If It Itches Don't Scratch It - Your TV's Watching

Best to resist the temptation to scratch that itchy place as you watch your favourite show on the box. What you get up to in front of your Smart TV may not be as private as you think.

According to a UK blogger, his LG Smart TV has a nasty habit of sending back unencrypted data and in the clear, to LG every time he changes channel.

Not that switching off "Collection of watching info" (it's set ON by default) in his settings did much good as his viewing data was still being sent back to LG's servers in a highly insecure fashion.

Source: DoctorBeet's Blog 

Go to the company web site and they boast "LG Smart AD provides the express way for advertisers to engage with targeted audiences through multi device screens in global scale and in the most effective and innovative fashion." i.e. targeted advertising.

On the face of it it would seem that LG are in breach of the UK's strict UK Data Protection Act?  One wonders how other countries are faring and if they are even aware of the nature of this risky data flow from their personal appliances.

According to a BBC report the blogger, Mr Huntley, "suggested that even if LG had never inspected the data, it could still pose a security risk as hackers could take advantage of the practice".

Buying a new television doesn't mean by default that you have agreed to be spied upon and neither it should.

With the Internet of Things upon us perhaps the best advice to give is 'better watch what you say to your toaster'!

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Beauty and The Beast - When Flying Becomes Really Interesting

Flight Trails

The joy of flying and visualisation combine in Contrailz, an interesting project from Russian software engineer Alexey Papulovskiy and his collaborator Nikolay Guryanov.

There are those of us who find beauty in these transport patterns and no doubt others who see them as evidence of the beastly spread of CO2 emissions.

For lovers of abstract art these visualisations have a certain ring of familiarity as the Singapore/Malaysia map (above) and Stockholm (below) demonstrates.

Flight Trails

Alexy began by  collecting tracking data for civil plane routes from Planefinder.net. The data set of 1 billion “dots” was for the month of October,2012.

Flight Levels are colour coded, with the red signifying lower altitudes and blue, higher altitudes. The project mapping demonstrates that commercial aircraft have specific routes that they follow and these routes regularly intersect.

All of which goes to show why you can see so many aircraft at different holding altitudes as you are preparing to land at a busy airport such as Changi or Heathrow (below).

And while you suddenly realise how much you are in the hands of your pilot and rush to check your travel insurance, take a good look at  the data source, PlaneFinder.  It picks up "ADS-B plane feeds used by commercial and private planes to transmit their name, position, callsign, status and lots more."

The crowded skies of the USA - PlaneFinder

Happy Travels!

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Not Such A Pretty Picture

It may look like a pleasing pattern but each of these red dots represents a bomb that fell on London during the Blitz (derived from the German term ‘Blitzkrieg’) from October 1940 until mid June in 1941.

The Bomb Sight project is the work of The National Archives in the UK. They scanned original 1940's bomb census maps , geo-referenced the maps and digitally captured the geographical locations of all the falling bombs recorded on the original map.

The data was then been  integrated into 2 different types of applications - an interactive web-mapping application and an Android App with an Augmented Reality view to reveal the locations of the bombs projected into the current urban landscape. So if you are visiting London you can stand on a street holding your phone  and point it in the direction you are interested in. The Bomb Sight App uses your camera and GPS to display all the bombs that fell nearby to where you are.

One can only be grateful that Time Travel has yet to materialise - actually being in the Blitz in real life would have been anything but entertaining!

Related articles

• Blitz interactive map unveiled
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Dog Dung Data Means There's Money In Muck

 

Owning a pet comes with certain responsibilities and none more so than in the state of Tennessee where dog owners are not only expected to clean up 'doggy-dos' on the street, but also submit a DNA sample from their canine's saliva to a worldwide database.

And should someone comes across an unscooped pile, they take a sample, mail it to BioPet Vet Lab in Knoxville where a DNA match identifies the offender and its owner.

The aptly named system, Poo Prints, charges $29.99 for the swabbing kit, $10 for a vial to hold the samples and $50 for the lab anaylsis which is usually completed within two weeks.

