There are identity thieves, stalkers and people generally trying to take advantage of you.

At least that was one of the things that I took away from a privacy conference last week in Seattle, where the word “creepy” slipped into the conversation as a description of everything from location-based services to more cutting edge Internet businesses.

But advocates argued that the cure for creepy was to make services relevant and useful — not spammy and invasive. In other words, consumers are willing to share their information — age, gender, location — if there’s a benefit to them.

I moderated a panel titled “Building Trust in the Sharing Economy,” which addressed identity issues as people become more comfortable using the Internet to find babysitters, rent out their apartments or lend their car to strangers.

In those cases, honest people typically don’t mind sharing information about themselves in order to be considered a trustworthy consumer or provider. It’s a red flag if they don’t.

Sonny Singh, the VP of sales and business development at Jumio, said it’s not creepy when you show your driver’s license to Hertz when you’re renting a car or to a hotel when you’re checking in. That’s why it shouldn’t be viewed as strange when you use sharing services like Airbnb or RelayRides.

But he said, instead, “they are assuming from your Facebook profile that you are who you say you are.”

Jumio is developing technology that allows users to verify their identity by entering their credit card and driver’s license information using a webcam or camera phone.

Participants in the panel (from left to right in the picture) are: Tricia Duryee, AllThingsD; Drummond Reed, founder, Connect.me; Sam Rosen, co-founder, Scaffold; Xin Chung, CEO and founder, Trustcloud; and Singh.

Here’s a video of the whole discussion, but you can skip to around the 26-minute mark to hear the whole discussion on “creepy.”

A month ago, I posted an initial list of speakers for the 10th D: All Things Digital conference.

After a decade, the event — which is held in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., just south of Los Angeles, at the end of May — has attracted another amazing group of speakers, including: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; serial entrepreneur Sean Parker, who will appear with Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek; Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus; Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz; LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman, who will appear with the social business site’s CEO Jeff Weiner; and Skype CEO Tony Bates.

Now, here’s another group of stellar speakers we’ve added to the programming lineup (and there are still even more big names to come in the weeks ahead): Oracle CEO Larry Ellison; former tech analyst superstar and now VC Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins; Intellectual Ventures’ Nathan Myhrvold; Pixar co-founder and Disney animation head Dr. Ed Catmull; and Visa President John Partridge.

Larry Ellison, CEO and founder of the enterprise giant Oracle, needs little introduction, as one of tech’s highest profile figures and a true Silicon Valley icon. Frankly, I think the short bio that’s on Oracle’s Web site says it all: “Larry Ellison has been CEO of Oracle Corporation since he founded the company in 1977. He also races sailboats, flies planes, and plays tennis and guitar.” There will be a lot to talk about with the voluble and always entertaining exec — who appeared at the D conference once before many years ago — from the current state of the tech industry to insights to where it’s all going. (In addition, Ellison has agreed to appear on a panel we are doing as a tribute to his close friend, Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs.)

Another well-known tech figure is Meeker, who is now a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, having joined the storied venture capital firm in early 2011. She focuses there on investments in its digital practice and via KP’s Digital Growth Fund, working with companies such as Spotify, Jawbone and One King’s Lane. But Meeker is perhaps best known for her long stint — 1991 to 2010 — as a star Internet research analyst at Morgan Stanley, where she brought many of the Internet’s great companies to the attention of Wall Street and beyond. She also wrote a series of groundbreaking reports on the landscape. That includes her annual “State of the Internet,” which Meeker will debut this year at the conference in an extended demo of her always riveting Internet trends presentation.

Nathan Myhrvold is also a tech legend, having worked for 14 years as chief strategist and CTO of Microsoft. But, instead of retiring, the avid inventor decided to focus on patents, founding and leading a controversial company called Intellectual Ventures, which buys them up and licenses them out (or sues if it doesn’t sell). With all the mishegas around patents right now, it’s a good time to have Myhrvold back to explain it all and perhaps to take some of the blame for the explosion in intellectual property lawsuits. (Myhrvold also co-authored a cookbook, “Modernist Cuisine,” so we hope we will also get some sort of futuristic cooking demo. Perhaps, Patently Delicious Flan?)

Speaking of tasty, the animation from Pixar over the years has been just that and it’s been one of Disney’s greatest acquisitions. Given how much Pixar has contributed to animation technology, we are glad to finally get Dr. Ed Catmull onstage. As co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, he will discuss where entertainment and technology are intersecting and where they are not. Catmull is a geek’s geek in the industry — having also founded the computer graphics laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology, the computer division of Lucasfilm, as well as Pixar, which he did with chief creative officer John Lasseter. Get ready to talk about image compositing, motion blur, subdivision surfaces, cloth simulation and rendering techniques, texture mapping and the z-buffer. Also, Catmull’s five Academy Awards.

Lastly, it is perfect timing for bringing on John Partridge, president of Visa. With swirling issues around online identity theft, digital privacy, the future of money and the rise of upstart competitors such as Square, Partridge has his hands full at the credit card giant. One of the most neglected arenas in tech, the way we manage payments is perhaps the biggest story of the next era, especially as it relates to mobile and the rise of smartphones as all-purpose devices.

In a forceful Gizmodo essay called “The Case Against Google,” Mat Honan argues that Google has become evil, because the company’s leadership now realizes that, in a world divided into apps and social networks, playing on the open Web won’t cut it anymore.

Google is in the process of tying all its products together so our usage of each one can inform the others, but it hasn’t really told users what’s going on and what it means. And as its set of products becomes more interwoven, Google is cross-promoting them ahead of the competition.

As Honan accurately describes the situation, in order to answer complex and subjective queries, Google needs to know a lot about the person asking the question. And that requires entrusting Google with lots of our private data and control.

But I want to live in a world where I can use the best tools and they work together. I don’t necessarily need Google to be the one to connect everything, but I’m not opposed to Google making it happen with some combination of its own products and other people’s.

Here’s a scenario that sticks in my mind. I want my phone to buzz me to say, “Hey, you should really leave now, because with the extra traffic today, your next meeting is 35 minutes away.”

And then the phone should tell me what I need to know about who I’m meeting with, and show me our recent correspondence and his or her latest tweets, and what friends and interests and experiences we have in common. It should tell me exactly where the meeting is and what’s a good place to park, and then it should start speaking turn-by-turn directions. If traffic gets worse, it should help compose a text to the person’s cell number that says I’ll be a few minutes late, and help me send it without distracting me from driving.

If you think about it, the who, what, where and when of a meeting are often split into four different apps: Our contacts, email, maps and calendar. That’s redundant, annoying and totally ridiculous on a phone, where I need to glance down and see what I need to know, now, before I walk into a pole.

I really like a lot of Google products. I don’t imagine I’ll ever voluntarily leave Gmail. Google Voice and its voicemail transcriptions make my life so much easier. As a voracious news consumer, I live in Google Reader. The Chrome browser is excellent. I’m generally quite happy when these products work together; for instance, when Gmail recognizes an event invitation in an email and helps put it on my calendar.

But when I’m looking for local stuff, I generally prefer Yelp and Foursquare to Google’s local products. If I want the latest news and commentary, I need my Twitter. Facebook is where the people are, and the good stuff is on Path and Instagram. I chat on Skype and AIM all the time. We run AllThingsD’s editorial team on WordPress and Socialcast. On my phone, I’ve recently gotten lots of value out of Highlight (dossiers on who’s nearby), Orchestra (to-dos), and Quora and Pinterest (for high-quality text and photos).

