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- White House unveils ‘one click’ online privacy plan
- Interactive 3-D graphical objects as an integral part of online shops
- Internet service prevents cable tangle in presentations at conferences
| White House unveils ‘one click’ online privacy plan Posted: 23 Feb 2012 03:12 PM PST White House unveils ‘one click’ online privacy plan The White House has unveiled an online privacy proposal Thursday intended to allow Web users to easily opt out of being tracked on the Internet.
Administration officials outlined a proposed “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” on Thursday and urged technology companies, consumer groups and others to jointly craft new protections. Such guidelines would initially be voluntary for companies, but those that agree to abide by them could be subject to sanctions for any violations. “As the Internet evolves, consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the digital economy,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “That’s why an online privacy Bill of Rights is so important. For businesses to succeed online, consumers must feel secure.” The effort comes as companies have found more sophisticated ways to collect and combine data on your interests and habits. Beginning next week, for instance, Google will start merging data it collects from email, video, social-networking and other services when you’re signed in with a Google account. The growing use of smartphones and tablet computers adds another dimension to the tracking. Location information can give service providers insights into where you spend your time and, if you have friends who use the same services, whom you tend to hang out with in person. Data collection can help companies improve and personalize services. It can also help advertisers fine-tune messages and reach the people most likely to buy their products and services – often without consumers even realizing it. That is why the administration is seeking more data protections for consumers in a report issued Thursday. How strong the protections will be ultimately depends on what rules parties can reach consensus on. The administration favored a multi-stakeholder approach that has hints of self-regulation because legislation to enable traditional regulation would take time. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission complained that software companies producing games and other mobile applications aren’t telling parents what personal information is being collected from kids and how companies are using it. Depending on how the guidelines are crafted, companies could be required to more prominently disclose when they collect such things as location, call logs and lists of friends – not just from kids, but everyone. The report is not intended to replace other efforts at offering privacy protections. Leading companies in mobile computing agreed Wednesday to require that mobile applications seeking to collect personal information forewarn users before their services are installed. The guidelines came as part of an agreement with California’s attorney general. Separately, the FTC has recommended the creation of a “Do Not Track” tool to let consumers curb advertisers from studying their online activity to target ads. In announcing support for the administration’s privacy safeguards, companies responsible for delivering nearly 90 percent of targeted advertisements also committed to adopting the Do Not Track technology when it is built into Web browsers, something expected this year. Commerce Secretary John Bryson said in a briefing with reporters that the administration’s proposal not only protects consumers but also gives businesses better guidance on how to meet consumer expectations. The proposal expands on widely accepted Fair Information Practice Principles crafted in the 1970s, when the Internet was just an experimental network used primarily by researchers. Those existing guidelines say that consumers should be informed about any data collection and given the option to refuse. They should also be allowed to review and correct data about themselves. The principles also have provisions for security and enforcement. Applying the principles to the Internet era, the administration said data collected in one context should not be used for another, while companies should specify any plans for deleting data or sharing information with outside parties. Companies also need to be mindful of the age and sophistication of consumers. Disclosures need to be presented when and where they are most useful for consumers. The idea isn’t to give people access to everything a company collects about them, but they should at least be able to review and correct any information that is used to make decisions. The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration plans to convene companies, privacy advocates, regulators and other parties in the common months to craft detailed guidelines that reflect those principles. Enforcement would be left to the FTC under existing laws. The codes of conduct would be specific to particular types of companies. One might cover social networks, for instance, while another might deal with services on mobile gadgets. A company that offers social-networking features on phones might adopt both. New ones could emerge as technology evolves. Although officials expect many companies will agree to the new codes, allowing them to use that commitment in marketing materials, the report also called on Congress to pass new laws to require remaining companies to adopt such guidelines. Until then, enforcement would be limited to companies that say they would abide by the codes but fail to do so. Legislation also would be needed for the FTC to give protections to businesses that follow a checklist of good practices. Known as safe harbor, such protections would exempt companies from sanctions if they inadvertently break a code. The report comes 14 months after the Commerce Department first proposed a privacy bill of rights. The issue was later elevated to the White House and won its endorsement with the release of Thursday’s report. The administration dropped a proposal in the original report to create a federal privacy office within the Commerce Department. Instead, the task of convening parties to craft guidelines is left to the existing NTIA. Share and Enjoy• Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Digg • Delicious • StumbleUpon • Reddit • Google Buzz • FriendFeed • MySpace • Add to favorites • Email • Print • PDF |
| Interactive 3-D graphical objects as an integral part of online shops Posted: 23 Feb 2012 03:08 PM PST Interactive 3-D graphical objects as an integral part of online shops Interactive 3-D graphical objects can be an integral part of online shops.
