LIKE: Ex-Googler Brian Kennish Helps Users Disconnect From the Social Web

Kennish released Facebook Disconnect in October and the extension quickly gained popularity, hitting the top 10 list of Google Chrome extensions. He told us that he quit his job at Google three weeks later so that he could "develop tools that make it trivial for the average user to understand and control the data they share whenever they browse or search the Web." He said that he thinks Google is "collecting more personal data than any other company" and "to fight for user privacy while working there would've been impossible."

disconnect-screen.JPGDisconnect, similar to his earlier project, blocks a number of third-party widgets from sites like Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo, as well as de-personalizes search at the cookie level, allowing you to remain logged-in to services like iGoogle or Gmail without having your search queries attached to your Google profile.

Kennish said that, while the tool is in a primitive state, he hopes it will have a larger effect on the debate over privacy on the Web.

"Realistically, Disconnect won't have a significant direct impact on the average user's privacy -- Adblock (and I mean the whole suite) is the most successful browser extension and used by less than 1% of the Web population," said Kennish. "So government policy and what browser vendors ship natively is more important to me. I'm hoping to show a better way through software and have a butterfly effect on policy and browser implementation."

Kennish calls the "Do Not Track" method of opting-out "a bad model for defending online privacy because phones ring and get your attention, where Web bugs are invisible and go unnoticed."

Indeed, last summer one online advocacy group released a browser extension that alerts you "whenever your personal information is being sent to Google servers." The result was a near constant barrage of alarm bells - if your phone rang this often, you would go insane. Disconnect takes a less obnoxious method, showing a running tally of how many calls have been blocked in the extension's toolbar icon. Clicking on the icon also allows you to quickly allow for unblocking because, no matter our privacy talk, these tools are also useful in our online lives and not always unwanted. Kennish's point is more that the user should be allowed to opt-in, rather than needing to opt-out - an oft-heard refrain in online privacy discussions.

Kennish said that he started with blocking standard third-party social widgets "because I consider them the most dangerous third-party resources and there didn't seem to be another tool that blocks them out of the box. The prevalence of these widgets means they can report on almost all your browsing activity, which can then be linked to databases full of the social data you intentionally share."

While Disconnect may be in early stages and not have a "significant direct impact" for the average user, the tool could be useful for those concerned about how different social tools are keeping track of your browsing habits. The extension is available for both Google Chrome and RockMelt.

No 3D Sex Sim for Xmas!: Microsoft says no thanks to Kinect groping game (Wired UK)

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Excerpt:

"Microsoft has publicly offered a "thanks but no thanks" to adult entertainment company ThriXXX, stating that the Australian firm's Kinect-powered sex game will never end up for sale on Xbox 360.

A video (NSFW link) cropped up earlier this month that showed a wily Kinect hacker using hand gestures, voice commands and objects to interact with a 3D-rendered, scantily clad lady. It offered up a working prototype, thanks to efforts in the hacking community, to show off how Microsoft's new peripheral could work in adult games.

The company specialises in interactive sex simulation software on PC, with titles like "3D Sexvilla" and "3DLesbian". It said: "the Kinect interface provides another exciting option for users of the sex simulation software to control the experience in extraordinary new ways"...

Ogilvy Partners Hong Kong Mall in Layar Augmented Reality Campaign, Evoking Gaudi

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From TAXI:

"Seamlessly blending the use of social media with augmented reality (AR), Ogilvy & Mather and K11 have teamed up for something special this Christmas for shoppers in Hong Kong.

K11 is a concept ‘art’ mall in the city.

OgilvyOne Worldwide Hong Kong has launched a Christmas campaign based on the famous architect Antoni Gaudi and his unfinished masterpiece, Sagrada Familia, in Barcelona.

K11 wants shoppers who are fans and friends to help ‘complete’ his masterpiece—an installation at the Mall in Hong Kong. To start, shoppers can submit their designs through Facebook; and then, with the help of a free iPhone AR app called ‘Layar’, they can view their virtual decorations along with hundreds of other designs.

“Through social networking sites we are teasing over 11,000 K11 Facebook fans and friends to create their own virtual Gaudi-styled Christmas decoration. The intent is to drive a branded viral experience, which takes you from your computer to the mall and into your smartphone within the mall,” said Kitty Wong, managing director of OgilvyOne Worldwide Hong Kong."

[via Ogilvy]

Games of Nonchalance: Art, Transmedia and ARGs in San Francisco

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Excerpt:

JH: "...I thought of you recently as I was giving a talk on remix culture. We ended up discussing the Situationist concept of detournement, and it occurred to me that this is a good baseline description of the kind of work Nonchalance does. Is that what you've been doing all these years, detourning the Bay Area (and sundry other places)?

JW: I never thought of it in that way, but the answer is yes, absolutely. I've always been a cut & paste, drag & drop kind of artist, and shamelessly so. I have no qualms about it because I know that what I've produced from these other sources is completely original.

JH: One of the things I like the most about Situationist art is how it's geared toward inspiring the viewer/participant to discover the untapped possibilities of the world around them -- "to expose the appalling contrast between the potential constructions of life and the present poverty of life." What are the potentials you're exposing, and what kinds of poverty -- intellectual, emotional, or even economic -- do your projects work against?

JW: "Potential constructions of life" is a great description for what we've attempted. We're presenting this parallel universe in which we're actively at war with banality and routine. It's a guerrilla street war, too, not some hypothetical plane. The potential is for collective behavior that promotes warmth and trust, communicating something very meaningful through mass media, and generally allowing for variation, color and fun in the civic realm. The poverty exposed is that of spontaneity and creativity in every day life. We don't always recognize how confined or restricted or repressed we are, and I'm speaking generally about "us" as a group or society, rather than us as individuals. Re-imagining and then reconstructing how we operate and function as a culture is our greatest aspiration. We can only do it in these microscopic slivers, though. The slivers exist in tandem with the rest of the world, often overshadowed by it, but they do exist, awaiting discovery by the curious dilettante...."

read the full interview:

http://www.jawbone.tv/articles/item/505-games-of-nonchalance-art-transmedia-a...