#Does internet privacy come at a premium? Would you pay for online privacy? Once we went online the concept of privacy changed.
What was once private personal information has now been twisted and altered by the digital age,
as users are starting to realize the consequences of freely givingtheir right to privacy. While we all seem to fear the NSA spying on us (a reasonable,
the Facebook mogul pointed out (on a conference call to investors) that privacy would be key to the company s growth.
This change in thinking was apparent with Facebook sacquisition of Whatsapp, to directly compete with another generally private sharing app, Snapchat.
Users are tired of seeing themselves hacked and exposed on the internet, and want to keep the curtain drawn.
The aforementioned apps fit this inevitable realization about what privacy means. Most recently, Facebook was under criticism again, this time for theautomatic uploadof private photos.
Frustrated users are ready to start paying for the privacy they could or should have maintained in the first place.
Does privacy come at apremium? In a certain sense, you can say that the industry of paying for internet privacy is already here,
says David Bakke ofmoney Crashers. Apps likeconfideandwickrprovide private messaging, yet are looking at pay plans for upper tier services.
Users are looking at ways to quietly and privately communicate online. As companies begin to
and surf the Internet in a secure fashion, or featuring ways to pay to eliminate such intrusions on our privacy,
And I think you ll see more and more internet users willing to pay for such services. That willingness is growing with every instance of our online privacy being abused.
Bothfacebookandokcupidhave run recent social experiments on their user base, creating animosity and frustration. However, there is an old adage that applies here:
The fallout from his brand of spying when it came to technology used for internet interactions was broad and irrational.
author Micheal Gurnow wrote about a momentary exodus from public browsing software, especially when it came to the threat of government intrusion.
Google was replaced by search engines which allow users to surf the Internet anonymously. Likewise Google chrome and Microsoft Internet explorer were traded for proxy browsers Some found smartphone camera apps
which do not log a picture s GPS. Many reluctantly gave up Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram and Pinterest.
The truly worried encrypted their home computers. Understanding what it means tobe private So now that we re ready to pay for privacy,
we have to understand our prior expectations of privacy and how we can change them.
People expect theirpersonal data to remain personal and private. This expectation is set at some point by the site they are entering their personal data into.
The thing is no one reads the terms of service contracts. When you click the little check box
and hit continue, you are agreeing to pages of legalese that pretty much state youdon thave any personal data
and you have absolutely no privacy on that site. They own it all. This isn t true for every site, of course,
but a good majority of them. So, can we just simply disappear from the internet?
The United states Supreme court is yet to do anything with the concept of the right to be forgotten.
Though, both the European union and the Argentinean court have decided that users do have a such right.
This is the extreme end of loss of privacy; when it becomes an overwhelming need to simply no longer exist in the digital sense.
Yet, with online banking and email, can one really be forgotten if they wish to stay current?
Not to mention the countless variables with any laws surrounding internet privacy, mostly defining privacy. Some of those variables haveled the House of Lordsin the UK to deem theright to be forgotten ruling asunworkable, unreasonable and wrong in principle.
Mainly, a committee of the House of lords had a major problem with leaving the decision of what is private and
what isn t in the hands of search engine giants such as Google. Per their report they feel,
that it is wrong in principle to leave search engines themselves the task of deciding whether to delete information or not,
based on vague, ambiguous and unhelpful criteria, and we heard from witnesses how uncomfortable they are with the idea of a commercial company sitting in judgement on issues like that.
(or on Google) as concerning public figures should not be removed because it would serve the interests of the public to have active debate
or a right to be forgotten on the Internet. Does it suggest a level of paranoia to want to be forgotten on the internet?
Are we really revealing that much about ourselves that privacy has become something of an antiquated concept?
and social media has given us that platform to do just that, or at least try. Perhaps this is why paying for privacy is just the solution many of us are looking for.
We have proven that we need controls in social media, just like our children need parental controls on their digital devices.
our so-thought personal data, is the inevitable evolution of social media sharing. Yet, who is to say that the company you are paying for privacy isn t turning around
and selling demographical information to the highest bidder? Paranoid, sure. Possible, yes. When it comes to internet privacy,
the bottom line istoonly put data on the internet that you are comfortable with being shared, viewed or sold by people that are not you.