In many cases, Google has a competing product. I don’t want to be forced to use Google’s product, and I don’t want my favorite apps to have to live as subjects on a Google-owned platform (or, for that matter, a Facebook-owned platform). What I’d like is for these services to work together and share data respectfully.

If Google wants to push its unification agenda, it should do a better job of explaining why that’s a good thing for me. We billion users, many of whom have been on Google for five years or more, should be given a fair chance to decide whether we want to opt in.

But again, I don’t think unification is a bad thing, if it can be done right. In app form, the closest thing I’ve used to have my online identity unified for my own sake is Greplin. Being a fairly trusting person, I’ve given this start-up access to search across my personal data on my multiple Google email accounts, calendars and docs, plus my Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Each time I open Greplin, it guesses that I probably want to search for information about the people in my calendar for that day, so it preformats them into suggested searches. When I click through on each name, I can see my historical correspondence with that person on every place we’re connected online (email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Greplin also scans through the correspondence to make a best guess at the person’s phone number, which has more than once been a total lifesaver.

But Greplin is just one app, and it’s only available on the iPhone. Imagine if these kind of connections could be made by the mobile operating system itself. Unlike iOS, Android at least lets apps communicate a bit between each other by signaling users’ intent when they switch between applications.

In fact, I would be okay with Google being the smart glue between services — understanding who I am, where I am, and what I prefer — and securely and respectfully moving that information around. That’s the kind of unified identity I’d want.

(Images courtesy of Flickr users Quinn Ryan Mattingly and Joi Ito)

This morning, Yahoo said it had hired PayPal President Scott Thompson as its newest victim, oops, CEO.

(You can read my interview with him too, here.)

AllThingsD.com had reported the pending development last night — which is how we roll here.

Now we will roll into the conference call on the matter, and are hoping that the head of the lucrative eBay payments unit will make an appearance, given that he does not start until next week.

One piece of advice I will extend Thompson: I would refrain from cursing, as previous Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz did on her first outing. (She was fired in September, although not precisely for the cussing she so enjoyed partaking in.)

Here we go!

7:02 am: It’s on, with Thompson present.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock begins, and he is “very excited, very excited.”

I’d be very excited if Thompson talked and not Roy, who has been to this particular Yahoo CEO rodeo a few too many times before.

Bostock is making promises that this time it’s going to be different. Really!

He also notes that the company will continue its “strategic review” — but who knows what that means now.

And he thanks Tim Morse, the interim CEO who is moving back to the CFO job. (Agreed — nice work, Tim!)

7:06 am: Scott Thompson is on and is “just thrilled” to be the new Yahoo CEO.

I like his accent, which seems like he might be from Boston. He does look and sound like Cliff Clavin, the mailman guy at the Beantown bar from the television classic “Cheers.”

Except, given he has been the darkest of dark horses in this CEO race, nobody knew Thompson’s name.

Thompson is saying all the right stuff, about wanting to increase shareholder value and such.

He sounds so hopeful! Urgency! Thoughtfulness! A bright new morning at Yahoo!

I have been to this rodeo before too, but I am still hoping this time it’ll work.

Scott, if you let me down, I might cry, because you sound so nice.

7:09 am Q&A time already.

Congrats from the Wall Street analyst peanut gallery.

Then, it’s right into a question for Bostock, about the progress of the Asian assets deal.

Also, is Thompson too much of a technologist and not a media dude?

Bostock wants to talk about only Scott, but notes that there will be “no slowdown and no delay” in the Asian process. And Thompson will be all onboard when he comes on board, folks.

Bostock sounds tired, but starts to talk about how a “great customer experience” is the key to the advertising business. He notes that Thompson knows how to do this, hence he’ll be fantastic.

“I have every expectation he’ll be out there calling on advertisers,” says Bostock. I would hope so, given that is where Yahoo makes most of its lettuce.

Bostock is saying Yahoo has been “treading water” and now needs to swim fast. Treading water? I wonder who the top honcho at Yahoo has been while the company has been listlessly dangling its legs in the drink?

Roy — that’s who!

7:15 am: Another analyst asks about margins.

Thompson is not having any of it! He is polite when asking for time to get on the job to make proper statements.

But he does focus on the need to build “great, innovative” products. True, but Yahoo has been incredibly unable to do this of late.

Thompson gives no specifics, though. My big idea: I would steal the self-driving car from Google.

7:17 am: A question about what the core of Yahoo is, and about what lessons Thompson is bringing from his experience at PayPal.

Well, he has not met the team — literally. Yahoo’s board consulted almost no one in the top ranks of execs on this appointment.

But Thompson “suspects” there is talent there. Given the recent attrition, he’ll need a big Inspector Clouseau magnifying glass to find it!

From eBay’s PayPal, he says that the key was balancing the customer experience with network effect and, well, blah, blah, blah Internet-speak.

I am still thinking shoplifting the self-driving car is the bestest idea.

7:20 am: A question about Yahoo’s display business versus Google.

Thompson notes it is too early for him to say — though he had better say soon! — but notes that data is key. He is a well-known by-the-numbers guy, and that is clearly where we are going at Yahoo, now that he is the big dog.

Thus:

“The data these Internet businesses create, the ability to use analytical technology to build a better businesses for your customers … I feel certain that wealth of data is going to be exploitable for next generation products, next generation experiences … My instinct says down in that data we’re going to be able to find ways to compete and innovate that the world hasn’t seen yet.”

I am really liking this accent, which is almost lulling. And so polite! Sources tell me that being “collaborative” was a big goal in this hiring.

7:22 am: A question about the identity of Yahoo, and whether it should be public or private.

Thompson harps on the need for innovation, and hopes it will be the future.

“I would not be here if I didn’t think it was possible,” says Thompson.

Bostock takes the public/private question. Yahoo will be public, he declares! Mostly, because it would be too pricey to take private.

“It’s a moot point,” he says.

7:25 am: More questions about what Yahoo is.

Thompson declines to run off the rails on this dicey one, but he says he believes that Yahoo has great assets.

It does. It’s just that it has been crashed many times — by the people who just hired him — right into a wall.

Just sayin’ — a self-driving car would have done a better job.

7:27 am: A brain-drain question, and more on Asia and on mobile.

Bostock butts in again. He said that Thompson will not be distracted by that, and will concentrate on the core business. Hush up, Roy.

Thompson says that he looks forward to meeting the peeps of Yahoo. (’Cuz he has not, as yet!)

He also loves mobile — which Yahoo has largely borked.

7:32 am: A content strategy question. Early days, so Thompson is still keeping his yap shut.

In this, he’s like the anti-Bartz. Is this good? It’s certainly different.

He says again that, “I can’t wait to meet” everyone at Yahoo. Vice versa, because this dude came from left field.

Thompson promises that he will be a “sponge.”

He closes by noting that he is “genuinely excited,” and says he believes in Yahoo.

Indeed, when it comes to Yahoo, you definitely gotta have faith.

“We all have multiple identities. It’s not abnormal; it’s just part of being human,” Poole said, in probably the most interesting session so far at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

“I cherish having options,” Poole said, joking that he can find more choices in the toothbrush aisle than ways to express himself online. “What’s really at stake now is the ability to be expressive on the Internet.”

Justifications for multiple identities include youthful indiscretions, personal and professional distinctions, exploring random communities and interests, and the more general drive to be able to choose how you present yourself to the world, Poole said.

