Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live (Part 1)
The following is an excerpt from Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis. Public Parts defends greater society’s move to public displays of personal information in an age of the Internet, social media and blogging.
We are publishing two excerpts from the book over the next two days, and today you’ll learn about the value of opening our data to online companies such as Google and why talking about our health publicly can actually help us in the long run. Tomorrow we’ll publish the second excerpt from Public Parts on this blog.
From Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis. Copyright (c) 2011 by Jeff Jarvis. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster.
The more we open, gather, analyze, and share our knowledge, the more we all know. Google’s engineers found that by tracking search queries for “flu,” they could map the spread of the disease around the world ahead of the U.S. Centers for Disease control and Prevention, helping health-care officials forecast the need for vaccine and treatment.
If each of us went only to our own doctors to seek information, it would be much more difficult to aggregate, track, and analyze that information. That we ask the same third party, Google—and can do so anonymously—adds up to public knowledge. For that reason, Google co-founder Larry Page told European regulators they should not be too quick to erase search data out of privacy concerns. To map trends and anomalies over time might allow Google and health officials to plot and predict the course of the next pandemic. “That could possibly save a third of the world popula- tion,” Page claimed at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York in 2010
U.S. Chief technology Officer Aneesh Chopra told how the government’s releasing hospital data in an open standard allowed Microsoft’s search engine, bing, to plot that information on its maps so users could find not only the nearest but also the best hospital to treat the flu.
As I’ve said, there’s nothing more private than our health information. But why? What’s the harm of sharing that data? There are many concerns. One fear is that insurance companies will reject us. But they already force us to sign over our medical histories. That is why the so-called Obamacare outlawed rejecting customers due to preexisting conditions. The law deals with the problem by restricting the use, not the flow of information.
Another fear is that we won’t get hired because of a medical problem. That, too, is society’s problem to solve. If employers may not discriminate on the basis of age, gender, race, religion, or disability, should they also be forbidden from discriminating on the basis of health? As many of us get our DNA mapped, will we need to forbid discrimination on the basis of genes? A larger fear of sharing health information is the stigma associated with illness. That stigma is most certainly society’s problem. Why should anyone be ashamed of being sick?
Consider a condition that is, by its nature, visible and thus public and carries its own stigma: obesity. There’s no hiding fat. Many countries now face crises of obesity and are grappling with its health risks and costs. New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, ordered restaurant chains in the city to post the caloric content of every item (it has changed the way I order a nosh at Starbucks, i can tell you). By tracking public data, students at my journalism school working with a colleague dug deeper into factors that contribute to the problem of obesity in poor neighborhoods, where the high cost and lack of availability of fresh, healthful food—tied to the low cost and easy availability of high-calorie fast food—contribute to obesity and diabetes. Open information about the problem will help us address it.
Rather than refusing to talk about weight because we think it is embarrassing for the overweight person, isn’t it better—isn’t it healthier—to encourage people to discuss their problems openly and to encourage others to offer solutions and support? A young star reporter at The New York Times, Brian Stelter, wanted to lose weight, so he tweeted everything he ate, reporting his diet publicly to pressure himself. That also allowed others to support and pressure him. Stelter confessed in The Times that he had problems at first telling even Twitter the truth and fell off the social wagon, not fessing up to a late-night slice of pizza. Then he found an audience. “We’ll be your support group,” said one reader. His brother started a Twitter diet alongside him. Friends told Stelter he was changing their habits by example. His disclosure became an act of generosity, helping others. He came to want to share. Exposing fast food’s fat and calories became his cause. “Monday, started w/McD’s, cinnamon melts and hash browns, 600 cals/44% of day’s fat—awful, and made me feel ill,” he tweeted. He even summoned the courage to buy a Wi-Fi scale that tweets one’s weight automatically, for all to see (no lying possible). Stelter lost ninety pounds on the Twitter diet and tweeted: “i haven’t fit into jeans in give or take ten years . . . Jeans shopping for the second weekend in a row. and i must say, it feels great.”
There’s a twist in Stelter’s story: He started his career writing the definitive blog covering the cable news industry, called cableNewser. He wrote it anonymously because he was only nineteen years old. If his industry audience had known he was a mere teen toiling in a dorm room, they likely wouldn’t have paid him much attention. The Times outed his age in a page-one feature. He sold his blog to another company, expanded it to cover broadcast news, and when he graduated, he got his job at The Times, where his byline is appearing on page one with regularity. Stelter found shelter in anonymity and then benefit in publicness.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, said at a Google conference in london in 2010 that the data we make public become yet more valuable as they mix with other data. We can find new correlations, trends, and cause and effect in the aggregation. He argued that in government and elsewhere, we should make data public by default, using standards that enable such analysis. At the event, privacy advocate Shami Chakrabarti, director of the U.K.’s National Council for civil liberties, attacked Berners-Lee. She bristled at the idea of massive databases, jumping to the conclusion that they would violate privacy. Berners-Lee countered that after eliminating data that hold personal information, there is still an untold wealth of knowledge to be found in what remains, and we should not lose the opportunity it affords us. Mining that data may become the gold rush of our age.
