The industry that is New Media is very much about two-way communication. We all recognize this. Rather than content simply being doled out to the masses, data on the Web travel in all directions. And while this arrangement hugely effective for a myriad of parties, there are the odd apples which, with barriers lowered, can damage a process.

Blogging for one, is filled with interesting discussion, much of it very open and wonderfully so. But it is also wrought with annoyances, some worse than others, and those troublemakers can become a management nightmare if not dealt with. And if you’re keeping tabs on an outlet or forum that requires especial jurisprudence, you’re bound to devote much of your time to being a watchful eye on matters. This is where a middleman by the name of Contrust comes into play.

Now, Contrust is not only aiming at independent Internet publishers and New Media upstarts to give its SaaS (software-as-a-service) monitoring system, presently a semi-exclusive beta, a solid spin. The company is hoping to climb into a chair where it can provide as much for social media actors as old media stalwarts and corporations and so forth. Regardless of this aim, the product it delivers is one that certainly goes above and beyond what common filters of Akismet’s making offer.

Backed by Xenia Venture Capital and headed by co-founders Shai Wolkomir (CEO) and Nir Abraham (CTO), each ranking as software and security specialists, Contrust presents itself as an automatic moderator of sorts. This doesn’t entail the user to simply flip the switch and step aside to allow a magical cleaner to sweep rubbish from view. It’s more about offering the user a good set of parameters, almost entirely customizable, that enable one to specific what may fly and what may not fly in a particular venue. This goes for things text-, video-, and still image-based. (The latter two options are enhanced by UK-based Image Analyzer.)

Flexibility is how they phrase it. Which is naturally necessary if the company is to adapt itself to the full variety of clients it seeks to deliver for. It might seem a bit heavy-handed for some in the media industry compelled to monitor themselves without being quite so strict. The specifications are indeed quite detailed, but if the inflow of undesirables is too much to bear, as annual reports of spam proliferation make all too clear, there’s reason to seek more control. Contrust may not be the appropriate engine for everyone. But for some, it may well be.

To reiterate, Contrust at present is in closed beta. If interested, you can submit your contact information via a simple application form, which the team pledge to review.

Source:Mashable!

Remember when Comcast got tricky with its network meters and squeezed some slow-flowing kinks into broadband users’ connections and got caught for doing it and grabbed the stern attention of the FCC and was told to, in some manner of speaking, to quit the shenanigans?

Well, Comcast is opting to forgo such secretive business from here on. Instead, it has, in the words of Vishesh Kumar of The Wall Street Journal, “formally submitted plans to the Federal Communications Commission…detailing how the company plans to manage its broadband network. …. Rather than than target specific types of bandwidth-intensive applications like peer-to-peer file sharing, the company will instead slow Internet speeds for its heaviest users at peak times when its network is congested.”

Just to lather some background on to this revelation, Comcast was pinned earlier this year for purposely slowing BitTorrent traffic, which opponents of the silent measure said tossed legitimate and legal transfers in with illicit, copyright-breaking behavior. (Ars Technica has an exceptional summary of the history of the company’s practices.) And this issue is only compounded by the ISP’s well-publicized plan to implement a bandwidth cap of 250GB for residential subscribers.

Technically speaking, the enactment of the two will essentially mean for Comcast customers not only that their standard monthly fee will offer only so much data access, but that the way in which they access the data - insofar as large and sustained transfers are concerned - is also observed and manipulated if deemed necessary. All in all, a consciously stifling combination, no doubt.

Some observers of the company’s actions say, on the one hand, that the data cap is quite high. They feel that the average user will not reach 250 GB in a given month, even with regular consumption of media like music and high-quality video. That may be true. Yet, how interesting it is that, on subject of networking throttling, Comcast claims to have received “no customer complaints…about the new method in its trial markets and less than 1% of customers were affected on a typical day.”

Perhaps the percentage is true, given the volume of users Comcast presumably serves. But the stated absence of any customer complaints seems absurd on its face, and raises several questions: Were customers aware? Did they notice? If so, did they fail to register calls to Comcast customer service for the fact that they were using peer-to-peer software and feared repercussions (for any number of reasons)? Were throttling measures so sporadic and fleeting that all was well minutes or hours after subscribers had noticed a drop in network performance?

Of course, many, if not all of these questions will remain in the air indefinitely, as proof is hard to amass among the consumer class. And Comcast cannot be expected to have to address psychological issues among its users. Thus, if the FCC finds Comcast’s plans to manage users’ activity more strictly not an unfair practice, which it may well do, Comcast users will, very simply, have to deal with it. If this is so, the only sensible thing for discontented Comcast subscribers to do is move on to another service provider. Will they, though? Comcast is evidently hedging its bet on customers’ feeling that a departure from the company’s billing charts will be less appealing than the moment at which they had originally signed on. This is thoroughly old style to business conduct, for sure, but it has unfortunately been proven quite effective at times.

(Image credit: Webwombat)

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Comcast Asks the FCC: How Stupid Do We Look?Comcast Hops on the YouTube KillerComcast Chooses Yahoo…Google Kicked in the Nuts?Comcast Not Net NeutralRumor: Plaxo Sells to Comcast for $175M in CashFCC May Fine Comcast Up To $1.77 TrillionComcast Practically Admits to Controlling Your Bandwidth Usage. So Not Net Netural.

