Web Notes Online

Several of the Constitutional amendments have come under discussion of late--the first and second most prominently. The second, regarding an armed militia, currently has the greatest interest. But it is the first where we need to focus our attention. For while we worry about our ability to arm ourselves, we need to make sure our free speech is not eroded.

We often feel that the right of free speech is a given. Our ability to say what we want, when we want, is sacred. There are the shouting fire in a theatre limitations, but you can say what you want, when you want. Right?

It depends.

We have often talked about the soap box in the town square. You can profess your beliefs in the town square. But increasingly, the town square is being replaced by the quad in the local mall. You might be surprised, but you don't have free speech in the quad because it is far from the town square. It is not public property. It is private--probably owned by some mega-corporation who doesn't want the flow of shoppers to be sidetracked or interrupted from their purchasing.

This extends to even taking pictures on the property of a mall. I once was checking out a new lens I had purchased and was standing beside my car in the parking lot at a mall in Annapolis. I pointed toward the mall (near the movieplex entrance at that mall) checking the focus when  mall cop stopped and asked me what I was doing. I explained I was checking a new lens I had just bought in the mall. He said I could not take pictures of the mall. I assured him I wasn't. Offered to show him my digital viewfinder. He left but I could see he had not moved too far off.

I know that if I had moved off the mall property like to the other side of the street, he wouldn't have bothered me. This was before the popularity of cell phone cameras. I'm sure that mall cop's problems controlling photographers have increased exponentially.

Busiensses--like a mall corporation--are not bound by the first amendment. The first doesn't extend inside the firm's door.

Historically, if you had a complaint about a corporation, you were often a single voice shouting into the wind. It was easy to ignore you. Yes. There was the possibility of class-action law suits, that that was expensive and time-consuming.

The internet as we see it today, changed all of that. Through social media movements can be launched that make corporations take note. More on social media in a later post.

 It is CES time again. The Consumer Electronics Show 2013 is open in Las Vegas.
 It gives a snapshot of the state of the industry and plans for the near future.
 If anything, the personal electronic device has evolved from the PDA to the smartphone. It has been joined by the tablet as personal communications devices. These devices are already merging as phones get larger and tablets get smaller.

These devices are the locus of massive changes going on in our society. We talk of social media and sites like Facebook and marvel at how we are able to reach out and community with each other. But it also allows others to reach in and communicate with us.

I grew up in the days before George Orwells' 1984. My generation read it and watched the year come and go. No big deal. Sure we thought of Big Brother and government intrusion. After all, we had just gone through the Vietnam War and the draft. The two-way television monitors of Orwell's book pale in comparison to what the smartphone in your pocket can do for government or, for that matter, business--more on this later.

We willingly give up freedoms for convenience. Privacy is quickly fading as something we can assume. It is possible now to track your every move through your smartphone. You have probably willingly allowed these when you downloaded and installed various apps for your phone. These apps provide a convenience for you but they also provide a door to your habits.

Privacy will also be eroded as you willingly allow insurance companies to monitor your driving habits so you can get a break on your car insurance. Such arrangements are already being offered if you allow a little black box to be mounted on your car.

Yes, this is if you opt in, but what of those who choose to opt out? The that opt out will get the higher rate and be suspect of wanting to hide their poor driving habits. If you speed, habitually accelerate rapidly, jam on the brakes, that makes you a poor risk for insurance companies. They suspect you of that, you wont get any discount.

Twenty years ago this was unthinkable. Twenty years ago was 1992 almost a decade after Orwell's benchmark of 1984. Now, it is thinkable. It is a reality.

We know we need to control the excesses of one Big Brother -- government, but we also must consider the other Big Brother -- Big Business. More next time.

Been listening/reading about all these geek celebs on their fun on Google + and smirking that it is beta and in effect a private club.

I am becoming less and less interested in the social network.

I guess I must be aging out of the mainstream. I rarely find a movie that strikes my fancy anymore. Even the big syfy "blockbusters" of the summer make me yawn.

I'm sure cost is a factor.

The advent of DVDs and cable with relatively modest prices makes me more likely to wait to view at home, than to run out to the theatre.

And, 3D hasn't changed my mind.

I'll be gving a tour for a group of people from a retirement community in Easton this morning.

It will be ineresting to hear their thoughts on the state of print newspapers today.

They are from my era or earlier that grew up with the print newspaper as a major source of daily news. There was radio and television, but it was the print newspaper that was there to provide depth to news coverage.



We are now entering an era of immediacy. We can get our news, in some cases, as it happens. All sorts of people have easy access to the Web and can post their thoughts and observations on virtually any topic. Facts can be of secondary concern.



