Twitter (for iPhone)

Despite recent user uproar over the loss of Instagram images displaying on Twitter (photos posted via Instagram now open in a separate window), Twitter remains one of the most active and attractive social networks. And the mobile experience is key to its success. The official Twitter iPhone app (free) balances simplicity with essential features, such as the ability to maintain more than one account from the app, well enough to keep it relevant among contenders. It also doesn't hurt that Twitter purchased its main competitor TweetDeck thus preventing that app from outpacing its own.

Stability and reliability also count for something, and, while Twitter delivers well enough on both counts, it's still far from perfect on either?that's a big reason we've scored Twitter a four out of five stars. Drafted tweets sometimes hang in the ether until you delete them and start afresh. The site goes down from time to time. But, all in all, the app loads and refreshes quickly and smoothly, particularly on Apple's Phone 5, with the help of that amazing little A6 processor.

Professional social media-ites, however, continue to load their smartphones with a social aggregator app, such as Hootsuite (free, 4 stars) or Seesmic, a one-stop-shop for keeping pace with not just multiple Twitter accounts, but multiple accounts across various social networks.

Design and New Features
A clean user experience and smart design put the Twitter iPhone app in the big leagues. In the early days of Twitter, its own apps weren't as competitive and feature-rich as those third parties built for the 140-character network. The iPhone app was Twitter's first mobile version to fully mature, and after five major iterations (this review looks at version 5.2) the official Twitter-branded app is the way to go for many users. Best of all, if you don't have a Twitter account and aren't interested in joining, you can still use the app to search and read the site.

No Account and Multi-Account Features
After downloading and installing the Twitter app from the iTunes Store, you can start using the app immediately, even before you authenticate an account. The app mimics Twitter's website by allowing even non-members to search and read the site, a token feature that will surely win over lurkers far and wide.

More likely than not, though, if you're downloading the app, you do have a Twitter user name and password, and perhaps more than one. Sign in with one of them to start. To add more accounts, you first have to be logged in?then tap the options button (three circles at bottom right), select Accounts & Settings, and use the plus sign at the top right to add more accounts). After you've set up all your accounts, you can toggle between them using the Accounts button. Switching among accounts is easy, fast, and efficient.

Design and Photo Effects
Rather than bombard your eyes with a cacophony of color, the Twitter app sticks to a more sophisticated color scheme of black and white, reserving muted shades of digital bluebird blue for the top spanner only. It looks practical without being too serious, a simple design that takes into consideration the growing number of business users and content on the site. The app's look is sharp enough to still be appealing to people who use Twitter for personal or casual reasons, too.

A nice touch on the interactive side: Double-tapping the home icon at the lower left forces the window to scroll back to the top automatically, which means less finger flicking for users.

The newest feature, photo filters, mimics the basic functionality of photo-sharing site Instagram to a large extent, and it's only available on Twitter's mobile apps, not the website. Snap a photo using your iPhone, and Twitter offers dramatic filter effects, cropping and resizing tools, and an auto-enhance button.

Twitter has eight photo effects in all: vignette, black and white, warm, cool, vintage, cinematic, happy, and gritty. A ninth option in the interface is "No Filter," which I'm going to say doesn't count. You can see all the photo filters applied to the same image in a grid, helping you decide which one is best among your choices, which is quite different from the Instagram experience in which you swipe through previews but can't see side-by-side comparisons. Twitter also does offer the ability to page through the images one by one in a slideshow, if you prefer (I don't).

Drafts
Each account has its own options panel, where you can access your profile, account settings, user lists that you follow, favorite tweets, and drafts of tweets that haven't been sent yet. Drafts would be one of my favorite features of the Twitter app, except that it's slightly confusing when you look at the options that are available.

It seems as if you can enter the draft area and write a message (pen-on-paper icon) to save as a draft. But once you compose your message, the options are "send" or "cancel." There's no "save as a draft" immediately apparent; there is an option to "save as draft" if you select cancel, but I hate that it's not where I expect it to be. If you select send, the message goes live immediately. Tweets also save as drafts when the site goes down or you have connectivity problems. But in my experience, these drafts can sometimes hang in limbo for eternity, never posting no matter how long I wait after regaining service. All that's left to do is copy the text, delete the original message, and paste the content into a new tweet.

