The information provides a powerful tool for marketers but raises new privacy concerns. Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has long been considered particularly sensitive.

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A number of companies are trying to better pinpoint mobile users’ online activity with new software and techniques they say could help advertisers track users across devices.

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The Bay Area-based private company has acquired BodyMedia, Inc., a 14-year-old Pittsburgh-based company that makes health-monitoring armbands.

The move comes just a couple months after Jawbone, which makes the wearable Up fitness band in addition to popular audio devices, acquired data and digital-design companies Massive Health and Visere.

Jawbone acquired BodyMedia for more than $100 million, according to people familiar with the deal, although both companies declined to give more specifics about the financials of the deal.

So what’s the appeal of BodyMedia for Jawbone? Unlike the Massive Health and Visere buys, which were mainly for talent acquisition, BodyMedia’s value lies in both the team and the company’s patents. BodyMedia has had more than 80 patents issued over the years, many in the area of multi-sensor technology. As a combined entity, BodyMedia and Jawbone will have over 300 patents issued and filed.

While the $130 Jawbone Up wristband does many things — it tracks activity levels and sleep patterns, and works with a compatible mobile app for Android and iOS to log food consumption — it lacks some of the high-tech sensors that BodyMedia’s products have.

“I think the first phase of this market has been about accelerometers and what those can do,” Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman said in an interview. “Now it’s about getting even more granular, and also, how we can get all that tech into an efficient form factor.”

To that point, BodyMedia’s armbands, which will continue to be sold for the time being, contain four different types of sensors, which measure your skin temperature, heat flux, galvanic skin response (GSR) and overall movement.

But compared with the wristband form factor of the Jawbone Up, the BodyMedia bands are bigger, bulkier products. Earlier this year, BodyMedia introduced a slimmed-down version of its health-tracking band, called the Core 2, to compete in the growing category of barely noticeable, 24/7 wearable fitness devices.

So can we expect to see a Jawbone wristband with GSR sensors anytime soon? “We’re working on lots of things,” was all Rahman would say, adding, “We’re exploring where we would see sensors working, and how we can put more and more on top of the body.”

The BodyMedia team will stay in Pittsburgh and will remain intact, both companies say. BodyMedia’s Chris Robins will no longer serve as CEO of the company, and will instead become the general manager of BodyMedia and a vice president of business development at Jawbone.

Jawbone also said today that it’s opening up its Up mobile software to ten different fitness-app makers, including RunKeeper, MyFitnessPal, LoseIt, Withings, Sleepio and IFTTT (for workout prompts). Jawbone Up users with iOS devices will now be able to share data to and from these partner apps with the Up app.

Mozilla’s recent announcement to block all third-party cookies by default in the new version of Firefox has sparked renewed interest in these topics, and as you would expect, opinions vary wildly depending on perspective and priorities. Reactions from those representing the ad industry predominantly have been critical, while many privacy advocates have applauded the decision. My reaction was one of frustration for several reasons, but one in particular that is relevant to this discussion — my company builds and sells a product that is used by advertisers and ad agencies to “track” what is happening online.

Common Theme, Different Issues

To adequately discuss privacy, you must first define what it is you’re discussing. Currently, there are two major movements being debated, both of which involve the way Web browsers and providers of online content (predominantly publishers and advertisers) exchange and store information.

First, the Do Not Track (DNT) HTTP header was designed in conjunction with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is intended to provide consumers with a standard way to indicate to Web applications, digital advertisers and publishers they do not wish to have their behavior tracked across Web properties. All major browsers currently support this feature and the industry is moving toward adopting it as a standard; however, last year Microsoft announced that beginning with Internet Explorer 10, it would enable DNT by default, subsequently causing widespread confusion since the header was designed to be opt-in, not opt-out. For this reason, the vast majority of publishers and advertisers currently ignore all stated DNT preferences, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Mozilla’s recent announcement involves a separate debate about whether or not browsers will accept third-party cookies. For the uninitiated, cookies are small files that include data that allow your computer to interact with the websites you visit. Third-party cookies traditionally are set by advertising companies and analytics firms, such as mine, to help understand what is happening on a website over a certain period of time. Prior to Mozilla’s announcement, only Safari blocked third-party cookies by default among the major browser providers. However, Mozilla’s market share (approximately 20 percent according to Net Applications) is much larger than Safari’s and represents “critical mass,” thus the renewed interest in this topic.

Why We Track

Companies track information online for different reasons. In the analytics world, our business is one of scale. Unlike behavioral targeting, our business model is predicated on the ability to identify correlation across millions of advertising “events” and making recommendations based on huge data sets across large-scale media campaigns.

Typically, advertisers purchase huge inventories of ads across a large number of sites their desired audiences frequent. Each of these ads has a different price associated with it, which increasingly is determined by demand and effectiveness. To make sure they get what they pay for, advertisers often choose to work with an analytics firm to better understand which ad campaigns and channels (search, display, etc.) are more effective and why. As a simple example, browser cookies allow us to determine which advertising is resonating with consumers and how many times that message should be displayed before it gets annoying and loses effectiveness, allowing advertisers to avoid waste and poor experiences.

Unintended Consequences

By most estimates, the first online ad appeared roughly 20 years ago. As a technology, cookies have been used for almost as long. They also serve as a fundamental component that underpins the economics of the open web. Small and upcoming publishers rely on the data provided through third-party advertising technologies to quantify and price the “real estate” accompanying their content, often selling ad inventory as part of large-scale networks that provide reach and attract larger advertising customers. Without these networks, it’s difficult to see these publishers attracting ad revenue necessary to compete and offer high-quality, ad-supported content. Paywalls will also become more prevalent for those publishers that have sufficient resources and audiences to support them.

Also, by eliminating the ability for publishers/advertisers to price and purchase higher-quality placements based on relevance, you can expect a return to “spray and pray” tactics where ad inventory prices plummet and the total number of ads displayed and purchased rises drastically. In other words, if you think some ads are disruptive today, get ready to see much more aggressive tactics employed.

