data

Just as you choose where your money goes after you die, you should be able to control your "digital assets" -- your online data -- when you pass away, according to a University of Illinois law professor.

Professor Jason Mazzone has written a paper titled "Facebook's Afterlife," which argues that federal agencies are responsible for safeguarding "digital afterlives" in the same manner that a bank has a duty to properly bequeath a deceased person's assets.

Mazzone, an expert in intellectual property law, says the U.S. government should take a solid role … Read more

Facebook, under pressure to show its power as an advertising medium, is urging advertisers to consider the bigger picture instead of measuring success with the number of clicks an ad gets.

The company says that a majority of sales come from people who see, but don't necessarily click on, online ads that promote campaigns, according to a study done in partnership with Datalogix, which compiles consumer purchasing data from retail stores.

Brad Smallwood, Facebook's head of measurement and insights, talked about the study -- which analyzed nearly 50 digital campaigns -- today at an advertising conference in New York. … Read more

Designer, software developer, and hacker Stef Lewandowski has pulled tweets out of the digital ether and formed them into wearable works of art. His Data Necklace is a combination of your Twitter account, a year-in-review archive, and a data visualization of your tweeting activities.

Here's the breakdown. Each bead is cut from acrylic. The 12 pairs of beads each represent one month of data. One bead represents the number of tweets by its length and a series of notches cut into the sides. The second bead carries a laser-etched tweet from that time period containing a particular keyword such as "love."… Read more

Apple issued a software update for the iPhone 5 on Verizon Wireless's network Sunday that will fix a problem that causes some Verizon iPhone 5 customers to use their Verizon data allotment when they they're connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Apple issued a the software update on Sunday and posted instructions for getting the update.

1. Tap Settings > General > About.

2. Wait for the following alert to appear:

3. Tap OK to install the update.

4. Hold the Sleep/Wake button down until you see "slide to power off".

5. Slide to power off.… Read more

Uploading a YouTube video causes it to be converted to the format used for streaming by the service. If you ever lose your videos, you could always grab the converted versions from the YouTube site, but what if you want the originals?

Google Takeout is now offering the ability to download the original versions of your videos, as mentioned by the Google Data Liberation blog. Takeout allows you to export data like settings, groups, or photos from Google's other Web sites and services.

Unfortunately, you can only download all videos together at this time. There's no option to … Read more

Protecting your privacy online sometimes seems like an uphill battle, but it is certainly worth the effort. Facebook has paired up with a data collection company called Datalogix with the goal of improving its advertisement system. The process uses information from programs like loyalty cards and pairs online data with offline data, putting your privacy at a greater risk.

Luckily, opting out of this service (and protecting your privacy) is as simple as following a few links and filling out a form. Read on to see how to do it.

Step 1: Open a web browser and go to … Read more

"There's that pesky speed of light." That cautionary remark was offered by Lee Ziliak of Verizon Data Services, speaking on a panel at the 451 Group's Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit last week. The context was that hybrid cloud environments may logically appear as something homogeneous, but application architectures need to take the underlying physical reality into account.

Latency, the time it takes to move data from one location to another, often gets overlooked in performance discussions. There's long been a general bias toward emphasizing the amount of data rather than the time it takes … Read more