Twitter's iPhone app doesn't have the ability to schedule tweets to post at another date and time, a highly desired feature. Social media power users who need this feature can find it in an aggregation app, like Hootsuite and Seesmic.

The Twitter-Branded App
The official Twitter app for iPhone is a well-established and reliable app for the site, and it will be the one I continue to use for my Twitter account. It loads and refreshes quickly, seldom crashes, and covers the essential things a non-professional tweeter would want to do on Twitter from an iPhone, like post photos and receive notifications of new @ messages. It's not flooded with features, as some of the aggregator apps are, but balances goodies with functionality well for a mobile app.

The Twitter app for iPhone is ideal for average or casual Twitter users, but for handling accounts across multiple social media sites?such as Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and the rest?aggregator tools like Hootsuite and Seesmic are still more efficient. Professional tweeters should stick with those apps.

More iPhone App Reviews:
??? MapQuest (for iPhone)
??? Waze (for iPhone)
??? TripRider (for iPhone)
??? Twitter (for iPhone)
??? Flickr (for iPhone)
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/ViEtsAxGm4A/0,2817,2391634,00.asp

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Google Pledges To Restore In-Browser Maps Access To Deprived Windows Phone Users

Rejoice, Windows Phone users: your daylong Google Maps crisis will soon be over. After causing quite a kerfuffle the other day by effectively blocking Windows Phone users from accessing Google Maps in-browser, Google has released a statement (obtained by The Next Web) clarifying its rationale and promising that it would soon fix the issue.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/L-BMJ1pHFtE/

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Bill Kristol has competition for dumbest piece of shit to ever walk the earth (Unqualified Offerings)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

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India gang-rape victim's friend recounts attack

School children and staff watch a self defense training program at a school in Mumbai, India, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013. An attack on a 23-year-old woman, who died of severe internal injuries over the weekend, has provoked a fierce debate across India about the routine mistreatment of women and triggered daily protests demanding action. Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde announced a special recruitment drive for women police officers Thursday and ordered every police station in the capital to be staffed by at least nine female officers to make them more attentive to women's needs. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

School children and staff watch a self defense training program at a school in Mumbai, India, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013. An attack on a 23-year-old woman, who died of severe internal injuries over the weekend, has provoked a fierce debate across India about the routine mistreatment of women and triggered daily protests demanding action. Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde announced a special recruitment drive for women police officers Thursday and ordered every police station in the capital to be staffed by at least nine female officers to make them more attentive to women's needs. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

A young boy participates in a candlelight vigil protesting against a leader of the ruling Congress party on accusations he raped a woman in a village in the early hours of the morning, in Gauhati, India, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013. Footage on Indian television showed the extraordinary scene of local women surrounding Bikram Singh Brahma, ripping off his shirt and repeatedly slapping him across the face. A Dec. 16 gang rape on a woman, who later died of her injuries, has caused outrage across India, sparking protests and demands for tough new rape laws, better police protection for women and a sustained campaign to change society's views about women. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Indians participate in a candlelight vigil protesting against a leader of the ruling Congress party on accusations he raped a woman in a village in the early hours of the morning, in Gauhati, India, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013. Footage on Indian television showed the extraordinary scene of local women surrounding Bikram Singh Brahma, ripping off his shirt and repeatedly slapping him across the face. A Dec. 16 gang rape on a woman, who later died of her injuries, has caused outrage across India, sparking protests and demands for tough new rape laws, better police protection for women and a sustained campaign to change society's views about women. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Indians participate in a candlelight vigil protesting against a leader of the ruling Congress party on accusations he raped a woman in a village in the early hours of the morning, in Gauhati, India, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013. Footage on Indian television showed the extraordinary scene of local women surrounding Bikram Singh Brahma, ripping off his shirt and repeatedly slapping him across the face. A Dec. 16 gang rape on a woman, who later died of her injuries, has caused outrage across India, sparking protests and demands for tough new rape laws, better police protection for women and a sustained campaign to change society's views about women. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

NEW DELHI (AP) ? The suffering of a university student and her male friend who were brutally attacked aboard a bus in India's capital did not end after the woman was gang-raped and both were savagely beaten for 2 1/2 hours. Dumped naked on a roadside, the pair encountered shocking apathy as passersby offered only cursory looks and police debated jurisdiction for 30 minutes before taking them to a hospital, where the man received no treatment as he sat without clothes on the floor for hours, the friend recounted in a television interview.