Lastly, while cookies are a relatively mature technology with existing browser controls, industry opt-outs and comprehensive privacy policies, there are alternate tracking approaches that don’t have the same level of consumer control. These alternate methods — including device fingerprinting, flash cookies, local storage, etc. — represent the Wild West of tracking technologies. They are very difficult to detect, lack proper controls and can be abused by fringe tracking companies. None of them represent progress or improvement for the customer.

Choice

The advertising community takes privacy seriously and we agree with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), National Advertising Initiative, Digital Advertising Alliance and other organizations advocating for the continued development of existing consumer-choice mechanisms. We welcome participation from Mozilla and other browser vendors that seek to deliver easy and transparent privacy solutions to consumers; however, these need to be developed in concert with both advertisers and publishers to be effective.

Paul Pellman is the CEO of Adometry, Inc., a marketing analytics provider that generates insights about the performance of marketing campaigns through combining and interpreting advertising data from online and offline channels. Prior to joining Adometry, he was executive vice president of marketing for Hoover’s.

The data showed that the most productive workers belonged to close-knit teams and spoke frequently with their colleagues. So, to get more employees mingling, the bank scheduled workers for group breaks, rather than solo ones.

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The main Moves interface is a neat-looking personal daily timeline, with proportional representation of time spent walking, running, biking, and in transit, in a vertical display that links together all the locations visited within 24 hours.

The app uses adaptive techniques to minimize battery drain by drawing cell-tower data most of the time, and then activating GPS when the accelerometer moves in a recognized way.

It’s made by a Helsinki-based company called ProtoGeo that is led by designer Sampo Karjalainen, a founder of kids’ virtual world Habbo Hotel.

Karjalainen thinks Moves can be a viable alternative to the Fitbit, Nike FuelBand and Jawbone Up, because it doesn’t require people to buy an additional device and keep it charged.

And besides, wristband-based sensors are not terribly sophisticated, anyway — many people find that they only approximate a measure of their physical activity, and they do a terrible job of tracking cycling, since it’s a stiff-wristed sport.

I was particularly interested in the app because I think it’s an example of passively harvesting personal data for the user’s benefit.

So the two big questions are 1) Is Moves accurate? And 2) Will it kill my phone battery?

This isn’t a product review, but I’d say that in two weeks of using the app my answers would be 1) It’s pretty accurate, but not as accurate as constant GPS tracking. And 2) It will have an impact on your battery, but not as bad as constant GPS tracking.

You may still want to use an additional app like Endomondo or RunKeeper to track workouts. I found that Moves was particularly bad at counting my mileage on the treadmill at the gym.

Karjalainen told me that Moves users can hold their phones normally — in their pocket or bag is fine — and the service has learned patterns of movement that correspond to various activities.

His goal is for Moves to be an everyday, mainstream tool to make people more conscious of their physical activity. It’s all about low-effort record-keeping. For instance, a future feature that Karjalainen mentioned would be interspersing photos from the day throughout the timeline.

But there is nothing if not competition in this space. Passive tracking seems likely to be a future feature of Google’s Google Now Android personal assistant app, which quietly launched a monthly activity summary of walking and biking.

I’d previously experimented with using Alohar Mobile’s Placeme app to passively track all the locations I visited on a daily basis, but Moves’ timeline interface seems more interesting and informative than a map of everywhere I’ve been (plus, Moves has a map view, too).

ProtoGeo has raised $1.6 million in seed funding from Lifeline Ventures and PROfounders.

That’s the basic premise behind all of these new activity trackers you might be hearing about. And I’ve tested quite a few of them throughout the past year.

I didn’t love the Nike+ Fuelband, primarily because I thought its arbitrary currency system, “fuel,” was not an ideal way to measure exertion. And I left the Fitbit clipped to sports bras too often, which meant the thing ended up sitting in my laundry pile.

I do like the Jawbone Up, however, for both its physical form factor and its app. In general, I’m very intrigued by this new category in tech, and I think there could be real value in it for consumers.

Now there’s another entrant into the market: Larklife, from Lark. Last year, the Bay Area-based startup came out with a wearable sleep tracker and vibrating alarm clock. It’s newest product is a $149 wristband that measures both daytime and nighttime activity.

Initially, you would think Larklife works just like all of the other bands. It measures steps. It measures sleep. It connects via Bluetooth to an iOS app that catalogs your progress and offers suggestions for leading a more healthful lifestyle.

But Larklife didn’t make me feel like I was measuring or managing anything very well. It actually made me feel sort of dumb, or that I must be doing something wrong if I couldn’t “get” how this activity band was supposed to work. The band itself was clunky. And there are two of them: One for day and one for nighttime wearing.

The Larklife day band is a rubbery rectangular wristband. It’s skinny on the bottom and fatter on the top and sides, reminding me more of a bangle bracelet or, worse, a house-arrest anklet, than the latest wave of slim activity-tracking bands. Currently it only comes in bright blue. More than a few people noticed it on my wrist this week.

The Larklife’s activity-tracking tech — an accelerometer — is nested in a chunk of the band that’s removable. In order to charge the band, you must remove this portion and plug a proprietary charging wire into the band.

This same small chunk of the band is what you’re supposed to snap into the nighttime Larklife, a more comfortable cloth band, for sleep monitoring. So, to be clear, you don’t really need the second Larklife band, because you can just wear the rubbery one to bed, but it’s a more comfortable option for sleep.

There’s a strip of small blue lights on the band, along with a skinny button that you use to sync the Larklife with its free companion app.

Larklife syncs with the app using low-energy Bluetooth. You could, theoretically, just activate Bluetooth on your iPhone whenever you want to sync your data, but Larklife is really supposed to be talking to the app throughout the day, which means leaving Bluetooth turned on all the time.

I tested Larklife during CES in Las Vegas last week, while I was out and about and often not near a power outlet, and some days I didn’t want to risk draining my iPhone’s battery even the slightest bit by leaving Bluetooth on. I much prefer the Jawbone Up method of syncing, which requires that you physically plug the band into your iPhone’s audio jack a few times a day. This is not only low-maintenance, but satisfying, because you’re very aware of when you’re uploading fresh data.

