New Facebook tool lets you search everything related to friends

Nbcnews

Rosa Golijan / NBC News

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveils a new "Graph Search" feature during a press event on Tuesday.

Facebook announced a new "Graph Search" feature on Tuesday that will answer all the questions that the social network's Newsfeed and Timeline do not.

"Today we're going to take a little trip to our roots," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, in making the announcement.

He described Facebook as a huge database before pointing out that "just like a database, you should be able to query it." The Newsfeed answers the question "What's going on?" and Timeline answers "Who is this person?" But what about everything else? We'll be able to answer other questions using something called "Graph Search."

In addition to launching Graph Search, Facebook is also incorporating Microsoft's Bing search results in Facebook searches. (Microsoft owns a 1.6 percent share of Facebook.)  Doing search on Facebook has often been an exercise in frustration, and Graph Search may help to change that. Will Graph Search challenge Google? No, but it could be a start to making Facebook's nemesis even more nervous, although Zuckerberg emphasized the new tool is "not Web search."

Graph Search is a privacy-aware search, Zuckerberg said. That means that it only searches content which has been shared with you and that your search results will differ from the search results someone else will see ... even if you enter the same exact queries.

Rosa Golijan / NBC News

Facebook's new Graph Search allows you to search through photos, places, friends, and interests.

You can initially use Graph Search search through people, photos, places, and interests. 

For example, let's say you want to play matchmaker for a friend who recently moved to New York City from Germany. You could search for all friends-of-friends who happen to reside in New York City, lived in Germany at some point, and are single. Ta da! You'll have a list of the ideal matches for your pal. Or perhaps you need to find a dentist. You can easily search for dentists who are liked by your friends.

There was a lot of emphasis on privacy and Zuckerberg explained that a message will appear on users' Newsfeeds to remind them that they should review their privacy settings. Even though Graph Search is privacy-conscious, some slightly embarrassing content could always come up and haunt you.

Zuckerberg emphasized that Graph Search is currently a beta product, meaning that it isn't quite perfect just yet. 

"Even as an early product, Graph Search is a completely new way for people to get information on Facebook," he says. If you want to start using the new feature, you can sign up for the beta by heading here.

Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

How Swartz helped build the Internet

Aaron Swartz, Reddit founder and Internet activist, 26, commits suicide

cnn

pbs.org

Aaron Swartz, the Internet political activist who co-wrote the initial specification for RSS, has committed suicide, a relative told CNN Saturday. He was 26.

"Great minds carry heavy burdens," wrote one user on Reddit, a popular social media website that Swartz helped develop and popularize following a merger in 2006.

Swartz also co-founded Demand Progress, a political action group that campaigns against Internet censorship.

A young prodigy, his passion pushed limits and landed him in legal troubles in recent years.

In 2011, he was arrested in Boston for alleged computer fraud and illegally obtaining documents from protected computers. He was later indicted from an incident in which he allegedly stole millions of online documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He pleaded not guilty in September, according to MIT's "The Tech" newspaper.

Two years earlier, the FBI investigated him after he released millions of U.S. federal court documents online. No charges were filed in that case.

Swartz, who completed a fellowship at Harvard's Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption, frequently blogged about his life, success and personal struggles. In some instances, he wrote about death.

"There is a moment, immediately before life becomes no longer worth living, when the world appears to slow down and all its myriad details suddenly become brightly, achingly apparent," he wrote in a 2007 post entitled "A Moment Before Dying."

CES 2013: Will HealthSpot Change Doctor's Visits Forever?

mashable

How to Roll Out Dronet

Global Guerrillas

The tough part about the Dronet (a simplified version of the made up word:  dronenet) idea isn't coming up with the idea, it's figuring out how to make it real and when it could become real (means and timing).  

If you can't figure out means and timing and communicate it to people, the idea is meaningless and ephemera.  NOTE:  this also means that if you are complaining to me about inventing it first in the shower a couple of years ago, you are wasting your time, I don't care.  Let's just figure out how to get it built together, right now, since nobody has done that effectively yet.

