Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

MN Attorney General on Cramming Scamming

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Here is a followup to the post, “Mobile Text Message “Cramming” Scam” since I’ve received a response, embedded below, from an assistant with the State of Minnesota Attorney General’s office.

The AG’s letter below had four key responses:

  1. Yes, I was a “victim” of cramming and it is an old scam, with players in the game like the Gambino crime family in the late 1990s
  2. Our MN AG, Lori Swanson, is very concerned about these practices. What I did not know is that Attorney General Swanson, alongside Senator Amy Klobuchar, is already going after this category, albeit it appears to be only landline cramming and not mobile cramming, the latter an arguably bigger problem (WCCO story from January 7th here)
  3. Minnesota law provides some protection ONLY FOR LANDLINE CRAMMING and NOTHING FOR MOBILE
  4. In addition to the MN AG’s office, the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission take complaints, and I was encouraged to file mine with them.

Visibility is what matters and Congress will only take action if enough consumers scream about this theft to them. That’s why I was so pleased to see a story on WCCO about mobile cramming (aired on February 1st) so they are paying attention.

Hats off to the journalists at WCCO for covering this story. As more and more of us get online with mobile phones — and our kids get them and respond to who-knows-what online — we need to scrutinize our cell phone bills and most people aren’t savvy enough to even know what’s going on with scams like these.

The wireless companies and scammers economic interests are aligned so there is little incentive for AT&T, Verizon, TMobile, Sprint and others to stop this practice of stealing from all of us. Congress needs to take action…now.

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Student Led Technology Conference

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Inver Grove Heights Community Schools has an upcoming event that seems so delightful that I had to bring it to you. It’s likely you know of someone who would really enjoy being enlightened about technology by a bunch of students, or perhaps you’d like to attend too and see how these kids have learned to use all the technology this district uses (you can get a sense in this highlights video).

A guy from the Inver Grove Heights Community Schools Office of Communications, Johnny Germscheid, reached out to us here at Minnov8 to tell us about the event. Its focus is about technology, education and breaking down the communication barrier between children and adults. I’m guessing there will be a lot of learning occurring on both sides (student-as-teacher and adult-as-student).

Students in grades K-12 will be teaching adults how to use iPads, iPods, and other devices and software programs. Conference highlights include:

  • Produce and publish an eBook using rich multimedia content.
  • Create a digital scrapbook to capture family memories.
  • Design a webpage or blog to share your story on the web.
  • Find out how to set up and manage your own social networking profile.
  • Collaborate electronically to edit documents in a more efficient manner.
  • Compose original songs to add flavor to your movies.
  • Learn how to get the most out of that new iPad.

This is the second year Inver Grove Heights Community Schools has offered this Student Led Technology Conference. Turns out the Inver Grove Heights school district (ISD 199) was nationally recognized in Washington DC by the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) this winter for this innovative concept.

The conference is free and open to anyone in the metro, or our entire State for that matter. To check out details about the conference, which takes place on Saturday, February 25th from 8:30am until Noon, visit the event mini-site here.

3M Company supports SOPA

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More than 400 organizations have publicly expressed support of the contentious Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), or the passage of other similar anti-piracy legislation, and we were stunned to see that Minnesota-based 3M Company made the list of those organizations IN FAVOR OF the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) (click that link to get a quick overview of what SOPA is and why you should care).

3M’s support for SOPA came to light in this post at Digital Trends. Viewing the list was enlightening, especially considering the somewhat confusing array of those in favor of legislation that has virtually the entire tech industry — and specifically cybersecurity, internet inventors and internet engineers — lined up against it and the Senate’s version, Protect IP Act.

While it would have been somewhat less stunning to see a list comprised mostly of media companies, those around them like their law firms, and other clueless organizations supporting this act, it seems to make no sense that a company like 3M would even get in to the discussion.

We have reached out to 3M for a response and will publish it if and when we receive it.

Walker Art Center’s Awesome New Website

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Walker Art Center new website (click for larger view)

Earlier this week I had a friend send me a Twitter DM saying, “Man…you MUST check out the new Walker Art Center website.” So I headed over there that evening and spent over an hour reading, poking around and seeing what they’d delivered.

To say I was impressed is an understatement: the design is fresh, exciting to view and the content compelling. The breadth and depth of coverage of art and design quickly shifted my mind toward a completely different place, one of consideration, thought and ideas instead of my typical focus on the tech “flipper-flappers” and “eye candy” of this new website they’d delivered.

Others agree. In his post at ArtInfo “Why the Walker’s new website is a big deal“, Tyler Green calls it a “game changer” since the Walker site is atypical for a museum, usually an informational site intended to lead visitors to the art institution’s building and its exhibits. Instead, argues Green, the site redefines how the Walker sees its role: as both a physical and as a virtual hub.

Walker Art executive director, Olga Viso, wrote this article about their new site, saying in part:

“As the Walker’s name signals, we’re a center: a hub that brings together various pursuits related to contemporary art, from presenting the visual, performing, and media arts of our time to publishing the latest scholarly research; collecting art objects and commissioning new works to hosting artist residencies and convening public discussions about art and ideas. Given these activities—and more importantly, our mission to investigate the questions that shape us and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities—I’m excited to introduce our new website, an online hub for ideas about contemporary art and culture, both inside the Walker and beyond.”

