WSJ: "Yahoo has agreed to pay $1.1 billion in cash for the company, one of the people said. Tumblr would continue to operate largely as an independent business, the people said...Tumblr, founded in 2007, fast built a following by making it easy for people to post blogs and photos, follow other people on Tumblr and receive updates via a feed. The website's simple design has lowered the bar for online publishing and effectively merged blogging with social media."

Internet Census 2012 - Port scanning /0 using insecure embedded devices, Carna Botnet

A home science experiment that probed billions of Internet devices reveals that thousands of industrial and business systems offer remote access to anyone.

The Evolution of the Web, in a Blink, by Vijith Assar. The New Yorker, May 11, 2013

Unclassified and released on 4/19/2013 in response to a FOIA request by MuckRock and reported by Wired: request, Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research has not been updated since 2007. It is 651 page document that on one hand references sites and sources that no longer exist, but on the other offers insights in techniques and leverage the deep web and techniques to obtain effective competitive intelligence information and data.

On The "Right to Be Forgotten": Challenges and Suggested Changes to the Data Protection Regulation

"By this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Notice), the Commission proposes to further increase the availability of broadband services onboard airplanes by establishing an air-ground mobile broadband service by which passengers aboard civil and government aircraft can connect to a full range of communications services while flying over the contiguous United States. Consumers increasingly demand ubiquitous broadband connectivity, even on airplanes. Demand continues to rise, with predictions that the number of aircraft offering broadband service will rise from approximately 3000 in 2012 to 15,000 by 2021.2 Establishment of air-ground mobile broadband service could help satisfy this demand. This air-ground mobile broadband service would operate in the 14.0-14.5 GHz band, on a secondary, non-interference basis with Fixed-Satellite Service (FSS) Earth-to-space communications. The key to such band sharing is spatial diversity, with FSS earth station antennas oriented to the south and above the horizon, air-ground mobile broadband base stations oriented to the north, and air-ground mobile broadband aircraft stations oriented below the horizon. Air-ground mobile broadband would be required
to protect primary FSS in the band from harmful interference, and would be required to accommodate other Federal and non-Federal users in the band. We ground our proposals in this proceeding in part on the service proposed by Qualcomm, Inc. (Qualcomm) in a Petition for Rulemaking filed on July 7, 2011.3 We believe our proposal would significantly increase the amount of spectrum available for the provision of wireless broadband to airborne aircraft, helping to meet rising demand for such services.

Hollee Schwartz Temple: "When people say everything's online," says Jerry Dupont of the Law Library Microform Consortium, "they're woefully uninformed." Dupont, founder of the LLMC, a nonprofit law library cooperative, estimates that of the 2 million unique volumes contained in America’s law libraries, only about 15 percent are available in digital form. That figure includes access via proprietary, commercial services like Westlaw and LexisNexis. Across the country, law libraries are trying to adapt to the digital revolution and preserve historic and precedential documents. But budget cuts have hit hard at academic law libraries, which historically have hosted some of the most robust legal collections. And the pressures are creating concerns that the public will lose access to essential legal documents."

Citizen Lab [University of Toronto] "released a new report, For Their Eyes Only: The Commercialization of Digital Spying. The report features new findings, as well as consolidating a year of our research on the commercial market for offensive computer network intrusion capabilities developed by Western companies. Our new findings include:

• We have identified FinFisher Command & Control servers in 11 new Countries. Hungary, Turkey, Romania, Panama, Lithuania, Macedonia, South Africa, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Austria.
  
• Taken together with our previous research, we can now assert that FinFisher Command & Control servers are currently active, or have been present, in 36 countries.

Lucchi, Nicola, Internet Content Governance & Human Rights (May 1, 2013). Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law Vol. 16, No. 3 (2013). Available at SSRN

News release: "As you search the Internet, visit websites, and update your social media accounts, you entrust a wealth of data to service providers: your thoughts, your photos, your location, and much more. What happens when the government wants access to all of this information, held by companies like Google and Facebook and AT&T? Will these providers help you fight back against unfair demands for data about your private life? Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) releases its third annual report, Who Has Your Back?, which looks at major technology service providers' commitment to users' rights in the face of government data demands. EFF's report examines 18 companies' terms of service, privacy policies, advocacy, and courtroom track records, awarding up to six gold stars for best practices in categories like "require a warrant for content," "tell users about government data demands," and "publish transparency reports."

A Secure Submission System for Online Whistleblowing Platforms. Volker Roth, Benjamin Güldenring, Eleanor Rieffel, Sven Dietrich, Lars Ries (Submitted on 26 Jan 2013) An abridged version has been accepted for publication in the proceedings of Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2013.

"The Internal Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year -- it's also acquiring a huge volume of personal information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records, as it expands its search for tax cheats to places it's never gone before. The IRS, under heavy pressure to help Washington out of its budget quagmire by chasing down an estimated $300 billion in revenue lost to evasions and errors each year, will start using "robo-audits" of tax forms and third-party data the IRS hopes will help close this so-called "tax gap." But the agency reveals little about how it will employ its vast, new network scanning powers. Tax lawyers and watchdogs are concerned about the sweeping changes being implemented with little public discussion or clear guidelines, and Congressional staff sources say the IRS use of "big data" will be a key issue when the next IRS chief comes to the Senate for approval. Acting commissioner Steven T. Miller replaced Douglas Shulman last November."

Civic Engagement in the Digital Age, by Aaron Smith, Apr 25, 2013: "Social networking sites have grown more important in recent years as a venue for political involvement, learning, and debate. Overall, 39% of all American adults took part in some sort of political activity on a social networking site during the 2012 campaign. This means that more Americans are now politically active on social networking sites (SNS) than used them at all as recently as the 2008 election campaign. At that point, 26% of the population used a social networking site of any kind. The growth in several specific behaviors between 2008 and 2012 illustrates the increasing importance of SNS as places where citizens can connect with political causes and issues:

• In 2012, 17% of all adults posted links to political stories or articles on social networking sites, and 19% posted other types of political content. That is a six-fold increase from the 3% of adults who posted political stories or links on these sites in 2008.
  
• In 2012, 12% of all adults followed or friended a political candidate or other political figure on a social networking site, and 12% belonged to a group on a social networking site involved in advancing a political or social issue. That is a four-fold increase from the 3% of adults who took part in these behaviors in 2008."

"Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, fresh from a visit to North Korea in January, on why the Internet is far from an unalloyed good to the citizens of dictatorships around the world."

Privacy Impact Assessment for the Office of Operations Coordination and Planning - Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative, DHS, Update April 1, 2013

EPIC: "The Department of Homeland Security has released a Privacy Impact Assessment for Einstein 3 - Accelerated. Einstein 3 is a government cybersecurity program that monitors Internet traffic. The monitoring includes scanning email destined for .gov networks for malicious attachments and URLs. According to DHS, the basis of the government’s authority to perform the monitoring is National Security Presidential Directive 54. EPIC is pursuing FOIA litigation to force the government to release the Directive to the public. For more information, see EPIC v. NSA - Cybersecurity Authority."

EPIC: "New documents obtained by EPIC in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit reveal that the Department of Defense advised private industry on how to best circumvent federal wiretap law. The documents concern a collaboration between the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and private companies to allow government monitoring of private Internet networks. Though the program initially only applied to defense contractors, an Executive Order issued by the Obama administration earlier this year expanded it to include other "critical infrastructure" industries. The documents obtained by EPIC also cited NSPD 54 as one source of authority for the program. NSPD 54 is a presidential directive issued under President Bush that EPIC is pursuing in separate FOIA litigation. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (Defense Contractor Monitoring), and EPIC: EPIC v. NSA - Cybersecurity Authority."

EFF: "Recently, we published a blog post that described how to opt out of seeing ads on Facebook targeted to you based on your offline activities. This post explained where these companies get their data, what information they share with Facebook, or what this means for your privacy. So get ready for the nitty-gritty details: who has your information, how they get it, and what they do with it. It’s a lot of information, so we’ve organized it into an FAQ for convenience."

"The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. The DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used, through its three main elements:

1. A portal that delivers students, teachers, scholars, and the public to incredible resources, wherever they may be in America. Far more than a search engine, the portal provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, format, and topic.
   
2. A platform that enables new and transformative uses of our digitized cultural heritage. With an application programming interface (API) and maximally open data, the DPLA can be used by software developers, researchers, and others to create novel environments for learning, tools for discovery, and engaging apps.
   
3. An advocate for a strong public option in the twenty-first century. For most of American history, the ability to access materials for free through public libraries has been a central part of our culture, producing generations of avid readers and a knowledgeable, engaged citizenry. The DPLA will work, along with like-minded organizations and individuals, to ensure that this critical, open intellectual landscape remains vibrant and broad in the face of increasingly restrictive digital options. The DPLA will seek to multiply openly accessible materials to strengthen the public option that libraries represent in their communities."

The State of Digital Marketing in the Networked Age, by Lee Rainie, April 19, 2013 - at Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today released a statistical survey of fraud in the United States during 2011, which showed that an estimated 25.6 million adults – 10.8 percent of the adult population – were fraud victims...While fast-growing online commerce has benefited consumers with greater choice and convenience, the survey indicates that, as of 2011, the Internet was also the place where consumers most often learned about fraudulent offers. The Internet category, which included email, social media, auction sites and classified ads, was followed by print advertising, and TV and radio. Most consumers bought fraudulent items via the Internet; telephone purchases ranked second."

EPIC:

Cybersecurity: Selected Legal Issues, April 17, 2013.

2013 Internet Security Threat Report - "Key Findings:

• 42% increase in targeted attacks in 2012.
  
• 31% of all targeted attacks aimed at businesses with less than 250 employees.
  
• One waterhole attack infected 500 organizations in a single day.
  
• 14 zero-day vulnerabilities.
  
• 32% of all mobile threats steal information.
  
• A single threat infected 600,000 Macs in 2012.
  
• Spam volume continued to decrease, with 69% of all email being spam.
  
• The number of phishing sites spoofing social networking sites increased 125%.
  
• Web-based attacks increased 30%.
  
• 5,291 new vulnerabilities discovered in 2012, 415 of them on mobile operating systems."

Comola, Margherita and Prina, Silvia, Intervention-Driven Changes in Social Networks and Their Effects on Household Outcomes (April 14, 2013). Available at SSRN

Machine-to-Machine Communications - Connecting Billions of Devices, Publication Date, 30 Jan 2012. Bibliographic information No.: 192 Pages. 45. DOI 10.1787/5k9gsh2gp043-en

Entrepreneur: "We asked 2,714 communicators how their companies use social media in our Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey, and Go-Gulf.com highlighted some of the findings in an infographic."

News release: "The Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, chaired by Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), today advanced legislation to promote a global Internet free from government control. The bill, approved by voice vote, contains the same language that unanimously passed the House and Senate last year, elevating it to official U.S policy rather than merely a sense of the Congress in light of continued international efforts to regulate the Internet. “Governments’ hands-off approach has enabled the Internet to grow at an astonishing pace and become perhaps the most powerful engine of social and economic freedom and job creation the world has ever known. Under the current multi-stakeholder governance model, non-regulatory institutions manage and operate the Internet by developing best practices with public and private sector input," said Chairman Walden. During the proceedings, Chairman Walden also clarified the intent of the legislation and agreed to continue to work with the minority to seek bipartisan consensus. Click here to view Walden’s full remarks. On February 5, 2013, the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology and the Foreign Affairs Subcommittees on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade and Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations held a joint hearing to discuss efforts by some countries to expand international regulation of the Internet. In the 112th Congress, the House and Senate adopted resolutions with overwhelming bipartisan support opposing efforts at the World Conference on International Telecommunications to drag the Internet within the purview of the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. agency."

Commentary: Mobile The First Cell Phone Call: Excerpt from “Networked: The New Social Operating System” by Joanna Brenner, Apr 3, 2013

EPIC: "Data protection agencies in six European countries have announced enforcement actions against Google. The agencies acted after Google ignored recommendations to comply with European data protection law. "It is now up to each national data protection authority to carry out further investigations according to the provisions of its national law transposing European legislation," the French data protection authority said. The enforcement action follows from Google's March 2012 decision to combine user data across 60 Internet services to create detailed profiles on Internet users. Last year, EPIC sued the Federal Trade Commission to force the FTC to enforce the terms of a settlement with Google that would have prohibited Google's changes in business practices. Google's revised privacy policies also prompted objections from state attorneys general, members of Congress, and IT managers in the government and private sectors. For more information, see EPIC: Google Buzz and EPIC: Enforcement of Google Consent Order."

"This report provides a detailed, current look at the nature of advanced threats targeting organizations today. Drawing on data gathered by FireEye® from several thousands of appliances at customer sites around the world, across 89 million events, this report provides an overview of the current threat landscape, evolving advanced persistent threat (APT) tactics, and the level of infiltration seen in organizations' networks today. Key findings include:

Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy [ALA] - Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment.

Toward an International Law of the Internet, Molly Land, New York Law School, November 19, 2012, Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 54, 2013 (Forthcoming) via SSRN.

Understanding Why Users Tag: A Survey of Tagging Motivation Literature and Results from an Empirical Study, Markus Strohmaier, Christian Körner, Roman Kern. Journal of Web Semantics, preprint server.

EFF: "Law professor and historian Tim Wu has called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) the “worst law in technology.” The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has described the government’s interpretation of it “expansive,” “broad,” and “sweeping.” And Orin Kerr, former federal prosecutor and law professor, has detailed how the government could use it to put "any Internet user they want [in jail]." So it's pretty surprising to see that now, instead of reining in the CFAA’s dangerous reach, the House Judiciary Committee is floating a proposal to dramatically expand it and is reportedly planning to rush it to the floor of Congress during its April “cyber” week...Techdirt’s Mike Masnick posted a new draft and analysis of the CFAA expansion bill on Monday."

The Telework Research Network: "We’re read over 500 studies about telecommuting and here are what we’ve found to be the most common advantages for the companies that establish work from home programs. The following pros and cons of work from home programs aren’t just our view, they’re the outcomes from a wide range of studies. Visit our Research: Pros & Cons page for additional information about how individuals and communities can benefit from telecommuting as well."

Thomas Johnson, Indexing Linked Bibliographic Data with JSON-LD, BibJSON and Elasticsearch: "Linked Data is a powerful tool for sharing bibliographic metadata. By combining the decentralization of the web with the use of globally defined metadata vocabularies, data from many sources can be treated as a single, aggregated graph. Supporting search across these distributed data sources within the same application, however, requires considerable work in vocabulary alignment and data transformation. Aggregate systems must convert data into a unified model which must (almost inevitably) be generic at the expense of the structure and granularity of the original data. This paper presents a novel solution for representing and indexing bibliographic resources that retains the data integrity and extensibility of Linked Data while supporting fast, customizable indexes in an application-friendly data format. The methodology makes use of JSON-LD to represent RDF graphs in JSON suitable for indexing with Elasticsearch. BibJSON is used as a common index format capable of handling a wide range of library resources. Since all three technologies (RDF/JSON-LD, BibJSON and Elasticsearch) share an emphasis on extensibility, it is possible to create an index of bibliographic data that is both generalized and flexible enough to handle Linked Data from multiple sources."

YouTube Blog: "In the last eight years you’ve come to YouTube to watch, share and fall in love with videos from all over the world. Tens of thousands of partners have created channels that have found and built businesses for passionate, engaged audiences. Advertisers have taken notice: all of the Ad Age Top 100 brands are now running campaigns on YouTube. And today, we’re announcing a new milestone: YouTube now has more than a billion unique users every single month."

David Pogue: "...LED bulbs are a gigantic improvement over incandescent bulbs and even the compact fluorescents, or CFLs, that the world spent several years telling us to buy. LEDs last about 25 times as long as incandescents and three times as long as CFLs; we’re talking maybe 25,000 hours of light. Install one today, and you may not own your house, or even live, long enough to see it burn out. (Actually, LED bulbs generally don’t burn out at all; they just get dimmer.) You know how hot incandescent bulbs become. That’s because they convert only 5 to 10 percent of your electricity into light; they waste the rest as heat. LED bulbs are far more efficient. They convert 60 percent of their electricity into light, so they consume far less electricity. You pay less, you pollute less."

Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, David White, Donna Lanclos, & Alison Le Cornu. 2013. Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment? Information Research, 18,1 (paper 556).

GPO 2012 Annual Report: "The Government Printing Office (GPO) is transforming itself from a traditional ink- on-paper operation to a digital information platform. While producing the official printed products of the Government remains an important part of our business, we are using technology to move away from a print-centric business model and toward a content-centric focus, which today serves as the foundation for an increasing variety of digital and secure products and services...GPO’s federal Digital System (), our one-stop, no-fee Web site providing public access to the official information products of all three branches of the Government, continues to grow. Today we have more than 800,000 individual titles accessible via FDsys, and we are seeing more than 37 million documents retrieved each month. By the end of the year FDsys surpassed its 400 millionth document retrieval.

Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of "Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Survive."

"The rapid growth of connected devices around the world has dramatically increased demand for wireless spectrum. Google is working with industry and regulators to make more spectrum available by enabling dynamic spectrum sharing through a database. This TV white spaces database is part of Google.org’s efforts to make more spectrum available for broadband access. To become certified as a TV White Spaces Database Administrator, we are entering into a 45-day trial with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) between March 4 and April 17, 2013. Learn more about spectrum, and how Google.org is helping to open up more spectrum for wireless broadband access."

Teens and Technology 2013 - by Mary Madden, Amanda Lenhart, Maeve Duggan, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser. March 13, 2013

News release: "The Justice Department’s Open Government Plan version 2.0 (PDF) announced a variety of new Department initiatives concerning the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A key initiative of this plan was the development of metadata standards that would “facilitate the ability of interested persons to search and retrieve documents across websites and disparate record keeping systems.” The plan called for the Office of Information Policy (OIP) to issue guidance for developing metadata standards in the posting of FOIA documents. Today, OIP posted the first in a series of guidance pieces designed to implement these standards across all agencies of the federal government. As the volume of material posted to agency websites continues to increase and “given that information on a given topic often is separately maintained by multiple agencies, it is essential that the public can quickly retrieve records of interest that are posted across government websites.” Looking to make government information not only available, but also accessible and usable, this initial guidance piece introduces the concept of a standard metadata “FOIA” tag to be used by agencies in the posting of FOIA material on agency websites."

"New research, published today in the journal PNAS, shows that surprisingly accurate estimates of Facebook users’ race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views can be inferred from automated analysis of only their Facebook Likes - information currently publicly available by default. In the study, researchers describe Facebook Likes as a “generic class” of digital record - similar to web search queries and browsing histories - and suggest that such techniques could be used to extract sensitive information for almost anyone regularly online. Researchers at Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre, in collaboration with Microsoft Research Cambridge, analysed a dataset of over 58,000 US Facebook users, who volunteered their Likes, demographic profiles and psychometric testing results through the myPersonality application...The researchers also tested for personality traits including intelligence, emotional stability, openness and extraversion. While such latent traits are far more difficult to gauge, the accuracy of the analysis was striking. Study of the openness trait – the spectrum of those who dislike change to those who welcome it – revealed that observation of Likes alone is roughly as informative as using an individual’s actual personality test score."

"Attorneys general for 38 states and the District of Columbia today reached a "$7 Million Settlement" with Google over consumer protection and privacy claims. The company engaged in the unauthorized collection of data from wireless networks, including private WiFi networks of residential Internet users. A detailed Assurance of Voluntary Compliance, setting out the terms of the settlement, is now available. In 2010, EPIC urged the Federal Communication Commission to investigate the Google Street View program after it became clear that Google had intercepted the private communications of millions of users of wi-fi networks in the United States. EPIC subsequently pursued FOIA requests regarding the FCC and the Department of Justice investigations. Federal wiretap claims concerning Street View are still pending in federal court. For more information, see EPIC: Investigations of Google Street View and EPIC: Joffe v. Google."

News release: "After the “Arab springs” and other protest movements that prompted many rises and falls in last year’s index, the 2013 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index marks a return to a more usual configuration. The ranking of most countries is no longer attributable to dramatic political developments. This year’s index is a better reflection of the attitudes and intentions of governments towards media freedom in the medium or long term. The same three European countries that headed the index last year hold the top three positions again this year. For the third year running, Finland has distinguished itself as the country that most respects media freedom. It is followed by the Netherlands and Norway. Although many criteria are considered, ranging from legislation to violence against journalists, democratic countries occupy the top of the index while dictatorial countries occupy the last three positions. Again it is the same three as last year – Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea."

Air Pollution in Asia: Frequently Asked Question

Web-scale pharmacovigilance: listening to signals from the crowd. Ryen W White1, Nicholas P Tatonetti, Nigam H Shah, Russ B Altman, Eric Horvitz. J Am Med Inform Assoc amiajnl-2012-001482 Published Online First: 6 March 2013.

How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms, by Kristen Purcell, Alan Heaps, Judy Buchanan, Linda Friedrich, Feb 28, 2013

"Cell phone searches are a common law enforcement tool, but up until now, the public has largely been in the dark regarding how much sensitive information the government can get with this invasive surveillance technique. A document submitted to court in connection with a drug investigation, which we recently discovered, provides a rare inventory of the types of data that federal agents are able to obtain from a seized iPhone using advanced forensic analysis tools. The list, available here, starkly demonstrates just how invasive cell phone searches are—and why law enforcement should be required to obtain a warrant before conducting them."

Via LLRX.com - Another NY court on discovery of social media evidence - Attorney Nicole Black brings context to the impact of the proliferation of social media accounts among the majority of adults in the United States. The information from these accounts has become a prime source for lawyers to mine for evidence to support their clients' cases.

Report: Social Networking - The Demographics of Social Media Users — 2012, by Maeve Duggan, Joanna Brenner. Feb 14, 2013

Risks of Friendships on Social Networks - Cuneyt Gurcan Akcora, Barbara Carminati, Elena Ferrari. DISTA, Universit`a degli Studi dell’Insubria, Via Mazzini 5, Varese, Italy

Via LLRX.com - When judges, jurors and the Internet collide: In the past, attorney Nicole L. Black has described misguided attempts by judges to excessively penalize jurors for using social media or the Internet during the pendency of trials. In fact, over the last year, judges have gone so far as to fine or jail jurors who have used social media during trial, and legislators have proposed laws that would criminalize such conduct. This despite the fact that jurors have been violating judges' orders not to research or discuss pending cases since the dawn of jury trials.

Report: Social Networking - Coming and Going on Facebook, by Lee Rainie, Aaron Smith, Maeve Duggan, Feb 5, 2013. "Two-thirds of online American adults (67%) are Facebook users, making Facebook the dominant social networking site in this country. And new findings from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project indicate there is considerable fluidity in the Facebook user population:

• 61% of current Facebook users say that at one time or another in the past they have voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook for a period of several weeks or more.
  
• 20% of the online adults who do not currently use Facebook say they once used the site but no longer do so.
  
• 8% of online adults who do not currently use Facebook are interested in becoming Facebook users in the future."

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to announce the publication of Open Wireless vs. Licensed Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption, authored by Yochai Benkler, and published in the latest issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology [download here]. The paper reviews evidence from eight wireless markets: mobile broadband; wireless healthcare; smart grid communications; inventory management; access control; mobile payments; fleet management; and secondary markets in spectrum. Benkler finds that markets are adopting unlicensed wireless strategies in mission-critical applications, in many cases more so than they are building on licensed strategies. If the 1990s saw what was called "the Negroponte Switch" of video from air to wire, and telephony from wire to air, the present and near future are seeing an even more fundamental switch. Where a decade ago most of our wireless capacity was delivered over exclusive control approaches-both command and control and auctioned exclusivity--complemented by special-purpose shared spectrum use, today we are moving to a wireless infrastructure whose core relies on shared, open wireless approaches, complemented by exclusive control approaches for special, latency-intolerant, high-speed mobile applications. The scope of the latter will contract further if regulation catches up to technological reality, and opens up more bands to open wireless innovation, with greater operational flexibility and an emphasis on interoperability."

"Last July we released our first Twitter Transparency Report (#TTR), publishing six months of data detailing the volume of government requests we receive for user information, government requests to withhold content, and Digital Millennium Copyright Act-related complaints from copyright holders. Since then we’ve been thinking about ways in which we can more effectively share this information, with an aim to make it more meaningful and accessible to the community at large. In celebration of #DataPrivacyDay, today, we’re rolling out a new home for our transparency report: transparency.twitter.com. In addition to publishing the second report, we’re also introducing more granular details regarding information requests from the United States, expanding the scope of the removal requests and copyright notices sections, and adding Twitter site accessibility data from our partners at Herdict."

Google Official Blog: "..January 28, is Data Privacy Day, when the world recognizes the importance of preserving your online privacy and security. If it’s like most other days, Google—like many companies that provide online services to users—will receive dozens of letters, faxes and emails from government agencies and courts around the world requesting access to our users’ private account information. Typically this happens in connection with government investigations. It’s important for law enforcement agencies to pursue illegal activity and keep the public safe. We’re a law-abiding company, and we don’t want our services to be used in harmful ways. But it’s just as important that laws protect you against overly broad requests for your personal information...Today, for example, we’ve added a new section to our Transparency Report that answers many questions you might have. And last week we released data showing that government requests continue to rise, along with additional details on the U.S. legal processes—such as subpoenas, court orders and warrants—that governments use to compel us to provide this information."

Tracey Samuelson, Marketplace for Monday, January 28, 2013: "If consumers want to “unlock” their cell phones in order to take their phone from one cellular network to another, they now need to ask the permission of their carrier. Starting January 26, unlocking phones without the provider’s OK is against the law. But perhaps the most surprising part of these changes is that they came from the Library of Congress, a government department better known for its archives than its regulatory abilities. But in addition to cataloging gems from the country’s past -- everything from old musical performances to little-remembered presidential speeches -- the Library of Congress also oversees copyrights."

Via LLRX.com - Knowledge Discovery Resources 2013 - An Internet Annotated Link Dataset Compilation - Marcus P. Zillman's current annotated link compilation encompasses top value-added resources for knowledge discovery available through the Internet. The selected resources and sites provide a wide range of actionable knowledge and avenues for information discovery to leverage as part of your overall research project strategy.

News release: "When writing or speaking, good grammar helps people make themselves be understood. But when used to concoct a long computer password, grammar — good or bad — provides crucial hints that can help someone crack that password, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated. A team led by Ashwini Rao, a software engineering Ph.D. student in the Institute for Software Research, developed a password-cracking algorithm that took into account grammar and tested it against 1,434 passwords containing 16 or more characters. The grammar-aware cracker surpassed other state-of-the-art password crackers when passwords had grammatical structures, with 10 percent of the dataset cracked exclusively by the team's algorithm. "We should not blindly rely on the number of words or characters in a password as a measure of its security," Rao concluded. She will present the findings on Feb. 20 at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY 2013) in San Antonio, Texas. Basing a password on a phrase or short sentence makes it easier for a user to remember, but the grammatical structure dramatically narrows the possible combinations and sequences of words, she noted."

"JSTOR, the not-for-profit digital library of thousands of academic journals and other content, announced [January 9, 2013] that the archives of more than 1,200 journals are now available for limited reading by the public. This is part of a major expansion of JSTOR’s experimental program Register & Read, in which people can sign up for a JSTOR account and, every two weeks, read up to three articles online for free. [The January announcement follows a successful 10-month test during which more than 150,000 people registered for reading access to an initial set of 76 journals. “Our goal is for everyone around the world to be able to use the content we have put online and are preserving,” said Laura Brown, JSTOR managing director. “Register & Read provides a virtual way for anyone to walk into the JSTOR library, register at the door, and ‘check out’ a limited number of articles for reading.” Journal archives from nearly 800 scholarly societies, university presses, and academic publishers are now included in Register & Read. These organizations license and entrust their content to JSTOR and share the goal of providing far-reaching access to scholarship."

"Published on 10 December 2012, Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog: Scale, Workflow, Attention, by Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Vice President, Research and Chief Strategist, discusses the position of the catalog and uses it to illustrate more general discovery and workflow directions. There is a renaissance of interest in the catalog and catalog data, yet it comes at a time when the catalog itself is being reconfigured in ways which may result in its disappearance as an individually identifiable component of library service. It is being subsumed within larger library discovery environments and catalog data is flowing into other systems and services."

Early warning analysis for social diffusion events - Richard Colbaugh1 and Kristin Glass, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM

Health Online 2013, by Susannah Fox, Maeve Duggan, Jan 15, 2013

Internet Archives Blog: "Today we updated the Wayback Machine with much more data and some code improvements. Now we cover from late 1996 to December 9, 2012 so you can surf the web as it was up until a month ago. Also, we have gone from having 150,000,000,000 URLs to having 240,000,000,000 URLs, a total of about 5 petabytes of data. (Want a humorous description of a petabyte? start at 28:55) This database is queried over 1,000 times a second by over 500,000 people a day helping make archive.org the 250th most popular website."

Branches of Opportunity, January 2013, Center for an Urban Future - "As more and more New Yorkers turn to digital books, Wikipedia and other online tools for information and entertainment, there is a growing sense that the age of the public library is over. But, in reality, New York City’s public libraries are more essential than ever. Far from becoming obsolete, the city’s three public library systems— Brooklyn, Queens and New York, which encompasses the branches in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island — have experienced a 40 percent spike in the number of people attending programs and a 59 percent increase in circulation over the past decade. During that time, 48 different branches citywide have at least doubled annual attendance at programs, ranging from computer literacy classes to workshops on entrepreneurship, while 18 have more than doubled their circulation. These trends are grounded in the new realities of today’s knowledge economy, where it is difficult to achieve economic success or enjoy a decent quality of life without a range of basic literacy, language and technological skills. A distressingly large segment of the city’s population lacks these basic building blocks, but the public library has stepped in, becoming the second chance human capital institution. No other institution, public or private, does a better job of reaching people who have been left behind in today’s economy, have failed to reach their potential in the city’s public school system or who
simply need help navigating an increasingly complex world."

