GE Loses Customer Data

Well, at least that the government of the UK and various US states can now say "Hey, it's not just us!!"

GE Money (Atlanta) admitted today to losing the data of 650,000 customers, 150,000 SSN records included. The data was being stored at an Iron Mountain facility.

But what is really interesting is Iron Mountain's response:
"We believe this is an unfortunate case of a misplaced tape," Iron Mountain's statement said. "We also understand the tape was created in such a manner to make unauthorized access extremely unlikely and difficult, even for experts with specialized knowledge and technology."

I'm no PR professional, but that first sentence is a doozy. IT managers beware - I would imagine that the unfortunate part included a cardboard box full of personal effects.

AT&T Offering Corporate iPhone Plans

In spite of the hurdles to be overcome with the actual iPhone (hardware and software of the device itself), AT&T is announcing that it is offering corporate plans.

In another stunning "deaf ear" move, they are retaining the hugely punitive pricing format they devised for the consumer iPhone - 2 year contract, unlimited internet plan for in excess of $50 ($45 - 55 for an unlimited plan...but you have to pay extra to use your browser).

I could be wrong, but I don't see this as a path to winning reviews. I think this is AT&T doing the minimum necessary to let highly-motivated people get their iPhone.

Which is, I guess, good news for Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. But expect to see more pressure on the wireless industry through alternative offerings. People may be willing to pay up to $200/month for cable, internet and their home phone. The days of $200/month being viable just for a rich smart phone plan are numbered.

Who Owns My Data? The Legislative/Regulatory Angle

Every day, more and more information becomes widely available on the web. Whether it's Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, photos from a party that were uploaded to a friend's website, or some other dimension of you, there is more information on you out there than you think.

Some sites even sell a remarkably complete profile on people - probably enough to aid and abet identity theft at minimum.

But get ready for this issue to get worse, as it combines with social engineering and identity theft trends. For a while now, through IM and web cams, pedophiles and other ill-intentioned folks have, and their brethren have gone after corporate targets through calls to reception, etc. Armed with the target's resume, address, personal interests, relationships and photos, these folks will be better masked, and more able to perpetrate fraud and worse.

This story by a Connecticut business journal talks about the response of Governor Rell and others. Other states throughout the country are wrestling with similar issues.

Rather than just raising scary issues, it's important to focus on how you can protect yourself , your family, and your business:

1. Google Yourself - On a regular basis, take a look at what information is available about you - at minimum, you'll know what is common knowledge.
   
2. Monitor Technology Usage - Whether we're talking about which sites, chats, or phone calls your kids are engaged in, or looking at your monthly business phone bill, it's important to monitor what's happening. Ask questions - not for lack of trust, but because it's your job.
   
3. Use Basic "Blocking" Features - Whether it's activating parental controls or blocking access to certain sites at work, this is important prevention. Make sure you are putting basic defenses in place; easy targets are more appealing than hard ones.
   
4. Open and Shred All CDs, Mail & Confidential Documents - After you've used them or filed them, of course. Unopened mail can be used to open accounts as a form of identity verification. An account statement can provide enough information to allow a thief to transact business in your name.
   
5. Secure Your Backup Data - Ensure any phone or computer's memory is completely wiped before donating or disposing of it. Zip drives, phones, phone memory, hard drives, backup devices - either lock them up or get rid of them.
6. Maintain Your Accounts - Even if you don't use it, go back and stay in touch with your accounts regularly - or don't sign up for one. Many retail web sites ask you to set up an account, but allow you to proceed without one. Unless you really need it, don't set one up. If necessary, close the account down when you're done with it.
   
7. Don't Forget The Real World - Physical security is important as well. Sometimes, when the defenses are all high-tech, bad guys will take the low-tech road. And now we all have cell phones...so we might be over heard providing sensitive info to folks, right?
   
8. Regularly Check Your Credit Report - You can pretty much get it free each year - so why not look at it?
   
9. Put A Lock On Your Credit - There's a lot you can do to make it harder for people to open accounts in your name (or your family's names). Go to Experian, Transunion, Equifax and get a lock placed on your account.
   
10. Say "I Prefer Not To Give You My SSN" - You'll be surprised at the response you get. Sometimes there's no alternative, but usually, businesses can do without it. If they can, why should they have it?

All in all, these are important habits, not things you do once and forget about. Just pay attention, do a little work, and you'll be a lot better off.

We Better Get A Bigger Wallet (VC Fund Raising in 2007)

eWeek reports that VCs raised more in 2007 than they did since 2001. eWeek speculates that the current state of the real estate marketing could have a lot to do with that - but that may suggest a boomerang effect for 2008, as housing stocks reach bargain prices, and investors wade back in. (press release for NVCA report).

Not as high a level of investment as the crazy pre-2001 levels of fund raising, but on the rise.

If you head to the NVCA site, you'll see an interesting table, which suggests that VCs not only raised lots of money, but invested it as well.

