A Curious Eye

Those who are accepted get three months to use the production facilities, including access to sound stages, as well as the use high-quality cameras, lights, production and editing equipment. The Space has three production studios, equipment rooms, screening rooms, and post-production facilities, including edit bays and a foley room.

Congress is likely to revisit online security legislation — meant to safeguard critical infrastructure from attack — that failed last year. And a looming question for Web giants will be who takes the reins of the Federal Trade Commission, the industry’s main regulator, this year. David C. Vladeck, the director of the commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, has resigned, and there have been suggestions that the chairman of the commission itself, Jon Leibowitz, will step down.

The agency is investigating Google over possible antitrust violations and will subject Facebookto audits of its privacy policy for the next 20 years. Its next steps could serve as a bellwether of how aggressively the commission will take on Web companies in the second Obama administration.

Full article at NYTimes.com

“We looked at what this means for search. It was no longer enough to simply be a really good place to put a keyword in and get some results back. How do you put a layer on all of what’s out there so that when people ask more natural questions, we take that input and allow someone to take action, rather than just return a bunch of links?”

Full article at Mashable.com

When you’re on a Google website…you’re accessing one of the most powerful server networks in the known Universe. But what does that actually look like? Here’s your chance to see inside what we’re calling the physical Internet.

See more at TheAtlanticCities.com

Google has announced a global campaign in support of equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

The Internet giant announced its Legalize Love campaign at the Global LGBT Workplace Summit 2012, which took place in London.

The campaign launches Saturday, July 7 in Poland and Singapore. Organizers plan to expand the campaign to every country where Google has an office, focusing on countries where anti-gay sentiment runs high.

“We want our employees who are gay or lesbian or transgender to have the same experience outside the office as they do in the office,” Google’s Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe is quoted by dot429.com as saying at the summit. “It is obviously a very ambitious piece of work.”

“Singapore wants to be a global financial center and world leader and we can push them on the fact that being a global center and a world leader means you have to treat all people the same, irrespective of their sexual orientation,” Palmer-Edgecumbe said of the decision to include Singapore in the campaign’s initial phase.

Bob Amnnibale, an openly gay executive at Citi, applauded the effort: “The fact that Google is so virtual and its appeal is very wide and young demographically means it can help spread messaging very, very quickly.”

The biggest change—among many—in iOS 6 will undoubtedly be Apple’s new Maps app. And though its turn-by-turn directions, Flyover and oh so sweet Siri look promising, the real question is how Apple’s maps will compare to Google’s.

Here’s a side by side comparison of the two, so you can see for yourself. It may have you wishing Apple hadn’t gone it alone quite yet.

It’s admittedly a little unfair to judge Apple Maps since it hasn’t even passed beta yet, but it doesn’t change the fact that Apple’s offering has to be great to not be a failure. And it’s also worth noting that Siri proved Apple’s not afraid to put an incomplete feature on an iPhone.

No iPhone user wanted to kill Google Maps. It makes me uneasy to even think about a phone without it. If you’re replacing something as ubiquitous and functional as Google Maps, you had better be just as good. Or as a wise man from the streets once said, “If you come at the king, you best not miss.”

Facebook and Google have gone head-to-head for some time now (hello, Google+). But the stakes may be getting even higher with a recent Businessweek report that Facebook is building a search engine. There is no timetable for this, but Facebook tends to move quickly. And the goal here is to take advantage of the mountains of content Facebook users create every day, including likes, comments, status updates, and interactions on brand pages.

What’s in it for brands: The move into search fits with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of a “semantic web,” where users are able to find personally relevant information based on their own interests and that of their friends. If a search engine based on social data takes off, it will increase the importance of brands establishing meaningful relationships with their fans. Likes, check-ins, and recommendations will be even more valuable and can be used to boost social search queries. For example, a future Facebook search may mean the pizza lover in you could easily find local restaurants that have been liked the most on Facebook, or that have the most check-ins. Facebook doesn’t want users to leave the network, and if it can provide personally relevant search, there’s one less reason to click over to Google to find out what time the movie starts.

Whether or not Steve Jobs’ passing means the end of Apple is a question only time can answer. The near-term stakes are very high for all four of the big tech companies—the other three being Google, Facebook, and Amazon. As Farhad Manjoo has chronicled, each is seeking to establish itself as the dominant innovator.

We’re taking a bet on Amazon, thanks in part to its new line of tablet devices, its massive collection of content, its thriving retail business, and its early investments in technologies like cloud computing and payment services. 

Amazon Web Services is a big deal; after all, it’s one of the best-distributed web services around. The infrastructure behind sites like Netflix and Reddit is built by Amazon, and if you’re starting a new tech company, more likely than not you’ll be doing it on Amazon’s platform. It may be a surprise to see cloud computing offered by what was once a mere online bookstore.

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“What if 70 percent of brands in the world disappeared overnight? Most people wouldn’t care, according to a new study of 50,000 people in 14 global markets performed by Havas Media, an international communications firm.

Of all the brands surveyed, only 20 percent made a notably positive impact on people’s lives. That means for all the millions spent on marketing and ads around the world, most people could care less which company sells them their lunch, television, or car. “The overall consumption model and the overall marketing model is not working anymore,” says Sara del Dios, the Havas executive behind the survey.

Reflecting demonstrations and disappointment in the global economy, the survey notes that most consumers don’t trust companies, think their efforts to be responsible are largely spin, and that they don’t work hard to fix big problems.”

“Top U.S. companies including Google, Microsoft, and Starbucks took the unusual step on Thursday of legally documenting their opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act.

A brief filed in court comes from 70 businesses and organizations that want their voice heard on the constitutionality of DOMA, which bans same-sex marriage from being recognized federally and stops couples married in states such as Massachusetts from having their weddings recognized in less accepting places such as Alabama. 

The companies paint the law as an overburdening government regulation that should be repealed.”

“ Google is saying very quietly what it wouldn’t really be tactful to say loudly: “Put your sensitive and controversial video data here.” Certainly a site like LiveLeak is also an option, but YouTube finds itself the center of attention more frequently, and being more of a popular culture community, it wants to emphasize its legitimacy in matters like this. The transparency report is a way for them to encourage users to trust them, and perhaps, governments to respect them.”