Digital Licenses Replace Print Prices as Accurate Reflection of Real Journal Costs by Paula Gantz, Association of American Publishers - Scholarly Publishing Division, Volume 11, No. 3, Summer/Fall 2012

News release: "The Commission has launched an Open Data Strategy for Europe, which is expected to deliver a €40 billion boost to the EU's economy each year. Europe’s public administrations are sitting on a goldmine of unrealised economic potential: the large volumes of information collected by numerous public authorities and services. Member States such as the United Kingdom and France are already demonstrating this value. The strategy to lift performance EU-wide is three-fold: firstly the Commission will lead by example, opening its vaults of information to the public for free through a new data portal. Secondly, a level playing field for open data across the EU will be established. Finally, these new measures are backed by the €100 million which will be granted in 2011-2013 to fund research into improved data-handling technologies. These actions position the EU as the global leader in the re-use of public sector information. They will boost the thriving industry that turns raw data into the material that hundreds of millions of ICT users depend on, for example smart phone apps, such as maps, real-time traffic and weather information, price comparison tools and more. Other leading beneficiaries will include journalists and academics."

How Much of the Web Is Archived? Scott G. Ainsworth, Ahmed AlSum, Hany SalahEldeen, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson, Jan 6, 2013.

"The Search Agency, a global online marketing firm and the largest independent U.S. search marketing agency, today announced wave II results of its 2012 Online User Behavior and Engagement Study, conducted online by Harris Interactive among 2,006 U.S. online adults from August 14-16, 2012. In addition to other findings, the study shows that, while Americans may be tweeting, searching and pinning to their hearts delight, they can’t pinpoint how some of the web’s most popular sites make a dime.Findings Include:

• We Know How to Post, but Not How They Profit - 70% of U.S. online adults know how to post on someone’s wall, but only 54% understand how Facebook makes money. Males demonstrated a higher understanding around Facebook’s monetization strategies at 57%, vs. females at 51%.
  
• Men Tweet, Women Pin - More online men know the character length of a tweet (37%) than online women (27%). When it comes to Pinterest, more women know what it means to “pin” something online (48%) than men (42%).
  
• Who is Padding Google’s Pockets? - 22% of U.S. online adults overall reported that they click on search engine ads (e.g. paid search links), but results showed great behavioral variances by region and age. U.S. online adults in the South showed the highest propensity to click on paid links (29%), nearly ten full percentage points greater than any other region: Northeast (20%), West (19%) and Midwest (17%). 30% of Americans ages 18-34 indicated they click on search engine ads, which is almost double the rate of Americans age 35 and older (18%)."

CRS - Internet Domain Names: Background and Policy Issues. Lennard G. Kruger, Specialist in Science and Technology Policy. January 3, 2013

CRS - Internet Governance and the Domain Name System: Issues for Congress. Lennard G. Kruger, Specialist in Science and Technology Policy. January 2, 2013

December 17, 2012: "the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) published his Report on the Status of Data Protection Officers (DPOs) as part of his ongoing task to monitor the compliance of EU institutions and bodies with Article 24 of the European Data Protection Regulation, which obliges the appointment of DPOs...Article 24 of the Data Protection Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 provides that each EU institution/body has to appoint at least one Data Protection Officer (DPO) to ensure in an independent manner its internal application. Article 24 sets out the conditions of appointment of the DPOs, their status and the general conditions governing the performance of their duties. Personal data: any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural (living) person. Examples include names, dates of birth, photographs, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers. Other details such as health data, data used for evaluation purposes and traffic data on the use of telephone, email or internet are also considered personal data."

American Banker: "Barclays recently announced that it has made a bulk order of 8,500 iPads for staff in order to improve customer service and boost sales. The devices are being given to front-office employees in its 1,600 branches — an average of five per branch — in one of the largest uses so far of Apple's tablets in an enterprise. Sovereign Bank and others are following suit...Many banks and other large businesses Tekserve works with are buying iPads for their employees and setting up the devices with recommended apps and personalization, so that the user's email account, VPN access and such are already on the device the first time she uses it. Some companies assign each user an app store login and let them install their own apps...Another corporate customer, CableVision, is deploying 3,000 iPads to field service technicians. When they get the iPad from Tekserve, it has their email, corporate desktop and 30 apps on it."

Brett Caine writing in Forbes: "We have become a society that communicates and shares just about everything we do, with one notable exception – work. Work is the place where social firewalls go up when they really should come down. After all, our teams are about teamwork. Social is the perfect tool to get our teams to work more collaboratively. And as it catches on, productivity is improving – people can work and play from anywhere and (finally) debunking the notion that workers need to be in an office to produce. The number of work-at-home employees is increasing dramatically and not just day-extenders. For the first time we are seeing companies implement work-at-home policies and practices that make it possible to work from home as a full member of the team. Everyone wants flexibility, more and more ask for it and the millennials will demand it. What does this changing workforce (and workplace) mean for leaders and managers in the workplace?"

"Electronic data interchange (EDI) provides an excellent context for examining how interoperability at the technological and data level can also produce profound effects at a higher, institutional level. Originally conceived as a means for speeding up the delivery of invoices and purchase orders by sending them electronically, EDI resulted in significant shifts with regard to retailer-supplier relations that went far beyond transaction efficiency...This case study, via SSRN, is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems (Basic Books, June 2012). The book is an extension of their 2007 study and paper, “Breaking Down Digital Barriers: When and How ICT Interoperability Drives Innovation” (Berkman Center Research Publication, 2007). Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems focuses on the relationship between interoperability and innovation in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) environment and beyond. Palfrey and Gasser seek to sharpen the definition of interoperability and identify its relevance for consumers, companies, governments, and the public by examining its driving forces and inhibitors, while considering how it can best be achieved, and why."

Via LLRX.com - Marcus P. Zillman's new research focuses on Deep Web Research and Discovery Resources 2013, comprising in the vicinity of 1 trillion pages of information located in various files and formats that the current search engines cannot find, or have difficulty accessing. Some of the more comprehensive search engines have written algorithms to search the deeper portions of the world wide web by attempting to find files such as .pdf, .docx, .xls, ppt, .ps. and others.  These files are predominately used by businesses to communicate within their organization or to disseminate topical information and work product to customers and potential clients. Searching for this information using deeper search techniques and the latest algorithms allows researchers access to a vast amount of actionable corporate information and intelligence. Research has also shown that even deeper information can be obtained from these files by searching and accessing the "properties" information on these files.

"What role should online intermediaries play in policing the content and conduct of their users? What if any legal responsibility should they bear when users post or transmit material that may be unlawful? These are familiar questions to advocates for Internet openness and crucial issues for Internet policy. Today, CDT is releasing an expanded and updated paper, Shielding the Messengers: Protecting Platforms for Expression and Innovation and additional resources that explore these complex issues."

"Social networking has spread around the world with remarkable speed. In countries such as Britain, the United States, Russia, the Czech Republic and Spain, about half of all adults now use Facebook and similar websites. These sites are also popular in many lower-income nations, where, once people have access to the internet, they tend to use it for social networking. Meanwhile, cell phones have become nearly ubiquitous throughout much of the world, and people are using them in a variety of ways, including texting and taking pictures. Smart phones are also increasingly common – roughly half in Britain, the U.S., and Japan have one. Globally, most smart phone users say they visit social networking sites on their phone, while many get job, consumer, and political information."

The Demographics of Mobile News Habits Men, College Grads and the Young are more Engaged, December 11, 2012: - Younger Americans demonstrate much stronger news habits in the mobile realm than on other news platforms, according to a new study by PEJ in collaboration with The Economist Group. Another finding, with potentially significant implications for the news industry, reveals that younger users are more responsive than other age groups to advertisements in the mobile news space...Overall, news consumption ranks high on mobile devices. Over a third report getting news daily on the tablet and the smartphone, putting it on par with other activities such as email and playing games on tablets and behind only email on smartphones. The popularity of news remains strong across all demographic groups studied, but is especially prevalent among men and the college educated. On the smartphone, differences also emerge in age and income."

The Best (and Worst) of Mobile Connectivity, by Aaron Smith, Nov 30, 2012. "Some 85% of American adults own a cell phone, and these mobile devices now play a central role in many aspects of their owners’ lives according to a new survey. For many cell owners, their phone is an essential utility that they check frequently, keep close at all times, and would have trouble functioning without:

• 67% of cell owners find themselves checking their phone for messages, alerts, or calls — even when they don’t notice their phone ringing or vibrating. Some 18% of cell owners say that they do this “frequently."
  
• 44% of cell owners have slept with their phone next to their bed because they wanted to make sure they didn’t miss any calls, text messages, or other updates during the night.
  
• 29% of cell owners describe their cell phone as “something they can’t imagine living without."

Cell Phone Activities 2012, by Maeve Duggan, Lee Rainie, Nov 25, 2012

Shane Shifflett and Jennifer Gollan: "The federal government has collected millions from the online Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, or PACER – nearly five times what it cost to run the system. Between fiscal years 2006 and 2010, the government collected an average of $77 million a year from PACER fees, according to the most recent federal figures available."

CDT - "The European Parliament today approved a Joint Resolution calling on EU Member States to promote and protect Internet openness at the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). The resolve of the Parliamentarians who drafted the resolution deserves recognition. The result is a strong statement of confidence in the civic and economic value of the open Internet, as well as the virtues of transparent, inclusive models for Internet governance. The public's ability to submit comments in the drafting process is testimony to the work of Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake, a steadfast advocate for civil liberties in the digital age. MEP Schaake invited the public to comment on a draft of the Resolution on her website, providing a strong example of an open, inclusive approach to policy work -- and one that has been lacking in many of the preparations for the WCIT. CDT was grateful for the opportunity, and submitted its own comments."

Parents, Teens, and Online Privacy, by Mary Madden, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser, Amanda Lenhart, Maeve Duggan, Nov 20, 2012. "Most parents of teenagers are concerned about what their teenage children do online and how their behavior could be monitored by others. Some parents are taking steps to observe, discuss, and check up on their children’s digital footprints, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

News release: "Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection Director David Vladeck issued the following statement regarding a federal judge’s approval of the FTC proposed order and $22.5 million civil penalty settling charges that Google misrepresented privacy assurances to users of Apple’s Safari Internet browser in violation of a previous FTC settlement Order: “The court’s approval of the Commission’s record setting $22.5 million fine against Google is a clear victory for consumers and privacy. As this case and many others demonstrate, the Commission will continue to ensure that its orders are obeyed, and that consumers’ privacy is protected.”

InternetNews.com: "While BYOD is a known trend, its actual impact and adoption varies, depending on who you ask. According to a recent study from security vendor Blue Coat, IT staff and employees tend to view BYOD in different ways. While 71 percent of employees reported that they used their own devices to access corporate IT, IT staff in the same survey said they believed 37 percent of employees were accessing the network with non-corporate devices. A study from security vendor Webroot seems to confirm there are a large number of employee-owned devices. It reports that 73 percent of companies now have a mix of company- and employee-owned mobile devices."

Via LLRX.com - Hurricane Sandy and the national digital library issue: Could we have stopped or slowed down global warming? - David H. Rothman's commentary maintains it is imperative that civic matters, including those that resulted in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, not become lost opportunities to find and share information, and to make best use of lessons learned. Accountability, effective communications, access to actionable information, building reliable infrastructures, and providing dynamic access to agile solutions during times of national crisis provide opportunities to leverage the evolving Digital Public Library of America.

EFF: "Each year, Google receives thousands of demands from governments around the world seeking information about its users. People who use any of the search engine giant’s free online services – such as Gmail, YouTube, Google+ or Blogger – leave digital footprints behind, and information relating to their accounts is increasingly sought out by law enforcement agencies. To raise awareness about this, Google publishes a Transparency Report every six months documenting how many requests it received for user data, and from which countries. The practice was recently emulated by Twitter."

"According to a recent report from Google, the company received 20,938 requests for user data in the first half of 2012, up from 18,257 requests in the second half of 2011. The United States accounted for 7,969 requests in the 2012 report. And of these requests, Google provided user data to the US government in 90% of the cases. Over the last several years, Google has pursued an aggressive effort to promote computing services that store personal data on Google's servers even as the number of government requests has grown. And earlier this year, Google reduced safeguards for Gmail users, over the objections of many lawmakers and users when it consolidated privacy policies across its various Internet services. In 2009, EPIC L3[urged] the Federal Trade Commission to look more closely at the privacy risks of cloud-based services. For more, see EPIC - "Cloud Computing"."

Via LLRX - Litigation, trial and pre-trail iPad apps for lawyers: One of the most popular and rapidly growing categories of apps for lawyers are those developed for litigation, during trials and during the pretrial discovery phase. In this article, attorney, legal blogger and legal tech expert Nicole Black recommends more than a dozen affordable, flexible and innovative iPad apps to assist attorneys in their work to develop, streamline, simplify and track critical litigation processes.

"How do the “digital footprints” of Internet and cellphone users affect privacy, and what impact does this have on freedom of expression? These questions lie at the heart of a new study released by UNESCO this week...This publication seeks to identify the relationship between freedom of expression and Internet privacy, assessing where they support or compete with each other in different circumstances. The book maps out the issues in the current regulatory landscape of Internet privacy from the viewpoint of freedom of expression. It provides an overview of legal protection, self-regulatory guidelines, normative challenges, and case studies relating to the topic.

"Browsers can be regarded as a kind of autonomous zone inside the operating systems of modern computers. A browser is a window to the online world, installed on each and every computer, powered with the ability to install and run additional apps on its territory. Of course, it grants access to a plethora of web-based apps: from online office editors to games. At the same time the majority of online threats come from the web as well. Vulnerabilities in web browsers and other popular programs are used by cybercriminals to infect systems and steal user data: quite often an infected web page triggers the attack. That is why keeping your chosen browser up-to-date is one of the most important tasks, since new versions plug security holes and provide new security features...Slightly less than 80% of Kaspersky Lab’s users have the latest version of a browser. It is important that our data is based on real usage statistics, and there is a chance that quite a lot of users, for example, use up-to-date Google Chrome, but have an outdated Internet Explorer installed, thus keeping a security hole open for attacks. At the same time, the number of users utilizing older or critically outdated browsers is very high. A 23% share for older browsers and 8.5% for obsolete versions represents millions of users. Such reluctance to upgrade is a key addition to the negative outlook on web-born threats.."

A range of presentations from the conference, Transformational Power of Internet Librarians: Promise & Prospect have been posted by InfoToday. A sample of the program links follow:

• Über Analytics - Customizing Google Analytics to track multiple library platforms, M Ryan Hess, Web Services Coordinator, DePaul University
  
• Super Searcher Secrets, Mary Ellen Bates
  
• Competitive & Business Info in Social Tools, Scott Brown
  
• Free & Easy to Use Web 2.0 Resources, Cheryl Ann Peltier-Davis
  
• Starting a New Library in the Google Age, Ronald Snijder

De Zwart, Melissa , Lindsay, David F., Henderson, Michael and Phillips, Michael, Randoms vs Weirdos: Teen Use of Social Networking Sites and Perceptions of Legal Risk (2011). (2011) 36(3) Alternative Law Journal 153.; Monash University Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 44. Available at SSRN

Telecommunications data retention - an overview, October 24, 2012:

"Begun in 1990, The Campus Computing Project™ is the largest continuing study of the role of information technology in American higher education. Our projects – the annual Campus Computing Survey, the national surveys of presidents, provosts, and other senior campus officials conducted in collaboration with Inside Higher Ed, and other research activities – draw on qualitative and quantitative data to aid and inform faculty, campus administrators, and others interested in critical planning and policy issues that affect American colleges and universities."

Via LLRX.com, Employment Resources on the Internet - Web research guru Marcus P. Zillman's guide is a comprehensive listing of employment resources available on the Internet. Zillman identifies links, search engines and resume writing sources from across many professional sectors which will help you discover, review, leverage and incorporate actionable information into a successful job search strategy.

How Teens Do Research in the Digital World - A survey of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers finds that teens’ research habits are changing in the digital age, November 2, 2012

"The Registering Researchers Task Group aims to create a concise report that summarizes the benefits and trade-offs of emerging approaches to the problem of incomplete national authority files. Background: National name authority files are incomplete. Many researchers—tenured and non-tenured faculty and graduate students—are only partially represented in national name authority files. National name authority files cover poorly authors of journal articles and exclude researchers who do not publish but who create or contribute to data sets and other research activities. Uniquely identifying the academic authors of all publications, including journal articles, and researchers who do not publish, facilitates compiling individuals' scholarly output, especially as their affiliations change over time. The scholarly output is a factor in the reputation and ranking of the scholar's affiliated institution."

Presidential Campaign Donations in the Digital Age, by Aaron Smith, Maeve Duggan, October 25, 2012

Via LLRX.com - DPLA Grant: Possible Synergy Between Libraries, Schools and Newspapers - David H. Rothman, a leading national digital library advocate, continues his series on the evolving framework for the Digital Public Library of America. In this column, he discusses the impact of new program funding from the Knight Foundation. Rothman believes the potential result could be the start of new synergies between libraries, schools, and newspapers - leading to more interest in civic participation, better monitoring of government at all levels, and maybe even a revival of many young people’s interest in newspapers.

Via EFF: "What is the Open Wireless Movement? Imagine a future with ubiquitous open Internet. We envision a world where, in any urban environment:

• Dozens of open networks are available at your fingertips.
  
• The societal expectation is one of sharing, and, as a result, wireless Internet is more efficient.
  
• The false notion that an IP address could be used as a sole identifier is finally a thing of the past, creating a privacy-enhancing norm of shared networks.
  
• There are no more restrictive Terms of Service from ISPs requiring closed networks.
  
• We're working with a coalition of volunteer engineers to build technologies that will let users open their wireless networks without compromising their security or sacrificing bandwidth. And we're working with advocates to help change the way people and businesses think about Internet service."

• WSJ.com - Live Sandy Updates
• New York Times - Tracking the Storm
• Washington Post - Sandy: Live Updates
• Twitter - information and updates about Hurricane Sandy
• NOAA - StormCentral 2012 - Sandy

Hurricane Sandy: NYC - "Sandy is expected to bring life-threatening storm surge flooding to the mid-Atlantic coast, Monday evening and into Tuesday.

• Latest alerts, NYC Emergency Mgmt
  
• City of New York on Twitter
  
• NYC Emergency Mgmt on Facebook
  
• WNYC Transit Tracker
  
• National Hurricane Center advisories
  
• ready.gov: Preparing for a hurricane

"Examining more than a decade of data on the social impact of technology in America, Pew Internet Research Analyst Kathryn Zickuhr discussed the patterns and trends shaping the new messaging realities of the digital age at the WSU Elliott School of Communications’ annual Comm Week conference."

Social Media and Political Engagement, by Lee Rainie, Aaron Smith, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry Brady, Sidney Verba. Oct 19, 2012

How (and why) agencies should develop an explicit policy for employees' online activities even on their own devices, by Gadi Ben-Yehuda.

OECD Internet Economy Outlook, October 2012

How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace. October 16, 2012 | Alison J. Head

the Chronicle of Higher Education - Jennifer Howard: "Academic libraries’ indexing of digitized works counts as fair use. So says the federal judge overseeing a major copyright-infringement lawsuit brought last year by the Authors Guild against the HathiTrust digital repository and its university partners. At stake was the uses the libraries could make of millions of scanned books. “I cannot imagine a definition of fair use that would not encompass the transformative uses” made by the defendants, Judge Harold Baer, of the U.S. District Court in New York, wrote in a ruling issued late Wednesday [copy of which is via EFF]."

Lee Rainie - Oct 11, 2012, at National Conference of State Legislators: "Being connected to the web, mobile technologies and social media have made many of us feel over or hyper-connected. Could being hyper-connected actually benefit younger generations? Lee Rainie [reviews] the latest data that shows how constant contact among younger generations allows them to be nimble, quick-acting multi-taskers who count on the Internet as their external brain and approach problems in a different way from older generations. But could this also lead to a generation that looks for quick fixes, has a loss of patience and eliminates deep-thinking skills?"

Mobile Device Location Data - Additional Federal Actions Could Help Protect Consumer Privacy, GAO-12-903, Sep 11, 2012

The State of the 2012 Election — Mobile Politics, by Aaron Smith, Maeve Duggan, Oct 9, 2012: "As of late September, 88% of registered voters own a cell phone of some kind—and significant numbers of these voters are using their mobile devices to get information about the 2012 election, to interact with the campaigns, and to converse with other voters about political issues:

• 27% of registered voters who own a cell phone have used their phone in this election campaign to keep up with news related to the election itself or to political issues in general.
  
• Three quarters of these cell-owning registered voters use their phone to send or receive text messages...
  
• Smartphone owners are using their mobile devices as a tool for political participation on social networking sites and as a way to fact check campaign statements in real time. Roughly half (48%) of registered voters who own a cell phone say that they have a smartphone..."

Via LLRX.com: Statistics Resources and Big Data on the Internet - Marcus P. Zillman has compiled a best practices bibliography of sites and reliable sources focused on the hot topic of statistics and big data. These sources are representative of multiple publishers, national and global - government, academia, NGOs, and industry, many of which leverage open source and collaborative applications.

Hoofnagle, Chris Jay, Urban, Jennifer M. and Li, Su, Privacy and Modern Advertising: Most US Internet Users Want 'Do Not Track' to Stop Collection of Data about their Online Activities (October 8, 2012). Amsterdam Privacy Conference, 2012. Available at SSRN.

"When used appropriately, educational technology is a tool to assist with implementation of the Common Core Standards, help raise graduation rates, and prepare students for life beyond K-12 education. Technology employed in isolation, without direct instruction, or highly qualified guidance, fails to address these concerns. It is the intent of this AASL [American Association of School Libraries] white paper to provide a review of technology-related topics that can contribute to success and might serve to generate interest in further research on filtering practices, Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs), apps, social media, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and related subjects."

"...if you’re among the millions of Americans who can’t afford the typical expensive high speed internet services out there, and can’t stomach the low-speed free internet dial-up ISPs, this is the website for you. Not only will you learn about how to get cheap high-speed internet for only $9.95 a month — and even free broadband — you’ll see how you can get a Microsoft Office-loaded, Series 7 PC for only $150. Think of CheapInternet.com as your official, go-to source for everything you need to know about all the exciting, new, inexpensive internet service options that make broadband internet affordable for everyone. (By the way, when we say it’s the cheapest internet access, we’re not talking about stripped down, low-speed dial-up service. Not at all. We’re talking about the kind of blazing fast high speed broadband internet service that you’d expect to pay a lot of money for every month.)...Most of the nation’s major cable companies (well-known names such as Cox Cable and Cablevision, Time-Warner Cable and Charter) and many more of the smaller, regional cable companies (such as Bend Cable, Bright House Networks, Eagle Communications and Sjoberg’s Cable) have banded together to make this the largest and most significant cheap internet access program."

News release with charts and data: "The Internet is now a fundamental infrastructure supporting the economy and is firmly in its second stage of development, having evolved from a data network connecting PCs with wires to a much broader network of new portable devices from mobile phones to tablet computers. It is also on the cusp of a much larger expansion to objects that typically did not have communications capabilities: the “Internet of things” is projected to have more connections than the people using them. This raises many important socio-economic and political issues for stakeholders to consider, as economies and societies become increasingly inter-meshed."

• Read online
  
• Download a summary
  
• Interactive charts

News releases: The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google today announced a settlement agreement that will provide access to publishers’ in-copyright books and journals digitized by Google for its Google Library Project. The dismissal of the lawsuit will end seven years of litigation. The agreement settles a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Google on October 19, 2005 by five AAP member publishers. As the settlement is between the parties to the litigation, the court is not required to approve its terms. The settlement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright-holders. US publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project. Those deciding not to remove their works will have the option to receive a digital copy for their use."

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has launched a major international crackdown on tech support scams in which telemarketers masquerade as major computer companies, con consumers into believing that their computers are riddled with viruses, spyware and other malware, and then charge hundreds of dollars to remotely access and “fix” the consumers’ computers. At the request of the FTC, a U.S. District Court Judge has ordered a halt to six alleged tech support scams pending further hearings, and has frozen their assets."

"The presentation includes random notes and interesting quotes that illustrate not only how researchers are using social media but also how measurements of their social web impact relates to their personal brand and altmetrics. Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC's Vice President, Research, and Chief Strategist, gave this presentation to staff at the University of Pittsburgh Library System on 7 September 2012. Several takeaways from Lorcan's presentation include:

• There are different ways of participating in a network world, and they are always changing.
  
• There is real value in being active online and developing a visible online profile around your professional role.
  
• The first page of Google results for you is your real homepage.
  
• Consider your personal brand: how can you ensure that the right you—your professional skill set, not your personal life—surfaces first when people search you on the web?
  
• This presentation is available from the OCLC Research website and on SlideShare."

"Through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Trade Commission, EPIC has obtained Google's initial privacy assessment. The assessment was required by a settlement between Google and the FTC that followed from a 2010 complaint filed by EPIC over Google Buzz. The FTC has withheld from public disclosure information about the audit process, procedures to assess privacy controls, techniques to identify privacy risks, and the types of personal data Google collects from users. EPIC intends to challenge the agency withholdings. For more information, see EPIC: Google Buzz."

EFF: "We’ve been seeing a range of reports about Facebook partnering up with marketing company Datalogix to assess whether users go to stores in the physical world and buy the products they saw in Facebook advertisements. A lot of the reports aren’t getting into the nitty gritty of what data is actually shared between Facebook and Datalogix, so the goal of this blog post is to dive into the details. We’re glad to see that Facebook is taking a number of steps to avoid sharing sensitive data with Datalogix, but users who are uncomfortable with the program should opt out (directions). Hopefully, reporting on this issue will make more people aware of how our shopping data is being used for a lot more than offering us discounts on tomato soup. Datalogix is an advertising metrics company that describes its data set as including “almost every U.S. household and more than $1 trillion in consumer transactions.” It specifically relies on loyalty card data – cards anyone can get by filling out a form at a participating grocery store."

Freedom on the Net 2012: "This report is the third in a series of comprehensive studies of internet freedom around the globe and covers developments in 47 countries that occurred between January 2011 and May 2012. Over 50 researchers, nearly all based in the countries they analyzed, contributed to the project by researching laws and practices relevant to the internet, testing the accessibility of select websites, and interviewing a wide range of sources."

James Glanz: "A yearlong examination by The New York Times has revealed that this foundation of the information industry is sharply at odds with its image of sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness. Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found. To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust. The pollution from data centers has increasingly been cited by the authorities for violating clean air regulations, documents show. In Silicon Valley, many data centers appear on the state government’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a roster of the area’s top stationary diesel polluters."

EFF: "A new study from Australia presents the latest evidence that loosening copyright restrictions not only enables free speech, but can improve an economy as well. The study, published by the Australian Digital Alliance, indicated that if Australia expanded copyright exceptions like fair use, along with strengthening safe harbor provisions, the country could potentially add an extra $600 million to their economy. In addition, the report details how vital copyright exceptions are to the Australian economy as a whole. As ADA’s executive officer and copyright advisor Ellen Broad told EFF, "Australia's sectors relying on copyright exceptions currently contribute 14% of our GDP, around $182 billion and they're growing rapidly. It's essential that Australia's copyright policy framework adequately support innovation and growth of these sectors in the digital environment.”

Trend Micro Incorporated Opinion Piece, September 2012 - Peter the Great Versus Sun Tzu

Technology Review: "Almost 30 per cent of recorded history, shared over social media such as Twitter, has disappeared, according to a new study of the Egyptian uprising and other significant events."

"Congress.gov makes federal United States legislative information freely available to the public. Launched Sept. 19, 2012, this version of the site is an initial beta release of Congress.gov, created as a successor to THOMAS.gov, the current public site for legislative information. The Congress.gov beta site contains legislation from the 107th Congress (2001) to the present, member of Congress profiles from the 93rd Congress (1973) to the present, and selected member profiles from the 80th through the 92nd Congresses (1947 to 1972). Over the next two years, Congress.gov will be adding information and features, eventually incorporating all of the information currently available on THOMAS.gov. (To compare the scope of legislative information available on THOMAS.gov and the scope of legislative information on the beta site, see Coverage Dates for Legislative Information.)"

Via LLRX.com: Bluebook Technologies - The Bluebook is the standard citation guide for legal materials. There are now three format choices for the Bluebook: paper, online subscription (since 2008), and as of August 10, 2012 - iPad app. Law Librarian, author, research instructor and blogger Mary Whisner's guide discusses and illustrates the features and pricing of each.

Via LLRX.com - The New Digital Public Library of America Board of Directors - David H. Rothman's current commentary highlights the composition of the new board of directors of the nonprofit DPLA, an organization that continues to grow and change, along with clarifying its goals and objectives.

"[On September 17, 2012] the Internet Archive launched TV News Search & Borrow. This service is designed to help engaged citizens better understand the issues and candidates in the 2012 U.S. elections by allowing them to search closed captioning transcripts to borrow relevant television news programs. The Internet Archive works to preserve the published works of humankind. Inspired by Vanderbilt University’s Television News Archive project, the Internet Archive collects and preserves television news. Like library collections of books and newspapers, this accessible archive of TV news enables anyone to reference and compare statements from this influential medium. The collection now contains 350,000 news programs collected over 3 years from national U.S. networks and stations in San Francisco and Washington D.C. The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired. Older materials are also being added."

News release: "In response to the growing demand to make research free and available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection, a diverse coalition today issued new recommendations that could usher in huge advances in the sciences, medicine, and health.The recommendations were developed by leaders of the Open Access movement, which has worked for the past decade to provide the public with unrestricted, free access to scholarly research — much of which is publicly funded. Making the research publicly available to everyone — free of charge and without most copyright and licensing restrictions — will accelerate scientific research efforts and allow authors to reach a larger number of readers."