Somewhat ironically, Poole’s new start-up Canvas does use Facebook authentication, Poole said — because it’s an easy way to filter out trolls and spammers. But after that Canvas users can then express themselves however they want.

Poole argued that it’s this diversity of options that must be preserved. Instead of using filtering techniques Google Circles and Facebook Smart Lists, he said, “It’s not who you share with, it’s who you share as.”

He concluded, “Facebook and Google do identity wrong, Twitter does it better, and I want to think about what the world would be if we did it right.”

Image credit Sage Ross.

The heavily backed San Francisco start-up came under fire a couple of weeks ago after one customer’s horror story spread rapidly across the Internet.

Ever since then, it’s been apologizing and working round the clock to roll out new security features.

Brian Chesky, the CEO and co-founder, tells me that so far he’s gotten 3,000 emails since posting his email address (brian.chesky@airbnb.com) on the site for any customers to contact him, and that engineers have been working past midnight and spending the night in the office to get new features completed quickly.

Most of the improvements are a direct response to the outcry, while only a few of them were already in the company’s pipeline.

“We realized that as we were entering the mainstream, there were a few opportunities to tighten up the platform,” Chesky said.

Today, it concluded work on a couple of major features, such as the $50,000 Host Guarantee, which means hosts will be reimbursed for property damage or theft and vandalism. Last week, the company also started providing 24-hour customer support using 100-plus agents in 18 countries working in multiple time zones.

It also launched Airbnb VoiceConnect, which allows people to make phone calls to one another without ever disclosing their real phone number. Privacy continues to be one of the company’s mantras, but that’s bending as users press to see a person’s real identity before conducting a transaction of this kind.

The need to make better security decisions in the future is also at the core of two hires. Airbnb has brought aboard Command Consulting Group, which will be reviewing the company’s practices and making recommendations, and hired Monroe Labouisse, who will be director of customer support after spending a decade at eBay and PayPal.

All of today’s improvements were outlined in a blog post today.

The guarantee will be retroactive and will definitely apply to EJ, the woman who chronicled her devastating story in a blog about how her San Francisco apartment was ransacked after she rented it to people via Airbnb.

The Airbnb Guarantee will allow hosts who believe their property was damaged or stolen during a stay to request funds from the company. Hosts can submit a request online, which will be examined by the customer service team. Airbnb will also have third parties that can go to the property to conduct an inspection if possible, and then a decision will be made.

The coverage will run alongside that of other insurance companies, meaning that if a person is refunded for his or her losses by another company, then the Airbnb Guarantee will not be necessary. The company still is recommending that hosts have insurance, and stresses that its guarantee does not replace it.

Chesky and Labouisse, who officially started at the company today, said that a number of previous customers have already reached out to inquire about the guarantee, but declined to disclose a specific number.

At $50,000, the guarantee is high enough that it signals to customers that Airbnb is serious about security and now has an incentive to make sure it is secure for all parties involved. Likewise, by making it retroactive, it means that it’s not just confident about its future, but also about most of the stays it has helped to mediate in the past.

Janrain, a Web identity management provider, has survived six years in the space and today is announcing $15.5 million in new funding led by Emergence Capital Partners and including Anthem Venture Partners, DFJ Frontier and RPM Ventures.

Janrain says it’s now used on 350,000 websites, including those made with Ning, KickApps and Get Satisfaction. You can see an example of how Janrain works on the Nasdaq community site below — basically, visitors are given the option to authenticate themselves with an existing account on another social service.

Web sites — that pay Janrain for its services — benefit because they can piggyback on the login and profile information users provide to other sites.

See also: Clearspring, which offers social sharing tools with an advertising business model, recently raised $20 million.

The deal, which occurred as far back as August, is being reported by Ben Kolada, an analyst at the boutique research firm the 451 Group. Kolada is characterizing it as a relatively small deal and remarks that the company’s only valuable asset is a patent awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. Google confirmed the acquisition to eMoney, but wouldn’t provide any more details.

The patent could potentially tie in nicely to Google’s near field communications (NFC) technology, which was announced last week as part of the release of the new Nexus S smartphone. Google’s Andy Rubin demonstrated the NFC technology live last week onstage at our event D: Dive into Mobile.

The patent encompasses technologies around mobile banking, advertising, identity management, and credit card and mobile coupon transaction processing. The company also occasionally goes by the name Walleto.

According to LinkedIn, the CEO and Founder of ZetaWire/Walleto is Alex Hertel, who started the company with his brother Philipp in March 2007.

Google publicly shamed Facebook this week for not giving its users the option to export the email contacts of their Facebook friends and import them to Gmail. The rapid-fire kerfuffle between the two companies came after private talks about sharing such data had broken down, and is apparently working, with tech industry opinion seeming to side with Google, even though few if any users seem to actually care about the issue. Sooner or later, if users start demanding to own their email lists and complaining about Facebook being evil, it will happen.

But the actual battle isn’t about reciprocity. If it’s on purely moral grounds, everyone’s hypocritical here. Facebook has arrangements to share user email addresses with Microsoft and Yahoo, and Google has in the past impeded Orkut users from exporting emails to Facebook. The reason this is playing out this way is because of the contentious relationship between Facebook and Google, and Google’s planned competitor to Facebook, a.k.a. Google Me.

As a larger question, what captivates me is how much value people are putting on user email addresses. Are our email addresses really the best proxy for who we are?

If you peel back the back-and-forth, the substance of Facebook’s argument is that Facebook users are on the service because it’s a social network, not an email application. When you use Facebook, your friends are identified by their (usually real) names, and you hardly ever see their email addresses. From Facebook platform tech lead Mike Vernal’s comment on TechCrunch:

Email is different from social networking because in an email application, each person maintains and owns their own address book, whereas in a social network your friends maintain their information and you just maintain a list of friends. Because of this, we think it makes sense for email applications to export email addresses and for social networks to export friend lists.

But to Google’s point, if people want to deactivate their Facebook accounts and/or try another service, they shouldn’t lose what they’ve created. When you join a new service, the best way it becomes useful and interesting is to quickly find and invite your existing friends (see: network effects)–and the best way to do that is to import a list of your email contacts.

The problem is you don’t own your friends’ email addresses; they do. Email is the only successful example of a decentralized social network.

Facebook has a privacy setting that lets you decide who specifically can view your email address. But that’s just within the centralized system of Facebook; you don’t (yet) get to choose where your email address can be shared. Plus, as we all know, Facebook’s privacy settings can get rather complicated, and both we users and the company change them over time.

Say I have a business contact I don’t want to share my personal email with, and she goes and exports her Facebook email contacts so she can fill out her Yahoo Mail contact list. Those settings need to carry over. And even if they do, spam and invasions of privacy are pretty much inevitable.

But am I my email address? As someone who’s very recently changed jobs, I know firsthand that link can be broken. I registered for so many of the sites I use with my old work email, and my whole address book was locked up there too. Now I have to reconstruct those relationships with a new identity. But I can do it. I’m still myself, after all.

Probably all of you reading this have more than one email address, and often multiple people use the same email address or the same computer. There’s not a one-to-one link between self and email, and the overlaps are often confusing and annoying.

Besides email, other options for an identity token might be your phone number, your social security number, your Facebook user name or your fingerprint.

But email seems to be the agreed-upon best proxy for Web services. Companies like RapLeaf run their businesses on connecting and aggregating information about people based on identifying their valid email addresses (and incur concerns about the implications of getting all that data in one place and selling it).

