Google began releasing a transparency report semiannually in 2010, hoping to “shine a light on how government actions could affect our users,” the company’s public policy blog explains. The latest report, covering January through June 2012, shows a growing number of government requests for user data and content removal.
“This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise,” the post says. “Government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report. In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts.”
A graph accompanies the post, showing a gradual increase in government requests for data with a slight uptick in the last year.
“The number of government requests to remove content from our services was largely flat from 2009 to 2011,” the post continues. “But it’s spiked in this reporting period. In the first half of 2012, there were 1,791 requests from government officials around the world to remove 17,746 pieces of content.”
By comparison, the number for the July-December 2011 period was only 1,048.
“The information we disclose is only an isolated sliver showing how governments interact with the Internet, since for the most part we don’t know what requests are made of other technology or telecommunications companies,” the post states. “But we’re heartened that in the past year, more companies like Dropbox, LinkedIn, Sonic.net and Twitter have begun to share their statistics too. Our hope is that over time, more data will bolster public debate about how we can best keep the Internet free and open.”
Goodbye Facebook, hello Twitter. Tech billionaire Mark Cuban says he’s moving his business away from the top social network to smaller sites because, “it now appears that to extend beyond minimal reach is going to cost brands more money,” Cuban told ReadWrite.
“That’s because in September Facebook changed the algorithm that controls which messages get through to which members,” the article explains. “The result is that some brands a sharp dropoff in the reach of their posts — as much as 50 percent in some cases.”
Facebook says the change was directed at reducing the spam in users’ newsfeeds — not getting more money from brands.
Cuban, however, is unconvinced. “I think this is a reflection of Facebook searching for more revenue since going public and the more it costs to reach followers on Facebook the lower the value to the brand of being on Facebook.”
Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks, and recently Facebook wanted to charge him $3,000 to promote a post to one million of the Mavericks Facebook fans.
“The big negative for Facebook is that we will no longer push for likes or subscribers because we can’t reach them all,” Cuban says. “Why would we invest in extending our Facebook audience size if we have to pay to reach them? That’s crazy.”
Cuban says he won’t be abandoning the social network altogether but wants to reach followers first on other platforms. “In addition to Myspace, Twitter and Tumblr are both ready, willing and able to support brand activation without holding followers hostage for additional revenue.”
“I get that they want to reduce the speed at which news scrolls off of people’s Facebook pages. The more stuff, the less you see; the less you see, the less you engage. All good points by Facebook,” Cuban admits. “But it’s a reflection of overall design and strategy weakness.”
More than one hundred musicians have signed an open letter asking Pandora to stop its support of the Internet Radio Fairness Act, an act that would reduce royalty payments on Internet streaming radio services.
“We are big fans of Pandora. That’s why we helped give the company a discount on rates for the past decade,” the letter begins.
“Why is the company asking Congress once again to step in and gut the royalties that thousands of musicians rely upon?” it continues. “That’s not fair and that’s not how partners work together.”
“Congress has many pressing issues to consider, but this is not one of them. Let’s work this out as partners and continue to bring fans the great musical experience they rightly expect.”
Pandora argues that the act promotes fairness since it brings the royalties in line with those of satellite radio services.
The music industry agrees that the royalties should be in line with each other, it just argues that the satellite services should pay more, like Pandora.
People have long requested a browser-based player from Spotify, and the Swedish company has responded by releasing a beta Web version of the popular streaming music software.
The new version allows people who cannot or do not want to download applications to use Spotify’s immense music library (competitor Rdio has had a Web player for years).
The Web version also allows people to log in to their Spotify account on computers other than their own.
“It’s unclear exactly what technology Spotify has chosen to use for streaming music in its Web player,” writes The Verge.
Spotify uses peer-to-peer technology on its desktop application, and streams directly from Spotify servers for the mobile app.
“The Web player is now live in some regions, and users will receive a Facebook invite when the service is ready,” notes the post.
Google announced a new upgrade to Google TV on Wednesday, which now offers advanced voice control, a new programming guide app and features from Google’s Knowledge Graph.