Report: Social Networking, Video Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online by Lee Rainie, Joanna Brenner, Kristen Purcell

Senior Citizens and Digital Technology from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

Via LLRX.com, Privacy Resources and Sites on the Internet - Marcus P. Zillman's guide is a comprehensive listing of both free and low cost privacy resources currently available on the Internet. It includes associations, indexes and search engines, as well as websites and programs that provide the latest technology and information on Web privacy. This guide will help facilitate a safer interactive environment for your email, your internet browsing, your health records, your data storage and file sharing exchanges, and internet telephony.

Via LLRX.com - Tutorial Resources on the Internet - Marcus P. Zillman's guide is a wide ranging and immediately useful listing of tutorial resources and sites on the Internet. This guide will assist you to discover, review and select the most relevant and reliable sources for your requirements, on topics that include: e-training, health sciences and biomedical research, educational opportunities for unemployed workers, effective web searching, statistical data mining, free college and university courses, programming in various open source applications, and technical support, user guides and repair services too!

News release: "Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has approved a final order settling FTC charges that Myspace misrepresented its protection of users’ personal information. The settlement bars Myspace from future misrepresentations about its privacy practices, requires the company to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy assessments for the next 20 years."

OCLC news release: "This report urges a collaborative approach for conversion of content on various types of digital media. Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, Swatting the Long Tail of Digital Media: A Call for Collaboration, is intended for managers who are making decisions on where to invest their born-digital time and money. It should help them understand that any expectations that local staff will be able to handle everything are probably impractical. We hope it will also help archivists (and others) in the trenches breathe a sigh of relief to think that perhaps they won’t have to deal with an array of obsolete media all on their own."

Smartphone Ownership Update: September 2012 - by Lee Rainie, September 11, 2012

Sliter, John R., 'Techno-Risk - the Perils of Learning and Sharing Everything' from a Criminal Information Sharing Perspective (September 9, 2012). 30th Symposium on Economic Crime in Cambridge, England on September 5th, 2012. Available at SSRN.

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has published a guide to help mobile application developers observe truth-in-advertising and basic privacy principles when marketing new mobile apps. The FTC’s new publication, Marketing Your Mobile App: Get It Right from the Start, notes that there are general guidelines that all app developers should consider. They include:

• Tell the Truth About What Your App Can Do.
  
• Disclose Key Information Clearly and Conspicuously.
  
• Build Privacy Considerations in From the Start.
  
• Offer Choices that are Easy to Find and Easy to Use.
  
• Honor Your Privacy Promises.
  
• Collect Sensitive Information Only with Consent.
  
• Keep User Data Secure."

eMarketer - Users turn to Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter itself to post pictures. "As the number of Twitter users grows, consumers are using the site to share photos, videos and other links with their followers. eMarketer forecasts that US adult Twitter users will reach 31.8 million in 2013, up 14.9% from the 27.7 million users in 2012. As the base grows, the way consumers use the site and what they share is also changing.In July 2012, website analysis company Diffbot looked at 750,000 links posted to Twitter worldwide and found that 36% were images, 16% were articles and 9% were videos. Additionally, 8% linked to a product, and 7% each linked to a site’s front page, a status update or a page error. Games, location-sharing, recipes and reviews each made up less than 2% of links."

A Behavioural Understanding of Privacy and its Implications for Privacy Law, Kirsty Hughes, University of Cambridge, September 2012. The Modern Law Review, Vol. 75, Issue 5, pp. 806-836, 2012

Politics on Social Networking Sites, by Lee Rainie, Aaron Smith. Sep 4, 2012: "A portion of social networking site users say the sites are important for some of their political activities and the way they decide how to engage with campaigns and issues. At the same time, most users of the sites say they do not use the sites for political purposes or debates. A nationally representative phone survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project finds that:

• 36% of social networking site (SNS) users say the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to them in keeping up with political news.
  
• 26% of SNS users say the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to them in recruiting people to get involved in political issues that matter to them.
  
• 25% of SNS users say the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to them for debating or discussing political issues with others.
  
• 25% of SNS users say the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to them in finding other people who share their views about important political issues."

ABI Research: "Eleven million eReaders are projected to be shipped globally in 2012. Down from a peak volume in 2011 of 15 million devices, the growing popularity of media tablets along with declining US baby boomer population and lack of organized digital bookstores outside of the US and Western Europe will reduce the eReader opportunity over the next five years. Regardless of the tremendous historical eReader success, the market tides have already begun to turn, says senior mobile devices analyst Joshua Flood. Despite the average tablet selling for more than $465 as a result of Apples dominant market position, tablets are expected to outsell eReaders 9 to 1 this year. Adds Mr. Flood, Nevertheless, the eReader market will not be totally cannibalized by media tablets. We believe there will always be a niche market for the dedicated reading device for voracious readers, business travelers, and educational segments, particularly ones that are low-priced. Over the next five years, annual eReader shipments are projected to drop by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.1%. In contrast, global media tablet shipments are predicted to increase from approximately 102 million annual device shipments in 2012 to nearly 250 million in 2017."

Promoting Global Internet Freedom: Policy and Technology. Patricia Moloney Figliola, Specialist in Internet and Telecommunications Policy, August 30, 2012

Internet Firearm and Ammunition Sales. Vivian S. Chu, Legislative Attorney, August 28, 2012

Measuring the Cost of Cybercrime. Ross Anderson, Chris Barton, Rainer Bohme, Richard Clayton, Michel J.G. van Eeten Michael Levi, Tyler Moore, Stefan Savage

News release: "EFF's Keeping Your Site Alive guide includes tips on choosing an appropriate webhost to provide the security and technical assistance needed to weather an attack. The guide also gives advice on how to back up and mirror content so it can be made available elsewhere in case the site is compromised, and includes tutorial videos with background information on the technical concepts involved. Denial of service attacks are an issue for websites across the globe, so EFF's guide is available in many different translations, including Chinese, Russian, Persian, and Arabic."

Proposed Model Jury Instructions - The Use of Electronic Technology to Conduct Research on or Communicate about a Case. Prepared by the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, June 2012

News release: "The Federal Communications Commission has concluded its review of the Verizon Wireless-SpectrumCo deal and approved four significant spectrum transfer applications involving Verizon Wireless, subject to a number of binding commitments and conditions. The applications include, among other things, the assignment of AWS-1 licenses held by Cox and SpectrumCo (a joint venture among subsidiaries of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks) to Verizon Wireless; a spectrum “swap” between Verizon Wireless and Leap; and Verizon Wireless’s net assignment of AWS-1 licenses to T-Mobile. The full Order further explaining the Commission’s reasoning and the commitments and conditions is available here."

"This report is geared to those tasked with gaining preliminary control over the digital media in an archives' collections, including those who don’t know where to begin in managing born-digital materials. Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, You’ve Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media errs on the side of simplicity and describes what is truly necessary to start managing born-digital content on physical media. It presents a list of the basic steps without expanding on archival theory or the use of particular software tools. It does not assume that policies are in place or that those performing the tasks are familiar with traditional archival practices, nor does it assume that significant IT support is available. Eighteen well-respected advisors weighed in on the guidance, ensuring that it was not just simple, but authoritative."

"The nation has made significant progress expanding high-speed Internet access in recent years, but further implementation of major reforms newly adopted by the Federal Communications Commission is required before broadband will be available to the approximately 19 million Americans who still lack access, according to the FCC’s Eighth Broadband Progress Report. In an era when broadband is essential to innovation, jobs, and global competitiveness, the Report concludes that the FCC – and the nation – must continue to address obstacles impeding universal broadband deployment and availability Congress in Section 706 the Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires the FCC to report annually on whether broadband “is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” The Report chronicles major strides taken by providers and policymakers to accelerate deployment, including: Billions invested by the communications industry in broadband deployment, including next-generation wired and wireless services."

Berkman Center for Internet Law: "This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems (Basic Books, June 2012). The book is an extension of their 2007 study and paper, Breaking Down Digital Barriers: When and How ICT Interoperability Drives Innovation (Berkman Center Research Publication, 2007). Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems focuses on the relationship between interoperability and innovation in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) environment and beyond. Palfrey and Gasser seek to sharpen the definition of interoperability and identify its relevance for consumers, companies, governments, and the public by examining its driving forces and inhibitors, while considering how it can best be achieved, and why. You can download this case study at SSRN. See also Urs Gasser's blog post about this publication."

"The First Amendment Center has supported an annual national survey of American attitudes about the First Amendment since 1997. The State of the First Amendment: 2012 is the 16th survey in this series. This year’s annual survey repeats some of the questions that have been administered since 1997 and includes new questions on the role of religion in the presidential election, attitudes about government’s control of the Internet, and opinions about the use of copyrighted material on the Internet. This report summarizes the findings from the 2012 survey, and where appropriate, depicts how attitudes have changed over time. The first section of this report presents the survey methodology used to conduct the State of the First Amendment research. The second section highlights the key findings from the 2012 project. The final section presents the complete survey results including question wording and trend data."

"Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, will present the latest Project findings to the Handheld Librarian Online Conference about how many people have mobile devices and how they use these devices—for accessing all kinds of content, using apps, social media, and for specialized searches such as for politics, news, and for health information. He will also discuss broader public attitudes about why people like mobile connectivity and how they feel challenged by it."

via LLRX.com - OverDrive, safeguarding classics, the Jane Austen-'Hunger Games' connection, and a few other priorities for the DPLA to ponder: David H. Rothman's current commentary on the Harvard-hosted Digital Public Library of America highlights successful components of the project and prospective concepts that would support attaining the goal of a national digital library system.

News release: "Following a public comment period, the FTC has accepted as final a settlement with Facebook resolving charges that Facebook deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including by giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining their express consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings, by maintaining a comprehensive privacy program to protect consumers' information, and by obtaining biennial privacy audits from an independent third party. The settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including by giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining their express consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings, by maintaining a comprehensive privacy program to protect consumers' information, and by obtaining biennial privacy audits from an independent third party."

News release: "Google Inc. has agreed to pay a record $22.5 million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it misrepresented to users of Apple Inc.’s Safari Internet browser that it would not place tracking “cookies” or serve targeted ads to those users, violating an earlier privacy settlement between the company and the FTC. The settlement is part of the FTC’s ongoing efforts make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to consumers, and is the largest penalty the agency has ever obtained for a violation of a Commission order. In addition to the civil penalty, the order also requires Google to disable all the tracking cookies it had said it would not place on consumers’ computers."

General Sentiment - Q2 2012 Global Brands Report - "Apple, Google and Microsoft have long vied for the top spot in our quarterly Global Brands series. Who pulled ahead this quarter? A new arrival in this quarter's Impact Media Value top ten also placed among the top Perception Media Value winners thanks to further European expansion. The Q2 2012 Global Brands report analyzes the brands that had the most significant impact online in the second quarter of this year."

Mobile Phone Problems - by Jan Lauren Boyles, Lee Rainie. August 2, 2012

Publishers Week news in following Google Book Scanning project postings: "After a round of key filings, two Authors Guild cases challenging Google’s ambitious library book-scanning program are on schedule for early fall trial dates. Final reply briefs were filed July 27 for the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, with that case now fully briefed and all but set for a November trial in Judge Harold Baer’s courtroom. And in the Authors Guild v. Google case, motions for summary judgment were also filed July 27, with a final round of reply briefs due September 17 and oral arguments set for October 9 before Judge Denny Chin. With the summary judgment motions now in, the question before the courts this time around is refreshingly simple compared to the complex 300-plus–page settlement agreement between the authors, publishers, and Google that was rejected by Judge Denny Chin in March of 2011: digitizing millions of books for preservation and indexing is either authorized by Congress under the Copyright Act’s fair use provision, or it’s not. The Authors Guild holds that the unprecedented mass digitization programs exceed Congress’s stated intentions, while lawyers for Google and the HathiTrust (a coalition of research libraries) argue that the public benefits and transformative nature of the scanning projects easily qualify them as fair use."

"Information technology (IT) is widely understood to be the enabling technology of the 21st century. IT has transformed, and continues to transform, all aspects of our lives: commerce and finance, education, employment, energy, health care, manufacturing, government, national security, transportation, communications, entertainment, science, and engineering. IT and its impact on the U.S. economy-both directly (the IT sector itself) and indirectly (other sectors that are powered by advances in IT)-continue to grow in size and importance. In 1995, the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) produced the report Evolving the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to Support the Nation's Information Infrastructure. A graphic in that report, often called the "tire tracks" diagram because of its appearance, produced an extraordinary response by clearly linking government investments in academic and industry research to the ultimate creation of new information technology industries with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. Used in presentation to Congress and executive branch decision makers and discussed broadly in the research and innovation policy communities, the tire tracks figure dispelled the assumption that the commercially successful IT industry is self-sufficient, underscoring through long incubation periods of years and even decades. The figure was updated in 2002, 2003, and 2009 reports produced by the CSTB. With the support of the National Science Foundation, CSTB updated the tire tracks figure. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology includes the updated figure and a brief text based in large part on prior CSTB reports."

CRS - "Amazon" Laws and Taxation of Internet Sales: Constitutional Analysis, Erika K. Lunder - Legislative Attorney; John R. Luckey - Legislative Attorney, July 26, 2012

Capitalizing on the smarter consumer, IBM Institute for Business Value, July 2012

• "The consumer is digital. Smarter consumers take technology completely for granted. Nearly half the people we surveyed are eager to use two or more technologies to shop. Younger consumers are particularly keen – and teenage “twitterati” have now escaped the parental leash.
  
• The household is “virtual.” Many consumers are shopping for a much wider range of family members, as the number of mutigenerational households rises. Thanks to the Internet, consumers can easily shop for adult parents who may or may not live nearby.
  
• Incomes and shopping attitudes are diverging. Between a fifth and a quarter of all consumers search for sale goods and only buy what they need, no matter how affluent they are or how optimistic they feel about their financial future."

The Future of Higher Education, by Janna Anderson, Jan Lauren Boyles, Lee Rainie. July 27, 2012

"While 72 percent of companies use social technologies in some way, very few are anywhere near to achieving the full potential benefit. In fact, the most powerful applications of social technologies in the global economy are largely untapped. Companies will go on developing ways to reach consumers through social technologies and gathering insights for product development, marketing, and customer service. Yet the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) finds that twice as much potential value lies in using social tools to enhance communications, knowledge sharing, and collaboration within and across enterprises. MGI’s estimates suggest that by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers—high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals—by 20 to 25 percent."

Big Data: "Experts say new forms of information analysis will help people be more nimble and adaptive, but worry over humans’ capacity to understand and use these new tools well Tech experts believe the vast quantities of data that humans and machines will be creating by the year 2020 could enhance productivity, improve organizational transparency, and expand the frontier of the “knowable future.” But they worry about “humanity’s dashboard” being in government and corporate hands and they are anxious about people’s ability to analyze it wisely." Janna Quitney Anderson, Elon University
Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project
July 20, 2012

"Half of all adult cell phone owners now incorporate their mobile devices into their television watching experiences. These “connected viewers” used their cell phones for a wide range of activities during the 30 days preceding our April 2012 survey:

• 38% of cell owners used their phone to keep themselves occupied during commercials or breaks in something they were watching
  
• 23% used their phone to exchange text messages with someone else who was watching the same program in a different location
  
• 22% used their phone to check whether something they heard on television was true
  
• 20% used their phone to visit a website that was mentioned on television
  
• 11% used their phone to see what other people were saying online about a program they were watching, and 11% posted their own comments online about a program they were watching using their mobile phone
  
• 6% used their phone to vote for a reality show contestant

The Cost of Connectivity - A comparison of high-speed Internet prices in 22 cities worldwide, by Hibah Hussain, Danielle Kehl, Benjamin Lennett, Chiehyu Li, Patrick Lucey. New America Foundation, July 19, 2012

"News is becoming a major part of what Americans watch on YouTube. In the last 15 months, a third of the most searched terms on the video sharing site were news related. A new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism explores the character of news on YouTube—what kinds of stories people access, who produced them, who posted them and what it means for the future of visual journalism. See a visual discussion of the findings."

Computer and Internet Use at Home: 2010

Interoperability Case Study: The Bar Code/UPC, Published July 15, 2012 by Matthew Becker. Download from SSRN

Via LLRX.com - Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated - July 2012

Navigating the Social Network - The Air Force Guide to Effective Social Media, March 2012

Family Caregivers Online by Susannah Fox, Joanna Brenner, July 12, 2012: "Thirty percent of U.S. adults help a loved one with personal needs or household chores, managing finances, arranging for outside services, or visiting regularly to see how they are doing. Most are caring for an adult, such as a parent or spouse, but a small group cares for a child living with a disability or long-term health issue. The population breaks down as follows:

• 24% of U.S. adults care for an adult
  
• 3% of U.S. adults care for a child with significant health issues
  
• 3% of U.S. adults care for both an adult and a child
  
• 70% of U.S. adults do not currently provide care to a loved one"

• Information Technology Reform - Progress Made but Future Cloud Computing Efforts Should be Better Planned, GAO-12-756, Jul 11, 2012: "As part of a comprehensive effort to increase the operational efficiency of federal technology assets, federal agencies are shifting how they deploy IT services. OMB issued a “Cloud First” policy in December 2010 that requires federal agencies to implement cloud-based solutions whenever a secure, reliable, and cost-effective cloud option exists; and to migrate three technology services to a cloud solution by June 2012. Cloud computing provides on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources; can be provisioned on a scalable basis; and reportedly has the potential to deliver services faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost than custom-developed systems."
• Ryan White Care Act - Improvements Needed in Oversight of Grantees, GAO-12-610, June 11, 2012

Teens 2012: Truth, Trends, and Myths About Teen Online Behavior, by Kristen Purcell, July 11, 2012. "Pew Internet's newest data on how teens use the internet, mobile phones, social media and social networking sites, as well as teen communication preferences and online information consumption."

Department of Defense, Chief Information Officer, Cloud Computing Strategy, July 2012

Reforming Copyright Is Possible - And it's the only way to create a national digital library, by Pamela Samuelson

Federal Register Volume 77, Number 131 (Monday, July 9, 2012), "On July 5, 2011, the Treasury Department announced that it will implement the Internet Payment Platform (IPP) no later than the end of fiscal year 2012; with all new payment requests in FY2013 processed using the IPP. The Internet Payment Platform (IPP) is a secure Web-based electronic invoicing and payment system that processes vendor payment data electronically, either through a Web-based portal or electronic submission, and automates the routing and approval workflow within an agency. The IPP is provided by the Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service through its fiscal agent, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston at no cost to vendors or government departments and agencies adopting the platform. The IPP benefits agencies by eliminating the need to file and store paper payment documentation; reducing the time of agency personnel researching and answering payment status questions by providing vendor and department-wide visibility into contract payments."

"In response to recent letters from Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA), nine mobile wireless carriers have provided detailed reports of law enforcement requests for user cell phone records. These requests come from agencies - across all levels of government - seeking text messages, caller locations, and other information in the course of investigations. The reports show that companies turn over thousands of records a day in response to subpoenas, court orders, police emergencies, and other requests. The volume of requests has increased as much as 16 percent for some companies over the last five years, and some carriers have rejected as many as 15 percent of all requests that they found legally questionable or unjustified. EPIC recently filed amicus briefs in the Fifth Circuit and New Jersey Supreme Court arguing that disclosure of historical and real-time cell phone location information violates a reasonable expectation of privacy and thus requires a warrant under the Fourth Amendment. For more information, see EPIC: In re Historic Cell-Site Location Information, EPIC: State v. Earls."

Interoperability Case Study: The Smart Grid, by Paul Kominers (download from SSRN)

Via LLRX.com - ChatterBots Resources on the Internet - Marcus P. Zillman's guide is a comprehensive listing of resources on increasingly popular computer projects and programs used to simulate human conversation using "intelligent" agents and text based applications, called chatterbots.

Privacy, Security and Trust in Cloud Computing, by Siani Pearson, HP Laboratories, HPL-2012-80R1, June 28, 2012

The top ten similarities between playing hockey and building a better Internet, Martin Arlitt, HP Laboratories, HPL-2012-1

"France’s Minitel service ended its 34-year run on June 30, 2012. Introduced in the pre-World Wide Web age, the Minitel presaged many services that eventually were delivered via the Internet including online banking, travel reservations... At the height of its popularity in the 1990s, there were nine million terminals in use in France, serving roughly 25 million people (the population of France, at that time, was 60 million). As the service was shut down today, France Télécom estimated that there were still 600,000 in use. The Minitel put France at the forefront of telecommunications when it was rolled out nationwide in the early 1980s (it started out as a trial in Brittany in 1978)...In the 1990s, there were as many as 26,000 different services available including chat, information services for news, weather, sports, and stocks, online commerce, telephone directory search, university applications, access to government information, and e-mail. Companies included “36 15” numerals in advertisements and the prefix had a similar meaning to the dot-com suffix today."

"Wednesday marks Independence Day here in the United States. Beyond the fireworks and barbecue, July 4th serves as an important reminder of the need to hold governments accountable, especially on behalf of those who may not have a chance to do so themselves. With that in mind, today we’re unveiling our first Twitter Transparency Report. Inspired by the great work done by our peers @Google, the primary goal of this report is to shed more light on: government requests received for user information, government requests received to withhold content, and DMCA takedown notices received from copyright holders. The report also provides insight into whether or not we take action on these requests. One of our goals is to grow Twitter in a way that makes us proud. This ideal informs many of our policies and guides us in making difficult decisions. One example is our long-standing policy to proactively notify users of requests for their account information unless we’re prohibited by law; another example is transmitting DMCA takedown notices and requests to withhold content to Chilling Effects. These policies help inform people, increase awareness and hold all involved parties––including ourselves––more accountable; the release of our first Transparency Report aims to further these ambitions."

The Future of Smart Systems, by Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie. June 29, 2012

"What are cookies? - A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that is downloaded on to your computer when you visit a website. Cookies are used by many websites and can do a number of things eg remembering your preferences, recording what you have put in your shopping basket, and counting the number of people looking at a website. The rules on cookies are covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. The Regulations also cover similar technologies for storing information, eg Flash cookies. The Regulations were revised in 2011, and the ICO is responsible for enforcing these new rules...Where to find information about controlling cookies:

• Internet Explorer
  
• Chrome
  
• Firefox
  
• Safari
  
• Opera

Older adults and internet use, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Mary Madden. June 6, 2012

"US Ignite is an initiative to promote US leadership in developing applications and services for ultra-fast broadband and software-defined networks. It will foster the creation of novel applications and digital experiences that will transform healthcare, education and job skills training, public safety, energy, and advanced manufacturing. By serving as a coordinator and incubator of this ecosystem, US Ignite will accelerate the adoption of next-generation networks. US Ignite’s mission is threefold:

• Spur the development of next-generation applications and digital experiences specifically designed for advanced-technology networks
  
• Maximize the potential of the GENI project’s national testbed network, a platform initially connecting 14 campuses and 6 cities providing symmetrical speeds of at least 100 Mbps
  
• Establish the US Ignite Partnership, a non-profit, public-private organization, to ensure new applications offer high-impact public benefit and/or high potential for commercialization
  
• With support from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation, and the GENI Program Office, the US Ignite Initiative will leverage the combined resources of government, research institutions, foundations, and industry to foster an innovation ecosystem for gigabit application and service development."

Mail Online: "Spy planes able to photograph sunbathers in their back gardens are being deployed by Google and Apple. The U.S. technology giants are racing to produce aerial maps so detailed they can show up objects just four inches wide. But campaigners say the technology is a sinister development that brings the surveillance society a step closer. Google admits it has already sent planes over cities while Apple has acquired a firm using spy-in-the-sky technology that has been tested on at least 20 locations, including London. Apple’s military-grade cameras are understood to be so powerful they could potentially see into homes through skylights and windows. The technology is similar to that used by intelligence agencies in identifying terrorist targets in Afghanistan."

"In recent years, online tracking companies have begun to monitor our clicks, searches and reading habits as we move around the Internet. If you are concerned about pervasive online web tracking by behavioral advertisers, then you may want to enable Do Not Track on your web browser. Do Not Track is unique in that it combines both technology (a signal transmitted from a user) as well as a policy framework for how companies that receive the signal should respond. As more and more websites respect the Do Not Track signal from your browser, it becomes a more effective tool for protecting your privacy. EFF is working with privacy advocates and industry representatives through the W3C Tracking Protection Working Group to define standards for how websites that receive the Do Not Track signal ought to response in order to best respect consumer's choices. The following tutorial walks you through the enabling Do Not Track in the four most popular browsers: Safari, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, and Chrome."

Ars Technica: "In a newly approved patent, an economics professor hopes to bring to the academic publishing world what seems to be forthcoming in the video game industry—new restrictions that would seemingly eliminate a secondary market for digital goods and prevent legal borrowing. Last week, the 2006 patent for a “Web-based system and method to capture and distribute royalties for access to copyrighted academic texts by preventing unauthorized access to discussion boards associated with copyrighted academic works” was approved by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent was granted to Joseph Henry Vogel, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras."

EPIC: "The Federal Communications Commission's final rule amending the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) regulations is now in effect. The rule requires "(1)prior express written consent for all autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls to wireless numbers and residential lines; (2) allow[s] consumers to opt out of future robocalls during a robocall; (3) limit[s] permissible abandoned calls on a per-calling campaign basis, in order to discourage intrusive calling campaigns; and (4) exempts prerecorded calls to residential lines made by health care-related entities governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996." EPIC has previously urged the Commission to require express consumer consent for telemarketing calls and to protect wireless subscribers from telemarketing. For more information, see EPIC: Telemarketing and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)."

When the Government Comes Knocking, Who Has Your Back?

Follow up to June 6, 2012 posting, LinkedIn Member Passwords Compromised, this update via the LinkedIn Blog: An Update On Taking Steps To Protect Our Members, June 9, 2012: "...In this post, we want to address questions we’ve been receiving and share what we’ve learned so far about the incident, how we’ve responded, and what we’re doing to protect our members going forward. First, it’s important to know that compromised passwords were not published with corresponding email logins. At the time they were initially published, the vast majority of those passwords remained hashed, i.e. encoded, but unfortunately a subset of the passwords was decoded. Again, we are not aware of any member information being published at any time in connection with the list of stolen passwords. The only information published was the passwords themselves."

New Technology Emerges to Archive Web Pages by John Adams

News release: "NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon today issued a third report on social media cases brought to the agency, this time focusing exclusively on policies governing the use of social media by employees. The Operations Management Memo details seven cases involving such policies. In six cases, the General Counsel’s office found some provisions of the employer’s social media policy to be lawful. In the seventh case, the entire policy was found to be lawful. Provisions are found to be unlawful when they interfere with the rights of employees under the National Labor Relations Act, such as the right to discuss wages and working conditions with co-workers. “I hope that this report, with its specific examples of various employer policies and rules, will provide additional guidance in this area,” Mr. Solomon said in releasing the memo. Two previous memos on social media cases, which involved discharges based on Facebook posts, issued in January 2012 and in August 2011."

Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri - Mobile Media News Consumption Survey Executive Summary: Who uses mobile media devices?: "According to our findings, two-thirds of U.S. adults used at least one mobile media device in their daily lives during the first quarter of 2012. Smartphones and large media tablets are now the preferred mobile media devices. In the two years since Apple defined the large media tablet market with its iPad, nearly a third of all adult mobile device owners in the U.S. said they are using one. For news organizations and advertisers, users of these devices, especially those who own large media tablets, have appealing demographic profiles. They tend to be relatively affluent, well-educated and avid news consumers."

Presentation: Teens, Kindness and Cruelty on Social Network Sites by Amanda Lenhart, Pew Research Center, Youth Working Group, June 5, 2012. "Amanda spoke about how teens use technology and about youth social and emotional experiences in social media spaces."

"By this Public Notice, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announces the composition of the Open Internet Advisory Committee (OIAC). The OIAC’s members include representatives from community organizations, equipment manufacturers, content and application providers, venture capital firms, startups, Internet service providers, and Internet governance organizations, as well as professors in law, computer science, and economics. The OIAC is a Federal Advisory Committee. Called for by the Commission in the Open Internet Order, its mission is to track and evaluate the effects of the FCC’s Open Internet rules, and to provide any recommendations it deems appropriate to the FCC regarding policies and practices related to preserving the open Internet. The OIAC will observe market developments regarding the freedom and openness of the Internet and will focus in particular on issues addressed in the FCC’s Open Internet rules, such as transparency, reasonable network management practices, differences in treatment of fixed and mobile broadband services, specialized services, and technical standards."

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to present this briefing document, which was developed as part of our March 30th, 2012, workshop on "Public Networks for Public Safety: A Workshop on the Present and Future of Mesh Networking.” This workshop provided a starting point for conversation about whether mesh networks could be adopted within consumer technologies to enhance public safety communications and empower and connect the public while simultaneously improving public safety. Participants in this initial convening, detailed on page 33 of the briefing document, included members of government agencies, academia, the telecommunications industry, and civil society organizations; their helpful inputs were integral to the final version of this document...the paper also synthesizes several strains of workshop discussion that probed big picture framing concerns that could inform the present and future of mesh. Specifically, it puts forth two related but distinct models for mesh: mesh in a technical sense and mesh as a metaphor or social layer construct, with a particular emphasis on the need for further conceptual development with regard to “social mesh.” The final section emphasizes key take-aways from the event, highlighting core principles and best practices that might both provide a theoretical underpinning for the future conceptual development of mesh networking technologies and social mesh models, respectively, and inform the real-world development of communications systems that involve either definition of mesh."

Via EPIC FOIA release, Analyst’s Desktop Binder 2011 Redacted, Department of Homeland Security National Operations Center Media Monitoring Capability, Desktop Reference Binder.