The online shop’s website fills the whole screen of the laptop. In the center, the image of a high-end digital camera appears. Just a few finger moves on the touchpad are needed to move the model freely and to enlarge or minimize it, no matter which objective has been set by the mouse click. “Up to now, for every move of the different object modifications, innumerable photos would have to be taken and then set together to an animation with a special kind of software. Furthermore, it is not necessarily the case that the potential customer’s browser already has the appropriate add-on program,” Kristian Sons explains. He co-developed the scene description language XML3D in the Intel Visual Computing Institute (VCI)/German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). XML3D simply requires the appropriate 3D model, an Internet connection and a browser. “Using XML3D, it is possible to embed three-dimensional content in such an easy way on websites as had previously been achievable only with video clips on the Internet,” adds Philipp Slusallek, professor for computer graphicsat Saarland University and scientific director in the DFKI and VCI. This is realized with XML3D by adding the necessary elements to the current HTML standard, HTML5. Besides text, images and videos, 3D objects can also be pictured on the website. “All 3D components form part of the HTML code that defines the website. Therefore, web developers can create new 3D content by using their habitual programming methods,” Slusallek explains. The Saarland computer scientists have already completed implementations of XML3D for the Firefox or Chrome browsers, as well as for the web programming language JavaScript, in combination with the browser component WebGL. This JavaScript interface to graphics hardware is already available in the latest versions of the browsers Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera. All implementations are free to use on the project’s website. In the future, not only three-dimensional configurators for online products but also interactive informational graphics, educational and computer games should be programmed using XML3D. Thus, researchers are working on a standardization of XML3D. In August 2011, in cooperation with the Fraunhofer IGD and the Web 3D Consortium, the DFKI founded a community within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that guarantees the WWW standard. This represents the first phase of the standardization process. Mozilla, Google and the international industrial consortium Khronos Group already have shown their interest in this issue. Share and Enjoy• Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Digg • Delicious • StumbleUpon • Reddit • Google Buzz • FriendFeed • MySpace • Add to favorites • Email • Print • PDF |
| Internet service prevents cable tangle in presentations at conferences Posted: 23 Feb 2012 03:04 PM PST Internet service prevents cable tangle in presentations at conferences No cable tangle anymore: screen contents can be shifted freely to any terminal's display and even shown on large-scale monitor walls.
“Some try to play it off with a joke at their own expense; others wish the ground would open and swallow them up. So it happens every day during innumerable meetings,” comments Philipp Slusallek, professor of computer graphics at the Saarland University and scientific director in the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). More and more embarrassing moments pass, until the person giving the talk finds the right cable to connect the projector and the presentation can finally be seen by everyone else. Philipp Slusallek and his team wanted to cope with this cable tangle, and found an answer to the issue. Their solution even extends to the possibility of visualizing three-dimensional content on large monitor walls. “The approach is so simple,” explains Alexander Löffler, who, jointly with researchers of theIntel Visual Computing Institute, developed the relevant software ‘NetVFB’. Once installed on the computer, every application is compatible. The application’s monitor image can be shown in the “virtual frame buffer,” with the result that it is visible as a service on the network. The monitors in the conference room are also shown as services on the network. Löffler adds: “Now it is possible to show the presentation at the touch of a button on the requested display, enabled by a an Internet transmission.” But there is more to come. With the new software, different laptop users’ screen images can be displayed on just one monitor. Due to the fact that the virtual frame buffer can be shown on numerous displays at the same time, it is also possible to observe and control a presentation via smartphone. The software can also be applied outside of conferences. Since modern LCD displays have a marginal width of only two or three millimeters, you can use them to build huge monitor walls with high resolution at low cost. Even if these monitors consist of more than 20 displays, one laptop is sufficient to control the content displayed on them through a regular WLAN connection. Up to now, this has been possible only with a considerable amount of hardware. Therefore, the innovative approach of the Saarbrucken computer scientists is also interesting in terms of perimeter advertising in sports stadiums or interactive displays in shops. “On such monitor walls we even can show 3D movies like Avatar,” Löffler adds. If you use shutter glasses on that occasion, all monitors have to show the image for the right and for the left eye at exactly the same time, to ensure the desired spatial impression. “We accomplish this synchronization by controlling the hardware for the graphics output,” Löffler explains. Internally, the software uses optimized video transmission protocols to transfer the synchronized image data directly from the virtual frame buffer to the displays. In the conventional approach, the unpacked display content is transferred sixty times per second via cable for diverse standards, such as VGA, DVI or HDMI, to the monitor. Particularly on high resolution displays, numerous gigabytes per second can easily result. With the Saarbrucken computer scientists’ approach, however, only the individually changed data, additionally compressed, needs to be sent. That reduces the effort to a fraction of what it was. In this way, it’s technically possible to transfer screen images to or from the displays of mobile terminals. The researchers use this technology, for instance, to work on a way to transmit the navigation monitor of a smart phone to the electronic display of a car’s dashboard. Thus, it could enable a new type of user interface beyond the automotive world. Share and Enjoy• Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Digg • Delicious • StumbleUpon • Reddit • Google Buzz • FriendFeed • MySpace • Add to favorites • Email • Print • PDF |
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