Research confirms that Facebook, Twitter and Google are spying on users

big brother (Photo credit: Vince_Lamb)

Social networks: can robots violate user privacy?

ECM Plus +++ Recent news in the international media has revealed numerous Internet privacy concerns that definitely deserve attention and further investigation, which is why Geneva-based High-Tech Bridge  decided to conduct a simple technical experiment to verify how the 50 largest social networks, web services and free emails systems respect – or indeed abuse – the privacy of their users.

According to High-Tech Bridge, the experiment and its results can be reproduced by anyone, as we tried to be as neutral and objective as possible.

ANALYSIS: The 50 Fastest Growing Online Job Trends In Q4 2012

Freelance artist

Web hosting rises as Android, IPhone ‘app fatigue’ and facebook, twitter social media confusion flatter to deceive

By ECM Plus

ECM Plus – Freelancer.co.uk has just released the Fast 50 report for Q4 2012, tracking trends in the online jobs market.

“The Freelancer Fast 50 report is a fairly unique leading indicator of the online economy”, said Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.co.uk. “As the largest outsourcing marketplace in the world with almost 7 million users and over 4 million jobs posted to date, the Freelancer Fast 50 report is uniquely placed to provide insights into ups and downs in the demand for skills, technologies, products and performance of companies through analysis of over one hundred thousand jobs per quarter being posted online” he added.

FEATURE: The Wisdom Of Integral Management Vs. Corporate Narcissism

Meetings: Corporate Narcissism? (Photo credit: lhl)

by Mats Eriksson

You have probably already heard this ancient wisdom tale: There was once a king who wanted to marry off his daughter. Naturally he wanted to find a smart and wise son-in-law. So he arranged a test for all her suitors. They had to go into a dark room and determine what was in it.

ISP finds British ‘bulldog spirit’ alive and well

Britons proud of being British – Plusnet ISP survey

Plusnet reveals eight out of ten people are proud to be British

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus /London/ +++ Internet Service Provider Plusnet has revealed that 81% of the nation feel proud to be British.

Plusnet commissioned a survey, with focus groups and insights from psychologist Dr. Cliff Arnall, which found that 80% of Brits say family gives them sense of pride.

Plusnet CEO Jamie Ford said: “This year Plusnet changed its strapline to ‘We’ll do you proud’ which, by coincidence, has been a rather fitting move given the events of 2012.”

Added Ford: “We’re certainly a proud nation when it comes to our culture, sense of humour and our heritage. However, it is matters closer to home and the everyday actions of family that generates the biggest sense of pride and here at Plusnet, we’re committed to making our customers proud of the products and services we provide every day.”

 

---

Smart grids at risk from cyber security in intelligent buildings

Intelligent building system – diagram.

Cyber attacks render smart grids intrinsically unsafe

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus /London/ +++ Building owners and designers, and particularly members of the building services industry, are racing to implement intelligent buildings and smart grids, aaccording to new research from a London academic institution.

Code-breaking Colossus rebuild takes on tube challenge

Colossus

 

New gallery for the rebuild of Colossus, the world’s first modern computer, gets underway

By ECM Plus Staff

ECM Plus +++ The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) located on Bletchley Park is creating a completely new gallery for its most famous exhibit: the rebuild of Colossus, the world’s first electronic, programmable computer. Anyone can play a part in helping to build the new gallery by sponsoring a valve on a virtual Colossus at http://www.colossusonline.org.

The new TNMOC gallery in historic Block H is on the spot where Colossus No 9 stood during the war and where the rebuild took place.

Yuan trade prospects good for Britain

Britannia on Plymouth Hoe

Hong Kong and England exchange would be good for future British prosperity as euro collapses

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ As Europe collapses under the strain of its top-heavy, over-debtedness and uber-bureaucratised idealism, the prospects for Britain are looking infinitely brighter in the light of recent exchange trade talks with the world’s second-largest economy, China.

Reports that the current British chancellor Osbourne is glad-handing the Chinese in the former British colony of Hong Kong comes as a welcome refrain for Britain’s social and economic prosperity, following the disintegration of the euro now taking place across the continent.

New Hampshire home for ‘Cyber Kill Chain’ centre

Howarth opens new intelligence centre in Farnborough, England. Image: stumayhew

“Minister For War” opens Lockheed Martin’s new cybersecurity intelligence centre in Hampshire

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Lockheed Martin has just opened its first Security Intelligence Centre in Farnborough, England, which the company said would extend its ‘global reach’ and would be ‘augmenting facilities in the United States’.

