Technology on HuffingtonPost.com

Microsoft, News Corp Have Talked About De-Indexing From Google

2009-11-23T00:36:55Z

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company's being paid to "de-index" its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

High-Tech Devices Help Drivers Put Down Phones

2009-11-22T20:58:52Z

A number of fledgling companies like ZoomSafer, Aegis Mobility and obdEdge employ systems that place restrictions on phones based on the phone's GPS signal, data from the car itself or from nearby cellphone towers. Any incoming calls are then routed to voice mail or a message explaining that the phone's owner is driving. Exceptions can be made for certain numbers.

Dennis Whittle: "We tried that and it didn't work?"

2009-11-22T17:22:44Z

"We've already tried something like that and it does not work."

One of the most difficult challenges of innovation is knowing when to discard an idea or hypothesis because "it does not work." Sometimes, a change in the external environment, such as the launch of Apple's iPhone Apps Store, can cause a piece of software suddenly become valuable. And sometimes, the addition of what is seemingly a small tweak to a product can transform a "ho-hum"product into something revolutionary.

I was reminded of this the other night when Mari and I were touring the Terra Cotta Warriors at National Geographic. I noticed that the horses on display, dating from 350 BC, had saddles without stirrups. They had bridles, bits, and reins, but no stirrups. By this time, saddles had been around for about 4,000 years, with few design changes. Around 200 BC, someone tweaked the saddle by adding a wood "backbone" that helped distribute weight across the horses's back and reduce fatigue. The saddle itself was a significant but not overwhelming advantage for its users.

Finally, after about another five hundred years someone in the Jin dynasty in China decided to hang stirrups off the saddle. This minor "tweak" to the saddle was revolutionary. Some credit this tweak as being "one of the basic tools used to create and spread modern civilization. Some argue that it is as important as the wheel or printing press."

This left me wondering what could be the most revolutionary minor tweak to our existing features on GlobalGiving.

Dennis Whittle is the co-founder and CEO of GlobalGiving.

"Did You Know?" Tracks Progress Of Information Technology (VIDEO)

2009-11-22T16:06:33Z

Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod's "Shift Happens (Did You Know?)" series tracks the progression of globalization and information technology in a way that shows just how exponentially fast the world is changing. They put into perspective the age of information overload we're living in, in the hopes of helping us understand the future-- but the way they present it, it's hard enough to even wrap your mind around the present.

WATCH the video:

READ the video transcript:

DID YOU KNOW?

If you're one in a million in China...

...there are 1,300 people just like you

China will soon become the NUMBER ONE English speaking country in the world.

The 25% of India's population with the highest IQ's...

...is greater than the total population of the United States.

TRANSLATION: India has more honors kids than America has kids.

The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010...

...did not exist in 2004.

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don' yet exist...

using technologies that haven't been invented

in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.

The US.. Department of Labor estimates that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs...

by the age of 38.

1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year.

1 in 2 has been there less than five years.

1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.

There are over 200 million registered users on MySpace.

If MySpace were a country it would be the 5th-largest in the world (between Indonesia and Brazil).

The #1 ranked country in Broadband Internet Penetration is Bermuda, #19 The United States, #22 Japan.

We are living in exponential times.

There are 31 Billion searches on Google every month.

In 2006, this number was 2.7 Blllion.

To whom were these questions addressed B.G.? (Before Google)

The first commercial text message was sent in December of 1992.

Today, the number of text messages sent and received everyday, exceeds the total population of the planet.

Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million: Radio 38 years, TV 13 years, Internet 4 years, iPod 3 years, Facebook 2 years.

The number of internet devices in 1984 was 1000.

The number of internet devices in 1992 was 1,000,000.

The number of internet devices in 2008 is 1,000.000.000.

There are about 540,000 words in the English language...

about 5X as many as during Shakespeare's time.

It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.

It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4.0x10^19) of unique information will be generated this year.

That is more than the previous 5,000 years.

The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years...

For students starting a 4 years technical degree this means that...

half of what they learn in the first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

NTT Japan has successfully tested a fiber optic cable...that pushes 14 trillion bits per second down a single strand of fiber.

That is 2,660 CDs or 210 million phone calls every second.

It is currently tripling every six months and is expected to do so for the next 20 years.

