Archive for September, 2013|Monthly archive page

Mozilla Opens Up On Cookie-Blocking, Ad Targeting

Mozilla Opens Up On Cookie-Blocking, Ad Targeting.

An interesting interview. A key section:

<quote>

There is a lot of concern among advertisers about the criteria you’re using for the CookieClearinghouse and the cookie-blocking patch. Are you seeking input from advertisers on these projects?

DDT: We’re meeting with publishers, advertisers and exchanges. We need to understand what their concerns are so we can figure out if there is a way to get to an agreement here… We’re never going to please everyone but we’d like to get to a place where there’s an undersanding of what we’re doing. We’re not doing this to mess up businesses but to give the user a voice.

BE: One of the options is already the DAA opt-out and we’re always carrying the torch for Do-Not-Track as an individual user’s expression of “don’t track me.” We think that DNT as an idea matches our mission. It’s about serving people above all agendas.

If someone says I don’t want to be tracked, they send that signal out to websites and we would like integrations not to set third-party cookies. DNT has been adopted by around 17% in the US and 11% globally and we’ve heard from some players who say they would comply with it if it were just a tracking preference.  They would lose about 20% of their audience but they could live with that.

The trick is getting that individual expression to be unadulterated and not automatically set, for example by Microsoft which started pre-setting it in Internet Explorer.”

</quote>

I’m fascinated by this significant shift in the characterization of the modern consumer as liberal person–one ostentatiously divorced from need alone and poised to consume on the basis of desire. Let’s start from the window shopper born in the late 19th c. to the post-WW2 pre-fab suburbanite to the post-’68 me generation infinite consumer to the present obese consumer. The thread has been always one in which the advert subverts better judgement or “will”–at least, until now. We want and the often buy that thing not because it is something we need (laugh) or even really will use fully (sigh), but because “we” enjoy the pleasure (or relief) of acting on the desire, regardless of the actual “origin” of the desire. (I tend to think that origin derives from the mirror logic described initially by Girard and then made a lot more sophisticated and compelling by Borch-Jacobsen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikkel_Borch-Jacobsen_. In a sense, desire is a kind of identity.)

Putting aside the politics of choosing, and the critique of “choice” as something equally possible and significant for all, regardless of class and situation, the idea that we, as implicitly rich consumers, not only can, but would want to limit the field of desirable things offered us, is something that has been developing for a couple of years now and which is reaching an interesting point of visibility.

It’s not a new idea–few things are–but it’s prominence in this area is perhaps novel. In fact, the idea, that we can, and indeed, would want, to contract for our desire, is one that’s been figured in bondage writing more or less since its inception. In _Venus in Furs_, as with other Naturalist work, the object of desire is the contract that the protagonist engages in to sell him- and, in other works, herself. 

Which is not to say I object to Mozilla’s intervention. Hardly: I like it. And I tend to believe that the more things are made available for visible examination, the better, not because we can necessarily make wise judgements on their value, but because we at least are given the opportunity to understand those elements constituting us.

Why you Probably Don’t Need an API Strategy

Why you Probably Don’t Need an API Strategy.

 

The point of the article, “In pursuing that route, most companies should not be discussing their “API Strategy,” they should be talking about their API as a tactic in support of their broader business strategy and objectives,” I tend to agree with. Strategy, for me, focuses on the making or distribution of a product. In open source, that dyad is implicitly involves the constitution of a collaborative network, a community. Constituting such a community is a strategy because it comes into being, as as such, in a milieu of contestation and competition. 

Technology Trumps Dogma, And Other Open Source Insights – ReadWrite

Technology Trumps Dogma, And Other Open Source Insights – ReadWrite.

Dropbox…opening my docs? | wncinfosec

Dropbox…opening my docs? | wncinfosec.

The opened docs were .doc files and the user agent was–actually a surprise!–LibreOffice. I’m no fan of LibreOffice but do appreciate the community it has gathered, and I can’t believe that the actual community is involved in this interesting behaviour. What gives? I mean, with Dropbox. I can imagine that it could have to do with translating .doc files to .odt for save in space, and that the conversion would be neutral. But in that case, wouldn’t it be in Dropbox’s interest to do what Google does and make any such conversion clear, if that is indeed what is occurring?

Microsoft now offers Office 365 for free through its nonprofits program – The Next Web

Microsoft now offers Office 365 for free through its nonprofits program – The Next Web.

 

I wonder how successful this will be. Honestly, I hope that it does help out nonprofits, but really, I think that the main issue is not the immediacy of being able to create (and edit) “office” documents but being able to work on those that were created by others or by oneself in the past. And it is also very important how an application presents itself–as a source of ad hoc adjustment, as a vehicle for ecosystem development, as an interface for those billions who have not been raised using qwerty and writing commands.

And how well will this offer work with the large embrace of mobile devices?

Fantástico – NSA Documents Show United States Spied Brazilian Oil Giant

Fantástico – NSA Documents Show United States Spied Brazilian Oil Giant.

 

Glynn Moody’s article summarising the _GLobo_ article cited here alerted me (and others) to the importance of the news. As I see it, the issue is the further erosion of trust in the Web itself that for the last 20 years has been touted as the next great market field. And which depends, for its success as a commercial field, on trust: that of consumers, that of vendors, in systems allowing secure transfers of credit.

NSA Revelations Cast Doubt on the Entire Tech Industry | Threat Level | Wired.com

NSA Revelations Cast Doubt on the Entire Tech Industry | Threat Level | Wired.com.

But the doubt is still there. And that’s the problem.”

New computer program analyses Twitter to map public sentiment | Technology | theguardian.com

New computer program analyses Twitter to map public sentiment | Technology | theguardian.com.

The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back | Bruce Schneier | Comment is free | The Guardian

The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back | Bruce Schneier | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Is Schneier being provoking or issuing a necessary alert? And: What is the effect on your business and your life of the revelations? What has changed?

Can Rupert Murdoch hold on to Kara Swisher? | Felix Salmon

Can Rupert Murdoch hold on to Kara Swisher? | Felix Salmon.

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