The new Farnborough centre was opened in the presence of Conservative Party Member of Parliament The Right Honourable Gerald Howarth representing the constituency of Aldershot, also in Hampshire, England.

Global ChokePoint to monitor violations of freedom of expression

New project to monitor worldwide abuses of freedom of expression

New project tracks censorship worldwide, documenting copyright enforcement’s effects on freedom of expression

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in collaboration with over a dozen civil society organizations worldwide, has just launched ‘Global Chokepoints’ at www.globalchokepoints.org.

The global collaboration documents how copyright enforcement is being used to censor online free expression in nations around the world.

Crisis? What crisis? Mid-life makeovers in paradigm shift

Crisis? What crisis?

Survery reveals middle-aged trends changing

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Men and woman in their forities and fifties are taking ownership of their existential questions and seizing the opportunity to take real life-changing and self-affirming steps in their life, according to a new survey carried out by OnePoll for credit monitoring firm Experian.

British businesses being battered by bureaucracy – report

CEBR research findings reveal red tape mountain. Image: Akademikerne

Rising business costs crippling British enterprise

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Small British firms are trapped in a vice of rising business costs, squeezing margins, choking growth and threatening their survival, according to a new study by Make It Cheaper and the Centre for Economic and Business Research.

According to the research, overheads have risen by almost a quarter over the past five years, and more than half (55 percent) of small business owners now warn that their company will simply not survive much longer if costs continue to rise at current rates.

Hoolie as Irish web content management surrounds in 7.1

7.1 surrounds Web Content Management in new Site Manager

TERMINALFOUR boost automated migration with latest release of WCM software

BY PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Dublin-based web content management bellwether TerminalFour has just taken the wraps off its next version of Site Manager.

According to the Irish softwar firm, Site Manager 7.1 now boasts major overhauls to its automated migration capabilities and importation tools.

Facebook finished: Fad fading as developed market numbers begin descent

All over bar the tweeting? Image: kevindean

Usage already falling in Britain and United States as privacy fears weigh

By ROBBIE NEWKET

ECM Plus +++ Official figures show that new subscribers to Facebook are already on the decline in Britain, the USA, Russia, Norway and other developed nations with fears over privacy and concerns over business ethics taking their toll.

LATEST FEATURE: Morale versus execution – the great debate

Esprit de corps or hive-minded automata? Picture: justified sinner

BY JOHN TREACE

Morale-the esprit de corps or “spirit of the body”-is the capacity of a group of people to hold a common spirit of loyalty and comradeship.

We think of morale as being deep-seated in the psych of the individual or group. Execution, on the other hand, is the process of reaching an objective as the result of performance. A team’s ability to execute is more of a surface measurement that’s easily evaluated by an outside observer.

Digital asset firesale as Autonomy mops up at Iron Mountain

Autonomy’s moves into the cloud platform to expand to 25 petabytes of customer data under management

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Autonomy has just acquired selected key assets of Iron Mountain’s digital division including archiving, eDiscovery and online backup.

In a digital asset firesale that observers see as a stratgic move into the cloud for Autonomy, this means access to Autonomy’s technology for information governance in secure, private clouds in data centres.

British website speeds trounce Europeans in mobile retail report

Internet mobile and cloud monitoring firm tracks best and worst in wireless retailing performances

Mobile retailers across Europe performing vastly differently

ECM Plus – Monitoring firm Keynote says that mobile website performance of 17 of the top retailers across five countries shows widely varied perfomances.

According to the firm, consumers are looking to their mobile handsets as their first port of call when making an online purchase, while retailers, it says, are investing heavily in making sure that their mobile offerings meet this new demand.

Mozilla Firefox sallies fourth into browser hegemony

Firefox insurgency burning down the ancien regime

Open source web browswer Firefox 4 eclipses Internet Explorer 9 – StatCounter

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Insurgent Internet web browser player Mozilla Firefox has just launched Version 4 of its popular web software, and according to independent webstat bellwether StatCounter, has already nabbed 1.95 percent of the worldwide Internet browser user base.

StatCounter reports that on the first day of Firefox 4’s official release yesterday, it scored higher globally than even the new Internet Explorer Version 9 which was launched over a week ago.

Galileo pontificates cloud payments for banks

Safety in numbers?: Cloud payment plans from Galileo

Cloud processing for regional and smaller banks and financial firms

ECM Plus – Galileo Processing has just taken the wraps off its new suite of solutions that enable payment card issuing banks and payment card programme managers to use cloud computing while ensuring levels of security, availability and regulatory compliance.

