"Behavioral targeting," believe it or not, could be a great topic for family discussion. Sounds like a big, nasty sociological term, but it's really about critical thinking, or knowing how others might be trying to manipulate us. When teens are wise to that, they know how to protect themselves from manipulation. Anyway, behavioral targeting is quite likely happening to Web users at your house, and … [Read more...] about Targeted Web ads & critical thinking
geolocation
UK government’s guidelines for social sites
As I mentioned last week, two milestone documents out of the UK have just been released, one a 200-page report requested by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and called "The Byron Review," and the other a set of guidelines for social-networking-service best practices issued by the Home Office itself . Both have worldwide relevance not just because they're about a worldwide medium that's universally … [Read more...] about UK government’s guidelines for social sites
Phone-based ‘icebreaker’
A new "real-space social networking" product for iPhones, iPod Touch devices, and laptops called iFob is a sign of the way social networking is going. It's marketed as being "simple, fun, and gamelike," and it probably is in the right hands. "Instead of logging onto a social networking site and searching through lists of far away strangers who may be living in virtual fantasy lands, iFob finds … [Read more...] about Phone-based ‘icebreaker’
New mobile ‘social networks’
This is "the year of social networks" for cellphones, CNET reported in its coverage of last week's mobile-phone-industry trade show. So it reviews five "shiny, new" examples: Bluepulse, a social service really just for phones (looks bad on a desktop); UK-based Trutap, which is "more a mobile facilitator than pure mobile social network"; Utterz, which is more about "pushing mobile-generated content … [Read more...] about New mobile ‘social networks’
New platform for self-exposure
Consider the privacy issue in light of the social networking that's becoming increasingly common on and with cellphones. "Almost 55% of all mobile phones sold today in the United States have the [GPS] technology that makes friend-and- family-tracking services possible," the New York Times reports, zooming in on one such service, loopt. In another article, it reports that Google has just acquired … [Read more...] about New platform for self-exposure