I find it interesting that the impact of the weak dollar or the ever-decreasing expenses to start a business weren't explored by the NVCA. Perhaps they feel that inflation balances that out? By the way, tough luck having a typo in a table in your press release - especially in the VC industry...

Google's MapReduce...Reduced?

Great post from ScuttleMonkey on slashdot yesterday:

The Database Column has an interesting, if negative, look at MapReduce and what it means for the database community. MapReduce is a software framework developed by Google to handle parallel computations over large data sets on cheap or unreliable clusters of computers. "As both educators and researchers, we are amazed at the hype that the MapReduce proponents have spread about how it represents a paradigm shift in the development of scalable, data-intensive applications. MapReduce may be a good idea for writing certain types of general-purpose computations, but to the database community, it is: a giant step backward in the programming paradigm for large-scale data intensive applications; a sub-optimal implementation, in that it uses brute force instead of indexing; not novel at all -- it represents a specific implementation of well known techniques developed nearly 25 years ago; missing most of the features that are routinely included in current DBMS; incompatible with all of the tools DBMS users have come to depend on."

Throwing Sheep - Facebook Applications

Is the much discussed Facebook applications platform used just for a bunch of silliness and product infringement?

An article today in the NY Times (by Dan Mitchell) provides some opinions.

"Many Facebook applications are “for toddlers,”writes Kara Swisher, the technology journalist and blogger for All Things Digital. The “kazillion users of these widgets are pretty much just acting like little children,” she wrote in October."

The article later discusses the interesting case study of a Scrabble-knock off game that is wildly popular on the platform.

Location Aware Google Maps on Your Windows Treo

As much as I hate to do anything to impune the reputation of the iPhone or Apple, because I love their products, I have to give props to Microsoft and Palm, by pointing out a little known fact. Because it extends the functionality of the already feature rich Treo.

Oh no, wait, actually Google gets the props.

You can, in fact, download Google Maps to your Treo (windows), and get location-aware Google Maps functionality. Right now.

This is an important fact-oid - it doesn't take away the wonder of the iPhone design, or the beauty of your tunes and videos on your phone.

But for those of us for whom fashion isn't as important, this feature is good to know about. The video gives you a demo - note, if you have a Treo 750 Windows smartphone like I do, you have GPS capability, and CAN get a map directly to a contact. And see traffic. And look up nearby businesses (Starbucks for after your meeting...).

Sun Buys MySQL Creator

Post from cmdrtaco at Slashdot regarding the acquisition of MySQL AB.

References a post on the MySQL blog by Kaj Arno. If you scroll down, Kaj discusses some of the implications of the deal.

Scroll down far enough and you will see the comment - "MySQL grew with LAMP and MySQL without LAMP at its core is simply unimaginable."

How important is this? We'll see...

iPhone Freight Train?

Two interesting eWeek articles today:
- Google Apps for the iPhone are getting better
- iPhone is closer to being Corporate-Ready than you might think

A partnership which would make WinTel proud...it's a toss up, in my mind, as to whether Jobs wants to target the corporate market.

Of course, Palm, Sony Erricson, RIM and others aren't really sitting still...2008 should shape up to be an interesting year.

But it is interesting that because Apple hit such a winning form factor, they can devote their energies to developing more powerful services/software across the platform, in the form of iTunes rentals, location-aware services, etc.

As I posted months ago, there are compelling short-comings to the iPhone for the corporate user (which is why I haven't bought one yet), but provided sufficient functionality, I think the corporate user would jump. Note that the only two which are not resolvable by software are the locked battery and the locked SIM...and those might be ameliorated in other ways.

MacBook Air (MacWorld followup)

CNBC interview with Steve Jobs. The world's thinnest notebook.

First reaction - wow, looks easy for your 4 year old to smash.

Second reaction - it's a laptop. A smaller laptop.

Third reaction - Man, Apple knows how to design great products...maybe I should take a look at it?

I personally think this is a less revolutionary move, maintaining a product line, than the release of an iPod or iPhone. Revolutions cannot happen every quarter...as the reporter says in the end of the interview, Apple is focusing more on the platform than any one product. Which is a wise move.

iTunes versus Netflix (follow up to MacWorld post)

The New York Times is running an article (iTunes Movie Rentals and Netflix Online: Different Markets, by Saul Hansen) today comparing and contrasting iTunes and Netflix movie rentals, and making the case that Netflix is targeted to a different group of people.

"After chatting with Reed Hastings for a few minutes, I realized that the services are very different. Netflix gives subscribers to its DVD-by-mail service the option of streaming movies on their computers as well. On Monday, the company said it would eliminate the time limits it had imposed on this service, which varied by price plan. Now anyone with the $8.99-a-month plan or higher can watch as many of its 6,000 movies as they have time for."

The different markets argument comes to play as Hansen describes the dynamics of the video rental biz:
"But Netflix can’t even promise users that every film older than a certain year will be available. That is because studios try to sell the rights to movies as many times as possible, so films move through various windows: theaters, airplanes, pay-per-view, premium cable, broadcast television and so on. Netflix only gets films that haven’t been exclusively devoted to some other distribution channel."