Let's get the timing out the way right now.  The timing is now.  

Drone tech is sufficient to pull it off.   Further, the open source community forming around drones is capable of handling the challenge.  

So, how does it get built?    

Here's a grassroots approach to get you thinking.....  

The Internet rolled out by using the common global network as a starting point.  It then piggybacked on public infrastructure (POTS) to connect people up.  Each new connection increased the value of the network.   

Dronet, in contrast, will emerge from peer to peer (p2p) connections as well as a few local hub and spoke delivery networks.  

Let me walk you through it...

I set up a landing pad.  You set up a landing pad.  We have a delivery network with a little effort on software and routes (take off, 300 ft straight up, GPS point to point, hover over target, landing provides a beacon for landing precisely).  It solves our problem.  We don't go to the FAA or any government agency for permission.

Then, someone develops a on-line system for registering landing pad locations and capabilities.  I register my landing pad in that system.  

With the next iteration of the system, I actively connect my landing pad to the system via a wireless hookup.  At that point, the status and capabilities of the pad are part of a global network that is forming.  

Soon, there are a dozen pads in my area withing hoping distance.  I note that a couple are at homes of friends and a local makerspace.  We start to regularly deliver stuff via our network.  

To solve our problems, we see advances in the following areas:

• Drones begin to connect to the emerging online system.  They do this through wireless connections via landing pads and cell phone networks.  They report status -- location to speed to altitude to power level.  
• Drones get new capabilities.  Rapid swap batteries and wireless recharging capabilities.  
• Drone payloads get modularized.  Standard packaging metrics and weights.  
• Dronet gets more detailed and real-time in its coverage of landing pad and drone activity.  
• People write apps that allow people to coordinate drone flights and performance metrics.

Small companies and coops (like the micro ISPs that we saw in the mid 90's) that provide drone landing pads and drone connectivity emerge everywhere simultaneously.  They offer drone pick ups and move quickly to adopt new standards as they emerge.

Soon thereafter, controls engineers jump in with a drone routing protocol based on some earlier work for a different purpose.  That bare bones protocol serves as a way to route drones from point to point and across multiple hops based on real-time status data.  

The Dronet coops and companies begin to peer with each other, and work on establishing multi-hop systems.  The local networks that grow the fastest are the ones that make easy for people to buy a pad and connect to the emerging network.

Have fun inventing the world,

JOHN ROBB

Text Messages Direct to Your Contact Lenses

MidweekPolitics

The White House on Internet & Telecommunications Treaty

The White House Blog

thephilanews.com

Michael Daniel 

Last Friday, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) ended without broad agreement regarding proposed revisions to a major international telecommunications treaty. Why? Because what should have been a limited effort to modernize quarter-century old telecommunications regulations turned into an attempt to legitimize greater state control over the Internet. The United States has consistently opposed such efforts based on core principles:  that the Internet’s social and economic benefits come from the free flow of information and ideas and that the technical innovation enabling this information flow comes from the full engagement of civil society, industry, and governments in the process. 

The United States went to the WCIT prepared to negotiate revisions to a telecommunications treaty, last revised in 1988. These changes would have reflected the realities of the modern world while staying true to the charter of the Conference. Unfortunately, a small number of vocal states at the WCIT which do not endorse the principles of economic opportunity and free expression sought, in proposal after proposal, to instead focus on the Internet. Because of those efforts, the Conference  missed a significant opportunity to encourage economic growth through greater broadband deployment.

In the end, the United States determined that it could not sign the proposed treaty and we were far from alone in our stance. Fifty-four nations in the developed and developing world—including India, Kenya, the Philippines, Colombia, and almost all of Europe—have also chosen not to sign the treaty. Moreover, U.S. industry, Congress, and civil society were united in recognizing the value of a principled decision to protect  the existing multistakeholder governance model of the Internet and not sign a treaty that could have set a dangerous precedent for greater state control of information on the Internet.

