FTC Commissioner Julie Brill on Online Privacy and Data Security

Over the past few years many of my clients have been involved in the digital advertising industry. When I learned that FTC Commissioner Julie Brill would be speaking at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society I was curious to hear her thoughts on consumer protection, privacy policies and the idea of consent and the rules vs. standards approach to protecting online privacy.

She offered two recent examples of the agency’s work in protecting privacy. One involved Facebook and concerns around unannounced changes to its privacy policy that resulted the company’s failure to keep its privacy promises. Another related to deceptive practices on the part of Google around Google Buzz, and its automatically enrolling people and then exposing their most frequent email correspondents.

Step Outside the Lines

I recently attended the Emerging Technology conference at MIT. I’d attended it several years ago and totally enjoyed myself. I went this year as the event photographer and thought it was even better.

Here’s what made this event so special. First, even though the topic was technology, very few of the people presenting were there to talk about products. Most were talking further in the future – where cool things happen. The people presenting were also very deep into their areas. Many were academics, several were from business (R&D types who might as well been academics) and a few from government.

Here were a few of the highlights that have stayed with me since the event. I’ve provided links to each of the presentations if you’re interested.

WebInno31 Summary

This week’s WebInno is in the books. It was a good event. Several of the participating companies were sales or marketing focused which created more consistency than at some past WebInno events. I wrote a preview of the event (you can find it here). The previews are always fun to write because they’re not really based on much but my initial impression of the various sites and services. The summaries, on the other hand, include not only my impressions but also details on what I heard from the companies themselves.

I’m proud to say I actually spent time with every one of the companies this time. Here’s my take on a few of my faves from the night’s festivities.

WebInno30 – Preview/Postview

Last night’s WebInno30 was great. I’ve updated yesterday’s preview with a postview based on conversations with several of the companies I spoke to at the event. All the updates are in italics below.

First, I have to say there was one company I missed in my preview – TourSphere – that I totally missed in my preview. That was too bad because they were the coolest company at the event. Basically, what they do is allow organizations (and individuals I suppose) to create really great tours that play on mobile devices. If clients have content of their own they can build the tours themselves, if not, TourSpheres can do all of the production.

Andreas Randow of TourSphere