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Facebook Needs to Turn Data Trove Into Investor Gold – NYTimes.com (Somini Sengupta)

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief, has managed to amass more information about more people than anyone else in history.

As Facebook turns to Wall Street in the biggest public offering ever by an Internet company, it faces a new, unenviable test: how to keep growing and enriching its hungry new shareholders.

The answer lies in what Facebook will be able to do — and how quickly — with its crown jewel: its status as an online directory for a good chunk of the human race, with the names, photos, tastes and desires of nearly a billion people.

via Facebook Needs to Turn Data Trove Into Investor Gold – NYTimes.com.

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Hackers target company-owned cellphones | WIVB.com (Joe Arena)

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Your company gives you a phone, but does this mean the device is safe from high-tech raiders?

Just because you might not pay for it, doesn’t mean you have free reign, and the consequences can come back to haunt if you, especially if you went into risky territory.

Computer forensic expert Michael McCartney said, “It happens every day. Every day in our business we’re kind of tossed between an employee doing bad things or an environment in which has been compromised due to internal threats or external threats where it has exposed the organization to tremendous risk.”

Just a year ago, nearly 800 companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, were all hacked. In today’s world, the threat is far too easy.

The simple act of checking a personal e-mail account or buying flowers for mom on Mother’s Day with mobile work devices can put the company you work for at risk.

via Hackers target company-owned cellphones | WIVB.com.

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A Computer Interface that Takes a Load Off Your Mind – Technology Review (Kate Greene)

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Conversations between people include a lot more than just words. All sorts of visual and aural cues indicate each party’s state of mind and make for a productive interaction.

But a furrowed brow, a gesticulating hand, and a beaming smile are all lost on computers. Now, researchers at MIT and Tufts are experimenting with a way for computers to gain a little insight into our inner world.

Their system, called Brainput, is designed to recognize when a person’s workload is excessive and then automatically modify a computer interface to make it easier. The researchers used a lightweight, portable brain monitoring technology, called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), that determines when a person is multitasking. Analysis of the brain scan data was then fed into a system that adjusted the user’s workload at those times. A computing system with Brainput could, in other words, learn to give you a break.

via A Computer Interface that Takes a Load Off Your Mind – Technology Review.

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E-discovery: Change your thinking about e-discovery | Inside Counsel (Steven Hunter)

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We go through the exercise of electronic discovery to reduce volumes of data into useful trial evidence. The problem is we’ve been using the wrong tools to do it. Traditionally, counsel savvy about e-discovery have interviewed key information custodians with the goal of developing a list of words and phrases (hereinafter, “keywords”) to be applied against the data set. In theory, applying a keyword filter captures most (if not all) of the relevant information while screening out irrelevant information.

The problem with screening data with keywords is that it doesn’t do what we assume it does. Applying a keyword filter to a data set (i.e., a Boolean search) is simultaneously over- and under-inclusive. Language (and human beings’ use of language) is inconsistent and imprecise. Keyword/Boolean searches are over-inclusive in that a simple Boolean search lacks the “intelligence” to differentiate between synonyms (e.g., you search for documents related to an insect infestation at an apple orchard, and you end up with thousands of documents about Apple computers).

via E-discovery: Change your thinking about e-discovery.

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Amazon Has A Story To Tell In eDiscovery « eDiscovery Journal (Barry Murphy)

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The more I research The Cloud and how eDiscovery will be enabled in it, the more I realize how little of the full story has been told.  Last week, we reported on X1 Discovery becoming part of the Amazon AWS (Amazon Web Services) ISV (Independent Software Vendor) program.  Amazon’s ISV program for AWS is very new and if you search for eDiscovery on the ISV site, you won’t get a lot of results.  In fact, I don’t think even Amazon understands just how much potential there is to be the only public Cloud provider with a robust cadre of eDiscovery solutions at the fingertips of customers.  That could be a differentiator, especially for serial litigants or regulated companies that want to leverage Cloud-based solutions.

As I searched the AWS site for eDiscovery stories, I came across another vendor already doing interesting things in the public Cloud with Amazon: Nextpoint.  The company has partnered with Amazon since 2007 and Amazon published a case study in 2010 about how Nextpoint has essentially built its capabilities on the Amazon Cloud infrastructure.  The benefit of doing this for Nextpoint is multifold:

Leverage Amazon’s security features (both digital and physical) – web sessions are transferred over HTTPS protocols between application users and AWS to enable secure connections.  Firewalls are enabled using the native EC2 Security Groups. AWS has successfully completed a Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS70) Type II Audit. Physical access to AWS data centers is tightly monitored.