In this era of social media and sharing, there are numerouscases of blatant ignorance. We need to educate ourselves by reading those pesky terms of service contracts,
noting which sites are sharing and which ones aren need t. We to be vigilant as to
what kind of personal data we re so eagerly sharing with the world. What we think is personal
or private is nothing of the sort. This isn t the era of anonymous chatting about pets on AOL
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#Chemotherapy will be obsolete in 20 years as scientists launch DNA project Scientists launch a new landmark project to map the genetic causes of disease.
Within 20 years, chemotherapy will be obsolete. Scientists have predicted the end of chemotherapy after launching a landmark project to map 100,000 genomes to find the genes responsible for cancer and rare diseases.
By the time children born today reach adulthood, invasive drugs and their devastating side-effects, will have been replaced by sophisticated medicines that can fix individual faulty genes, according to those behind the project.
Britain is the first country in the world to embark on a program to map the genomes of thousands of people in the hope of finding
which genes are responsible. In a joint 300 million project, universities across Britain are coming together, alongside the Department of health, the Wellcome Trust, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Medical Research Council.
David cameron, the prime minister, said the venture would unlock the power of DNA to deliver better tests,
I believe we will be able to transform how devastating diseases are diagnosed and treated in the NHS and across the world,
and the project is expected to be completed 2018.20 years from now there will be therapies, instead of chemo, that will be a much more targeted approach to treatment,
and the blockbuster chemotherapy drugs that gave you all those nasty side effects will be a thing of the past
Understanding humanity s genetic code is not only going to be fundamental to the medicine of the future.
It is essential part of medicine today. In rare congenital disease, in cancer and in infections, genomic insights are already transforming diagnosis and treatment.
Prof Farrer also predicted that genome sequencing to find the causes of the disease will become standard within our lifetime.
The first human genome was sequenced in 2003 following 13 years of work at a cost of 2 billion.
Now it takes around two days and costs just 1, 000. A genome consists of a person s 20,000 or so genes and the DNA in between.
Each genome consists of a code of 3 billion letters. Over the next four years, about 75,000 patients with cancer and rare diseases, plus their close relatives, will have their whole genetic codes,
or genomes, sequenced. Cancer patients will have the DNA of both healthy and tumour cells mapped,
making up the 100, 000 total. Scientists expect the project to be pivotal to the development of future personalised treatments based on genetics, with the potential to revolutionise medicine.
A 78 million partnership between Genomics England, the body set up by the Department of health to oversee the project,
and the Californian DNA sequencing technology company Illumina was unveiled by Mr Cameron today. Illumina, originallyspun out by Cambridge university scientists, will invest around 162 million into the project over its lifetime.
By the end of next year that figure is expected to have risen to about 10,000. Strict confidentiality rules will be enforced and under normal circumstances
patients will not be told of unforeseen surprises that might effect their health or insurance premiums. But helpful findings will be fed back to the doctors in charge of their treatment.
In return, those consenting to having their DNA sequenced must agree to drug companies having access to the information as well as academic scientists.
One example of such a therapy that already exists is Herceptin, a drug specifically designed for women with a type of breast cancer characterised by over-activity of the Her2 gene..
The NHS is now set to become one of the world s go-to health services for the development of innovative genomic tests and patient treatments.
#Smartphones to replace room keys at Hilton hotels The new smartphone key feature will arrive in six hotels in 2015.
using their iphone or Android handset as a room key. The feature won t start arriving until 2015,
of which all the US-based hotels already allow for mobile#check in and check out. If all goes as planned,
the end of this summer will see that ability expanded to include choosing one s own room using a smartphone.
#Vision-correcting electronic display could free users from eyeglasses The idea is to anticipate how your eyes will naturally distort whatever's on screen.
those of us who need glasses to see a TV or laptop screen clearly could ditch the eyeglasses.
The technology uses algorithms to alter an image based on a person's glasses prescription together with a light filter set in front of the display.
The algorithm alters the light from each individual pixel so that, when fed through a tiny hole in the plastic filter,
rays of light reach the retina in a way that re-creates a sharp image. Researchers say the idea is to anticipate how your eyes will naturally distort whatever's on screen something glasses
Brian A. Barsky, a University of California, Berkeley, computer science professor and affiliate professor of optometry and vision science who coauthored the paper, says it's like undoing
The technology is being developed in collaboration with researchers at MIT and Microsoft. In addition to making it easier for people with simple vision problems to use all kinds of displays without glasses
the technique may help those with more serious vision problems caused by physical defects that can't be corrected with glasses or contacts,
and a detail of a Vincent Van gogh self-portrait and applied algorithms that warped the image by taking into account the specific eye condition it was told to account for.
whose display they had affixed an acrylic slab topped with a plastic screen pierced with thousands of tiny, evenly spaced holes.