By 2013, a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain.

Predictions are that by 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species.

During the course of this presentation...67 babies were born in the US, 274 babies were born in China, 395 babies were born in India, and 694,000 songs were downloaded illegally.

SO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Nathalie Blanchard Loses Health Benefits Over Facebook Photo

2009-11-22T14:58:24Z

BROMONT, Quebec — A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.

Nathalie Blanchard has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Saturday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from insurance giant Manulife.

But the payments dried up this fall and when Blanchard called Manulife, she says she was told she was available to work because of Facebook.

She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on Facebook, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday.

Blanchard said Manulife told her it's evidence she is no longer depressed. She's fighting to get her benefits reinstated and says her lawyer is exploring what the next step should be.

Blanchard told the CBC that on her doctor's advice, she tried to have fun, including nights out at her local bar with friends and short getaways to sun destinations, as a way to forget her problems.

Manulife wouldn't comment on Blanchard's case, but did say they would not deny or terminate a claim solely based on information published on Web sites such as Facebook.

David Weinberger: What's Irreplaceable About Books?

2009-11-22T14:27:47Z

As Marshall McLuhan said, new media generally do not replace old media. For example, radio remained important even after television came to dominance. On the other hand, by the time Western Union ended its telegram service in 2006, the cultural role and importance of telegrams had changed ... and shrunk. So, after we have networked digital books, will books be as ubiquitous and culturally important as radio? Will their role become as narrow as the telegram's in 2005? Will they be as cherished but infrequently attended as live theater? What's the future of books?

The answer depends on what we value about printed books that electronic books cannot replace.

We won't know the answer until we invent the future. But, I'm going to hypothesize, predict, or stipulate (pick one) that at some point we will have ebooks (which may be distinct hardware or software running in something other device we carry around), with paper-quality displays that are full-color and multimedia, that are fully on the Net, with software that lets us interact with the book and with other readers, that are a part of the standard outfitting of citizens, and that exist within a world that provides ubiquitous Net connectivity.

Those are a lot of assumptions, of course, and each and every one of them could be disrupted by some 17 year old at work in her parents' basement. Nevertheless, if the future is something like that, then what of pbooks' value will be left unreplaced by ebooks?

Readability. I'm assuming paper-quality displays, which may turn out to be unattainable without having to wheel around batteries the size of suitcases. But, with a display not as crisp as ink on paper, ebooks' ability to display text in various fonts and sizes should remove this advantage from pbooks.

Convenience. I am assuming that ebooks will be more convenient than pbooks: as legible in sunlight, at least as easy to hold and use, easier to use for those with certain disabilities, long enough battery life, possibly self-lit, etc. The biggest open question, I believe, is whether it will be as easy to annotate ebooks...

Annotatability. The current crop of ebooks make highlighting passages and making notes so difficult that you have to take a break from reading to do either of those things. But, that's one big reason why the current crop of ebooks are pathetic. With a touchscreen and a usable keyboard (or handwriting recognition software), ebooks of the future should be as easy to annotate as a pbook is. And those annotations will then become more useful, since they will be searchable and sharable.

Affordability. The marginal cost of producing ebook content is tiny, which doesn't mean prices will drop as dramatically as we might like. Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine a world in which ebook content costs more than pbooks. Of course, this assumes that ebook readers will be cheap enough to compete with pbooks, given the combined cost of content and hardware. On the other hand, if ebook readers turn out to be software that runs on some more generalized device, the economics will likely work in ebooks' favor.

Social flags. We use the books we own as tribal flags, as Cory Doctorow points out in a recent interview. You probably carefully choose which book you're going to bring with you on a job interview, and which books get moved to the shelves in your living room. Ebooks can serve the same role when introduced into social networks, including social networks explicitly built around books, such as LibraryThing.com. They obviously don't work in physical space that way; if you want to show off your books to people who visit your home, you're going to have to get physical copies.

Aesthetic objects. Many of us love the feel and smell of books. While ebooks might be able to simulate that in some way — maybe their page displays could yellow over time — it'd still just be a simulation. While ebooks will undoubtedly develop their own aesthetics, so that we'll call people over to see how beautiful this or that new ebook is, they can't replace the particular aesthetics of pbooks. So, those who love pbooks will continue to cherish them.