With these activity-tracking bands, the software component is just as important as the hardware. Larklife takes a different approach from others by focusing on simplicity and positive encouragement. Days are displayed as big circles, with a spattering of activity points and achievements within each circle.

After a few days of using the Larklife band, I was getting notifications from the app like, “It’s 4:00 pm. If you’re feeling sluggish, have a glass of water or a piece of fruit.” The app would cheer me on if I hit a milestone of 10,000 steps in a day.

And Larklife is supposed to automatically recognizes when your activity gets more intense, so it would know when I was running a few miles on the treadmill instead of walking around a convention center. I would check the app and see a “running man” figure that marked my activity in that day’s bubble, or a star for my step milestone.

But the app’s food tracking is incredibly limited compared with other apps. Fitbit lets you set weight goals, track food items and measure calories consumed. Jawbone Up also offers caloric estimates for logged foods, and has a cool cloud graph that made me painfully aware of how much coffee and sugar I’ve been consuming.

Larklife’s app doesn’t come with a data set for calories. After I would manually log that I was having a meal, I could edit that meal name to say “Caesar salad,” for example, and then I could select from the food categories: Protein, Vegetable, Fruit, Grain and Water. That’s it.

Lark says it’s really focused on getting people to live a more healthy lifestyle in general, without making things too complicated. So, even if a Larklife user simply starts to realize that he or she isn’t entering in vegetables often enough, that’s one step in the right direction, Lark says. But if I’m going to log my food, I want more specific data.

Lastly, I couldn’t figure out how to track my sleep with the Larklife band. As it turns out, you’re supposed to go into the app, tap the “plus” icon, select sleep, set your alarm and then, while the band is synced to your iPhone, press the skinny button on the band until the app tells you the syncing has been a success. Either I didn’t set this correctly or inadvertently pressed the button again in my sleep, because I could never get a solid reading on my sleep data.

In terms of battery life, Larklife says that each band should last around two full days. I actually got more use out of mine. I charged it fully on Monday of last week, and the battery died early Thursday. But I also wasn’t constantly connecting the band to my iPhone via Bluetooth.

In the activity-tracking race, Lark puts in good effort but doesn’t quite measure up to the competition.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130114/in-activity-tracking-race-larklife-band-comes-up-short/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20121217/activity-tracking-tech-moves-from-wrist-to-neck-with-sculleys-new-shine-necklace/ http://allthingsd.com/20121217/activity-tracking-tech-moves-from-wrist-to-neck-with-sculleys-new-shine-necklace/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:00:11 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=278463 Activity-tracking wristbands like the Nike+ FuelBand and the Jawbone Up are becoming all the rage.

But what if they’re just too clunky for you?

That’s the problem former Apple CEO John Sculley and business partner Sonny Vu have been tackling with the Misfit Shine. Under the company name Misfit Wearables, the duo recently came up with a metallic activity tracker the size of a quarter; it can be worn as an elegant bracelet or go almost unnoticed as a pocket clip.

Now, after crossing the $500,000 mark on Indiegogo.com, where Misfit is raising money to fund production of the Shine, Sculley and Vu are moving all that compressed tracking tech from the wrist to the neck. The company plans to make a leather activity-tracking necklace, designed with a small, connective metal pendant that users can click the Shine device onto. You can take a look at the picture above for an idea of what the Shine looks like; Misfit says images of the necklace design aren’t available yet.

Like the Shine wrist gadget, the necklace will then track activity levels, including steps taken, and share the data to apps on the iPhone 4, iPhone 5 and most Android devices. It uses Wi-Fi, not Bluetooth, to share the data, and in addition to tracking basic activity levels, it will record aerobic activities like running, cycling and swimming, since it’s waterproof.

But it doesn’t track sleep patterns, unlike the Jawbone Up, Fitbit or Lark bands, and the company hasn’t integrated any kind of food-monitoring system into the Misfit Shine, either.

“We do think the user experience isn’t complete without great software,” Vu said in an interview with AllThingsD. “But if you don’t wear the product in the first place, there’s no start. There’s no data start. So we really think the whole thing starts with wearability.”

Vu says Misfit plans to sell the necklace accessory for $79 at retail, though preorders on Indiegogo will cost either $49 for just the necklace, or $199 for the Shine-plus-necklace package.

Philips Electronics makes a similar product, called DirectLife, that costs $149 and can be worn as a necklace. But that product requires the user to plug the activity monitor directly into their computer, via USB, to transfer data.

Misfit Wearables expects to ship the Shine in a few months (although, as we have seen with some of these crowdfunded gadgets, delays are always possible).

The start-up is based in San Francisco, and in addition to crowdfunding money for production, is backed by Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121217/activity-tracking-tech-moves-from-wrist-to-neck-with-sculleys-new-shine-necklace/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20121208/they-know-what-youre-shopping-for/ http://allthingsd.com/20121208/they-know-what-youre-shopping-for/#comments Sat, 08 Dec 2012 17:03:24 +0000 Jennifer Valentino-Devries and Jeremy Singer-Vine http://allthingsd.com/?p=276211 Georgia resident Andy Morar is in the market for a BMW. So recently he sent a note to a showroom near Atlanta, using a form on the dealer’s website to provide his name and contact information.

His note went to the dealership—but it also went, without his knowledge, to a company that tracks car shoppers online. In a flash, an analysis of the auto websites Mr. Morar had anonymously visited could be paired with his real name and studied by his local car dealer.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121208/they-know-what-youre-shopping-for/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121127/professor-to-try-to-salvage-troubled-do-not-track-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20121127/professor-to-try-to-salvage-troubled-do-not-track-deal/#comments Wed, 28 Nov 2012 07:13:51 +0000 Julia Angwin http://allthingsd.com/?p=273321 Ohio State Law professor Peter Swire has agreed to step in to try to salvage contentious negotiations between privacy advocates and the online advertising industry over how to block unwanted online tracking.

However, the appointment of Mr. Swire, who served as chief counselor for privacy in the Clinton Administration, is unlikely to result in a do-not-track deal by the end of this year, as previously promised.