And of course, the power of the platform is raised...
"Mr. Hastings says Netflix is trying to cut many more similar deals. “We want to be integrated into hi-def DVD players, Internet set-tops, game consoles, and eventually directly into the TV,” he said."

Although I don't see the article making the case that the markets are truly different, I do see it reinforcing the idea that consumers want an easy way to watch videos anywhere, and want access to a broad set of movies. Of course, Hollywood wants to make as much money as possible, but audiences and attendance at movies is declining, home theaters becoming more sophisticated, with TiVo, Apple, and Microsoft pushing their own home media platforms.

Part of Apple's strategy seems to avoid simply being a middleman between Hollywood and the platform provider. Netflix's future seems to reside in being a reseller...it remains to be seen whether this is a valuable role.

MacWorld 2008 - Some New Nails?

Well, most of what was announced people could see coming.
- iPhone Software Update
- iTunes Movie Rentals
- Ultra-Light Laptop

The Time Capsule seems to be a bit more of a surprise. But there were definitely not any iPhone moments, in my humble opinion. Is that OK?

Probably. In terms of significance, Apple seems to be continuing on the convergence strategy that's worked so well for them. The iPhone update add location-aware GPS features, which is something that iPhone users have really wanted, and is a logical extension of a device which is phone, internet device all in one.

And though it may seem less revolutionary, rentals through iTunes is extremely significant if you consider the same basic idea - the more service-rich the device you have, the more valuable it becomes. In the short-term, these two services seem likely to help AT&T and Apple maintain the sky-high pricing for the iPhone (2 year contract required).

Look at the AppleTV and Time Capsule announcements, and it is clear that Apple is extending the strategy of device convergence (iPhone = cell phone, mp3 player, internet device, movie player) to supply chain convergence (buy or rent media through the iPhone/iTunes, watch on the iPhone/Macbook, store on AppleTV/Time Capsule = no more video store, no more Netflix).

Although these may be "best laid plans," this strategy will probably have legs for Apple. They continue to release products in response to real consumer needs, and continue to focus on convergence. Although these products aren't as sexy as an iPhone, they provide more mass market appeal for what Apple already has, letting the market catch up. Movie Rentals also increases the annuity revenue base for Apple, which should keep its share price sky high.

Regrets to Blockbuster, Hollywood Video. This is another nail in your coffin.

Goodbye to the Web's Second Largest Advertiser?

With talk of the sale of Countrywide, the beleaguered mortgage lender, in the air, an interesting implication is surfacing - will their $57M in online ad purchasing vanish overnight?

ZDNet Article

The short-term story and its impact on Google/Yahoo/Microsoft is interesting, but so is the behavior. That a troubled giant would greatly ramp up its online ad buying is interesting in general.

Correction: 2Legit2Quit (Hammer Don't Play That)

This blog prides itself on the accuracy of its information, and today, well, we fell short. We wrote the 2Legit2Quit was a Michael Jackson creation - when clearly it was the work of none other than MC Hammer. (Thanks to Matt for pointing this out...and for having this kind of trivia filed away in his head).

The only possible apology is to allow the man himself to demonstrate his too legit-ness.

Did My Internet Just Get Faster? (Comcast Wideband demo)

Presentation by Comcast's CEO of the new Wideband cable modem. Pretty impressive - 150mbps speeds.

Although the application shown was video downloading, this has implications for online gaming, and plenty of other applications. Today's machines have some pretty amazing capabilities - but so much software is being developed with the assumption it will be web-delivered that this is a significant event.

Another Web-Based Resource for Learning about the Candidates

The New York Times Primary page.

Politics and Technology

Well, why not talk politics? It's our responsibility to vote, if we can, and help to govern our country.

After all, it's 2008, an election year, and we're in a doozy of a primary season. We're all fortunate to live in a thriving democracy, even if it seems no one is ever happy with the state of affairs.

And when we talk politics, we should be talking technology. Because technology holds a lot of promise - to turn politics from a glorified beauty contest into a glorious expression of our rights and responsibility!

But as usual, it may be that technology simply points out that the problem with politics is, to often, us. Lots of information is out there - but are we reading it? Did you know, for example, that two Democrats are Chicagoans (current or former, there may be more), that Hillary Clinton is on the board of Walmart, or that Duncan Hunter and Alan Keyes both have the middle initial L? Who knew those two were even part of this political throw-down? I didn't.

I also didn't know that the Prohibition Party had elected Gene Amondson again...Gene! Will you never learn?

So gird yourself up with some real (and perhaps even important) data and insight into candidates while there's still time. The only bad choice is an uninformed one. "I like his ties" is not a good reason to elect someone President, after all. Links below give you some indication of who's who.

Washington Post - Project Vote Smart - Wikipedia

Oh, and don't forget the issues. Golly, this isn't just about people after all, but what they're going to do actually with the power they are given.

On The Issues (it's a bit confusing, but part of this site IS about 2008) - 2Decide (I suspect an affiliation with Michael Jackson's 2Legit2Quit)

Enjoy!