The stakes in this battle are increasingly high. Both Facebook and Google want to be our identity on the Web. I stay logged in to Gmail and Facebook all day from my laptop, and reap the benefits of those services being integrated with other ones, whether it’s a related service like Google Calendar or a new doodad that I can use Facebook Connect to register for.

Both Facebook and Google are striving to do two things:

• Represent us best by collecting our connections and experiences
• Be our token to bring that identity the rest of the Web

So think about where this is going. Facebook last week introduced a single-sign-on feature for phones (first on select Android apps and soon iOS). The way this will work is when you open a participating app, you have the option to connect to Facebook and bring your identity and friends with you. So the first time you use the app, it knows you and your context. You can imagine if this were to extend to Facebook’s Instant Personalization product, and you were to get a phone that out-of-the-box got your Facebook account and then automatically set up your contacts, preferences, apps and anything else you want or need. It’s powerful stuff.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Adam D’Angelo (pictured here) is too shy to subject himself to a BoomTown video–or perhaps too savvy–but he did agree to a sit-down for a short interview recently in a nondescript room in the Palo Alto, Calif., office building that houses Quora, the hot social answers start-up.

D’Angelo was, of course, the CTO and VP of Engineering at Facebook, as well as a prep school friend of the massive social networking site’s co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

But D’Angelo left the company in mid-2008 and with former Facebooker Charlie Cheever launched the question-and-answer site in January, after much venture capitalist shoving to get on board.

With more than $10 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and a whole lot more hype to contend with, D’Angelo and his small team have been trying to move the site well beyond its Silicon Valley-tech-dudes forum to one in which a plethora of topics and memes thrive.

As was the initial goal, D’Angelo said the aim remains to become the best place to find pertinent information about just about anything.

“The Web is a great place for finding information, but a lot of information that is really important is actually in people’s heads,” said D’Angelo. “If I had to pick one, I would say Wikipedia is a good comparison [to Quora], but there is room for more.”

Not such an easy task, which is why D’Angelo believes most Q&A sites still come up short for users.

“Quora is a simple interface, but it is very complicated underneath,” he said. “Q&A sites in the past had good systems, but they did not add in identity, reputation and quality.”

The hope is that by adding those elements, as it develops, Quora can more correctly answer the questions people are looking for.

“We are really interested in info that changes quickly and in unstructured info,” said D’Angelo, which he noted was at the heart of a lot of searches and well beyond data that search engines such as Google (GOOG) provides.

And for answerers, D’Angelo believes, it also gives them a place to feature their expertise in a much easier way than if they used their own Web site.

“We think people have found that Quora is different from a blog, in that people now have to think up what they think people might want to know,” said D’Angelo. “Here, they are given the topics and the questions, which means they are hitting areas they already know their audience is interested in.”

Interestingly, D’Angelo said he has wanted to turn down the spotlight on the site in recent months, as he hopes to get Quora on as solid footing as possible.

“We want to make a product that markets itself and not because we are big in Silicon Valley,” he said. “So, we want to tone down anything that does not have to do with improving Quora itself.”

Perhaps one of the reasons is the competing effort by his old pal and employer at Facebook, which launched its own Answers product soon after D’Angelo did.

D’Angelo declined to answer any questions related to the obvious and decidedly odd competition, although it is clear the move irks him, since it was a longtime interest Facebook was never interested in until he was and Quora attracted a giant amount of attention.

“There were a lot of different things I could have done [when I left Facebook]. But I felt this was an area that was completely neglected compared to other stuff,” is all D’Angelo will say.

Luckily for Quora, so far the Facebook Answers product has not garnered a whole lot of buzz, although D’Angelo discounted that as being a sign of Quora’s success.

“This thing is up to us, whether we succeed or fail is something that only we can determine,” he said.

Last night, BoomTown got to grill some “Catfish”–as in the three young hipsters responsible for the new documentary about a twisted online romance on Facebook.

That was for a Q&A after a screening in San Francisco, where I got to talk to Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and the film’s subject, Nev Schulman, about how they decided to make it.

“Catfish” is being released by Universal Pictures, which picked it up after it got a lot of attention at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

Before the social networking site’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg gets his knickers in a knot, “Catfish” is actually not the Facebook-bashing one.

Instead of a semi-fictional film–that would be “The Social Network” from Sony (SNE)–this one is a rumination on identity in the digital age.

As I previously wrote, I won’t give away the particulars, except to say it shows the range of human emotions that social networking engenders, from desperation and loneliness to serendipity and hope for love.

We talk about all that and more in the video of the interview I did before our discussion with the audience at the screening:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100903/the-catfish-aka-the-other-facebook-movie-dudes-speak/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100611/att-responds-to-boomtown-privacy-breach-via-email-oh-the-irony/ http://allthingsd.com/20100611/att-responds-to-boomtown-privacy-breach-via-email-oh-the-irony/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:53:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29397

Earlier today, I wrote a piece about how I was one of the 114,000 AT&T customers whose email and device identity numbers had been easily exposed earlier this week via a flaw in the way the company registered the Apple (AAPL) iPad 3G for cellular access.

In my post, I complained that I had yet to hear from the telecom giant about the security snafu and release of my personal email address, which AT&T (T) had yet to acknowledge to those impacted.

Well, the company does read tech blogs, so this morning, this communication from a PR honcho was sent to my work email, which is available on this site publicly.

Regrets? AT&T has a few:

Hi Kara:

I am writing to apologize that your personal e-mail address was made public. As you know, we fixed the flaw that caused this almost as soon as we heard about it from one of our business customers. But that doesn’t change the fact that your personal information was exposed without your permission. That is something we truly regret.

Nothing is more important to us than protecting the privacy of customer information. You should know that in this case, the only thing compromised was your email address and not, for example, the contents of your email or any other personal information. And as you also know, the problem only affected iPad 3G customers. No other mobile devices or customers were involved.

Thanks very much for your patience. Please let me know if there is anything we can do for you or if you have any questions.

Mark Siegel
Executive Director-Media Relations
AT&T
[Address redacted]
[Work phone number redacted]
[Mobile phone number}
[Email address redacted]

As you can see, I used my crack security system–DELETE!–to save Siegel any incursions into his privacy.

And while I do appreciate the reaching out, I still want to hear–as do others affected–officially from AT&T about exactly what’s what.

Siegel told me in a follow-up email: “We are finalizing our plans for communicating with customers.”

(Suggestion to make us happy: A free iPhone 4 might be a sweet gesture. Only kidding!! Sort of.)

In addition, I am not sure, as he wrote in the initial email, whether it is comforting or not that it was only my email and only my iPad 3G that were violated.

That’s sort of like telling me that only one room of my digital house was broken into, although nothing good was taken, so not to worry.

Actually, if that happened in real life, I would still call the police. That is, if the call on my iPhone didn’t drop.

Again, I kid! Sort of.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100611/att-responds-to-boomtown-privacy-breach-via-email-oh-the-irony/feed/ 17 http://allthingsd.com/20100611/online-privacy-follies-hit-home-boomtown-was-one-of-those-exposed-in-the-att-ipad-snafu/ http://allthingsd.com/20100611/online-privacy-follies-hit-home-boomtown-was-one-of-those-exposed-in-the-att-ipad-snafu/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:15:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29352 Yesterday, it was revealed that AT&T–which usually and deservedly catches flak for its appalling dropping of voice calls–got caught up in a thorny security debacle related to the Apple iPad.