The interview Friday marked the first time the man, who has not been named, has spoken publicly about the Dec. 16 attack in New Delhi.

The attack has outraged Indians and led to calls for tougher rape laws and reforms of a police culture that often blames rape victims and refuses to file charges against accused attackers. The nation's top law enforcement official said the country needs to crack down on crimes against women with "an iron hand."

The 23-year-old woman died last weekend from massive internal injuries suffered during the attack. Authorities charged five men with her murder and rape and were holding a sixth suspect believed to be a juvenile. A hearing in the case was scheduled for Saturday.

On the night of the attack, the woman and her companion had just finished watching the movie "Life of Pi" at an upscale mall and were looking for a ride home. An autorickshaw driver declined to take them, so they boarded the private bus with the six assailants inside, the companion told the Indian network Zee TV.

Authorities have not named the man because of the sensitivity of the case. Zee TV also declined to give his name, although it did show his face during the interview. The man has a broken leg and was sitting in a wheelchair during the interview.

After a while, the men on the bus starting harassing and attacking the pair, he said.

"I gave a tough fight to three of them. I punched them hard. But then two others hit me with an iron rod," he said. The woman tried to call the police using her mobile phone, but the men took it away from her, he said. They then took her to the rear seats of the bus and raped her.

"The attack was so brutal I can't even tell you ... even animals don't behave like that," the man said.

Afterward, he overheard some of the attackers saying the woman was dead, he said.

The men then dumped their bleeding and naked bodies under an overpass. The woman's companion waved to passersby on bikes, in autorickshaws and in cars for help, but no one stopped. "They slowed down, looked at our naked bodies and left," he said.

"My friend was grievously injured and bleeding profusely," he said. "Cars, autos and bikes slowed down and sped away. I kept waving for help. The ones who stopped stared at us, discussing what could have happened. Nobody did anything."

After about 20 minutes, three police vans arrived, but the officers argued over who had jurisdiction over the crime as the man pleaded for clothes and an ambulance, he said.

Finally, he said, they were taken to a hospital.

"When we reached the hospital, I sat without clothes on the floor for a long time even as my friend was taken inside for treatment," he said.

The man said he was given no medical care. He then spent four days at the police station helping police investigate the crime. He said he visited his friend in the hospital, told her the attackers were arrested and promised to fight for her.

He said his friend was determined to see that the attackers were punished. "She gave all details of the crime to the magistrate ? things we can't even talk about," he said. "She told me that the culprits should be burnt alive."

The man said he gave the TV interview because he hopes it will encourage rape victims to come forward and speak about their ordeals without shame.

"She has awakened us all by her courage," he said of his friend, who died at a Singapore hospital after being flown there for treatment. "People should move ahead in the struggle to prevent a similar crime happening again as a tribute to her."

Most people in India are reluctant to get involved in police business because once they become witnesses, they can be dragged into legal cases that can go on for years. Also, Indian police are often seen less as protectors and more as harassers.

On Friday, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said crimes against women and marginalized sections of society are increasing, and it is the government's responsibility to stop them.

"This needs to be curbed by an iron hand," he told a conference of state officials from across India that was called to discuss how to protect women.

He called for changes in the law and the way police investigate cases so justice can be swiftly delivered. Many rape cases are bogged down in India's overburdened and sluggish court system for years.

"We need a reappraisal of the entire system," he said.

In the wake of the rape, several petitioners appealed to the Supreme Court to take an active role in the issue of women's safety.

On Friday, the court dismissed a petition asking it to suspend Indian lawmakers accused of crimes against women, saying it doesn't have jurisdiction, according to the Press Trust of India. The Association for Democratic Reforms, an organization that tracks officials' criminal records, said six state lawmakers are facing rape prosecutions and two national parliamentarians are facing charges of crimes against women that fall short of rape.

However, the court did agree to look into the widespread creation of more fast-track courts for accused rapists across the country.

___

Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgT99obFvvw

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-01-04-India-Gang%20Rape/id-19f13517263b49e4ab49ba97e88f4866

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Oil slips on stimulus concerns, ample supplies

NEW YORK (AP) ? The price of oil fell Friday as investors weighed the possibility that the Federal Reserve might end its extraordinary economic stimulus measures later this year and the nation's crude supplies remained more than ample.

