Today pictures of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are splashed across the front page of Valleywag. Nothing unusual in that, except for the fact that both Paris and Lindsay didn’t consent. These were obtained through a fairly simple hack into their MySpace profiles, via Yahoo! Notably: the hack didn’t involve any illegal passwords, just typing in URLs.
ValleyWag used this as an excuse to launch into an attack on the principles behind Data Portability as part of their coverage. We discussed it, and concluded that the model has to begin with privacy, and ensuring that privacy contracts between services are honored, before any discussion of portability.
We also talked a little about what to expect on Monday at the Apple WWDC. Aside from Steve Job’s dress, not much is known. Assuming the keynote is simulcast, we’ll move the SquawkBox until directly afterward.
Yesterday's call centered around the issues of portability -Portability of our NumbersPortability of our DataPortability of our Devices
Our special guest was Rod Ullens, CEO and co-founder of Voxbone (Belgium) – Voxbone provides international VOIP DID numbers and worldwide VOIP origination services. Rod is attending eComm this week and will be making some important announcements that everyone will want to hear about … especially as it pertains to number portability ! He gives a preview in the podcast.
On this call we also discussed Mark Zuckerberg's recent interview about Facebook's approach to data portability and his perspective on having to sort through all of the privacy and security issues for individual Facebook members before jumping into the larger issues of portability.
There was an interesting discussion around Wal-Mart's decision to discontinue the sale of computers pre-loaded with linux.
We finally had an entertaining discussion about the individual who missed their flight after being detained at a TSA checkpoint, because the staff examining his MacBook Air was unable to clearly identify the device according to "what their criteria for a computer" dictated. Was this an example of "Failure in TSA training and/or common-sense" or an oversight in the Apple Marketing Manager's Launch Plans – download this podcast to find out …
Yesterday was a pretty exciting day on the privacy and data portability front. I didn't have any inkling of what was coming up next after publishing the Privacy Manifesto on GigaOm, but shortly after Plaxo, Facebook and Google all joined the Data Portability working group. That's great news, and I myself have committed to the [...]
