This has to be a first.
I’m sure most of you have at least seen the headlines by now: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been accused of engaging the services of a pricey prostitute service multiple times over the past year. More or less incriminating himself, Spitzer has announced his plans to resign effective this Monday.
More and more details have emerged from the ether over the past few days about the scandal, and tonight the New York Times revealed the identity of “Kristen” — the prostitute cited in the affidavit that mentioned Spitzer — to be 22-year-old Ashley Alexandra Dupré. There are three main sources used for the article: 1) a confirmation from someone “familiar” with the prostitution operation that Kristen and Dupré are one and the same person; 2) interviews with both Dupré and her mother; and 3) Dupré’s MySpace page.
Yes, that’s right. For a feature article that will no doubt be on the front page of the print edition tomorrow morning, the New York Times editors have allowed extensive quotations from a social networking profile. All three photos from the article were photos uploaded by Dupré to her MySpace page. There is a prominent link to her profile from the article. The journalists cite some of her listed musical influences, and even quote lyrics from some of the music that Dupré has recorded and uploaded.
Continue reading ‘Watch What You Put Online… Even If You’re A Prostitute’
It’s been a long time coming and has a ways to go still, but Google Health is on the way.
Google confirmed last week that it is testing this new product (click here for a screen shot) with the Cleveland Clinic, followed by another update on Thursday by Google VP (and total babe, btw) Marissa Mayer:
One of the most exciting and innovative parts of Google Health is our platform strategy. We’re assembling a directory of third-party services that interoperate with Google Health. Right now, this means you’ll be able to automatically import information such as your doctors’ records, your prescription history, and your test results into Google Health in order to easily access and and control your data. Later, this platform strategy will mean that you will be able to interact with services and tools easily, and will be able to do things like schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and start using new wellness tools.
Meyer assures us that Google is emphasizing privacy, security, and user control in its Health offering. But as Nick Carr points out, Meyer is careful to leave open a future loophole. “We won’t sell or share your data without your explicit permission,” she says (with my emphasis). Hmm.
Google Health is sure to be a useful product, but there is certainly a risk in putting your most private of information in a third party’s hands. When it is released, would you consider using Google Health?
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user j.reed.
The Story
Mashable reports that Google introduced an “invisibility” feature into its Gmail version of Google Talk over the weekend. I am very much against this type of feature, and am disappointed that Google has chosen to implement it.
If you’ve used AOL Instant Messenger (or its Microsoft and Yahoo! competitors), you’ll be familiar with the invisibility option: while you are able to see which of your contacts are online and even initiate conversations with them, it appears to them as if you’re offline.
The Argument
Instant messaging is a form of social networking. By choosing to become invisible, you’ve chosen to selectively participate in your social network. You have elected to receive all the benefits while experiencing none of the risks or costs. I believe that this goes against the very social nature of the whole social networking phenomenon.
Continue reading ‘Invisibility: A Violation of the Social (Networking) Contract?’
Which one’s the terrorist?
Nick Carr blogs today about concern shown by American intelligence authorities about the security vulnerabilities of increasingly popular virtual worlds such as Second Life. He cites this Washington Post article, which in turn quotes from a newly-issued paper from the “Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity”:
“Unfortunately, what started out as a benign environment where people would congregate to share information or explore fantasy worlds is now offering the opportunity for religious/political extremists to recruit, rehearse, transfer money, and ultimately engage in information warfare or worse with impunity.”
The article goes on to note that the CIA has already set up shop on some “private islands” in Second Life for “meetings and training.” And then there’s this:
Virtual worlds could also become an actual battlefield. The intelligence community has begun contemplating how to use Second Life and other such communities as platforms for cyber weapons that could be used against terrorists or enemies, intelligence officials said. One analyst suggested beginning tests with so-called teams of cyber warfare experts.
As Keanu Reeves would say: “Whoa.”
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Pathfinder Linden.
A few days ago I wrote about the data portability debate sparked by the deactivation of Robert Scoble’s Facebook account following his attempt to siphon his social graph data out of that service. Well, now Duncan Riley at TechCrunch and Steve O’Hear at ZDNet are breaking the news that Facebook (along with Google and Plaxo) have joined the DataPortability Workgroup. Riley reports:
The DataPortability Workgroup is actively working to create the ‘DataPortability Reference Design’ to document the best practices for integrating existing open standards and protocols for maximum interoperability (and here’s the key area) to allow users to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems.
Riley congratulates Google and Facebook, but O’Hear is less optimistic:
Call me cynical, but while I welcome this move [...], I remain skeptical of how quickly users will actually see real-world benefits from Google and Facebook’s membership.
Whether there will be an immediate change in the services or not, this is a big step towards unlocking the social graph.
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