Tag Archives: tech

Uncategorized

shared content

“

The Federal Trade Commission, charged with protecting consumers and guarding against deceptive advertising practices, acknowledges it does not know.

But faced with a growing wave of digital advertising that is intended to look like the news articles and features of the publications where they appear, the commission is warning advertisers that it intends to vigorously enforce its rules against misleading advertising.

The practice of what is now known as native advertising or sponsored content — and has been referred to as advertorial or infomercial — has grown more aggressive on the Internet. That is because companies and brands have the ability to target specific audiences and individuals and to get instant feedback when consumers react to what is being shown.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/business/ftc-says-sponsored-online-ads-can-be-misleading.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“

The Cold War era I grew up in was a world of insulated walls, both geopolitical and economic, so the pace of change was slower — you could work for the same company for 30 years — and because bosses had fewer alternatives, unions had greater leverage. The result was a middle class built on something called a high-wage or a decent-wage medium-skilled job, and the benefits that went with it.

The proliferation of such jobs meant that many people could lead a middle-class lifestyle — with less education and more security — because they didn’t have to compete so directly with either a computer or a machine that could do their jobs faster and better (by far the biggest source of job churn) or against an Indian or Chinese who would do their jobs cheaper. And by a middle-class lifestyle, I don’t mean just scraping by. I mean having status: enough money to buy a house, enjoy some leisure and offer your kids the opportunity to do better than you.

But thanks to the merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution that has unfolded over the last two decades — which is rapidly and radically transforming how knowledge and information are generated, disseminated and collaborated on to create value — “the high-wage, medium-skilled job is over,” says Stefanie Sanford, the chief of global policy and advocacy for the College Board. The only high-wage jobs that will support the kind of middle-class lifestyle of old will be high-skilled ones, requiring a commitment to rigorous education, adaptability and innovation, she added.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/friedman-why-i-still-support-obamacare.html?ref=todayspaper

Standard
Uncategorized

shared content

“

As certain high school seniors work meticulously this month to finish their early applications to colleges, some may not realize that comments they casually make online could negatively affect their prospects. In fact, new research from Kaplan Test Prep, the service owned by the Washington Post Company, suggests that online scrutiny of college hopefuls is growing.

Of 381 college admissions officers who answered a Kaplan telephone questionnaire this year, 31 percent said they had visited an applicant’s Facebook or other personal social media page to learn more about them — a five-percentage-point increase from last year. More crucially for those trying to get into college, 30 percent of the admissions officers said they had discovered information online that had negatively affected an applicant’s prospects.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper

Standard
tumblr

shared content

“

Mr. Mosley argued that French law makes it illegal to take and distribute images of an individual in a private space without that person’s permission. But Google said that would limit freedom of speech, forcing the company to block search results without any person or court overseeing the context in which the images appeared.

Analysts said the ruling against Google could lead to greater restrictions on what was accessible through search results and could prompt more people to demand that the United States technology company remove references to their private activities.

“At this point in time, the pendulum is swinging toward individuals’ privacy and away from freedom of speech,” said Carsten Casper, a privacy and security analyst at the consulting firm Gartner in Berlin.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/business/international/google-is-ordered-to-block-images-in-privacy-case.html?ref=todayspaper

Standard
tumblr

shared content

“But Twitter and books share something perhaps more profound: a love of words. “Twitter has probably caused more people to spend more time choosing their words carefully than any other force in the last five years,” said Sloan, who, before the publication of his acclaimed 2012 novel, “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” worked at Twitter. “You’d think it would be a natural fit for people who care about language.””

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/how-has-twitter-changed-the-role-of-the-literary-critic.html?pagewanted=2&ref=todayspaper

Standard
tumblr

shared content

“Bad uses of Twitter, as Margaret Atwood says, have been the fault of the user, not the technology. Comparing tweets with the telegram and African tribal drums, she argues in a 2010 Big Think interview that the form is “not different in nature from what we have always done, which is communicate with one another, send messages to one another and perform our lives.” Williams and Stone always conceived of Twitter as “a mouthpiece for everyday people,” and that’s what it’s been. Yet the uncertainty surrounding its purposes starts to seem more alarming as ownership, control and privacy become increasingly murky. The danger of the technology is not that it will make us more facile or less intelligent but that we can’t predict who, ultimately, will be running it – or to what ends.”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/hatching-twitter-by-nick-bilton.html?pagewanted=2&ref=todayspaper

Standard
tumblr

shared content

“During the 1999 holiday season, the managers of Amazon’s fledgling toy division were worried they wouldn’t be able to meet surging demand for Pokémon toys. So they bought out the entire Pokémon inventory of the Toys “R” Us Web site, which shipped it to Amazon free. Amazon surely sold the toys at a loss. But guess who had happier customers that year?”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/brad-stones-everything-store.html?ref=todayspaper

Standard
tumblr

shared content

“

Why do many people think that Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple are rivals? They hardly compete directly. Sure, Facebook and Google both sell targeted Web-based advertisements. But they offer such different services that they don’t share a core mission. Apple makes its money selling devices and mobile apps. Microsoft sells computer software and video game consoles. Google makes a free suite of applications that could challenge Microsoft Office. But it has not. Google also runs a social network that no one uses. And it gives away a mobile smartphone operating system. All four seem to be safely in control of distinct missions and markets. They intersect only slightly.

But these companies are not just focused on dominating a particular device or service like your phone or Web search. Short-term revenue and market capitalization only serve to finance their long-term vision. Each is scheming to win the marathon ahead: to become the operating system of your life.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/fred-vogelsteins-dogfight.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper

Standard
tumblr

shared content

“

Their key finding was that the total number of mutual friends two people share — embeddedness, in social networking terms — is actually a fairly weak indicator of romantic relationships. Far better, they found, was a network measure that they call dispersion.

This yardstick measures mutual friends, but also friends from the further-flung reaches of a person’s network neighborhood. High dispersion occurs when a couple’s mutual friends are not well connected to one another.

…

Their dispersion algorithm was able to correctly identify a user’s spouse 60 percent of the time, or better than a 1-in-2 chance. Since everyone in the sample had at least 50 friends, merely guessing would have at best produced a 1 in 50 chance. The algorithm also did pretty well with people who declare themselves to be “in a relationship,” correctly identifying them a third of the time — a 1 in 3 chance compared with the 1 in 50 for guesswork.

Particularly intriguing is that when the algorithm fails, it looks as if the relationship is in trouble. A couple in a declared relationship and without a high dispersion on the site are 50 percent more likely to break up over the next two months than a couple with a high dispersion, the researchers found. (Their research tracked the users every two months for two years.)

”

– http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/spotting-romantic-relationships-on-facebook/?_r=0

Standard
tumblr

shared content

“

THE moving assembly line was the simplest of inventions, born of necessity to meet the exploding demand for automobiles in America in the early 20th century.

And while it turned 100 years old this month, “the line” remains as integral to the progress of the auto industry as it was in the days of Henry Ford.

The assembly line is a constantly evolving industrial ballet of workers and robots building cars. And automakers like the Ford Motor Company are finding that building multiple models on the same line is a huge key to success in the intensely competitive global marketplace.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/30/automobiles/100-years-down-the-line.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper

Standard