October 2012

Digital Lessons From the Final Presidential Debate

So, the final debate has come and gone and all that's left is the spin. After obsessively watching and tracking the debates on Twitter, here are a few quick digital lessons we've learned.

Hop on those trends: no matter how silly, the candidates are willing to do whatever possible to stay inside the social conversation.
Foreign Policy isn't as interesting as Game 7 or Monday Night Football: The conventional wisdom on Twitter was that the foreign policy debate was simply harder for average Americans to get excited about compared to the more tangible domestic issues. The candidates seemed to understand this too, often trying to change the subject in the first half hour of the debate to the economy and issues like education.
When in doubt, declare you've won before it's over: The social world has no real rules and is home to boundless speculation and wild prediction, which means that political campaigns can spin and even perform damage control from their computers well before reporters flood the spin room.

A healthy reminder from Amazon: You don’t buy e-books, you rent them

Sometimes the language we use fails to capture the essence of what we’re doing when we are online, or lulls us into a false sense of security about our behavior and what it means.

For example, we’ve gotten pretty used to the idea that we can “buy” e-books from Amazon: we just click a button and pay with a credit card and there it is on our Kindle. Except that we aren’t really buying it in the traditional sense of the word; we are merely renting it, or paying for access to it under a specific set of circumstances — and a recent incident in which a woman’s account was blocked and all of her books removed without explanation is a healthy reminder of that.

Physician, Steel Thyself for Electronic Records

[Commentary] The electronic medical record, or EMR, is a computerized system that allows physicians to record patient information electronically instead of using paper records. Test results can be reviewed through the system, and prescriptions can be emailed straight to the pharmacy. You can order medical tests and medications worth thousands of dollars with just a few mouse clicks. As stipulated by ObamaCare, Medicare and Medicaid have enthusiastically embraced the concept of a paperless world. Doctors who adopt these programs in a "meaningful" way (more on that later) will be rewarded to the tune of up to $44,000 over five years. For those doctors who say no thanks, reductions in their Medicare payments for service will start in 2015. So, excuse me if, like a teenager transfixed by her smartphone, my eyes are glued to my screen at your next visit with me. I am truly listening to you. It's just that eye contact has no place in the Land of Meaningful Use.

[Dr. Valinoti is an internist in private practice in Bergen County, NJ]

In Des Moines, Turning Off Beacon Unleashes a Storm

A Des Moines television station has turned off the lights on the city's Weather Beacon, igniting a tempest among residents who were raised to look downtown for a forecast.

Late last month, KCCI-TV pulled the plug on the beloved landmark, whose colored lights delivered a daily outlook from atop a 500-foot backup transmitter tower in Iowa's capital city. Now Iowans must turn to their smartphones or televisions for a forecast. Yes, there's an app for that. But for many residents of Des Moines, Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids (MI) and other cities whose weather beacons have helped brighten the skyline for decades, the lights emit more than just nostalgia. A recent inspection revealed the tower no longer met the city's building code, and KCCI, the station that owns it, says the needed repairs are too expensive. Also, the Weather Beacon's original bulbs are no longer made and the painted substitutes required constant attention, the station said in a recent statement.

BBC Episode Examines Its Own Sex Scandal

Seeking to quell a growing uproar over its mishandling and possible cover-up of sexual abuse allegations, the British Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a highly critical examination Monday night of what one insider called the worst crisis in half a century to afflict the BBC, a national institution once viewed as an emblem of ethical probity.

The unusual spectacle of one BBC show broadcasting a hard-edged look at the journalistic integrity of another reflected the sense of crisis across Britain, as journalists, school officials, politicians and others question whether they did enough to stop decades of widely-rumored abuse by Jimmy Savile, a high-profile television personality and disc jockey known also for his philanthropy, who is accused of victimizing some 200 girls. Previous BBC associates of Savile who appeared on the “Panorama” investigative program spoke of their suspicions about him — even of his seeming boasting about what he had done — and of their failure to expose him.

McDonald’s removes networking features in some online games

McDonald’s said it has removed social networking features in some of its online games after a privacy advocacy group complained to federal regulators that the restaurant chain was violating child online privacy laws.

In a complaint filed last August to the Federal Trade Commission, the Center for Digital Democracy said McDonald’s was using a “tell-a-friend” feature on games and other functions of HappyMeal.com and McWorld.com that asked children to upload photos and videos onto the site and then pass along that information to friends. McDonald’s also asked for children to list the e-mail addresses of friends, without gathering parental consent for that information. The practice, CDD said, was a form of deceptive viral marketing that violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. By collecting information such as e-mail addresses, McDonald’s wasn’t adequately disclosing its collection of personal data and didn’t ask for parents’ permission. McDonald’s said in a statement that it has scrapped the “forward-to-a-friend” options that “allowed users to e-mail ecards, links and photos to friends and family.”

Rep Markey grills Microsoft over privacy changes

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) sent a letter to Microsoft requesting detailed information about recent revisions to its policies for handling customer data, saying he is concerned the new privacy rules will allow Microsoft to construct "detailed, in-depth consumer profiles.”

“Such collection may be in Microsoft’s corporate interest, but not necessarily consumers’ interest," he wrote in the letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Rep Markey asked Microsoft to explain why the new policy does not prohibit targeted advertising. Rep Markey asked Microsoft to explain what customer information it shared across its services before the changes and what it is able to now share after the changes. He also requested a list of all the services affected by the revision. He asked whether users will have any way to opt out of the changes and how Microsoft will handle the information of children and teens.

Sequester Would Bring Deep Cuts for IT Vendors

If the sequester is implemented on Jan. 2, government information technology vendors can look forward to a world of pain, including terminated or restructured contracts, a redefinition by government agencies of critical programs, and an increase in disputes, including monetary claims by agencies against contractors, according to Elizabeth Ferrell, a Washington lawyer specializing in federal procurement.

The numbers are stark. The White House Office of Management and Budget is charged with implementing $54.7 billion in non-defense budget cuts for fiscal year 2013 in the event Congress does not find a way to stave off sequestration. "All agencies are planning," she said, "but they're planning behind closed doors and they're not telling people." Government contractors, Ferrell said, are "frustrated at the lack of detailed information on how sequestration will be implemented." Her advice for tech companies doing business with the government is to determine the status of their funding. Projects that are fully funded won't be clawed back under sequestration, but just about everything else that isn't funded or protected as exempt, like Veterans Affairs' programs, will face drastic cuts as agencies squeeze 8.2 percent in annualized funding reductions into three fiscal quarters.

Government Printing Office Looks to Digital First Future

The Government Printing Office’s future lies in offering permanent and secure access to online content and producing paper copies only in rare circumstances, according to the agency’s five-year strategic plan.

97 percent of government documents are now “born digital,” meant for a life on the Web rather than piled on a shelf or filed in a binder. As a result, GPO said, its future plans will focus on making government content more easily available online through e-books, mobile-optimized websites and application programming interfaces that stream content onto third-party websites.

Why We Need a President Debate on Technology

Technology is everywhere in the president’s responsibilities. Demonstrating that the president has a comprehensive understanding of technology plus a mature view of its capacities, limitations and dangers should be central to the electoral process. Unfortunately, as with so much other heavy policy, technology is largely left out of the political debate. Here are three reasons why there should be a presidential debate on technology.

Cyberwar is war.
What the Supreme Court will really be dealing with: whether advertisers, Web browsers and Internet service providers can troll your email and search history for personal information, whether and when law enforcement and debt collectors can access that information and whether law enforcement can use the GPS in your cellphone to track you and gather evidence of wrongdoing.
Transparency and free speech are different in the Internet age.

Benton

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