Can offer flexibility and scale.  Nextpoint can increase processing power by 50x in order to complete time-sensitive tasks for customers. Nextpoint can automatically provision capacity, process data, and then de-provision the capacity once their client’s processing is complete.

Price competitiveness.  Because AWS is pay-as-you-go, Nextpoint does not have the ongoing data center costs that its competitors might.

via Amazon Has A Story To Tell In eDiscovery « eDiscovery Journal.

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With new Bing, is Microsoft the first to get ‘social search’ right? – The Washington Post (Ellis Hamburger)

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“90 percent of people consult with a friend or expert before making a decision,” Microsoft says in promotional materials for the new Bing, announced Thursday and rolling out over the next few weeks. The pitch sounds just like Google’s plan for Search Plus Your World, which peppers your search results page with content from Google+, the company’s social network. Microsoft’s doing a few things differently: it’s including social data from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Blogger, and soon, LinkedIn, Quora, and Foursquare. The idea is that these social results will be inherently more relevant than Google’s simply by virtue of including more social networks, and in an unobtrusive manner.

With its “most significant” Bing update ever, is Microsoft the first to get “social search” right? Read on to find out.

via With new Bing, is Microsoft the first to get ‘social search’ right? – The Washington Post.

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Defining ‘big data’ depends on who’s doing the defining – Computerworld (Brandon Butler)

May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Big data is an IT buzzword nowadays, but what does it really mean? When does data become big?

At a recent Big Data and High Performance Computing Summit in Boston hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), data scientist John Rauser mentioned a simple definition: Any amount of data that’s too big to be handled by one computer.

Some says that’s too simplistic. Others say it’s spot on.

“Big data has to be one of the most hyped technologies since, well the last most hyped technology, and when that happens, definition become muddled,” says Jeffrey Breen of Atmosphere Research Group.

The lack of a standard definition points to the immaturity of the market, says Dan Vesset, IDC program vice president of the business analytics division of the research firm. But, he isn’t quite buying the definition floated by AWS. “I’d like to see something that actually talks about data instead of the infrastructure needed to process it,” he says.

via Defining ‘big data’ depends on who’s doing the defining – Computerworld.

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Twitter Seeks To Quash Order Requiring Production of Account Holder’s User Information, Tweets : Electronic Discovery Law

May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

People v. Harris, No. 2011NY080152 (N.Y. Crim. Ct.)

Following up on the case summary from last week (posted May 1, 2012) in which the court denied defendant’s motion to quash the District Attorney’s subpoena and issued an order requiring the production of defendant’s user information and Tweets from Twitter, Inc., this week brings us Twitter, Inc.’s motion to quash the court’s order.  Filed on May 7, 2012, the motion seeks to quash the court’s order on the grounds that the order imposes an undue burden on Twitter for reasons including that it requires them to violate the law.

Opening its brief, Twitter notes that section 2703(d) of the Stored Communications Act provides that “[a] court issuing an order pursuant to this section, on a motion made promptly by the service provider, may quash or modify such order, if. . . compliance with such order otherwise would cause an undue burden on such provider.”  Twitter argues that the order compelling its production of the defendant’s information imposes an undue burden for three reasons.

via Twitter Seeks To Quash Order Requiring Production of Account Holder’s User Information, Tweets : Electronic Discovery Law.

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Google Search Results Protected by First Amendment, Report Says | PCMag.com (Chloe Albanesius)

May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are well within their First Amendment rights to pick and choose what type of search results they display – much like media outlets and publishers make editorial decisions, according to a new report.

The findings – commissioned by Google and produced by law professor Eugene Volokh – essentially suggest that those complaining about Google favoring its own products in search results do not have a valid argument.

Google has denied such favoritism, but “even if it is assumed that Google engages or plans to engage in such prioritizing, that prioritizing would constitute the legitimate exercise of Google’s First Amendment right to decide how to present information in its speech to its users,” Volokh wrote in the report.

via Google Search Results Protected by First Amendment, Report Says | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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