"The Cabinet Office and London School of Economics (LSE) have published research into the Total Cost of Ownership of Open Source Software, by Maha Shaikh and Tony Cornford, Version 8.5 Final, November 2011, Unclassified. The report has beejointly financed by the Cabinet Office and OpenForum Academy, together with some of its supporters, including Alfresco, Deloitte, IBM and Red Hat."

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission testified before Congress about the agency’s efforts to protect consumer privacy, including the FTC’s support for implementation of a “Do Not Track” mechanism that would allow consumers to control the tracking of their online activities across websites, and other approaches recommended in its recent privacy report. In delivering Commission testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the current time is a “critical juncture” for consumer privacy, and described the FTC’s recent privacy report, including its call for final implementation of a Do Not Track mechanism. The testimony notes that the Commission recommends Congress consider enacting general privacy legislation, and that it enact data security and breach notification legislation and targeted legislation to address data brokers."

Disappearing Phone Booths - Privacy in the Digital Age, by Erica Newland, May 2012

"Over the course of 2011's momentous Arab Spring uprisings, young women in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen used social media and cyberactivism to carve out central roles in the revolutionary struggles under way in their countries, according to a new study commissioned by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The study, Unveiling the Revolutionaries: Cyberactivism and Women’s Role in the Arab Uprisings [May 17, 2012], explores the activism of several key figures, including Egypt's Esraa Abdel Fattah, who became widely known as “Facebook girl,” as well Libya's Danya Bashir, Bahrain’s Zeinab and Maryam al-Khawaja and Tunisia's Lina Ben Mhenni, who became known as the uprising’s “Twitterati,” dubbed by influential media and pundits as “must-follows.” The paper was written by Courtney Radsch, a doctoral candidate in international relations at American University and an internationally recognized expert on social media, citizen journalism and activism in the Middle East."

Ohm, Paul, Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization (August 13, 2009). UCLA Law Review, Vol. 57, p. 1701, 2010; U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 9-12. Available at SSRN

Mobile, Social Networking Three-quarters of smartphone owners use location-based services, by Kathryn Zickuhr, May 11, 2012

Google - First Amendment Protection for Search Engine Results, April 20, 2012. Eugene Volokh and Donald M. Falk [This White Paper was commissioned by Google, but the views within it should not necessarily be ascribed to Google.]

E-Democracy.org: "Our 2010-11 Inclusive Social Media pilot funded by the Ford Foundation built a foundation for taking our inclusive online engagement work to the next stage. “Knowing” what we are experiencing requires a reflective evaluation. Today, we are sharing the executive summary from our “participatory evaluation” and publishing the entire 60 page review (PDF).

Just-in-time Information through Mobile Connections by Lee Rainie, Susannah Fox, May 7, 2012

Academic spring campaign aims to make all taxpayer-funded academic research available for free online: "The government has drafted in the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it. The initiative, which has the backing of No 10 and should be up and running in two years, will be announced by the universities and science minister, David Willetts, in a speech to the Publishers Association on Wednesday. The move will embolden what has been dubbed the "academic spring" – a growing campaign among academics and research funders for open access in academic publishing. They want to unlock the results of research from behind the lucrative paywalls of journals controlled by publishing companies. Almost 11,000 researchers have signed up to a boycott of journals owned by the huge academic publisher Elsevier. Subscriptions to the thousands of research journals can cost a big university library millions of pounds each year – costs that have started to bite as budgets are squeezed. Harvard University, frustrated by the rising costs of journal subscriptions, recently encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls."

NSA Fact Sheet, April 2012: Mobile phone platforms are susceptible to malicious attacks, both from the network and upon physical compromise. Understanding the vectors of such attacks, level of expertise required to carry them out, available mitigations, and impact of compromise provides a background for certain risk decisions. In general, comparing risks introduced by the new generation of mobile devices to those of traditional, widely-deployed desktop systems provides insight into how the risks to DoD networks are changing. Due to the larger cultural and technological shift to mobile devices, this may be more relevant than comparison of different smartphone brands."

Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want - An OCLC Report: "In 2008, OCLC conducted focus groups, administered a pop-up survey on WorldCat.org (OCLC’s freely available end user interface on the Web) and conducted a Web-based survey of librarians worldwide. The Online Catalogs report presents findings from these research efforts. The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often thought of as discovery tools, the catalog’s delivery-related information is just as important to end users. In addition, the report presents findings on:

• The metadata elements that are most important to end users in determining if an item will meet his or her needs
  
• The enhancements end users would like to see made in online library catalogs to assist them in consistently identifying appropriate materials
  
• The enhancements librarians would recommend for online library catalogs to better assist them in their work."

Via LLRX.com - A Technical Examination of SOPA and PIPA - The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) are the subject of this Infographic, by Spencer Belkofer, Lumin Consulting. See also his related Infographic on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

News release: "The Kindle Fire, introduced to the market in November 2011, has seen rapid adoption among buyers of tablets. Within the Android tablet market, Kindle Fire has almost doubled its share in the past two months from 29.4 percent share in December 2011 to 54.4 percent share in February 2012, already establishing itself as the leading Android tablet by a wide margin. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab family followed with a market share of 15.4 percent in February, followed by the Motorola Xoom with 7.0 percent share. The Asus Transformer and Toshiba AT100 rounded out the top five with 6.3 percent and 5.7 percent market share, respectively."

The Eye-Opening Effects of Staring at Your Screen by JuJu Kim. "It’s no secret that we spend more than six hours a day on average staring at digital screens. But what’s lesser known is the toll it can take on our eyes. Read on for the ailments too much screen-staring can cause (turns out, “Computer Vision Syndrome” is a thing), then discover some tips to protect your peepers."

"At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, Lee Rainie will discuss the Project’s latest findings about how people use the internet, smartphones, and social media tools to get news, share news, and create news. He will describe how the very definition of news is expanding in the age of “me media.” He will discuss the Project’s new research about how people use different platforms to get news about different topics: that is, they use different media channels to learn about the weather and learn about local government. He will also describe how social networks have become essential transmitters of news and evaluators of the meaning of news in people’s civic lives."

The Future of Money in a Mobile Age by Aaron Smith, Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie - Apr 17, 2012

Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Part 3: Recommendations and Readings, Karen Smith-Yoshimura OCLC Research and Rose Holley National Library of Australia

Human Rights and Technology Sales: How Corporations Can Avoid Assisting Repressive Regimes, By Cindy Cohn, Trevor Timm, & Jillian C. York - April 2012

Twitter blog: "One of the great things about Twitter is working with so many talented folks who dream up and build incredible products day in and day out. Like many companies, we apply for patents on a bunch of these inventions. However, we also think a lot about how those patents may be used in the future; we sometimes worry that they may be used to impede the innovation of others. For that reason, we are publishing a draft of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, which we informally call the “IPA”. The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended."

Via LLRX.com - SOPA’s Evil Twin Sister – CISPA: Well known graphic artists Jake O'Neil and Spencer Belkofer created this infographic out of a sense of urgency to visualize the salient information with as many communities as possible. This bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, has not garnered the media coverage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but its high impact implications target key legal issues involving privacy and intellectual property.

Digital differences, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith. April 13, 2012: "When the Pew Internet Project first began writing about the role of the internet in American life in 2000, there were stark differences between those who were using the internet and those who were not. Today, differences in internet access still exist among different demographic groups, especially when it comes to access to high-speed broadband at home. The ways in which people connect to the internet are also much more varied today than they were in 2000. As a result, internet access is no longer synonymous with going online with a desktop computer.

• One in five American adults does not use the internet. Senior citizens, those who prefer to take our interviews in Spanish rather than English, adults with less than a high school education, and those living in households earning less than $30,000 per year are the least likely adults to have internet access.
  
• Among adults who do not use the internet, almost half have told us that the main reason they don’t go online is because they don’t think the internet is relevant to them. Most have never used the internet before, and don’t have anyone in their household who does.
• "About one in five say that they do know enough about technology to start using the internet on their own, and only one in ten told us that they were interested in using the internet or email in the future.
  
• The 27% of adults living with disability in the U.S. today are significantly less likely than adults without a disability to go online (54% vs. 81%). Furthermore, 2% of adults have a disability or illness that makes it more difficult or impossible for them to use the internet at all.
  
• Though overall internet adoption rates have leveled off, adults who are already online are doing more. And even for many of the “core” internet activities we studied, significant differences in use remain, generally related to age, household income, and educational attainment."

2012 Federal Media and Marketing Study Overview, April 12, 2012, Fourth Annual Release

EPIC: "The New York Times reported that Facebook would provide users with a downloadable archive containing many types of data that the company stores about users. Although the new archive contains more user information than Facebook first offered in 2010, Max Schrems, the German law student and founder of Europe v. Facebook, said that Facebook is still only providing 39 of 84 data categories. EPIC called on Facebook to give users full access to all of the data that the company keeps about them through EPIC’s Know What They Know campaign. In comments on a settlement between Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission, EPIC recommended that the FTC require Facebook to give users full access to their data. For more information, see EPIC: Facebook Privacy and EPIC: Know What They Know.

Salience vs. Commitment: Dynamics of Political Hashtags in Russian Twitter by Vladimir Barash and John Kelly

News release: Worldwide media tablet sales to end users are forecast to total 118.9 million units in 2012, a 98 percent increase from 2011 sales of 60 million units, according to Gartner, Inc. Apple's iOS continues to be the dominant media tablet operating system (OS), as it is projected to account for 61.4 percent of worldwide media tablet sales to end users in 2012. Despite the arrival of Microsoft-based devices to this market, and the expected international rollout of the Kindle Fire, Apple will continue to be the market leader through the forecast period. "Despite PC vendors and phone manufacturers wanting a piece of the pie and launching themselves into the media tablet market, so far, we have seen very limited success outside of Apple with its iPad," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. "As vendors struggled to compete on price and differentiate enough on either the hardware or ecosystem, inventories were built and only 60 million units actually reached the hands of consumers across the world. The situation has not improved in early 2012, when the arrival of the new iPad has reset the benchmark for the product to beat."

Ben Kersey: "Microsoft and AOL ...signed a deal that would see MSFT pick up 800 of AOL’s patents for around $1 billion in cash. The deal is expected to close at the end of 2012, with Microsoft being able to leverage AOL’s remaining 300 patents under a non-exclusive license. As it turns out, there was an undisclosed term to the deal, and AllThingsD reports that Microsoft has picked up part of Netscape."

Wikimedia - "Previous versions of our application used Google Maps for the nearby view. This has now been replaced with OpenStreetMap - an open and free source of Map Data that has been referred to as ‘Wikipedia for Maps.’ This closely aligns with our goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone. This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications. OpenStreetMap is used in both iOS and Android, thanks to the amazing Leaflet.js library. We are currently using Mapquest’s map tiles for our application, but plan on switching to our own tile servers in the near future."

Selling You on Facebook: "Some of the most widely used apps on Facebook—the games, quizzes and sharing services that define the social-networking site and give it such appeal—are gathering volumes of personal information. A Wall Street Journal examination of 100 of the most popular Facebook apps found that some seek the email addresses, current location and sexual preference, among other details, not only of app users but also of their Facebook friends. One Yahoo service powered by Facebook requests access to a person's religious and political leanings as a condition for using it. The popular Skype service for making online phone calls seeks the Facebook photos and birthdays of its users and their friends...This appetite for personal data reflects a fundamental truth about Facebook and, by extension, the Internet economy as a whole: Facebook provides a free service that users pay for, in effect, by providing details about their lives, friendships, interests and activities. Facebook, in turn, uses that trove of information to attract advertisers, app makers and other business opportunities."

The Global Information Technology Report 2012 - Living in a Hyperconnected World - World Economic Forum, 2012

10 Things Online Data Collectors Won't Say - They know your online browsing secrets. We reveal their hidden tactics.

The rise of e-reading, by Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr, Kristen Purcell, Mary Madden and Joanna Brenner

Security of power grids: a European perspective, Corrado Leita, Marc Dacier, Symantec Research Labs. April 2012

"The 1940 census records were released by the US National Archives April 2, 2012, and brought online through a partnership with Archives.com. This website allows you full access to the 1940 census images, in addition to 1940 census maps and descriptions. Please visit Getting Started to determine the best way to begin your search.

• Find census maps and descriptions to locate an enumeration district. To find a person in the census, you first need to determine the appropriate enumeration district number. This can be found by searching census district maps and descriptions.
  
• Browse census images to locate a person in the 1940 census. Census images are organized by enumeration district number. Once you've located the correct one, you can begin to browse census images to look for your ancestor.
  
• Save, share, and download images to save your work and share with family members. When you locate a census image, you can easily save, share, or download the image for future reference. This image can be a great keepsake, or addition to your family tree!"
  
• See also U.S. Census Bureau Infographic - 1940-2010 How has America changed?

The Plaintiffs’ Bar Goes Digital - An Analysis of the Digital Marketing Efforts of Plaintiffs’ Attorneys & Litigation Firms, January 2012

Social Networking Risks Outlined in Latest Counterintelligence Brochure, March 2012

House of Lords - House of Commons - Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions Privacy and injunctions, Session 2010–12 - Report, together with formal minutes, minutes of evidence and appendices Ordered by the House of Lords and the House of Commons to be printed 12 March 2012

How to Use iOS 5 Devices in Litigation, by Brian Malcom

Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing, March 27, 2012: testimony of General Keith B. Alexander, USA Commander, U.S. Cyber Command and Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service

CRS - Congressional Oversight of Agency Public Communications: Implications of Agency New Media Use. Kevin R. Kosar, Analyst in American National Government, March 14, 2012

Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2011–2016

• "Global mobile data traffic grew 2.3-fold in 2011, more than doubling for the fourth year in a row. The 2011 mobile data traffic growth rate was higher than anticipated.
  
• Last year's forecast projected that the growth rate would be 131 percent. This year's estimate is that global mobile data traffic grew 133 percent in 2011.
  
• Last year's mobile data traffic was eight times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. Global mobile data traffic in 2011 (597 petabytes per month) was over eight times greater than the total global Internet traffic in 2000 (75 petabytes per month).
  
• Mobile video traffic exceeded 50 percent for the first time in 2011. Mobile video traffic was 52 percent of traffic by the end of 2011.
  
• Mobile network connection speeds grew 66 percent in 2011. Globally, the average mobile network downstream speed in 2011 was 315 kilobits per second (kbps), up from 189 kbps in 2010. The average mobile network connection speed for smartphones in 2011 was 1344 kbps, up from 968 kbps in 2010.
  
• In 2011, a fourth-generation (4G) connection generated 28 times more traffic on average than a non-4G connection. Although 4G connections represent only 0.2 percent of mobile connections today, they already account for 6 percent of mobile data traffic.
  
• The top 1 percent of mobile data subscribers generate 24 percent of mobile data traffic, down from 35 percent 1 year ago. According to a mobile data usage study conducted by Cisco, mobile data traffic has evened out over the last year and now approaches the 1:20 ratio that has been true of fixed networks for several years.
  
• Average smartphone usage nearly tripled in 2011. The average amount of traffic per smartphone in 2011 was 150 MB per month, up from 55 MB per month in 2010.
  
• Smartphones represent only 12 percent of total global handsets in use today, but they represent over 82 percent of total global handset traffic. In 2011, the typical smartphone generated 35 times more mobile data traffic (150 MB per month) than the typical basic-feature cell phone (which generated only 4.3 MB per month of mobile data traffic)."

Pew: The Web Is Dead? No. Experts expect apps and the Web to converge in the cloud; but many worry that simplicity for users will come at a price, Janna Quitney Anderson, Elon University - Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, March 23, 2012

Via Bill Lucey:

• Energy Tomorrow (API)
  
• Service Station FAQ’s
  
• AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report
  
• Real Time Retail Fuel Prices: Oil Price Information Services (OPIS)
  
• Gasoline Taxes by Individual States (API)

Follow up to New 'HTTPS Everywhere' Version Warns Users About Web Security Holes see the following from privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian - Firefox switching to HTTPS Google search by default (and the end of referrer leakage).

"In 2011, the digital revolution entered a new era. The age of mobile, in which people are connected to the web wherever they are, arrived in earnest. More than four in ten American adults now own a smartphone. One in five owns a tablet. New cars are manufactured with internet built in. With more mobility comes deeper immersion into social networking. For news, the new era brings mixed blessings. New research released in this report, The State of the News Media 2012, finds that mobile devices are adding to people’s news consumption, strengthening the lure of traditional news brands and providing a boost to long-form journalism. Eight in ten who get news on smartphones or tablets, for instance, get news on conventional computers as well. People are taking advantage, in other words, of having easier access to news throughout the day – in their pocket, on their desks and in their laps. At the same time, a more fundamental challenge that we identified in this report last year has intensified — the extent to which technology intermediaries now control the future of news. Two trends in the last year overlap and reinforce the sense that the gap between the news and technology industries is widening. First, the explosion of new mobile platforms and social media channels represents another layer of technology with which news organizations must keep pace. Second, in the last year a small number of technology giants began rapidly moving to consolidate their power by becoming makers of “everything” in our digital lives. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and a few others are maneuvering to make the hardware people use, the operating systems that run those devices, the browsers on which people navigate, the e-mail services on which they communicate, the social networks on which they share and the web platforms on which they shop and play. And all of this will provide these companies with detailed personal data about each consumer."

Teens, Smartphones & Texting - "Texting volume is up while the frequency of voice calling is down. About one in four teens say they own smartphones." Amanda Lenhart Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet Project

"Director Lee Rainie [provided] a look at some of the most recent survey results obtained by the Pew Internet Project on mobile computing and the use of handheld devices at the NFAIS workshop, Mobile Devices and the delivery of information: An Update.

FBI Fact Sheet on Internet Fraud: Includes information on: Avoiding Internet Auction Fraud, Avoiding Non-Delivery of Merchandise, Avoiding Credit Card Fraud, Avoiding Investment Fraud, Avoiding Business Fraud, Avoiding the Nigerian Letter or “419” Fraud, Common Fraud Scams, Investment-Related Scams, Internet Scams, and Fraud Target: Senior Citizens.

News release: "One out of five American consumers used their mobile phone to access their bank account, credit card, or other financial account in the 12 months ending in January 2012 and an additional one out of five indicated they would likely use mobile banking at some point in the future, according to a Federal Reserve Board survey, Consumers and Mobile Financial Services, March 2012. The survey's findings suggest that the use of mobile banking is poised to expand further over the next year, with usage possibly increasing to one out of three mobile phone users by 2013. However, the survey indicates that many consumers remain skeptical of the benefit of mobile banking and the level of security associated with the technology. The use of mobile banking is highly correlated with age, according to the survey results. People between 18 and 29 account for approximately 44 percent of mobile banking users, relative to 22 percent of all mobile phone users. Conversely, people age 60 and over account for only 6 percent of all mobile banking users, but 24 percent of mobile phone users. The survey showed a significantly higher level of mobile banking uptake among African Americans (16 percent) and Hispanics (17 percent), relative to 11 percent and 13 percent of mobile phone users, respectively."

Social networking sites and politics, by Lee Rainie, Aaron Smith, Mar 12, 2012

"Based in Amsterdam and Paris, the Internet Memory Foundation (formerly European Archive) is a non-profit institution. Since 2004, it actively supports the preservation of Internet as a new media. The foundation is currently archiving dozens of Terabytes of data per months and is developing several technologies to support the growth and use of the Internet Memory. The foundation has developed a wide range of collaborations, both with cultural institutions and research team to fulfill its mission."

Alexanyan, Karina, Barash, Vladimir, Etling, Bruce, Faris, Robert, Gasser, Urs, Kelly, John, Palfrey, John G. and Roberts, Hal, Exploring Russian Cyberspace: Digitally-Mediated Collective Action and the Networked Public Sphere (March 2, 2012). Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2012-2.

Smartphone users now outnumber users of more basic mobile phones within the national adult population, Aaron Smith Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet Project

"Pew Director Lee Rainie gave a keynote at the NFAIS annual conference about the way the internet and mobile connectivity have transformed the worlds of networked individuals. He discussed how normal life has changed in the past decade because of three revolutions in technology: 1) the spread of broadband; 2) the rise of mobile connectivity; and 3) the emergence of technological social networks. He discussed trends and likely future developments in technology that will shape the way people learn, share, and create information. The slides in PDF are here."

Pew - Global Digital Communication: Texting, Social Networking Popular Worldwide

NASA Cybersecurity: An Examination of the Agency’s Information Security - Testimony before the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, February 29, 2012 - Statement of Paul K. Martin, NASA Inspector General: "My testimony today highlights five issues that we believe, based on our extensive audit and investigative work, constitute NASA’s most serious challenges in the admittedly difficult task of protecting the Agency’s information and systems from inadvertent loss or malicious theft. These challenges are:

• Lack of full awareness of Agency-wide IT security posture;
  
• Shortcomings in implementing a continuous monitoring approach to IT security;
  
• Slow pace of encryption for NASA laptop computers and other mobile devices;
  
• Ability to combat sophisticated cyber attacks; and
  
• Transition to cloud computing."

Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives - by Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie, February 29, 2012

News release: "Today at the RSA Conference 2012, Scott Charney, corporate vice president of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, shared his vision for the road ahead as society and computing intersect in an increasingly interconnected world. In a new paper, Trustworthy Computing (TwC) Next, Charney encouraged industry and governments to develop more effective privacy principles focused on use and accountability, improve end-to-end reliability of cloud services through increased fault modeling and standards efforts, and adopt more holistic security strategies including improved hygiene and greater attention to detection and containment."

Our Mobile Planet: Global Smartphone Users, Google, February 2012

Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality - New Report and Infographic, the Berkman Center, by Urs Gasser, Sandra Cortesi, Momin Malik, & Ashley Lee.

DuckDuckGo: An introduction to the anonymous search engine

FCC Measuring Broadband America - A Report on Consumer Wireline Broadband Performance in the U.S.: "presents the results of the first nationwide performance study of residential wireline broadband service in the United States. The study examined service offerings from 13 of the largest wireline broadband providers using automated, direct measurements of broadband performance delivered to the homes of thousands of volunteers during March 2011. This report highlights the major findings of the study, while the separate Technical Appendix provides a detailed description of the methodology and describes the specific tests that were performed. The Commission is also making available the results of all tests run in March 2011, as well as the complete raw data set of results from all tests taken during the study period of February to June 2011."

"Today the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues posted on its website hundreds of supporting documents related to its investigation into the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) studies conducted in Guatemala in the 1940s. The documents include a spreadsheet that Commission staff painstakingly created to document the research subjects in Guatemala. In addition, the Commission has posted a Spanish translation of its report, "Ethically Impossible" STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. As the world is now aware, the PHS research involved intentionally exposing and infecting vulnerable populations to sexually transmitted diseases without the subjects’ consent. The revelation of the research led to an apology from President Obama to the President of Guatemala. It also resulted in a request from President Obama to the Commission for a thorough fact finding investigation into the U.S. PHS studies...The Commission completed its historical investigation and sent its final report to the White House last September. The full report posted now includes hyperlinks to the supporting historical documents cited in the endnotes."

Via WSJ, this commentary by FTC Commission Robert K. McDowell: "On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish "international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices. If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet's flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and quickly became the greatest deregulatory success story of all time...Russia, China and their allies within the 193 member states of the ITU want to renegotiate the 1988 treaty to expand its reach into previously unregulated areas. Reading even a partial list of proposals that could be codified into international law next December at a conference in Dubai is chilling..."

Internet Governance and the Domain Name System: Issues for Congress. Lennard G. Kruger, Specialist in Science and Technology Policy, February 9, 2012

"Encyclo is an encyclopedia of the future of news, produced by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University...our main site emphasizes new developments and the latest news. We think there’s great value in a resource that steps back a bit from the daily updates and focuses on background and context. What is it about Voice of San Diego that people find interesting? How has The New York Times been innovating? What model is Politico trying to achieve? Those kinds of questions are why we decided to build Encyclo — a resource on the most important organizations and issues in journalism’s evolution...Our initial focus is on the companies and organizations that are having a big impact on the future of news. That includes a lot of traditional news organizations doing innovative work (like The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and CNN) and a lot of newcomers whose business models are made possible by the Internet (like Talking Points Memo, GlobalPost, and West Seattle Blog). Some are nonprofits focusing on high-end investigative and watchdog work..."

Google Fiber Blog: "We’ve measured utility poles; we’ve studied maps and surveyed neighborhoods; we’ve come up with a comprehensive set of detailed engineering plans; and we’ve eaten way too much barbecue. Now, starting [February 6, 2012], we’re ready to lay fiber. As we build out Google Fiber, we’ll be taking thousands of miles of cables and stretching them across Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. Each cable contains many thin glass fibers, each about the width of a human hair. We’ll be taking these cables and weaving them into a fiber backbone — a completely new high speed infrastructure that will ultimately be carrying Kansas Citians’ data at speeds more than 100 times faster [emphasis added] than what most Americans have today. At first, we’ll focus on building this solid fiber backbone. Then, as soon as we have an infrastructure that is up and running, we’ll be able to connect Google Fiber into homes across Kansas City!"

Official Google Code Blog, Pete LePage, Developer Advocate: "...the Chrome Developer Relations team launched several new resources, including the Field Guide to Web Applications. It’s a new resource that is designed to help web developers create great web apps. We’ve heard loud and clear from users that they want more and better web apps, and we hope this new field guide will enable you to create those web apps. Our fictitious author Bert Appward guides you through topics like the properties of web applications, design fundamentals, tips for creating great experiences, and a few case studies that put best practices to use. Whether you're building your first web app or are just looking for ways to improve your existing apps, I hope you'll find the field guide useful."

Follow up to postings on driving distractions and texting, this news: "U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced the first-ever federally proposed guidelines to encourage automobile manufacturers to limit the distraction risk for in-vehicle electronic devices. The proposed voluntary guidelines would apply to communications, entertainment, information gathering and navigation devices or functions that are not required to safely operate the vehicle. Issued by the Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the guidelines would establish specific recommended criteria for electronic devices installed in vehicles at the time they are manufactured that require visual or manual operation by drivers. The announcement of the guidelines comes just days after President Obama’s FY 2013 budget request, which includes $330 million over six years for distracted driving programs that increase awareness of the issue and encourage stakeholders to take action."

Digital Advertising and News Who advertises on news sites and how much those ads are targeted

A Methodology for Internal Web Ethics, Michalis N. Vafopoulos, Petros Stefaneas, Ioannis Anagnostopoulos, Kieron O'Hara. February 11, 2012

Latin American Governments Need to "Friend" Social Media and Technology, by Carl Meacham, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer for Latin America and the Caribbean, October 5, 2011

lifehacker: "The U.S. Interstates as a Subway Map infographic is a subway-style map of America's interstate highways, and it's pretty handy for quickly planning a cross-country trip. You can see at a glance how the highways connect and the major cities along the way. Although the map's lines aren't geographically precise, for planning a trip, this design by Cameron Booth may work even better than traditional maps' more accurate road representations. For example, if you're driving from Teaneck, NJ to San Francisco, CA you already know you're going west so all you need to find is that straight red line for I-80 cutting across the map. Also really useful are the map's circles representing the cities along the way—"stops," if you will, and "transfers" for other highways. Here's the full map. Click to expand or right-click to save to disk. Update: High-res posters (36 inches by 24 inches) are available for purchase for $39 plus $10 shipping on Cameron's site."

News release: "Congress is demanding drones in the air over the United States – without considering the civil liberties issues. Within the span of three days last week, the House and then the Senate passed a law – H.R. 658 – requiring the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to speed up, within 90 days, its current licensing process for government use of drones domestically and to open the national airspace to drone aircraft for commercial and private use by October 2015. While the law requires the FAA to develop guidance on drone safety, the law says absolutely nothing about the privacy or transparency implications of filling the sky with flying robots. As CDT and others have pointed out, drones are powerful surveillance devices capable of being outfitted with facial recognition cameras, license plate scanners, thermal imaging cameras, open WiFi sniffers, and other sensors. Drones’ unique ability to hover hundreds or thousands of feet in the air – undetected, for many hours – enables constant, pervasive monitoring over a wide area. Without clear privacy rules, public and private use of drones can usher in an era of unparalleled physical surveillance. Without transparency requirements, citizens will not even have the basic right to know who owns the drone watching them from above. Congress, the FAA, industry bodies, and the American people all should play a role in ensuring that drones are used responsibly."

Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2011, Roger Skalbeck, Georgetown University Law Center, 2 J.L. (1 J. Legal Metrics) 25-52 (2012)

News release: "The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today they are partnering to enhance the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA®) for the Arctic region by summer 2012. ERMA® is the same interactive online mapping tool used by federal responders during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This effort will help address numerous challenges in the Arctic where increasing ship traffic and proposed energy development are increasing the risk of oil spills and chemical releases."

"CDW-'s new Federal Mobility Report examines how Federal employees use mobile devices today, the challenges they face and the benefits they enjoy. More than half of Federal employees use at least one mobile device at work, according to CDW-G's research, and many are using personal devices. The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is likely to continue, following the November 2011 executive order that asked agencies to limit the number of Information Technology (IT) devices they issue to employees, including mobile devices such as laptops and smartphones, in order to cut costs. In this report, CDW-G examines the current BYOD status, how agency IT professionals manage mobile devices – both personal and agency-owned – and the steps they are taking to mitigate very real security concerns."

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission warned marketers of six mobile applications that provide background screening apps that they may be violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The FTC warned the apps marketers that, if they have reason to believe the background reports they provide are being used for employment screening, housing, credit, or other similar purposes, they must comply with the Act. According to the FTC, some of the apps include criminal record histories, which bear on an individual's character and general reputation and are precisely the type of information that is typically used in employment and tenant screening."