Sentimental objects. For my bar mitzvah, some friend of my parents gave me a leatherbound copy of A.E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad" and other poems. It was a beautiful aesthetic object, but I also understood that it had a personal meaning to the giver. I doubt that that particular copy did — I don't think it came from his own collection — but the physicality of the book was itself a marker for the personal meaning it had for the giver. As Cory says, the books your father read — the very copies that were in his hands — probably have special meaning to you. It's hard to see how ebooks could have the same sentimental value, except perhaps if you are reading the highlights and notes left by your father, and even then, it's not the same.

Historic objects. Likewise, knowing that you're looking at the very copy that was read by Thomas Jefferson gives a book an historic value that ebook content just can't have. It's hard to see how an author could autograph an ebook in any meaningful way.

Historical objects. As John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid have pointed out, as has Anthony Grafton, books as physical objects collect metadata that can be useful to historians, e.g., the smell of vinegar that indicates the book came from a town visited by cholera. Ebooks, however, accumulate and generate far more metadata. So, we will lose some types of metadata but gain much more...maybe more than our current norms of privacy are comfortable with.

Specialized objects. It will take somewhere between an improbably long time and forever for all collections of pbooks to be digitized. Thus, books in special collections are likely to be required well after we can take the presence of ebooks for granted.

Possessions. We are headed towards a model that grants us licenses to read books, but not outright ownership. (This is Cory's main topic in the interview that stimulated this post.) If we lose ownership of ebooks, then they won't have the sentimental value, they will lose some of their economic value to readers (because we won't be able to resell them or buy them cheaper used), and we won't be as invested in them culturally. Whether ebooks will be ownable, and whether that will be the default of the exception, is unresolved.

Single-mindedness. Books are the exemplar in our culture of thinking. We write our best thoughts in books. We engage with the best thoughts of others by reading books. Books encourage and enable long-form thinking. Ebooks, because they are (ex hypothesis) on the Net, are distracting. They string together associated chunks and tempt us with links beyond themselves. It is easy to imagine ebooks providing the singleminded pbook experience: "Press here to remove all links." But, of course, you could always unpress the button. Besides, since your ebook is on the Net (ex hypothesis), all that's stopping you from jumping out of the book and into your email or Facebook is self-discipline. So, while ebooks can provide the singledminded experience of pbooks, some of us may prefer the paper version to keep the distraction of the Net at bay.

Religious objects. Some books have special meaning within some religions. It's hard to imagine, for example, that an ebook is going to replace the Torah scrolls in synagogues. In fact, orthodox Jews can't use electronic devices on the Sabbath, so they are certainly going to continue to buy pbooks. But, this is the very definition of a specialty market.

So, what does all this mean for the future of books? It depends.

First, are there other values of pbooks that I left off the list?

Second, I haven't listed any unique advantages of ebooks. For example, ebooks will allow social reading: engaging with others who are reading the book or with the traces left by those who have already it. That's potentially transformative of reading. Also, ebooks are likely to radically reduce the cost of reading, especially of some categories of overpriced pbooks (e.g., textbooks). Also, ebooks will make it much easier to understand the content of books through embedded dictionaries, search capabilities, and links to explanatory discussions. Also, as more of the corpus gets digitized, ebooks will make it far easier for scholars to pursue the footnotes (except they'll be embedded links, not footnotes). Also, ebooks will incorporate multimedia. Also, reading ebooks will build a searchable personal corpus that is far more useful to us than bookcases filled with out conquered pbooks. Also, we'll always have our entire library with us, ready to be read or reread, which is good news for readers.

I leave it to you to decide how this mix of values is likely to play out. What will be the social role and meaning of pbooks as we go forward into the ebook era? In twenty years — giving ourselves plenty of time to develop usable ebook readers, to digitize most of what we need, and to build an always-available network — will pbooks be used mainly by collectors, and scholars working with unique texts? Will they be sentimental objects? What poor people read? What rich people read? Will physical books be the equivalent of AM radio, of the road company of "Cats," of quaint objects in book museums — and/or the continuing pinnacle and embodiment of learning?

