FutureVigil (tm) » online-data

SOCIAL MEDIA TO PREVENT MURDERS AND SUICIDES?

Jeffrey Newman — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:49:57 +0000

This tidbit of creative thinking was found on the site of Jonathan Nguyen, who works in PR andcrises management. He saw a news story about George Sodini, who murdered three and wounded nine others in a Pennsylvania gym before killing himself. Sodini had talked about his plans on his blog, as have many others. Now, there are social media monitoring tools such as Radian6 which can read and listen to conversations on the web, including the blogosphere via an heuristic analysis engine. It is used sometimes to protect brands from disparagement and to guage sentiment on products. The questions raised is whether it could be modified to watch for potential homicidal or suicidal acts? Outstanding lateral thinking Jonathan! Present uses of social media are rudimentary and limited.

SOCIAL MEDIA PREDICTIONS FOR 2010

Jeffrey Newman — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:48:32 +0000

Social media has become the subject of a lot of writing and discussion and its hard for someone not in the field to get a sense of the realistic trends for the coming year in this arena. Here is what I have come up with for social media predictions (probable trends) for 2010; 1) New kinds of searching on the internet will evolve. Instead of going to sites like Google, users will receive customized search results in the context of what they are currently doing (similar to Amazon only more broadly applied). So, if you are researching travel plans, you will be sent links and summaries rirectly related to the topic. If you are researching an illness, you will be sent articles and summaries of studies closely on point, automatically; 2) Social media interaction on mobile devices will skyrocket, especially as tablets come on the market next year; 3) Augmented reality will continue to emerge in the form of applications on mobile phones and tablets which superimpose computer-generated info like instructions or labels or pricing over real world data; 4) Facebook will continue to grow in popularity and will come into greater use as a business networking device like Linkedin, only with more flexibility and less rigidity. In addition, Facebook will become a repository of directory information to find stuff; 5) Twitter will also continue to expand, as will the development of more uses for it including the immediate distribution of critical news and information to users on a highly customized format. Twitter will evolve quickly from its present use as a fun tool to an essential one.

IS THERE A WAY TO STYMIE IRAN’S DEEP-PACKET SPYING?

Jeffrey Newman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:56:00 +0000

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported a disturbing story on it’s front page about how the Iranian government is not just blocking web access, it is engaged in “deep-packet inspection” of it’s citizens computers using technology developed by Siemans, AG and Nokia. Deep-Packet inspection is a form of data-mining in which equipment is installed to examine on-line data including emails and internet phone calls as well as messages on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Each digitized packet is taken apart and examined for keywords. There is nothing new about content filtering. Such filters are being used to stop spam, viruses and pornography. However, Iran’s use to find those it believes pose a potential harm to the government is new.

It remains to be seen whether the use of this technology results in the death or imprisonment of those who oppose the present governmental leadership. In the meantime, is there any known technology that can technologically stymie the deep-packet inspection, which could be downloaded by individuals inside Iran in order to protect them? It seems logical that if we can create such intrusive mechanisms, we can create an antidote. If one or more exists, we should spread the word asap.