd love to see a discussion arise over there.
 

In response to my prior post on the topic of meat substitutes, I received an email from Jason Matheny, who works with New Harvest, a great non-profit organization focused on advancing research in this area - I strongly encourage you to check out their website and donate, if this is something yo

Stanford Reference Librarian and Archivist Sarah Wilson created this wonderful compilation of testimonies, statements, press releases, news coverage and other materials from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Public En Banc Hearing on Broadband Management Practices - held at Stanford University on April 17, 2008. Thanks Sarah!

Social networks have gotten a lot of play in recent years. What about social devices? I've been thinking about whether/how the nature of computer interfaces is changing—specifically, becoming less passive and more “social.”

My conversations with academics in Stanford's Department of Communications, and the research they've guided me toward, leads me to believe that we are once again at the edge of a shift in the way we communicate. For a variety or reasons, PCs and other computers in cars, mobile devices, etc., are making increased use of voice-driven, natural language interfaces or avatars, moving computing away from the traditional mode of passive information processing toward a more social, "person to person" interaction.

Some quick examples. Google's VP of Search gave a recent interview at Le Web during which she said that Google was exploring a more conversational interface that would allow users to actually ask Google questions out loud as though conversing with a person. Although it has met with (comic) resistance in the past, a trail of Microsoft patents going back ten years shows how serious the company is about developing a social interface, complete with voice, expressions, and gestures. As much as twenty-five percent of Microsoft's research efforts reportedly involve artificial intelligence. Even the U.S. government has gotten into this game: the U.S. Army’s virtual recruiter, SGT Star, responds to questions out loud, changes moods, makes jokes, etc. According to developer statistics, SGT Star has responded to over two million questions since his debut in 2006.

Thanks to my friend Tom Fee for sharing this piece by Albert Schweitzer... "No human being is ever totally and permanently a stranger to another human being. Man belongs to man. Man is entitled to man. Large an small circumstances break in to dispel the estrangement we impose upon ourselves in daily living, and to bring us close to one another, man to man.

January 1 is Public Domain Day--the day when new works around the world come into the public domain.

On this last day of a very difficult year for the world, I'd like to end the year with a speech from this year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize: "Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Dear Friends and Colleagues around the world...
 

John Dunn, on the PCWorld web site: "The Internet needs to be globally regulated if it is to have any chance of stopping scams such as security 'scareware', a researcher has suggested...
 

Quito Enterprises filed a patent infringement suit in Florida against Netflix, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Slacker, Pandora Media, Strands, Veoh Networks, Realnetworks, Hulu, NBC Universal, News Corp, Last.fm, and CBS Corp on December 26th. Other than filing on Boxing Day, another unusual fact is that this patent was sold at auction last April for $975,000 ($1,072,500 with buyer's commission).