E Mail that Deletes Itself
August 8, 2009
Short honk: Want to make your email self destruct? Navigate to the Vanish page. A unit of i2 in the UK was exploring this function but the company moved resources elsewhere. Useful for some; not so useful for others.
Stephen Arnold, August 8, 2009
Google Relationship Map
August 3, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Muckety.com and its relationship map of Google. Same Googlers and former Googler whom I track appear on the map; for example, Anna Patterson (University of Illinois Ph.D., developer of Xift, Google inventor, one of the founders of Cuil.com) and the Digg-hyped Marissa Mayer(keeper of the user interface and authority on Internet anonymity).
But there are some omissions. You can click around as I did, and you may be able to nail down Steve Lawrence or Sanjay Ghemawat. Perfect? Nope. Useful. I think it is suggestive in light of IBM’s alleged “invention” of relationship maps discovered by processing data.
For the purposes of comparison, here’s the Cluuz.com map of Ms. Mayer:
I assume IBM’s relationship maps put these two free systems to shame.
Stephen Arnold, August 3, 2009
Bozeman’s Hot Idea
July 16, 2009
I have had several conversations with individuals who have had in the course of their working lives some connection with law enforcement and military intelligence. What I learned was that the Bozeman idea has traction. The “Bozeman idea” is the requirement for city job applicants to provide their social networking details. Among the details requested as part of the job application process was log in details for social networking services.
According to the Montana News Station’s “Bozeman City Job Requirement Raises Privacy Concerns”,
The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person’s “background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records.” “Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.
What I have now learned is that a number of European entities are discussing the Bozeman idea. Early word – unofficial, of course – is that Bozeman has had a Eureka! moment. Monitoring is much easier if one can log in and configure the system to push information to the interested party.
I am on the fence with regard to this matter. Interesting issue.
Stephen Arnold, July 16, 2009
How to Avoid Enterprise Social Network Sin
July 2, 2009
Network World’s “Seven Deadly Sins of Social Networking Security” reminded me of the assurances about the security of social networks for the enterprise. I did not believe their assurances, and after reviewing Bill Brenner’s article, I wonder how long it will be before the hyperbolists accept some grim realities. One of these is that where humans are involved, security is actually up in the air, maybe non existent.
Mr. Bremmer wrote:
By sharing too much about your employer’s intellectual property, you threaten to put it out of business by tipping off a competitor who could then find a way to duplicate the effort or find a way to spoil what they can’t have by hiring a hacker to penetrate the network or by sneaking a spy into the building.
Yep, humans. His two page article runs through a number of actions that individuals can take to button up security loopholes.
My take: social networks in the enterprise can create some exciting situations. He does not dig into the legal and life threatening issues, preferring the more tame world of legal liability. Not me. I think that social networks can create a world of excitement for pharma companies and intelligence professionals. I don’t have an answer. The 20 somethings just point out that I am an old addled goose and the vulnerabilities multiple like gerbils.
The notion of real time search of posted social comments fresh from Intranets is quite interesting, however.
Stephen Arnold, July 1, 2009
Wall Street Journal, Desperate and Ineffectual or Just Clueless
June 29, 2009
I am now receiving one email every hour from the Wall Street Journal. It is now 3 38 pm Eastern time, and I spoke with a customer service representative about my receiving these automated spam messages. The customer service representative took my email address, verified that I am a paid-in-full, real-life subscriber to the print edition of the Wall Street Journal. The customer service representative apologized three times, I explained that if I received additional spam asking me to subscribe I would post another document of record in my Web log and ask my legal eagle to notify the appropriate agencies in New Jersey and Kentucky about this use of my personal email. In my opinion, I am not sure whether this means the WSJ is desperate and ineffectual or just clueless.
So, here’s the contact information for these spam messages:
Can’t read the fine print? Let me reproduce it for you:
The Wall Street Journal
This is a special offer made available only for first time subscribers to The Wall Street Journal. Thereafter, your subscription will be renewed automatically at the then current rate. Other restrictions may apply. Should subscription rates or terms change, the Wall Street Journal Online will notify you in advance. If you would prefer not to receive further commercial messages from the Wall Street Journal Online, please click here and confirm your request. To contact us by mail, send correspondence to: Customer Service Department, the Wall Street journal Online, 4300 Route 1 North, South Brunswick, NJ 08852. Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company. Our records indicate that your email address is opted in to receive this email. etc, etc.
