Tech Talk

PETA sent Tech Talk this screen capture of a message its members posted on DKNY's Facebook page.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals used Donna Karan New York’s own social media presence against it on this, one of the largest online shopping days of the year.

PETA members posted a vertical message that reads “DK BUNNY BUTCHER” for the fashion titan’s more than 204,700 fans to see in the past hour in reference to the company’s decision to sell fur.

“PETA has sent Donna Karan executives detailed information about the suffering of animals who are raised and killed for their fur, and thousands of people have taken action against the designer, who continues to use rabbit fur from China,” a PETA spokesperson wrote to Tech Talk. “Undercover investigations have revealed that animals on Chinese fur farms are hung upside down, screaming and kicking, and are forced to watch those ahead of them die violently before their own throats are cut.”

The 16 accounts posted seemingly positive messages on DKNY’s Facebook wall — with the real message hidden in each user’s profile photo.

Among the wall posts:

• Listen, some bunny loves you!
• Fashion is life and death.
• Can u show us what goes into ur designs?
• Nothing is more important than fashion, right!?!
• Fashion to die for…
• I would kill for one of your fur coats.
• DKNY continually shocks me!
• I’m trying to save something today – can u help?
• What’s the cost of a fur coat?
• Who wouldn’t do anything for a Donna Karan coat!

Of course, after understanding the context of the overall message, the individual wall posts take on a different meaning.

DKNY appeared to be unaware of the messages as it posted at least once after its wall was defaced:

Our Cyber Monday treat: 20% Off of the entire site (both DKNY & Donna Karan New York) PLUS Free Shipping. Happy Shopping! www.dkny.com

Administrators are not notified each time a person posts on a fan page and must monitor comments.

Regardless of one’s opinions on either company, PETA’s strategy is a smart one — and one that will likely be repeated more often as more brands turn to the Web to disseminate their message.

“This is the first time that PETA has used this particular approach on Facebook,” Ashley Byrne, a senior campaigner for PETA, told Tech Talk. “We have, however, used Facebook many times to get our message across. When Brookstone was selling live frogs inside cheap plastic enclosures — misleading customers and causing the deaths of countless frogs in their stores by hiding sick animals in back rooms — we asked our members and supporters to post comments on Brookstone’s page expressing their concern for the frogs’ welfare. It was not long before the company’s Facebook fan page was taken down.”

Byrne said her company believes the use of social media is an effective tool for online advocacy and virtual activism.

“PETA uses social media in a variety of ways to interact with supporters on a personal level and share information,” she told Tech Talk. “PETA members took over Donna Karan’s Facebook page in order to pressure Karan to drop fur from her designs. We knew that Facebook would be an effective platform for letting Donna Karan’s fans know that Karan continues to design with fur even though she’s aware that gentle rabbits endure tremendous suffering because of the fur industry.”

Byrne said PETA hopes that by posting on the DKNY Facebook page, a new audience may be reached.

“Social networks have allowed PETA to connect with supporters on an individual and immediate level,” Byrne said. ”We are able to interact with any one of our 1 million Facebook fans or 100,000 Twitter followers. We can address specific questions and concerns, offer advice, and share in joint victories.”

Byrne said social media allowed PETA to stay in constant touch with supporters.

“By using social media, we can deliver information to our supporters in real time. We are able to update them on developments relating to campaigns and victories as they happen,” she said. “We knew that by targeting Karan’s Facebook page on Cyber Monday, we could convince more people to boycott her designs until she drops fur for good.”

The most popular applications on Facebook have been transmitting identifying information to advertising and tracking companies, the Wall Street Journal reports. Tens of millions of users are affected — even those who have the strictest privacy settings, the newspaper reports.

The breach is hardly the first on the network.

It is a good time to remember that users should assume that all information posted online will be ultimately made public to everyone. Assuming anything else would be foolish.

A Facebook spokesperson told the Journal:

“A Facebook user ID may be inadvertently shared by a user’s Internet browser or by an application,” the spokesman said. Knowledge of an ID “does not permit access to anyone’s private information on Facebook,” he said, adding that the company would introduce new technology to contain the problem identified by the Journal.

It is important to note that the majority of applications are not made by Facebook, something many users do not realize.

Click here to read the full Wall Street Journal report.

Facebook image

As many colleges and universities encourage their students to sign off of Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and other social media networking sites while on campus, at least one American institution is encouraging increased usage.

The University of Kentucky has placed a pair of wooden pointers reminiscent of Facebook’s Places logo around campus to remind students to check-in at the school, Advertising Age reported. Curious to see what the larger-than-life signs look like? Click the link and check out a picture.

