MA Seminar Lecture Resources

Facebook may start tracking all your cursor movements on the site.

WSJ: Article from June 2012 about the new Wi-fi tracking pitch from marketing firms

The Mechanical Turk 1770

"Inside Minority Report‘s ‘Idea Summit,’ Visionaries Saw the Future"

Google has acquired Behavio, a small team of people that has developed a framework for collecting various types of data from Android phones.  

[...]

The business of collecting location information began in 2003, when Boston-based Skyhook Inc. launched and began the practice of "wardriving"—cruising around in cars to collect information about Wi-Fi hotspots. Comparing the names and signal strengths of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots against a database allows for a cellphone's location to be determined within 100 feet, in many cases, Skyhook says.

In 2007, Google began building its own Wi-Fi database, using the StreetView cars. Last year, Apple switched from using Skyhook and began creating its own database of Wi-Fi points for use on its newest phones, although it still uses Skyhook data for older phones and Macintosh computers.

WSJ: Apple, Google Collect User Data

see also:

Wired: Why and How Apple Is Collecting Your iPhone Location Data

and:

Waze’s mapping and traffic information are built off the contributions of 70,000 volunteer map editors and some 15 million active users.

Inner workings revealed in early 1820s

Turns out people were behind the computations all along.

Chicago History Museum crowd sourced content contest

Portland Smells was meant to be more of an art project than a public utility. That is, until a local government representative contacted me regarding a project that was being built out (now available at whatsinourair.org) to help report and monitor illegal chemical dump sites in the Portland area. Apparently the functionality created for Portland Smells was greatly needed for social and environmental justice.