According to Galileo, their cloud processing offers clients a dedicated virtual environment where clients can preserve intellectual property. Users can develop their own app and functionality to support their card programmes.

FEATURE: Times are a-changin’ for customer communications

In customer communications, ‘the times they are a-changin’ Glen Manchester, CEO of Thunderhead, explains why businesses need to move away from siloed, print-centric document output to a much more flexible solution in order to provide truly customer-focused communications.

For any government or organisation engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, Bob Dylan’s anthem of social change has never rung so true.

Today’s ‘connected’ world is putting pressure on organisations to deliver timely, personal and compelling communications across a range of communications channels.

European browser hegemony burns as Firefox bites back

Mozilla outfoxes Microsoft in Europe

Firefox overtakes Internet Explorer in Europe in browser wars – StatCounter

ECM Plus – It was only a matter of time.

Microsoft’s dominance in the web browser war in Europe is over.

Open source Mozi;;a Firefox overtook Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to become the number one browser in Europe in December 2010 according to StatCounter, the analytics company.

StatCounter Global Stats reported that in December, Firefox took 38.11% of European market share, compared to IE’s 37.52%.

“This is the first time that IE has been dethroned from the number one spot in a major territory,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share.”

“We are probably seeing the impact of the agreement between European Commission competition authorities and Microsoft, to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March last,” added Aodhan Cullen.

In North America IE still retains a clear lead in the browser market with 48.92% followed by Firefox (26.7%) and Safari (10.16%).

StatCounter Global Stats is based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4.9 billion from North America) collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites.

StatCounter, which provides free website traffic information, publishes browser stats via StatCounter Global Stats, a free online research tool. It also monitors internet market share battles including Search Engines, Social Media and Operating Systems including mobile.

Dolan quaffs DataStream Content

XML - eXtensible Markup Language

XML markup data goes from unstructured to ‘smarter’ forms

ECM Plus – Dolan Company has acquired DataStream Content Solutions. which sells federal legislative and regulatory data and advanced content management systems to information businesses, publishers and governments.

According to Dolan, DataStream’s proprietary processes and technology transform highly-complex and unstructured data into valuable products and services for its business and government clients.

The acquired firm specialises in applying XML markup language to convert complex and unstructured data into ‘smarter’ forms, enabling flexible queries and dynamic database updates, Dolan said.

Dolan added that DataStream’s proprietary business lines include Legislative Impact and Regulatory Impact, as well as data management technologies which facilitate searching vast federal databases.

The firm also said they were licensed to business clients and to the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Legislative Counsel.

The company also offers other data management, conversion and analytic tools and services. Subsidiary Potomac Publishing was included in the acquisition.

Dolan said its target markets have been government, legislative and regulatory sectors.

DataStream will continue to be run by its founder and president, Mark Anstey, and its chief information architect, Ed Schulke. Both will report to The Dolan Company’s Business Information Division Executive Vice President Mark Stodder. DataStream will remain in its College Park, Maryland, offices, Stodder said.

Sad Anstey: It’s an exciting fit between our technological approach to government information and Dolan’s ability to market high-value business information and intelligence.”

DataStream’s company’s Professional Services Division provides specialised outsourced services to the legal profession through three subsidiaries. NDeX is a provider of mortgage default processing services in the US; DiscoverReady provides outsourced discovery management and document review services to major companies and their law firms; Counsel Press is the nation’s largest provider of appellate services to the legal community.

Google data privacy breach leaves brand reputation in tatters

Image via Wikipedia

Street View privacy breach damaging to user confidence in the brand

by Jack Adams, SEO Consultant, Greenlight

Google has escaped a fine for collecting personal data – including email addresses and passwords – being used in UK public Wi-Fi spots.

Despite labelling the act as a “significant breach” of the Data Protection Act that was “not fair or lawful,” the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), has simply requested that Google delete the offending data and given the search giant nine months to review its privacy practices.

The general consensus is that the ICO has been very lenient over this – its probe has been labelled “lily-livered” by Tory Member of Parliament (MP) Robert Halfon. But has Google really escaped lightly?

The damage to Google’s brand perception is substantial. In direct monetary terms it seems certainly Google has got off lightly, in the UK at least. Investigations in other nations are ongoing.

However, there can’t be any denying that some extent of damage has been done to users’ confidence in the brand and its squeaky-clean image, built around the company’s ‘don’t be evil’ motto.

