3PHealth Blog
The Law of Unintended Consequences
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
Today’s Internet “blackouts” of the pending US SOPA and PIPA regulation (see the CRN slideshow for more details) exemplifies the “all or nothing” approaches deployed by both regulators and internet companies when it comes to regulation of sensitive issues such as IP, digital rights management and digital privacy.
The intent of the legislation is good: Who (other than criminals) could argue against protecting content owners from piracy? The problem is with the unintended consequences – holding a larger, deep pocket site responsible for things they may accidentally link to (programmatically) or better yet, that their users link to within the larger platform. While not perfect, most reputable sites do a good job of removing offending content.
Well, the same issue holds true for Web Privacy regulation. The Do Not Track (DNT) header initiative takes the same binary approach to privacy. Share or don’t share my information beyond this site. The unintended consequence is that the person being protected (me) gets a lousy choice and lousy Web experience.
Do I believe that regulating digital privacy is good? Yes. But once again, it should not be an all or nothing directive, such as DNT (which, while it will be included in most browsers, has no legal teeth to enforce it’s use). It has negative consequences for both Web users and marketers. Nobody wins and only lip service is paid to privacy, while nothing really changes.
Why not let the user determine what they want to share with whom? Make choice a law. Let the market develop techniques and tools to support compliance and let Internet businesses and companies that share their visitor data with others, pick the solution that best matches their business model and compliance needs. Companies such as TRUSTe and 3PMobile are two good examples of companies working towards that end – giving users the choice to make more finely tuned data sharing decisions. Decisions based on their personal sharing tolerance and the trust earned by each site or service collecting, using and sharing their data.
Selenium for Android using the new Choice Mobile Browser
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
We’re pleased to announce the “Choice™” browser for Android and iPhone. For the first time you can now automate browser testing using the popular open source tool – Selenium across any carrier network. For more information please check our web site @ www.3pmobile.com or email us at info@3pmobile.com
AT&T introduces New Developer Platform – Immediately fragments the Carrier industy
Monday, January 9th, 2012
Today AT&T announced a new developer platform (link: AT&T Announces API Platform to Boost Innovation and Collaboration with Mobile App Developers).
Only one problem (well several actually).
- It only works on AT&T’s network/phones. So if I build something that works for them it won’t work on any other platform
- AT&T controls access to the API’s. This is the Carrier dream. You get to see only what they want you to see. Want to innovate? Then wait for the next set of API’s to be released
- No support for Privacy – you can now access the API’s to the device and unless there’s a fancy pop-up (easily suppressed) then you won’t know what’s happening
The holy grain for HTML is access to Native Device side API’s AND, the ability integrate that capability with Native Web Services. It’s the game changer and makes Mobile apps obsolete (well except maybe for gaming). However the along with nirvana comes the privacy problem. How do I control what has access to my device?
I can see it now. Lots and lots of Mobile Web apps (simple apps where the content lives on the server and you access it through a “browser like interface). But therein lies the disappointment – the interface on the Mobile device will never be a full browser – just a very limited Web run time engine (think Phone Gap).
The solution – a Mobile browser that connects to ANY Web service (not just a Web app) AND allows Native Device side API access with standard programming techniques, all while protecting the users Privacy.
Why Personalization algorithms won’t work
Monday, January 9th, 2012
Because they don’t know “Me”.
There’s this great TED video up on Yahoo… What Facebook and Google (and a few others) are hiding from the world.
So what’s going on here? Well what the Content providers are doing is “monitoring and measuring” You…
And then they start building a profile on You…
Which means that “You” get placed in a bubble…
And then they give “You” content they think (algorithms) is appropriate…
But what they (algorithms) fail to do is give you more content because they’re not very good at solving these kind of problems…they’re filtering and NOT in a good way.
When the Internet finally “Knows Me” it becomes a much more colorful and relevant world.
And that’s why when we built the “Choice” browser, we included a little something for You…it’s called “Me”, and allows “You” to chose what you want to share with the Internet. This allows those algorithms to make some really smart “Choices”, and for you to see “lots of really cool bubbles”.
Could solving Mobile Privacy Speed up the Web?
Friday, January 6th, 2012
Yes, Virginia it sure could… How?
Well let’s think about it for a moment and revisit an old blog post – “Privacy on the Internet is NOT binary” I started with a definition from Wikipedia….
Privacy (from Latin: privatus “separated from the rest, deprived of something, esp. office, participation in the government”, from privo “to deprive”) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share basic common themes.
When something is private to a person, it usually means there is something within them that is considered inherently special or personally sensitive. The degree to which private information is exposed therefore depends on how the public will receive this information, which differs between places and over time. Privacy partially intersects security, including for instance the concepts of appropriate use, as well as protection, of information.
What privacy allows us to do is be selective in what we share. It includes data about myself, my current location, my device that i’m using to connect with etc. In essence it’s context. The more context you have about something, or somebody, or some location, then the more PRECISE your response can be.
And Virginia therein lies the key to unlocking performance on the Internet – the precision you can bring to your response then the faster it will get there. Here’s a simple example. Yesterday I ran a performance test on Google’s Mobile home page. Here are the results…
- Load time was 5.789 seconds on Sprints network
- Page size was 525.83kb – that’s 525,830 bytes worth of data
Think about that for a moment. Google sent over ½ MB of data to my Mobile phone and it still had to ask me for access to my current location. Imagine for a moment that I could transmit my personal information to Google BEFORE it had to send a response back to me. Instead of ½ MB you could drop it down to less than 100,000 bytes of data. That’s an 80% drop in the data sent. And on top of that I get a personal response.
So there you have it – Privacy really can help speed up the Web. The more you trust and share with content providers then the better job they’ll be able to do with the response that you get back.