We recognize, however, that many states wanted something from this Conference that it did not provide, but could have: increased investment in broadband to connect more people around the world to the digital future. And to those nations, we reaffirm that our Administration is committed to connecting more across the globe to modern technology — and will do so both directly, and in forums positioned to address real needs in a constructive way.

The United States believes that expanded global access to telecommunications services and broadband Internet—combined with an inclusive Internet governance model—remains the best path towards economic growth that benefits everyone. We know that the WCIT was not the last place that those opposed to an inclusive Internet will try to gain legitimacy for their approach. As a result, the U.S. remains committed to upholding our principles in all our international engagements. The Obama Administration looks forward to continued discussions with all parties, from other nations to industry to civil society, on how best to promote the growth of this infrastructure so the world can continue to enjoy the benefits of digital innovation.

Obama's Data Team

TimeMagazine
How startup technology helped Obama win the election.

Now you too can protest in Cuba… virtually

Babalu blog/ By Alberto de la Cruz

Via Pedazos de la Isla:

Website allows users to virtually protest in Havana, #Cuba

Are you a Cuban living on the outside- or perhaps someone from another nationality- who has wanted to participate in a protest on the island? Now, a new initiative gives you the chance to fulfill this wish…at least virtually.
The German-based human rights organization known as The International Society of Human Rights, or Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (IGFM), launched a new campaign dubbed “UnSilence“, which uses an online platform to allow people throughout the world to join protests in countries under totalitarian regimes which violate the human rights of their citizens.  On the website, there are countries such as Iran, North Korea, and also Cuba.
To take part in the virtual protest in Havana, it’s simple.  First, visit the site at http://www.unsilence.de/. Once in the website, an introductory video will being with images of civic protests for freedom throughout the world- mainly of the recent Arab Spring.  After the introduction, a global map will appear, which you could “navigate” with your mouse to select a country where there is a demonstration taking place.  Once Cuba is clicked, users will be taken to Havana, where citizens have taken to the streets in the Civic Plaza, right in front of an image of Che Guevara.

Continue reading HERE >>

¿Cuánto espacio físico ocupa Internet?

Microsiervos

En What If de XKCD, ¿Cuánto espacio físico ocupa Internet?

Una forma de calcular cuánto espacio físico ocupa la información almacenada en internet es comprobar cuándo espacio de almacenamiento hemos comprado los seres humanos. Se fabrican alrededor de 650 millones de discos duros cada año. Si gran parte de ellos son unidades de 3,5" suponen un volumen de unos 8 litros de discos duros fabricados cada segundo.
Esto significa que los últimos años de producción de discos duros — que gracias al incremento de su capacidad representan una gran parte de la capacidad de almacenamiento global — apenas darían para rellenar un petrolero.
Así que, por esta regla, internet es más pequeña que un petrolero.

Vale, esta forma de calcularlo, por eliminación, un poco rara; y vale que internet no sólo son discos duros. Pero ahí queda el dato, y cualquier otro cálculo más aproximado — o en su defecto más ingenioso — será bienvenido.

Babbage: A lucrative accident

EconomistMagazine

In this week's programme: a drone-powered internet of things, Facebook under fire and the twentieth anniversary of the text message.

Government Surveillance on Citizens Rising

Nic Halverson 

As the inferno of the David Petraeus scandal continues to burn, the latest Google Transparency Report shows government surveillance is starting to heat up.

"This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise," Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst, explains on Google's blog.

Between January and June of this year governments from around the world filed 20,939 requests with Google to access data on 34,614 accounts. According to company data, during that same time frame last year, governments made 15,744 requests on 25,342 accounts.  More >>

What Petraeus affair reveals about your emails

WND/ Steve Elwart*

gawker.com

“Hell has no wrath like a woman scorned.” The saying took on a new meaning, with wrath being source of the “Petraeus-gate” that started when a general’s mistress believed he was cheating her.