Observations:
- I opted out last week, and the service here told me it took Dow Jones 10 days to stop sending spam.
- I am a subscriber and I use the email address in this Web log for work, not spam from publishers who seem to be a combination of desperate and clueless
- The customer service representative said I would not receive any more emails.
My thought is that when once respected publishers use the tactics of those selling Viagra, colon cleansers, and get rich schemes – there’s serious trouble in Wall Street Journal type outfits.
Watch this Web log for updates from a customer. If an outfit treats a customer to spamfests, imagine what the company will do to mere prospects! I suppose the paper will be gone someday and I should have pity. Unfortunately spam from legitimate companies riles my feathers.
Stephen Arnold, June 29, 2009
Social Networks and Security
June 28, 2009
Short honk: An azure chip consultant took me to task because of my skepticism about the security of social networks in the enterprise. I direct said azure chip consultant to “Study Shows High Vulnerability of Social Networkers”. No study is definitive, but I find the results interesting. One example: “A third of those polled said they include at least three pieces of personally identifiable information in their profiles.” Great for best pals. Not so great for some enterprise tasks.
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2009
Facebook Streams
June 25, 2009
You will want to work through this somewhat disjointed discussion of Facebook in ReadWriteWeb’s “The Day Facebook Changed Forever: Messages to Become Public By Default.” For me the most important point was:
In time, though, people may very well decide they are comfortable with their social networking being public by default. That will be a different world, and today will have been one of the most important days in that new world’s unfolding.
The reason? More content flows to monitor and mine. Goodie. Love those social postings.
Stephen Arnold, June 26, 2009
Text Mining and Predicting Doom
June 23, 2009
The New Scientist does not cover the information retrieval sector. Occasionally the publication runs an article like “Email Patterns Can Predict Impending Doom” which gets into a content processing issue. I quite liked the confluence of three buzz words in today’s ever thrilling milieu: “predict”, “email”, and “doom”. What’s the New Scientist’s angle? The answer is that as tension within an organization increases, communication patterns in email can be discerned via text mining. The article hints that analysis of email is tough with privacy a concern. The article offers a suggestive reference to an email project at Yahoo, but provided few details. With monitoring of real time data flows available to anyone with an Internet connection, message patterns seem to be quite useful to those lucky enough to have the tools need to ferret out the nuggets. Nothing about fuzzification of data, however. Nothing about which vendors are leaders in the space except for the Yahoo and Enron comments. I think there is more to be said on this topic.
Stephen Arnold, June 23, 2009
Data Tables Contain Deleted Data. Yikes. Revelation.
May 21, 2009
it was spies on Facebook. Then it was the LA Times’s spoofed via a year old Prop 8 story. Now – news flash – the issue is privacy on social networking sites. Yikes. What a scoop? Sky News in the UK published “Fears over Privacy on Social Networking Sites” here. The intrepid news hounds at Sky News reported:
Researchers from the University of Cambridge say that many social networking sites maintain copies of user photos even after users delete them.
I wonder if the wizards in the groves of academe figured out that quite a bit of other information and data lurk on these sites. In fact, unless the indexes have been rebuilt, my hunch is that my team could find some interesting stuff not searchable but available to those poking around with forensic savvy.
I am waiting for one of these intrepid reporters to define “delete” and “remove”.
Stephen Arnold, May 22, 2009
Google Health
May 20, 2009
A battle is shaping up among some heavy hitters for digital health services. If you want a useful summary of what Googzilla has been doing, you can click here to read Mark Gibbs’s overview of the service. For me the most interesting comment was:
Google Health provides an API based on a subset of the “Continuity of Care Record” API described as “a standard format for transferring snapshots of a patient’s medical history.” This API allows developers to build software that can create and read consumer’s medical records with sophisticated authorization and access controls.
Not much about search and data mining in the story, however. Keep in mind that Google products and services have search baked in. Google seems to be pursuing a consumer strategy whilst Microsoft is chasing the health enterprise. Lots of exciting coming in this sector. Health information is in the same sorry state as the US health care system. My thought is that it will evolve along the same lines as the US auto and airline industry. That’s a comforting notion, isn’t it?
Stephen Arnold, May 20, 2009
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