“The most important new feature of the update, which has internally been called Google TV 3.0, is voice control: Users can trigger channel changes, start apps and fire up the program guide with simple voice commands,” reports GigaOM.
The system is sensitive to context, bringing up Web content, shows or videos as commanded by users. The article also notes that the Google TV voice control is different from that of Microsoft’s Xbox and Samsung’s TV platform.
“The company decided to add the microphone to the remote control to allow users to use both,” explains the article, noting that the “old D-Pad still works great for simple navigation tasks, which can be overly complicated if you want to solve them through voice or gestures.”
The smarts behind Google’s Knowledge Graph also powers the recently launched Google Now app.
“Google Now and the thinking behind it has been a big inspiration for Google TV going forward, [Google TV product lead Rishi Chandra] added, explaining that the goal is to eventually display content in very much the same way that Google Now displays its information cards to its users.”
Google TV 3.0 includes a new programming guide called PrimeTime that gives access to live TV and streaming content, “but shines especially during live TV viewing, when shows on other channels are displayed through topical overlays,” notes the post. “Eventually, the same functionality will exist for YouTube and other on-demand content.”
Earlier this spring, YouTube began testing a feature that embeds links to external sites within videos and advertisements. Right now, the feature forces the video to pause when you click on the links, which is disruptive and similar to using a Walkman versus an iPod.
“This is the Sony Walkman of ecommerce and video,” says Darrell Whitelaw, executive creative director at IPG Media Lab. “The thinking is spot-on, but the execution is just awful.”
YouTube recently teamed up with Juicy Couture for a fashion ad that links directly to the product pages of the clothes seen in the video. Juicy Couture says the technology shows strong ROI potential.
Other brands like Gucci have created similar shoppable videos for YouTube with third-party technology, “but this is the first time an advertising platform the size of YouTube has enabled shoppable videos and video ads,” Fast Company writes. “Advertising creatives say it’s a move that hints at — but doesn’t quite encompass — the future.”
In the coming years, media experts envision shoppable ads that enable consumers to purchase within videos by clicking any product in the video and buying it.
“Every evolution starts with something like this,” Whitelaw says. “I’m not taking away from the quality of it. It’s amazing that someone actually did it and got a client to say yes, let’s jump in and do this new thing. But you still have to look at the fact the next one — that perfect, beautiful experience — that’s going to be the one that gets people to buy.”
Tablets are no longer just a second screen, according to the recently released Q3 Global Video Index report from video analytics group Ooyala.
“Tablets are redefining the way we watch TV, and are often used as the ‘first screen’ people turn to when streaming TV shows, movies and sporting events,” indicates the report.
Ooyala studied 200 million unique viewers from more than 130 countries. The post includes an infographic of the findings, which VentureBeat summarizes:
“Tablet owners spent 71 percent of their total tablet video viewing time watching videos 10 minutes or longer,” while “30 percent of total tablet viewing time was spent watching content over an hour long.”
“The overall share of tablet video viewing grew 90 percent in the past two quarters,” notes the report. “The amount of time users spent watching live video on gaming consoles more than doubled in Q3,” and “Desktop viewers tuned into live video for an average of 40 minutes.”
Additionally, the report found the share of tablet viewing jumped 26 percent after the iPad 3 was released in March. Currently, 29 percent of U.S. adults own a tablet or e-reader compared to the mere 2 percent in 2009.
These numbers are not surprising in light of the many affordable tablets recently launched, such as Google’s updated line of Nexus tablets, Amazon’s new Kindle HD, Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD and the new iPad mini.
“With more tablets hitting the market every day, video publishing and monetization strategies must adapt to this new reality of Tablet TV,” suggests Ooyala.
The Verge writer Dan Seifert spent a few weeks simulating the life of a cord-cutter, ignoring cable television and other forms of entertainment while using Amazon as his only source of entertainment.
He concluded that while Amazon has an extensive array of entertainment options, the offerings are not enough to convince him to permanently switch from cable.
Furthermore, he said that the cost difference actually ends up not being very different from paying for a full slate of cable channels.
