The FTC has announced a plan to adopt new education and data collection restrictions to better protect the consumer’s privacy.

Senior attorney for the FTC, Loretta Garrison, admitted that consumers “..sort of know they are being tracked, but they don’t really understand the weather of information that’s being collected…”

What this means for consumers is that there’s a common sense element to knowing that our movements online are being tracked, but we don’t realize just how much information is being collected.

The FTC is sensitive to the members of Internet companies who fear that greater restrictions will limit them in a marketing sector that is rapidly growing. At the same time, the FTC feels like there should be a base of privacy protection should be available to consumers, similar to the “do-not-call” registry in place for telemarketers. Garrison also added, “There ought to be an element where if they don’t want to be tracked, they ought to be able to say ‘no.’.”

This fall, the FTC is planning to release a report of recommendations for companies and advertisers and web companies to provide specific concerns over certain practices and offer suggestions to protect their user’s privacy.

These guidelines will be an extension of their “self-regulation” policies, since without a Congressional act; the FTC cannot “force” companies to abide by these sorts of changes.

The concerns are spurned from recent concerns about privacy over Google street view and some of Facebook’s recent policy changes, prompting the FTC to express concerns about consumer’s online privacy.

While an “opt in” or “opt out” suggestion may not be feasible, due to the nature of online marketing, the FTC has raised concerns about how much is being collected from consumers as they browse their favorite web sites.

One of my favorite commercials is of the guy who’s in the car with his lady and he’s singing the wrong lyrics to Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard.  While I’m sure that the guys in Def Leppard like a good case of Ramen Noodles (who doesn’t?) I would doubt they are singing homage to the noodle dish. What I love about this commercial is that we have all been singing the wrong words at some point – at the top of our lungs and with the biggest smiles on our faces.

In the commercial the woman called him on it and then called a library.  I found an app in the iTunes app store that will do an internet search for lyrics to whatever song you are listening to at the time.  I’ve tested it with both songs I’ve purchased from iTunes and things that I have gotten from other music outlets and it seems to work pretty well.

You can search for a song that is playing or on pause.  Just go to your home screen and tap the Lyric Search icon. Basically what it does is perform a Google search and send you back links for the different pages that will have the right lyrics. Then you just click on the one that has the information you think is right and you can find out if you’re right, or if your passenger is. If they are, tell them they are walking if they give you a hard time. You have the keys, and that means you have the power.

It’s free, pretty cool, and I’m sure at some point, I’ll use it to prove to my husband he’s wrong.

Any applications you think are worth my time to test out or play around with? I am welcome to suggestions. 

A recent ComScore study has found that Facebook has surpassed Google as the place to be.

While Google gets the most overall hits, the users do not spend as much time on Google sites (YouTube and Google News included) users are navigating to and spending their time on Facebook.

Since social media is a growing trend in the way we communicate with friends, family, and even our customers, Facebook has found a way to not only get users to their website, but to make them want to stay.  With the addition of Facebook Places in August, Facebook users can check into locations, feed their status updates to Twitter, and instant message other Facebook friends. Regardless of your opinions on Facebook privacy practices, they have put everything into one place.

Facebook has the numbers to prove it.  In August alone, Facebook reported 41.1 million minutes of logged in user activity and the closet competitor is Google, who captured 9.6% of total time.

For businesses and companies who have been considering using Facebook to connect, it means that your customers are on Facebook, and parking there for a while. I’m curious to see if the Google number will be lower next month due to the release of instant search, which was, as Google stated, to shorten the length of time it took for you to get where you want to be. Since, apparently, users want to be on Facebook, I wonder how Google will feel about that. 

This morning, there was an email from my IT department warning me not to click on any PDF links and directing me to this ABC News story. A global virus attack was launched yesterday afternoon affecting the likes of Disney, NASA, and even ABC themselves.

Here’s how it works: You get an email with the subject “Here you have” and when you open it up there’s a short email about the “document you requested” and the PDF link to access it. Once you click on the link, the Trojan virus takes over your computer and sends out the email to all the people in your contact list. The tricky part is that the email would come from you. Everyone knows not to open emails that are from someone you don’t know, but this sets up a new problem where you have to be careful even if you know who the email sender is.

Last week, Secretary-General of the United Nations warned that these kinds of attacks could be the new form of war. Hamadoun Touré has urged that cyber security vulnerabilities could be the new wave of attacks, opening up a whole new kind of war.

The Department of Homeland Security and the US Emergency Response Team are looking into the problem, and Adobe has released a statement citing a “critical vulnerability” existing in Adobe Reader 9.3.4.

Here are some things you can do to add a little extra security in your email until this whole mess can be resolved:

• If you did not “request” a PDF link, don’t open a PDF link.
• If you don’t feel 100% certain about opening an email, don’t open it. Find the person it was supposedly sent from or send them a new email asking if they truly meant to send you something like this.
• If you think anything is suspicious, go ahead and delete it right away. It’s best not to risk it.

