IVR Deconstructed

Police cruisers are equipped with cameras to provide irrefutable evidence about what goes down when police and suspects interact. They’re an easy way to catch suspects doing and saying things they’re not supposed to, and an easy way to keep tabs on officers.

This is a perfect example of where technology can provide a clear benefit. But like anything, it’s one thing to have the technology, another thing to get people to use it.

I’m referring to the story of a Seattle police officer and two Seattle residents that’s in the news right now. The purpose of this post isn’t to take sides; it’s just to make a point.

According to ABC News, Josh Lawson, 23, and Christopher Franklin, 22, claim they were unlawfully arrested and even physically abused by Officer Brad Richardson on November 16 of last year.

Part of the arrest was captured on tape, but not all of it. There’s a lot that may or may not have happened, and it’s most of that stuff that’s at the center of the controversy.

A taste—

Richardson says he stopped the two men, telling them to get down on the ground, but they kept approaching his car—they refute that last bit. Franklin and Lawson say they immediately got down because Richardson was pointing his gun at them, and then Richardson assaulted them, although Richardson refutes all that.

It’s impossible to say without seeing the entire arrest video.

There’s a lot more to this story, and you can learn about it at ABCNews.com. I’m not going to comment on the other aspects—I just want to make my point.

Which is that we have the technology, let’s use it. If the cameras in police cruisers are always on (officers aren’t necessarily required to run them), there won’t be a question about what happened. Done and done.

“If we accept that you can patent things that are obvious and also that economic leeches who produce/invent nothing can accumulate ideas—then, sure, those leeches have a right to their royalties.

But hording intellectual property as a sledgehammer to use on small companies that haven’t infringed on any patents but don’t have the deep pockets to ward patent trolls off seems to be anti-competitive in nature.”

Plum CEO Andy Kuan feels strongly about this, and I agree with him. Because that’s what patent trolls do—they leech money off obvious ideas and other people’s hard work.

If patent trolls were right, we would all owe Leonardo Da Vinci’s descendants a Fort Knox load of money for the things he invented 500 years ago—the helicopter, hang glider, “hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells and steam cannon,” according to Wikipedia.

Back to the court proceedings in Tyler, Texas…

Wired correspondent Joe Mullin wrote that the jury members were awe-struck by having Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Internet, and such a high-profile Internet case visit the sleepy East Texas town.

And why there?

In a podcast on This American Life, NPR reported that patent trolls scour the country for small towns with federal courts where they can set up dummy companies and file their lawsuits.

They do this, according to NPR, because the drug war in the 1990s clogged federal courts—patent trolls couldn’t get their suits heard because criminal cases take precedence over civil cases.

So they had to go to smaller towns like Tyler, Texas, which has less than 100,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Or Marshall, Texas, which has a population of under 25,000 yet every year ranks in the top three for number of patent suits cases tried by a federal court, according to NPR.

It’s in towns like Marshall and Tyler where patent trolls can file suit after suit.

“That’s what’s really sickening—that a patent troll’s greatest weapon is its ability to threaten legal action.

Especially as it impacts small companies that can’t defend themselves effectively. As far as I’ve seen, every time a big company waves their legal stick at a smaller company, the smaller company folds without a fight.”

Well, this time it looks like the small company was the one waving the legal stick against the big companies. And the big companies took the stick and stuck it…well, you know.

Cookies pass information from your computer, through your Internet browser, to sites you’ve visited. Basically, it’s a way for websites to know if you’ve been to the site before and for your browser to target their advertisers to the right people.

Those are two uses. Fairly benign ones.

Step back to 1995…

Cookies were released onto the public through Internet Explorer in October 1995, according to Wikipedia. Two ominous things about it: one, users didn’t have a choice whether to use them or not because computers accepted them by default and, two, users didn’t know they existed.

It wasn’t until the Financial Times wrote an article about cookies in early 1996 that the public became aware of these little guys, according to Wikipedia. The article, of course, sparked a litany of privacy rights debates.

Fast-forward to today…

Cookies are going well beyond just helping websites tailor your experience. Aggregators are using them to track all the websites we visit, and then passing that information on to retailers, banks, health insurance companies, et cetera, according to the New York Times.

That’s where the scary scenarios come in like the bank one I shared in Aggregators Are Watching. You can add loads of other scenarios to that one. I mean, imagine being rejected for health coverage because you did a search for ‘high blood pressure’ or ‘smoking cessation aids’ or something like that?

According to the New York Times, a new practice called weblining is emerging that’s similar to the redlining practice of the 1970s where banks and insurers drew lines on maps around inner-city areas and refused to offer their services in those areas.

Except now those institutions are doing it based on our Internet searches. For example, a bank may deny you credit because your Internet search habits are similar to those of other customers who were negligent on their bills.

Alarming, isn’t it?

So, we have some ability to control the Big Brother effect, but not really. With browsers, we can turn off the cookies (prevent the browser from uploading them on our computers).