According to a report initially posted on Gawker Media’s Valleywag site, the telecom giant had a flaw that allowed a group of computer experts to expose the email addresses and identity numbers of 114,000 owners of the popular tablet device.

Including mine.

That would be my personal one from Comcast (CMCSA), which you can see here in an obscured list of others–including some prominent officials in government.

AT&T (T) had my email because it was used to sign up for mobile service for the Apple (AAPL) iPad’s 3G version, automatically appearing during registration.

Now the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the AT&T breach, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, in what seems to be an early probe.

Oooh, the Feds are involved now.

I wish I could say it will make a difference. Because it won’t.

In fact, coming on the heels of privacy controversies at Facebook and Google (GOOG), it’s just another log on the digital fire that has been burning up privacy for a very long time now.

And now more than ever, it is part of a massive confluence of trends, including:

Consumers more interested than ever in sharing information about themselves in order to make ever better social networking connections online; a plethora of innovative devices–mostly mobile–and Internet tools available to seamlessly and easily allow those consumers to do so; and, perhaps most of all, Internet companies intent on hoovering up as much information as possible, in order to garner more consumers and sell it to advertisers.

In large part, this is all well and good, creating a range of valuable and entertaining services at little or no cost and making the computing experience more personal and relevant.

Because of that, I have to admit I was less tweaked than I thought I would be, although I wish I were not.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose email was also compromised, expressed the feeling best.

“It shouldn’t be pretty hard to figure out my email address,” he was quoted saying in the Journal article. “To me, it wasn’t that big a deal.”

That’s because all of us are thinking less that such information is private or will remain that way for long.

See this handy illustration, below, from the Journal, about how the iPads were hacked so easily and you get the picture quickly.

And, indeed, I am one of those who puts a great deal of information about myself out there for many to see, from my email on Facebook to my locations on Foursquare to my thoughts on Twitter to photos and videos everywhere.

That said, like others, I have also begun to rethink some of this, recently removing my phone number and other personal information from Facebook and other places where I had stashed them in plain sight, making them harder to find.

Of course, I also know that retrieving much of my personal information is now a lost cause, like trying to unmix cream poured into coffee.

Still, companies, especially those entrusted with this information, should not be quite so sanguine as consumers have become.

I still haven’t heard from AT&T, for example, which is somewhat irksome since the company has known about the issue for days now.

And as each of these incidents occurs, you get the feeling of execs either too obtuse or thoughtless or, yes, cynical to make this a priority.

They should, since the avalanche of information being made available will only increase, with possibly dire circumstances if not handled well.

Hollywood actress Joan Crawford had it right in a famous quote: “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”

Substitute “Digital living” for love and it’s the very same message.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100611/online-privacy-follies-hit-home-boomtown-was-one-of-those-exposed-in-the-att-ipad-snafu/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100517/your-web-browser-just-told-everyone-you-visited-a-porn-site/ http://allthingsd.com/20100517/your-web-browser-just-told-everyone-you-visited-a-porn-site/#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 18:47:23 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=19584 Your identity as a dog may still be safe on the Internet. Everything else about you, though, is looking increasingly like an open book.

Latest data point: No matter what you do to stay anonymous, there’s a good chance your Web browser is betraying your identity, by leaving a unique fingerprint every time you visit a site.

A study conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that 84 percent of browsers leave a unique marker, via different combinations of settings and configurations. That percentage moves up to 94 percent if your browser uses plug-ins for Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash and Oracle’s (ORCL) Java.

What to do about it? There’s not a lot an individual user can do, the EFF says. But it says these kinds of broswers tend to be less identifiable than others:

• Those with JavaScript disabled (possibly using a tool like NoScript)
• Those that use TorButton, which successfully anticipated and defended against many fingerprinting measurements
• Mobile devices like Google’s (GOOG) Android and Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone (the study was conducted in January and February, before the iPad hit the market)
• Corporate desktop machines that are precise clones of one another

So if you’re the kind of person who only browses the Web via your smartphone, perhaps you’ll be okay. Otherwise, “the best solution for web users may be to insist that new privacy protections be built into the browsers themselves,” the EFF suggests.

Or, failing that, accept that absolute privacy–the kind where no one has any ability whatsoever to track your actions–may be unattainable on the Web. The real solution may not be a technical one, but a social one, whereby we come to a rough agreement about what we’re okay sharing and what we really, really need to keep to ourselves. That could take a while.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100517/your-web-browser-just-told-everyone-you-visited-a-porn-site/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100426/facebook-scribe-david-kirkpatrick-talks-about-zuckerbergs-world-which-we-all-just-live-in/ http://allthingsd.com/20100426/facebook-scribe-david-kirkpatrick-talks-about-zuckerbergs-world-which-we-all-just-live-in/#comments Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:34:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27651

While at the press conference at Facebook’s f8 developers confab last week, BoomTown checked in with David Kirkpatrick, author of the soon-to-be-released book, “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World.”

Pretty good timing for the former Fortune magazine writer, since the social networking site seems to be barreling through on its goal of being at the center of the digital universe, now reaching 500 million users worldwide with a $25 billion private-market valuation.

An IPO is expected sooner rather than later, although the innovative company seems more intent on colonizing the Web with “Like” buttons and its insidious Facebook Connect.

As Kirkpatrick wrote on the book’s Facebook fan page after the conference last week:

“Yesterday’s f8 represents a sea change for Facebook because for the first time the world finally sees its true ambition–to become the world’s Internet identity infrastructure. The implications are manifold, as I explain in my book.”

Well, as an aged member of the tech media who has seen true ambitions come and seen them go, often very quickly–Netscape Communications, AOL (AOL), Yahoo (YHOO)–I will reserve judgment on digital world domination for five years hence.

Nonetheless, it looks like “The Facebook Effect” will be well worth reading, given Kirkpatrick had cooperation from its execs, including CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg.

And I know how much the was-that-a-question tech wunderkind of Silicon Valley likes to answer queries, so kudos to Kirkpatrick for getting him to sing. Also, expect a lot of big players in the Web drama from Yahoo to Google (GOOG) to Microsoft (MSFT) to Twitter and more.

Here’s the video of my interview with Kirkpatrick about the book, which comes out in June (I did forget to ask him why Tintin’s silhouette posed for the cover):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100426/facebook-scribe-david-kirkpatrick-talks-about-zuckerbergs-world-which-we-all-just-live-in/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100309/on-tap-for-facebook-new-technology-for-linking-to-web-sites/ http://allthingsd.com/20100309/on-tap-for-facebook-new-technology-for-linking-to-web-sites/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:02:55 +0000 Jessica E. Vascellaro http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=22386 Facebook Inc. is holding a major developer conference in San Francisco next month. The packed agenda includes technology to better bridge the Web site with the rest of the Internet, people familiar with the matter say.

The software is called the Open Graph API, which Facebook said late last year it planned to release during the second quarter of this year. Using the technology, Web sites can adopt elements of the pages business build on Facebook, like a box that allows people to become a “fan” of your site.

But Facebook’s plan is far broader than helping people build Web sites. By getting sites to adopt the technology, Facebook hopes to make it even easier for users to share information from the Web on Facebook and to have that information associated with their Facebook identity.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100309/on-tap-for-facebook-new-technology-for-linking-to-web-sites/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091203/so-much-for-openid-google-embraces-twitter-yahoo-embraces-facebook/ http://allthingsd.com/20091203/so-much-for-openid-google-embraces-twitter-yahoo-embraces-facebook/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:01:17 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=30157 Ever use Google Friend Connect? No? Every heard of it? No? Well, you may soon.