Fred Schulte, Senior Reporter For HuffPost Investigative Fund, Talks Digitizing Medical Records On NPR (AUDIO)

2009-11-21T17:56:33Z

Fred Schulte, a senior reporter for the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, talked with NPR's Scott Simon Saturday morning about the overlooked technology companies that stand to make huge profits in the push to digitize the nation's medical records.

"The government's $45 billion plan to jump-start a national shift to electronic medical records has touched off a gold rush among scores of technology firms - even as many experts question whether the benefits of the products are being oversold," Schulte writes in an article on the digitization of medical records, on the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.

"There's a sort of a gold rush going on," Schulte explained on NPR's Weekend Edition. "Some of the biggest companies in the world--Microsoft, Dell, Google--all of these huge tech companies are very interested in the billions of dollars that is going to derive from health care in cyberspace."

"There are cash registers ringing," Schulte said.

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund's examination of the medical records business is ongoing. Click here to follow the coverage, and listen to the full interview below.

Craig Newmark: Big news From Washington That Everyone Misses

2009-11-21T17:24:49Z

Hey, Beth Noveck is working at the White House getting really serious about giving all Americans a serious voice in running our Federal government.

She talks about how this is happening at city and state levels in Open Government Laboratories of Democracy:

Inspired by the President's call for more open government, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts launched its data catalogue, following in the footsteps of Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere around the country (as well as cities in Canada and the UK), to provide public access to information by and about government. What makes this exciting is not merely having transportation information available in machine-readable formats, but that professional and amateur enthusiasts can then get together, as they did last weekend, to create new software applications and data visualizations to better enable public transit riders to track arrival times for the next subway, bus, or ferry. Publishing government information online facilitates this kind of useful collaboration between government and the public that transforms dry data into the tools that improve people's lives. (For another great example, check out what happened

when we published the Federal Register for people to use.)

However, here's the big story:

The Obama Administration is taking unprecedented strides toward creating the most open and accountable government in history.

We could all use help getting that message out there.

Large Hadron Collider: Quick Restart Of World's Largest Atom Smasher Stuns Scientists

2009-11-21T16:33:14Z

GENEVA — Scientists are preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.

When the machine is fully operational, its magnets will control the beams of protons and send them in opposite directions through two parallel tubes the size of fire hoses.

In rooms as large as cathedrals 300 feet (100 meters) under the Swiss-French border, the magnets will force them into huge detectors to record the reactions.

One goal is to unravel the mysteries of the Big Bang that many scientists theorize marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago.

The restart of the Large Hadron Collider late Friday was hailed as a significant leap forward in efforts to launch new experiments – probably in January – on the makeup of matter and the universe.

The machine was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault in September last year.

The nuclear physicists working on it were surprised at how quickly they got beams of protons whizzing through the 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel underground late Friday.

"That was all wrapped up by midnight. They are going through the paces really very fast," said James Gillies, spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known by its French acronym, CERN.

Things went so well Friday evening that scientists achieved the operation seven hours earlier than expected, he said. Some scientists had gone home early Friday and had to be called back as the project jumped ahead, Gillies added.

Praise from scientists around the world was quick.

"I congratulate the scientists and engineers that have worked to get the LHC back up and running," said Dennis Kovar of the U.S. Department of Energy, which participates in the project. He called the machine "unprecedented in size, in complexity, and in the scope of the international collaboration that has built it over the last 15 years."

CERN decided Saturday to test all the protection equipment while there still is a very low intensity proton beam circulating in the collider. The tests will take 10 days, Gillies said.

He said CERN decided against immediately testing the collider's ability to speed up the beams to higher energy or to start with low-energy collisions that would help scientist calibrate their detection equipment.

In the meantime, CERN is using about 2,000 superconducting magnets – some of them 15 meters (50 feet) long – to improve control of the beams of billions of protons so they will remain tightly bunched and stay clear of sensitive equipment.

Officials said Friday evening's progress was an important step on the road toward scientific discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider, which are expected in 2010.

"We've still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we're well on the way," CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said.

With great fanfare, CERN circulated its first beams Sept. 10, 2008. But the machine was sidetracked nine days later when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated and set off a chain of damage to the magnets and other parts of the collider.

Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators, said the improvements since then have made the collider a far better understood machine than it was a year ago.

