June 6th 2008
Israeli surveillance software is being used on US billboards to gauge who is looking at an advertisement and customize its content. The billboards provide analytics on the number of ad viewers, the duration of views, and (perhaps most worrying) viewer demographics.
June 4th 2008
Inspired by the hideous and tacky mascots of the Beijing Olympics, the Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau in Shenzhen and the Beijing Police have adopted animated, noseless “censor-mascots” of their own, Jingjing and Chacha. Note the play on words: jing cha means “police” in Chinese. Even as Chinese citizens use the Internet […]
June 3rd 2008
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is considering blocking Facebook, the popular social networking site used in April to mobilize 80,000 supporters to protest rising food prices. As described in earlier postings, Facebook has been used around the world to coordinated even larger protests. Blogger Kareem el-Beheiri, who covered and promoted the protest was imprisioned for 73 . See […]
June 3rd 2008
Its kind of the opposite of, “do unto others”. When Universal Music lost an infringement case to Bridgeport Music, it did an unexpected thing. It apparently made a successful case that punitive damages tacked on to statutory damages are unconstitutional. As a plaintiff, Universal has argued in other cases for very high fines. It is, […]
June 2nd 2008
As reported back in November, the State of New York is now requiring e-commerce sites “doing business in the state” to collect sales tax. New Yorkers were previously required to pay sales tax, but previous court rulings had exempted out of state sites from being required to collect that tax, unless they had sufficient manpower […]
June 2nd 2008
Viacom recently amended it $1 Billion lawsuit against YouTube (Google) for copyright infringement which it filed last year. Google claims that Viacom is trying to overturn precedent by making carriers and hosting providers liable for what their users post or transmit. Viacom claims it has found over 150,000 instances of copyright infringing material on YouTube, […]
May 30th 2008
If a group of kids can control hundreds of millions of machines for sending spam, shouldn’t security experts with billions of dollars from the NSA, MI6, or CSEC be tempted to do the same? Why wait to try to catch data to going over the wires when botnet programs could let agents review the data […]
May 28th 2008
The Federal Trade Commission has issued new provisions under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. These are additional definitions and adjustments to rules, and do not significantly extend these anti-spam regulations for most marketers. The new provisions address the following main themes:
May 27th 2008
Boing Boing has a linking policy: “After years of making fun of ‘linking policies’ that set out the terms under which a website can be linked to, BoingBoing has decided to create a linking policy of our own. Here it is — now, abide by it!
May 24th 2008
I’m struck by the visible and creative use of the Internet by people in China responding to the Sichuan earthquake. Then again, so are Western technophiles, who seem overheated about how their favorite application was used in response to this disaster. Rather than attempt to synthesize something that’s as yet unfinished, I’d like to share […]
The future of digital experiences will be built by strategists who grasp the full array of emerging business, social, and technical models. Specialties in user experience, branding, application design, and data science are laying the foundation for richer user experiences and business models breakthrough products and revenue based marketing.
UsefulArts is a soapbox to discuss the front line of digital experience, and the agencies and platforms that enable it. Digital business needs a cadre of leaders who can connect c-level enterprise thinking with the ways these new interaction models can help organizations to matter more to their most important stakeholders.