As a consumer of news, it is up to the public to determine what is truth and what is fiction. It wasn't always that way. While some have complained of media bias, generally speaking what was in the print newspaper was the result of efforts to provide accurate information.

Tuesday, August 18
Picking this up on Tuesday. Great group from Easton Club Easton for the tour. They asked excellent questions. The tour ended up being about twice as long as normal.

They are of the generation, like mine, that grew up with the print newspaper. They prefer the print paper to an online news source. It is a considerable difference from the pov of the young people I give tours to. The process does not hold the young crowd's interest. They fail to see the relevance.

I can understand this. While I was a product of the print age, I am more than happy to work in the Internet/digital age we are now entering.

I plan to write more frequently. Check back from time to time, you might find it interesting.

Richard

The WebNotes column will no longer appear in the print edition of the newspaper. All my efforts will now focus on online-only stories.

It is important to place greater emphasis on the Internet version. It is our future. I am interested in issues of interest to the community.

The Wall Street Journal's decision to explore micro payments to allow site visitors to read individual stories for a fee is being watched closely by the industry.

We currently have a subscriber wall around our locally produced material. You can access state, national, and world news without payment.

The WSJ has a similar subscriber base system for an annual fee of more than $100. A micro-payment system would allow casual visitors to the site to pick and choose stories they might want to read and pay for them individually for a modest fee. A fee structure has not been announced.

I liken this system to the one in the print world where there are subscribers and people who purchase individual copies of the paper on a day-by-day basis. They see an interesting headline in a paper box or at a news stand and purchase the single issue.

This system will help provide some additional revenue but it doesn't add much to replace the lost print advertising revenue that the industry is now experiencing. It could be useful to provide stats of additional eye-balls on the site which would allow the site to charge higher rates to advertisers.

In another Internet story, the Boston Transit Authority looks like it will ban cell phone use by trolley operators. An operator has admitted to texting on his phone when his trolley was in a crash that injured at least 46 people.

Texting is a form of distracted driving that is becoming more common. States are taking steps to ban drivers from this activity in autos. It is only right that transit workers be required to do the same.

Distracted driving which could be anything from being intoxicated to being sleepy to talking with other people in the car or using a cell phone, is the prime cause of accidents.

More later.

You can reach me at richardepolk@gmail.com

Last week Google mail, called Gmail, went down for the sixth time in eight months. It was down from two and one half to four hours depending upon what story you read. All services have outages. “Downtime” is inevitable when you are using computers.

But when a Google service goes dark, even for only a couple of hours, it is news. The company has gotten so big and people have gotten so dependent upon it, an outage can affect many people.

Gmail is part of what has come to be called “cloud computing.” In essence it means accessing software and servers (storage devices) over the Internet. The “cloud” is the Internet itself.

Cloud computing allows you to store less on your computer and makes your material accessible from anywhere you have access to the Internet. It also means you can work from different computers on the same project. You also share the project with others who might be anywhere in the world.

Google has applications, maps as well as Gmail in the cloud. Google Docs, for example, is the company’s answer to Microsoft Word. You can write and save your documents online. You can share it with a co-worker or call it up from home if you want to continue working from there.

Outages like the one with Gmail last week do cause ripples in the net as bloggers question the strength of the system. But cloud computing is inevitable. As the use of small “net” laptop computers increase in use, the cloud will be the place to be.

These small “net” laptop computers are smaller, lighter, with smaller screens and have smaller hard drives. Some have small solid state flash drives instead of disc drives. This makes them more shock resistant and adds to the weight reduction.

Small computers like this are specifically designed for Internet access through wireless connections. They are good for business people on the go in airports or even your neighborhood coffee shop or bagel bakery—anywhere that offers wireless service.

Coupled with cloud computing, they can be an extension of your office, home or dorm room.

In future columns I’ll talk about changes in our photo gallery on the Web site and cultural phenomena’s like Twitter the social Web site that allows you to share your thoughts with your friends or the world in 140 characters or less at a time. It started as a geek think. Now celebrities, reporters and even politicians are getting into it. I understand that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich “tweeted” during President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress. He mistakenly called it a state of the union speech which it wasn’t that error was quickly picked up by those following his comments.

Tweets can be worse than email for publicizing your typos. They are dashed off quickly and once sent, can not be retrieved.

But more on that later. Maybe I’ll start twittering myself one of these days.

But for now, you can reach me at rpolk(at)chespub.com.

Richard Polk is the Online Editor of the Internet version of The Star Democrat. It is located at http://www.stardem.com.