It is expected soon to be running with more energy than the world's most powerful accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago. It is supposed to keep ramping up to seven times the energy of Fermilab in coming years.

This will allow the collisions between protons to give insights into dark matter and what gives mass to other particles, and to show what matter was in the microseconds of rapid cooling after the Big Bang.

The Large Hadron Collider operates at nearly absolute zero temperature, colder than outer space, which allows the superconducting magnets to guide the protons most efficiently.

Physicists have used smaller, room-temperature colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles. And scientists still have other questions about antimatter, dark matter and supersymmetry they want to answer with CERN's new collider.

The Superconducting Super Collider being built in Texas would have been bigger than the Large Hadron Collider, but in 1993 the U.S. Congress canceled it after costs soared and questions were raised about its scientific value.

Gillies said the Large Hadron Collider should be ramped up to 3.5 trillion electron volts some time next year, which will be 3 1/2 times as powerful as Fermilab. The two laboratories are friendly rivals, working on equipment and sharing scientists.

But each would be delighted to make the discovery of the elusive Higgs boson, the particle or field that theoretically gives mass to other particles. That is widely expected to deserve the Nobel Prize for physics.

More than 8,000 physicists from other labs around the world also have work planned for the Large Hadron Collider. The organization is run by its 20 European member nations, with support from other countries, including observers Japan, India, Russia and the U.S. that have made big contributions.

Einstein Robot 'Albert Hubo' Brings Physicist Back To Life (VIDEO)

2009-11-21T15:53:35Z

The famed physicist Albert Einstein may no longer be living, but his robotic double almost seems to bring the scientist back to life.

The engineers at Hanson Robotics have created a robotic head designed to look like Albert Einstein's and put it on top of the "HUBO" bipedal robotic frame.

The following video demonstrates the intricate facial movements that Hanson Robotics has been able to achieve with "Einstein's" face, giving the robot a surprising range of facial expressions.

The video even pictures Albert Hubo walking surprisingly well by itself, then shows it stopping to have a chat.

Via a voice synthesizer that mimic's the actual Einstein's voice, the robot waves and says, "My name is Albert Einstein. I am a physicist." He repeats this a couple of times before bowing.

The Albert Hubo currently resides at the University of California at San Diego with researchers who are working with the robot to help it emote, perform more realistic facial expressions and interact with humans.

See it for yourself below!

WATCH:

NYT Kristof: 'Boycott Bing,' It's A Chinese Propaganda Tool

2009-11-21T15:15:45Z

Western corporations have often behaved embarrassingly in China, sacrificing any principles to ingratiate themselves with the Communist Party authorities. Yahoo was the worst, handing over information about several email account holders so that they could be arrested -- and then dissembling and defending its monstrous conduct. Now Microsoft is sacrificing the integrity of Bing searches so as to cozy up to State Security in Beijing. In effect, it has chosen become part of the Communist Party's propaganda apparatus.

Andy Plesser: Video: eBay is a Style Barometer: Plaids, Rocker-Chic and Leather Jackets are Hot, Says Constance White

2009-11-21T02:19:13Z

NEW YORK, NY-- eBay has the pulse of the fashion market because, "It's probably the only place that a person could come to and really see the breadth and depth of style at their fingertips," says Constance White, Style Director for eBay.

Yesterday, Andy met up with White, a former fashion writer for the New York Times, who explained that eBay is a reflection of real-time fashion trends. The top trend of the moment according to traffic on eBay plaid, leather jackets, and the rocker-chic look.

In addition, eBay has recently launched a line of mobile boutiques to appear in 13 cities this holiday season. The 5,500 square feet New York pop-up store will be open today until November 27th and has already been visited by the likes of Kim Kardashian, actress and avid eBay seller.

In the latter half of the video, White shows us some styles in Kim's eBay store, including some from her own collection. Some of the proceeds from Kim Kardashian's sales will go to charities, including the Dream Foundation.

Online or in store, eBay shoppers can donate to a charity of their choice at checkout and eBay will match the final donation up to $200,000. At the 57th Street location, it will match every purchase dollar-for-dollar, up to an additional $200,000.

Check here for White's interview with Narciso Rodriguez on his upcoming eBay collection.

You can also find our story on NBC Local Bay Area.