The fact that Jill Kelley, a friend of the Petraeus family, received what she felt were threatening emails was apparently enough to bring the FBI into the case, prodded along by an agent-friend of the recipient.

The FBI started the investigation under the authority of the 1986 United States Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The act allows for “government entities” to acquire a warrant to access email records less than 180 days old “if there is reasonable cause to believe a crime has been committed.” For email older than six months, a federal agency only needs to get a subpoena signed by a federal prosecutor, not a judge, to obtain the messages.

Because of the wording of the law, Americans have fewer privacy protections for their electronic emails than would for those same messages than if they were printed out and stuck in a drawer.

In the eyes of the law, email kept on an individual’s hard drive in their home computer has the same protection as one’s personal papers, which require a search warrant. Emails stored on a remote server “in the cloud” do not have the same protection.

The writers of the law also did not envision the cloud. Email stored in the cloud has the same legal protection as documents in a public warehouse: the government can obtain them with a simple subpoena; no court procedure is required.

To make things really confusing, the government’s interpretation of the ECPA was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court that covers the western United States, including California, and the home to many online email companies and the servers that host their messages. As a result, the DOJ advises “Agents outside of the Ninth Circuit can therefore obtain such email (and other stored electronic or wire communications in ‘electronic storage’ more than 180 days) using a subpoena…” but reminds agents in the Ninth Circuit to get a warrant.

Cloud email servers use the power of many different servers across the Internet. It does not reside in one place. Mail services such as those offered by Google (gmail) will store email messages (from your inbox, draft, and deleted folders) long after you have forgotten them. FBI and other investigating agencies routinely gain access to electronic inboxes and information about email accounts offered by Google, and other Internet mail providers.

The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal report that Jill Kelley contacted the FBI about “five to ten” anonymous emails that started in May and reportedly warned Kelley to “stay away” from an unnamed man. In the resulting investigation, the FBI discovered electronic paper trail eventually led to an “anonymous” account that was used by Paula Broadwell and her husband.

In examining this and other accounts, agents uncovered sexually explicit emails that Broadwell exchanged with another party who also used what has been reported to be a Gmail account. Eventually, investigators were able to determine that the other party was CIA Director David Petraeus using an assumed name.

While it hasn’t been specified exactly how the FBI were able to track the emails back to Broadwell, anyone with knowledge of how email works can make an intelligent assessment.

Petraeus and Broadwell used anonymous accounts with fake names that they set up for the purpose of their illicit affair. While they knew enough to cover some of their tracks, they weren’t sophisticated enough to take sufficient steps to completely protect their identity.

There are some services, such as Tor Project that can hinder tracing attempts. Other services such as Hotspot Shield and LogMeIn Hamachi can create a virtual private network to help preserve privacy. But this system is not fool-proof. Many of these services still use U.S. based servers that may have logs that can be read by investigating agencies or hackers.

Any email messages that are sent leave a trail. Many email services contain hidden codes called “metadata” that will contain the IP address of the sender’s computer’s internet connection device called a “router.” Other services, such as Gmail, will only include the IP address and Internet name of the servers that pass along the email.

The FBI spent weeks tracing the route these messages took. The FBI cross-referenced the IP addresses of the email’s origins against hotel guest lists, looking for common names. The messages were traced back not only to the Broadwell home, but also to the hotels where she was staying while sending some of the messages. (The travel patterns revealed by the emails coincided with her travel to promote her biography of Petraeus.)

The FBI could also request email data from the email service without the knowledge of the user. In fact, the email service is prohibited by law in notifying the user that the records were accessed.

Google is routinely approached by investigating agencies for email information. In fact, they issue what they call a “Transparency Report” every six months, to provide users with statistics about government requests for data and takedowns. For the period of January to June 2012, Google fulfilled 35,000 government requests for email information, 16,000 from the United States alone. How many of these requests were accompanied by a warrant is never disclosed.

