Category: data

data, web

managing photos and videos

benadida

This holiday, I finally spent time digging into how I manage photos and videos. With 2 young kids and some remote family and friends, this requires a good bit of thinking and planning. I know I’m not the only one, so I figured documenting where I landed might be useful to others. I started with Dave Liggat’s Robust Photo Workflow, and found much of it resonates with my needs. Here’s where I landed: I take photos with a DSLR and two phones. My wife takes photos with her phone. We both take videos with our phones. We use Dropbox/Carousel auto-upload, which works … Continue reading managing photos and videos

data, privacy, security9 Comments

(your) information wants to be free

benadida

A couple of weeks ago, Epsilon, an email marketing firm, was breached. If you are a customer of Tivo, Best Buy, Target, The College Board, Walgreens, etc., that means your name and email address were accessed by some attacker. You probably received a warning to watch out for phishing attacks (assuming it wasn’t caught in your spam filter). Yesterday, the Sony Playstation Network of 75 million gamers was compromised. Names, addresses, and possibly credit cards were accessed by attackers. This may well be the largest data breach in history. And a few days ago, it was discovered that iPhones keep … Continue reading (your) information wants to be free

crypto, data, privacy, web10 Comments

grab the pitchforks!… again

benadida

I’m fascinated with how quickly people have reached for the pitchforks recently when the slightest whiff of a privacy/security violation occurs. Last week, a few interesting security tidbits came to light regarding Dropbox, the increasingly popular cloud-based file storage and synchronization service. There’s some interesting discussion of de-duplication techniques which might lead to Oracle attacks, etc., but the most important issue is that, suddenly, everyone’s realizing that Dropbox could, if needed, access your files. Miguel de Icaza wonders if Dropbox is pitching snake oil. Yes, Dropbox staff can, if needed, access your files. I don’t mean to harp on my … Continue reading grab the pitchforks!… again

data, health, privacy2 Comments

The Health IT report is very good; some opinionated suggestions

benadida

“Oy,” I thought, when I received a copy of “REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT REALIZING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE HEALTHCARE FOR AMERICANS: THE PATH FORWARD” [PDF]. I worried this would be a lot of vague, easy-to-agree-with advice with little actionable material. I was wrong. Hats off to the team that wrote this! Problem Analysis is right on Some nuggets of the problem analysis, all from the executive summary (a quick and useful read): First, most current health IT systems are proprietary applications that are not easily adopted into the workflow of a clinician’s day, and whose … Continue reading The Health IT report is very good; some opinionated suggestions

data, policy, privacy5 Comments

devices, payload data, and why Kim is (in part) right.

benadida

A few days ago, I wrote about privacy advocacy theater and lamented how some folks, including EPIC and Kim Cameron, are attacking Google in a needlessly harsh way for what was an accidental collection of data. Kim Cameron responded, and he is right to point out that my argument, in the Google case, missed an important issue. Kim points out that two issues got confused in the flurry of press activity: the accidental collection of payload data, i.e. the URLs and web content you browsed on unsecured wifi at the moment the Google Street View car was driving by, and … Continue reading devices, payload data, and why Kim is (in part) right.

data, web3 Comments

distributed innovation

benadida

A few years ago, a small group of folks (Mark Birbeck, Steven Pemberton, Ralph Swick, Shane McCarron, me, and more recently Ivan Herman, Manu Sporny, and a lot of great new folks) started with the simple idea that, if web pages contained a bit of structured data in addition to their haphazard content, we could improve the Web a little bit. We could mark up titles, people’s contact information, geolocation data, copyright licensing information, etc. Tools could be built, including browser plugins and search engines, to help users extract this structured data and make sense of it. There were others … Continue reading distributed innovation

data, health, policy2 Comments

Taxing Human Transactions – Part 1

benadida

The worst part of my job is dealing with the mess of document formats and coding systems in healthcare. The acronym soup is insane: HL7, CCD, CCR, CDA, Green CDA (which I just heard about from John Halamka’s blog but… no link!), and that’s just the document formats. Then there are coding systems like LOINC, SNOMED, SNOMED-CT, UMLS, ICD9, ICD10, RxNorm, … Interestingly enough, the issue is not how many there are. The issue is how they’re licensed. Here’s a screenshot from the HL7 website that should tickle your funny bone: So, HL7 is unlocking the power of health information, … Continue reading Taxing Human Transactions – Part 1

data, policy

Apple fanboy delusions, the Palm Pre is looking mighty tasty

benadida

On many issues, I’m an Apple fanboy. On the issue of the iPhone, less and less. Here’s the short version of the story: Apple produces iTunes, which manages all of your music and videos, and syncs them to your iPod/iPhone. Very cool software, magnificently built, great experience overall. I’ve been using this setup for 6+ years. Along comes Palm with the Pre, a phone with functionality similar to the iPhone. Obviously, Palm wants to let its users sync their music and photo library with the Pre. Seems fair, right? Here’s how the story unfolds: iTunes 8.0: I will only sync … Continue reading Apple fanboy delusions, the Palm Pre is looking mighty tasty

data, web

Stefano thinks I’m a purist…

benadida

Stefano Mazzocchi is awesome and his thinking on Web-based data is incredibly nuanced and pragmatic, so it’s not often that I want to publicly disagree with him. But in his latest post, I think he’s off the mark. Stefano argues: The difference between RDFa and Microdata (syntactic differences aside) is basically the fact that the proponents of the first believe that once everybody naturally starts reusing existing ID schemes and ontologies a densely connected web of semantically reconciled information will come together naturally. The second just want to focus on immediate values and avoid speculating on what’s going to happen … Continue reading Stefano thinks I’m a purist…

data, privacy, web

Pot, Kettle, meet Zuckerberg

benadida

Facebook is an impressive company, they’ve done and continue to do some very amazing things. And I admit I certainly didn’t see them coming 4 years ago. But okay, come on: “No one wants to live in a surveillance society,” Zuckerberg adds, “which, if you take that to its extreme, could be where Google is going.” Umm, seriously? I mean, sure, Google might be pushing us towards a surveillance society, but then, isn’t Facebook doing exactly the same thing? At least Google promises to remove your records after a certain period of time, whereas Facebook wants to keep your data … Continue reading Pot, Kettle, meet Zuckerberg