“We’re encouraging students to check in, so when they do, it’ll show up in their news feed and maybe their friends still in high school will see it over and over again,” Kelley Bozeman, the university’s marketing director told the publication.

The university ought to be commended for utilizing social media to its fullest.

Marketing and advertising costs are passed along to current students. Kentucky has discovered an innovative way to recruit high school students at no cost to anyone — sans the price to produce the giant pointy thingies. Even better, the method that the university has opted to utilize targets high school students in an arena that they are likely to naturally frequent; talk about targeting the demographic effectively. Kentucky is considering less expensive window stickers should the initiative expand.

Concerned about privacy? The university has even thought about that, according to Advertising Age.

“We do think about privacy,” Bozeman told the magazine. “But this is about check-ins during the day, when you’re on campus, in the classrooms and going to athletic events. Adults use good judgment. It’s not about checking in at home.”

It would be beneficial for other universities — and businesses — to consider following Kentucky’s lead. It’s certainly a strange way to market a university, but look at all the press Kentucky received for simply putting up two signs. It’s priceless.

People are influenced by their friends, and having customers, guests and customers brag about where they are getting food, groomed, educated or rest could only help industries across our society. This is the future. Kudos to Kentucky for leading the way.

Have you ever wondered what Google knows about you — and makes available to others? Now you can develop a better idea.

The technology giant has made it easier than ever to understand what information is collected, who it is available to and enables users to change many of the corresponding settings.

“One of our goals at Google is to give users meaningful choices to protect your privacy,” Google states in its new privacy center, where links to some of the company’s most popular privacy settings are posted.

The search engine giant has been under fire for collecting personal information from insecure wireless networks, as Tech Talk has extensively reported.

Perhaps the most powerful tool is the Google Dashboard, which displays information stored for services like Alerts, Analytics, Blogger, Books, Buzz, Calendar, Checkout, Contacts, Docs, Gmail, iGoogle, Latitude, Maps, Picasa, Profiles, Talk, Voice, Web History and YouTube.

It contains fascinating details like how many contacts you have, stored credit card numbers, recent status messages, most commonly e-mailed individuals, most recent piece of spam received, most recent alerts, newest e-mails, number of conversations logged, number of docs trashed, number of gadgets installed and more.

It will also indicate most recent Web search, image search, news search, product search, video search, map search, blog and book search with the corresponding date and time. It also indicates how quickly information becomes irrelevant. For example, the most e-mailed person in your Tech Talk editor’s primary Gmail account is an ex — and has not been e-mailed in some time.

Users may change their account password and privacy, sharing and subscription settings from the Google Dashboard.

The Ads Preferences Manager allows users to view and edit the information Google uses to show users interest-based advertisements within Google’s advertising network. Folks can add or remove interest categories associated with one’s Web browser or opt out of viewing relevant advertising entirely. It’s fascinating to learn what categories the Internet search giant has associated with you. As for your humble editor, the search engine’s analysis of which advertisements would be most relevant was dead-on.

Additionally, Google’s privacy center allows users to:

• Learn how to move data in and out of Google products;
• Encrypt the search traffic between one’s computer and Google;
• Learn how to partake in incognito browsing and downloading;
• Get information how to request the removal of images with inappropriate content, or to remove a photo of yourself your family, your car, or your home;
• Learn how to share videos with a specific group of individuals;
• Learn how to manage the site’s Web History;
• Learn how to chat off the record in Talk;
• Learn how to opt out of Google Analytics and Search Personalization; and
• Control Google Latitude.

It’s a powerful dashboard that Tech Talk implores you to explore. Chances are you will even learn more about yourself in the process.

Yelp, a Web site that gives folks the opportunity to share business reviews and events, has been under increased pressure to change the way it operates — and finally has.

Small business owners pressured the six-year-old company that boasts more than 10 million reviews to change the way it handles its reader views in a class action lawsuit.

The suit, which the New York Times reports accuses the site of extortion, claims “Yelp will remove negative reviews and reinstate positive reviews for paying advertisers and says that ‘business listings on Yelp.com are in fact biased in favor of businesses that buy Yelp advertising.’ ” 

Yelp has long denied the claims.

Yelp, however, made a pair of major changes on Tuesday. Now users, the Times reports, will be able to see reviews that the site filtered out, and advertisers won’t be able to post their favorite review at the top of their respective page.

Yelp indicated that it filters out comments that may be posted on behalf of the company being reviewed or that of a rival entity. 