Armed with the metadata and information from the email service, the FBI now had Broadwell’s name and in the course of the investigation uncovered another disturbing element, the possibility that classified information was being sent to Broadwell, who is also a reporter.

Federal prosecutors now had the probable cause they needed to request a warrant to monitor Broadwell’s other email accounts. Through this warrant they were able to determine that Broadwell and another person had set up a private email account to exchange messages.

A little more digging uncovered that fact that anonymous person Broadwell was communicating with was Petraeus.

(In a bizarre twist, another Army general, John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was also caught up in the investigation, being suspected of exchanging 20,000 to 30,000 pages of potentially inappropriate communications with Jill Kelley, the woman who sparked the investigation in the first place.)

The investigators also discovered that Broadwell and Petraeus had used a technique that is common among terrorist organizations and organized crime. They used the oft-neglected draft folder.

In this technique, one person will write a message and rather than send the message, they will save it to their draft folder. The other person will then log into the account, usually through a web browser and read the message in the folder.

Ironically, storing emails in a draft folder, rather than an inbox, may make it easier for the government to intercept their communications. This is because the Department of Justice has argued that emails in the “draft” or “sent mail” folder are not in “electronic storage” (as defined by the Stored Communications Act), and thus not deserving of warrant protection. Instead, the government has argued it should be able to get such messages with just subpoena rather than a warrant.

Some of the techniques the FBI user to track down Broadwell, Gen. Petraeus and later, Gen. Allen can also be utilized by any computer user.

For example, for a Gmail account, a person can see this metadata by doing the following:

1. Log into the Gmail account and open a message.
2. In the upper right corner of the message, next to the “reply” button, click on the “down” button.
3. Then click on the “Show original” selection.
4. A new window will open showing all the data that was hidden in the message.

A guide is available to download that will give instructions for looking at metadata for 19 different type of email accounts.

With this metadata, the IP address of the sender can be determined and then use an IP address locator such as WhatIsMyIPAddress to find out the ISP where the email account is registered as well as its geographic location. This is good information to have if a computer user is getting attacked by multiple spam messages coming from one sender.

It is also interesting to look up your own email address to see what information is available on you.

So far, the results of the investigation are varied: the distinguished military careers of two long-serving servicemen are effectively ended, three marriages damaged, perhaps irreparably, and the insecurity of our electronic communication has been exposed.

Congress is supposed to be looking into the antiquated communications law, but don’t hold your breath. The Justice Department has warned that updating that telephone-modem-era law would have an “adverse impact” on investigations. The White House, for its part, does not seem to be in a hurry to secure an individual’s rights against having their privacy violated.

Interestingly, in congressional testimony, James A. Baker, associate deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice, has suggested that people’s online privacy is enhanced if the government has easier access to private data. “By authorizing law enforcement officers to obtain evidence from communications providers, ECPA enables the government to investigate and prosecute hackers, identity thieves, and other online criminals. Pursuant to ECPA, the government obtains evidence critical to prosecuting these privacy-related crimes.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said, “With the explosion of cloud computing, social networking sites, and other new technologies, determining how best to bring this privacy law into the digital age will be one of Congress’s greatest challenges.”

That email invisibility cloak many Americans think they have is full of holes.

--------------------------------

* Steve Elwart, P.E., Ph.D., is the executive research analyst with the Koinonia Institute and a subject matter expert for the Department of Homeland Security.

Petraeus Affair Teaches Us About Online Surveillance

Tom Simonite

The FBI methods used to reveal the CIA director's affair are relevant to all Web users.