If you use Twitter.

This morning, Google (GOOG) said it is integrating the microblogging service with Friend Connect, a federated identity platform that allows credentials from social networks to be used on nonsocial sites. So beginning today, you’ll be able log in to any site that supports Google Friend Connect with your Twitter identity, and once you’ve done so, share content from those sites via Twitter (see video below).

An interesting move–more so for timing, than strategy. News of the alliance comes not 24 hours after Yahoo (YHOO) announced the integration of Facebook’s competing identity platform, Facebook Connect, across key properties Mail, News and Finance. Seems Google has no intention of allowing Friend Connect to become for the social Web what Yahoo is to search. Although as Om Malik notes, Google may not have much say in the matter.

“If more and more sites use Facebook Connect, that is use Facebook ID, the closer company gets to becoming the ultimate identity broker of the Web, which in terms helps them achieve their ultimate goal–organize world’s relationships,” Malik writes.

“Since the Yahoo deal will yield more relevant user behavior data,” Malik continues, “Facebook can continue to get better at surfacing information using the social graph. The more Facebook does that, the less important it is for people to continue searching. If the Facebook brain brings you the stuff you’re likely to want (thanks to inputs from your friends), the more Facebook will keep you inside its system. Google is nowhere close to delivering that experience.”

One last point: The announcement of the Google-Twitter and Yahoo-Facebook alliances does not bode well for OpenID, a nonproprietary identity standard that has a lot of industry buy-in but hasn’t yet bee able to move into the mainstream on the Web.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091203/so-much-for-openid-google-embraces-twitter-yahoo-embraces-facebook/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091202/yahoos-project-rushmore-begins-with-massive-facebook-connect-deployment-across-internet-giant/ http://allthingsd.com/20091202/yahoos-project-rushmore-begins-with-massive-facebook-connect-deployment-across-internet-giant/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:30:25 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21220

A few weeks ago, several sources at Yahoo begin telling BoomTown about a mysterious “Project Rushmore,” which was described as a massive integration of major social networking sites across the giant Internet portal.

Now, the first unveiling of Project Rushmore comes with this morning’s announcement that Yahoo (YHOO) will be integrating Facebook Connect with its many properties–from its powerful media sites to its Flickr photo service to its email.

Once deployed–in the first half of next year, said Yahoo–Yahoo users can monitor their full Facebook feed on the site and Facebook users will have their Yahoo activity displayed on their news feed, if they choose to.

The companies said no money will be exchanged in the five-year deal; nor will there be any other financial or advertising element.

This is a major step for Yahoo, which has long touted its openness, and a significant upgrade to the company’s relationship with Facebook.

It’s also more than ironic, as Yahoo had been very close to acquiring Facebook for just over $1 billion several years ago, in a should-have deal that went south.

Currently, Facebook users can update their status and access their stream via an app on the Yahoo homepage. They can also share to Facebook using buttons on Yahoo, and Facebook can access contacts on Yahoo.

But the relationship between the pair–which have some of the largest audiences on the Web between them–has been relatively thin until now.

This has been a glaring problem for Yahoo, which has also promised a lot of socialization throughout the service, but has not really provided it for users. The company hopes this tight link with the fast-growing Facebook will send users back to Yahoo.

Facebook–via Facebook Connect, which allows users to log on to participating sites with their identity on the service–is perhaps the bigger winner here.

The huge amount of data from the activities from one of the most trafficked sites on the Web–with upward of 500 million users–will further solidify its growing role as a central hub of a user’s Web life.

Another irony: This was the role Yahoo held for many years and has been losing to, yes, Facebook.

Yahoo is still aiming to be the central hub for a lot of people too, said Jim Stoneham, Yahoo’s VP of Communities, who noted that slightly more than half of Yahoo users also have Facebook accounts.

“That’s highly relevant that a lot of people use both,” said Stoneham. “So, there should be a strong bond across both sites.”

Added Stoneham: “This will be a done on a deep level into Yahoo.”

Stoneheam declined to comment on whether and when the service would be striking similar deals with other networking sites.

But sources told me that Twitter and LinkedIn are likely candidates, as well as MySpace.

That would, of course, account for the four presidential stone faces on Mount Rushmore–George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

Other big Internet companies are getting into the social act. Separately, both Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) recently struck a data-mining deal with Twitter and Microsoft also did so with Facebook.

So, such an overall move by Yahoo is an important and necessary one–and also very late in coming–since it completely missed the social networking train and needs to figure out how to be part of it in a way that is useful to users and open.

“This relationship pushes us really far forward [toward openness],” said Cody Simms, senior director of product management for Yahoo’s open strategy. “And it helps our users be more social, which they want to be wherever they are.”

And presumably, Yahoo hopes these moves will keep users on Yahoo a little longer while doing that.

Here is the full blog post from Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal by Stoneham:

Update once to share with many on Yahoo! and Facebook

Posted December 2nd, 2009 at 6:29 am by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor

We have good news to share with everyone who uses Yahoo! and Facebook–in the first half of 2010 we will open the door between two of the Internet’s largest online communities. You will be able to see your Facebook friends’ activities on Yahoo! and share Yahoo! content–ratings, photos, article comments, and more–directly on your Facebook stream. We’re doing this by deeply integrating a service called Facebook Connect across Yahoo! properties worldwide, which we announced today.

As the place where over 500 million people visit every month, Yahoo!’s goal is to bring together social experiences from across the web, and provide one place for people to access information and stay in touch with the people they care about most.

Yahoo!’s integration of Facebook Connect will provide you with richer experiences across the Yahoo! products you use every day, such as Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Sports. In the future, you’ll be able to choose where you want to update your status message–from destinations across Yahoo!–or directly on Facebook.

We are doing this as part of our commitment to deliver more personally relevant Internet experiences, so watch for more details in the New Year!

Jim Stoneham, VP of Communities for Yahoo!

And, if you are a glutton for punishment, here’s the full press release from Yahoo:

Yahoo! Extends Facebook Integration to Bring Together Social Experiences From Across the Web

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 2, 2009–Continuing its commitment to be the center of people’s online lives, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today announced further integration with Facebook that unites social experiences from across the Web to provide a place for consumers to enjoy meaningful content and stay in touch with the people they care about most.

“With this integration, we are opening the door for two of the Internet’s largest online communities to make it easier for people to stay connected,” said Jim Stoneham, vice president of Communities for Yahoo!. “It also enables us to further the Yahoo! Open Strategy, which is aimed at making experiences dramatically more open, social and personally relevant for the more than 500 million people that visit Yahoo! each month.”

Yahoo!’s Facebook Connect integration will give consumers richer experiences on Yahoo!, including in Yahoo! Mail and on properties like Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, and Yahoo! Finance. It will enable them to connect with Facebook friends on Yahoo!, view a feed of their friends’ related activity on Yahoo!, and share content–such as photos from Flickr or comments on news stories–with all of their friends on Facebook. The content that consumers share with Facebook friends will then create a loop that drives visitors back to Yahoo!.

This partnership extends the current Facebook integration on Yahoo! which enables Facebook users to access their stream and update their status from the Yahoo! homepage, provides “Share on Facebook” options across the Yahoo! network, and allows Facebook to access Yahoo! Contacts. People using both Yahoo! and Facebook will soon be able to share updates across both networks, creating a richer and more relevant social experience by connecting the broad range of Yahoo! content and services with their friends on Facebook.