Amazon claims to offer 22 million books, movies, TV shows, songs, apps and games, but Seifert notes that options are often limited and Amazon does not offer live events (he missed watching sporting events and presidential debates).
Amazon offers free streaming video for its Prime customers, but “the movies and TV shows available or free to Prime members generally aren’t the latest and greatest blockbusters,” writes Seifert.
He adds that at $79.99 for a yearly subscription or $7.99 monthly Prime is not cheap, but does provide value for frequent Amazon customers.
Internet television is similar to the early days of cable television, according to Dawn Ostroff, head of Conde Nast’s new Entertainment Group.
Current Internet television is largely low budget and caters to niche markets, much like cable television before people fully figured out how to fill the new channels with content.
Ostroff likes the YouTube channels WIGS and AwesomenessTV, which have 17 million and 43 million views respectively, but notes that the production quality is not on par with traditional television.
Internet television could grow as online video advertising is projected to rise from $3 billion to $9 billion by 2017, reports The Verge. As this happens, the length and production quality could rise, according to Ostroff.
“I think ultimately, you will see a lot of this digital content become full-length content,” said Ostroff. “It’s going to stay short for a while, but I think the production quality is going to get better.”
Internet television will need to shift away from niche markets if it wishes to grow, argues Ostroff.
“There will be more focus on more niche shows in order to carve up the audience even further, but I think there will continue to need to be big events,” she said. “You’re never going to be able to get a big audience, a wide audience, by doing niche content.”
Researchers at Norman Security discovered a cyberespionage campaign that targeted Israeli and Palestinian organizations for more than a year, suggesting “cyberspying is a global phenomenon and no longer mostly the domain of massive nation-states like China,” reports Dark Reading.
“The discovery of this latest operation highlights just how popular and easy it has become to execute cyberspying. Thanks to ease of access and use of remote access Trojan (RAT) tools and reliability of social engineering, you don’t need nation-state backing to conduct these types of targeted attacks.”
“RATs traditionally had been associated with Chinese-based attackers, but that conventional wisdom is shifting as other nations and politically motivated attackers move to cyberspying via these tools to more efficiently gather intelligence on their marks,” the article continues.
Norman’s report did not draw conclusions on who was behind the attacks, but confirmed it was the same hacker for both.
“We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg,” says Einar Oftedal, deputy CTO at Norman, referring to the global potential of cyberspying. Oftedal says the attack was not “too advanced.”
“I believe that next year we’ll see more actors from different nations” conducting cyberespionage, says Aviv Raff, CTO of Seculert. “I think such efforts are already in place, and [we] saw that with last year’s attacks. The way I see this is that next year, more of such attacks will be discovered — meaning they are taking place as we speak but go under the radar.”
A new report from BI Intelligence analyzes consumer spending trends on tablets, noting that people purchase items more frequently on tablets than on smartphones.
Bank of America predicts people will spend $67.1 billion through mobile transactions in 2015, according to the report.
Tablets account for seven percent of ecommerce traffic, while smartphones account for only five percent.
Tablet shoppers “spent 50 percent more per order on retail websites than smartphone shoppers — and more unexpectedly, 20 percent more than shoppers on PCs,” notes the report.
“With lower prices, more device options, and emerging market opportunities, tablet sales are set to explode to 450 million annually by 2016. Increased tablet commerce volume will likely come along with it.”
People often use tablets to compare prices, says the report. More than “half of tablet owners used their devices to compare price, product, and store information.” Twenty percent of tablet users say they use their tablets to compare prices every day.
As MP3s became ubiquitous, the music industry failed to “distinguish between average fans and professional pirates, and embittering a whole generation of users,” reports paidContent.
Now with increased popularity of photo-sharing sites, the copyright problem has surfaced in the photo world and one image owner is taking a new tactic to enforce copyrights.
Major image owners like Getty have mimicked the music industry, attacking violators with lawsuits that have become a significant source of revenue.