Gordon Wetzstein, who coauthored the paper while a research scientist at MIT s Media Lab, says the screen allows a regular two-dimensional display to work as
what's known as alight field display. This means the screen controls the way individual light rays emanate from the display, leading to a sharper image without degrading contrast.
The researchers tested out their device by using a Canon DSLR camera with the focus set to simulate vision problems like farsightedness.
Wetzstein says the next step is to build prototype displays that people can use in the real world something he expects could take a few years.
or that software tracks head movement and adjusts the image accordingly. Barsky expects this won t be much of a problem,
when we look at a display that doesn t look right, we tend to naturally move around to improve the focus.
However, Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor at the MIT Media Lab who coauthored the paper says that if researchers used a display with a high enough resolution about double the 326 pixels per inch of the ipod Touch used in the paper the technology could be made to be used by more than one person at once.
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#Baidu is developing a semi-autonomous car Baidu wants to keep the individual in control. Would you prefer to ride in a completely autonomous self-driving car, like Google s self-driving car,
or one like Chinese search engine Baidu s semi-autonomous car?##Instead of cars that have#no steering wheels, gas pedals,
or brake pedals for drivers to control, Baidu is thinking about cars with intelligent assistants who help you drive.##
##This is actually an intelligent assistant collecting data from road situations, Baidu s Kai Yu told The next Web.
He s deputy director of the company s#Institute of Deep Learning, a Chinese equivalent to#Google s X Labs. A team to turn the unthinkable to reality,
the Institute s website says. We don t call this a driverless car, he said, adding that a carshould be helping people, not replacing people,
so we call this a highly autonomous car. The first working versions are expected sometime next year.
In an irony that may not be lost on future cultural historians the search engine giant in the land of self-reliant independence is building a car that takes over completely.
And the search giant in the land with a history of huge collectives and mass thinking wants to keep the individual in control.
The Google vision, where there are no human drivers, is already becoming a reference point#either as a vision of a fun campus of the future,
as in the movie Internship, or as a vision of#a Silicon valley kidnapping, as in an episode of the HBO seriessilicon Valley.
Which is more likely? In the former, a driverless car merrily shares a sunny day with other Googlers,
whether Google s or Baidu s vision is more likely, it s hard to see how the next generation of Apple-,Android,
-and Windows-enhanced cars will not start tapping into the next generation of Siri s, Google Now s and Cortana s intelligence.
On the other hand even as hands-free parking has gained popularity, the idea of a completely driverless car is already being welcomed in some quarters.
But a new New Frontier in humanless vehicles is now emerging, one in which Google may already be left in the dust.
There are now reports that Baidu, eager to gain the lead on its American competitor, is developing#unmanned autonomous bicycles.
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#A rescue drone that finds survivors by tracking their mobile phone signals The drone can pick out the location of an individual phone within 30 feet.
A mobile phone can be the device that saves you in an emergency, even if you aren t able to make a call.
The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Lausanne have developed a drone that can pinpoint the location of a mobile phone by picking up its Wi-fi signal.
Video) The drone, which was reported first by Robohub, can pick out the location of an individual phone within 30 feet.
It calculates location by picking up the signal from several spots, allowing it to triangulate the origin.
The system could be especially useful after avalanches and earthquakes, when people might be buried under many feet of snow or rubble.
The drone tracks how strong a signal is; a weaker signal can indicate that a person is trapped deeper down, giving rescue crews a 3d picture of where to search.
This is not the first time phones have been used to pinpoint people. In 2006, an Oregon family was found based on text messages.
Drones are also already being used in search operations. They can also track heat signatures, helping rescue crews quickly spot a warm human being among an expanse of trees or snow.
Judges ruled earlier this week that a Texas search nonprofit could continue using drones after objections from the FAA.
The drone could also be used to provide Wi-fi if infrastructure was knocked out by a disaster,
masters student Jonathan Cheseaux said in a release. Companies like Facebook and Google are looking into using drones
and satellites to provide internet connectivity to remote corners of the world where installing internet cables is especially difficult.
The same types of systems would be useful in disaster situations to get large areas back online quickly.