According to BioPet Vet Lab CEO Tom Boyd, “The problem of pet owners not picking up after their pets is tearing apart communities. It’s no wonder that Consumer Reports lists ‘dog poop’ as one of the nation’s top ten personal gripes. We used our research in animal DNA identification systems to help provide community leaders with a tool to bring peace back to the neighborhood.”

He goes on to say that he sees his system as a benefit for the nation's health: "In the United States alone, the nation’s 73 million dogs generate approximately 6.3 billion pounds of waste annually. Approximately 40%, or 2.5 billion pounds, is never picked up by owners. Indeed, dog feces is a bacterial breeding ground of diseases that are especially dangerous to children and others with weakened immune systems."

One wonders if this database system would crash under the 'weight of evidence' if they ever tried to roll it out in France!

Related articles

• Patent infringement issue moot, BioPet founder says of dog DNA kit (knoxnews.com)
• Florida condo association to do DNA tests on dog poop (obscurestore.typepad.com)
• DNA tests catch bad dog owners who leave poop behind (theglobeandmail.com)

Twitter Global Pulse - The Japanese Earthquake

Twitter's visualisations show the flow of information (tweets) during major events; in this case the recent Japanese Earthquake.  There was a 500 percent increase in Tweets from Japan as people reached out to friends, family and loved ones in the moments after the earthquake.

The first clip shows the volume of @replies traveling in and out of Japan in a one-hour period just before and just after the recent earthquake.

Replies directed to users in Japan are shown in pink; messages directed at others from Japan are shown in yellow

The next clip shows the worldwide retweets of Tweets that originated in Japan, showing the spread of information from original Tweets through those who pass them on to others.

Senders’ original Tweets are shown in red; Tweets retweeted by their followers in the hour after the event are displayed in green.

 

Source - Twitter Blog

Join the Q

If you are nor familiar with this image then you are perhaps not alone.

It is a QR Code ® and this one is for thedigitalconsultant blog's URL.

Such coding will becoming increasingly obvious on magazines and as prevalent as the barcode which appears on most products.

A 1994 Japanese invention, the QR Code is a two dimensional code (matrix code) which you can read on mobile phones that have a camera, smart phones and dedicated QR scanners.

The beauty of it is that you can encode text, site URLs, and other data that you wish to share.

The QR code (its name is short for quick response) was developed to promote quick identification and processing.

They have moved quickly from being a geeky novelty to an item that should be included in all digital channel communciations and deployment.

Source: Global Graphica

With the rapid deployment of smart phones expect Q Codes to be increasingly used in all forms of advertising - on buildings, buses, print material and even on business cards.

Even shopping will be quicker.  Imagine you are reading an article in a magazine and you spot a QR Code.

All you need to do is get your phone with its free QR scanning software and scan in the QR code.  One quick scan and you are instantly transported to the relevant website to get additional information. Simple - no keyboarding required.

So how do you go about creating Q Code for you company or personal use?  The answer is very simple using this free tool from Kaywa.

 Source: Kaywa.com

Those industries who rely on handscanners can use Q Codes to revolutionise their businesses and the scanner process will be considerably cheaper than the hardware currently in use. A cellphone with a camera is all that is needed.

Here is an example of QR Codes being used in the manufacture of electronics and if you would like to learn more about the technical side of this data encoding system I would recommend a visit to QR Code.com.

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• What is a QR Code? - QR Codes - Library Research Guides at Boise State University (guides.boisestate.edu)

Smart Billboards Target Consumers

With the aid of a small camera that scans the faces of passersby, a new type of  billboard will quickly tailor its marketing message to suit.  Sex and age triggers the relevant marketing messages.

The Digital Signage Promotion Project is currently being tested for a year by a consortium of 11 Japanese railway companies.

Twenty seven high-tech advertising boards now grace the subway stations around Tokyo and while face recognition software is being used, the companies are quick to assure commuters that no recorded images will be stored.

Only data related to groups of people will be held.  This information relates to categories of people, which ads they look at and the times of day when they do so.

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• Tokyo billboards can instantly deduce your age and gender in the name of better marketing [Scifi Advertising] (io9.com)
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