Scroogle!

What a discovery; Microsoft has started this initiative (in a lack of a better term) where by means of infographics, text, animations and imagery, they explain what, in their opinion, Google should and shouldn’t be doing, and why it is better to use Microsoft Outlook.

http://www.scroogled.com/

Under ‘Our Position’ you find these three points:

Here are some examples of things Outlook.com does not do, but Gmail does:

  • Go through the contents of your sent and received email messages to display targeted ads
  • Go through the contents of your incoming email from other email services for the purpose of targeting ads
  • Go through the contents of your entire inbox for the purpose of targeting ads

Have a look yourself on their website, there is a Valentine’s Day-special under ‘The Latest’, enjoy!

Scroogle

Flutrends

I would like to share an interesting and quite helpful side of search engines and their personalised searches. Google Flu Trends http://www.google.org/flutrends/ch/#CH  helps you to follow the ‘evolution’ of a flu in your region. It tracks search entries of that topic and combines it with the time of the entry and Google maps. Of course, a too paranoid view on this isn’t constructive, but I think that it is important to mention both negative and positive aspects of personalisation in online searching.

Privacyfix

Duck Duck Go, the amasing search engine I wrote about earlier, suggested to me this option to keep an eye on your information:

https://privacyfix.com/start

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For now this is an add-on that works with Firefox and Chrome, but they are working on a version for Safari. I will try it out and report back! And if you do as well, feel free to share any thoughts about it.

Collusion by disconnect

What a superb discovery:

https://disconnect.me/tools

‘We think your personal info should be treated with respect, that you should be the steward of your digital self, that you shouldown your own data.’

There isn’t much more to say, just have a look and discover this to yourself. Don’t forget to read their privacy policy: ‘Our privacy policy, in a sentence: We don’t collect your IP address or any other personal info, except your email address if you ask us to write you.’

Malte Spitz ‘Your phone company is watching’

This is a Ted-talk which tackles the subject of ownership of your own data. Malte Spitz talks about how he tried getting is mobile phone data back and what he did with it. What is most important to me is that he highlights why it is so important to hang onto (or claim it back) self-determination. So many times, people around me are convinced that all this gathered data isn’t really of great threat or of great potential.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/malte_spitz_your_phone_company_is_watching.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstract for the Junior Research Symposium 2012

It is time to publish my abstract I wrote for the Junior Research Symposium 2012 that will take place in November in Geneva. Their website hasn’t been updated yet, but you can already find information about past symposia. http://www.junior-research.ch/index.php/2011/database

 

Abstract:

The internet is weaving itself into our daily lives and will do so even more in the future. As gateway between the analog and the digital world, search engines hold a crucial position, and therefore it is important for us to understand and use search engines adequately.

This project enquires from the user’s point of view how graphic design can improve orientation and transparency in the process in online searching. Through quantitative studies, a target group was defined, which then determined the specific field of application. By shadowing user search habits both on- and offline, this method highlighted which setting the result should be placed into. A participatory lab-situation generated the concept on which the result is based and confirmed the hypothesis stated in the initial research question.

These methodologies led to the creation of an online-tool enabling users to be in better control of their search queries and to have greater clarity about the origin of the found information. For example, users conclude that being more aware of personalised search issues like the filter bubble allows them to take appropriate action.

When It Comes to Politics, the Internet is Closing Minds

I have been given this link to a video which I would like to share here. It is a debate on wether ‘the internet is closing minds when it comes to politics’. Robert Rosenkranz is introducing the four panelists, Eli Pariser, Jacob Weisberg, Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Evgeny Morozov. It might not be obvious from the title why this video is relevant to my research focus, but as soon as you listen into it you will discover the many ways my research will refer to this.

http://fora.tv/2012/04/17/When_It_Comes_to_Politics_the_Internet_is_Closing_Minds

 

 

Spotify and their ‘choices’

Yesterday I had an interesting encounter with Spotify. As probably many of you did as well, I was presented with the option of allowing access to my confidential information stored in Spotify in my keychain. Because of the three buttons ‘Always Allow’, ‘Deny’ and ‘Allow’, I naively assumed this was optional. And it may be, but it won’t let you make this choice. Try it. For about ten minutes, every time I clicked ‘Deny’, this window came again and again. Until I got impatient and wanted to choose ‘Allow’ which means allow once. Not even that is possible, it will keep popping up. So the only way it will leave you be in peace is if you choose ‘Always Allow’.

Now of course you have the option to then just stop using Spotify. (Un-) Fortunately, the service they provide is amasing. And the price you pay is your personal information it seems.

Martin Feuz

On the 21st of June 2012 Martin Feuz took the time to have a very interesting talk with me about my project. Martin is currently working as an Interaction Design Researcher (PhD) at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Apart from getting most productive feedback on the direction of my work, it was enriching to talk to an expert on the matter I just started discovering a few months ago.

We agreed on how interesting it can be as a ‘non-coder’ in the world of search engines and what freedom this position can give you. Then he talked about the differences between Information Retrieval and Information Seeking, how market-oriented the field of Search Engine obviously is and what this implies. Which lead us to Eli Pariser, whom I mentioned on this blog a while ago, his freshly (march 2012) launched website http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ and the topic of online-filters. On January the 20th, Google introduced a toggle button that allows the logged-in user to choose between a personalised and a non-personalised search. How come most people don’t know about this button yet? Something very interesting I find.

Martin raised a very good question: How can you inform yourself properly if you don’t know the answer? This is precisely where the topic of filter bubbles is crucial. It is important to Information Seeking that ‘you get a sense of the corpus’ (quote Martin Feuz) of information that there is.

There are a few projects that are proposing a search with a different angle;

http://www.horizobu.com/?q=&qt=w&s=58d06d86628e3242afed2f2b6a1538a2&l=en&r=US&t=&i=0#0

http://blekko.com/

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

http://duckduckgo.com/

Questions I have to answer for my project would be my personal interest in this topic, in what areas more transparency  is needed, how I understand the word ‘democracy’ in this context and why there isn’t any transparency when it comes to universal search engines such as Google, Bing ect, or why it seems to be so difficult to add some transparency there. Those are pivotal things to think about of course, but what was even more important for me to take from the discussion with Martin Feuz was a huge amount of push and incentive to pursue what I started working on.