This email has spread like crazy through inboxes around the world, infiltrating even government inboxes and accounts. Until Adobe can fix the errors, use caution when opening any email – because now that the people who sent it out know the security vulnerability is there, you better believe they will continue to exploit it until there is a fix.

Remember the old days when commercials featured laughing and smiling parents in the foreground, holding up a bottle of vitamins or canned food, while their kids played in the background.  These commercials would always end the same, with the parents being attacked with hugs and everyone giggling.  The advertising message here was geared towards parents, presumably hard working folks, who wanted to spend more time with their children.  The other night, I caught a commercial featuring a “homestyle” tasting macaroni and cheese product, and it wasn’t the mother who wanted to spend more time with her kids instead of cooking that was selling the product.  It was her child, holding up the bag and speaking right into the camera.

The message here is simple; kids have a lot of power as to where the money in a household goes. Marketing strategies are being focused towards children, and even though they don’t hold the purse strings, they can pester and nag their way to getting what they want.

There is no better example of this than in the marketing of food and snacks to children.  Fast food advertisers have done this for a long time, using things like toys, kids clubs, and slogans to entice the average youth to prefer their company to another. There are laws on the books that prohibit the advertisement of certain substances (like tobacco and alcohol) to children, but aside from that, the regulations are pretty much “self” induced.

Last week, the FTC issued to subpoenas to some of the biggest names in brands out there, including Yum Brands!, (Owners of the KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut chains), IHOP, and even Chuck E. Cheese. Spokeswoman for the FTC states that it’s simply a follow up for the 2008 report urging certain companies who market to children and teens to be more responsible for the advertising message they are sending. Those who disagree with the ruling speculate this is the first step to Congressional hearings and federal regulations.

 This is happening on the heels of nutrition watch dog group, Center for Science in the Public Interest, threatening a lawsuit against McDonald’s over Happy Meal toys. The CSPI alleges that the toys violate consumer protection acts and as of June 22, 2010, issued a letter to the McDonald’s Corporation threatening suit if they did not pull the toys within 30 days. 

The CSPI issued this call to action in July 2010 urging the end of “junk food marketing to kids”. In the call to action, the group states that they worked with Senator Tom Harking (D-Iowa) to set up meetings with the FTC, the CDC, and the Department of Agriculture to “develop model nutrition standards for food marketing to children”. The FTC “naughty list” was issued at the end of August. Doesn’t that time line seem a little off to you?

The question is – can the government tell you who you can and cannot market to without regulating the entire industry. Could the FTC subpoena be a step towards the regulation of fast food advertisers to limit the manner in which they market to children? Is this the first step towards Ronald McDonald and Chuck E. Cheese suffering a similar fate as Joe the Camel and Spuds MacKenzie?

How do you feel about the possible regulation of advertisements towards children and does it set a larger precedent for similar regulations in other industries? 

Google Instant Search rolled out this morning and while some, like me, have already gone into their preferences and turned it off, many others will leave their Google setting as is and continue to use the instant search feature. 

The purpose of instant search, according to Google, is to save 2-5 seconds per search and to get smarter predictions on what you’re searching for. As you enter your search words, Google will populate your results for you.  It seems like a pretty sweet deal – as you get to do less thinking and more clicking. If you’re a business using AdWords, it could mean something different for you.

More clicks could be exactly what Google wants. Think about this – when it comes to AdWords, you’re paying per click based off the search terms entered into Google. What Instant Search has done is create a search engine that will give more results to short tailed keywords (cell phone vs. cell phone provider in Texas) and stop the need for you to search further.

Let’s say you’re doing a search for “cell phone providers”. Once you get to “cell phone”, Google displays results for you, and if you keep typing what you’re looking for, you’ll get a different set of results for the longer search term.  Basically, what this boils down to is the companies listed will pay more when you click on a result for “cell phone” than you will for “cell phone provider in Texas”.

What Google has essentially done here is put businesses in the position where customers will be clicking on results spanned from short tailed keywords, costing business more money, and lining Google’s pockets with instant cash. Now, when our results are instantly populated we could keep typing exactly what we set out to search for, but why would we when Google has laid out a nice set of results for us to click through?

Do you remember the now defunct WebTV? A friend of mine had it a long time ago and I remember thinking that it was the coolest thing ever. When the service was bought out, renamed MSN TV, and stopped being sold, I was sort of sad. I thought it was a really great concept and could have a lot of potential, given that the consumer had the right choices for what could be viewed and what couldn’t. Since the 90s, TV on the Web has come a long way, with services like Netflix and Hulu offering streaming to your console devices and your mobile phones.

It was to be expected that someone would see the potential in the WebTV-like service and run with it. Just over the weekend, the three big contenders for your business have emerged. AppleTV and GoogleTV have stepped out as the main contenders, squaring off in a head to head showdown. With Google TV launching this fall and AppleTV announcing a cheaper 99.00 set, here’s a quick rundown of what the two will bring to your living room.