“The problem is that, in most cases, there’s little connection between the harm and the damages,” the article notes. “When a blog or a small business or a Tumblr user posts a picture, they don’t deprive the owner of thousands of dollars but are simply using an image that could, in most cases, be replaced with many others.”
The Getty argues that simply using the DCMA copyright takedown process does not adequately compensate photographers for the use of their images, but the article suggests it is likely “most of the money Getty collects goes to the company and lawyers, not to the photographers.”
Micro-stock agency Dreamstime has come up with a different approach to dealing with copyright infringements, which is “much more sensible,” the article notes.
“Unlike other image owners, Dreamstime does not sic lawyers on people who like its photos. Instead the company, which claims to have more than 5 million users, responds by sending them a notice to take the image down or else to buy a license at the going rate which can be as low as $8.”
“We want to respond to copyrighted images but we want to do it in a different, non-heavy-handed way,” says CEO Serban Enache. “This is very successful way of turning unauthorized users into customers. Once they learn of the license, they often obtain larger licenses.”
Cloud-gaming services are poised to create a new segment of gaming by allowing gamers to play high-tech games using a simple computer or tablet connected to broadband Internet, writes the Wall Street Journal.
OnLive.com runs the most successful streaming service for gaming. The site has more than 200 titles, some of which are available for free.
People can also buy games that they can have access to for life, or they can rent games for three or five days. Users can also pay $10 a month for unlimited access to select titles.
Other companies are set to break into the industry, including Playcast Media Systems, which hopes to bring games to satellite and cable companies.
Sony bought cloud-gaming company Gaikai to help bolster Sony’s cloud-gaming strategy. Even GamesStop, a video-game retailer, plans to launch a service by the summer, according to WSJ.
The article offers interesting overviews of four titles for cloud gaming: “Sleeping Dogs,” “Civilization V,” “L.A. Noire” and “Limbo.”
“Call of Duty: Black Ops 2” allows players to live-stream their gameplay to YouTube, a feature that could spark a rise in spectator gaming, reports paidContent.
The market for consumer viewed gaming has not been filled since the television show “GamesMaster” went off the air in 1998. But YouTube live streaming could help fill this void.
It is true that “YouTube is chock-full of gamer commentaries,” but “there has long been a technical hurdle — while PC gaming can more easily be screencast, console gamers have needed to route their video output to a PC,” explains the article.
Ustream, Own3d.tv, and eSports Live have supplied some avenues for better live video game viewing, but YouTube has distinct advantages over the other entities.
While hardcore gamers have found ways to make live viewing work, the direct integration into the new “Call of Duty” opens up the opportunity to millions more.
The feature even allows players to play the role of director, “changing camera angles and mic levels and presenting pieces to camera via webcam,” according to paidContent.
Also, by tying video game content directly into YouTube, “Call of Duty” establishes itself on the largest video service on the Internet. There is a good chance YouTube will be on many televisions soon, meaning video game viewing could migrate from computers to televisions as well.
Often overshadowed by Samsung and Apple, HTC is teaming up with Verizon Wireless to offer the Droid DNA, which will be sold for $199 this holiday season.
“The 5-inch phone, which will run Android 4.1, stands out because of its 1080p Super LCD 3 display, which shows 440 pixels per inch, more than any other smartphone in the U.S. market,” writes GigaOM.
“The display also features a wide 80-degree viewing area, can handle blurry action better and is reportedly 50 percent brighter than the Samsung Galaxy S III.”
The Droid DNA will undoubtedly draw attention with its impressive display and quad-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon processor. However, there is some question regarding whether consumers will notice the added clarity and whether the screen will drain the battery.
The Droid DNA will provide 2GB RAM and 16GB of storage, but it will be difficult “to explain why every day consumers will need all that power,” suggests the post.
Other features include wireless charging, an ultra-wide lens for the front-facing 720p camera, Beats Audio profile, two amplifiers for headphones and speakers.
Whether this powerful phone can signal a shift for HTC remains to be seen, but “the phone is beautiful, very sleek and elegant,” GigaOM writes. “It’s a phone that looks good coming out of your pocket and feels good in your hand.”