Ask!

HOW I SEARCH FOR THINGS ON THE INTERNET

Picture this:

I've just got home after a long hard working day at school. I'm tired and I don't want any nonsense. After a while of trying to do it, my (for instance) R.S. homework proves too hard and I get stuck on a question that I decide I'm going to look the answer to up on the internet. The question: Describe in depth the 7th commandment? As I said before I don't want any nonsense and so to get my answer as quickly as possible I need to search precisely. To show you what I mean here is an example: If you search on google "The commandments" all the search results are about the 10 of them as a whole and it is hard to find a website where it goes into detail about what the 7th commandment means although they tell you what it is. If you search, however, "What is the 7th commandment?" you are presented with websites which focus solely on the 7th commandment and describing it in depth which helps me answer my homework question easily.

The way this works is I have learnt through experience that search results are listed by use of keywords so when I searched only "The commandments" I was presented with an overview of all of the 10 commandments however, when I added "the 7th" to my search this was added as a new keyword and so was focused on in the search result changing the results to what I was looking for. These slight changes in the keywords you use in your internet searches could make a lot of difference and cut down your searching time dramatically!

Thanks for reading :-)     

ICT PROJECT - London Olympics 2012

This is my ICT project I made at school about the London Olympics 2012. I made the video on my macbook on iMovie with a mash up of Jason Mraz, stop motion pictures from my canon Eos 500D (which i kept still on a tripod), pictures of the games and it's stadiums that I found on the internet and some really cool effects that iMovie has to offer. I really enjoyed making this project and hope that anyone reading this enjoys (or has enjoyed) watching it :-) 

Prep

Prep

4/ There's no last word on all this, of course, but it is important that people realise how the tools and services we give our trust to — in the form of so much information about ourselves, our friends and networks — work and the kinds of consequences, good, bad and unwanted, that can follow.

Over half-term, this story surfaced: How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did. And you may have heard about the Google tracking story that also broke over half-term: Google admits tracking Safari users. Or you may remember this from last year, Logging out of Facebook is not enough (the Telegraph picked up on this: Facebook criticised for 'tracking' logged-out users).

5/ What kind of web do we want? One where companies can determine what we do and say and see? One where the idea of the open web has been lost and instead we live largely inside a behemoth like Google(+) or Facebook? Here are a few things to think about …

Adrian Short wrote a piece on his blog (at the end of 2011) that was then re-published in the Guardian, Why Facebook's new Open Graph makes us all part of the web underclass:

When you own a domain you're a first class citizen of the web. A householder and landowner. What you can do on your own website is only very broadly constrained by law and convention. … If you use a paid-for web service at someone else's domain you're a tenant. A second class citizen. You don't have much control. You'll probably have to live with your landlord's furniture and decoration and a restrictive set of rules. …

The promise of the open web looks increasingly uncertain. The technology will continue to exist and improve. It looks like you'll be able to run your own web server on your own domain for the foreseeable future. But all the things that matter will be controlled and owned by a very small number of Big Web companies. Your identity will be your accounts at Facebook, Google and Twitter, not the domain name you own. You don't pay Big Web a single penny so it can take away your identity and all your data at any time. The things you can say and do that are likely to be seen and used by any significant number of people will be the things that Facebook, Google and Twitter are happy for you to say and do.

Tim Berners-Lee was interviewed last year by The New Statesman. He spoke about his fears for the openness of the very web and internet themselves, and his fears have relevance to what we've been looking at: 

His greatest fear is that … the web could be killed off by a large company or government. "That is why I campaign for commercial net neutrality," he says. "If large corporations control our access to the internet and determine which websites we can go to, we will lose its openness and its democratic nature. We can all help to campaign for the right to connect. It is essential that we keep the space open as a white sheet of paper that anyone can use, without being spied on, blocked and diverted."

Larry Lessig, reviewing The Social Network, wrote:

What is important in Zuckerberg’s story is not that he’s a boy genius. He plainly is, but many are. It’s not that he’s a socially clumsy (relative to the Harvard elite) boy genius. Every one of them is. And it’s not that he invented an amazing product through hard work and insight that millions love. The history of American entrepreneurism is just that history, told with different technologies at different times and places.