“As one of the largest sites on the Web, Yahoo! is an ideal partner to integrate with Facebook Connect, enabling users to share meaningful content with their friends on Facebook from Yahoo’s wide range of category-leading properties,” said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook Developer Network.

The integration is expected to begin in the first half of 2010.

[Photo credit: Dean Franklin under the Creative Commons attribution license.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091202/yahoos-project-rushmore-begins-with-massive-facebook-connect-deployment-across-internet-giant/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20091122/meet-the-new-aol-aol/ http://allthingsd.com/20091122/meet-the-new-aol-aol/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:51:12 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13166 The new AOL will differ than the old one in several ways: New boss, smaller headcount, different owners.

So, of course, it also gets a new logo. This one will look awfully familiar, since it is the same trio of well-known letters, and if you’re not paying attention you won’t notice a thing.

But look closely:

See? Yup: Two lower-case letters and a period.

The idea is that the type will remain consistent, but will be “revealed” when it sits on top of different images. The old AOL swoosh triangle goes away, although its sort-of iconic “running man” will stick around in some form, the company said.

Here’s a canned quote from CEO Tim Armstrong about what this means:

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people–employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade.”

Branding outfit Wolff Olins gets credit (and money) for figuring this one out. But let’s see what investors think of the work when the company spins off from Time Warner (TWX) next month.

Here is the full press release:

AOL PREVIEWS NEW BRAND IDENTITY FOR ITS FUTURE AS AN INDEPENDENT CONTENT-DRIVEN COMPANY

New Aol. Brand Expresses Commitment to Stimulating Content, Openness and Inclusion

NEW YORK–November 22, 2009–AOL today previewed its new brand identity for its future as an independent company committed to creating the world’s most simple and stimulating content and online experiences.

The new AOL brand identity is a simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever changing images. It’s one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal. The new brand identity will be fully unveiled on December 10, when AOL common stock begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people–employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.

AOL partnered with Wolff Olins, a global brand and innovation consultancy, to develop a brand identity that speaks to the company’s future. The identity itself is a platform for expression and creativity reflecting the content, products and services which AOL offers. Some of the world’s best creative artists, including Universal Everything, GHAVA and Dylan Griffin created art and animations for the brand.

“Historically brand identity has been monolithic and controlling, little more than stamping a company name on a product. AOL is a 21st century media company, with an ambitious vision for the future and new focus on creativity and expression, this required the new brand identity to be open and generous, to invite conversation and collaboration, and to feel credible, but also aspirational. We’re delighted to have worked so closely with the AOL leadership team to create something bold and exciting that sets AOL apart,” said Karl Heiselman, CEO of Wolff Olins.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091122/meet-the-new-aol-aol/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090727/one-way-to-help-iran-protesters-donate-thumb-drives/ http://allthingsd.com/20090727/one-way-to-help-iran-protesters-donate-thumb-drives/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:37:54 +0000 Andrew LaVallee http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=13804 The creators of a program aimed at counteracting Iran’s Internet filters have issued a call for something that lies around unused on plenty of desks: USB thumb drives.

The program, called Haystack, allows Iranian citizens to access the Internet without the impediments on Facebook and other sites that the government has imposed. It also masks the user’s identity online, a crucial safety measure amid efforts by pro-regime Internet users to track down protesters.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090727/one-way-to-help-iran-protesters-donate-thumb-drives/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090220/what-we-really-need-is-a-stopping-congress-from-exploiting-for-the-children-politics-bill/ http://allthingsd.com/20090220/what-we-really-need-is-a-stopping-congress-from-exploiting-for-the-children-politics-bill/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:02:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=13306 Funny isn’t it? Congress spent most of last year calling for Internet companies to limit user data retention and here it is pushing legislation that would require Internet service providers and the operators of Wi-Fi access points to retain Internet user data for up to two years. Why? To protect children from predators, of course.

Introduced by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, the “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act,” or Internet Safety Act, states that “a provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.”

Sounds a bit broad, doesn’t? And indeed, privacy advocates say that it applies not just to the Wi-Fi access points of Internet service providers, but to those of libraries, schools, businesses and individuals as well.

To mine. And to yours.

An unsettling thought. Said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology: “[This is] invasive, risky, unnecessary, and likely to be ineffective.”

Perhaps. But it’s for the children. “While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,” Sen. Cornyn said Thursday. “Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090220/what-we-really-need-is-a-stopping-congress-from-exploiting-for-the-children-politics-bill/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081006/time-to-poach-a-few-more-googlers-eh-mark/ http://allthingsd.com/20081006/time-to-poach-a-few-more-googlers-eh-mark/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:11:13 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=6296

Facebook really is That company. Which company? That one. That company that shows up once in a very long while–the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago. That company where large numbers of stunningly-brilliant people congregate and feed off each other’s genius. That company that’s doing with 60 engineers what teams of 600 can’t pull off. That company that’s on the cusp of Changing The World, that’s still small enough where each employee has a huge impact on the organization, where you think about working now and again, and where you know you’ll kick yourself in three years if you don’t jump on the bandwagon now, even after someone had told you that it was rolling toward the promised land. That company where everyone seems to be having the time of their life. … I’m serious. I have drunk from the Kool-Aid, and it is delicious.”

– Facebook manager Justin Rosenstein, June 15, 2007

Facebook manager Justin Rosenstein once described the social network as “the Google (GOOG) of yesterday, the Microsoft (MSFT) of long ago.” Today, Rosenstein perhaps views it as the Facebook of So Totally Last Week because he’s leaving the company, along with departing Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Together the two hope to develop some sort of new extensible enterprise productivity suite, something that will be “to your work life what Facebook.com is to your social life,” according to a post on Rosenstein’s Facebook page.

“We see this new venture as very complementary to Facebook,” Rosenstein explained. “We hope our products will become to your work life what Facebook.com is to your social life. Our software will use Facebook Connect as the default option for identity and authentication. Our user interface will adopt many of Facebook’s conventions, creating a seamless and familiar experience for current Facebook users. And if our new development tools turn out to be useful, we hope the Facebook engineering team will come to adopt them.”

The departures are a blow to Facebook, which has been suffering something of a brain drain recently, and more specifically, to CEO Mark Zuckerberg who founded the company with Moskovitz while the two were undergraduates at Harvard.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081006/time-to-poach-a-few-more-googlers-eh-mark/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080605/mozilla-firefox-30-is-the-best-browser-for-web-for-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20080605/mozilla-firefox-30-is-the-best-browser-for-web-for-now/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:01:00 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080605/mozilla-firefox-30-is-the-best-browser-for-web-for-now/ If you buy a new Windows Vista PC, it comes with a decent built-in Web browser, Internet Explorer 7. If you buy a new Macintosh computer, it comes with a decent built-in Web browser, Safari 3.0. So why would you want or need a different Web browser?

That is the question that Mozilla, the nonprofit organization that makes the leading alternative browser, hopes to answer this month when it releases version 3.0 of its Firefox Web browser. In some tech-industry circles, Firefox already is preferred over Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer and Apple’s (AAPL) Safari, but it still isn’t used by most people, and Mozilla is hoping to broaden its appeal.

The new version will be released simultaneously for Windows and the Mac’s OS X operating system, as well as for Linux. While each of the three editions will have the visual style of the operating system on which it runs, all three will have the same features.

I’ve been using prerelease versions of Firefox 3.0 for months, and have recently been testing a near-final version and comparing it closely to IE and to Safari. I have tested it on multiple Windows PCs and Macs, on desktops and laptops, over slow connections and fast ones. I have tried it with well over 100 Web sites.

