Recent stuff

Interesting review on Google by Daniel Soar: "It knows"

And while we're on the subject of "it", a recent article about our official class snack,  It's It (or for Aaron, Pop-tarts)

And one on location and privacy from the New York Times,

And one that Anders sent on NSA spying
And one from Jenny on Digital textbooks
--t

Current items

Some items relating to our recent discussions:


On open social network information, The Social Graph is Neither , a blog post by Maciej Ceglowski.


We talked about planned obsolescence of things like toasters.  A great piece on the way all this works is Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff


I mentioned the article about direct brain connection in the Economist, called "Mind goggling" (not googling)


And a current New York Times article by Claire Miller on our friend Larry, 

Privacy in the mall

A new startup called Euclid Elements emerged from stealth mode today to debut its customer-tracking solution for brick-and-mortar merchants it’s calling “Google Analytics for the physical world.” The name is an apt description for the new solution, which employs sensors and wireless technology to track customer behavior...

So what does Euclid actually do? It uses preconfigured in-store sensors plugged directly into switch in the network closet to track the Wi-Fi signals on customers’ smartphones. In doing so, Euclid can map out and analyze customer shopping behavior, including things like foot patterns (the movement in and out and through the store), plus customer loyalty, retention rates, “dwell time,” and even things like “window conversion rates,” which can be thought of as the offline “click-though.” (A window conversion means a customer sees a window display and then decides to enter the store).