A start-up called Kaggle facilitates contests to analyze open data. In one, government agencies in Australia put up data on traffic patterns and challenged the 364 teams that entered to find better ways to predict delays, enticing them with a $10,000 prize. The winning team’s analysis found, counterintuitively, that traffic jams can propagate both ways—that is, a slowdown behind you can end up catching up with you. Also on Kaggle, Ford offered $950 to come up with an algorithm that takes various data points—phone calls, conversations, eating, fatigue—to help determine which drivers are distracted. The Heritage Health Prize, which Kaggle administers, offered $3 million to the team that can best predict who will be hospitalized in the next year. These projects are made possible with open data.
Just look at what we have created with shared data so far: Wikipedia; Google search, which is built on using our links and clicks to learn which sites are most relevant; Wolfram|alpha, which tries to make sense of more complex data; Google Maps and open-source mapping projects, which collect our photos and annotations; review sites such as tripadvisor for travel, Yelp for restaurants, and rotten tomatoes for movies; PatientslikeMe, where patients share details about their medications and treatments; Twitter, Facebook, and Quora, which give us a place to ask questions and get answers; Ushahidi and seeclickFix, which let people report anything from graffiti to disasters around them . . . the list can and will go on and on.
Photos courtesy of Simon & Schuster
Tomorrow we’ll publish the second part of this excerpt from Public Parts. Come back tomorrow to learn how the “myth of perfection” is a lie and how being public, warts and all, can actually grant us more freedom.
RIM offering $100 worth of free premium apps after global outage
by Andrew Moran (Guest contributor/Digital Journalist)
Following the major service disruptions that affected BlackBerry users around the world last week, Research In Motion has announced that it is giving away $100 worth of free premium apps to its customers as an apology.
Research In Motion announced in a press release Monday morning that it is compensating its customers with a selection of free premium apps that are worth $100. This offer, which will be available Wednesday until Dec. 31, 2011, was issued as a gift of appreciation for their service and as an apology for last week’s service disruptions.
One of the worst global outages in RIM’s history could cost the Canadian BlackBerry-maker approximately more than $100 million in lost revenues, according to a report from theMontreal Gazette.
There were disruptions and delays in service for three days in Africa, Europe, India and the Middle East, 1.5 days in Latin America and Canada and one day in the United States.Starting Wednesday, a dozen or so apps will be made available to their customers – though, that the availability of the apps will depend on the type of device, access to BlackBerry app world, operating system version and local conditions.
“Our global network supports the communications needs of more than 70 million customers,” said Mike Lazardis, RIM Co-CEO, in the press release. “We truly appreciate and value our relationship with our customers. We’ve worked hard to earn their trust over the past 12 years, and we’re committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect, today and in the future.”
He added that the company has apologized and will attempt “to restore their confidence.” Lazardis assured his customers that they are making sure that this will not happen again.
The complete selection of available apps will be rolled out within the next four weeks. The first selections include the following:
SIMS 3 – Electronic Arts
Bejeweled – Electronic Arts
N.O.V.A. – Gameloft
Texas Hold’em Poker 2 – Gameloft
Bubble Bash 2 – Gameloft
Photo Editor Ultimate – Ice Cold Apps
DriveSafe.ly Pro – iSpeech.org
iSpeech Translator Pro – iSpeech.org
Drive Safe.ly Enterprise – iSpeech.org
Nobex Radio™ Premium – Nobex
Shazam Encore – Shazam
Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo
This article was previously published on Digital Journal [Link]
Photo courtesy of arrayexception
Amazon to allow users to pay $30 to remove ads on new Kindles
by Andrew Moran (Guest Contributor/Digital Journalist)
Sick and tired of advertisements? Amazon is allowing its customers to pay $30 to remove advertisements from the latest ad-supported Kindles. The $30 is the difference in price between a non-ad Kindle and a Kindle with ads.
There is now reprieve for Kindle customers who purchased the latest subsidized Kindles that contain Special Officers and advertisements.
For $30, you can upgrade to an ad-free Kindle and remove ads that you find annoying, according to a report from theDigital Reader. Also this news was discovered by a MobileRead forum user.
The steps to rid yourself of ads are to go to the Manage Your Devices page, choose the Kindle that is subscribed to Special Offers and then unsubscribe. The original tipster informed Digital Reader that Amazon would not allow its consumers to go back to an ad-subsidized version.The unsubscribe feature isn’t available for Kindle 3 (Kindle Keyboard) users.
For those interested in purchasing a Kindle, the least expensive e-reader without special offers is $109, the Kindle Touch is $139 without ads and the Kindle 3G is $149 with ads and $189 without the ads.
“It looks like Amazon noticed that a lot of people bought a K3 SO and hated the ads, and that is probably why they added a solution to the K4 before it launched,” wrote Nate Hoffelder ofDigital Reader.Amazon has not made any official announcement regarding the option.