Talking about the why of launching such an ambitious site redesign, Viso said, “The intent of the new site is to make visible our role as a generative producer and purveyor of content and broadcast our voice in the landscape of contemporary culture.”

Any downsides or critique? Two, but the first is a biggie and the second not so much.

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Heard About The Mass Spying Industry Yet?

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Wikileak’s founder, Julian Assange, made headlines around the world this past week with his presentation on the release of tens of thousands hundreds of documents (with more to be released) outlining that “Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries.”

So that you are able to stay informed about developments that may positively or negatively impact your application development or personal use of technology, you should know about an emerging global industry focused on mass-scale spying on mobile devices, social media, or other internet-based use and so you are encouraged to view the video below and then visit Wikileaks – The Spy Files.

In case you are ready to immediately dismiss this as a “foreign country” problem and that it wouldn’t or couldn’t affect you or your organization, remember the “inadvertent” collection of U.S. citizen’s communications when domestic warrantless wiretapping ensued. In addition, it has been revealed that in January 2011, the National Security Agency broke ground on a $1.5 billion facility in the Utah desert that is designed to store terabytes of domestic and foreign intelligence data forever and process it for years to come.

While it is an imperative that our government intelligence agencies can stay on top of the exponential explosion in online communications and technologies, we’ve quickly learned this week with the CarrierIQ “rootkit scandal” how much we don’t know about what software is on our devices, how the carriers are using their ability to track our location within a few feet of our mobile phones is being used, and whether or not they are automatically storing ALL of our data with open, non-warrant-based analysis by intelligence agencies.

The flip side of this is another issue, one that certainly justifies U.S. expenditures and an acceleration in intelligence agency capability. It is how the stakes are rising QUICKLY on everything happening in cyberspace. As more and more of us shop online, map our businesses and processes to the web, interact socially online and can instantly (and for free) talk with anyone, anywhere on the planet, ensuring that the bad guys in other countries aren’t able to mass vacuum up our data and use it against us is critical to our national defense.

Stop the Internet Blacklist

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I normally don’t harvest content en masse from a website, but I honestly didn’t think the SOPA/Protect IP bills would actually make it to the floors in Congress.

It has and the hearings are going on right now but, according to Tim O’Reilly (the tech publisher) on Google+ a moment ago, “This is really important. They aren’t even hearing testimony from opponents of the bill. The “hearings” are a sham, with testimony from supporters only.”

A veritable Who’s Who of tech giants—including Facebook, Google, Twitter, eBay, Yahoo, AOL and Mozilla—explicitly came out against both SOPA and PROTECT-IP in a letter to the ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees

To get you up-to-speed quickly, here’s why this is bad:

Good infographic is here too.

The following came from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

Big media and its allies in Congress are billing the Internet Blacklist Legislation as a new way to prevent online infringement. But innovation and free speech advocates know that this initiative is nothing more than a dangerous wish list that will compromise Internet security while doing little or nothing to encourage creative expression.

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users’ attempts to reach certain websites’ URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the reliability and universality of the DNS evaporates.

It gets worse: Under SOPA’s provisions, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities. While PROTECT-IP targeted sites “dedicated to infringing activities,” SOPA targets websites that simply don’t do enough to track and police infringement (and it is not at all clear what would be enough). And it creates new powers to shut down folks who provide tools to help users get access to the Internet the rest of the world sees (not just the “U.S. authorized version”).

WHAT CAN YOU DO? Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has placed a hold on the Senate version of the bill, taking a principled stand against a very dangerous bill. But every Senator and Representative should be opposing the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA. Contact our members of Congress now to speak out!

Senator Office Phone Fax Email
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D- MN) 202-224-3244 202-228-2186 http://klobuchar.senate.gov/emailamy.cfm
Senator Al Franken (D- MN) 202-224-5641 202-224-0044 http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=email_al


“Thank You” for the Books for Thai School

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Back in September I wrote a post called, “English Books for Thai School – Can You Help?” and was so pleased people jumped in to help. We collected well over 250 books for the school and delivered them when the students and teachers arrived at the Mall of America at the outset of their time here in Minnesota.

I cannot express enough my thanks for all who helped out:

Lerner Publishing: Kathleen Clarke responded to a blind email request of mine and she put together a big box of brand new, amazingly high quality books, perfect for the English program at Strisuksa school

Meg Knodl

Meg Knodl: As senior librarian in Communications and Community Engagement with Hennepin County (Minn.) Library, Meg had great suggestions on buying surplus books from the library system (a sale was just ending and she connected me with the right folks).

Paul Schroeder

To show the power of social media, I’d placed a plea and link to that Minnov8 post mentioned above on my Facebook wall. Two people responded immediately with a third who joined in:

Paul Schroeder:  A fraternity brother of mine who read about my plea on Facebook responded by collecting several dozen books and even cajoled a friend of his in participating with some novels. These novels, while not perfectly targeted to the students, surprisingly were very welcomed by the teachers!

