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Looking beyond the web, marketers are considering location-based services as a way to extend their reach and engage consumers in the “real world.”
Some, including Bravo, HBO and Warner Brothers, are partnering with consumer-facing location-based services (LBS) like Foursquare to do so. Others are seeing a benefit in creating their own communities and geo-apps, though this can be a development-heavy and costly process. Through a new DIY platform, Socialight hopes to make this a much simpler proposition. -
Anthony Stancl, who used the social networking site Facebook to deceive and coerce fellow New Berlin Eisenhower High School students into sexual acts with him in 2008, was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison and another 13 years of extended supervision.
Waukesha County Circuit Judge J. Mac Davis imposed the sentence because he said Stancl had proven he was manipulative, excessively self-centered and could still be dangerous.
“I am afraid of what he can and might do,” Davis said.
In a case that attracted national media attention, Stancl, 19, of New Berlin, posed as a female on Facebook and persuaded at least 31 boys to send him naked pictures of themselves. He then used the pictures – and the threat of releasing them to the rest of the high school – to blackmail at least seven boys, ages 15 to 17, into performing sex acts.
Month: February 2010 Page 1 of 2
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My folks stayed at my condo in Boulder the last few nights with me so I was inspired this morning to write a quick post in the Letters to my Dad series that I’m writing with my father (he’s calling his posts “Father and Son.”)
In my dad’s last post, Father and Son #3, he wrote about our overthrow of the administrative regime in my high school at the start of my senior year when they botched the AP course schedule because of a “computer glitch.” He calls it a “lesson in leadership and self reliance” and tells a great story of how we (him and I) quickly mobilized about 60 parents and students in 24 hours to get together, proposed a solution to the problem, presented the case the superintendent and principal, and then fixed the problem. We all got to take more than one AP class (even though school was over for me my senior year at lunch time since there were no other classes to take) and I even wore a tux to prom. -
In a gambit to extend beyond SSL certificates, VeriSign introduces the Trust Seal today. The trust mark service seeks to increase confidence, traffic, and transactions for sites that do not require SSL certifications, including sites that outsource shopping cart or payment functions and do not collect sensitive personal information. Though not designed specifically for small and midmarket companies, VeriSign's Fran Rosch, Senior Vice President Authentication, says that SMBs are the most likely customers for the new service. He says, "Based on our market segmentation research, we expect the initial adopters to be smaller companies that use shared payment [services] for their e-commerce, but we also expect interest from non-profit companies, professional services such as legal and medical practices, and franchises."
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School-issued laptops used to spy on kids – Philadelphia Inquirer
Lower Merion School District officials used school-issued laptop computers to illegally spy on students, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.
The suit, filed Tuesday, says unnamed school officials at Harriton High School in Rosemont remotely activated the webcam on a student's computer last year because the district believed he "was engaged in improper behavior in his home."
An assistant principal at Harriton confronted the student for "improper behavior" on Nov. 11 and cited a photograph taken by the webcam as evidence.
Michael E. and Holly S. Robbins, of Penn Valley, filed the suit on behalf of their son, Blake. They are seeking class action status for the suit.
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School-issued laptops used to spy on kids – Philadelphia Inquirer
Lower Merion School District officials used school-issued laptop computers to illegally spy on students, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.
The suit, filed Tuesday, says unnamed school officials at Harriton High School in Rosemont remotely activated the webcam on a student's computer last year because the district believed he "was engaged in improper behavior in his home."
An assistant principal at Harriton confronted the student for "improper behavior" on Nov. 11 and cited a photograph taken by the webcam as evidence.
Michael E. and Holly S. Robbins, of Penn Valley, filed the suit on behalf of their son, Blake. They are seeking class action status for the suit.
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According to SuperCover Insurance, iPhone owners smash their old iPhone on purpose when a new model is announced in order to get a free upgrade. SuperCover also says that 40% of all claims are suspicious. Is the iPhone that addicting?
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More than 75,000 computer systems at nearly 2,500 companies in the United States and around the world have been hacked in what appears to be one of the largest and most sophisticated attacks by cyber criminals discovered to date, according to a northern Virginia security firm.
The attack, which began in late 2008 and was discovered last month, targeted proprietary corporate data, e-mails, credit-card transaction data and login credentials at companies in the health and technology industries in 196 countries, according to Herndon-based NetWitness.
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At least several hundred exhibitors are here this week in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress. Each of them seems to be launching either a new app store or a new operating platform. What these inescapable announcements fetch in buzz and inventiveness, they misjudge in audience tolerance. The impact goes beyond mere ennui, of which there is plenty, and touches at the heart of what makes a corporate mobile strategy nearly impossible to birth: There are too many choices.