Instead, what’s important here is that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone. The real story is not the invention. It is the platform that makes the invention sing. Zuckerberg didn’t invent that platform. He was a hacker (a term of praise) who built for it. And as much as Zuckerberg deserves endless respect from every decent soul for his success, the real hero in this story doesn’t even get a credit. It’s something Sorkin doesn’t even notice.

John Naughton wrote this month:

Lessig's right: the really significant thing about the internet is that it's an enabler of "permissionless innovation". And this is no accident: it's a consequence of the way the network was designed. Way back in the 1970s, when Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn were pondering the problem of how to create the internet, they came up with two basic principles: there should be no central ownership or control; and the network should be indifferent to the uses to which it was put. If you had an idea and it could be realised by shipping data across the internet, then the network would do it for you, no questions asked.

Look back at this sub-page to lesson 7. Remind yourself who Cerf and Kahn were. Now look for Paul Baran. What diagram is associated with him on that page? 

(These are the two links, in order, that Paul Miller refers to in this tweet: http://dynamicmedianetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/baranx3.jpg and the NYT obituary, Paul Baran, Internet Pioneer, Dies at 84.)

Last word to Tim Berners-Lee:

"When I started the web, I wanted to foster creative interconnectivity, in which people from all around the world can build something together. It's about trying to create a sort of human meta-brain - getting connected brains to function as a greater human brain. With these things, we have to trust in humanity. I think human nature, on balance, is wonderful. If we use the web properly, we can enhance that."

Prep Notes

16: Social software — trust, privacy, choice … and the web (III)