Benchmark crude for February delivery fell 39 cents to $92.53 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The Labor Department reported U.S. employers added 155,000 jobs in December, a steady gain that shows hiring held up during the tense negotiations to resolve the fiscal cliff. The solid job growth wasn't enough to push down the unemployment rate, however, which remained at 7.8 percent last month.

Also, the Institute for Supply Management said U.S. service firms' activity expanded in December by the most in nearly a year, driven by a jump in new orders and hiring. The index measures growth in industries that cover 90 percent of the workforce, including retail, construction, health care and financial services.

The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration on Friday reported a much bigger drop in the nation's crude supplies than analysts expected. Supplies fell by 11.1 million barrels or 3 percent. Analysts expected a drop of just a million barrels.

Oil supplies shrank as crude imports fell off by almost a million barrels a day last week. At the same time, supplies at the crucial hub for domestic crude at Cushing, Okla., stayed at near-record levels. Overall U.S. crude inventories are about 9 percent above year-ago levels.

Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, was down $1.22 to $110.92 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

In other energy futures trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange:

? Wholesale gasoline lost 5 cents to $2.75 a gallon.

? Heating oil fell 2 cents to $3 a gallon.

? Natural gas rose 5 cents to $3.27 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-01-04-Oil%20Prices/id-647510517a4147299e605dc64e86a722

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Fewer Manatee Deaths in 2012, but Threats Remain

Unlike a lot of other endangered species, the Florida manatee didn?t have all that bad a year in 2012. Only 392 manatees were found dead in Florida last year (pdf), according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. This figure is a drop from 453 in 2011 (pdf) and well below the record high of 766 in 2010 (pdf). Florida has been tracking manatee deaths since 1974, when the population was maybe 20 percent what it is today and the state recorded just seven fatalities. Numbers of both manatees and fatalities steadily rose through the ensuing decades; last year?s deaths are slightly below the annual average for this century. Today an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 manatees currently swim in the waters around Florida and, more rarely, surrounding states.

Florida?s manatees are a subspecies of the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus) and have been federally protected since 1967, predating the Endangered Species Act. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the subspecies (T. m. latirostris) as ?endangered,? citing a population of fewer than 2,500 mature individuals and predicted declines of at least 20 percent over the next 40 years due to changes in habitat and increased boat traffic.

Watercraft tend to be the most frequent killers of manatees?81 confirmed deaths in 2012, although most manatees bear the scars of nonfatal boat strikes. Stress from colder waters is the second-highest cause of manatee death?78 confirmed cases in 2012. As I wrote in 2010, coastal development in southern Florida has destroyed their native habitats, pushing many of the gentle giants farther north where they are more likely to die of hypothermia when seasonal temperatures drop below 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit). (More than 25 percent of the fatalities in 2012 were from undetermined causes.)

Although manatees suffered fewer than average deaths in 2012, the coming weeks could make for a rough start to 2013. On January 3 the Broward County Natural Resources Planning and Management Division warned boaters that twice as many manatees as usual are in the region this month, many of them near the warm-water discharge of a Fort Lauderdale power plant. Broward is one of Florida?s southernmost and most populous counties. Boaters there, as in many other areas of the state, must maintain slower speeds in posted manatee zones, which the division credits with keeping manatee deaths low in the county. (In fact, only three manatees were reported killed by watercraft in Broward in 2012, compared with 19 in Lee County on the opposite side of the state, where another unusually large gathering of the animals in search of warm water has amassed in a canal in Cape Coral.)

Cold water and boaters aren?t the only threats. Manatees also have a very low genetic diversity, which could leave them vulnerable to inbreeding problems or disease outbreak, according to a study released last month by researchers from the University of Florida and the U.S. Geological Survey. Luckily, the animals do not show any current signs of inbreeding.

And then there?s politics. In December a libertarian organization, the Pacific Legal Foundation, petitioned the federal government to change the status of manatees from ?endangered? to the less stringently protected classification of ?threatened.? The petition came on behalf of another group, Save Crystal River, which opposes ?onerous federal regulations? that it says endanger the Citrus County fishing and tourist industries. (Manatee deaths have never been very high in Citrus County. Only two manatees were killed by watercraft there in 2012, down from five the previous year, but the state boating regulations are in effect wherever manatees swim.) The organizations base their claim on a 2007 review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which suggested that a status change might be warranted, and the service has been collecting additional data ever since. The original endangered species designation was not based on population size (which was unknown 40 years ago) but on the dangers posed by boats and habitat loss.