When the FBI started investigating harassing emails sent to a resident of Tampa Bay that organized parties for a local Air Force base, it soon became a much broader investigation that led to the uncovering of an affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell. Now reports of how the FBI uncovered a series of online email accounts and figured out who was using them have revealed things about digital surveillance that will surprise many Web users, and even tidbits that have impressed experts. Here are five things we’ve learned so far:

• No judge-issued warrant is needed for authorities to ask a company for your emails or other electronic communication records that are six months old or more. That’s thanks to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which says that a federal prosecutor’s subpoena is enough. Privacy activists have long campaigned for this to change. Leading civil liberties lawyer Kevin Bankston today suggested the Petraeus affair could help those efforts by raising awareness of the current law.
• Communicating by saving draft emails in an online account for someone else to log in and see – as Petraeus and Broadwell did – doesn’t help escape surveillance. This tactic long-used by activists and terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid in 2001, prevents emails lodging in personal accounts and other places. But the FBI or law enforcement can easily ask a provider to reveal the IP addresses people used to log into an account. Those IP addresses can be matched to physical locations, and to people's known addresses and movements.
• IP addresses can be used to pinpoint people very precisely, providing a crucial match between online and offline life. The WSJ reports that the FBI figured out it was Broadwell operating pseudonymous email accounts by matching IP addresses from emails they sent to particular hotels. Those matched with particular hotels and the dates she stayed in them on a book tour.
• Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s Outlook make it extra easy for investigators to find out the IP address an email originated from – and hence where an email was sent from. When emails are sent extra data goes along with them known as “headers” containing technical data. In the case of Yahoo Mail and Outlook that includes the IP address of the connection used to send an email, so investigators don't need to subpoena a mail provider to trace its origin. It’s not known if Broadwell used Yahoo accounts in the events surrounding the Petraeus affair, but she’s known to have used the service before thanks to leaks by nebulous activist group Anonymous of account information from defense contractor Stratfor.

• Email and other services hosted online make life relatively easy for investigators. Google and other online providers have legitimate reasons to log which IP addresses log into accounts and when, for example to detect hacking attempts and keep their software running smoothly. But that data hangs around, and investigators aren't shy about asking for it. Google today published new figures on government requests for its data that show U.S. authorities tapped the company 26 percent more in the first half of 2012 than they did in the second half of 2011, a total of 7969 requests of which 90 percent were complied with.

The U.S. Government's Growing Appetite for Google Users' Data

Searching suspects: Data Google holds on its users is increasingly being requested by - and given to - law enforcement and government agencies.

Tom Simonite

U.S. government and law enforcement agencies are increasingly asking Google to hand over data on its customers to help with investigations.

The search and ads company today released figures revealing that it was asked to hand over user data 7,969 times by US agencies in the first six months of 2012 - an increase of 26 percent over the previous six months. That continues a long established trend in the figures released in Google's twice-yearly transparency report and charted above. The 7,969 requests asked for data from a total of 16,281 user accounts, and ninety percent of the requests were complied with.

Google is unusual amongst Web companies in that it shares information about the number of such requests it receives. Social network Facebook is likely subject to a similarly high volume, for example, but does not disclose any information on their number or origin. Google started reporting the number of requests for its data in 2009, and the number of affected accounts in 2011. Since January 2011, U.S. authorities have requested data pertaining to a total of 39,581 accounts.

Law enforcement and government agencies see Google and other companies as valuable sources of data that can help with criminal and intelligence investigations, such as the one that led to the resignation of CIA director David Petraeus last week. Knowing what a person searched for, who they emailed, and which IP address they logged in from can provide evidence of a person's motivations, movements and much more.

Some privacy activists say that the ease with which U.S. authorities can extract information on users from Google and other companies suggests changes in the law, and company policies are needed to protect innocent users against the risk of unnecessary surveillance. Data can only be handed over by a company if it exists, and some campaigners think companies such as Google should reduce how long they retain some information. For example, Google currently stores search query details for 9 months before anonymizing them, a period some argue is too long. The main target of legal campaigning about data access is against the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows government and law enforcement to obtain data from Internet companies without a warrant if it is at least 6 months old.
-----------------------------------
But worldwide:

theatlantic.com

Google: 'Government Surveillance Is on the Rise' >>

China's Internet firms spin a web of opportunities

ReutersVideo

Nov. 14 - Chinese Internet firms are mixing online gaming, shopping and social media into their business models as competition ramps up, to cater to a massive -- and diverse -- user base. Tara Joseph reports.

