Material Covered: CES 2008
Photos at: http://gallery.mac.com/svolkow#100235&bgcolor=black&view=grid
News Items and Issues Discussed
Donna brought up Facebook's controversial BEACON feature which announces behaviors to your network. There was an anecdotes regarding the purchase of a diamond ring which was not longer a surprise to the intended recipient. This raises the whole question of privacy and who much personal/behavorial/clickstream data are users willing to share with each other and advertisers. Bill mentioned that some sites have a policy of keeping data for up to 7 years. A similar controversy erupted when Google revealed that it was "reading" gmails in order to display relevant ads. The outcry blew over in a few months and now Gmail users don't seem to worry about it.
Tivo records almost every click of the remote and it's a good bet that many of our favorite sites including Google, Amazon, YouTube, Rhapsody, Last.fm and Netflix, store extensive user data which is used for ad targeting and personalization. Allegedly the data is held anonymously so advertisers can't see actual IDs.
Stefan defended the newest Apple notebook PC the AIR as excellent for portability. Others thought it might be too stripped down.
Jeff discussed Wal-Mart's shuttering of its download store. Might they have ceded the digital download biz to the likes of Amazon Unbox and iTunes? Rival Target launched a "Digital Partners Program with a DRM free John Legend Album of 19 tracks for $9.99. The experiments will continue no doubt.
The CES presentation stimulated good questions about "Fair Use", compression, HDTV/Digital TV and the viability of IPTV business models which all foreshadow class sessions to come.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
UCLA 405.23 Class #2, 16 January
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