Earlier this year, a coalition of Internet giants agreed to support a do-not-track button that would let Web users block tracking with a single privacy setting in their Web browser. Currently, Web users who want to turn off tracking must install tracking files from more than 100 companies, alerting those companies that they do not want to be tracked.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121127/professor-to-try-to-salvage-troubled-do-not-track-deal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121026/yahoo-dings-do-not-track-default-and-search-partner-microsoft/ http://allthingsd.com/20121026/yahoo-dings-do-not-track-default-and-search-partner-microsoft/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:05:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=264107

In a post today on its policy blog, Yahoo took aim at Microsoft’s controversial “Do Not Track” default in its Internet Explorer 10 browser.

Said Yahoo in a post titled “In Support of Personal Experience”:

“Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.”

Thus, Yahoo “will not recognize IE10’s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.”

Such a move should make Yahoo very popular with advertisers, most of which are publicly and privately decrying the Microsoft effort for their browser having advertising targeting and tracking turned off by default.

In fact, Yahoo’s statement of no-default-respect pretty much tracks on what the Digital Advertising Alliance, which represents thousands of major marketers, said recently, as well as the Association of National Advertisers.

Both those groups and many others are seeking to kill DNT.

According to sources, the impetus for the Yahoo decision was CEO Marissa Mayer, a former Google exec.

Interestingly, Google recently added DNT support to the latest version of its increasingly popular Chrome browser developer build.

And the third major browser, Mozilla’s Firefox, also offers a DNT product as a key feature.

Right now, Mayer is in discussions with the software giant about improving the weak results of its search advertising partnership, too. This should make those talks much more interesting.

In fact, in a longer privacy post today, titled “Privacy and Technology in Balance,” Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith noted:

“Just because the signal is turned on doesn’t mean that a consumer wants no services that involve tracking. It means instead that consumers are empowered to make their own choices, including selecting services that involve tracking from advertisers and ad networks they trust.”

Here’s the whole post, and here is a really good New York Times piece on the controversy, including talks taking place via an international group working on global DNT standards, called the World Wide Web Consortium:

In Support of a Personalized User Experience

Friday, October 26th, 2012

At Yahoo!, we aspire to make the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining. Our users have come to expect a personalized Yahoo! experience tailor-made for their lives — whether they’re checking local weather, sports scores, stock quotes, daily news, or viewing ads on our site. We fundamentally believe that the online experience is better when it is personalized.

That said, we also believe that there should be an easy and transparent way for users to express their privacy preferences to Yahoo!. That’s why we offer our own tools and resources such as Ad Interest Manager, to give users more control over personalized advertising on Yahoo!, and why we participate in industry-wide programs such as AdChoices, which allows users to learn why they’ve been shown an ad.

Yahoo! has been working with our partners in the Internet industry to come up with a standard that allows users to opt out of certain website analytics and ad targeting. In principle, we support “Do Not Track” (DNT). Unfortunately, because discussions have not yet resulted in a final standard for how to implement DNT, the current DNT signal can easily be abused. Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.

Ultimately, we believe that DNT must map to user intent — not to the intent of one browser creator, plug-in writer, or third-party software service. Therefore, although Yahoo! will continue to offer Ad Interest Manager and other tools, we will not recognize IE10′s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.

Yahoo! is committed to working with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to reach a DNT standard that both satisfies user expectations and provides the best Internet experience possible. We will closely evaluate our support for DNT as the industry makes progress in reaching a meaningful, transparent standard to promote choice, reduce signal abuse, and deliver great personalized experiences for our users.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121026/yahoo-dings-do-not-track-default-and-search-partner-microsoft/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120828/jeff-ma-talks-about-tenxer-raising-3-million-more-to-help-you-judge-yourself-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120828/jeff-ma-talks-about-tenxer-raising-3-million-more-to-help-you-judge-yourself-video/#comments Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:00:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=245687

On-the-job personal productivity start-up tenXer has raised $3 million in a Series B round, which it said it will use to accelerate growth outside its software industry market.

The San Francisco company, which was founded by longtime entrepreneur Jeff Ma, makes tools to allow a user or perhaps a company, track performance and progress using a number of different metrics. The presumable goal is to use social and gaming elements, along with this activity data, to help you do your job 10 times better.

Get it with the tenXer name now?

The new funding is led by True Ventures, and its partner, Puneet Agarwal, will join tenXer’s board of directors.

Radar Partners and Khosla Ventures, as well as angel investors, participated in the new round, for what the company describes as a “human capital management platform.”

Currently aimed at tracking the work of software engineers, tenXer integrates current tools such as GitHub, Pivotal Tracker and Jira.

Here’s a video interview with Ma — who gained fame for his gambling prowess as part of the MIT blackjack team, and also was one of the co-founders of Citizen Sports, which was bought by Yahoo in 2010 — about the new round, and also about where tenXer is headed next:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120828/jeff-ma-talks-about-tenxer-raising-3-million-more-to-help-you-judge-yourself-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120822/no-more-secrets/ http://allthingsd.com/20120822/no-more-secrets/#comments Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:00:08 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=243842

Most of us don’t look so good when we quantify our lives. We exercise less than we think, and eat more. We spend more time thinking about work than working hard. We probably have a higher opinion of ourselves than is warranted.

– Bruce Kasanoff, in a Digital Trends article, referring to the possibility that new technologies may make lying impossible

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120822/no-more-secrets/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120809/in-fight-over-largest-fine-ever-ftc-commissioners-disagreed-over-whether-google-should-admit-fault/ http://allthingsd.com/20120809/in-fight-over-largest-fine-ever-ftc-commissioners-disagreed-over-whether-google-should-admit-fault/#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 16:30:10 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=239683 As expected, Google will pay $22.5 million to settle with the FTC over violating its October 2011 privacy settlement.

Google is in trouble because it told users of the Safari browser, via a help page, that they did not have to worry about being tracked because Safari blocks cookies by default, while at the same time bypassing Safari settings to allow tracking cookies. Google has since deleted those cookies, and says it never collected personal information.

This is the largest FTC penalty ever for violation of one of its orders — though in tech terms, it’s just a generous Series B funding round or so.

It was decided by a vote of 4-1, with Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch dissenting on the grounds that the FTC should not have accepted Google’s denial of liability.

