In my last two posts, I kept coming back to questions concerning personal data: is it anonymous, who has control over it, and how is it used. The cable company knows who you are, so if they’re going to track your viewing preferences it has to stay local so that it stays anonymous (see here). [...]
Walt Mossberg’s WSJ column on Thursday posits that tracking cookies are spyware, according to his definition of the term:
Computer code placed on a user’s computer without his or her permission and without notification, or with notification so obscure it hardly merits the term. Once installed, spyware and adware alter the PC’s behavior to suit [...]
I just read an interesting story about technology from a startup called Invidi that delivers targeted ads to cable TV viewers. The targeting is based upon user behavior, and like Tivo, the system maintains privacy by never allowing behavioral data to leave the digital set top box (DSTB). This means that any personalization has to [...]
I just followed the trail from John Battelle’s note about Yahoo’s launch of Mindset to Greg Linden’s post comparing it to Google Personalized Search and MSN Search, then to Greg’s company Findory.com and his history at Amazon helping develop recommendations and personalization features there.
Personalization of search results, news and blog stories, product recommendations, or anything [...]