Sherry Collins: She had several ideas I took advantage of and then recommended a site I’d never heard of, FreeCycle, a kind of “Craigslist for free stuff” and I placed a post in the Minneapolis Group

The very generous donation by Beth Sullivan, volunteer for The Women's Prison Book Project

Beth Sullivan: She responded with 75 classic (and new!) books that were extras from a non-profit she volunteers for, The Women’s Prison Book Project.

As these great volunteers were putting forth such kind efforts to gather books, I’d been interacting with my contact at the school, Lynn Brown. Mentioning the phenomenal work of Project Gutenberg, I asked her to go through the books there and make recommendations and we’d download the books for her (since their internet connections are pretty minimal at the school).

What happened next surprised even me and set me on a course I hadn’t expected. …  [Read More…]

Something Amazing Happened at #EduTechMN Yesterday – Steve Jobs Was in the Room

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[This post was originally published earlier today on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

I felt it. I didn’t know it then, but it may have been at the precise moment Steve was passing. I was sitting in a room of about 100 people, mid-afternoon, listening to a panel of educators at the EduTech MN conference at the University of Minnesota. I was actually finishing a blog post on my MacBook Air, and hadn’t even intended to stay for the panel (the startup pitches were over).

But I was surprisingly drawn in by the discussion. I was blown away by what these people, senior educators, were saying — showing so much passion, speaking from the heart, talking about how kids are learning today. They just lit up as they described how the new tablet and mobile technologies are opening up worlds for these kids like nothing they’d ever seen before. The iPad, the iPod Touch, and all the great software these Apple devices have engendered.

I found myself beaming from ear to ear as I listened to them describe their real-life experiences, with such excitement in their voices.  These aren’t boring educators, I thought!  These are really dedicated, committed people who work on the front lines, whose worlds revolve around how our children learn, and how they can make that process better for them, every single day. And, thanks to technology and a certain company named Apple, they have more and more amazing tools to help them do that. It was a special experience for me, as someone not involved much in the world of education. I’m so glad I stayed.

I sat there and thought to myself — right at that very moment — “Wow, would Steve Jobs be proud to be hearing this right now.”

I like to think he was.

Steve, you didn’t just change technology, media, music, and retailing forever.  You changed education, too — in a big, big way. We thank you. We will greatly miss you.

But we know we’ll see the mark you made on this world for a long, long time to come, in the eyes of children everywhere.

 

[Left to right on the panel: Jesse Thorstad, technology specialist, Fergus Falls school district; Dave Eisenmann, director of instructional tech, Minnetonka school district; Jennifer Sly, MN Historical Society; and Jay Haugen, Superintendent, Farmington school district. The panel was moderated by State Senator Terri Bonoff.]

Predicting Human Behavior through Games

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Every week, people from around the world spend more than 3 billion hours playing video games. Professor Jaideep Srivastava of the University of Minnesota and Professor Dmitri Williams at the University of Southern California find this number too large to ignore. Their software company Ninja Metrics relies on social analytics to make sense of human behavioral data from these games.

Their startup coincides with a rising trend in game play and specifically an explosion in online games. Further, promotional forces like Dr. Jane McGonigal, an influential author and occasionally controversial visionary from U.C. Berkley believes that games can solve real-world problems through increasing the amount of time spent playing games to 21 billion hours per week by 2020. There is little doubt that gaming will continue to be an extremely important global activity.

The introduction of platforms like the Nintendo Wii, the Apple iPad, and the Sifteo Cubes has opened up a variety of new options for games. The social-gaming company Zynga has been steadily building innovative games delivered over social networking platforms like Facebook. The MIT Technology Review reported last week that Zynga is planning to produce a drastically more complex, strategic, and socially interactive gave than ever before. In a TechCrunch article last year, it was estimated that half of all Facebook users play games and that 40% of the time spent on Facebook is devoted to social games like those developed by Zynga. Clearly, there is an extensive amount of activity and data being generated through these evolving social interactions in massively multiplayer online games (MMO). …  [Read More…]

FCC: 68% of Broadband Connections NOT Broadband

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just released an 87 page report entitled, “Internet Access Services: Status as of December 31, 2009” (PDF). What this report reveals—that 68% of so-called “broadband” internet connections don’t meet the FCC’s new minimum standard of 4 megabits per second (mbps) download and 1mbps upload—should be taken in to consideration whether you’re an internet or web-based developer, a company delivering ever-richer and more robust services (i.e., bandwidth intensive ones) or are just curious about the true state of broadband in the United States.

Though many people who have commented here on Minnov8, through Twitter to our account (or our personal ones) seem truly excited when reports in 2007 showed the U.S. exceeded 50% of households had broadband. Then that excitement is tempered with reports like this one stating “U.S. Broadband: Still Expensive; Still Underwhelming” compared to the rest of the world.

But it wasn’t until this FCC comprehensive analysis appeared this week that a clearer picture of the true state of broadband penetration appeared. Take a look at Figure 1(a) from the report (after the jump) and you’ll note that over 92 million of the 133 million U.S. households with broadband have download speeds between 6mbps and 3mbps with 58% of the total having less than 3mbps download speed!

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