John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

If Facebook’s IPO filing does anything besides mint a lot of millionaires, it will be to shine a rather unsettling light on a fact most of us would rather not acknowledge: The web as we know it is rather like our polar ice caps: under severe, long-term attack by forces of our own creation. And if we lose the web, well, we lose more than funny cat videos and occasionally brilliant blog posts.

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Collaboration 2.0

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Collective business collaboration is very different to our individual digital interaction choices: how do we leverage past generations of training technologies to align with new opportunities to define and formalize the best ways to work together, and which CxO group should be responsible for this, or should this be a cross enterprise initiative?

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Elie

FEBRUARY 17, 2012

NuCaptcha is the first widely deployed video captcha scheme. Since Technology Review interviewed me about NuCaptcha in October 2010, I have been working on evaluating its security and usability.

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Robert's Db2

FEBRUARY 11, 2012

So, last week I posted a blog entry describing one of the two really important (in my opinion) DB2 10 for z/OS enhancements related to LOB (large object) data management -- that being the ability to "in-line" a portion (or even all) of a LOB column's data values in a base table space, alongside the associated table's non-LOB data values (this as opposed to having to store all of every LOB value in a LOB table space that -- while logically transparent -- is physically distinct from a table's base

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Speaker: Aarushi Kansal, AI Leader & Author and Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO at Aggregage

Software leaders who are building applications based on Large Language Models (LLMs) often find it a challenge to achieve reliability. It’s no surprise given the non-deterministic nature of LLMs. To effectively create reliable LLM-based (often with RAG) applications, extensive testing and evaluation processes are crucial. This often ends up involving meticulous adjustments to prompts.

IT

Hunton Privacy

FEBRUARY 28, 2012

The Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) recently announced that its members will work “to add browser-based header signals to the set of tools by which consumers can express their preferences” not to be tracked online and will work with browser providers to develop “consistent language across browsers…that describes to consumers the effect of exercising such choice.”.

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Data collection Privacy Marketing IT 40

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

The news alert from the Wall St. Journal hit my phone about an hour ago, pulling me away from tasting “ Texas Bourbon ” in San Antonio to sit down and grok this headline: Google’s iPhone Tracking. Now, the headline certainly is attention-grabbing, but the news alert email had a more sinister headline: “Google Circumvented Web-Privacy Safeguards.” Wow!

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Collaboration 2.0

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

Designing quality business strategy that realizes the power of modern technologies requires alignment with traditional business values; the siren song of projected futurism can look embarrassingly naive in hindsight

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Privacy and Cybersecurity Law

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) was enacted in December 2010. Heard about it? It’s quite likely that you have, given its […].

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IT Marketing 40

Scary Beasts Security

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Flash on Linux hasn't always been the best experience in the stability and security departments. Users of 64-bit Linux, in particular, have to put up with NSPluginWrapper , a technology which bridges a 64-bit browser process to the 32-bit Flash library. In terms of sandboxing, your distribution might slap a clunky SELinux or AppArmor policy on Flash, but it may or may not be on by default.

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Libraries Access Security IT 20

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Geopolitical risk is now at the top of the agenda for CEOs. But tracking it can be difficult. The world is more interconnected than ever, whether in terms of economics and supply chains or technology and communication. Geopolitically, however, it is becoming increasingly fragmented – threatening the operations, financial well-being, and security of globally connected companies.

Risk

Hunton Privacy

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

On January 25, 2012, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) published an initial statement welcoming the European Commission’s proposed new General Data Protection Regulation (the “Proposed Regulation”), and commended the Commission’s efforts to strengthen the rights of individuals, recognize important privacy concepts such as privacy by design and privacy impact assessments, and include accountability requirements.

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Personal data Privacy Compliance Data breaches 40

Robert's Db2

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

As a mainframe DB2 guy, I'm bullish on stored procedures -- I've presented on the topic at international conferences and regional user group meetings , written about stored procedures for the old DB2 Magazine (now known as IBM Data Magazine ), and posted many a related entry to my DB2 blogs, both this blog (an example being an entry from August of last year ) and the one I maintained while working as an independent DB2 consultant (included among these is part 1 of a 3-part entry on stored proced

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Mining IT 54

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

Over the weekend I finished Larry Lessig’s most recent (and ambitious) book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It. Amongst those of us who considered Lessig our foremost voice on issues of Internet policy, his abrupt pivot to focus on government corruption was both disorienting and disheartening: here was our best Internet thinker, now tilting at government windmills.

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Insurance Government Marketing IT 109

Collaboration 2.0

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

We’re in for more cloud/SaaS merger and acquisitions this year; will continued innovation triumph over old guard purchase integrations, and do the customers and prospects care as much as the financial markets think they do?

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Marketing Cloud 77

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Security

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

In the normal course of research for the book, I wondered how quickly mobile phone use got to the 1 billion mark. I figured we’re well past that number now, but I had no idea how far past it we’ve blown.Like, six times past it. We hit 1 billion in the year 2000, and never looked back. According to the ITU , nearly 90% of people in the world use mobile phones.