"The UK Home Affairs Committee publishes its report into The Roots of Violent Radicalisation today, the result of a wide-ranging inquiry that began in May 2011. The Committee concludes that the internet is one of the most significant vehicles for promoting violent radicalism - more so than prisons, universities or places of worship, although direct, personal contact with radicals is in many cases also a significant factor. Witnesses told the Committee that the internet played a part in most, if not all, cases of violent radicalisation.

• Report: Roots of violent radicalisation
  
• Inquiry: Roots of violent radicalisation
  
• Home Affairs Committee

Report: "DNS (Domain Name System) is an Internet service that converts user-friendly domain names into the numerical Internet protocol (IP) addresses that computers use to talk to each other. When you enter a domain name, such as www.fbi.gov, in your web browser address bar, your computer contacts DNS servers to determine the IP address for the website. Your computer then uses this IP address to locate and connect to the website. DNS servers are operated by your Internet service provider (ISP) and are included in your computer’s network configuration. DNS and DNS Servers are a critical component of your computer’s operating environment—without them, you would not be able to access websites, send e-mail, or use any other Internet services. Criminals have learned that if they can control a user’s DNS servers, they can control what sites the user connects to on the Internet. By controlling DNS, a criminal can get an unsuspecting user to connect to a fraudulent website or to interfere with that user’s online web browsing. One way criminals do this is by infecting computers with a class of malicious software (malware) called DNSChanger. In this scenario, the criminal uses the malware to change the user’s DNS server settings to replace the ISP’s good DNS servers with bad DNS servers operated by the criminal. A bad DNS server operated by a criminal is referred to as a rogue DNS server."

via SEC: Facebook, Inc. Form S-1, February 1, 2012

• "We had 845 million MAUs as of December 31, 2011, an increase of 39% as compared to 608 million MAUs as of December 31, 2010.
  
• We had 483 million daily active users (DAUs) on average in December 2011, an increase of 48% as compared to 327 million DAUs in December 2010.
  
• We had more than 425 million MAUs who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011.
  
• There were more than 100 billion friend connections on Facebook as of December 31, 2011.
  
• Our users generated an average of 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day during the three months ended December 31, 2011."
  
• Reuters: "It's the year's hottest initial public offering, but some wealth managers find themselves having a hard time recommending Facebook to their clients."

"EPIC has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Trade Commission for the Privacy Report that Google was recently required to submit to the agency. The Commission had previously investigated Google after EPIC filed a complaint regarding Google's Buzz product, which transformed private user contacts into publicly available social network data. Last fall the Commission reached a settlement with Google and, as a result, the company is subject to a consent order that requires it to file regular reports with the Commission. EPIC has requested that Google's first report, filed on January 26, 2012, be released to the public. Because of Google's plan to change its business practice on March 1, 2012, EPIC has asked the FTC to expedite the disclosure of the report. For more information see EPIC: In re Google Buzz."

Report: Social Networking, Web 2.0 - Why most Facebook users get more than they give by Keith Hampton, Lauren Sessions Goulet, Cameron Marlow, Lee Rainie. February 3, 2012

Open Access to Scientific Information, Published 25 January 2012 | POST Notes 397, by Chandrika Nath

"DMARC, which stands for "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance", is a technical specification created by a group of organizations that want to help reduce the potential for email-based abuse by solving a couple of long-standing operational, deployment, and reporting issues related to email authentication protocols. DMARC standardizes how email receivers perform email authentication using the well-known SPF and DKIM mechanisms. This means that senders will experience consistent authentication results for their messages at AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and any other email receiver implementing DMARC. We hope this will encourage senders to more broadly authenticate their outbound email which can make email a more reliable way to communicate."

World Press Freedom Index 2011-2012 - "Syria, Bahrain and Yemen get worst ever rankings - “This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news." “Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them."

Jurors’ Use of Social Media During Trials and Deliberations - A Report to the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, Meghan Dunn, Federal Judicial Center November 22, 2011

EFF: "This January 28 marks International Privacy Day. Different countries around the world are celebrating this day with their own events. This year, we are honoring the day by calling attention to recent international privacy threats and interviewing data protection authorities, government officials, and activists to gain insight into various aspects of privacy rights and related legislation in their own respective countries. As part of International Privacy Day, the EFF asked data protection authorities, politicians, and activists about privacy related issues and concerns for 2012. In addition to the individuals highlighted in our previous posts, EFF heard back from the Council of Europe, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), and activists from Canada, France and Spain. In various ways, all of the responses focused on government surveillance or data protection laws. For the Council of Europe and European Data Protection Supervisor, the focus was on data protection agreements, while the activists were mindful of the ever-increasing power of government authorities to surveil their citizens."

Via CDT: "Earlier this week, Twitter announced that it will begin making certain Tweets inaccessible to users in countries where the content of those Tweets is illegal. In announcing its new policy, Twitter was acknowledging the challenge that all global social media sites face: governments ask tech companies to comply with local content laws and if these companies refuse to comply, they risk being blocked from the country entirely, further limiting information that citizens can access. If the company has employees on the ground, refusal also risks legal charges against employees. This, of course, raises a well-worn question: are human rights better served when a platform restricts some content in order to remain in a country, or when it resigns itself to a nationwide block of its service?"

News release: The European Commission has today [January 24, 2012] a comprehensive reform of the EU's 1995 data protection rules to strengthen online privacy rights and boost Europe's digital economy. Technological progress and globalisation have profoundly changed the way our data is collected, accessed and used. In addition, the 27 EU Member States have implemented the 1995 rules differently, resulting in divergences in enforcement. A single law will do away with the current fragmentation and costly administrative burdens, leading to savings for businesses of around €2.3 billion a year. The initiative will help reinforce consumer confidence in online services, providing a much needed boost to growth, jobs and innovation in Europe."

National Archives Office of Inspector General Management Letter No. 12-01, Network Outage

How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crunch Time, Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, Project Information Literacy Research Report, University of Washington's Information School, October 12, 2011

"Fat paychecks, sweet perks, fun colleagues, and over 70,000 jobs ready to be filled -- these employers offer dream workplaces. Like Google, which reclaims the top spot this year to become a three-time champion. Meet this year's top 100."

Made in heaven or marriage from hell? Social media and the financial sector, Cicero Consulting, January 2012

Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period, Lee Rainie Director, Pew Internet Project

Via LLRX - Deep Web Research 2012: Marcus P. Zillman's extensive research over the years into the "invisible" or "deep" web indicates that it covers somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion plus pages of information located throughout the Internet in various files and formats that current search engines either cannot locate, or have difficulty accessing. The current search engines find hundreds of billions of pages at the time of this publication. His guide provides extensive and targeted resources to facilitate both a better understanding of the history of deep web research as well to effectively and productively search for and locate these often undiscovered but critical documents.

Real Time Charitable Giving - Why mobile phone users texted millions of dollars in aid to Haiti earthquake relief and how they got their friends to do the same - Aaron Smith, Pew Internet Project, Senior Research Specialist

Programmable Web Services Directory of over 100 government [local, state and federal] APIs released in 2011.

• Over 2,000 APIs Added in 2011: Social, Telephony, Open Government
  
• See also How the Internet of Things Is Turning Cities Into Living Organisms - "When city services can autonomously go online and digest information from the cloud, they can reach a level of performance never before seen." December 6, 2011

News release: "Were you ever about to sign a contract for a personal loan, credit card, or other consumer credit and discovered that it was all working out more expensive than you had first expected? An EU-wide investigation of websites offering consumer credit took place to check whether consumers are receiving the information to which they are entitled under EU consumer law1 before signing a consumer credit contract. National enforcement authorities checked more than 500 websites across the 27 Member States plus Norway and Iceland. They flagged 70% (393) of sites for further investigation in relation to the following main problems: the advertising did not include the required standard information; the offers omitted key information that is essential for making a decision; the costs were presented in a misleading way. National enforcement authorities will now contact financial institutions and credit intermediaries about suspected irregularities and ask them to clarify or take corrective action. The sweep operation checked in particular how business is applying the Consumer Credit Directive (recently transposed in Member States), which aims to make it easier for consumers to understand and compare credit offers."

The Gov Doc Kids Group and Free Government Information - Tom Adamich, Martha Childers, Katy Davis, John H. Faria and Antoinette W. Satterfield. The IFLA World Library and Information Congress

News release: "Almost one in three U.S. TV households – 35.9 million – owns four or more televisions, according to Nielsen’s State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report. Across the ever-changing U.S. media landscape, TV maintains its stronghold as the most popular device, with 290 million Americans and 114.7 households owning at least one. In contrast, 211 million Americans are online and 116 million (ages 13+) access the mobile Web. For more insights on usage and trends across TV, mobile, online, and social media download Nielsen’s State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report."

comScore Reports November 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share: "For the three-month average period ending in November, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by LG with 20.5 percent share and Motorola with 13.7 percent share. Apple strengthened its position at #4 with 11.2 percent share of total mobile subscribers (up 1.4 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 6.5 percent share...In November, 72.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 2.1 percentage points. Downloaded applications were used by 44.9 percent of subscribers (up 3.3 percentage points), while browsers were used by 44.4 percent (up 2.3 percentage points). Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 2.1 percentage points to 33.0 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 29.7 percent of the mobile audience (up 1.2 percentage points), while 21.7 percent listened to music on their phones (up 1.0 percentage points)."

Revolution in the Arab World: "In the first article, Dr. Laleh Khalili compares the Arab Spring with other revolutions in the twentieth century, pointing out how difficult it is to ascertain what the effects of revolutions might be. Next, Dr. Jillian Schwedler also takes a historical approach to the study of revolution by looking systematically at protests in Jordan over several decades with a focus on law, urban space, and spectacle. Third, Dr. William Zartman focuses particularly on the events in Tunisia, commenting particularly on different groups vying for leadership. Fourth, Gamal Eid writes about how youth have used social media to rally support and organize protests in Egypt." The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)

It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed, December 21, 2011

The civic and community engagement of religiously active Americans - "Those who are active in church, religious, or spiritual organizations are often more deeply involved in their communities than those who are not members of such groups. And their tech use helps them tie to all kinds of groups" by Jim Jansen Senior Fellow, Pew Internet

State of the Federal Web Report, December 16, 2011. Produced by the .gov Reform Task Force

"Have you ever wondered why some online ads you see are targeted to your tastes and interests, or how websites remember your preferences from visit to visit? The answer may be in the “cookies." A cookie is information saved by your web browser, the software program you use to visit the web. Cookies can be used by companies that collect, store and share bits of information about your online activities to track your behavior across sites. Cookies also can be used to customize your browsing experience, or to deliver ads targeted to you. OnGuardOnline.gov wants you to know how cookies are used and how you can control information about your browsing activities. Here are answers to some commonly asked questions about cookies – what they are, what they do, and how you can control them."

EPIC: "Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Mike Lee (R-UT), Chairman and Ranking member of the Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, have sent a letter to FTC Chairman John Liebowitz, expressing concern about Google's business practices and the company's impact on competition in Internet search and commerce. In September, EPIC wrote to the FTC and described how Google biased YouTube search rankings to give preferential treatment to its own content following the acquisition of the Internet's largest video service provider. The EPIC letter preceded a Senate hearing on The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition? EPIC testified before the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee in 2009 on Google's growing dominance of essential Internet services."

Reading Digits in Natural Images with Unsupervised Feature Learning, Yuval Netzer, Tao Wang, Adam Coates, Alessandro Bissacco, Bo Wu1, Andrew Y. Ng

News release: "Researchers have set a new world record for data transfer, helping to usher in the next generation of high-speed network technology. At the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle during mid-November, the international team transferred data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a wide-area network circuit. The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks—each with a complete movie and all the extras—in a day."

News release: "TRUSTe, the leading online privacy solutions provider, released its first privacy index as part of its new "Privacy Pulse" information series tracking changes and trends in online privacy. In the 2011 Website Edition of its Privacy Index, TRUSTe analyzed the privacy policies of the top 100 U.S. websites (as ranked by Alexa Sept. 2011) to evaluate privacy practices by measuring key policy attributes, as well as the type of disclosures contained in them. TRUSTe found that while nearly 100 percent of websites today include a privacy policy, existing policies are highly complex, lengthy and written in language that is confusing for the average person to understand. Additionally, the vast majority of privacy policies are not readily transparent regarding third-party usage of data or consumer choices."

"The Blueprint for a Secure Cyber Future builds on the Department of Homeland Security Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report’s strategic framework by providing a clear path to create a safe, secure, and resilient cyber environment for the homeland security enterprise. With this guide, stakeholders at all levels of government, the private sector, and our international partners can work together to develop the cybersecurity capabilities that are key to our economy, national security, and public health and safety. The Blueprint describes two areas of action: Protecting our Critical Information Infrastructure Today and Building a Stronger Cyber Ecosystem for Tomorrow. The Blueprint is designed to protect our most vital systems and assets and, over time, drive fundamental change in the way people and devices work together to secure cyberspace. The integration of privacy and civil liberties protections into the Department’s cybersecurity activities is fundamental to safeguarding and securing cyberspace."

How SOPA Affects Students, Educators, and Libraries: "...Libraries represent another educational group that could face fallout from SOPA. The Library Copyright Alliance, a group whose members include the American Library Association and two other major library organizations, has also written a letter to the House of Representatives raising major issues with the bill. Alarmingly, the librarians point to “three pending copyright infringement lawsuits against universities and their libraries relating to their use of digital technology,” reflecting “a growing tension between rights holders and libraries, and some rights holders’ increasingly belligerent enforcement mentality.” That same enforcement mentality, under SOPA, could lead to criminal prosecutions of libraries, even for activities that are a fair use and conducted without the intention of commercial gain."

The Protester, by Kurt Andersen: "It's remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats. Two decades after the final failure and abandonment of communism, they believe they're experiencing the failure of hell-bent megascaled crony hypercapitalism and pine for some third way, a new social contract."

Ten Facts about Mobile Broadband, Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director, Governance Studies - December 08, 2011. The Brookings Institution

Predicting the Future of Computing: "Since no supercomputer can yet predict the future, we need your help. Readers are invited to make predictions and collaboratively edit this timeline, which is divided into three sections: a sampling of past advances, future predictions that you can push forward or backward in time (but not, of course, into the past), and a form for making and voting on predictions. The most prescient prophet might receive an iPad 2 in 2050. But if the past is any guide, this prediction will almost surely be wrong."

The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption: Have America's Largest Companies Reached a Social Media Plateau? Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D. and Justina Andonian - Center for Marketing Research, Charlton College of Business, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Americans and Mobile Computing: Key Trends in Consumer Research, by Aaron Smith. December 7, 2011 at the Government Mobility Forum

"Independent research firm TNS surveyed more than 3,500 cloud computing users in eight countries around the world to find answers to these and other timely questions. The survey focused on capturing user information about outcomes and experiences rather than predictions and intentions. While much remains to be discovered about how cloud can transform enterprises, the findings of the CSC commissioned Cloud Usage Index are nonetheless informative — and often surprising."

"It’s that time of year, again, when news organizations are scrambling to determine which stories and screaming headlines attracted the most attention from its readers. As a way to get the ball rolling, I contacted some leading news organizations and asked them to provide the online story that generated the most page views on their Web Sites over the last year. Here, then [are several of the] responses that came back from those organizations considerate enough to return my emails.

• "The New York Times: The story with the most page views on NYTimes.com between January 1 through Dec 5, 2011 was Sustainable Love By Tara Parker-Pope, an essay on what makes a happy marriage. The article appeared in the Times' print edition on January 2, 2011.
  
• The Wall Street Journal: The most popular story at WSJ.com for 2011 was an essay entitled: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior which were excerpts from author Amy Chua’s new book: "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", a book that caused a great deal of controversy earlier this year.
  
• ABC: According a company spokesperson, the top story for 2011 on ABCNews.com was a story about the 50 most popular women on the Internet. The article was originally published on May 6, 2010. The two other top stories for 2011 at ABCNews.com was the killing of Osama bin Laden published on May 1, 2011; and the obituary of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, published on October 5, 2011.

"The OECD broadband portal provides access to a range of broadband-related statistics gathered by the OECD. Policy makers must examine a range of indicators which reflect the status of individual broadband markets in the OECD. The OECD has indentified five main categories which are important for assessing broadband markets."

"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics (On-demand self-service, Broad network access, Resource pooling, Rapid elasticity, Measured Service); three service models (Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)); and, four deployment models (Private cloud, Community cloud, Public cloud, Hybrid cloud). Key enabling technologies include: (1) fast wide-area networks, (2) powerful, inexpensive server computers, and (3) high-performance virtualization for commodity hardware." Draft Documents as follows:

• NIST Special Publication 500-293, US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Release 1.0 (Draft), Volume I High-Priority Requirements to Further USG Agency Cloud Computing Adoption
  
• NIST Special Publication 500-293, US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Release 1.0 (Draft), Volume II Useful Information for Cloud Adopters

"The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain appeared in the Nov. 30 edition of the Technology Review - The PC is dead. Rising numbers of mobile, lightweight, cloud-centric devices don't merely represent a change in form factor. Rather, we're seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users and software developers on the one hand, to operating system vendors on the other—and even those who keep their PCs are being swept along. This is a little for the better, and much for the worse. The transformation is one from product to service. The platforms we used to purchase every few years—like operating systems—have become ongoing relationships with vendors, both for end users and software developers. I wrote about this impending shift, driven by a desire for better security and more convenience, in my 2008 book The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It."

The internet as a diversion and destination - On a typical day, 53% of young adults go online just for fun and to pass the time, by Lee Rainie. December 2, 2011

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today issued the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2011. The FTC's National Do Not Call Registry provides consumers with an easy way to stop unwanted telemarketing calls...According to the Data Book, at the end of FY 2011 (September 30, 2011), the Do Not Call Registry contained 209,722,924 actively registered phone numbers, up from 201,542,535 at the end of FY 2010. In addition, the number of consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls increased from 1,633,819 at the end of FY 2010 to 2,272,662 at the end of FY 2011. In its third year of publication, the Data Book contains a wealth of information about the Registry for FY 2011, including:

• The number of active registrations and consumer complaint figures since the Registry began in 2003;
  
• FY 2011 complaint figures by month and complaint type;
  
• FY 2011 registration and complaint figures for all 50 states and the District of Columbia by population;
  
• The number of entities accessing the Registry by fiscal year; and
  
• An appendix on registration and complaint data by consumer state and area code."

News release: "Our analysis of The Consumer Benefits of Expanding Shared Use of the Public Airwaves, which we are releasing today demonstrates that spectrum made available for shared use without a license (unlicensed spectrum), has played a central and critical role in growth of wireless broadband data service. In fact, the shared use model has performed as well as, if not better than, the exclusive licensed model, even though unlicensed spectrum was considered to be “junk” by commercial operators. Using unlicensed technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, consumers receive higher quality service at lower prices.

• Consumers “extend” broadband service to their mobile devices at home and directly access hundreds of thousands of public and private hot spots across the U.S. This adds over $25 billion per year in value to broadband service.
  
• The efficient use of shared spectrum allows cellular wireless providers to “offload” more than one-third of their data traffic, dramatically reducing the number of cell sites they have to build and operate. This lowers the cost of service by at least another $25 billion per year.
  
• Intensive intra-firm communications, remote metering and monitoring, tagging of assets and goods, pay and go billing, and a host of others machine-to-machine applications, all of which rely on shared use spectrum, save businesses tens of billions of dollars per year."

The UK Cyber Security Strategy - Protecting and promoting the UK in a digital world, November 2011

News release: "The social networking service Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers' express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established. The FTC's eight-count complaint against Facebook is part of the agency's ongoing effort to make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to American consumers. It charges that the claims that Facebook made were unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law."

"The University of Pittsburgh is fortunate to own one of the rare, complete sets of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. It is considered to be the single most valuable set of volumes in the collections of the University Library System (ULS). Indeed, only 120 complete sets are known to exist. While Audubon was creating Birds of America, he was also working on a companion publication, namely, his Ornithological Biography. Both of these sets were acquired by William M. Darlington in the mid-nineteenth century and later donated, as part of his extensive library, to the University of Pittsburgh. Recognizing that the Darlington Library includes significant historical materials, such as rare books, maps, atlases, illustrations, and manuscripts, the ULS charted an ambitious course to digitize a large portion of Mr. Darlington’s collection, including the Birds of America. We are pleased to present our complete double elephant folio set of Audubon’s Birds of America, accompanied by his Ornithological Biography, through this Web site. Together these sets constitute an unprecedented online combination."

Why Americans use social media - Social networking sites are appealing as a way to maintain contact with close ties and reconnect with old friends, by Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 11/14/2011

"Consumer Reports' Guide to online security outlines some of the most common Net threats—such as phishing, online scams, and computer viruses. (See: Best ways to stay safe online.) But our latest security report also notes that mobile phones and social media sites can also present a rising amount of ID theft risks since more consumers are using their smart phones to shop and sharing news of online bargains on Facebook. (See: Mobile phones: The new risk and Concerns about Facebook.) The Consumer Federation of America, a non-profit association of almost 300 consumer organizations, has compiled a list of 10 tips for having an ID theft-free holiday season (PDF) on its website, IDTheftInfo.org."

Mapping the Mal Web - The world’s riskiest domains, by Barbara Kay, CISSP, Secure by Design Group and Paula Greve, Director of Research, McAfee Labs

News release: "The FCC is launching the Small Biz Cyber Planner, an online resource to help small businesses create customized cybersecurity plans. This is the result of an unprecedented public-private partnership between government experts and private IT and security companies, including DHS, NCSA, NIST, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Chertoff Group, Symantec, Sophos, Visa, Microsoft, HP, McAfee, The Identity Theft Council, ADP and others. The online tool is available at FCC.gov/cyberplanner. By almost any measure small businesses have an outsized impact on our economy and it is critically important that small businesses, a vibrant engine for job and idea creation, are secure using the many broadband enabled tools they need to efficiently run their businesses. According to a survey released in October, 2011 by Symantec and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), two-thirds of U.S. small businesses rely on broadband Internet for their day-to-day operations...This effort is part of an ongoing program to raise awareness about the cybersecurity risks to small businesses and to help these businesses become cyber-secure. Earlier this year, the FCC and a coalition of public and private-sector partners developed a cybersecurity tip sheet, which includes tips to educate business owners about basic steps they can take immediately to protect their companies. The tip sheet is available at FCC.gov/cyberforsmallbiz".

The Top 25 US Public Libraries' Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat "characterizes the combined collections of the top 25 US public libraries, as represented in the WorldCat database. These libraries account for more than 34 million holdings in WorldCat across 13.5 million distinct publications. The report considers overlap vs. uniqueness of holdings for these libraries, and compares their collective collection with the collective holdings of the rest of the US public libraries whose holdings are represented in WorldCat. It also compares their collective collection to the collective WorldCat holdings of ARL member libraries, and to all US academic libraries represented in WorldCat.">The Top 25 US Public Libraries' Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat characterizes the combined collections of the top 25 US public libraries, as represented in the WorldCat database. These libraries account for more than 34 million holdings in WorldCat across 13.5 million distinct publications. The report considers overlap vs. uniqueness of holdings for these libraries, and compares their collective collection with the collective holdings of the rest of the US public libraries whose holdings are represented in WorldCat. It also compares their collective collection to the collective WorldCat holdings of ARL member libraries, and to all US academic libraries represented in WorldCat."

"Just under half (46%) of cell phone and tablet users who have downloaded apps say they have paid for an app at some point, according to a survey conducted July 25-Aug. 26, 2011 by the Pew Internet & American Life project. That number is statistically equivalent to the 47% who reported doing so in May 2010. However, the number of people who have downloaded an application has grown, so only 16% of all U.S. adults have ever paid for an app -- this compares with 13% who said so in May 2010. This is a small but statistically significant increase."

News release: "Demonstrating the increasing role of the network in people's lives, an international workforce study announced today by Cisco revealed that one in three college students and young professionals considers the Internet to be as important as fundamental human resources like air, water, food and shelter. The 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report also found that more than half of the study's respondents say they could not live without the Internet and cite it as an "integral part of their lives" – in some cases more integral than cars, dating, and partying. These and numerous other findings provide insight into the mindset, expectations, and behavior of the world's next generation of workers and how they will influence everything from business communications and mobile lifestyles to hiring, corporate security, and companies' abilities to compete."

"This webinar featured innovative ways to increase access to special collectons. The report, Rapid Capture: Faster Throughput in Digitization of Special Collections, focused on the actual moment of digitization of non-book materials and on innovative ways to speed things up. But speeding things up in one part of the process often uncovers bottlenecks in other parts. In this webinar, experts from special collections and archives offered up creative ways to speed up other parts of the process to provide greater access to special collections..."

How Mainstream Media Outlets Use Twitter Content Analysis Shows an Evolving Relationship - November 14, 2011

"Building, operating and securing the Global Information Grid (GIG) for the Department of Defense is a complex and ongoing challenge. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Cyber Identity and Information Assurance has developed a strategy for meeting this challenge, which is available here: Build and Operate a Trusted GIG - Identity & Information Assurance Related Policies and Issuances - Developed by the DoD CIO, IIA Deputate. Last Updated: October 18, 2011. In the CIIA Strategy, the primary goal areas are as listed as follows:

• Organize for unity of purpose and speed of action (shortened to "Organize" in the chart).
  
• Enable secure mission driven access to information and services (shortened to "Enable" in the chart).
  
• Anticipate and prevent successful attacks on data and networks (shortened to "Anticipate" in the chart).
  
• Prepare for and operate through cyber degradation or attack (shortened to "Prepare" in the chart)."
  
• The Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center (IATAC) is a U.S. Department of Defense Information Analysis Center (IAC) sponsored by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), and Assistant Secretary of Defense Research and Engineering (ASDR&E). IATAC is hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton."

• To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications, November 11, 2011 via European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) - "European Union (EU) agency which acts as a centre of expertise for the EU Member States and European institutions. It gives advice and recommendations on good practice, and acts as a “switchboard” for exchanging knowledge and information. The agency also facilitates contacts between the European institutions, the Member States, and private business and industry."
• "Recording aspects of one’s life, or life-logging, has a long established history in human society, but it is undergoing transformational change in terms of depth, volume and type of data. Before the 20th century, life-logging was restricted to recordings on paper media and involved written accounts, such as books, diaries, or collections of letters between people as well as person-constructed images such as drawings or paintings. By the 20th century, the media had broadened to include still photographic images, sound and moving images and most families kept at least an image life-log in the form of a photo album. By the end of the 20th century, most of these life-log data were digitally recorded with both the resolution and frequency of recording dramatically increasing year on year. Paper diaries and letters gave way to blogs, e-mail, and social networking status updates with the significant difference that the latter were potentially recorded forever and with a vastly more complete history than the episodic fragments of days gone by."
• Appendix I Scenario Building and Analysis Template, accompanying the deliverable "To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications". File To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications [Appendix II]
• Appendix II Risk Assessment Spreadsheet, accompanying the deliverable "To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications"

"The Veterans Job Bank powered by NRD.gov provides Veterans with a central source for identifying Veteran-committed employment opportunities and assists America’s employers in identifying qualified Veterans. A key part of the White House’s ongoing commitment to improve access to employment opportunities for transitioning Service Members and Veterans, it facilitates access to hundreds of thousands of private-sector job openings specifically targeted at Veterans. The Veterans Job Bank returns job opportunities based on search criteria entered by the user. Powered by a Google search, jobs are drawn from various job boards that have posted or specifically tagged jobs for Veterans."

Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites by Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Aaron Smith, Kristen Purcell, Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie. Nov 9, 2011

The Socialbot Network: When Bots Socialize for Fame and Money -
Yazan Boshmaf, Ildar Muslukhov, Konstantin Beznosov, Matei Ripeanu -
University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to share a new paper published in First Monday, Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,’ authored by Berkman community members danah boyd, Eszter Hargittai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey.

Half of adult cell phone owners have apps on their phones - The percent who download apps nearly doubles in two years, but just 46% of downloaders have paid for an app...The growth in apps downloading is a reflection of the broader trend toward mobile devices the Pew Internet Project has identified over the past decade. Americans have embraced mobile connectivity in the form of laptops, smartphones, tablet computers, and e-readers, while desktop computers have become less popular over time." Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research, Pew Internet Project, November 2, 2011

Judicial Ethics and Social Networking Sites: "Michael Crowell
UNC School of Government, September 2011 (Revised)

Information Security Continuous Monitoring (ISCM) for Information Systems and Organizations (NIST Special Publication [SP] 800-137)

DOE IG Evaluation Report - The Department's Unclassified Cyber Security Program – 2011, DOE/IG-0856 October 2011

All Your Clouds are Be­long to us – Se­cu­ri­ty Ana­ly­sis of Cloud Ma­nage­ment In­ter­faces - Juraj So­mo­rovs­ky, Mario Hei­de­rich, Meiko Jen­sen, Jörg Schwenk, Nils Grusch­ka, Luigi Lo Ia­co­no. In Pro­cee­dings of the ACM Cloud Com­pu­ting Se­cu­ri­ty Work­shop (CCSW), 2011.

"Protesters of all political persuasions are increasingly documenting their protests -- and encounters with the police -- using electronic devices like cameras and cell phones. The following tips apply to protesters in the United States who are concerned about protecting their electronic devices when questioned, detained, or arrested by police. These are general guidelines; individuals with specific concerns should talk to an attorney."

"Social media not only connects consumers with each other, but also with just about every place they go and everything they watch and buy. Nielsen’s new Social Media Report looks at trends and consumption patterns across social media platforms in the U.S. and other major markets, exploring the rising influence of social media on consumer behavior. Highlights of Nielsen’s “State of the Media: The Social Media Report”

• Social networks and blogs continue to dominate Americans’ time online, now accounting for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet
  
• At over 53 billion total minutes during May 2011, Americans spend more time on Facebook than they do on any other website
  
• Tumblr is an emerging player in social media, nearly tripling its audience from a year ago
  
• Nearly 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone
  
• Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile Internet
  
• 70 percent of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user
  
• Across a sample of 10 global markets, social networks and blogs are the top online destination in each country, accounting for the majority of time spent online and reaching at least 60 percent of active Internet users."

Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits, comScore, October 2011.

News release: "Concerned that the pairing of the new Kindle Fire tablet with its must-use Silk browser means Amazon could track each Web click of Kindle Fire users Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) [October 14, 2011] sent a letter to Amazon’s CEO asking for responses to questions about tablets users’ privacy and security...In May 2011, Reps. Markey and Joe Barton (R-Texas) introduced the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011, bipartisan legislation that amends the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 to extend, enhance and update the provisions relating to the collection, use and disclosure of children’s personal information. The legislation also establishes new protections for the personal information of children and teens."

Tracking the Trackers: Where Everybody Knows Your Username by Jonathan Mayer, posted on October 11, 2011

Six Provocations for Big Data, Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford

Governors Highway Safety Administration, Cell Phone Laws and Texting, October 2011 - "This chart outlines all state cell phone and text messaging laws. Some local jurisdictions may have additional regulations. Enforcement type is shown in parenthesis.

• Handheld Cell Phones: 9 states, D.C. and the Virgin Islands prohibit all drivers from using handheld cell phones while driving. Except for Maryland, all laws are primary enforcement—an officer may cite a driver for using a handheld cell phone without any other traffic offense taking place.
  
• All Cell Phone Use: No state bans all cell phone use (handheld and hands-free) for all drivers, but many prohibit all cell phone use by certain drivers - Novice Drivers: 30 states and D.C. ban all cell phone use by novice drivers. School Bus Drivers: Bus drivers in 19 states and D.C. may not use a cell phone when passengers are present.
  
• Text Messaging: 34 states, D.C. and Guam ban text messaging for all drivers. 31 states, D.C., and Guam have primary enforcement; the others, secondary. Novice Drivers: An additional 7 states prohibit text messaging by novice drivers. School Bus Drivers: 3 states restrict school bus drivers from texting while driving.
  
• Some states such as Maine, N.H. and Utah treat cell phone use and texting as part of a larger distracted driving issue. In Utah, cellphone use is an offense only if a driver is also committing some other moving violation (other than speeding)."

Account Deactivation and Content Removal: Guiding Principles and Practices for Companies and Users, Erica Newland, Caroline Nolan, Cynthia Wong, and Jillian York. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society and. The Center for Democracy & Technology, September 2011

Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums Part 1: Site Reviews - Karen Smith-Yoshimura, Program Officer OCLC Research; Cyndi Shein, Assistant Archivist Getty Research Institute

Federal Reserve Bank of New York - Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution. Request for Proposal (Event-6994)

News release: "What do you think about when choosing a cell phone provider? Their prices? Their coverage area? Whether they have spiffy, high-tech phones? Whether their phones work overseas or in the subway? What about how long they retain information about you and under what circumstances they turn it over to law enforcement? All of the nation's major mobile carriers are retaining their customers' location data for at least a year, according to a chart the Department of Justice (DOJ) developed in 2010 — and that the ACLU of North Carolina received in response to our public records request about local law enforcement's use of cell phone location information. And location info's not all they hang onto. We gave a copy of this document to Wired.com, which has written about it here."

How people learn about their local community: "Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending on the subject matter and their age, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that asks about local information in a new way. Most Americans, including more tech-savvy adults under age 40, also use a blend of both new and traditional sources to get their information. Overall, the picture revealed by the data is that of a richer and more nuanced ecosystem of community news and information than researchers have previously identified...local TV draws a mass audience largely around a few popular subjects; local newspapers attract a smaller cohort of citizens but for a wider range of civically oriented subjects."

News release: "Representatives Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Co-Chairmen of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to investigate so-called “supercookies”, files that can be installed on computers without a user's knowledge. Supercookies allow websites to collect detailed personal data about users, including websites previously visited. Even when consumers choose to delete regular cookies from their computers, supercookies persist. According to a report last month in The Wall Street Journal (“Latest in Web Tracking: Stealthy ‘Supercookies’, August 18, 2011), it was discovered that companies have been installing supercookies on users’ computers without their knowledge. Even technical experts at the websites in the report stated they had no knowledge that the secret files were being installed."

News release: "Last week, the FCC published its final Open Internet rules in the Federal Register, which means they will formally go into effect later this fall. The publication caps off a two-year process at the Commission to get the rules in place. While the rules won’t change much in terms of day-to-day use of the Internet, it is good news for consumers and innovators that they will at long last be enforceable. The rules essentially preserve the status quo online. They prevent cable, DSL, and fiber carriers from favoring or disfavoring certain sites or applications over others and prevent mobile carriers from blocking websites or competing voice and video applications – leaving consumers to decide which services they might prefer. The only significant change will be that now, if carriers engage in discriminatory routing or network management practices, those whose traffic is affected will have a place to go to demand recourse. The rules themselves reflect a light-touch and flexible approach to preserving the competitive environment that currently exists on the Internet. The rules do not, as some critics declare, amount to “regulating the Internet,” and there is ample evidence that in the absence of rules carriers might discriminate (as a few have done already) against some lawful traffic."

Intelligence Issues for Congress, Richard A. Best Jr., Specialist in National Defense, September 14, 2011

Marine Corp Social Media Principles

Microsoft Becomes First Corporate User of Standard XML-Based Bank Statements

News release: "Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. announced the results of a new report revealing 48 percent of enterprises surveyed have been victims of social engineering, experiencing 25 or more attacks in the past two years, costing businesses anywhere from $25,000 to over $100,000 per security incident. The report, The Risk of Social Engineering on Information Security, shows phishing and social networking tools as the most common sources of socially-engineering threats – encouraging businesses to implement a strong combination of technology and user awareness to minimize the frequency and cost of attacks. Socially-engineered attacks traditionally target people with an implied knowledge or access to sensitive information. Hackers today leverage a variety of techniques and social networking applications to gather personal and professional information about an individual in order to find the weakest link in the organization. According to the global survey of over 850 IT and security professionals, 86 percent of businesses recognize social engineering as a growing concern, with the majority of respondents (51%) citing financial gain as the primary motivation of attacks, followed by competitive advantage and revenge."

"A report released today by the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society highlights the dilemmas companies and users face when enforcement of a website's Terms of Use policy results in deactivation of user accounts or removal of user-generated content. The report recommends principles, strategies, and tools that both companies and users can adopt to lessen the negative effects of account deactivation and content removal. The report, Account Deactivation and Content Removal: Guiding Principles and Practices for Companies and Users, outlines select examples of good company practices. Such practices feature rules and enforcement policies that are sensitive to users' free expression and privacy rights and to the potential risks faced by human rights activists, who are increasingly using social media tools in their work."

News release: "Want to know more about Internet safety and security? Visit the new and improved OnGuardOnline.gov for practical tips and resources on how to be safe, secure and responsible online. Created through a partnership of 16 federal agencies led by the Federal Trade Commission, it’s a great source of free information for your home, school, community group, or workplace. OnGuardOnline’s new features include a cybersecurity blog and information updates via e-mail. Also, the FTC has partnered with the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies in the Stop.Think.Connect Campaign™ to raise awareness of the need for stronger cybersecurity with new approaches to help increase online safety and security. The new OnGuardOnline blog offers cybersecurity news from around the government, how-to articles and videos, and insights from federal officials. Check back regularly for updates, or sign up to get an e-mail when a new post is up. You can copy information from the site, adapt it, post it, or link to it, and you can share your thoughts on the blog. Updating your website or blog? Link to OnGuardOnline. Editing a newsletter? Use our articles. Need hand-outs for a talk you’re giving? Print publications from the website, or order free materials from the FTC."

CRS - Illegal Internet Streaming of Copyrighted Content: Legislation in the 112th Congress, Brian T. Yeh, Legislative Attorney, August 29, 2011

Americans and Text Messaging by Aaron Smith, September 19, 2011

CRS: Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options, and Policy Considerations, Bruce R. Lindsay, Analyst in American National Goverment, September 6, 2011

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comment on proposed amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, which gives parents control over what personal information websites may collect from children under 13. The FTC proposes these amendments to ensure that the Rule continues to protect children’s privacy, as mandated by Congress, as online technologies evolve. The Commission proposes modifications to the Rule in five areas: definitions, including the definitions of “personal information” and “collection,” parental notice, parental consent mechanisms, confidentiality and security of children’s personal information, and the role of self-regulatory “safe harbor” programs."

Alex Campbell: "Incoming students at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science this year are getting a new kind of welcome-to-campus perk: Free data storage, for keeps. The service, called LifeTime Library, works on students’ personal computers, allowing them to automatically archive files and folders. The data are preserved on the Web, where students can search for files by name or by date saved. Students can continue to use the online storage locker after they graduate, and the plan is for the program to remain free, said Gary Marchionini, the school’s dean. About 60 incoming students out of a total of 160 have signed up for the first year of the program, he said. The idea is to “help students learn to manage their digital lives,” Mr. Marchionini said. Dealing with large amounts of online data is a big part of what students learn at the School of Information and Library Science, and the LifeTime Library can serve as a teaching tool for students to figure out the best ways to organize reams of their own digital information."

Radical change is certainly producing some alarming symptoms: "According to Nielsen BookScan, the publishing industry standard for book sales data, book sales are pretty healthy, with one significant proviso which I'll come to. Ten years ago in 2001, 162m books were sold in Britain. Ten years later – a decade in which the internet bloomed, online gaming exploded, television channels proliferated, digital piracy rampaged and, latterly, recession gloomed – 229m books sold. So, a 42% increase in the number of books sold over the last 10 years...For one thing, people are buying more and more books in Amazonia, and more and more of them are on Amazon's ebook platform the Kindle. In May this year, Amazon announced that, for the first time, it was selling more Kindle versions of books than paperback and hardbacks combined, and (here's the thing that doesn't get quoted so often) sales of print books were still increasing."

"The World Wide Web Foundation is very pleased to announce an exciting new initiative: the World Wide Web Index. We thank Google for a generous grant of US $1 million to the Foundation, which we are using to seed the creation of the Index...What is the Web Index? The Web Index will be the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web and its impact on people in a large number of countries. It will be a composite index, incorporating political, economic, social, and developmental indicators, as well as indicators of Web connectivity and infrastructure."

"The Tracking Protection Working Group is chartered to improve user privacy and user control by defining mechanisms for expressing user preferences around Web tracking and for blocking or allowing Web tracking elements. The group seeks to standardize the technology and meaning of Do Not Track, and of Tracking Selection Lists." See in Input Documents as follows

• The FTC staff report that calls on industry to create a Do Not Track mechanism
  
• FTC guidelines for behavioral targeting
  
• IAB Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
  
• Neelie Kroes, EU Commission, Online privacy - reinforcing trust and confidence
  
• Do Not Track Cookbook: approaches to data collection in DNT-friendly ways
  
• IETF proposal for Do Not Track
  
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) discussion of Do Not Track
  
• The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) DNT proposal
  
• Mozilla Do Not Track Field Guide
  
• Microsoft Web Tracking Protection, member submission to W3C

Via Rich McCue: UVic Law Student Technology Survey 2011 - "In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the past nine years, we decided for the second year in a row to ask some extra questions about the mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with. This survey was completed by 139 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90% plus response rate. Executive Summary:

• 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
  
• 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
  
• 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
  
• 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
  
• The average laptop price stayed basically the same as last year at $1,186, which is down from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
  
• The students’ average typing speed was was 60 wpm.
  
• 72% of all students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
  
• 55% of students use Gmail as their primary email account (up from 49% last year), 9% use UVic email and 22% Hotmail.
  
• 60% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing (down from 67%). 30% favor Google Docs (up from 27%) and 2% OpenOffice.
  
• 58% of students report backing up their primary computer on a regular basis. 60% of those backing up do so to an external hard drive and 25% to a cloud storage solution.
  
• 97% of students use Facebook (up from 91%) and 92% (up from 80%) would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar

28% of American adults use mobile and social location-based services: "55% of smartphone owners use their phones to get location-based directions or recommendations, while geosocial services and location-tagging features are less popular," by Kathryn Zickuhr, Research Specialist and Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 9/6/2011

Internet Access - Households and Individuals, 2011. Key Points:

• 45 per cent of Internet users used a mobile phone to connect to the Internet
  
• 6 million people accessed the Internet over their mobile phone for the first time in the previous 12 months
  
• The use of wireless hotspots almost doubled in the last 12 months to 4.9 million users
  
• 21 per cent of Internet users did not believe their skills were sufficient to protect their personal data
  
• 77 per cent of households had Internet access
  
• Get all the tables for this publication in the data section of this publication.

Weak typing - the lost art of the keyboard. by Janet Swift

"The Global Internet Speedup is the name for our collaborative effort to make the Internet faster through cooperation between recursive DNS services and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). This collaboration is being done through an open IETF proposed standard called "edns-client-subnet" which helps better direct content to users thereby decreasing latency, decreasing congestion, increasing transfer speeds and helping the Internet to scale faster and further. Find out about how it works or who is involved."

Triposo - "We build free, interactive travel guides for mobile devices. To make our guides we use the content that is freely available from seven different sources, including Wikitravel, Wikipedia, World66 and Openstreetmap. Our mission is to make that content relevant for you. So we mix and mash and annotate - and we distill great, relevant travel guides out of it. We currently have over fifty different free travel guides for Android covering all major destinations. We also have a world guide: one app in which you can download all the travel guides you need. We have thirty travel guides for iPhone and the same number of travel guides optimized for iPad."

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media: "Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways. Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and—on many major research and library sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. Since it lives in the web browser, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications; since it runs on one’s personal computer, it can also communicate with software running there (such as Microsoft Word). And it can be used offline as well (e.g., on a plane, in an archive without WiFi)."

65% of online adults use social networking sites - Women maintain their foothold on SNS use and older Americans are still coming aboard. Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist, Kathryn Zickuhr, Research Specialist, 8/26/2011

The PII Problem: Privacy and a New Concept of Personally Identifiable Information (July 8, 2011). New York University Law Review, Vol. 86, 2011. Paul M. Schwartz and Daniel J. Solove.

Inside Higher Ed: "The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project -- a series of studies conducted at Illinois Wesleyan, DePaul University, and Northeastern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois’s Chicago and Springfield campuses -- was a meta-exercise for the librarians in practicing the sort of deep research they champion. Instead of relying on surveys, the libraries enlisted two anthropologists, along with their own staff members, to collect data using open-ended interviews and direct observation, among other methods. The goal was to generate data that, rather than being statistically significant yet shallow, would provide deep, subjective accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of the library and each other at those five institutions. The resulting papers are scheduled to be published by the American Library Association this fall, under the title: “Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know.” One thing the librarians now know is that their students' research habits are worse than they thought."

"August 25, 2011 - Facebook is rolling out a series of changes to its privacy controls. We reviewed the changes in detail on Tuesday; now here’s how you can take advantage of these changes.

"Symantec Corp. announced the results of the August 2011 Symantec Intelligence Report, now combining the best research and analysis from the Symantec.cloud MessageLabs Intelligence Report and the Symantec State of Spam & Phishing Report. This month’s analysis reveals that once more spammers are seeking to benefit from fluctuations in the turbulent financial markets, most notably by sending large volumes of spam relating to certain “pink sheets” stocks in an attempt to “pump” the value of these stocks before “dumping” them at a profit. In a pump-and-dump stock scam, spammers promote certain stocks in order to inflate the price as much as possible so that they may then be sold before their valuation crashes back to reality. The spam for these scams tries to convince the prospective mark that the penny stock is actually worth more than its valuation, or that it will soon skyrocket. Most of these claims are either misleading or false. A successful pump-and-dump spam campaign will artificially drive up the price of the stock to a point where the scammers decide to sell their shares. This usually coincides with them ending the spam campaign, which in turn reduces the interest in the stock, helping to drive its valuation back to the original low price."

Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of “rare” is changing in the age of information abundance by Maria Popova.

International Bloggers and Internet Control, Hal Roberts, Ethan Zuckerman, Jillian York, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, August 2011

Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Improvements in Patch and Configuration Management Controls Can Better Protect TSA’s Wireless Network and Devices (Redacted) OIG-11-99 July 2011

News release: "The National Music Publishers Association announced it has reached a resolution with YouTube in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in 2007. As a result of this resolution, music publishers will have the opportunity to enter into a License Agreement with YouTube and receive royalties from YouTube for musical works in videos posted on the site. HFA's licensing and rights administration expertise was instrumental in making this opportunity possible. HFA will administer the license agreements which will be available to all music publishers regardless of affiliation."

Update, November 30, 2011: Seeking Synchronicity Webinar Recording Now Available
OCLC - "A new membership report from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Seeking Synchronicity distills more than five years of virtual reference (VR) research into a readable summary that features memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multi-phase research project that included focus group interviews, surveys, transcript analysis, and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users, and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the "R" in "VR" needs to emphasize virtual "Relationships" as well as "Reference". Among the topics addressed are:

• The exaggerated death of ready reference
  
• The importance of query clarification in VR
  
• Ways to boost accuracy and build better interpersonal relationships in VR
  
• What can be learned from VR transcripts
  
• How convenience is the "hook" that draws users into VR services
  
• Generational differences in how people perceive reference interactions and determine success
  
• The need for more and better marketing"

"The government apps and mobile sites allow you to access official information on various topics from the palm of your hand. Learn more about apps."

Trends in Circumventing Web-Malware Detection. Moheeb Abu Rajab, Lucas Ballard, Nav Jagpal, Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Daisuke Nojiri, Niels Provos, Ludwig Schmidt. Google Technical Report rajab-2011a, July 2011

A Guide to Facebook Security For Young Adults, Parents, and Educators, Linda McCarthy, Keith Watson, and Denise Weldon-Siviy, August 2011. "This online guide explains how you can:

• Protect your Facebook account
  
• Avoid the scammers
  
• Use advanced security settings
  
• Recover a hacked Facebook account
  
• Stop imposters

Federal Computer Week: "Although Google+ has attracted more than 10 million users since its recent debut, many people in government are wondering what it is and how it ought to be used. Thanks to the Navy, now there is an overview of the new site. The Navy recently published a 13-page online guide titled What’s the deal with Google+? on the SlideShare website, providing a basic introduction to the new social networking site and how it could be used by individuals. The Navy’s presentation had been viewed by 606 people as of Aug. 16."

Revealed: Operation Shady RAT by Dmitri Alperovitch, Vice President, Threat Research, McAfee: "An investigation of targeted intrusions into more than 70 global companies, governments, and non-profit organizations during the last five years."

Americans and their cell phones - Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 8/15/2011. "Mobile phones have become a near-ubiquitous tool for information-seeking and communicating: 83% of American adults own some kind of cell phone. These devices have an impact on many aspects of their owners’ daily lives. In a telephone survey conducted from April 26 to May 22, 2011 among a nationally representative sample of Americans, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that, during the 30 days preceding the interview:

• Cell phones are useful for quick information retrieval (so much so that their absence can cause problems) – Half of all adult cell owners (51%) had used their phone at least once to get information they needed right away. One quarter (27%) said that they experienced a situation in the previous month in which they had trouble doing something because they did not have their phone at hand.
  
• Cell phones are an important tool in emergency situations – 40% of cell owners said they found themselves in an emergency situation in which having their phone with them helped.
  
• Cell phones can help stave off boredom – 42% of cell owners used their phone for entertainment when they were bored."

TeleNav survey examines Americans' attachment to mobile phones; finds iPhone users are least willing to let go of their devices

Search and email still top the list of most popular online activities - Two activities nearly universal among adult internet users, by Kristen Purcell

Haystack Logo...and how well hidden is YOUR needle?

"Data (in)security is rapidly gaining consumer attention in major media. In 2011 major breaches at Sony, Epsilon and others have highlighted the risk consumers face from their data being compromised. Major corporations are now recognizing the urgency to implement strong and innovative security measures to ensure the security of their customers’ data. At the same time, both Apple and Google have seen stunning growth in the past few years and now dominate the smartphone market. Companies and app developers have leveraged these platforms to provide new mobile services, often bringing them to market very quickly. But what steps have the smartphone OS providers and app developers taken to secure the data on their customers’ smartphones? At viaForensics we believe in proactive forensics – applying the power of forensic methods proactively to improve digital security. With appWatchdog we utilize forensic techniques to investigate consumer mobile apps and understand what user data is stored and could be at risk. This white paper summarizes our findings for the first 100 tests, from November 2010 through June 2011."

Measuring Broadband America - A Report on Consumer Wireline Broadband Performance in the U.S., FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau

Critical Infrastructures: Background, Policy, and Implementation -
John D. Moteff, Specialist in Science and Technology Policy, July 11, 2011: "This report discusses in more detail the evolution of a national critical infrastructure policy and the institutional structures established to implement it. The report highlights five issues of Congressional concern: identifying critical assets; assessing vulnerabilities and risks; allocating resources; information sharing; and regulation."

Dr. Kari Kraus, University of Maryland, via NYT: "..if we’re going to save even a fraction of the trillions of bits of data churned out every year, we can’t think of digital preservation in the same way we do paper preservation. We have to stop thinking about how to save data only after it’s no longer needed, as when an author donates her papers to an archive. Instead, we must look for ways to continuously maintain and improve it. In other words, we must stop preserving digital material and start curating it."

Flash Cookies and Privacy II: Now with HTML5 and ETag Respawning (July 29, 2011), Ayenson, Mika, Wambach, Dietrich James, Soltani, Ashkan, Good, Nathan and Hoofnagle, Chris Jay, Available at SSRN

"The Berkman Center is pleased to release Online Security in the Middle East and North Africa: A Survey of Perceptions, Knowledge, and Practice. This report describes the results of a survey of 98 bloggers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) carried out in May 2011 in order to study bloggers’ perceptions of online risk and the actions they take to address digital communications security, including both Internet and cell phone use. Digital communication has become a more perilous activity, particularly for activists, political dissidents, and independent media. The recent surge in digital activism that has helped to shape the Arab spring has been met with stiff resistance by governments in the region intent on reducing the impact of digital organizing and independent media. No longer content with Internet filtering, many governments in the Middle East and around the world are using a variety of technological and offline strategies to go after online media and digital activists. The survey was implemented in the wake of the Arab spring and documents a proliferation of online security problems among the respondents. In the survey, we address the respondents’ perceptions of online risk, their knowledge of digital security practices, and their reported online security practices. The survey results indicate that there is much room for improving online security practices, even among this sample of respondents who are likely to have relatively high technical knowledge and experience."

Poynter: "Writing in the newsletter of the International News Marketing Association, Dow Jones senior vice president of circulation Lynne Brennen proposes five attributes to measure “a consumer’s willingness to pay.” She also assigned a percentage weighting to each. Keep in mind this is a measure not of what people would like to have as they consume news, but what they will actually pay for. What advertisers want is outside the scope of this particular exercise. Brennen’s big five and the weighting she assigned are:

• Broad reliability of content — 30 percent
  
• Vertical nature of content — 30 percent
  
• Longevity of content — 30 percent
  
• Immediacy of information — 8 percent
  
• Social “trustworthiness” — 2 percent

“The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?” - Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. DATE: September 21, 2011

News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in collaboration with the Tor Project, has launched an official 1.0 version of HTTPS Everywhere, a tool for the Firefox web browser that helps secure web browsing by encrypting connections to more than 1,000 websites. HTTPS Everywhere was first released as a beta test version in June of 2010. Today's 1.0 version includes support for hundreds of additional websites, using carefully crafted rules to switch from HTTP to HTTPS. HTTPS protects against numerous Internet security and privacy problems, including the search hijacking on U.S. networks that was revealed by an article published today in New Scientist magazine. The article, entitled US internet providers hijacking users' search queries, documents how a company called Paxfire has been intercepting and altering search traffic on a number of ISPs' networks. HTTPS can prevent such attacks."

Forum Guide to Ensuring Equal Access to Education Websites - Introduction to Electronic Information Accessibility Standards, July 2011

EPIC: "The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to approve a bill that will require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain data on every customer to allow the government to identify and track their online activity for one year. EPIC Director Marc Rotenberg testified against the bill at the subcommittee hearing, and his arguments were cited by committee members including Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). After two days of deliberation, the bill was passed with an amendment to require ISPs to retain even more information: not only internet protocol addresses, but also customer names, addresses, phone records, type and length of service, and credit card numbers. This retention is a radical contradiction of the core American value that we are innocent until proven guilty, said Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)."

Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality - FAQ only - See also slides here. Alessandro Acquisti (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University), Ralph Gross (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University) Fred Stutzman (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University), August 2011

"Marketers are spying on Internet users -- observing and remembering people's clicks, and building and selling detailed dossiers of their activities and interests. The Wall Street Journal's What They Know series documents the new, cutting-edge uses of this Internet-tracking technology. The Journal analyzed the tracking files installed on people's computers by the 50 most popular U.S. websites, plus WSJ.com. The Journal also built an "exposure index" -- to determine the degree to which each site exposes visitors to monitoring -- by studying the tracking technologies they install and the privacy policies that guide their use."

"The WorldCat Identities Network gives users the opportunity to visually explore the interconnectivity and relationships between WorldCat Identities. The WorldCat Identities Network uses the WorldCat Identities Web Service and the WorldCat Search API to create an interactive Related Identity Network Map for each Identity in the WorldCat Identities database. The Identity Maps can be used to explore the interconnectivity between WorldCat Identities. WorldCat Identities creates a summary page for every name in WorldCat, including people, things (e.g., the Titanic), fictitious characters (e.g., Harry Potter), and corporations (e.g., IBM). This application was developed primarily by JD Shipengrover, Senior Web & User Interface Designer, and Senior Software Engineer Jeremy Browning. The prototype is available from the WorldCat Identities Network activity page."

Video, Web 2.0 - 71% of online adults now use video-sharing sites by Kathleen Moore, July 26, 2011

NARA Bulletin 2011-04, July 18, 2011. TO: Heads of Federal Agencies; SUBJECT: Guidance on Managing Mixed-Media Files; EXPIRATION DATE: July 31, 2014

CNET: "Google's Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns, CNET has confirmed. The cars were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago."

News release: "A ground-breaking membership report from OCLC Research suggests that by transforming virtual reference (VR) service encounters into relationship-building opportunities, librarians can better leverage the positive feelings people have for libraries. This is critically important in a crowded online space where the biggest players often don’t have the unique experience and specific strengths offered by librarians. The report — Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference — demonstrates that today’s students, scholars and citizens are not just looking to libraries for answers to specific questions—they want partners and guides in a lifelong information-seeking journey. Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference, from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and additionally funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), distills more than five years of VR research into a readable summary featuring memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multiphase research project that included focus group interviews, online surveys, transcript analysis and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the “R” in “VR” needs to emphasize virtual “Relationships” as well as “Reference.”

"While the Internet can be a safe and convenient place to do business, scammers are out there in "cyber world" targeting unsuspecting consumers. The Looks Too Good To Be True.com website was built to educate you, the consumer, and help prevent you from becoming a victim of an Internet fraud scheme. The website was developed and is maintained by a joint federal law enforcement and industry task force. Funding for the site has been provided by the United States Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Key partners include the National White Collar Crime Center, Monster.com, Target and members of the Merchants Risk Council."

News release: "The social media market is primed for a new player that allows users to connect with friends, according to the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, produced in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee Results. Despite a small improvement this year, Facebook (+3% to 66) is the lowest-scoring site, not only in the social media category, but of all measured companies in this report. The survey was conducted last month, before the widespread introduction of Facebook’s biggest competitor, Google+, but Facebook’s low score indicates that Google+ could easily pounce and gain market share if they can provide a superior customer experience."

Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips - Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745, Published Online 14 July 2011. See also Google's Effects on Memory, PBS NewsHour via YouTube.

College students and technology by Aaron Smith, Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr - July 19, 2011

"The .gov reform effort is part of President Obama's Campaign to Cut Waste, identifying unnecessary websites that can be consolidated into other websites to reduce costs and improve the quality of service to the American public. The President signed Executive Order 13571, "Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service," April 27, 2011, which requires federal agencies to take specific steps to strengthen customer service, including how they deliver services and information on federal ".gov" websites."

Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Betsy Sparrow1, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745

Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, July 2011

35% of American adults own a smartphone - One quarter of smartphone owners use their phone for most of their online browsing. Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 7/11/2011. "Several groups have higher than average levels of smartphone adoption, including:

• The financially well-off and well-educated – 59% of adults living in a household earning income of $75,000 or more are smartphone owners; 48% of those with a college degree own smartphones.
  
• Those under the age of 45 – 58% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 now own a smartphone as do 49% of those ages 18-24 and 44% of those ages 35-44. Even among those with a household income of $30,000 or less, smartphone ownership rates for those ages 18-29 are equal to the national average.
  
• African-Americans and Latinos – 44% of blacks and Latinos are smartphone users.

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court in Colorado today to block the government's attempt to force a woman to enter a password into an encrypted laptop, arguing in an amicus brief that it would violate her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. A defendant in this case, Ramona Fricosu, is accused of fraudulent real estate transactions. During the investigation, the government seized an encrypted laptop from the home she shares with her family, and then asked the court to compel Fricosu to type the password into the computer or turn over a decrypted version of her data. But EFF told the court today that the demand is contrary to the Constitution, forcing Fricosu to become a witness against herself. "Decrypting the data on the laptop can be, in and of itself, a testimonial act -- revealing control over a computer and the files on it," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Ordering the defendant to enter an encryption password puts her in the situation the Fifth Amendment was designed to prevent: having to choose between incriminating herself, lying under oath, or risking contempt of court."