Rosch, instead, believes that Google is in contempt of the 2011 agreement. “This is Google’s second bite at the apple,” he wrote.

If Google is being fined $22.5 million, Rosch argues, the company should not be permitted to deny liability.

The other commissioners replied, “With a company of Google’s size, almost any penalty can be dismissed as insufficient.” But because the issue didn’t exist for very long, and Google didn’t make money from it, a penalty serves as sufficient warning, they argued.

The most interesting sideshow of the case was that the fact that the FTC was planning to fine Google had been leaked out in bits and pieces over the past five months. So, even though the FTC is not extracting an enormous fine, the fire over the issue has been stoked in the press continuously.

The FTC also posted today a more technical description of what Google did to bypass Safari’s settings.

Here’s what happened: Despite having that help page up saying that Safari wasn’t tracking users, “for several months in 2011 and 2012,” Google circumvented Safari settings to place a temporary cookie from DoubleClick. This was in part to set up those little +1 social advertising buttons on its ads for users.

And here’s the crux: “Because of the particular operation of the Safari browser, that initial temporary cookie opened the door to all cookies from the DoubleClick domain, including the Google advertising tracking cookie that Google had represented would be blocked from Safari browsers.”

But that’s not actually the crux, because the specific issue that the FTC is mad about is that Google had up the incorrect help page the whole time. This misrepresentation is exactly what Google promised it wouldn’t do in 2011.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the penalty is meant to send a message that “No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120809/in-fight-over-largest-fine-ever-ftc-commissioners-disagreed-over-whether-google-should-admit-fault/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120608/apple-to-release-new-tracking-tool-for-apps/ http://allthingsd.com/20120608/apple-to-release-new-tracking-tool-for-apps/#comments Fri, 08 Jun 2012 20:22:41 +0000 Jessica E. Vascellaro http://allthingsd.com/?p=218330 Apple Inc. is planning to release a new way for mobile app developers to track who uses their software, according to people briefed on Apple’s plans, the company’s latest attempt to balance developers’ appetite for targeting data with consumers’ unease over how it is used.

The new tool, which could be detailed in the coming weeks, aims to better protect user privacy than existing approaches, these people said.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120608/apple-to-release-new-tracking-tool-for-apps/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120605/ad-networks-bypass-iphone-privacy-rules/ http://allthingsd.com/20120605/ad-networks-bypass-iphone-privacy-rules/#comments Tue, 05 Jun 2012 13:30:39 +0000 Joel Schectman and Jessica E. Vascellaro http://allthingsd.com/?p=216660 Mobile ad networks are using new techniques to target iPhone users by circumventing Apple Inc.’s earlier efforts to protect user privacy.

Apple last summer said it would stop allowing app makers to use a unique identifier embedded in iPhones and iPads to track users as they move from app to app, which is an important way for advertisers to position their ads for appropriate audiences.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120605/ad-networks-bypass-iphone-privacy-rules/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-tailors-your-who-to-follow-list-but-only-if-you-want-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-tailors-your-who-to-follow-list-but-only-if-you-want-it/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 23:18:38 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=209621 Twitter began rolling out tailored suggestions for users to follow on Thursday, aiming to give Twitter newcomers better direction in learning how to navigate the somewhat abstruse microblogging platform. The suggestions stem from a tracking cookie Twitter sends to new users, allowing the company to see sites visited within the past 10 days. Twitter then uses that information to recommend who to follow. Users can also opt out of this service.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120517/twitter-tailors-your-who-to-follow-list-but-only-if-you-want-it/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120419/att-aims-to-avoid-opening-can-of-worms-as-it-opens-up-its-network/ http://allthingsd.com/20120419/att-aims-to-avoid-opening-can-of-worms-as-it-opens-up-its-network/#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:35:57 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=198139 The windowless building in Lower Manhattan may not indicate it, but AT&T Labs is trying to be more open.

Using an area normally home to its network security team, Ma Bell had a science fair of sorts on Thursday, showing off a number of the technologies that it has been cooking up in its labs. Many of the projects on display take advantage of different pieces of network data that AT&T now makes available to developers.

The various projects and booths paint an interesting future where doors can be opened by voice, a chip in the phone or even the electrical signals that travel through our hands, to name just a few of the gee-whiz technologies on display. But whether this future is bright or grim depends a bit on how one feels about being tracked.

Cellphones are indeed powerful devices these days — portable computers that know who we are, where we are and how we pay for things. Many of the projects on display Thursday aim to combine that knowledge in useful ways.

One application, for example would allow parents to keep tabs on their kids while they are driving — getting alerts if they text and drive or neglect to wear their seatbelts.

Another project nearby shows something akin to Caller ID on steroids. Today’s Caller ID shares only one’s phone number, but AT&T has the potential to share a lot more. One demo imagined what it would be like to share location and all manner of other information with a person you are dialing. Such uses could make it easy when, for instance, one is ordering a pizza.

Data combinations clearly have downsides, though. Imagine how hard it would be to cancel an outing with friends if they knew one was in Atlantic City, rather than sick in bed.

There are two questions that companies need to ask when releasing new services, says Edward Amoroso, senior VP and chief security officer for AT&T.

The first, Amoroso says, is about the art of the possible. “What sort of technology could you actually do?”

Then, he said, it is important to ask a second question. “What technology are people going to be comfortable with?”

Thursday’s science fair was more about the first question than the second.

Not all of the projects were as fraught with controversy. One of the more popular demos was one AT&T has been showing for a couple of years now called “Air Graffiti,” which allows users to tag physical locations with art, photos, sounds or other information — all without the risk of irking the property owner. AT&T has been working on the idea for a decade, but the technology needed to make it a reality has only recently become widely available.

Locations can be as specific as a single spot or as big as the earth and users can choose to share their graffiti publicly or with only a small collection of friends or family. Graffiti can also be timed to last for a short duration or set to live forever.

AT&T also used Thursday’s event to launch Watson, a new speech-recognition technology that it says is the result of a million hours of research and development and is the subject of 600 patents. The platform can recognize natural speech patterns and translate among six different languages.