1/ We'll start by discussing the prep from lesson 15, where you were asked to think about: privacy and how it might be changing; frictionless sharing and social apps; Facebook's timeline. 2/ Facebook recently launched their IPO (stock market offering).  Documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed that it had a staggering 845 million active monthly users, half of whom sign in every day, $3.7bn in annual revenue and a rocketing growth rate. It also has a very healthy profit margin of 27%, just above fellow internet giant Google. This is a company that seems to give the final lie to the image of tech firms as coming prematurely to market with more in the way of wild dreams than a solid balance sheet. Guardian Some think the company could be valued at as much as $100bn.   Why might Facebook end up being valued at $100bn? One suggestion: Here's the Number That Matters in Facebook's IPO Filing - Technology - The Atlantic — the revenue per active monthly user is somewhere around $4.39–5.02. To justify the kind of valuation that Facebook is seeking, the company is going to have to generate a lot more revenue that they currently do. … even if Facebook gets to 3 billion users, if it doesn't increase its revenue per user, the company will only generate $13 billion in revenue per year … there is only one strategic direction for Facebook to go. It needs to generate more revenue per user. A lot more. … Two things are likely to happen: … 1) A lot more advertising. … 2) More Facebook Payments. … My guess is that Facebook's need to monetize at higher levels and users' desires will come into conflict more often the higher its revenue per user climbs. As Wired noted,  "With a huge new source of personal information, Facebook can now serve some of [the] most micro-targeted ads in history. You could probably call them nano-targeted ads." And the FT reported this February that advertising will come to Facebook on mobile devices 'within weeks'.   Some commentators have questioned the accuracy of Facebook's own estimate of the number of active users it has: "Facebook appears to be using the term “active” as a euphemism for “engaged” rather than how many users are actually going to its site every month" — NYT. From the same article: Facebook’s “Like” button on third-party sites or through “Facebook Connect” — its platform allowing users of other Web sites to sign in through Facebook and share information — is valuable, even if it isn’t easily monetized. … All of those “Likes” help Facebook create a treasure trove of data that should make its ability to target advertising to its users all the more valuable. (Of course, some people will be unnerved by how much Facebook knows about them.)  For an indication of how some of this could play out, read this blog post by an Old Pauline, Michael Henley, about Spotify and Facebook. Or, read As Banks Start Nosing Around Facebook and Twitter, the Wrong Friends Might Just Sink Your Credit:  … in the last year or so, financial institutions have started exploring ways to use data from Facebook, Twitter and other networks to round out an individual borrower’s risk profile—although most entrepreneurs working on the problem say the technology is three to five years away from mainstream adoption. Finally, here's an overview of what Facebook disclosed (last November) about its use of tracking data: The company compiles tracking data in different ways for members who have signed in and are using their accounts, for members who are logged-off and for non-members. The tracking process begins when you initially visit a facebook.com page. If you choose to sign up for a new account, Facebook inserts two different types of tracking cookies in your browser, a "session cookie" and a "browser cookie." If you choose not to become a member, and move on, you only get the browser cookie. From this point on, each time you visit a third-party webpage that has a Facebook Like button, or other Facebook plug-in, the plug-in works in conjunction with the cookie to alert Facebook of the date, time and web address of the webpage you've clicked to. The unique characteristics of your PC and browser, such as your IP address, screen resolution, operating system and browser version, are also recorded. Facebook thus compiles a running log of all your webpage visits for 90 days, continually deleting entries for the oldest day and adding the newest to this log. 3/ It has become important to understand how our data is used on the web and internet and by the services we use. We've looked at privacy, tracking and how to find search results in ways that don't prefer those on any given company's network or service. It is also important that users are educated enough about the services that a Facebook or Google operates to be able to hold these companies to account. As a result of focused pressure and an investigation, for example, Facebook recently made significant changes to their privacy policy: Facebook is close to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over charges that it acted in a deceptive manner in regards to its privacy settings, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal. The settlement would require Facebook to receive user consent before making "material retroactive changes" to its privacy settings. It would also require independent privacy audits for the next 20 years.* * (more on this just below) And this week, the White House announced a new privacy bill of rights (Do Not Track). If time, we'll look at Max Schrems’ David and Goliath struggle with Facebook. (Related: Get your Data! Make an Access Request at Facebook!) Pressure and scrutiny are effective: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Facebook had made claims about its privacy policies that were "unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law." … The FTC said it had reached a proposed settlement with Facebook that would force it to obtain consent before making changes to privacy settings. The firm will also have to undergo an independent audit of its consumer privacy policy every two years for the next 20 years, to make sure it complies with the FTC ruling. … In future, the firm will be required to obtain consent from its users ahead of making changes that change their privacy settings, and it will be required to prevent anyone from accessing a Facebook user's account 30 days after they have deleted it. — Guardian, Facebook reaches deal with FTC over 'unfair and deceptive' privacy claims (November 2011). Facebook has been told to stop its practice of indefinitely retaining data about which adverts its 500 million users outside the US click on, following a review by the Irish data protection commissioner of its non-US operations. It has also agreed to take immediate steps over data collected from third-party sites when people use their Facebook identity to log in to them. Until now, that data about people's behaviour was passed back to Facebook and retained indefinitely. Following the review, Facebook can keep the data but it has to make it anonymous – for example it can share how many people clicked on an advert but can't provide details of specific users – within 10 days and completely delete the data after 90. The social network has also been told to improve users' control over social adverts, and simplify its explanations of its privacy policies which must also be made more prominent for new users, following a detailed report by the commissioner. — Guardian, Facebook told to stop indefinitely holding users' advertising data (December, 2011) … we don’t always get everything right. The launch of Google Buzz fell short of our usual standards for transparency and user control—letting our users and Google down. While we worked quickly to make improvements, regulators—including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission—unsurprisingly wanted more detail about what went wrong and how we could prevent it from happening again. Today, we’ve reached an agreement with the FTC to address their concerns. We’ll receive an independent review of our privacy procedures once every two years, and we’ll ask users to give us affirmative consent before we change how we share their personal information. — Official Google blog, An update on Buzz (March 2011)

Prep

The release of 60 new apps that employ Facebook’s “frictionless sharing” has sparked another round of internet debate about the value of the functionality, and the shift to getting users activated on the site’s new Timeline design.


A poll by Sophos suggests many users are unhappy with Timeline and Philip Landau posed the question on the Guardian’s work blog: What if Facebook Timeline was read instead of your CV?


Nick Bradbury blogged about how actually more friction is added to the sharing process, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped 5 billion song plays being shared. Whatever that means.


Facebook are introducing a new, inline privacy setting that allows a user to control who can see their app activity on Facebook. With this setting, people can share their app activity with as large or small an audience as they'd like. … On February 1, 2012, all apps will be enabled for the improved dialog, but those that haven’t fully configured their dialog can disable the setting in the Developer App until February 15, at which time it will be turned on for all apps.


The latest changes which make app permissions in Facebook more prominent … will definitely get brands and marketing types tense, but for once I think users are going to think it's brilliant. Facebook (rightly) get a hard time on privacy so it's good to see them giving more power and control to their users.