This article originally appeared on Digital Journal [Link]
Samsung wants iPhone 4S banned in France and Italy
by Henry Cole (Guest Contributor/Digital Journalist)
Samsung is seeking an injunction to ban Apple’s new iPhone 4S in France and Italy, due to Apple’s use of Samsung-patented technologies in the phone, the company claims.
An official Samsung press release earlier today claims Apple have infringed two Samsung patents related specifically to Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) standards for 3G mobile phones, a technology which Samsung believes is essential to the functioning of modern phones.
Apple and Samsung have quite a history when it comes to patent wars, starting with Apple’s claim earlier this year regarding the similarity of the design of Samsung’s Galaxy range of phones and tablets to that of Apple’s iPhone and iPad.
Samsung announced recently that they believe it’s time for them to take a tougher stance in the patent wars, and they seem to be living up to this claim, as their press release states “Apple has continued to flagrantly violate our intellectual property rights and free ride on our technology. We believe it is now necessary to take legal action to protect our innovation.”
Samsung also claims that they will be looking to file more preliminary injunctions in other countries, after “further review.”
This article originally appeared on Digital Journal [Link]
Apple announces new iPhone 4S with voice controls, 8MP camera
On Tuesday Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed the new iPhone 4S, complete with voice controls, and the updated operating systems for Apple’s iconic smartphone. He also explained how the iCloud service will work for Apple product users.
Available soon from Apple is the iPhone 4S, an upgraded version of Apple’s popular iPhone 4. Cook said at the Cupertino press conference the iPhone 4 accounts for more than half of Apple’s total iPhone sales to date and in general the iPhone has a five percent share of the worldwide mobile phone market.
Hoping to strengthen its smartphone foothold, Apple revealed the new iPhone 4S. Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller talked about the smartphone with the powerful dual core A5 processor (found in the iPad), promising seven-times faster graphics speed than the iPhone 4. Battery power reaches 8 hours of 3G talk time, 10 hours of video, he added.
As some Apple watchers expected, the company unified its CDMA and GSM devices into a single world phone.
An eight-megapixel camera has been added to the iPhone 4S. It houses 60 percent more pixels than in the iPhone 4 sensor, and is one-third faster at capturing pics than its predecessor. Also built into the sensor is face detection and improved auto-white balance, Schiller adds, along with a larger f/2.4 apertureBefore he moved on to the next announcement, Schiller said Airplay mirroring is coming to the iPhone (letting you stream to iTunes library wirelessly).
The next announcement related to the iPhone 4S, so was Schiller saving the most anticipated for last? He said, “What we really want to do is just talk to our device and we want to talk to it any way we’d like.”
The new iPhone using the Siri voice assistant so you can hands-free ask “What is the weather like today?” and the phone replies with “here is the weather for today” and a screen detailing the forecast.Or say to your iPhone 4S “wake me up tomorrow at 6 am” and Siri sets an alarm and tells the user that the task is completed. You can get answers, find facts and perform complex calculations just by asking.
Apple also integrated Yelp’s restaurant reviews into Siri.
The voice tech controls will be available in English, French and German at launch.The iPhone 4S will retail for $199 (16GB),$299 (32GB) and $399 (64GB). It will be vailable October 14 in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, France Germany and Japan. By December, more than 70 countries will be able to purchase Apple’s latest iPhone. In the U.S., it’s available for all three carriers: AT&T, Verizon and now Sprint.
iOS 5 Details
Cook talked about the upgrade operating system for Apple fans. In iOS 5, Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone Software, ran through several of the key features, many of which have already been reported: a new Reminders app uses location-based technology so it can remind you, say, when to leave work; iMessenger goes up against BlackBerry’s BBM and is “pushed to all devices,” Forstall said; an upgraded camera adds one-tap access and photo editing right in iOS (you don’t need to type in your password to pull up the camera); Newsstand accesses magazines such as The New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair, and newspapers like The New York Times, gathering subscriptions in a single place on your home screen; Safari’s new feature Reader to let you read things later using Reading List.
iOS 5 will be available Oct. 12 as a free update.
Head in the iCloud
Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, followed Forstall to discuss iCloud, Apple’s jump into the cloud-computing space. He pointed out once iCloud launches, songs purchased via iPhone or iPad on iTunes will “automatically be downloaded to a users’ Mac for no additional charge.”Your media library is available to be synced to any Apple device. “With a tap of a button, you can download a song you’ve previously downloaded from the iTunes store onto another device,” Cue said.Books, Documents and Apps work the same way: download it on one device, say the iPad, and it will also be downloaded on your iPhone.
For the Calendar app, you can also share the App with other iCloud users (which could be useful for business meetings).
A new iPod nano will also be available. It’s been updated with several fitness-related improvements, and UI additions such as new clocks.
This article originally appeared on Digital Journal [Link]
Photo courtesy of Apple