Several of the technologies on display are also making their way into AT&T’s latest “Rethink Possible” campaign spots.

AT&T, like other carriers, have been increasingly opening up various features of their network — even core things like location and messaging and payment — so that developers can create more sophisticated programs.

Opening up their most valuable assets — the networks — is a clear risk for the carriers. At the same time, each is looking to avoid becoming just a “dumb pipe” for which they are paid a toll that barely covers the cost of each generation of network upgrades.

Things are indeed at a critical juncture, says Chief Technology Officer Krish Prabhu.

“There’s a cultural transformation and we are right in the middle of it,” Prabhu told AllThingsD. In a couple of years, the result will be clear, he said. “Either we changed the company for the good or we missed the boat.”

One of the capabilities that AT&T is studying is whether to allow, for example, the ability for applications to send text messages on behalf of users, much the way that the iPhone or Android sends notifications. Striking the right balance between usefulness and spam will be key.

Also front of mind for AT&T is making sure that nothing it does compromises the overall security of its network, something Amoroso said remains his top priority.

Figuring out how to make money will be another key. Prabhu said that AT&T has some goals in terms of getting a certain percentage of new revenue by opening up its network. However, he declined to reveal any of the specific numbers.

“I think the network has a lot of capability other than just connectivity,” he said. “It is a business objective and there is clearly an understanding that at some level a certain percentage of our revenue will come from this.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120419/att-aims-to-avoid-opening-can-of-worms-as-it-opens-up-its-network/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120319/getting-into-data-tracking-gear-with-nike-fuelband/ http://allthingsd.com/20120319/getting-into-data-tracking-gear-with-nike-fuelband/#comments Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:00:08 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=187478 Despite the fact that I’m a writer, which conjures up images of long days glued to the desk, I consider myself to be pretty active, and I try to maintain momentum by working out regularly. So I’ve been intrigued by the newest wave of wearable health and fitness products meant to track daily activity levels.

This week, I’ve been testing the $149 Nike+ FuelBand, as well as BodyMedia’s $199 Fit Link armband, with varying results.

The Nike+ FuelBand generated a lot of buzz when it was introduced in January. It’s currently sold out, aside from availability at a couple Nike retail stores in New York City. Otherwise, interested customers have to sign up on Nike’s Web site to be notified of the next shipment batch.

In my five-day test of the Nike+ FuelBand, I liked its design, ease of use, and overall coolness quotient. But I didn’t always find the “Fuel” metric — Nike’s new way of calculating exertion levels — to be super useful. On the flip side, while I wouldn’t give BodyMedia’s armband any design awards, it tracked more of the kind of data I’m interested in.


The Fuelband is a plastic wristband with a smooth, rubbery coating that measures a wearer’s steps, calories burned and Fuel levels, and then syncs the data with an app on your iPhone. It also acts as a watch. The FuelBand comes in three sizes. After adjusting the fit using a small insert that comes in the packaging, I eventually forgot I was wearing mine, aside from some minor annoyances, like when it tapped against my laptop.

The wristband’s display of LED lights really stand out, and garnered enthusiastic responses when people noticed it. There’s a single button on the band, for toggling between functions. A USB connector at one end of the FuelBand is used for charging the device and for syncing data through a computer.

Nike estimates that the battery will last up to four days without needing a charge, factoring in several “sync” sessions a day. In my test, the FuelBand went almost exactly four days without needing a charge, though this was skewed slightly because I plugged the FuelBand into my computer at one point to sync the data online, which automatically prompted more charging.

After registering my band online, entering in my height and weight, and setting my daily Fuel goal at around 3,000, I downloaded the free Nike+ FuelBand app from the App Store (the app is currently only available for iPhone). Syncing the FuelBand with the iPhone app was easy and took just about 10 seconds with a good Bluetooth connection.

On the main page of the app, the data appears in a circle with a giant Fuel score in the middle, but I could also view my activity in a linear graph. While the band only shows the number of steps taken, the app displays distance in miles, which was helpful. I found myself wishing the band would display distance in miles.

The Fuel number is drawn from a table created by Nike’s team of researchers, which studied various activities — for example, walking, running, playing tennis, etc. — and the levels of oxygen needed during those activities. While Fuel factors in your movement, it doesn’t factor in your height, weight, or body mass index. It’s meant to be a universal currency for everyone using the FuelBand.

For the most part, my Fuel levels were in line with my activity levels, but there were some aspects of Fuel I thought were sort of bogus. My Fuel level on Monday was hundreds of points higher than the next day’s level, even though I went for a two-mile run on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I lifted some light weights for about 30 minutes, which netted me 207 Fuel points, and then jogged for 20 minutes, which nearly tripled my Fuel score. But then I sat on a plane for 4.5 hours, so I didn’t reach my goal of 3,000 Fuel points for that day. 

On Thursday, I worked out twice, which is not a regular occurrence for me, but I did this for the sake of testing activity bands. Both workouts were aerobic, and lasted around 35 minutes. And yet I still didn’t hit my Fuel goal that day.

One explanation for this, according to Nike, might be that I was more consistently active on days I didn’t exercise, like Monday (which would make sense, because I was running around the South by Southwest festival in Austin that day). In the Nike Fuel world, one great hour of exercise isn’t supposed to make up for 17 hours of inactivity.



By connecting to Facebook and Twitter, FuelBand wearers can share and compare Fuel scores. I liked the competition it created with other friends who were sharing their scores and I liked the reactions I got from the Twitterverse; to me, that was the best part of Fuel, and I could see why this would be motivating for users.

	Nike+ FuelBand	BodyMedia Fit Link	Fitbit Ultra
Form Factor	Wristband	Armband	Dongle, clips to clothing or wristband
Measures	Movement/Steps, Activity Levels, Calories Burned, Nike “Fuel”	Movement/Steps, Activity Levels, Calories Burned and Consumed, Heat Flux, Skin Temperature, Sleep Efficiency	Movement/Steps, Activity Levels, Calories Burned and Consumed, Sleep Patterns, “Flower Power”
Estimated Battery Life	Up to 4 Days	Up to 4 Days	5 to 7 days
Mobile App	Yes, iPhone only	Yes, iPhone and Android	Yes, iPhone only
Waterproof	Water-resistant, but shouldn’t be submerged	Water-resistant, but shouldn’t be submerged	Water-resistant, but shouldn’t be submerged
Price	$149	$199, plus $6.95 a month for data-tracking	$99.95



For comprehensive data tracking, I actually found the BodyMedia Fit Link armband to be more useful than the FuelBand. 