The EPFL team noted its work underscores confidentiality issues with drones as its aircraft can pull phones Wi-fi network names and MAC addresses.
But it also only works in a search and rescue situation if a phone s Wi-fi connections are unprotected.
So would you rather be anonymous or rescuable e
#Why the Internet of things just became very interesting The Internet of things (Iot) computing phase is the next industrial revolution, according to experts.
And an estimated 50 billion connected devices and I0t solutions will reach $7. 1 trillion by 2020.
a focus on shareholder positioning will help us better understand where we are in the Iot cycle
when long-term tech investors place their respective bets. By integrating a basket of public Iot semiconductor companies (highlighted by Goldman sachs;
note: Making S-E-N-s-E of the next mega-trend) with Google Trends data containing the phraseiot,
we see that an obvious inflection point does not occur until Q4 13 (see Exhibit 1 below).
During the Q4 13 inflection point, Google Trends data traversed from a prolonged period of stagnation to rapid ascension.
Public Market Not Ready for Iot Though still in its early stages, Iot remains a tough space for public investors to gain exposure, especially to
Further highlighting the early-cycle Iot thesis, Goldman sachs describes it well in their Internet of things Volume 2 note:
we expect a similar ecosystem of software vendors to develop. Despite the limited public pure-play Iot options, firms are exhibiting their bullishness towards publicly available layers.
demonstrating that these investors see potential in Iot. What Iot says about broader technology market trends The Iot market is young in two senses of the word:
These limits to gaining exposure drive a broader shift in technology investing. We believe that Iot acts as a microcosm for a larger market themetraditional investors are now looking beyond the public markets to play technology trends.
Looking at private market funding for Gartner s high value layers, we see that investors are flooding into the Iot private company ecosystem with $1. 1b deployed into relevant startups in 2013.
It is with this understanding that we arrive at our original point: public investors are venturing beyond the confines of public markets.
As we have seen in recent late stage funding rounds by Uber, Snapchat, and Dropbox, private companies are able to stay private longer.
This trend is likely to continue as brand name mutual fund managers, as well as hedge funds, blur the lines of public and private markets.
Effects on Communication with Investors By examining the Internet of things investment landscape, we collide directly with a market phenomenon currently under way traditional, public capital crossing over from public to private markets.
This shift is forcing investors to make a difficult choice: invest in the publicly available hardware layers, wait for public investable options,
or venture into the private markets. Irrespective of public or private monikers, many investors can now go anywhere they d like,
a shift that has broad implications for companies. Managers are adapting to the times, and as a company, understanding this
and prepping your story to benefit from the macro tailwind is crucial. The number of competitors for Iot investable dollars just grew exponentially,
and as such, getting ahead of the pack just became ever more important. Via Venture Bea a
#Micro-colleges will educate the workforce of the future: Futurist Thomas Frey The world has a shortage of 18 million teachers.
Dell s#Center for Entrepreneurs#took to the Rockies, sponsoring an event at the Innovation Pavilion in Centennial, Colorado.
Former IBM engineer and noted futurist#Thomas Frey#addressed a gathering of business leaders, entrepreneurs and community members on an issue he says is increasingly impacting the labor force:
With the ever-increasing pace of innovation, traditional colleges and universities are failing to train and retrain workers quickly enough.##
##The model of two and four-year degrees, he says, is largely incompatible with an industry that gets flipped on its head every couple of quarters.
We have need a huge for some other way of getting people in the world educated, Frey said.
We need to prepare students for jobs that don t yet exist using technology that hasn t been invented to solve problems we don t even know are problems yet.
No doubt, a tall order, but Frey believes it s a challenge we can collectively meet. Teacherless classroom Frey says he was approached once by Google to collaborate on a project to deliver educational resources to Africa.
The search giant recognized that one of the biggest obstacles had been that teachers simply didn t want to come to the continent.
With this in mind, the notion of a teacherless classroom became more and more intriguing. It wouldn t be without precedent, Frey noted.
There are already media aggregators and automation services that enable organizations to generate editorial content on autopilot.
Could similar technology be leveraged to deliver educational content? The world has a shortage of 18 million teachers,
Frey said. He noted that a full 23 percent of all children grow up without an education.
With the changing pace of technology today, if we continue to have to insert a teacher between us
and everything that we need to learn in the future, we can t possibly stay competitive, Frey said.
