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  • mwseven 11:25 pm on October 11, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Netflix: 100% of Streaming Media to be Subtitled by 2014 

    As a result of a 2010 lawsuit brought against Netflix by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), a few days ago Netflix announced that 100% of its programming will be fully subtitled by September 30, 2014, in order to increase ease of access to subscribers who are deaf or hearing-impaired. Previously, NAD claimed (and Netflix denied) that Netflix violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing the option to show content with full closed-captioning.

    The Consent Decree (pdf) can be read here.

    This development is interesting, because it opens the audience of Netflix to a wider range of people, which may experience Netflix’s media in varying ways. For example, a movie renowned for its musical score (e.g. The Sound of Music or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) may lose a great deal of its impact on users who may not be able to fully experience the content, which may be translated into lower ratings for these movies. Clearly, recommendation systems for selecting appropriate movies for Netflix’s subscriber base will require some updating–so that any movie suggestions should be appropriate for the target subscriber.

    How do you think Netflix’s recommendation algorithms should take into consideration an expanded subscriber base that consists of a non-negligible segment of deaf or hearing-impaired users?

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  • mwseven 12:13 am on April 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Spectrum Matters. And Senator Mark Warner, D-VA, will tell you why. 

    http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/why-spectrum-matters/

    A recent opinion piece on the topic of why more efficient use of spectrum in the US is needed really stuck with me. However, this wasn’t a normal opinion piece, with a run-of-the-mill “technical analyst” (who, most of the time, are neither technical nor do they analyze), but Mark Warner, US Senator from Virginia and former co-founder of Nextel, explains in no uncertain terms why the process for licensing spectrum is taking so long to change even though it is universally recognized as immensely important to technological and economic progress.

    He specifically talks about how difficult it is to free up (currently) government-reserved spectrum for commercial use–both in monetary terms (how much it would cost to relocate government services to use other spectrum bands), as well as fairness, as most companies that in spectrum auctions are the very few giants that already dominate the field, leaving virtually nothing for any smaller newcomer. I agree that it is indeed urgent that the United States quickly find a way to reform the distribution of spectrum usage, so that more efficient use can be made of our limited spectrum resources, enabling more and more companies and people to take advantage of these resources for the betterment of society through technological progress. Although this article is a little light on the technical details, but the perspective that it gives is wholly different–the view from the inside of Washington, and the reasons why it cannot move as adroitly as we would wish in loosening up spectrum allocation rules.

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  • mwseven 5:48 pm on March 22, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Congressional Tweeting: The Successes and Failures of Tweeting on Capitol Hill 

    A recent study by the global public relations firm Edelman has found a series of interesting statistics concerning both the US Legislative Branch and the online social microblogging site Twitter. Given the meteoric rise of microblogging and instantaneous feedback social networking, members of the US Congress have begun to establish more and more of an online presence, reflected in the Twitter accounts that they hold. Although the Democratic Party usually has a reputation for being better-informed and more facile with current social media technologies, it is actually the Republican Party that makes the most effective use of such services as defined by the measured metrics of engagement (number of replies to tweets), mentions (number of retweets and twitter handle mentions), amplification (number of retweets of congressional members’ tweets), follower growth, and a proprietary measure of how “trustworthy” each account was.

    Republicans were found to outperform Democrats by tweeting (on average) 30% or more, in addition to smaller gaps in static tweets, replies, and retweets. Republicans were also more likely (52%) to post relevant links and multimedia-rich sites (60%). In addition to this, there was a higher rate of hashtag use by Republicans, followed by a 3.5x (by number of tweets) direct mentions of specific pieces of legislation. another interesting behavioral note is how congressional members tweeted differently from the Northeast (were retweeted by others several times more than any other region), the South (posted the most replies from any other region), the Midwest (posted more frequently and the most multimedia links), and the West (posted more hashtags and posted more retweets than anyone else).

    I found this very interesting, because this really shows how Republicans are making effective use of Twitter and incorporating it into their campaign and legislative apparatuses, and I was surprised by the overall rate of adoption of this technology in Congress, since after the public debacle of SOPA/PIPA in early January, it is hard for most Americans to even consider using the words “Congress” and “effective use of technology” in the same sentence in a positive manner.

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    • Tegar mahendra 9:51 pm on October 20, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      how that contrast with six strike isp policy please american fight it for america abd american are symbols of frredom

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  • mwseven 2:45 pm on March 11, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Privacy of Increasing Concern to Social Media and Internet Search users 

    In two recent surveys by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, privacy concerns about personal information and allowing others free access to your own private details have been having a greater effect on how individuals make use of the internet and social networking applications.

    First, personal information gathered by internet search has been brought to a head by Google’s recent consolidation of all users’ personal information into a single package that is used to track users’ preferences and provide recommendations. 65% of all Americans believe it is a BAD thing for search engines to collect information and use it to provide search results, due to the narrowing of horizons–that search engine behavior may limit the amount and type of information one can find, with only 29% saying more relevant results were (in general) a GOOD thing. Targeted advertising (where ads are directed to specific demographics based on their internet behavior) was also not well-regarded, with 68% expressing disapproval. Overall, however, a majority of users surveyed have expressed their satisfaction with the user experience of search engines up to now (accurate and trustworthy results (77%), fair and unbiased news (66%), etc), but as privacy moves to the forefront of the internet search conversation, it remains to be seen how the disapproval with aggregating user data will impact this.

    http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012/Summary-of-findings.aspx

    Second, privacy is now making more and more of an impact on social networking sites such as Facebook. Facebook’s business model depends on many users forming links with many other users, allowing deeper penetration of ads, news items, etc, but more and more people have been found to actively prune their social networks compared to 2009. For example, 63% of all internet users have deleted friends compared to 56% in 2009, and now over 59% of all social networking users have taken advantage of privacy options to limit their online social profile visibility to the general public.