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IT 107

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 3, 2012

I had the news on in the background while performing morning ablutions. It was tuned to CBS This Morning – Charlie Rose has recently joined the lineup and my wife, a former news producer, favors both Rose and the Tiffany Network. But the piece that was running as I washed the sleep from my eyes was simply unbelievable. It was about the two unfortunate british tourists detained by Homeland Security over jokes on Twitter about “destroying America” (a colloquialism for partying &#

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Government Access IT Security 100

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

I’m still in recovery mode after the wave of Apple-defenders inundated me with privacy-related comments over this past weekend, and I promise to continue the dialog – and admit where I may be wrong – once I feel I’ve properly grokked the story. The issue of privacy as it relates to the Intenet is rather a long piece of yarn, and I’m only a small part of the way toward unraveling this particular sweater.

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Privacy Mining Insurance IT 91

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 10, 2012

( image ) I don’t have Siri yet – I’m still using my “old” iPhone 4. But I do have my hands on a new (unboxed) Nexus, which has Google Voice Actions on it, and I’m sure at some point I’ll get a iPhone 4GS. So this post isn’t written from experience as much as it’s pure speculation, or as I like to call it, Thinking Out Loud.

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John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Not since Google’s 2004 filing have so many journalists sped-read one document at the same time, eager to glean any possible insight unique to their particular point of view or publication and rush to post it before anyone else. Yes, I’m one of those journalists, I suppose, but I know I have to read this thing for any number of reasons, so I may as well use the race as an excuse to force myself into action.

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IT 90

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

I promise, for at least 18 months, to not bring this topic up again. But I do feel the need to report to all you RSS lovin’ freaks out there that the combined interactions on my two posts – 680 and still counting – have exceeded the reach of my RSS feed (which clocked in at a miserable 664 the day I posted the first missive). And as I said in my original post: If I get more comments and tweets on this post than I have “reach” by Google Feedburner status, well, that’s enough f

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IT 88

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

My research manager turned up this gem in the course of answering a question I had about the popular response to the introduction of the telegraph in the US (a moment that informs the working title of my next book ). What I find fascinating is how the invention incited an innate religious response (this editorial from a local Albany, NY newspaper is in no way unique).

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Military IT 81

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

It took longer than I thought it would, but it’s finally happened. Apple’s admitted that it needs real search to bring it’s tangled app universe to heel, and purchased Chomp , a leading third-party app review and search service. Nearly two years ago I wrote this piece: Apple Won’t Build a (Web) Search Engine. From it: …but it will build the equivalent of an app search engine.

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IT 80

Speaker: Nicholas Zeisler, CX Strategist & Fractional CXO

The first step in a successful Customer Experience endeavor (or for that matter, any business proposition) is to find out what’s wrong. If you can’t identify it, you can’t fix it! 💡 That’s where the Voice of the Customer (VoC) comes in. Today, far too many brands do VoC simply because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do; that’s what all their competitors do.

Customer Experience

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

Yahoo has always been proud of the algorithms that drive its choice of personalized content, but it’s hard to grok exactly what they do behind the scenes to make the magic happen. Today the company released a visualization of its “C.O.R.E.” (Content Optimization and Relevance Engine) technology, and the result is pretty cool. From a release sent to me by Yahoo: C.O.R.E.

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IT 79

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

( image ) Waaaay back in January of this year , in my annual predictions, I offered a conjecture that seemed pretty orthogonal to my usual focus: “China will be caught spying on US corporations, especially tech and commodity companies. Somewhat oddly, no one will (seem to) care.” Well, I just got this WSJ news alert , which reports: Using seven passwords stolen from top Nortel executives, including the chief executive, the hackers—who appeared to be working in China—penetrated Nortel

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Paper Passwords IT 74

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

It sort of feels like “wayback week” for me here at Searchblog, as I get caught up on the week’s news after my vacation. Late last week the Obama administration announced “Consumer Data Privacy In A Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Innovation in the Global Digital Economy.” The document runs nearly 50 pages, but turns on a “Privacy Bill of Rights” – and when I read that phrase, it reminded me of a post I did four ye

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Data Privacy Privacy Personal data Data collection 72

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

You know you want your very own Facebook S1 as a PDF document, right? If so, click this link, and it’s yours! Facebook S-1.

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IT 85

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Analytics

Collaboration 2.0

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

We’re in for more cloud/SaaS merger and acquisitions this year. Will continued innovation triumph over old guard purchase integrations? And do the customers and prospects care as much as the financial markets think they do?

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Marketing Cloud 70

John Battelle's Searchblog

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

If you’ve been reading Searchblog, you know I’ve been writing quite a bit about Google, privacy, and the advertising business. All of those topics are going to be coming together in my interview with Neal Mohan, VP Product at Google, on the Signal SF stage next month. Neal oversees display and mobile advertising for Google, and works directly with the company’s entire advertising stack, a formidable lineup of products that include the Doubleclick ad server and exchange business

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Privacy Risk IT 70

Collaboration 2.0

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Your on the job contributions in collaborative environments are much more protected than elsewhere digitally, but getting credit for ideas is critical to continued use pattterns

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