Disappearing jobs and micro-colleges The main factor driving change in the labor force is new innovations rendering old jobs obsolete,
but no mechanism is in place yet to help workers grow at the pace of evolving technology,
Once you can download a level app on your smartphone, suddenly you no longer have need a for that tool,
When a user downloads an app, a part of a job disappears. It s a tiny piece but it s a piece nonetheless
This dynamic works both ways. For example, in the wake of Facebook s purchase of Oculus Rift, the amount of job postings for virtual reality designers skyrocketed,
but firms have had trouble filling the positions because relatively few professionals have the requisite skill sets.
instead, Frey believes that the workers of the future as early as 2030 will need to retool their careers as many as six times throughout their lives.
That isn t possible through conventional universities, but he believes micro-colleges such as#Davinci Coders,
which offers programming training, #are stepping in to fill the gap. We need to create systems for reemploying people at a far faster rate than ever before,
Frey said. Jobs are going to transition in lots of different ways that we don t even understand yet,
#Here s why automakers want 4g technology in cars Automakers are counting on the connected car.
Today s cars are trying to replicate the smartphone experience. Touchscreen interfaces are common. Dashboard designers take UI tips from iphones,
and#automakers want to build apps for cars. Large automakers like General motors are taking the next obvious step
and#integrating 4G LTE service into their cars starting this year. Drivers pay a monthly service fee for#in-car 4g#that s separate from their smartphones,
and use it for an array of services from movies for kids in the backseat to sophisticated#GPS-on-steroids solutions.
It s a win-win for automakers the dealers who sell the 4g add-ons, and carriers like AT&T. But is it a win for consumers?##
##Audi, the first major automaker to introduce 4g connectivity, debuted the option in their 2015 A3 car.
GM is adding 4g capability to nearly all of their 2015 Buick models, and 4g is also rolling out to Chevrolet and Dodge within the year.
While some luxury cars have come with built in 3g in the past, there are two major game changers here:
Both GM and Audi are aggressively targeting middle-market consumers, and 4g viewers tend to consume a whole lot of bandwidth-intensive video content which generates expensive data fees.
Phil Abram, GM s chief infotainment officer (a job title which does actually exist) is the man responsible for rolling out interactive content and delivery systems for Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac,
and other brands. When Co. Labs held a video chat with Abram earlier this month,
he said that the 2015 Buick Lesabre, the first GM model with 4g, debuted in June
and the company will add 4g to 30 more models by the end of the year.
New#car buyers#would be given a 3 gigabyte trial and data plans would be set up by AT&T The cheapest $5 plan offers 250 megabytes usable in a 24-hour period;
monthly plans range from $5 for 200 megabytes to $50 for 5 gigabytes a month.
These fees piggyback on top of existing Onstar telematics packages, which start at $20 a month. We looked closely at other device pricing plans, Abram added.
The use case of cars is different than phones. In promotional materials, Audi and GM both emphasize 4G LTE service as a mechanism for users to get in-car entertainment, rather than for navigation or safety monitoring.
Buick boasts they cankeep everyone happy with streamed movies, music, and games, while Audi emphasizesfaster downloads and high-definition video streaming for up to eight devices used by passengers over the in-vehicle#Wi-fi#hotspot.
Smartphone and#car convergence#has been happening for quite some time and in-car 4g allows automakers to solve the vexing customer issue of answering demand to integrate smartphones without sacrificing safety or usability,
while simultaneously pushing a#lucrative car option#to market. Audi is offering drivers their a new and data-intensive navigation system,
which feeds the dashboard with information on#nearby gas stations, restaurants, and all sorts of Google earth overlays.
GM, meanwhile, is revamping their previously 2g Onstar system to take advantage of the new data possibilities.
And then, naturally, there are the auto dealerships.##In-car 4g hotspots#are potentially lucrative businessespecially
when there s a $50 monthly fee attached. It s a safe bet to assume dealers will give the hard sell to families with young children in the backseat
or businesspeople who constantly travel by car. Beyond the obvious use cases of Netflix and#data-heavy navigation systems, 4G LTE service also means drivers can send#SMS#text messages by voice dictation,
can have their seatmates shop on Amazon while they drive, and take advantage of a whole set of use cases.
While drivers and passengers might not necessarily need#high-speed Internet#in their cars it s arrived on the market
##and it s a safe bet to say we ll see it in most new cars sooner rather than later.
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