    (However, it remains to be seen if users have taken to manipulating privacy settings in anticipation of more aggregation policies like Google’s profile aggregation, or if they simply have made mistakes in the past–by posting content on social networks they regret showing to the general public (11% of all SNS users).)

    http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Privacy-management-on-social-media/Summary-of-findings.aspx

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  • mwseven 5:33 pm on March 3, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Smartphone Penetration in the US Market Significantly Up 

    http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Smartphone-Update-2012.aspx

    A recent report by the Pew Internet and American Life project (part of the Pew Research Center) indicated that almost half (46%) of all US adults are smartphone owners as of February 2012, up 11 percentage points from 35% just last year, and overtaking the 41% of US adults that own a non-smartphone cellular phone. The report further breaks down the smartphone survey over various demographic groups, and finds that the largest increases from last year have taken place in virtually all groups (although no decline in smartphone use was recorded amongst any group, some results were not statistically significant, such as the +2% among senior citizens 65+).

    Some of the largest increases were recorded from adults 18-25 (+18%), adults 35-54 (+16%), adults 25-34 (+13%), women (+13%), and geographically rural locations (+13%).

    This is definitely a promising sign for the future of wireless data networks, as more and more people adopt the use of networked devices that enable fast and easy communication, as well as the generation and consumption of data. I especially found it interesting that, from all the demographic groups indicating a major increase in smartphone possession, many people living in rural areas are now choosing to buy and own a smartphone. Traditionally, these areas are the least well-supported by modern communications networks (such as various internet and cellular services), and it is very promising that many people in rural locales are opting for these devices to increase their connectivity to the rest of the world.

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  • mwseven 6:59 pm on February 25, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Influence Quantification: Q&A + Background with Klout CEO 

    Since we recently were talking about influence models, this following article caught my eye.

    http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/23/tech/social-media/klout-joe-fernandez/index.html

    It’s a Q&A session with the CEO of a social media analytics firm known as Klout, which focuses on assigning “online influence scores” based on the degree of connectedness and consistency of online updates, in order to see which public (and private) figures are able to “drive actions online” such as inducing others to visit a website, or view a video clip.

    The importance of being able to measure such a nebulous thing like “influence” is the increased ability to market products, services, and possibly reward programs to targeted individuals or organizations that have higher influence score (http://mashable.com/2012/02/16/klout-gamificaton/), enabling more product information dissemination than otherwise possible. In addition to this, social influence measures are the basis of a “sharing economy” (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/occupy-big-business-the-sharing-economys-quiet-revolution/249582/) where individuals are willing to believe, trust, and interact in trade with other individuals based on their belief that their partner is a reputable source of information, products and services.

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  • mwseven 7:06 pm on February 19, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Android Fragmentation: Soon to be a non-issue? 

    http://www.localytics.com/blog/2012/android-not-as-fragmented-as-many-think/

    Handset market fragmentation is of a big concern to mobile app developers–the need to handle multiple OS versions, coupled with a large variability in device screen size and resolution usually drives all but the most determined or well-funded app makers away from generating apps for a specific OS market.

    This article focuses on why, contrary to accepted mobile app development thinking, the Android app market is not as fragmented as is commonly thought: over all the handsets using some form of Localytics (real-time analytics and data gathering for apps), almost three-quarters use an Android 2.3 variant, and an additional 23% use Android 2.2 “Froyo.” A good plurality (over 40%) use an Android device with a 4.3″ screen size, and the resolution in the sampled Android market was even less fragmented, with over 60% using the standard 800×480.

    This is interesting because these statistics show that, for an Android app programmer, one really only needs to focus on a relatively small number of combinations of OS versions, screen sizes and screen resolutions to really access a good deal of the Android app market–and these numbers will only get better as more and more apps are designed for these specific configurations. Although several competitors currently hold the lead in app ecosystem development (such as Apple, with their centralized control and development of the entire family of i-devices), it looks like Android is quickly catching up with this positive feedback loop, as more people purchase configurations compatible with most apps, and most app developers design for those configurations.

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  • mwseven 6:56 pm on February 12, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Motorola’s 3G patent infringement lawsuit against Apple dismissed 

    On the morning of February 10, 2012, in Mannheim, Germany, Motorola Mobility’s (MMI) patent lawsuit against Apple concerning a patent related to 3G/UMTS has been dismissed, citing insufficient proof.

    Article:

    http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/02/apple-wins-one-3g-patent-dispute-with-motorola-in-germany.ars

    The patent in question concerned the generation of pseudorandom (PN) code sequences for use in the transmission and processing of CDMA signals, and can be read at the link below:

    Patent:

    http://www.google.com/patents/US6246697

    Over the course of the litigation process, MMI did not try to prove that Apple had specifically infringed upon their patented process of generating PN code sequences, but rather argued that -any- implementation of PN code sequence generation in a device inevitably infringed upon MMI’s patent. I found this exceptionally disturbing, because if the court had ruled in Motorola’s favor, MMI would have had free reign to demand licensing fees from any and all carriers and mobile device manufacturers for using PN code sequences for use in CDMA signal processing: giving too great a degree of control over 3G networks worldwide to a single company.

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