How to disappear from the Internet forever

lifehacker.com.au

On Five "easy" steps

Step 1: Delete your social network accounts

Step 2: Remove unwanted search results

Step 3: Get rid of background check, criminal, and public record results

Step 4: Remove any usernames attached to an email address with your name

Step 5: Stay off search engines without going offline by remaining anonymous  

Details with  Thorin Klosowski >>

On Eve Of CPC Congress, China Examines Its Digital Image – Analysis

Eurasia review/ B. Raman

What the people think of their leadership and government will be increasingly reflected not in the traditional print and TV media, but in the digital media and in the blogs and micro-blogs of the digital world. The digital image of China in the international net community will increasingly influence governmental and non-governmental perceptions of China. Future prejudices of China will be born not in the columns of the print media and in the radio and TV reports, but in the mushrooming blogs and micro-blogs of the digital world. It is important for leaders and policy-makers to pay attention to what is being discussed in the digital world and to be able to interact with the digital world. Future stability will depend not only on what happens in the real world, but also on what happens in the digital world.

These are some of the features of the world of the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) being highlighted by the analysts of the prelude to the Congress which is starting at Beijing on November 8,2012. An article by Dennis Pamlin of 21st New Frontiers, a consultancy organization in Sweden, carried by the “China Daily” on November 2,2012, says:

“In the coming years China’s image will be increasingly shaped in a connected world, a world in which people will not only be passive consumers of information, many of them will be active providers of information through different social media. In a connected world people will trust their social networks more than traditional media, and the social networks with the most trust will create a virtual image of China.

“This digital image of China will be determined by the images, stories, comments, blogs and videos posted online, rather than through the print media, television and radio. So China must pay attention to its “digital twin”.

“In a connected world it is no longer enough to do good things and tell people about them, it is also necessary to engage in dialogue with people around the world. If China does not engage in these dialogues, its digital twin will end up distorted.

“We are rapidly moving into a hyper-connected society where transparency and enormous amounts of information are creating new opportunities and new challenges. In order to overcome the challenges and seize the opportunities it is important that China, and those with an understanding of China, explore new ways to encourage dialogue so that its digital twin is not shaped to suit others’ agendas.”

According to the “China Daily”, on November 1,2012, many party functionaries opened their own micro-blogs in their real names and started interacting directly with party cadres and people. One of those who has thus started interacting is Yu Zhengsheng, Secretary of the Shanfghai Municipal Committee of the CPC and a member of the CPC Politbureau, who is being tipped to join the new Standing Committee of the Politbureau as one of its seven members.

In a message posted on his micro-blog, he said: “It is the responsibility, instead of the power, that the official position gives to us. We’re not special. We cannot be above the law. Assuming the responsibility of serving the people is the key of an official’s work.” According to the “China Daily”, this is not the first time he is directly interacting through the web with party cadres and the general public. He has been doing it before.

Zhang Qingli, secretary of the Hebei Provincial Committee of the CPC, said in his microblog: “We should provide a chance for people who have a desire to work, a stage for people with working capabilities, and important posts for those who have had achievements before. What we should do is to encourage diligent officials, criticize the ones who can only deliver lip service, and deal with those who create disorder on our team. We cannot arrange idle positions and feed idlers. The key is to implement what we say in conferences and write on documents.”

Zhang Baoshun, secretary of the Anhui Provincial Committee of the CPC, microblogged: “Officials at all levels should be modest and close to the public. Our posts and power are not for showing off. We’d better have more closeness to residents and avoid bureaucracy. As for fact-finding trips to grassroots areas, high-level officials should not ask people to accompany them. Instead, we should dispense with all unnecessary formalities, and not burden and disturb local people.”