Now users will have the opportunity to review all postings – whether suspicious or not.

“I hope that these changes will debunk some of the myths and conspiracy theories out there about Yelp and its advertising and whether those are linked,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp’s co-founder and chief executive told the Times. “It will underscore the point that it really is and has always been a level playing field for businesses, and will showcase the unique challenge we face, in certain situations where it’s obvious businesses are trying to change ratings.”

The changes are consistent with the growing trend of transparency on the Web.  Companies can no longer operate under the premise of superiority over its customers.  Web surfers demand access to all information so that they could develop their understanding of things – not just what big businesses would like to feed them.

How great would it be if you were connected to someone who could offer you some really neat perks — like free travel, for I don’t know, a year?

JetBlue Airways is doing just that.

Presumably to increase the number of fans it has on its Facebook page, the airline has offered really generous perks that will increase as the number of its “friends” do.  Currently, JetBlue only has 63,863 fans, which isn’t very many for a corporation with the exposure it has.

Among the prizes offered:

• A pair of roundtrip flights given away to any JetBlue destination from Dec. 9 through Jan. 31.
• A team prize of a 5-day/4-night getaway package for four
• A one year “All-You-Can-Jet” pass valid for travel in 2010

Of course, in order to enter these amazing deals, you must give the airline access to your profile information, become a fan and share your phone number, e-mail address and postal code.

Now talk about buying your friends.  But with that said, JetBlue, if you’re listening, I think I could be friends with you for unlimited travel for a year.

The most recent alien sighting at Google

Unidentified flying objects have been spotted around the Google homepage twice this month — giving birth to wild speculation as to what will happen next.

A mysterious Google logo appeared in the form of crop circles suddenly Tuesday morning. Around the same time, coordinates pointing to 51.327629, -0.5616088 were transmitted without warning or explanation through Google’s Twitter account.

Last week’s alien-themed logo depicted a UFO abducting the second of Google’s O’s.  When one clicked the logo, a search page detailing “unexplained phenomenon” emerged.

Many Internet surfers, sci-fi phenatics and followers of Fox Mulder concluded the map coordinates are centered over the very spot in Surrey, England where the first UFOs landed in H.G. Wells’ 1898 “War of the Worlds.”

The first of two UFO sightings at Google this month.

Some conspiracy theorists have deduced that the Googleplex has been taken over by aliens, while others say it is an appropriate means to mark the 143rd anniversary of Wells’ birth, which coincidentally happens to be Monday.

Even National Geographic reported that new crop circles, and provided a little history and perspective.

Several Web sites have reported that a third message could be released next week, at which time the signs may become clear.

The truth is out there, as so much as you want to believe.

For years, newspapers have been able to keep the price of their products relatively low in part by inserting advertisements throughout its pages.

Fig. 3B, as shown in The Register, is a pictorial diagram of an illustrative page image including margins suitable for printing advertisement and other content.

Now, it seems, Amazon may be developing a similar strategy for its e-book reader, the Kindle, as well as paperbacks purchased through its book publishing service.

The Register, a British tech Web site, reports that the retail giant filed two U.S. patent applications July 2 potentially setting the stage for customer-tailored advertisements:

“While on-demand printing hasn’t yet ‘adapted to modern marketing,’ the patent states, many ‘free’ internet sites are able to operate at a profit by serving up ads along with their content.”

“The patent applications explain that embedded ads could be contextually sensitive. For example, Ann of Green Gables could include pitches from the Cavendish tourism board, or the ending of The Great Gatsby advertisements to local automotive repair shops. Alternatively, the ads could be targeted to a customer’s general interest based on their Amazon user profile.”

However, one of the two patents states that the introduction of advertisements would benefit customers, stating:

“Including advertising and/or related content with on-demand printed content may prove advantageous to a consumer. For example, a lower price may be offered to a consumer regarding a request for on-demand printed content if the consumer is willing to accept advertising in the printed content. …  Additionally, a consumer may benefit from content-related information that is not part of the requested content, such as supplemental reference material, relevant footnotes, illustrations, and the like. Content-related information, as well as advertisements may be included in the form of appendixes or in-line with the requested printed content.”

You can check out the second patent here.

While I initially hesitated at the idea of inserting advertisements in books, I have come to the opinion that it would actually be a good thing.  Not only would it likely reduce the cost of printed books, and potentially lead Amazon to eventually offer a free ad-supported e-book for every printed copy purchased as the MediaPost hypothesized, it could offer the reader relevant suggestions and ideas as to what else he or she might enjoy.

What do you think?