Category — Social Media

Earlier this year, Google announced that they had a plan for the VP-8 video they acquiring after purchasing On2 Technologies in early 2010. They stated its Chrome browser will stop supporting the H.264 codec in a couple of months and will support its own WebM and Ogg Theora technologies instead. According to Wikipedia’s article on the topic, “there were calls for Google to release the VP8 source code, notably the Free Software Foundation issued an open letter on March 12, 2010, asking Google to gradually replace the usage of the Adobe Flash Player and H.264 on YouTube with a mixture of HTML5 and a freed VP8.”  So, in essence, Google is taking, what I consider to be, a large chunk of H.264 support away to support open innovation.  H.264, after all, is patented.  Patents for the technologies in H.264 are held by 27 companies, including Microsoft and Apple, and administered by the MPEG LA.  If you consider the biggest technology companies in the US, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft hold a considerable slice of the patent applications in software, then you get the picture.  By any measure, the value of patents is a very, very big deal, and now the U.S. government is now getting involved to decide whether the MPEG LA is unfairly trying to squash Google’s WebM.

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Concerns around security and personal information have recently stirred up Washington in the last two months, and online social media privacy appears to be in the vortex.  With all this news chatter, I was recently asked how I protect my privacy and security, while still enjoying social media.  My answer was shorter than this blog – the responsibility of protecting your privacy and your family starts with being smart about the initial choice you make (i.e. joining a social network or media site), and then every choice you make afterwards (i.e. updating your chosen sites).  First and foremost, you need to educate yourself about your rights and responsibilities on social sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google.  Know what you’re getting into before you jump in with loads of personal information.  It can be tough to restrain yourself from adding too much information, so that buddy of yours from day camp 10 or 20 years ago will recongize you online all grown up.  Just remember that you’re one potential user about to join over half a billion other users and adding this information to a semi-public domain on the Internet - your definition of privacy is not necessarily what makes the rules.   [Read more →]