The China Daily has quoted Zhou Xiaopeng, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Sina, an online microblogging service, as saying that though many Chinese officials and governmental departments began to use micro blogs to interact with netizens two years ago, “it is only now that so many high-level officials interact with Web users via a popular online platform.”

In addition to encouraging the party functionaries and officials to use the social media sites for direct and continuous interactions with party cadres and the public, the Chinese Government has also been closely monitoring the use of these sites by foreign embassies in Beijing for digital interactions with the people in order to influence their perceptions.

The “China Daily” reported on November 3,2012:

“The micro blogs have become an important platform for foreign governments to promote public diplomacy in China and pose an increasing influence on China’s Internet, said the first research report on foreign governments’ micro blogs in China, which was released on Friday. ( November 2) More >>

From Burson-Marsteller: This infographic from BM has almost covered every popular social media platforms in China. We would like to analyze it from 3 aspects. The first one is time, according to it’s presentation, we can see that Chinese netizens totally spend 32 hours/month staying online, 41% of the time is on Weibo & SNS, 23% is on watching videos and 10% is on e-commerce sites like Taobao. The second one is function, the infographic tells us that in China 385M netizens are IM users (among which 90% should be Tencent QQ users); and the most used function is search which seems to be dominated by Baidu. The third one is way of access, till now in China there are 910M mobile users, 200M smart phones and 80M 3G users and this number, like the infographic said, will increase exponentially and the result will be like this: in the coming future, netizens will use mobile to access internet, but not computers.

Loads.in: ¿En cuánto tiempo carga realmente tu página web?

Microsiervos

Uno de esos servicios prácticos y con un mnemónico fácil de recordar: Loads.in calcula en cuánto tiempo carga tu web; basta usar/guardar una dirección del tipo microsiervos.loads.in para que al llamarla realice el cálculo.

El resultado es del tipo realista, mostrando pantallazos a diversos intervalos de tiempo con las imágenes que los usuarios ven en realidad. También se puede cambiar el navegador usado en la prueba (Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox) y el lugar desde el que se realiza la prueba (Estados Unidos, Europa, Sudamérica, etc) aunque eso funciona más bien regulero para España por lo que he visto.

Bonus interesante: la gráfica en cascada (waterfall) que detalla todas las llamadas y tiempos necesarios para cargar cada objeto de la página, en su orden correspondiente.

Online spying threatens Canada's national security

OpenMedia.ca/ Lindsey Pinto

huffingtonpost.ca

An access-to-information request from The Globe and Mail has revealed that Canada’s Communications Security Establishment has concerns about our nation’s network security. Specifically, the documents show that Huawei Technologies—a Chinese company that has become the world’s leading maker of telecom equipment—has been the subject of national security concerns.

With all these security worries in the air, it seems strange that Ottawa should continue to consider a bill that could leave Canadians’ personal data less secure. Online spying bill C-30—a contentious piece of legislation that has provoked the ire of Canada’s privacy commissioners, legal experts, and wider public—could, if passed, lead to the creation of giant, unsecure registries of every Internet user’s personal data.

Introduced in the House of Commons earlier this year, Bill C-30 would require telecom providers in Canada to monitor user data, and be prepared to hand over personal information to authorities without a warrant or judicial oversight.

This on its own creates security risks: for C-30 to work, ISPs must implement and maintain both the technology and the personnel required to give authorities real-time, simultaneous access to transmissions in the form specified by law enforcement. This could also mean that telecom companies would be responsible for breaking data encryptions to facilitate use of the gathered information. This would be both expensive (note: the costs will be passed down to Canadians) and would create a security risk, as our personal data would pass through more and more people and systems vulnerable to cyber-attacks and other breaches.

With the advent of increased foreign control over Canada’s networks (i.e. one of the briefing notes uncovered by The Globe urges caution and asserts that Canada “can’t feasibly block foreign technology”) it seems reckless to consider a bill that would weaken Canadians’ control over private data. Huawei is already doing business with Canadian wireless providers, including big telecom companies Bell and Telus.

Would you feel safer under the online spying bill?