Like Nike’s device, and the Fitbit, the Link armband measures steps and overall movement, but also uses sensors to detect changes in the skin’s surface temperature. So, while it doesn’t measure heart rate (the beauty of this new wave of fitness bands is that many of them don’t use heart-rate straps), it measures the body’s reaction to changes in heart rate, according to BodyMedia CEO Christine Robins.

I also liked that BodyMedia’s product incorporated weight goals, my caloric intake as well as output, and my sleep patterns, through a comprehensive online dashboard. Access to these advanced analytics online will cost users $6.95 a month, after a few free-trial months.


One night, I slept wearing both the FuelBand and the BodyMedia band. The FuelBand, which isn’t supposed to measure sleep patterns, only showed that my activity level had flatlined. The BodyMedia band, on the other hand, recorded how many hours and minutes I was actually sleeping, out of the total time that I was lying down, and calculated my sleep efficiency based on that.



The BodyMedia Fit Link band has its own drawbacks. There’s no display of information on the band itself, and it’s hard to forget you’re wearing it. It’s a bigger band that fastens to your arm, whereas the FuelBand feels like a thick bracelet. The armband also costs more than the FuelBand, and in my experience, syncing my Link armband to my iPhone was problematic. The company plans to release a new app, due this spring, that allows for better Bluetooth syncing, so users can update their BodyFit iPhone app and Web accounts at the same time.


For users looking for an activity-tracking wristband that tells you when and how much you moved throughout the day, the Nike+ FuelBand may work. But for serious weight-trackers or people looking to track segmented workouts, a product like a BodyMedia band or even a Nike+ SportsWatch would probably be a better fit.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120319/getting-into-data-tracking-gear-with-nike-fuelband/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20120226/talent-management-start-up-peoplematter-raises-14m-led-by-morgenthaler/ http://allthingsd.com/20120226/talent-management-start-up-peoplematter-raises-14m-led-by-morgenthaler/#comments Mon, 27 Feb 2012 03:00:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=178063

PeopleMatter said it has raised $14 million in a Series C funding, which was led by Morgenthaler Ventures.

The Charleston, S.C.-based software company, which focuses on hourly workers, said the new investment will be used for product innovation and customer-acquisition strategies.

Existing investors Noro-Moseley Partners, C&B Capital, Intersouth Partners and Harbert Ventures also participated in the round. PeopleMatter had previously raised $14.4 million, which brings its total funding to just over $28 million.

PeopleMatter competes with other online talent management firms, such as SuccessFactors, Taleo and Rypple, although those focus on career professionals. In contrast, PeopleMatter is aimed at service-industry workers, including food service, convenience store, hospitality and retail verticals.

The company’s offering allows organizations to manage applicant tracking, hiring, onboarding, training and scheduling processes. It is also launching a smartphone app this week that workers can use.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120226/talent-management-start-up-peoplematter-raises-14m-led-by-morgenthaler/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120224/as-privacy-concerns-grow-more-social-media-users-are-unfriending/ http://allthingsd.com/20120224/as-privacy-concerns-grow-more-social-media-users-are-unfriending/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:00:03 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=177610 As concerns about online privacy grow, users of social media sites are increasingly looking to unfriend other users and “prune” their personal profiles, according to a new report out today from Pew Research Center.

More than 60 percent of social media users said last year that they deleted people from their friends lists, up from 56 percent in 2009; and 26 percent of users who keep their profiles private say they apply additional privacy settings to limit what some friends can see.

Profile “pruning” — deleting comments friends leave and untagging photos — is also on the rise, the report says.

Women are significantly more likely to keep their profiles private, and are more likely to unfriend people than men are, with 67 percent of women saying they’ve removed friends, compared with 58 percent of men. Young people are more likely to manage their social media presences by deleting comments and untagging photos.

Some 48 percent of social media users say they experience some level of difficulty managing privacy controls on their profiles — but 49 percent say the process is “not difficult” at all. A tiny sample of those surveyed say it’s “very difficult.”

The report highlights a divide between those who may care about privacy when it comes to social networks and those who seemingly do not. As Pew notes, it could be interpreted that avid users of social networks, who share lots of personal details, have abandoned any expectations of privacy, or are “uniquely unconcerned” about online privacy.

On the other side, Pew says, privacy advocates say the public still “cares deeply about their privacy online but those sensitivities have been ill-served by technology companies.”

The report comes just as the White House has moved to create a privacy bill of rights, aimed at governing online data tracking. One of the issues at hand is a “do not track” tool which Web companies like Google have just agreed to support. Last week, Google was reported to be using deceptive practices to track Web users in certain browsers.

As The Wall Street Journal notes, though, a “do not track” button would allow for some Web data collection — such as the data gathered through Facebook’s “Like” button.

Pew is careful not to point to Facebook directly throughout the report, but notes that Facebook is by far the most popular U.S. social network (in its recent S-1 filing, Facebook showed that its user base has ballooned to more than 845 million). Pew’s report says that the term “privacy settings” — as well as “unfriend” — are part and parcel of the Facebook experience.

The Pew survey on Internet usages was conducted between April and May of last year, and sampled more than 2,200 U.S. adults 18 and older. The survey found that two-thirds of U.S. Internet users had profiles on social networking sites, up from just 20 percent in 2006.

In terms of who was more likely to post things on social networks that they later admitted they regretted, males were almost twice as likely to do so, with 15 percent copping to it, than were females, at 8 percent. Young adults, age 18 to 29, were also more likely to post content that they’d later regret on social networks.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/Oli Dunkley)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120224/as-privacy-concerns-grow-more-social-media-users-are-unfriending/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120223/web-firms-to-adopt-no-track-button/ http://allthingsd.com/20120223/web-firms-to-adopt-no-track-button/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:00:04 +0000 Julia Angwin http://allthingsd.com/?p=177221 A coalition of Internet giants including Google Inc. has agreed to support a do-not-track button to be embedded in most Web browsers — a move that the industry had been resisting for more than a year.