And please find our story on Beet.TV

Robert D. Atkinson, Ph.D.: Whack-A-Mole Security: Bad Policy, Bad Legislation

2009-11-21T01:15:16Z

Guest post by Daniel Castro, Senior Analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

The recent disclosure of a confidential Congressional document has at least one congressman calling for a ban on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software, but a closer look at the problem reveals that this effort would merely be treating the symptoms, not the disease.

First some background. Last month the Washington Post revealed that more than thirty members of Congress and staffers were under investigation for possible ethics violations, including for "accepting contributions or other items of value... in exchange for an official act." While this revelation was shocking, perhaps even more shocking was the means by which this information was leaked -- the information was downloaded from the Internet. As detailed by the Washington Post and the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct in the U.S. House of Representatives, a low-level committee staffer had saved a copy of a confidential House ethics committee report on her personal computer while working from home. Unfortunately, the staffer was also running a peer-to-peer file sharing program and inadvertently saved the file in a folder that was shared with other users. By saving the file in a shared folder, the staffer made the document available to all other users on the publicly accessible file sharing network. While only one report from July was reported by the Washington Post, the Standards Committee noted that the potential disclosure involved several confidential documents.

The initial reaction from House leaders was tempered. The Standards Committee issued a statement reminding House Members, Officers and employees to maintain good information security practices when handling sensitive materials and noted that "no matter how robust our cybersecurity systems are, they remain subject to individual error." The statement also emphasized that the disclosure took place on the staffer's personal computer, that the staffer was no longer employed by the committee, and that no House information systems were compromised.

Case closed? Not so fast. Some members of Congress are jumping on the media attention surrounding the ethics leak to enact a legislative ban on peer-to-peer file sharing software. Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) has introduced the Secure Federal File Sharing Act which would prohibit the use of peer-to-peer software on all computer systems run by the Federal government or its contractors. In addition, the legislation directs the Office of the Management and Budget (OMB) to address the use of P2P software on the home computers of government employees used for work purposes. To be fair, this is not a completely reactionary move. Congress has held a number of hearings over the years detailing instances of sensitive and confidential information being revealed over peer-to-peer networks--including Social Security numbers, financial records, and even location information about a safe house for the first family. In fact, the latter incident spurred Rep. Towns to first announce his call for a ban on the use of peer-to-peer software on all government networks.

It is hard to fault the Congress for misunderstanding the problem when some of the press reports surrounding the incident have often been misleading or inaccurate. In fact, most of the press seems to blame the disclosure on the peer-to-peer software, rather than on human error or the bad policies and practices that led to the disclosure. And some reports are simply erroneous and reflect a poor understanding of the technology. For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, by using a peer-to-peer network the staffer "allowed someone to hack into her computer and obtain the document." That's like saying by publishing an article on its website, the Wall Street Journal allowed its readers to hack into their web server and read the news.

To be clear, using peer-to-peer file sharing software exposes users to a number of risks. First, P2P software is often used by Internet users to download and distribute copyrighted content, an illegal act for which individuals can and should be held responsible. Second, the files shared on P2P networks often contain malware -- viruses, spyware, and other malicious software that can steal the user's private data and turn an infected PC into part of a botnet. But peer-to-peer software, by itself, did not cause the confidential Congressional document to be leaked to the press.

Some have argued that peer-to-peer software presents a unique threat because users are often unaware that the software is sharing files on their personal computer. For this reason, Reps. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), John Barrow (D-GA) and Joe Barton (R-TX) introduced the Informed P2P User Act (H.R. 1319) earlier this year which would require peer-to-peer software to give users conspicuous notice and obtain consent before sharing files from a user's PC. First, most file sharing software does not share your entire hard drive, but just a few select folders. In addition, P2P software is already evolving and responding to their users' demands for more control and notice over how files are shared and preventing accidental disclosure of private information. Finally, while more notice may reduce some accidental file disclosures, incidents such as the recent leak of Congressional documents stem from misconfigured settings or operator error, not a lack of notice.