My verdict is that Firefox 3.0 is the best Web browser out there right now, and that it tops the current versions of both IE and Safari in features, speed and security. It is easy to install and easy to use, even for a mainstream, non-technical user. It can be downloaded, free, at mozilla.com by clicking on “Firefox 3 Sneak Peek.”

This situation may change. Microsoft is working on a new version of IE, scheduled to be unveiled later this year, with some impressive new features. And Apple is always working on new iterations of Safari, though it is secretive and hasn’t disclosed its plans. But for now, in my view, Firefox 3.0 rules on both Windows and Mac.

I couldn’t find any significant downsides to Firefox 3.0. Every page I tried rendered properly and rapidly on both platforms. I ran into only one glitch, in a preference setting. That problem appeared on only one of my four test machines and was fixable with the help of Mozilla, albeit via a geeky method.

In the one or two cases where Firefox lacked a feature I thought important, such as the “auto fill” feature in Safari that can quickly fill out an online form, I was able to find an add-on that did the trick from Mozilla’s vast library of add-ons, which are written by people all over the world. (One caution: Some existing add-ons won’t work with the new version until their authors update them.)

When Firefox first came out, it was the fastest browser, but it lost that title over the years. However, in my tests, this new third version of Firefox regained the speed crown. It beat IE 7 handily on my test Windows computers and edged Safari slightly on my test Macs.

For example, using a new Dell (DELL) XPS One desktop, I opened identical folders containing the same 16 bookmarks on both IE 7 and Firefox 3.0. IE took 37 seconds to completely display the 16 pages, but the new Firefox did it in just 23 seconds. On a new Apple iMac, I did a similar, but more daunting, test — opening identical folders containing 24 bookmarks. Safari rendered all of the pages in 36 seconds, but the new Firefox finished the job in 32 seconds.

The latest Firefox has a number of new and improved features. If you type any word or phrase into its address bar, the browser instantly searches your history and bookmarks for a possible match, to save you from typing or combing through your bookmark list.

The whole process of managing bookmarks has been vastly simplified. Every Web address is accompanied by a star icon at the right. To bookmark the site, you just click the star once. No other action is required. To specify where to file the bookmark, you click the star twice. You also can remove bookmarks by clicking the star. And you can tag bookmarks with key words, to make it easier to find them.

There are also smart bookmark folders, which gather your most visited sites, or most recently bookmarked sites, automatically into folders. You also now can more easily back up and restore your bookmarks, complete with tags.

Security is also improved. The old version of Firefox would warn you when a site you were visiting appeared to be a fake, designed to steal your identity. (IE has a similar feature, though Safari doesn’t.) But Firefox 3.0 now warns you about sites that are known for trying to plant viruses, spyware and other malicious software on your computer, a warning the other big browsers don’t yet provide.

With one click, Firefox 3.0 also provides details about who owns the site you’re visiting, and whether it’s encrypted, if the site owner has adopted a special type of security certificate.

My bottom line: Even though you already have a built-in browser, Firefox 3.0 can improve your Web experience.

• Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080605/mozilla-firefox-30-is-the-best-browser-for-web-for-now/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080501/how-to-avoid-cons-that-can-lead-to-identity-theft/ http://allthingsd.com/20080501/how-to-avoid-cons-that-can-lead-to-identity-theft/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 00:01:00 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080501/how-to-avoid-cons-that-can-lead-to-identity-theft/ When most people think about Internet security problems, they focus on viruses and spyware — technological attacks that can usually be mitigated by technological defenses. But the most insidious Internet security problems today rely on human gullibility, not tricky software. While technological defenses can help you fend off these newer types of attacks, your best weapons against them are common sense, alertness, and careful email and Web-surfing practices.

These types of attacks are called “social engineering,” and they are used by criminals to steal your money and identity, and to plant on your computer malicious software that can be used to keep ripping you off. Social engineering is the online equivalent of an old-fashioned con game, in which a crook frightens people with false warnings, or tempts them with false promises, and then robs them.

While viruses and spyware overwhelmingly afflict Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows users and spare users of Apple’s (AAPL) Macintosh computers, social-engineering schemes can ensnare Mac users as well. There’s nothing inherent in Macs that makes their owners more resistant to falling for social-engineering scams.

The most common form of social engineering is called phishing, a one-two punch using both email and Web browsing to trick people into typing confidential information into Web sites that look like the sites of real companies, especially financial institutions. But these phishing sites are actually skillfully designed fakes that transmit your sensitive data to criminals, often in distant countries. Once these creeps have your passwords and account numbers, they can loot your funds and steal your identity.

Here are some tips to help you avoid being the victim of social engineering, updated from a similar column I wrote in 2006. It includes information on some antiphishing software that wasn’t available back then. But remember: Security software alone can’t save you from scams.

1. Never, ever click on a link embedded in an email that appears to come from a financial institution, even if it’s your own bank or brokerage and even if it looks official right down to the logo. The same goes for payment or auction services, like PayPal or eBay (EBAY). Don’t do this even if the email asserts that your account has a problem, or that the bank has to verify your information. And certainly don’t enter any passwords, Social Security numbers or account numbers directly in an email.

These types of emails are almost always fakes, and the links they contain almost always lead to phony Web sites run by criminals. The only exception might be a confirmation email from a brokerage firm concerning a trade you know you made minutes before. Even legitimate-looking addresses in emails or in the address bar of Web browsers can be fakes that hide the crooks’ true Web addresses. The lock icon on a Web site can also be falsified.

If you are truly worried about your account, call the bank or company, or go to its Web site by manually typing in its address or by using a well-established bookmark in your browser that you created yourself.

2. Don’t click on links to offers for free software or goods that you receive in an email, especially from a sender or company you’ve never heard of.

3. Never download software from unfamiliar Web sites unless you are absolutely sure you need it and it’s legitimate. Even if it claims to be a useful program, it may very well be a malicious application like a “key logger,” which can report back to crooks everything you type into your computer. If you really want the program, do a Web search on it first, to see if others have reported it as a malicious fake.

4. If a Web site tells you that you need to download special viewing software to see its videos, don’t do it. Even if it claims to be giving you legitimate viewing software, like Microsoft’s Silverlight, Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash or Apple’s QuickTime, don’t download it there. Go to the official Microsoft, Adobe or Apple Web sites to get these viewers.

5. Use a Web browser, like Internet Explorer 7 on Windows, or Firefox 2.0 on Windows or Mac, that includes built-in features to warn you about, or block access to, known phishing sites. The next versions of these two browsers will have even stronger features that will detect sites that are not only fake, but which are known to distribute malicious software.

Unfortunately, the third major browser, Apple’s otherwise excellent Safari for Mac and Windows, lacks any such antiphishing detection, though I expect Apple to add the feature in a future version. So, for now, Mac users worried about phishing should rely on Firefox.

6. Consider security software that tries to detect and block phishing sites. McAfee’s (MFE) free Site Advisor and paid Site Advisor Plus products do a good job. Symantec (SYMC) has similar features built into its large security suites, Norton 360 2.0 and Norton Internet Security 2008.

7. Educate yourself by reading about social engineering and phishing and how to avoid being a victim. Microsoft has a very good guide at: microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/identify.mspx and Symantec has one at: symantec.com/norton/clubsymantec/library/article.jsp?aid=cs_phishing.

Follow these tips and you’ll be a happier — and safer — surfer.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

• Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

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