The reversal is being announced as part of the White House’s call for Congress to pass a “privacy bill of rights,” that will give people greater control over the personal data collected about them.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120223/web-firms-to-adopt-no-track-button/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120222/nikes-new-high-tech-sneakers-will-tell-you-how-much-air-you-got-on-that-dunk/ http://allthingsd.com/20120222/nikes-new-high-tech-sneakers-will-tell-you-how-much-air-you-got-on-that-dunk/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:00:17 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=176822 Looks like the basketball players of tomorrow will boast that they’ve got data-tracking game.

A new Nike+ “pressure sensor” is coming to Nike basketball and training shoes. The sensors will track data about wearers’ movements and transmit it wirelessly to their iPhones. The enhanced basketball shoes are meant to track the movements of players during practice sessions and games, including (but not limited to) how high the wearers jump. The training shoes are meant for casual and competitive athletes involved in any intense fitness activity.

Nike has been adding sensors to its athletic gear since 2006, though some of the products send data to an iPod or accompanying fitness watch rather than to a smartphone. The company says the Nike+ community has grown to more than six million “digitally connected” athletes.

Last month, Nike introduced the Nike+ FuelBand, a lightweight rubber wristband meant to be worn all the time to track fitness levels, which are measured in a Nike-branded activity currency called NikeFuel.

With these new basketball and training shoes, Nike says, workout statistics can be shared with friends on social networks. They also offer a “showcase” mode, which allows wearers to superimpose their live data onto a video that can then be shared with friends. So now, when a heated debate arises about who jumped higher on the court, you can take it inside, to Facebook.

A couple of unanswered questions — which I’ll ask Nike in a short while, and update as needed — is whether the sensor uses Bluetooth or another kind of wireless technology to transmit the data, as well as how far the reach of the sensor is. Most casual basketball players I know wouldn’t want to carry their smartphones in their pockets while playing (and I’m imagining it’s the same case with pro players). So would the user have to head to the sidelines or locker room and be within a certain proximity of his or her phone to transmit the data? Or does the data sync automatically?

And I’m curious to hear more about how verticals are actually measured. For example, if one foot edges higher than another, is the ultimate measurement an average of the two verticals? Or is it from the foot that got higher?

The company’s first sensor-enabled basketball shoe will be the Nike Hyperdunk+, which will cost $250 and hit stores this June. The first training shoes that work on the Nike+ system will be the Lunar Hyper Workout+ for women and the Lunar TR 1+ for men.

Nike has said LeBron James will wear the Nike Hyperdunk+ shoes this summer at the London Olympics.

Update: Nike’s vice president of digital sport, Stefan Olander, offered some more details on how the new pressure sensor works.

It reads four key pressure points in the foot to track when the feet leave the ground, Olander said. That data is combined with accelerometer technology to measure gravity and overall movement.

While data transmission in the “old” Nike+ sensors and running sneakers is enabled through Nike’s proprietary radio protocol, the latest Nike+ sensors use a new kind of Bluetooth technology that is said to be faster — and saps less power from connected devices. The data is stored locally on the sensor, and users can (wirelessly) upload the data to their iPhones when they’re done with their basketball or training session.

Also, the new pressure sensors are put into both left and right sneakers — unlike earlier versions of Nike+ sensors, which slipped into just one shoe — to more accurately measure the wearer’s movements. Whether the user takes off from the left foot or right foot — for example, when shooting a layup or attempting to dunk — Nike knows the timing of the foot pressure; the company claims it has created an algorithm that is more than 96 percent accurate in measuring jumps.

I wasn’t at today’s press event, but here are some tweets from those who were, including, naturally, Nike:

Improve every time you step on the court or in the gym. Introducing Nike+ Basketball & Nike+ Training #innovate http://t.co/7dsnBBwq

February 22, 2012 8:23 am via Nike PublisherReplyRetweetFavorite

@Nike

Nike

Nike has just unveiled a Hyperdunk shoe with a pressure sensor that tracks every move & allows you to upload it.

February 22, 2012 8:21 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@darrenrovell

darren rovell

#Nike is arguing that it will bring the power of its own lab to any athlete through technology. I like the idea of the connected athlete.

February 22, 2012 8:18 am via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeffjarvis

Jeff Jarvis

Nike+ will tell you how high you jumped when you okay bball!!! That’s unreal!!

February 22, 2012 8:23 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@omid

Omid Ashtari

Here’s a promotional YouTube video featuring Mr. James himself, showing off the sneakers and how another player’s vertical data is transmitted to the iPhone:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120222/nikes-new-high-tech-sneakers-will-tell-you-how-much-air-you-got-on-that-dunk/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120218/lawmakers-target-googles-tracking/ http://allthingsd.com/20120218/lawmakers-target-googles-tracking/#comments Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:02:13 +0000 Jennifer Valentino-Devries http://allthingsd.com/?p=176119 Three congressmen on Friday called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google Inc., after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Internet giant was bypassing privacy settings of people who used Apple Inc.’s Web browser on phones and computers.

The lawmakers — Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.), Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.) 00 want to know if Google’s behavior “constitutes a violation” of a privacy settlement Google and the Federal Trade Commission signed last year. Breaches of the settlement could bring fines of as much as $16,000 per violation per day.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120218/lawmakers-target-googles-tracking/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120217/how-to-get-out-of-tracking-on-safari/ http://allthingsd.com/20120217/how-to-get-out-of-tracking-on-safari/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:17:40 +0000 Jennifer Valentino-DeVries http://allthingsd.com/?p=176056 It’s difficult for users to stop Web trackers that take advantage of a loophole in Apple’s Safari browser — at least for now.

Apple says it is working to put a stop to the practice. And Google, which had been tracking users after exploiting this loophole to put Google +1 buttons in ads, stopped the practice after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

But in the meantime, to stop such tracking by other advertising companies, the only options available to Safari users are problematic.

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