I must admit that when I read and wrote about Google’s private data anonymization policies I took the word “anonymization” at face value. I know that it can mean some very different things, but now that CNET’s Chris Soghoian has actually asked Google the sordid details and debunked the process, I’m quite sure that my and Google’s definition of the word is not the same.

Here’s the reply that Chris got from Google when he asked them to describe what anonymization really means:

“After nine months, we will change some of the bits in the IP address in the logs; after 18 months we remove the last eight bits in the IP address and change the cookie information. We’re still developing the precise technical methods and approach to this, but we believe these changes will be a significant addition to protecting user privacy…. It is difficult to guarantee complete anonymization, but we believe these changes will make it very unlikely users could be identified…. We hope to be able to add the 9-month anonymization process to our existing 18-month process by early 2009, or even earlier.”

Here’s what happens when you do a Google search, in the simplest possible terms: you type in some keywords, Google stores a unique cookie, your IP address, and the words you typed in.

Now, what they mean by anonymization is that after 9 months they remove some of the bits from your IP address. After 18 months, they remove the last part of your IP address. Now, even without taking into consideration the fact that the unique cookie is there all this time, rendering all this anonymization stuff completely useless, this sounds fishy.

Let’s start with the anonymization after 18 months. They remove the last part of the IP address, right? Like, 111.111.111.xxx? That’s a grand total of 255 possible combinations, which means you’re anonymous in the crowd of 254 other people. Gee, thanks Google! That’s the level of anonymity and privacy I want! Even without the cookie, it’s a bit laughable to think that someone who wants to find you will not be able to do so merely by analyzing timestamps, keywords, and the activity from other IP addresses with the same first three octets.

Bear in mind that I am simplifying things quite a bit here and I’m not taking into account the fact that most users today are assigned dynamic IPs by their ISPs. Still, the point here is that Google’s anonymization process - based on the data I have - is laughable and in many cases useless.

After 9 months, however, they remove some of the bits from your IP address. I’d like to know: which ones? If it’s as Chris predicts, 111.111.111.1xx, then this entire anonymization thing is a complete farce. If they remove some of the bits from the first, second or third octet… well, that’s a bit better, but due to the cookie business mentioned above, it’s still all very far from anonymity.

The sad conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that (and again, based on the data I have) Google is not really doing much to protect our privacy; they’re just doing it to shut the critics up. And don’t even get me started on all that other data owned by your ISP, your mobile network operator, your email provider… well, nearly every company that provides you with any online service. Put all those bits and pieces together, and your privacy is thrown out the window. If you want to stay anonymous, you’re going to have to take a lot of extra steps, because the big boys obviously won’t do it for you just yet.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:CNet Deems Ask.com The Most Private Search Engine in the Land7 Useful Firefox Toolbars For Power SurfersGoogle To Launch Google WikiGoogle Maps Hangs Up on Click-to-CallGoogle Checkout Trends Knows Your Shopping HabitsGoogle Gets GhoulishGoogle Calendar Optimized for iPhone

An interesting statement emerged on NewTeeVee today. Post author Chris Albrecht quotes Roku VP of consumer products “It’s unfortunate that the limitless possibilities are being capped by an ISP [Comcast], but it has no direct business impact on us.” Roku, for those unaware, is in a partnership with Netflix to deliver streaming movies on a $99 buy-in deal fully subsidized through one’s monthly rental subscription cost. Comcast, meanwhile, will be initiating a bandwidth limit of 250GB for residential broadband users per month starting in October.

Let me say that 1) the limits to be enact could have a direct business impact on Roku, and 2) of course the company will say otherwise. The reason being that it is in Roku’s interest to disregard changes at Comcast. If it were to complain in ways that prospective users would notice, it might risk cutting into sales by dissuading shoppers concerned about hitting the data limit. And at this point in time, Roku likely doesn’t need such disruptions to its output.

VP Tim Twerdhal says that consumers’ choice of downstream video bitrates allows Roku to safely stay within the bounds set by Comcast. A valid point. Equally valid is his explanation that visual quality will be sustained while bitrates drop as the technologies involved improve and advance. But such progress is a relative unknown to Comcast’s very real “cut-off.”

Furthermore, it only takes knowledge of existence a limit - not too big or too small - to influence consumer decisions. Give a user warning of what might be if he/she were to seek the full potential (or close to it) of modern conveniences like high-quality media downloads, and that tricky thing known as deliberation creeps into the picture. A user might begin to weight the pros and cons of his/her situation. And that eventually eats into interconnected economies. With the movie/TV download sector being one of the hungriest around today.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:YouTube Insights: Now With Demographic StatsMySpace Data Availability Goes LiveGoogle Voluntarily Taking Your Analytics DataTiVo to Release User Profile DataViacom Backs Down - Our Privacy is PreservedGeoCommons - Google Maps Meet Heat MapsFacebook Beacon Collects Data on Non-Users Too

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “17 Online Tools For Your Graduation”, url: “http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/17-online-tools-for-your-graduation/” });

Source:Mashable!
Looks like Cox Communications is following in the footsteps of Comcast, having been found to be interfering with file-sharing by blocking its customers’ Internet connections. A study based on research by The Associated Press and Krishna Gummadi at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems found that about 54% of Cox users were blocked […]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Cox Blockers: Keeping Torrent Users from Sharing Files”, url: “http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/cox-blocks-interne/” });