Jamie S. Gorelick and Michael Traynor, Co-Chairs - ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 - Re: For Comment: Initial Draft Proposals on Lawyers' Use of Technology and Client Development. Date: June 29, 2011

Benjamin Rossi - analyst at Basex: "For students, doing research is the bread and butter of their academic life. Conducting research doesn’t just mean searching for information effectively; it means being able to judge the reliability of sources, place information within various contexts, and synthesize different information sources while developing one’s thesis. Encompassing a wide variety of competencies, research is one of the most important skills that students learn in preparation for participation in the knowledge economy. Increasingly, however, students find that the overwhelming abundance of easily accessible but undifferentiated information on the Web hinders their ability to do the kind of deep, exploratory research that broadens their education and hones critical thinking."

Federal Register Volume 76, Number 125 (Wednesday, June 29, 2011)]

Follow up to previous postings on cell phones and radiation levels, a new study - Mobile Phones, Brain Tumours and the Interphone Study: Where Are We Now?

OECD draft Communiqué on Principles for Internet Policy-Making, June 29, 2011

"New technology can bring tremendous benefits to consumers, but it also can present new challenges. Mobile apps offered on cell phones and other portable devices such as tablets and music players can perform a range of consumer services such as locating the nearest retail stores, managing shopping lists, tracking family budgets, and allowing consumers to read news articles, play interactive games, and connect with family and friends. The FTC is making a concerted effort to ensure that consumers have the information they need about mobile apps, and is offering new information on OnGuardOnline, the federal government’s website to help you be safe, secure and responsible on the Internet."

E-reader Ownership Doubles in Six Months - Adoption rate of e-readers surges ahead of tablet computers, Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research, Pew Internet Project, June 27, 2011

"In the summer of 2010, Peter Mosinskis from California State University Channel Islands assembled a team of approximately fifteen volunteers from seven different CSU campuses and one from the UC system to evaluate the accessibility of Google Apps. The team also recruited student volunteers and screen reader users to assist with the testing. Automated, manual, and screen reader testing began the first week of January 2011 and was completed February 4th. The report has been completed and posted here for your review. The CSU Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) Staff, ATI Leadership Council, and Google have reviewed the Google Apps Accessibility Evaluation report. We discovered a number of accessibility issues during our testing. These issues are outlined in the report as well as "workarounds" that can be used to improve the user experience for persons with disabilities. When campuses choose to use Google Apps, they are required to provide an equally effective service for people with disabilities and it is critical for campuses to ensure that the "workarounds" meet the educational needs of the student and/or faculty. The March 15, 2011 USA TODAY online news article Complaint: Google programs hard for blind students illustrates possible legal problems that may result from adopting the Google Apps for Education suite."

Follow up to posting, WSJ: FTC Plans to Serve Google With Subpoenas, from the Official Google Blog: "At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first. We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible—and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. Still, we recognize that our success has led to greater scrutiny. Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business. We respect the FTC’s process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services. It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand...To learn more about our business, please visit google.com/press/competition."

News release: "ICANN’s Board of Directors has approved a plan to usher in one of the biggest changes ever to the Internet’s Domain Name System. During a special meeting, the Board approved a plan to allow an increase in the number of Internet address endings - called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) - from the current 22, which includes such familiar domains as .com, .org and .net. “ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today’s decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN. New gTLDs will change the way people find information on the Internet and how businesses plan and structure their online presence. Virtually every organization with an online presence could be affected in some way. Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organizations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways."

Hunting For A Job? Try the Internet: Acknowledging the economy in the past several years has made the job search process even more challenging, Rhonda Keaton and Barbara Fullerton provide strategic suggestions and a guide to a wide range of sources to support and leverage a multi-pronged search effort in response to the competitive job arena.

News release: "The mobile Data Tsunami initially described here is still growing at an astounding pace. According to Nielsen’s monthly analysis of cellphone bills for 65,000+ lines, smartphone owners – especially those with iPhones and Android devices — are consuming more data than ever before on a per-user basis. This has huge implications for carriers since the proportion of smartphone owners is also increasing dramatically. (Currently, 37% of all mobile subscribers in the United States have smartphones.) In just the last 12 months, the amount of data the average smartphone user consumes per month has grown by 89 percent from 230 Megabytes (MB) in Q1 2010 to 435 MB in Q1 2011. A look at the distribution of data consumption is even more shocking: data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users (90th percentile) is up 109 percent while the top 1 percent (99th percentile) has grown their usage by an astonishing 155 percent from 1.8GB in Q1 2010 to over 4.6GB in Q1 2011.

News release: "The mobile Data Tsunami initially described here is still growing at an astounding pace. According to Nielsen’s monthly analysis of cellphone bills for 65,000+ lines, smartphone owners – especially those with iPhones and Android devices — are consuming more data than ever before on a per-user basis. This has huge implications for carriers since the proportion of smartphone owners is also increasing dramatically. (Currently, 37% of all mobile subscribers in the United States have smartphones.) In just the last 12 months, the amount of data the average smartphone user consumes per month has grown by 89 percent from 230 Megabytes (MB) in Q1 2010 to 435 MB in Q1 2011. A look at the distribution of data consumption is even more shocking: data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users (90th percentile) is up 109 percent while the top 1 percent (99th percentile) has grown their usage by an astonishing 155 percent from 1.8GB in Q1 2010 to over 4.6GB in Q1 2011.

The FTC provides antitrust approval [link to notice here] - Microsoft news release: Microsoft Corp. and Skype Global announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype, the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype. The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities. The combination will extend Skype’s world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft’s existing portfolio of real-time communications products and services. With 170 million connected users and over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010, Skype has been a pioneer in creating rich, meaningful connections among friends, families and business colleagues globally."

Social networking sites and our lives How people’s trust, personal relationships, and civic and political involvement are connected to their use of social networking sites and other technologies, June 16, 2011

"In addition to the content of web pages, it's important to record how this digitized content is constructed and served. The HTTP Archive provides this record. It is a permanent repository of web performance information such as size of pages, failed requests, and technologies utilized. This performance information allows us to see trends in how the Web is built and provides a common data set from which to conduct web performance research."

To Move or Not To Move: The Economics of Cloud Computing - Byung Chul, Tak Bhuvan Urgaonkar, Anand Sivasubramaniam, Computer Systems Laboratory Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

The Information Needs of Communities - The changing media landscape in a broadband age, Steven Waldman and the Working Group on Information Needs of Communities, June 2011

13% of online adults use Twitter Half of Twitter users access the service “on the go” via mobile phone, Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 6/1/2011

Announcement by Eva Galperin: "Back in December of 2010, Facebook debuted its tag suggestion feature, which works by using facial recognition technology to examine photos in which you’ve already been tagged, and then creating what Facebook calls your “photo summary” or “photo comparison information,” or what we’ll call your “facial fingerprint.” Using this information, FB suggests your name to your friends when they upload a photo of you, and invites them to tag you in that photo. Over the last few months, Facebook has been slowly rolling this feature out to all of its users, which caught the attention of security firm Sophos, The New York Times, and the European Union, which has launched a probe to investigate the new feature."

News release: "The U.S. Department of Commerce today released a report that proposes voluntary codes of conduct to strengthen the cybersecurity of companies that increasingly rely on the Internet to do business, but are not part of the critical infrastructure sector. The report, Cybersecurity, Innovation and the Internet Economy, focuses on the “Internet and Information Innovation Sector” (I3S) – these are businesses that range from small and medium enterprises and bricks-and-mortar firms with online services, to social networking sites and Internet-only business, to cloud computing firms that are increasingly subject to cyber attacks."

EPIC: "The White House modified its privacy policy for WhiteHouse.gov on June 3, 2011. The new policy is more than twice as long as the old policy. The new policy states the White House web site now uses persistent Google Analytics cookies that track users for up to two years. Previously the site employed only single-session cookies, which were automatically deleted when users closed their browsers. The site does not provide a means for visitors to opt out of receiving cookies. The present policy reflects changes the administration made last year to allow for use of tracking cookies by federal websites. For more information, see EPIC: White House Adopts Weird Opt-Out Privacy Policy for Public Access to Government Web Sites."

HM Treasury Review of the Money Laundering Regulations 2007: the Government response, June 2011

Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, Timothy J. Dickey, and Marie L. Radford. 2011. "'If It is Too Inconvenient, I'm Not Going After It.:' Convenience as a Critical Factor in Information-seeking Behaviors." Library and Information Science Research, 33: 179-190. doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2010.12.002 Pre-print.

News release: "AVG Technologies, Inc. announced it will make its leading Family Safety software available for free in exchange for a 99 cent donation to the American Red Cross family relief efforts in Joplin, Mo. The move comes in response to research the company conducted and has released over the course of the year on early childhood technology usage trends, “Digital Diaries" and is complemented with the release of a first-of-its-kind e-book and mobile application for teaching very young children the basics of online safety, Little Bird’s Internet Security Adventure.” AVG CEO JR Smith is making appearances across the country today urging parents to consider introducing their child to Little Bird to help them learn about online safety....Roughly half of today’s children (ages 6-9) are regularly talking to their friends online and using social networks, yet 58 percent of their parents admit they are not well-informed about their children’s online social networks. The “Digital Playground,” the third stage of AVG’s year-long “Digital Diaries” research program, further reveals the increasingly digitally-literate group of 6- to 9-year-olds and their parents in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand to find that:

• More than half (51 percent) of 6- to 9-year-olds use some kind of children’s social network such as Club Penguin or WebKinz.
  
• Roughly one in five use email, and despite being underage, 14 percent are on Facebook, according to their parents.
  
• 47 percent of 6- to 9-year-olds talk to their friends on the Internet.
  
• Almost one in six 6- to 9-year-olds and one in five 8- to 9-year-olds have experienced what their parents consider objectionable or aggressive behavior online.
  
• American children average four hours online each week, slightly more than the worldwide average of 3.5 hours per week.
  
• 58 percent of parents admit they are neither well-informed nor understand their children’s online social networks.
  
• Only 56 percent of parents were certain their family computer has parental controls or safety programs in place."

Press Release and Highlights: "The annual study of the impact of the Internet on Americans conducted by the Center for the Digital Future found that almost half of Internet users age 16 and older -- 48 percent -- are worried about companies checking their actions on the Internet. By comparison, the new question for the Digital Future Study found that only 38 percent of Internet users age 16 and older are concerned about the government checking what they do online."

United Nations General Assembly: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, May 16, 2011

24% of internet users have made phone calls online, Lee Rainie, Director, May 30, 2011

WSJ: "The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force. The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military. In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks," said a military official. Recent attacks on the Pentagon's own systems—as well as the sabotaging of Iran's nuclear program via the Stuxnet computer worm—have given new urgency to U.S. efforts to develop a more formalized approach to cyber attacks. A key moment occurred in 2008, when at least one U.S. military computer system was penetrated. This weekend Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, acknowledged that it had been the victim of an infiltration, while playing down its impact."

G8 Summit of Deauville - May 26-27, 2011: "We discussed new issues such as the Internet which are essential to our societies, economies and growth. For citizens, the Internet is a unique information and education tool, and thus helps to promote freedom, democracy and human rights. The Internet facilitates new forms of business and promotes efficiency, competitiveness, and economic growth. Governments, the private sector, users, and other stakeholders all have a role to play in creating an environment in which the Internet can flourish in a balanced manner. In Deauville in 2011, for the first time at Leaders' level, we agreed, in the presence of some leaders of the Internet economy, on a number of key principles, including freedom, respect for privacy and intellectual property, multi-stakeholder governance, cyber-security, and protection from crime, that underpin a strong and flourishing Internet. The "e-G8" event held in Paris on 24 and 25 May was a useful contribution to these debates."

Federal Computer Week: "NASA is the first federal agency to venture into creating an aggregation network on the SlideShare Web platform, officials announced May 16. The NASA Universe network that started May 16 on SlideShare provides links to the agency’s videos, slide presentations and other documents shared from SlideShare channels sponsored by NASA headquarters and its 10 field centers. NASA Universe takes advantage of the new aggregation network technology, which SlideShare recently established and currently customizes for a handful of clients, including NASA, IBM and Dell. The SlideShare networks automatically and continuously aggregate content from many channels. NASA headquarters and the field centers each has its own channel on the site feeding documents into NASA Universe."

Via WSJ: "This year, the government will spend $80 billion on IT, at agencies as varied as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, and on non-classified sections of the US Department of Defense [see Federal Cloud Computing Strategy Published]. As slices of government spending go, this is not huge, amounting to about 2 percent of the federal budget, but not trivial either. As has usually been the case, the government spends more (about $3.8 trillion in 2011) than it brings in via tax revenue (about $2.2 trillion in 2011). With Congress and the President wrestling over extending the debt ceiling, every dollar spent becomes a politically-charged particle of a wider debate over the appropriate role of government in our society...A keystone of Vivek Kundra [Chief Information Officer of the United States], is to push federal agencies to embrace, where possible and appropriate, the cost-savings and efficiency that come from cloud computing. Today he’s released exclusively to AllThingsD a list of 78 different government projects and services that have been identified for a shift to the cloud. Requests for proposals–RFPs, the documents through which government agencies seek bids from the private sector–are either already written or soon to be released." The list is embedded in this article using Scribd.

Via PBS FRONTLINE: "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has become internationally recognized since the publication last year of thousands of secret U.S. documents. But Bradley Manning, the Army private alleged to have provided the documents, remains largely a mystery. Who is Bradley Manning? How did he come into contact with a trove of secrets and, allegedly, with WikiLeaks? And what might have motivated the largest leak of classified information in American history? Investigating those questions for the film WikiSecrets, FRONTLINE sought to understand Manning through extensive interviews with his father, friends and others he confided in during the months before his arrest. FRONTLINE also obtained access to Manning's Facebook account...The following presentation is an edited version of Manning's wall, annotated by FRONTLINE, beginning when he opened the account in July 2007 and concluding in June 2010 [edited and redacted]. It includes only posts authored by Manning (with the exception of the first, from his aunt) -- status updates, articles, pictures and "likes" -- and the responses of his Facebook friends."

"New McKinsey research into the Internet economies of the G-8 nations as well as Brazil, China, India, South Korea, and Sweden finds that the web accounts for a significant and growing portion of global GDP. Indeed, if measured as a sector, Internet-related consumption and expenditure is now bigger than agriculture or energy. On average, the Internet contributes 3.4 percent to GDP in the 13 countries covered by the research—an amount the size of Spain or Canada in terms of GDP, and growing at a faster rate than that of Brazil...The United States is the largest player in the global Internet supply ecosystem, capturing more than 30 percent of global Internet revenues and more than 40 percent of net income. It is also the country with the most balanced structure within the global ecosystem among the 13 countries studied, garnering relatively equal contributions from hardware, software and services, and telecommunications."

News release: "The latest Broadband Progress Report to Congress from the Federal Communications Commission reveals that approximately 26 million Americans, mostly in rural communities located in every region of the country, are denied access to the jobs and economic opportunity made possible by broadband. While the infrastructure of high-speed Internet is unavailable to those Americans, the FCC report also finds that approximately one-third of Americans do not subscribe to broadband, even when it's available. This suggests that barriers to adoption such as cost, low digital literacy, and concerns about privacy remain too high. The Report also notes limited broadband capacity for schools and libraries as a further indicator that broadband is not being reasonably and timely deployed and is not available to all Americans. Without action by the FCC in partnership with the states and the private sector, prospects for broadband service in many of the areas cited in the Report will remain unacceptably low. The Report finds the problem especially acute among low-income Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, seniors, and residents of Tribal areas. Congress recognized the importance of broadband in Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which directs the FCC to take immediate action to accelerate broadband deployment when it is not "reasonable and timely."

Via LLRX: "Link Rot" and Legal Resources on the Web: A 2011 Analysis by the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group - Sarah Rhodes describes and documents the work of the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group's fourth annual investigation of link rot among the original URLs for online law and policy-related materials archived though the group's efforts. Link rot" is used to describe a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL. The Chesapeake Group focuses primarily on the preservation of Web-published legal materials, which often disappear as Web site content is rearranged or deleted over time. In the four years since the program began, the Chesapeake Group has built a digital archive collection comprising more than 7,400 digital items and 3,200 titles, all of which were originally posted to the Web.

Roadmap for the Digital City - Achieving New York City's Digital Future - The City of New York, May 2011

"White House officials released an international cyberstrategy here today that will help to build a “coalition of nations [with a] mutual interest in securing cyberspace,” Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said...To realize fully the benefits that networked technology promises the world, these systems must function reliably and securely. People must have confidence that data will travel to its destination without disruption. Assuring the free flow of information, the security and privacy of data, and the integrity of the interconnected networks themselves are all essential to American and global economic prosperity, security, and the promotion of universal rights. Almost a third of the world’s population uses the Internet and countless more are touched by it in their daily lives. There are more than four billion digital wireless devices in the world today. Scarcely a halfcentury ago, that number was zero. We live in a rare historical moment with an opportunity to build on cyberspace’s successes and help secure its future for U.S. citizens and the global community. For these technologies to continue to empower individuals, enrich societies, and foster the research, development, and innovation essential to building modern economies, it must retain the openness and interoperability that have characterized its explosive growth. Underlying these are technical principles and effective governance structures that demand our support. At the same time, our networks must be secure and reliable; they must retain the trust of individuals, businesses and governments, and should be resilient to arbitrary or malicious disruption."

"Because we believe that Internet censorship is not only against the basic purpose of the Internet, which is to let people communicate what the want to with the people they want to communicate with, but also fundamentally against the universal right to freedom of opinion and expression [which] includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers (UDHR, Article 19), we offer you here "How to bypass Internet Censorship". This book, How to bypass Internet Censorship. will not only help you find your way in the diversity of tools and techniques that allow you to defeat Internet censorship, but will also tell you more about how censorship works behind the curtains. You will also learn about the risks that may be linked to the use of such tools, and help you evaluate and mitigate them thanks to encryption or anonymization techniques."

Building a Collaborative Digital Collection, a Necessary Evolution in Libraries, Michelle M. Wu, Georgetown University Law Center, Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 11-47, Law Library Journal, Forthcoming

The Social Life of Health Information, 2011 - by Susannah Fox, May 12, 2011

Digital Agenda: more than half EU Internet surfers use foreign language when online, 11 May 2011 — While 90% of Internet surfers in the EU prefer to access websites in their own language, 55% at least occasionally use a language other than their own when online according to a pan-EU Eurobarometer survey released today. However, 44% of European Internet users feel they are missing interesting information because web pages are not in a language that they understand and only 18% buy products online in a foreign language. The results underline the need for investment in online translation tools so that EU Internet users are not excluded from finding information or products online because they lack the language skills. Currently the European Commission manages 30 different research projects working at the interface of language and digital content, supported by €67 million of EU funding and the new projects submitted this year will get an additional €50 million. One of the objectives of the Digital Agenda for Europe is to ensure more accessibility to web content for everyone."

"Search.USA.gov is the U.S. government’s official search engine. It is a comprehensive, searchable index of about 50 million pages from federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal websites.

• Leverages Bing™ index of government websites.
  
• Customizes search using structured algorithms specific to government information.
  
• Optimizes search to retrieve and make sense of relevant information quickly.
  
• Improves navigation by providing customized search suggestions, such as related topics and type-ahead search.
  
• Enhances mobile access through a mobile site and native iPhone application.
  
• Provides access to all Spanish language government websites at Buscador.USA.gov"

The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security. (May 1, 2011). Daniel J. Solove, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security, Chapter 1, Yale University Press, 2011.

Internetnews.com: "Microsoft announced Tuesday that it is buying Internet communications provider Skype for some $8.5 billion in cash -- the largest acquisition in the company's history. The two companies said the deal was the result of an unsolicited offer from Microsoft and, if it passes regulatory hurdles, will make Skype a division of the software giant. The companies hope to finalize the purchase during the current calendar year. Microsoft sees the acquisition as key to its vision of a connected world which will have, the two companies hope, billions of users over time."

What Really Works in Mobile Health, by Susannah Fox, May 4, 2011: "The Mobile Health conference at Stanford University highlights practical, proven solutions to improve the health behavior of everyday people. Susannah Fox discussed the Pew Internet Project's latest research about what people are really doing online -- how they are gathering, sharing, and creating health information and what it means now that a majority of adults have on-the-go internet access."

Better Choices: Better Deals - Consumers Powering Growth. UK Department for Business, Innovations and Skills, April 2011

Larsson, Stefan, The Path Dependence of European Copyright (April 15, 2011). SCRIPT-ed, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1824228

The Deciders: Facebook, Google, and the Future of Privacy and Free Speech, Jeffrey Rosen

Implementing Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 IT Purchasing Requirements: M-1l-20 - Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies from Jacob Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, April 28, 2011

U.S. Public Libraries and the Use of Web Technologies, 2010 - April 2011, Zeth Lietzau, Jamie Helgren. This study was funded through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) by the Colorado State Library, Colorado Department of Education.

"A new economic analysis of federal government broadband stimulus projects awarded by the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) concludes that the program's funding of duplicative broadband networks has resulted in an extremely high cost to reach a small number of unserved households. The study, Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of RUS Broadband Subsidies: Three Case Studies, was commissioned by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and prepared by Jeffrey Eisenach and Kevin Caves of Navigant Economics of Washington, D.C., April 13, 2011."

The Mobile Movement Understanding Smartphone Users - Google/IPSOS OTX MediaCT U.S., April 2011

• General Smartphone Usage: Smartphones have become an integral part of users’ daily lives. Consumers use smartphones as an extension of their desktop computers and use it as they multi-task and consume other media.
  
• 81% browse the Internet, 77% search, 68% use an app, and 48% watch videos on their smartphone
  
• 72% use their smartphones while consuming other media, with a third while watching TV
  
• 93% of smartphone owners use their smartphones while at home

The big four phone carriers spill on their location and customer data collection policies: "The recent uproar over location tracking in smartphones has gotten ugly and fingers are bound to be pointed. But in the spirit of transparency, the four major carriers have outlined and detailed their location tracking applications s well as what exactly that data is being used for. The honesty does come as a response to the revelation that iPhones, Android devices, and Windows Phone 7 units are tracking user location."

Rethinking Music: A Briefing Book Compiled and Presented By The Berkman Center for Internet & Society At Harvard University, April 2011.

News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Access have launched an international campaign for HTTPS Now, rallying consumers around the world to help us make web surfing safer. HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) protects web surfing by encrypting requests from a user's browser and the resulting pages that are displayed, but many websites default to using the unencrypted and vulnerable HTTP protocol. The HTTPS Now campaign takes a three-pronged approach to protecting web surfing, including distributing updated tools for people to use to protect their web browsing, taking an Internet-wide survey of the state of HTTPS deployment, and helping website operators implement HTTPS. As a first step, individuals using the web are encouraged to install HTTPS Everywhere, a security tool for the Firefox browser developed by EFF and the Tor Project. HTTPS Everywhere automatically encrypts a user's browsing, changing it from HTTP to HTTPS whenever possible."

NYT: "As technical problems interrupted computer services provided by Amazon for a second day on Friday, industry analysts said the troubles would prompt many companies to reconsider relying on remote computers beyond their control...Amazon set up a side business five years ago offering computing resources to businesses from its network of sophisticated data centers. Today, the company is the early leader in the fast-growing business of cloud computing. In business, the cloud model is rapidly gaining popularity as a way for companies to outsource computing chores to avoid the costs and headaches of running their own data centers — simply tap in, over the Web, to computer processing and storage without owning the machines or operating software. Amazon has thousands of corporate customers, from Pfizer and Netflix to legions of start-ups, whose businesses often live on Amazon Web Services. Those reporting service troubles included Foursquare, a location-based social networking site; Quora, a question-and-answer service; Reddit, a news-sharing site; and BigDoor, which makes game tools for Web publishers."

5 Myths About the 'Information Age', by Robert Darnton, professor and university librarian at Harvard University. This essay is based on a talk he gave last month at the Council of Independent Colleges' Symposium on the Future of the Humanities, in Washington - snipped: "Confusion about the nature of the so-called information age has led to a state of collective false consciousness. It's no one's fault but everyone's problem, because in trying to get our bearings in cyberspace, we often get things wrong, and the misconceptions spread so rapidly that they go unchallenged. Taken together, they constitute a font of proverbial nonwisdom. Five stand out:

1. The book is dead." Wrong: More books are produced in print each year than in the previous year.
   
2. We have entered the information age." This announcement is usually intoned solemnly, as if information did not exist in other ages. But every age is an age of information, each in its own way and according to the media available at the time.
   
3. "All information is now available online." The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone who has ever done research in archives. Only a tiny fraction of archival material has ever been read, much less digitized. Most judicial decisions and legislation, both state and federal, have never appeared on the Web.
   
4. "Libraries are obsolete." Everywhere in the country librarians report that they have never had so many patrons. At Harvard, our reading rooms are full. The 85 branch libraries of the New York Public Library system are crammed with people.
   
5. "The future is digital." True enough, but misleading. In 10, 20, or 50 years, the information environment will be overwhelmingly digital, but the prevalence of electronic communication does not mean that printed material will cease to be important."

"Federal agencies can improve the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of large-scale IT systems by learning from each other, and by leveraging best practices in the private and public sectors. The CIO Council created and will continue to evolve this Best Practices information-sharing platform to realize those benefits. Agencies will be aggregating case studies, lessons learned, and other tools here, helping to grow this platform into a robust resource for all Federal IT professionals. This platform implements point 10 from the 25-Point Implementation Plan To Reform Federal IT Management: “Within six months, the Federal CIO Council will develop a collaboration portal to exchange best practices, case studies, and allow for real-time problem-solving.” Federal agencies have begun developing case studies (below) that demonstrate their use of best practices in managing large-scale IT systems. Please check back for additional case studies, best practices, and other content related to effective IT management."

Information 2.0 and Beyond: Where are we, where are we going? by Kristen Purcell, Mar 29, 2011 at APLIC's 44th Annual Conference in Washington, DC

"The Affordable Care Act (ACA) calls for a number of web-based initiatives, including development of the website healthcare.gov which provides a variety of health information and helps individuals find coverage options. Therefore, understanding the level and quality of Internet access among those groups most likely to benefit from reform, such as the uninsured, those with lower incomes, and members of racial and ethnic minority groups, is an important consideration as health reform is implemented. A new Data Note, using data from The Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University Race and Recession Survey, conducted Jan. 27-Feb. 9, 2011, examines racial and ethnic disparities in the shares who report seeking out health information online, and explores the broader question of how disparities in Internet access might impact the abilities of different groups to access health care information available on the web as part of the ACA."

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, April 11, 2011: "Users increasingly rely on individual pages listed by search engines instead of finding better ways to tackle problems. Although some analysts questioned the finding of search dominance, it's a user behavior that gets stronger every year. Today, many users are so reliant on search that it's undermining their problem-solving abilities. Ironically, the better search gets, the more dangerous it gets as people increasingly assume that whatever the search engine coughs up must be the answer...Still, the rough estimate from our available data is obvious: users change search strategy only 1% of the time; 99% of the time they plod along a single unwavering path. Whether t"e true number is 2% or 0.5%, the big-picture conclusion is the same: users have extraordinarily inadequate research skills when it comes to solving problems on the Web."

[April 8, 2011] "the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page, where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage."

Presidential Policy Directive PPD-8, National Preparedness, March 30, 2011 [via FAS]

"The FCC acted today to promote increased consumer access to nationwide mobile broadband service by adopting an Order that requires facilities-based providers of commercial mobile data services to offer data roaming arrangements to other such providers on commercially reasonable terms and conditions, subject to certain limitations. Consumers expect mobile data services that will allow them to remain connected wherever they go; a data roaming rule will help ensure that consumers’ services are not interrupted and that coverage is available on a competitive basis. The widespread availability of data roaming arrangements will allow consumers with mobile data plans to remain connected when they travel outside their own provider’s network coverage areas by using another provider’s network. This promotes connectivity and nationwide access to mobile data services such as email and wireless broadband Internet access. The rule the FCC adopted today promotes investment in and deployment of mobile broadband networks, consistent with the recommendations of the National Broadband Plan. This new investment in broadband will increase competition and benefit consumers; without data roaming guarantees, consumers will be limited in their choices, especially in rural areas."

OPEN Compute Project: We started a project at Facebook a little over a year ago with a pretty big goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost. We decided to honor our hacker roots and challenge convention by custom designing and building our software, servers and data centers from the ground up. The result is a data center full of vanity free servers which is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers. But we didn't want to keep it all for ourselves. Instead, we decided to collaborate with the entire industry and create the Open Compute Project, to share these technologies as they evolve."

Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Trends for 2010, Volume 16, Published April 2011

Via CDT, "Regardless of Frontiers:" The International Right to Freedom of Expression in the Digital Age: "The purpose of this report is to explore how the internationally recognized right to freedom of expression should apply to the Internet. This report is intended to spark further research, discussion, and action. The Internet offers individuals around the world the potential to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas in unprecedented ways. Like no medium before it, the Internet can empower citizens to communicate instantaneously with others in their own communities and worldwide, at low cost relative to traditional forms of media. The Internetʼs unique attributes create new opportunities to collaborate, exchange ideas, and promote scientific, cultural, and economic progress. Producers of traditional forms of media also can use the Internet to greatly expand their audiences at nominal cost. Like no other technology, the Internet can transcend national borders and eliminate barriers to the free flow of information. These unique features of the Internet, if properly supported, can foster innovation, economic growth, democratic participation, and human development."

"Pediatricians are adding another topic to their list of questions for visits with school-aged and adolescent patients: Are you on Facebook? Recognizing the increasing importance of all types of media in their young patients’ lives, pediatricians often hear from parents who are concerned about their children’s engagement with social media. To help address the many effects—both positive and negative—that social media use has on youth and families, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued a new clinical report, The Impact of Social Media Use on Children, Adolescents and Families in the April issue of Pediatrics (published online March 28). The report offers background on the latest research in this area, and recommendations on how pediatricians, parents and youth can successfully navigate this new mode of communication."