Scientists do not know how many manatees historically swam in the waters around Florida and other southern states. Today the population enjoys a tenuous recovery. Hopefully we can still say that tomorrow.

Manatee photo by Jim Reid, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Manatee zone sign by Peter Dutton via Flickr, used under Creative Commons license

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=efce44d310d9fe9ada3798db75bd4ec3

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Making the best of the web: Customer analysis | The New Economy

The CEO of Mozilla had a revelation. Gary Kovacs realised web pages he visited allowed other websites to ?track? information about his browsing. In other words, the pages he viewed transmitted data about his online behaviour to third parties. Speaking at TED in February 2012, he said: ?Not even two bites into breakfast and there are already nearly 25 sites that are tracking me. I have navigated to a total of four.? He recounts that his nine-year-old daughter fared no better while visiting children?s websites, and as a parent, he worried:? ?Imagine in the physical world, if someone followed our children around with a camera and a notebook, and recorded their every movement??

Thankfully, this comparison is misleading. Trackers do not collect ?personally identifiable information,? or anything that may reveal the user?s identity.? In this sense, to compare trackers to the behaviour of a real life stalker might be considered a pessimistic exaggeration. What is most curious is that, in contrast, while users are typically concerned by the number of third parties collecting data, as well as the content of the data itself, knowing about trackers does not change online behaviour.

A study by the University of Salisbury, Maryland confirmed this. Despite the discovery that most consumers dislike being tracked and are conscious that information is collected in order to generate targeted advertising, many do not let it change their performance. Save for the zealous few who will download blocking programs, informed consumers continue to browse as before. This may be because users suffer few tangible costs as a result of behavioural tracking, aside from the unpleasant awareness.

This has not stopped Mozilla from developing an add-on called Collusion, which shows which third parties collect information resulting from a visit to a given website. Collusion displays browsing as a spider web of connections between trackers and your sites of interest.? After a few hours of internet usage, the size of the diagram exponentially grows into a daunting network of trackers and the tracked. Yet, many online whizzes complain that Collusion is not as sensitive in detecting these as similar programs, such as Better Privacy, No Script, Ghostery or Tracker Block, which in addition offer the option of blocking third parties from retrieving information. Mozilla aims to provide a new version of Collusion that will also have a blocking function.

Despite Kovacs?s alarmist tone, the official Collusion web page does recognise that ?not all tracking is bad. Many services rely on user data to provide relevant content and enhance your online experience?. The firm?s aim is to compile data willingly submitted by Collusion users and make the information available to the greater public for the benefit of research.

Raising awareness is the mission of many privacy advocacy groups, as well as industry regulators, such as the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), which unites 90 firms that use behavioural tracking under a self-imposed standard. In addition to providing information and enforcing its rules, the NAI also offers users of its member websites an opt-out tool. Big industry names such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AddThis and AppNexus are members. Meanwhile, organisations such as Privacy International raise awareness and lobby governments for greater protection of personal information (although while visiting their website, an internet user will be tracked by Piwik Analytics).

Evidon, a US-based data and privacy firm, which produces the add-on Ghostery, is a leading firm in providing transparency tools to ensure that firms are complying with their privacy policies. Their business caters both to firms and consumers. For instance, their tools allow firms to provide greater information about advertisements or information collected by third parties, while others notify the user as to whether implicit or explicit consent is required for a cookie to be installed on their computer.

In terms of legal regulation, European governments have taken a conservative stance on the issue. An EU e-Privacy directive was passed in 2009, requiring users give their consent before having third-party cookies installed on their machines. This law came into effect in May 2012 in the UK, requiring that websites inform and request consent of their users for the presence of cookies. Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, recently requested the World Wide Web Consortium, the organisation responsible for setting rules of use for the internet, to set as a default a ?Do Not Track? standard.

Meanwhile, Viviane Reading, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, condemned a March 2012 revision of Google?s privacy policy, which enabled the corporation to combine information compiled across all its services, including Search, YouTube, Picasa and email in order to generate more specific profiles for individual users.

Preference referral
Whereas behavioural tracking has changed little in the consumer?s relationship towards internet use, it has altered the content that target markets interact with online. Targeting means consumers are shown only links and recommendations tailored to individual preferences. This potentially limits consumers? awareness of competitor products and encloses us in what author and activist Eli Pariser describes as a ?Filter Bubble?.