But the legislative response from Rep. Towns is more troubling. The congressman has argued that "We can no longer ignore the threat to sensitive government information that insecure peer-to-peer networks pose. Voluntary self-regulations have failed so now is the time for Congress to act." However, the committee staffer revealed confidential information by mistakenly saving the document in a shared file folder. This mistake was human error. If the staffer had accidentally emailed those documents--say by inadvertently clicking on the wrong attachment--would members of Congress now be calling for a ban on email? Of course not. The underlying problem is not that the staffer was running a P2P program on her computer, but that the sensitive documents had virtually no access controls on them to prevent their unauthorized use. After the staffer was allowed to take the document home as an unsecured file, the confidential information could have been leaked in many different ways--from a lost USB drive to a stolen laptop to a snooping roommate. If the file would have even had basic password protections enabled, probably none of the ensuing drama would have happened. A properly encrypted file, even if lost or made publicly available, would remain secure and confidential.

Unfortunately, this type of response is typical when organizations face a data breach, as executives scramble to fix the immediate problem without taking time to understand the bigger issues. This whack-a-mole approach to information security problems is bad strategy for an organization and bad policy for the Congress. Good information security practices depend on IT leaders forming a solid understanding of risk and taking action to manage those risks. For example, in this case, the risk here is not peer-to-peer file sharing, but rather inappropriate disclosure of confidential information. A better approach would be to review the policies and procedures for access to confidential information. Questions to ask include:

Who should be given access to sensitive information?

Should employees be permitted to take sensitive documents out of the office?

If so, what controls are in place to ensure that the data stays secure?

If not, what controls are in place to ensure files remain in the office?

Are sufficient penalties in place to punish those who violate these policies?

Are the known risks acceptable, and if not, what else should be done?

Certainly people are not perfect and some data breaches will still occur even with better policies and technology. And prohibiting P2P software probably makes sense for most agencies, but it is only a small part of a bigger problem. Rather than narrowly focusing on P2P, policymakers should be promoting broad strategies for sound information security policies across government. For example, rather than legislate that government IT executives should have a full accounting of P2P use on their network, they would be better off mandating that these IT executives need to have information security programs in place that give them detailed network intelligence so they can inventory what applications are running on their computers and track suspicious outbound and inbound network connections. In addition, government-wide policies should be developed to promote secure teleworking. As teleworking becomes more common the perimeter for enterprise security becomes wider and the amount of control that IT administrators can exert over remote PCs becomes weaker, thus creating a new threat environment. Government best practices in this area would be helpful to small and large businesses in the private sector.

Policymakers should use this experience as an opportunity to push for substantial progress on information security practices, not merely small mandates banning a particular type of software.

The New York Music Project: Help Map The City In Song

2009-11-20T22:57:09Z

Since its founding, New York has been an evergreen inspiration for musicians, from Gershwin to Dylan to the Beastie Boys. "Empire State of Mind," Jay-Z's love letter to the city, is just the latest, and perhaps greatest, in a long line of New York-inspired songs. But one day -- maybe soon, maybe not -- someone else will come along and pen a ditty about the city that never sleeps that will fully-encapsulate life in the five boroughs and Jay-Z's will be a worn-out standard, played while fans shuffle out of the new new Yankee Stadium.

So in honor of the long and vast history of New York in song, we're extremely pleased to introduce the Huffington Post New York Music Project. Essentially we are trying to discover, uncover, and map every single song lyric that name-checks a location, business, corner, monument, etc., in the city of New York. This can be as vague as George Cohan giving his regards "to Broadway" to as specific as Lou Reed "waiting for the man" on 125th and Lexington. We've put together 40 entries to start off with, but that just scratches the surface.

We need your help!

Help us create the definitive map of New York music. All you need are the lyrics, a picture of the location (if you don't have one, use Google Maps Street View to grab an image), and hit the PARTICIPATE button below. This submission format is ideal: "Song" - Artist.

Multiple lyrics from the same song are fine, and feel free to add as many as you can. Also please note that there will be a delay of up to 24 hours once you submit -- but don't let that deter you!

Black Friday Sales 2009: How To Use Social Media To Find Deals

2009-11-20T22:25:47Z

We're a week away from Black Friday and just a few years ago, if you wanted to find the best deals, you had to wait for the sales flyers to hit your newspaper or mailbox. You'd make a list of what you wanted and get your game plan together. But that's all changed because of social media. Tools like iPhone apps, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook will be key in helping competitive shoppers get a leg up against the thousands of shoppers vying for the deals of the century this season.