Most of my time at Christmas growing up was spent looking at Wishbooks (mostly from Sears) wondering what Santa would bring. Wishbooks (and many of their publishing retail chains) are long gone or are standing in the tub holding a toaster (I’m looking at you JCPenny-Kmart-Sears).
The contemporary “wishbooks” from Target, Walmart, Toys R Us and Kmart pale in comparison.
Hard to believe that Black Friday (previously) is fast approaching, and that ads have already begun leaking online (more background here). Why it was just last year that people were rioting in Walmart over waffle makers.
Amazon’s Kindle (as a service) is now available at 11,000 libraries, via this press release. You can get content delivered to any of a variety of devices and apps (such as Android, Apple apps, and Kindle Cloud Reader). I’ve tried most of those apps, and they are great.
The week link here is the library’s webpages (and eBook inventory as managed by Overdrive). To the later, every eBook I would conceivably read is ‘out’. To the former, good luck figuring out what you are supposed to do, where you login, how you find books, and getting them on your device. I’m looking at you, Delaware County library system. 1996 called, and it wants its website back.
The curious thing to me about the Facebook apps ‘leaking data’ story is not that’s its happening, but rather the low levels of digital literacy (or the fact that this has been happening for years) by the public:
Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.
The difference in the past was that the cost of acquiring this data was substantial enough to make it not worth the effort. The amount of data freely available and the decreased cost of computing power make it a trivial effort. This is only going to become more prevalent as online providers look to monetize the sale of data. The problem is that data is being used in ways that the average internet user cannot comprehend, and therefore cannot make an informed decision to opt-in or opt-out.