Via EFF: "Your cell phone company knows everywhere you go, twenty-four hours a day, every day. How concrete is this fact for you? It's very concrete for Malte Spitz, a German politician and privacy advocate. He used German privacy law — which, like the law of many European countries, gives individuals a right to see what private companies know about them — to force his cell phone carrier to reveal what it knew about him. The result? 35,831 different facts about his cell phone use over the course of six months. As the German newspaper website Zeit Online reports:

Internet Access Services: Status as of June 30, 2010, Industry Analysis and Technology Division, Wireline Competition Bureau, March 2011: "This report summarizes information about Internet access connections over 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction in service in the United States on June 30, 2010, as collected by FCC Form 477. Form 477 gathers standardized information about subscribership to Internet access services in the fifty states, District of Columbia, and inhabited insular areas (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands). The information is reported by telephone companies, cable system operators, terrestrial wireless service providers, satellite service providers, and other facilities-based providers of advanced telecommunications capability.
Notable developments during the first half of 2010 include:

News release: "Today, the OpenNet Initiative, a partnership between the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs (Munk School) and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, announced the release of a new report titled West Censoring East: The Use of Western Technologies by Middle East Censors, 2010-2011 by Helmi Noman and Jillian C. York. The OpenNet Initiative has documented network filtering by national governments of the Internet in more than forty countries worldwide. National governments use network filtering as one of many methods to control the flow of online content, and utilize a variety of technical means to institute such filtering. The report analyzes the use of three American and Canadian-made tools: Websense, McAfee SmartFilter, and Netsweeper for the purpose of government-level filtering in the Middle East and North Africa. The investigation found that nine countries in the region utilize Western-made tools for the purpose of blocking social and political content, effectively blocking a total of over 20 million Internet users from accessing such websites. The authors analyze as well the increasing opacity of the usage of Western-made tools for filtering at the national level."

Enabling Distributed Security in Cyberspace - Building a Healthy and Resilient Cyber Ecosystem with Automated Collective Action, March 23, 2011

Privacy Impact Assessment for the Use of Unidirectional Social Media Applications Communications and Outreach, March 8, 2011. Kathleen McShea
Director of New Media and Web Communications, Office of Public Affairs, Department of Homeland Security

How to Hack RSS to Reduce Information Overload, By Dawn Foster: "Last week, I held a session at South by Southwest [SXSW] Interactive titled Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information, where I talked about creative ways to use RSS to manage information overload without using any programming skills. There is more information available in the world than any one person could hope to consume (hundreds of exabytes of data), but most of that information isn’t interesting, out of date, inaccurate, or not relevant for you. The key to reducing information overload is to more efficiently find the data you want among the information that you don’t care about. The tools that I talked about in my SXSW session are focused on discarding or de-emphasizing the data you don’t need, while highlighting the data that’s relevant for you."

"The Net, smartphones, and other technologies have added to the way people can engage with so much to local communities and wider communities of interest. Yet, there are many gaps. Lee Rainie. Director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project explores those gaps at the Computers in Libraries conference. He points to some findings of his Project that highlight areas where libraries and information services add value to the participants in their communities."

Smartphone Security - Survey of U.S. consumers, Ponemon Institute© Research Report, Sponsored by AVG Technologies, Independently conducted by Ponemon Institute LLC, Publication Date: March 2011

Americans under age 40 are as likely to donate to Japan disaster relief through electronic means as traditional means like the phone or postal mail. Kristen Purcell, Michael Dimock, Pew Center for The People & The Press. March 23, 2011

How mobile devices are changing community information environments, by Kristen Purcell, Lee Rainie, Tom Rosenstiel, Amy Mitchell, Mar 14, 2011 - Pew Internet

More than half of all American adults were online political users in 2010: "Fully 73% of adult internet users (representing 54% of all U.S. adults) went online to get news or information about the 2010 midterm elections, or to get involved in the campaign in one way or another. We refer to these individuals as "online political users" and our definition includes anyone who did at least one of the following activities in 2010:

• Get political news online - 58% of online adults looked online for news about politics or the 2010 campaigns, and 32% of online adults got most of their 2010 campaign news from online sources.
  
• Go online to take part in specific political activities, such as watch political videos, share election-related content or "fact check" political claims - 53% of adult internet users did at least one of the eleven online political activities we measured in 2010.
  
• Use Twitter or social networking sites for political purposes - One in five online adults (22%) used Twitter or a social networking site for political purposes in 2010."

News release: "In testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission discussed its efforts to protect consumer privacy through enforcement actions, consumer education, and policy initiatives like the FTC staff’s recent preliminary privacy report. The report proposes a framework to balance consumer privacy with industry innovation by: 1) building privacy protections into everyday business practices (“privacy-by-design”); 2) simplifying privacy choices for consumers; and 3)improving transparency with clearer, shorter privacy notices. The Commission told Congress that industry stakeholders have made important progress in implementing Do Not Track, a mechanism proposed in the staff's preliminary privacy report last December that would allow consumers to choose not to have their Internet browsing tracked by third parties. The testimony noted that two of the major Internet browsers – Microsoft and Mozilla – “have recently announced the development of new choice mechanisms for online behavioral advertising that seek to provide increased transparency, greater consumer control, and improved ease of use.”

Official Google Blog: "Ever been stuck in traffic, only to find out you’d have been better off going a bit out of your way to take a less congested route? If you’re like me, you probably hear the traffic report telling you what you already know: traffic is bad on the road you’re currently on, and you should have taken another. It doesn’t need to be this way, and we want to help. So we’re happy to announce that Google Maps Navigation (Beta) will now automatically route you around traffic. With more than 35 million miles driven by Navigation users every day, this should add up to quite a bit of time saved!"

News release: "The 2011 Sleep in America® poll released today by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) finds pervasive use of communications technology in the hour before bed. It also finds that a significant number of Americans aren't getting the sleep they say they need and are searching for ways to cope. Many Americans report dissatisfaction with their sleep during the week. The poll found that 43% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 64 say they rarely or never get a good night's sleep on weeknights. More than half (60%) say that they experience a sleep problem every night or almost every night..Communications technology use before sleep is pervasive. Americans report very active technology use in the hour before trying to sleep. Almost everyone surveyed, 95%, uses some type of electronics like a television, computer, video game or cell phone at least a few nights a week within the hour before bed. About two-thirds of baby boomers (67%) and generation X'ers (63%) and half of generation Z'ers (50%) and generation Y'ers (49%) watch television every night or almost every night within the hour before going to sleep...Computer or laptop use is also common. Roughly six in ten (61%) say they use their laptops or computers at least a few nights a week within the hour before bed. More than half of generation Z'ers (55%) and slightly less of generation Y'ers (47%) say they surf the Internet every night or almost every night within the hour before sleep."

"YouTube World View is a series of monthly interviews with the world's most foremost leaders where you ask the questions."

Via Microsoft, IE6 Countdown: "10 years ago a browser was born. Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye. This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers..."

Who Tries to Find Objective Information on Health Care? Findings From the 2010 Health Confidence Survey - Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI)

• "USERS OF HEALTH INFORMATION: This analysis looks at who currently uses information on health cost, quality, and outcomes. Data comes from the EBRI/MGA 2010 Health Confidence Survey (HCS), a survey that examines a broad spectrum of health care issues, including Americans’ satisfaction with health care today, their confidence in the future of the health care system and the Medicare program, and their attitudes toward health care reform.
  
• TYPES OF INFORMATION SOUGHT VARIES: Overall, 45 percent of the population reported having tried to find information about the advantages and disadvantages of different treatments, while only 14 percent tried to find information about the number of disciplinary actions taken against a doctor or hospital. About one-quarter tried to find cost information (28 percent for the full costs of different treatments; 24 percent for the costs of different doctors and
  hospitals).
  
• WHO SEARCHES FOR INFORMATION: Women, younger individuals, and individuals with higher levels of education were more likely than others to seek information on cost, quality, and access. Individuals who experience an increase in either premiums or cost sharing are more likely than those who do not to seek information."

Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive's Examination of URL Stability: "This guide for researches by Sarah Rhodes focuses on the highly significant impact of "link rot", which refers to the loss or removal of content at a particular Uniform Resource Locator (URL) over time. When an attempt is made to open a documented link, either different or irrelevant information has replaced the expected content, or else the link is found to be broken, typically expressed by a 404 or "not found" error message. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Web-based materials often disappear as URLs change and web sites are changed, updated, or deleted."

2010 Internet Crime Report, The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), February 2011

News release: "Worldwide PC microprocessor shipment growth in the fourth calendar quarter of 2010 (4Q10) slowed notably, compared to both 3Q10 (-.04% quarter-over-quarter) and to 4Q09 (-.21% year-over-year), according to the latest PC microprocessor study from International Data Corporation (IDC). For the full year 2010, however, worldwide PC microprocessor unit shipments grew 17.1%, while revenue increased 26.7% to $36.3 billion. "The fourth quarter was weak and out of synch with normal seasonal patterns in terms of unit shipments," said Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC. "The first half of the year turned out to be the better half of the year. However, looking back at the whole year 2010, it's clear that the ongoing shift to mobile processors, combined with a shift back towards high-performance mobile processors, as opposed to Atom processors for netbooks, drove a significant rise in overall processor average selling prices." In 2010, the industry average selling price (ASP) for microprocessors rose 8%, approaching the levels last seen in 2008. While a strange year in terms of shipment patterns, 2010 was also a year of recovery. Looking at processor shipments by form factor, during the year 2010 mobile PC processor unit shipments grew 26.2%, x86 server processor unit shipments grew 28.1%, and desktop processor unit shipments grew 6.2%. Mobile PC processors, which represented 50.2% of all PC processors shipped in 2009, represented 54.1% of processors in 2010."

Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure and Brain Glucose Metabolism - Henry Lai, Lennart Hardell. JAMA. 2011;305(8):828-829.doi:10.1001/jama.2011.201

Wikipedia, past and present, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie, Jan 13, 2011

"The National Broadband Map is a searchable and interactive website that allows users to view broadband availability across every neighborhood in the United States. The NBM was created by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in collaboration with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and in partnership with 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia. The NBM is a project of NTIA's State Broadband Initiative. The NBM will be updated approximately every six months and was first published on February 17, 2011."

Egyptians Find Their Power in Access to Information: "Make no mistake: Access to information, in a country with limited resources, served as the first catalyst for the Egyptian revolution that began January 25 and resulted 18 days later in the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak after almost 30 years in office. The internet, along with Facebook and Twitter, was the Open University that facilitated learning about democracy for Egypt’s young people...But on the internet, the release of a single document spread like a ferocious fire in seconds, and millions had access to it. In a nation where only one in 700 citizens read the newspapers, young people with some European-language skills were able to translate and share news about the rest of the world with their fellow Egyptians. Those who did not read a foreign language saw the images, which they received through mobile technologies." by Sohair Wastawy - dean of university libraries at Illinois State University in Normal - who the first chief librarian of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, where she served for six years.

"The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy was published February 13, 2011, marking a milestone in the Administration’s 25-Point Implementation Plan To Reform Federal IT Management. The strategy is designed to help the government deliver value to the public by increasing the operational efficiency of Federal IT dollars, and responding faster to taxpayer needs. In releasing the report, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra noted, “The adoption of cloud computing will play a pivotal role in helping the government close the productivity gap between the public and private sectors.” The strategy outlines how the Federal government can accelerate the safe, secure adoption of cloud computing, and provides agencies with a framework for migrating to the cloud. It also examines how agencies can address challenges related to the adoption of cloud computing, such as privacy, procurement, standards, and governance...Moving forward, agencies are required to evaluate their technology sourcing strategies so that cloud computing options are fully considered, consistent with the “Cloud First” policy outlined in the 25-Point Implementation Plan, which states: “The three-part strategy on cloud technology will revolve around using commercial cloud technologies where feasible, launching private government clouds, and utilizing regional clouds with state and local governments where appropriate.”

The Triangle Research Libraries Network’s Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Digitization of Modern Manuscript Collections and Archival Record Groups, January 2011 - Laura Clark Brown, Judy Ruttenberg, and Kevin L. Smith, J.D.

10 Conservative Principles for Cybersecurity Policy, by Paul Rosenzweig, George Washington University School of Law; Posted FEbruary 10, 2011

News release: "President Barack Obama will today detail his plan to win the future by catalyzing the buildout of high-speed wireless services that will enable businesses to grow faster, students to learn more, and public safety officials to access state-of-the-art, secure, nationwide, and interoperable mobile communications. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for a National Wireless Initiative to make available high-speed wireless services to at least 98 percent of Americans. The Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative laid out today will make it possible for businesses to achieve that goal, while freeing up spectrum through incentive auctions, spurring innovation, and creating a nationwide, interoperable wireless network for public safety. It will also reduce the national deficit by approximately $10 billion."

News release: "Experian® Hitwise®, a part of Experian Marketing Services, announced today that Google accounted for 67.95 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Jan. 29, 2011. Bing-powered search comprised 27.44 percent of searches for the month, with Yahoo! Search and Bing receiving 14.62 percent and 12.81 percent, respectively. The remaining 70 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 4.61 percent of U.S. searches. Bing and Yahoo! Search achieved the highest success rates in January 2011. This means that for both search engines, more than 81 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Website. Google achieved a success rate of 65 percent. The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine result pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information."

"The Digital Signage Federation (DSF), a professional membership association, announced today the release of new industry standards for digital signage privacy. The “Digital Signage Privacy Standards” are a set of voluntary privacy guidelines recommended by DSF for digital signage companies, their partners and the venues that host these systems....The DSF Standards Committee is comprised of eight members from different sectors of the industry, and is chaired by Ken Goldberg, CEO of Real Digital Media. Harley Geiger, a committee member and Policy Counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, was instrumental in leading the effort to develop policies that safeguard consumer privacy and preserve the public’s trust in the digital signage industry. Subsequently, the Digital Signage Privacy Standard includes strong principles in the following categories:

• Transparency
  
• Individual Participation
  
• Purpose Specification
  
• Data Minimization
  
• Use Limitation
  
• Data Quality & Integrity
  
• Security
  
• Accountability

"The role of social media in Congressional leaders’ messaging and outreach has exploded over the past few years, whether it be through tweets about floor schedule updates or on Facebook. But within that trend is a clear — and nonpartisan — divide between the savvy and those still in the dark. House Democratic and Republican leadership aides are eager to tout their bosses’ use of social media." [Link]

State Cyberbullying Law - A Brief Review of State Cyberbullying Laws and Policies, Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D. and Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D., Cyberbullying Research Center, updated January 2011

Emerging Legal Issues in Social Media: In Part 1 of his commentary, Ken Strutin discusses how the growth of social media and social networking applications has permeated and extended the range of legal investigation, discovery and litigation. The materials he highlights represent a current sampling of notable developments in law enforcement, law practice, civil and criminal litigation, and technology's influence on human behavior.

Report: Generations, Mobile, Seniors - Generations and their gadgets, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Feb 3, 2011

Audit Report, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Monitoring of Power Grid Cyber Security, DOE/IG-0846, January 2011

McCabe, Mark J. and Snyder, Christopher M., Did Online Access to Journals Change the Economics Literature? (January 23, 2011).

Health Topics - 80% of internet users look for health information online, Susannah Fox, Associate Director, Pew Research, February 1, 2011

Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001 - 2008, A Report Prepared by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 2011

News release: "The Center for Democracy & Technology today released a proposal that sketches the parameters of what Do Not Track (DNT) means. The document is intended to identify the types of behaviors that DNT should prohibit, and jumpstart a discussion aimed at developing a common understanding of the terms of this emerging technology. The concept of DNT technology is gaining momentum; however, definitions underlying technology—such as what "tracking" actually means—are still in flux...CDT suggests that the following definition for "tracking" in the context of Do Not Track:

Freedom in the World 2011: The Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy, Washington, D.C, January 13, 2011: "Global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House’s annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties around the world. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey. The year featured drops in the number of Free countries and the number of electoral democracies, as well as an overall deterioration for freedom in the Middle East and North Africa region. A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world. Published annually since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world. The latest edition analyzes developments that occurred in 2010 and assigns each country a freedom status—Free, Partly Free, or Not Free—based on a scoring of performance on key democracy indicators.

PewInternet: 22% of online Americans used social networking or Twitter for politics in 2010 campaign, by Aaron Smith, January 27, 2011:

"Working in partnership, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) promotes and funds high-quality, cost-effective teaching and research, meeting the diverse needs of students, the economy and society."

National Journal: Google and Mozilla both announced that they will be adding "do-not-track" options to their Internet browsers, allowing users to prevent websites from gathering personal information and selling it to advertisers. Mozilla announced its plan Sunday with Google following suit Monday. According to a company statement, Google's "Keep My Op-Outs" feature will be available as an extension for download on its Chrome browser Monday. "We made available, for all major browsers, a downloadable browser plugin that enables you to permanently opt out of Google's advertising cookie, even if you deleted all your browser's cookies," according to the statement." Mozilla's Firefox version will be an HTTP header that will tell websites that a user wants to opt-out what's called "online behavioral advertising." "The advantages to the header technique are that it is less complex and simple to locate and use, it is more persistent than cookie-based solutions, and it doesn't rely on user's finding and loading lists of ad networks and advertisers to work," said Mozilla technology and privacy officer Alex Fowler wrote in a blog post Sunday. Microsoft announced a similar feature for its Internet Explorer in December."

National Security Cyberspace Institute - Federal Government Cybersecurity Progress: Obama Administration Report Card 2009-Present

"On Tuesday, January 25, at 9 p.m. EST, President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol. We have been working on a number of ways citizens can get involved in the State of the Union and ask their questions of President Obama and senior Administration officials. You can find all the details on our brand new State of the Union page."

• Watch the live stream of the State of the Union Address on WhiteHouse.gov.
  
• Immediately following the State of the Union Address, stay tuned for a live Open For Questions event where Senior White House officials will answer your questions about key issues addressed in the speech live from the White House.
  
• Wednesday: Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will be taking your questions via Twitter before his post-State of the Union briefing on Wednesday, January 26. Follow @PressSec on Twitter to find out when he’ll be taking your questions, then respond to @PressSec using the hashtag #1Q and watch for his video responses.
  
• President Obama will answer your questions during a live YouTube interview at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday January 27. Submit your questions on youtube.com/askobama."

Americans living with disability and their technology profile by Susannah Fox

News release: "Verizon Communications on Thursday (Jan. 20) filed an appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, challenging the Federal Communications Commission's Report and Order on rules dealing with the issue of net neutrality..."Today's filing is the result of a careful review of the FCC's order. We are deeply concerned by the FCC's assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself. We believe this assertion of authority goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress, and creates uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers." [Michael E. Glover, Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel]

News release: "Today, the Federal Communications Commission grants—with conditions and enforceable commitments—approval of the assignment and transfer of control of broadcast, satellite, and other radio licenses from General Electric Company (GE) to Comcast Corporation. The approval will allow GE and Comcast to create a joint venture involving NBC Universal, Inc. (NBCU) and Comcast. An Order further explaining the Commission’s reasoning and the conditions and commitments will be issued shortly. The Commission's decision is based on a thorough review of the record, which includes extensive data and voluntary commitments from the applicants, as well as thousands of comments from interested parties and public input received at a public forum held in Chicago. Based on this review, the Commission has determined that granting the application, with certain conditions and contingent upon enforceable commitments, is in the public interest."

The Social Side of the Internet - Technology use has become deeply embedded in group life and is affecting the way civic and social groups behave and the way they impact their communities, by Lee Rainie, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, Jan 18, 2011

News release: "Most Internet users in America say they go online to answer routine questions, and they give overwhelmingly positive marks to today’s Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 66% of regular Internet users instinctively go online to answer routine questions. Just 30% say they do not. (To see survey question wording, click here). Eighty-nine percent (89%) of those who regularly go online rate today’s Internet search engines as good or excellent in terms of finding the information they need. Fewer than half a percent rates the search engines they use as poor. Seventy-eight percent (78%), in fact, say they generally use the same Internet search engine all the time. Just 19% use more than one."

McIntyre, Joshua J., The Number is Me: Why Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses Should Be Protected as Personally Identifiable Information (August 15, 2010). DePaul Law Review, Vol. 60, No. 3, 2011.

Follow up to Critical Undersea Internet Cables Damaged Between Europe and Mideast, this related commentary, Undersea Cables: The Achilles Heel of our Economies, by Franz-Stefan Gady

Sources Sought: "The Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the United States House of Representatives seeks vendors experienced with web design, development and support using Drupal, the open-source web content management system. This is a source selection process only. The CAO will not be making any contract awards during this process. The CAO has established a flexible Drupal hosting platform as the preferred web hosting environment for the House. Members, Committees, Leadership, Officers and Officials (the CAO’s customers) each manage and control a public web site. These customers have the independent authority to select the web vendor of their choice provided that vendor meets specific House requirements. In total, there are nearly 520 unique House web sites within House.gov."

Via Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, this new memorandum on technology neutrality: "Each year, the U.S. Government spends almost $80 billion dollars buying information technology (IT); the software, computer equipment and network devices that help the Government run efficiently. It is important that those purchases be fair, neutral and based on an objective assessment of relevant criteria. To ensure that the agencies and the public are aware of our policy, today U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy Dan Gordon and I issued a statement to Senior Procurement Executives and Chief Information Officers reminding them to select IT based on appropriate criteria while analyzing available alternatives including proprietary, open source and mixed source technologies."

Government Technology: "A new study ranking government, nonprofit and industry trade groups for their use of social media and online strategies revealed that more than 50 percent of the organizations polled are not using these digital avenues as effectively as they could be. The first L2 Digital IQ Index: Public Sector was co-authored by digital think tank L2 and the George Washington University School of Business, and ranked 100 digitally active public-sector groups on how well they are using different technologies to their greatest ability, or how high their digital IQ is. NASA, the White House and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are respectively ranked as having the highest digital IQs. The International Civil Aviation Organization, the Universal Postal Union, and the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (IIABA) came in last."

News release: "...the FCC announced a challenge to researchers and software developers to engage in research and create apps that help consumers foster, measure, and protect Internet openness. The Open Internet Challenge is part of the FCC’s efforts to empower end users to help preserve Internet openness. Details of the challenge are posted at openinternet.gov/challenge. “This challenge is about using the open Internet to protect the open Internet,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. “Our goal is to foster user-developed applications that shine light on any practice that might be inconsistent with the free and open Internet. Empowering consumers with information about their own connections will promote a vibrant, innovative, world-leading broadband ecosystem.” The Open Internet Challenge seeks to encourage the development of innovative and functional applications that provide users with information about the extent to which their fixed or mobile broadband Internet services are consistent with the open Internet. These software tools could, for example, detect whether a broadband provider is interfering with DNS responses, application packet headers, or content."

Presentation: Race and Ethnicity Asian-Americans and Technology

News release: "This report presents findings from a year-long study designed and executed by OCLC Research, the HathiTrust, New York University's Elmer Bobst Library, and the Research Collections Access & Preservation (ReCAP) consortium, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers, including large-scale print and digital repositories. The study assessed the opportunity for library space saving and cost avoidance through the systematic and intentional outsourcing of local management operations for digitized books to shared service providers and progressive downsizing of local print collections in favor of negotiated access to the digitized corpus and regionally consolidated print inventory."

Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books, Published Online 16 December 2010, Jean-Baptiste Michel et al. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1199644.

"Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases like Freebase."

"The internet is slowly closing in on television as Americans’ main source of national and international news. Currently, 41% say they get most of their news about national and international news from the internet, which is little changed over the past two years but up 17 points since 2007. Television remains the most widely used source for national and international news – 66% of Americans say it is their main source of news – but that is down from 74% three years ago and 82% as recently as 2002. The national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 1-5, 2010 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that more people continue to cite the internet than newspapers as their main source of news, reflecting both the growth of the internet, and the gradual decline in newspaper readership (from 34% in 2007 to 31% now). The proportion citing radio as their main source of national and international news has remained relatively stable in recent years; currently, 16% say it is their main source."

The commercial data privacy issues discussed in the Department’s green paper, Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework, provide a clear lens through which to assess current policy. Throughout the history of the Internet as a commercial medium, the Department of Commerce has been a key avenue of government engagement. Today, the Department continues this role, primarily through the Internet Policy Task Force, established by Secretary Locke. This Task Force is examining policy approaches that reduce barriers to digital commerce while strengthening protections for commercial data privacy, cybersecurity, intellectual property, and the global free flow of information."

The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program - Expanding Broadband Access and Adoption in Communities Across America, Overview of Grant Awards, December 2010

Google Voice Blog: "When we launched calling in Gmail back in August, we wanted it to be easy and affordable, so we made calls to the U.S. and Canada free for the rest of 2010. In the spirit of holiday giving and to help people keep in touch in the new year, we’re extending free calling for all of 2011. In case you haven’t tried it yet, dialing a phone number works just like a regular phone. Look for “Call phone” at the top of your Gmail chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. To learn more, visit gmail.com/call. Calling in Gmail is currently only available to U.S. based Gmail users."

65% of internet users have paid for online content, Jim Jansen, Senior Fellow, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 12/30/2010

"Mass collaboration is revolutionizing not only the way we work, but the way we live, learn, create and care for each other. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, authors of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, analyze some of the trends reshaping our world. Today: Journalism in the age of user-generated content and Wikileaks - "It turns out people will not pay for news as a commodity. In an age of Twitter, bloggers, WikiLeaks and social networks, people can find the news without buying a paper. As one youngster said, “If the news is important it will find me.” The Internet has destroyed the business model for print. Print publications will survive, but not in the long term, and this has big implications for journalism. Compared to the massive physical assets of, say, The New York Times, online newspaper The Huffington Post has almost zero printing and distribution costs. The New York Times employs more than a thousand people in its editorial department alone. The Huffington Post employs 60 and a volunteer roster of thousands of writers. The site is thriving, with 20 million readers."

Peter Eckersley: "At the beginning of this year EFF identified a dozen important trends in law, technology and business that we thought would play a significant role in shaping digital rights in 2010, with a promise to revisit our predictions at the end of the year. Now, as 2010 comes to a close, we're going through each of our predictions one by one to see how accurate we were in our trend-spotting."

News release: "S&P Equity Research sees big developments for the Internet segment in 2011, including continuing challenges for Google, changes at Yahoo, a cloud offering from Apple, and excitement from China. "The coming year should also be another year of solid growth, with double-digit gains for U.S. Internet advertising and retail spending," observed Scott Kessler, Information Technology analyst at S&P Equity Research."

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to announce the release of a new paper, Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing, by Bruce Etling, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey."

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to share a new report, Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and Human Rights Sites by Ethan Zuckerman, Hal Roberts, Ryan McGrady, Jillian York, John Palfrey

Net Neutrality as Diplomacy, Jonathan Zittrain. Vol. 29, Yale Law & Policy Review, December 2010.

Via LLRX.com - Juror Behavior in the Information Age: Ken Strutin focuses on the impact of social media on jurors who increasingly try to stay connected to work and home while performing their civic duty, and the resulting impact of the power of individual jurors to virtualize a trial by going online. His article collects recent and notable examples of juror online misbehavior and highlights scholarship and practice resources concerning its implications for voir dire, trial management and the administration of justice.

Free Kindle Books: A Guide, by Lauren Indvik

1. "Project Gutenberg: 33,000 free e-books, including all of the classics, available in Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.
   
2. Google E-Bookstore: The free section is filled with thousands of free, scanned copies of books, available in Kindle-friendly PDF formats.
   
3. Internet Archive: Millions of primarily rare, out-of-print works in multiple languages and formats (including Kindle), especially useful for academic work.
   
4. Open Library: 20 million user-contributed items in multiple editions and formats (including Kindle).
   
5. ManyBooks.net: Nearly 30,000 titles, many of which have been pulled from Project Gutenberg. Has a good collection of little-known Creative Commons works.
   
6. LibriVox: Thousands of free audiobooks."

• Small Change - Why the revolution will not be tweeted, by Malcolm Gladwell: "he world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns...Some of this grandiosity is to be expected. Innovators tend to be solipsists. They often want to cram every stray fact and experience into their new model. As the historian Robert Darnton has written, “The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the Internet.” But there is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is..." [entire article available free online]
• The Political Power of Social Media Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change, by Clay Shirky: "Since the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions. Over the same period, social media have become a fact of life for civil society worldwide, involving many actors -- regular citizens, activists, nongovernmental organizations, telecommunications firms, software providers, governments. This raises an obvious question for the U.S. government: How does the ubiquity of social media affect U.S. interests, and how should U.S. policy respond to it? As the communications landscape gets denser, more complex, and more participatory, the networked population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action. In the political arena, as the protests in Manila demonstrated, these increased freedoms can help loosely coordinated publics demand change."[Access to this article is available for non-subscribers until 2/13/2011]

Proposed U.S. House Rules Welcome (Quiet) Mobile Devices to the Floor: "In this last Congress, the 111th, the House operated under a rule that dictated that no one shall "smoke or use a wireless telephone or personal computer on the floor of the House." But, according to copy of the proposed rules just posted to the website of the Committee on Rules, that section has been tweaked for the 112th congress to give the Speaker of the House wide discretion in dictating what sort of mobile technologies members and staffers can bring to and use on the floor of the House.

Cancer 2.0: A summary of recent research, Susannah Fox, Associate Director, 12/13/2010: "The majority of U.S. adults have internet access, including those who are living with chronic disease. In 1995 only about 1 in 10 American adults had access to the internet. In 2000, it was up to nearly half of adults. Now, about 75% of adults and 95% teenagers in the U.S. have internet access. Survey data from the Pew Internet Project and the California HealthCare Foundation show that while internet access is the norm, adults living with chronic disease are significantly less likely than healthy adults to go online:

• 81% of adults reporting no chronic diseases go online.
  
• 62% of adults living with one or more chronic disease go online.
  
• It is important to note that 80% of adults who provide care to their parents or another loved one have internet access. So while internet access is unevenly distributed, especially among age groups, many people have “second degree” access."