This damage has been compounded by the widespread national news coverage of the privacy breaches, especially with the matter being discussed in UK parliament.

Even in general conversations, one slightly less-than-tech-savvy individual expressed reservations over Google, asking whether this breach means they should discontinue internet banking in fear of online fraud, demonstrating just how this news has pervaded the general public. The question though is whether this has put the respective individual off searching with Google? Will they now switch to a competitor?

The damage to Google’s brand perception is substantial.



Software AG acquires Data in truth movement

The SOA metamodel

Software AG acquires Data Foundations for ‘one-version-of-the-truth’ for process-driven Master Data Management

ECM Plus – In a deal the German company hopes will increase business process performance by so-called ‘Master Data Management’, or MDM, Software AG has just acquired a US firm that specialises in just that.

New Jersey-based Data Foundations Inc. provides Master Data Management software, and is used to optimise organisational business performance.

According to the firm, linking business process management and MDM will reduce complexity, deliver accurate data and maximize process quality

Software said that users would then be able to gain “one version of the truth”, which, they said, was ‘a key foundation for strategic business process optimization’

MDM also promises consistent and reliable information from differing data sources, which can then be used by virtually any system, service-orientated architecture application or automated business process.

Software said that the availability of consistent data across organisation will maximise process quality and enable faster, more precise business decisions.

The company added that organisations with a single and reliable view of business critical data ‘will have laid a key foundation’ for strategic business optimisation.

According to Software, the acquisition of Data Foundations seeks to extend its webMethods product portfolios based on its strategic fit with key corporate strengths.

This, it said, included, amongst other things, ‘trong Governance focus’ as well as deep integtration capabilities and high transaction volumes.

THQ taps MediaBox for digital media workflow

Improved workflow aids games developers

Licensing management systems help online product approvals, rich media flow

ECM Plus – Game developer THQ has just licensed Conecture’s Mediabox-PA product approvals and Mediabox-DAM digital asset management.

According to the company, it will be using the two systems for licensees and manufacturers to submit product design artwork as digital media to licensors via a central online system.

The Mediabox-PA system also enables licensors to review submitted artwork online, link comments with each artwork file and manage workflow’s order of projects and submissions between licensee-customers and their own staff.

The app can also be used by licensees to log in and review licensor comments and submit revised product designs online.

Analytics and metrics, such as data traffic, milestones, and activity are tracked and reported in real-time are also supported.

THQ said it will now be using Mediabox-DAM system to manage and deliver style guide assets related to their video games.

All products are available only as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and are pre-configured to work for specific industries.

Diurnal demand drives Day to DemandBase

DemandBase CEO Chris Golec

Day harnesses Demandbase for content targeting to biz web visitors

ECM Plus – Day Software, recently acquired by Adobe, has tapped Demandbase Inc., a technology company providing B2B marketing – which also happens to be jointly-funded by Adobe.

The two firms have linked up to form a partnership that hopes to tap into Demandbase’s so-called ‘Real-Time ID Service’, which, the company said, ‘provides B2B marketers with the intelligence of knowing which company is about to visit their website pages’.

Together with Day’s CQ5 technology, its clients can be served a tailored web page of content. based entirely on a range of pre-known information about that visiting user, profiling which has such data as the precise industry it is in, how much revenue it makes, the number of its employees, their actual office location, and the named account status.

According to the company, the plug-in also enables CQ5 customers to make web experiences more ‘relevant and engaging’ as they put it, significantly increasing site conversion rates and return on marketing.

Chris Golec, CEO and Founder of Demandbase said: “As customer interactions shift to the web, the ability to change a web experience for a specific account, industry, or size of business enables the B2B web site to move beyond brochure-ware.”

Users of CQ5 need no more software or infrastructure to start delivering a customized web experience to business visitors, the company asserted.

Day users can separate out high and low value prospects, increase engagement and conversion and make an immediately impact on the ROI across all their B2B marketing.

According to DemandBase, the real-time identification of key accounts is made possible by its Business Resolution Platform, which uses proprietary algorithms that intelligently combine a database of 800 million IP addresses across North America and Europe, over 30 million business contacts, and information from social networks critical for business including Facebook and LinkedIn.

The company said that this multi-tiered process ensures that ‘target accounts are identified’ in a fraction of a second and appended with the most current information, fully standardised for CRM and marketing automation systems.

The service is cloud-based and has matched more than 1 billion visits in 2010, the company said, and can currently identify more than 100 million businesses every month without even the use of traditional ‘cookies’ or by tracking personal information.