"data ownership" entries

Strata Week: Intel wants you to reap the benefits from your personal data

Intel's Data Economy Initiative, your personal records are exposed, Sears gets into the data center business, and ODI wants Git for data publishing.

Intel’s taking the lead in the new “data economy”

Intel is looking to take the lead in what it has dubbed the “data economy,” helping consumers and individuals realize and retain more value from their personal data. Antonio Regalado and Jessica Leber report at MIT Technology Review that the the world’s largest computer chip maker has launched a “Data Economy Initiative.” Ken Anderson, a cultural anthropologist who is in charge of the project, described the initiative to them as “a multiyear study whose goal is to explore new uses of technology that might let people benefit more directly, and in new ways, from their own data.”

As part of the initiative, Intel is funding hackathons to encourage developers to experiment with personal data in new ways, Regalado and Leber note. “[Intel] has also paid for a rebellious-sounding website called We the Data,” they report, “featuring raised fists and stories comparing Facebook to Exxon Mobil.” Read more…

Strata Week: Movers and shakers on the data journalism front

Reuters' Connected China, accessing Pew's datasets, Simon Rogers' move to Twitter, data privacy solutions, and Intel's shift away from chips.

Reuters launches Connected China, Pew instructs on downloading its data, and Twitter gets a data editor

Yue Qiu and Wenxiong Zhang took a look this week at a data journalism effort by Reuters, the Connected China visualization application. Qiu and Zhang report that “[o]ver the course of about 18 months, a dozen bilingual reporters based in Hong Kong dug into government websites, government reports, policy papers, Mainland major publications, English news reporting, academic texts, and think-tank reports to build up the database.”

Read more…

Should the Freedom of Information Act extend to data in private companies?

Rep. Issa expressed support for reforming FOIA to include personal data held by companies.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which gives the people and press the right to access information from government, is one of the pillars of open government in the modern age. In the United States, FOIA is relatively new — it was originally enacted on July 4, 1966. As other countries around the world enshrine the principle into their legal systems, new questions about FOIA are arising, particularly when private industry takes on services that previously were delivered by government.

In that context, one of the federal open government initiatives worth watching in 2012 is ‘smart disclosure,’ the targeted release of information about citizens or about services they consume by government and by private industry. Smart disclosure is notable because there’s some “there there.” It’s not just a matter of it being one of the “flagship open government initiatives” under the U.S. National Plan for open government or that a White House Smart Disclosure Summit in March featured a standing room only audience at the National Archives. When compared to other initiatives, there has been relatively strong uptake of data from government and the private sector and its use in the consumer finance sector. Citizens can download their bank records and use them to make different decisions.

Earlier this summer, I interviewed Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) about a number of issues related to open government, including what he thought of “smart disclosure” initiatives.

Read more…

Strata Week: The Megaupload seizure and user data

Megaupload's demise raises data questions and Bloomberg opens up its market data interface.

In this week's data news, Megaupload users face data deletion, Bloomberg opens its market data interface and Pentaho changes its licensing for Kettle.

Strata Week: Why ThinkUp matters

ThinkUp and data ownership, DataSift turns on its Twitter firehose, and Google cracks opens the door to BigQuery.

Data democratization gets an important new tool with the release of ThinkUp 1.0. Also, DataSift offers another way to get the Twitter firehose, and Google offers a little more access to its BigQuery data analytics service.

If your data practices were made public, would you be nervous?

Solon Barocas on data mining's reputation and the ethics of data collection.

Solon Barocas, a doctoral student at New York University, discusses consumer perceptions of data mining and how companies and data scientists can shape data mining's reputation.

Strata Week: A step toward personal data control

Singly believes your data tells your story, news orgs debate word clouds, and Mary Meeker looks at the latest Internet trends.

Data democratization takes a step forward with Singly 1.0, The New York Times and The Guardian debate the finer points of word clouds, and Mary Meeker presents her annual report on Internet trends.