Foul Tech Sours

In a previous post titled " Gaps In the Fourth Amendment -- Exploited? ", I shared with you an assignment I did for my security class. The assignment briefly discusses electronic privacy and how the Federal Government takes advantage of loop holes within laws that are put in place to protect the privacy of American citizens. NSA's MUSCULAR has been in the news for a while now, and I believe it is a prime example of government exploitation of flaws in privacy laws. In case you do not know what MUSCULAR is, as far as we know it is a project that enables NSA and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to copy "entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants" ( http://www.washingtonpost.com ). This means that millions of records from internal networks belonging to large companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are sent back to data warehouses at NSA HQ. At the time of ...

Yesterday Twitter  relaunched a site called Business for Twitter .  Several Twitter users may use the site strictly for micro-blogging purposes: posting song lyrics, location updates, rants, etc. For those of us that tend to think more broadly, Twitter is a great tool to advertise and market yourself, businesses, and brands. The content on the site is not necessarily new to users that utilize Twitter on a more professional basis. However, the content is more organized making it easy for even the most unfamiliar business user to get what they need out of Twitter.  The website includes examples of businesses that are already using twitter to market, advertise and reach out to consumers such as Porsche, and Bonobos. The most impressive features on the site include articles that explain "everything you need to know to get up and running on Twitter". Several people probably think it is easy to just start sending tweets. But, from a professional perspective, it is necessary...

In case you missed it, here is a quick run down of a few April Fools jokes and ideas made by our favorite (and least favorite) companies. Shibasphere A comedic take on hands-free video games consoles such as the Xbox 360 Kinect. With the motto "No hands. No Wires. No limits" I thought this was a legitimate device until I watched the associated video. Google Nose Google actually had a few pranks that they pulled on us today.  One that really stood out was Google Nose. This probably actually had some people going, but common sense says that you can't just go smelling things through your monitor (not yet anyway). When you click on the beta link, it redirects you to a search such as used napkin  and instructs you to lean in as close as you can and press enter to smell the aroma. There are also several other "scents" such a maple syrup, cookie dough, casino, and even frying onion. Try typing any of those things into google to smell the aroma. Google Maps Trea...

Okay. I was going to wait until tomorrow to talk about this, but I just HAD to express myself after coming across several articles and pictures about Google, this Project Glass nonsense, and the selection process.  As many of you may have already heard, after inviting 8,000 people to their "Explorer Program", they ended up having to disqualify several of the invitees.  Both parties, Google and the applicants, are at fault here. First, it is the fault of the applicants for not looking for further information concerning the terms of the application process. These idiots simply saw that they could tweet and post to Google+ using the hash tag #ifihadglass and began tapping away at their keyboards and phones.  Many of the applicants failed to realize that this is NOT a free trial or give away, and were surprised when they learned that they would be expected to pay full price ($1,500 from what I've read) for the "Glass" product. But how can you blame google for ch...