Make no mistake: The platform wars will rage for years, and the corporate IT manager could suffer the casualties. Not only must IT choose a platform its user base will be happy with, and that it can adequately support and manage (securely), but it must also choose based on the company’s overall mobile strategy. If it ignores the last part, it will miss a major opportunity to increase productivity by extending its applications to those mobile platforms — an easy task when a single platform becomes the corporate standard. -
On a planet with around 6.8 billion people, we’re likely to see 5 billion cell phone subscriptions this year.
Reaching 4.6 billion at the end of 2009, the number of cell phone subscriptions across the globe will hit 5 billion sometime in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The explosion in cell phone use has been driven not only by developed countries, but by developing nations hungry for services like mobile banking and health care.
“Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services,” said ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Toure at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, “and I am confident that we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in particular in 2010, with many more people using their phones to access the Internet.”
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At least several hundred exhibitors are here this week in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress. Each of them seems to be launching either a new app store or a new operating platform. What these inescapable announcements fetch in buzz and inventiveness, they misjudge in audience tolerance. The impact goes beyond mere ennui, of which there is plenty, and touches at the heart of what makes a corporate mobile strategy nearly impossible to birth: There are too many choices.
Make no mistake: The platform wars will rage for years, and the corporate IT manager could suffer the casualties. Not only must IT choose a platform its user base will be happy with, and that it can adequately support and manage (securely), but it must also choose based on the company’s overall mobile strategy. If it ignores the last part, it will miss a major opportunity to increase productivity by extending its applications to those mobile platforms — an easy task when a single platform becomes the corporate standard. -
On a planet with around 6.8 billion people, we’re likely to see 5 billion cell phone subscriptions this year.
Reaching 4.6 billion at the end of 2009, the number of cell phone subscriptions across the globe will hit 5 billion sometime in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The explosion in cell phone use has been driven not only by developed countries, but by developing nations hungry for services like mobile banking and health care.
“Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services,” said ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Toure at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, “and I am confident that we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in particular in 2010, with many more people using their phones to access the Internet.”
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Yesterday's resignation by former CEO Owen Van Natta is not totally surprising, given MySpace's continued losses in advertising, search revenues, and traffic. What is shocking, however, is that the senior leadership at NewsCorp and Fox Interactive remains in positions of power despite the significant mishandling of the scandal involving the discovery of more than 90,000 convicted sex offenders on NewsCorp's flagship social networking site.
MySpace could have taken the steps to notify any parents whose children were contacted by convicted sex offenders, including changing terms of service to allow greater disclosure of sex offenders' conduct. That's what a responsible company with responsible management would have done. To my knowledge, they didn't, presumably afraid of the negative publicity. -
Last year, 29,000 Registered Sex Offenders (RSOs) were discovered on MySpace, after initial reports that the number was only 7,000. The number is now 90,000, and reflects only those registering with truthful information. We seek to limit risk to minors that stems from users — particularly RSOs — registering with false information on social network sites (“SNS”). The Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking, comprising 50 state Attorneys General, asked the Task Force to find and develop online identity authentication tools primarily for social network sites in the United States. The Attorneys General also asked the Task Force to establish specific and objective criteria that will be utilized to evaluate existing and new technology safety solutions.
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Yesterday's resignation by former CEO Owen Van Natta is not totally surprising, given MySpace's continued losses in advertising, search revenues, and traffic. What is shocking, however, is that the senior leadership at NewsCorp and Fox Interactive remains in positions of power despite the significant mishandling of the scandal involving the discovery of more than 90,000 convicted sex offenders on NewsCorp's flagship social networking site.
MySpace could have taken the steps to notify any parents whose children were contacted by convicted sex offenders, including changing terms of service to allow greater disclosure of sex offenders' conduct. That's what a responsible company with responsible management would have done. To my knowledge, they didn't, presumably afraid of the negative publicity. -
Last year, 29,000 Registered Sex Offenders (RSOs) were discovered on MySpace, after initial reports that the number was only 7,000. The number is now 90,000, and reflects only those registering with truthful information. We seek to limit risk to minors that stems from users — particularly RSOs — registering with false information on social network sites (“SNS”). The Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking, comprising 50 state Attorneys General, asked the Task Force to find and develop online identity authentication tools primarily for social network sites in the United States. The Attorneys General also asked the Task Force to establish specific and objective criteria that will be utilized to evaluate existing and new technology safety solutions.