AppleTV

• Support for Netflix
• HD Rentals for TV/Movies.
• Streaming content to your iPhone, iPad, or Mac devices.
• Share content with AP I.

GoogleTV

• Partnering with TV manufacturers to install boxes onto new televisions.
• Basic service will be free.
• Control TV from Android supported mobile devices.
• Eventual integration into PS3.

The implications of a popular television on the web service would be the million other things that you do through your internet connection. The future could bring video conferencing to your TV and your gaming consoles. Are these announcements another sign that cable TV is starting to be considered obsolete?

The internet is buzzing after the Apple conference yesterday and while some pretty exciting announcements were made, the announcement of the iOS 4.1 is probably the most exciting. When the 4.1 OS rolls out next week, Steve Jobs has assured iPhone users that many of the bugs that have gotten a lot of coverage lately.  Some of the things that Apple says the 4.1 OS will fix are the proximity sensors, issues with the Bluetooth not staying connected, and performance repairs to the 3G.

For those that updated their 3G to the new 4.0 OS, this may be music to your ears. Many 3G users had to revert their operating systems off the 4.0, simply because the devices responded so poorly to the update. As someone who\ had a 3G, some of the problems I had were slow texting and slow application loading times.

Lifehacker has posted a comparison video in a recent blog, laying out the two operating systems on a 3G and showing you the response time.  While the demonstration and testing was not what one would be considered to be “scientific”, it looks like what they have found is that the 4.1 OS wins, but not by as much as you would think.

They are of the opinion that 4.1 probably isn’t enough to drop iOS 3 completely, but for users who want the new operating system with a little bit better response and performance, the 4.1 is going to be your best bet.

You can check out the full Lifehacker iOS 4.1 video and make your own decision.

George: Should we tell him we’re leaving?

Elaine: What for? Let’s just get out of here. (They all leave) …

Restaurant Host: Seinfeld, Four?

Episode 16, Season 2. Seinfeld. “The Chinese Restaurant”

If this describes your usual experience at a bar or restaurant on any given night, you’ll take comfort in knowing that The Onion AV Club has solved some of your dinner problems. WaitList for the iPhone is a free application that lets you know how long you’ll be waiting for nearby restaurants, bars, or clubs.

WaitList uses the GPS feature on your phone to show you local restaurants in your area. Once your name is on the seating list, you log into WaitList, find the location and update the wait time that your hostess has given you. Once you update it into the application, when someone else logs in to check out the location, they’ll see the time you’ve indicated. You can also send wait time updates directly to your Twitter account.

Popular location related se rvices like FourSquare are being used by companies to update local markets on current conditions. With WaitList, local vendors are going to be able to update their own wait times. With active Twitter accounts, restaurants can push out their updates and help people know how long they will be waiting for. This lets them be ahead of their customers, so that no one comes into a restaurant unprepared for how long they may be waiting.

One problem with the application is that you don’t have any restrictions to which location you can update wait times for. Let’s say there are two bars across the street from each other, one bar might update the others wait times to much longer than they actually are to drive business across the stree.

Now you just have to decide where to eat. 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations and head of the International Telecommunications Union, Hamadoun Touré, has targeted cyber security as a pressing issue. At a discussion in London on Thursday, he proposed a global cyber security peace treaty, stating, “A cyber war would be worse than a tsunami – we have to avoid it.”

The world has already been taking steps to protect itself from possible cyber attacks, but as more and more infrastructure, like banking, energy, and utility services begin to become tied to the internet – a cyber attack could be more devastating. In 2007, Estonia suffered attacks that attacked banking and government sites.

The ITU is hoping that a “common code of conduct against cybercrime” can be reached and that each country will pledge that citizens can connect to the internet as well as protecting against cyber criminals.

The need for a Geneva Convention like cyber security treaty continues to grow, with Touré adding, “We’re in a new world order today.”

If you’re a history nerd like me, you might find it interesting to note that this is not the first time that advancements in technology have spurned concerns over international cooperation.

In 1899, little known negotiations began in The Hague.  These meetings between nations were known as the Peace Conferences, the first being held in 1899 and the second in 1907, and their purpose was to define the rules of war.

Ironically, the third Peace Conference had been planned for 1915, but with the start of World War I in 1914, the third round of conferences never came to be. The Peace Conferences were first proposed by Nicolas II of Russia, who knew that with the growth of modern technology, there needed to be clearly defined rules regarding weapons technology, and what was acceptable to be used. (It’s interesting to note that Nicolas II was the one who approved the mobilization of Russian troops in 1914, and began the steady domino fall into WW I.)

Tsar Nicolas II was able to recognize that the change of weapons and the Industrialization of the modern world required new rules to be put in place. Technology has come a long way since before WWI and there are new kinds of weaponry to be addressed.