Consumers are placed in a self-sustaining cycle, reducing the size of the individual?s marketplace. The links they click are used to narrow down our preferences, further enclosing us within predetermined characteristics. Facebook, for instance, uses this to determine which posts feature most prominently on a user?s newsfeed.

As a result, the internet?s potential as a means to openly share a wide range of information is limited. In this sense, Pariser argues, the power of gate-keeping has moved from publication editors to algorithms.

For example, Google collects characteristics from the user?s machine to refine search results according to what it believes to be his or her preferences. Jeremy Keeshing, writer of blog thekeesh.com, developed a script that shows Facebook?s ?EdgeRank?: the ranking of your friends based on your interaction with them.

Organisations seeking to take advantage of behavioural tracking need to be careful not just with how they attain the information, but how they use it, bearing in mind the savvy nature of today?s consumer. When it was discovered that users of Orbitz.com who owned PCs were targeted for ads for cheaper hotels than those using Macs, there was an outcry of ?digital discrimination?.

It is possible for users to alter their online profile. Looking at the ads preferences section on Google allows one not only to view which classifications one has been attributed by behavioural tracking, but also to edit and delete these characteristics.

Tracking organisations install third party cookies, which save a small amount of data on the user?s web browser. At the user?s next visit, the browsing history can be retrieved through the cookie. Web beacons, images of a few pixels or features embedded in a webpage, report site traffic, unique visitor counts, and personalisation, such as your favoured volume on a YouTube video. Locally shared objects or flash cookies not only store more complex data, but are much more difficult to opt out of. Browser fingerprinting identifies a series of settings, which makes a computer uniquely identifiable. This method has also provoked protests from privacy advocates, as it is also impossible to avoid.

Trackers combine various sources of information into one identity if the user crosses over to other websites within the tracker?s network. Profiles are assigned to a specific anonymous identity, churning out consumer categories or aggregate data.

Shortly after the release of Collusion, the Guardian called for readers to submit the data from the add-on after a day?s worth of browsing. With this data, they measured the 10 biggest trackers. Unsurprisingly, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! feature on the list, as well as two divisions of Google: DoubleClick and Google Analytics. The former creates income from publishers and advertisers: the latter allows website publishers to gather more information about their web use. Facebook also uses tracking for its social plugins, but not for targeted advertising, for which it uses the information its members freely provide. In addition, as soon as a non-member lands on a Facebook page, it tracks their browsing progress. If that non-member ultimately signs up to the network, Facebook gets a sense of what persuaded them to do so.

Also among the top 10 are giants specialised in tracking and targeted advertising, such as Quantcast, Comscore, AppNexus and Nielsen. These firms buy the right to access information from websites with heavy traffic and sell the information on to firms looking to advertise. Ghostery indicates that the New York Times allows access to the following list:? Audience Science, BrightCove, Chartbeat, Check M8, DoubleClick, Dynamic Logic, Facebook Connect, Google AdSense, NetRatings SiteCensus, Score Card Research Beacon and Web Trends.

Tracking solves a major problem in both consumer and organisational markets; it saves time. It?s a proven hit; Google made 96 percent of its revenue from tracking techniques in 2011.

In many ways, Gary Kovacs is right to raise concerns about the transmission of information: users have the right to know their behavioural traits are being analysed for commercial gain. Many websites offer an opt out, but with warnings that many of their functions may no longer work as a result. Governments also need to make sure trackers toe the line with regards to Personally Identifiable Information and privacy advocates have pressurised governments to do so. Between July and December 2011, the US government made 6,321 requests for data to Google, which complied in 93 percent of cases and led to 12,243 user accounts being specified. To its credit, all these results are published on Google?s transparency website.

Advocates have argued tracking behavioural information online has little difference from supermarket loyalty cards and other forms of market research. Perhaps the continual increase in reliance on the internet makes users more protective of their information: as does the uncontrollable nature of the net itself. Those wishing to utilise information extracted from online research should, in turn, be conscious of society?s level of acceptability before putting a brand in peril.

What do trackers track?
- How often a user returns to a website
- The path of a user?s journey from one website to the next
- The time of a user?s visit and the title of the visited webpage
- The user?s IP address (from which their location can be inferred)
- The user?s browser and its language
- Whether the user clicked on a given ad

Source: http://www.theneweconomy.com/business/consumer-watch?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=consumer-watch

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