The problem with that, though, is that many websites won’t let you on their site if you don’t allow cookies. Try it yourself if you haven’t already and you’ll see what I mean.

When I first got my smartphone I turned off cookies because I was hesitant about mobile Internet security, but I soon discovered that I couldn’t get on anywhere without enabling them.

Imagine this in a real-world scenario…

You walk up to a storefront and a security guard stops you at the door.

“Welcome to ________,” he says. “May I ask where else you’ve shopped today?”

“Excuse me?” you say.

“Can you tell me the other stores you’ve visited today?”

“I don’t understand. Excuse me, I’d like to go in the store.”

The security guard blocks your path. “I’m sorry, I can’t let you into our store if you won’t share your shopping habits with me.”

You stare at him. “Are you serious?”

“I am,” he says.

“Can I see your manager?”

“I’m sorry. She’s inside the store.”

What do you think your reaction to this kind of treatment would be?

“Have you lost your mind?”

Maybe something like that? Well, that’s what’s going on in the cyberworld today.

In the U.S. alone, there are approximately 78.2 million dog owners and 86.4 million cat owners.  Thirty-nine percent of U.S. households own at least one dog, and thirty-three percent own at least one cat.  Total pet industry expenditures for the year totaled 50.84 billion dollars for 2011, increasing about 2 billion dollars from the previous year, with a 2-3 billion dollar increase observable year over year.

But this relationship is certainly not all one-sided.  There are numerous proven health benefits associated with pet ownership.  Pets help to lower blood pressure with recent statistics released showing that people with hypertension showed lower blood pressure readings in stressful situations than those who did not own a pet.

Pets provide companionship, which can result in greater psychological stability, which is proven to protect from heart disease.  People with pets have been shown to make fewer doctor visits, and they help fight depression and loneliness also.

So what do these statistics demonstrate?  There a lot of people out there who love their pets, and a lot of pets out there who love their people.  As a pet owner myself (I have 5-month old kitten named Lily), I am well aware of all the benefits and rewards of having an animal companion.

Every so often however, the kitten seems to want to climb the drapes when I want to sleep, or thinks it is a good idea to explore high up cabinets instead of playing with her toys on the ground.  Trying to redirect an animal’s attention, especially a baby animal’s, is no easy feat.  Sometimes your puppy would rather chew your shoes than his rawhide.  We’ve all been there.

Enter technology.  Every day on this blog we write about the historic and life altering technologies that power our business and personal lives.  Luckily for our pets (and ourselves!), the benefits of technology are not only for humans.  Companies market everything from computerized identification tags to automatic doors and feeders, streamlining our pet’s lives as well as our own.

The other day I was perusing CNN Technology and stumbled upon something quite brilliant.  An iPad app made to entertain cats.  If you take a look at the video above, you can see several very pleased kittens happily playing with several iPad games designed just for them.

One enterprising developer authored three games meant to entertain and stimulate the world’s cats, and even allows their owners to gather statistics on their reflexes and intelligence.  The games are as you’d imagine (protecting cheese from mice, navigating a tomato around a bull’s eye), and the application comes equipped with a feature that shuffles between games to keep cat’s attention when signs of boredom appear.

Pretty nifty idea, right?  As long as you have a screen protector (to protect against sharp kitten claws), you can put your iPad to good use entertaining your pets in a safe and fun way.  As an indoor cat owner, this strikes me as a very innovative use of technology, and not only pleases me, but my pet

Watch a few seconds of the video above (if you can keep it to only a few seconds, actually—it’s mesmerizing)…

That video is U2 in a Pop On the Box appearance in 1979, and it’s…well, you can judge for yourself…. And looking at the Bono in that video, somehow I can see him as the guy who invested in Facebook, not the guy from the Sunday Bloody Sunday video.

Actually, it reminds me of Will Ferrell’s character in Zoolander—designer Jacobim Mugatu, formerly Jacob Moogberg of Frankie Goes to Hollywood before Relax fame, who invents the piano keyboard tie, makes it rich off it and then goes on to become a well-known fashion designer. But anyway…

Through his investment company Elevation Partners (which he co-founded, according to the Belfast Telegraph), Bono owns 1.5% of Facebook’s shares, which is valued at about $750 million at the moment—enough to make him a billionaire (or at least his investment firm) when the social media giant goes public, which is imminent.

Again, please don’t take this the wrong way U2 fans, but it’s just a little surprising. No, not the Pop On the Box video, which is more than a little surprising…the fact that Bono is gonna be one of the new Facebook billionaires.

But it’s true. Facebook is looking to raise about $5 billion with its IPO, which would be the biggest initial public sale of stock for a web company in history, according to the Washington Post. Experts are estimating that Facebook’s IPO could raise the overall value of the company up to somewhere between $75 billion and $100 billion.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, it will certainly raise the value of Elevation Partners’ shares to over $1 billion. Which will earn more for Bono than U2 has earned in the 30-plus years of their existence.

Well, it seems Bono the Rebel has done well for himself, doesn’t it?