How ‘likes’ bring votes – Narendra Modi’s campaign on Facebook:

Like it or not, India has just concluded its first social media election.

It is no coincidence that the national parties that were late adopters or did not have a social media strategy also acquired the image of non-transparency, out of sync with the aspirations of the youth, first-time voters and other key voting demographics in the country. Undoubtedly, this was India’s first election with such large-scale usage of technology, open-access internet platforms to connect, build conversations, share, mobilise opinion and citizen action. Prime minister-elect Narendra Modi saw this first-hand and had the first-mover advantage in using these technology tools to reach out to India’s huge youth demographic.

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The Central Asia Digital Islam Project:

The Internet and social media are slowly beginning to revolutionize the Islamic marketplace of ideas for Central Asians. Similar to processes identified by scholars like Peter Mandaville in other contexts, Central Asia’s access to digital Islam has been delayed by low Internet penetration, authoritarian controls on media and communication, and, in part, by Central Asia’s peripheral status in the Muslim world. Advances in communications technology and large-scale migration are rapidly eroding these obstacles, however, allowing Central Asians to increasingly participate in trans-national Islamic discourses through digital media.

Some of the latest Terms of Service in Linkedin’s User Agreement:

Linkedin’s Unlimited License to Sell My Information to Anyone: Section 2.2 of the user agreement grants Linked an unlimited license to do whatever it wants with the information you post on Linkedin, including the right “to use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered . . . without any further consent, notice and/or compensation.”

Linkedin’s Right to Control Who Sees My Information: Section 2.2 also gives Linkedin the right to control other users’ “access and share rights to your content and information.”

Read more on the report by Heather Bussing on HR Examiner

Via Tech Crunch and WSJ a graphical display of the dollars flowing into the Capitol for lobbying activities of tech companies like Google, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Yahoo.

Ev Williams definition of social media: Media for which the consumer’s relationship with the creator is relevant for understanding or value.

If you don’t know the people, or don’t care, it’s probably not social media. It’s just media. It doesn’t matter if it’s created by an individual or a corporation.

What’s more, when companies use social media…well, they’re not. They may be using platforms that are primarily used for social media (like Facebook) or platforms that are used for social media, among other things (like Twitter), but that doesn’t make the companies—or their media—social.

The valuations of messaging apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat and others are, obviously, stunning. Allowing proper private communication among users is an obvious easy win. And yet Twitter has never really cared about private messaging. Direct messaging is a long neglected product, and Twitter doesn’t seem to care much about it. I wonder if Twitter execs regret not paying more attention to private messaging, and if they occasionally fantasize about the extra tens of billions of dollars they might have added to their market cap if they had done so. Via Uncrunched.

Amid a wide range of new platforms to manage streams of data from the Internet of things, a simple version emerges that anyone can use. Read David Talbot’s report on MIT’s Technology Review

With a new service called Freeboard, Bug Labs is giving people a simple one-click way to publish data from a “thing” to its own Web page (Bug Labs calls this “dweeting”). To get a sense of this, visit Dweet.io with your computer or mobile phone, click “try it now,” and you’ll see raw data from your device itself: its GPS coordinates and even the position of your computer mouse. The data is now on a public Web page and available for analysis and aggregation; another click stops this sharing.

LTE Will Let Your Car’s Computer Update Like Your Smartphone. Think about it: The average person hangs onto a car for about 11 years. The average lifespan of a computer or tablet or smartphone is, what, three at the high end? So that super-slick infotainment setup in the center console is gonna feel pretty dated long before you’re ready to trade up for a new set of wheels. But what if the carmaker could push updates to the system anytime they wanted? We’re not there just yet, but it’s an intriguing idea.

[Watch this video on YouTube]

This year at the New York Auto Show, Chevrolet rolled out LTE features on several of its new models, including the Traxx SUV. For the time being, the system’s applications are fairly simple. There are apps like iHeartRadio and The Weather Channel, and the car can also serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to seven devices.

The conflict in Syria is being presented to the international community through a complex mix of state, opposition, international and local media sources. Individuals and NGOs in Syria have also effectively used social media to show the world the horrors of the conflict. As the crisis has evolved, so too have the ways in which activists have deployed the media available to them.

Join the conversation of New America online on the evolution of media throughout the conflict using #MediaInSyria and following @NatSecNAF

President Obama delivered a speech at the Department of Justice to announce the outcomes of a broad-ranging and unprecedented review of U.S. intelligence programs.

[Also read 1) The Fight Against Big, Bad Data 2) Big Data and the Future of Privacy]

The review examined how, in light of new and changing technologies, we can use our intelligence capabilities in a way that optimally protects our national security while supporting our foreign policy, respecting privacy and civil liberties, maintaining the public trust, and reducing the risk of unauthorized disclosures.

Additionally, President Obama issued a new presidential policy directive for our signals intelligence activities, at home and abroad. This directive lays out new principles that govern how we conduct signals intelligence collection, and strengthens how we provide executive branch oversight of our signals intelligence activities.

Watch the speech below, or see this White House fact sheet to learn more.

Intelligence Chief Issues Limits on Press Contacts – NYTimes.com
At the same time The Obama administration has barred officials at 17 agencies from speaking to journalists about unclassified intelligence-related topics without permission.