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As Location-Sharing Services Grow, Privacy Concerns Do Too

As the list of programs that collect users’ location information grows, concern about privacy risks is increasing along with it.

Facebook is set to add location-sharing to its popular site next month. Meanwhile, services such as Foursquare and Loopt have been adding users, and a plethora of smaller tools have sprung up as well. But a study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University showed that the majority of the more than 80 location services it surveyed either don’t have privacy policy or collect and save all data for an indefinite amount of time.

The Carnegie Mellon study found that people value the ability to find others in an emergency and get information based on their location. Lorrie Cranor, an associate professor of computer science and one of the authors of the study, said people also value location-based advertising in some circumstances — a good thing for the companies that are building a business around precisely that. But she said many people just don’t realize what a database of all the locations they’ve been at over time could mean.

“There are a lot of concerns about the government being able to subpoena this information,” Ms. Cranor said in an interview. She also cited divorce proceedings as a possible way in which a person’s location data could be used.

The saved information is just one potential problem. The site pleaserobme.com, which broadcasts when people send status messages showing they aren’t at home, has gotten a lot of attention recently and shows just how many people are sharing their location information with the entire Internet.

The Carnegie Mellon study, which was updated last month ahead of a hearing on consumer privacy, also analyzed the services based on how many options users had for adjusting what they broadcast. They found that although nearly half of the services allowed restriction to users denoted as a “friend,” only about 15% allowed users to “blacklist” others and about 35% allowed the user to go “invisible” — sending location data but not being seen by others. Ms. Cranor and others on the team have been working on a model location-sharing system called Locaccino that gives users the ability to finely tune how they share their information. The system allows people to set rules that determine when to share information and what people to share it with. For example, you could set the system to allow coworkers to see your location during business hours only, or only when you’re in an office complex. Ms. Cranor said the system was set up in part to show that such fine-tuning could be done, so “maybe some of the commercial services will adopt some of these ideas.”

(The full study, by Janice Tsai, Patrick Kelley, Norman Sadeh and Ms. Cranor, is available here.)

Readers, what do you think? Do you share your location via social-networking? Do you find it problematic?

Battery Ventures Raises New $750 Million Fund

In a grim climate for venture-capital fundraising, there have been only a few positive glimmers. One of those glimmers: Battery Ventures has closed a new $750 million fund.

The new fund would be one of the bigger venture funds raised in the first quarter of this year as venture-capital firms largely continue to struggle to collect new money. Other notable new fund closings so far this year include Redpoint Ventures, which raised a $400 million fund.

Tom Crotty, a general partner at Battery, said the firm raised its new fund over a five-month period. While the process of collecting money for the fund was “no different” than for Battery’s previous funds, Mr. Crotty said he noticed a very different response from investors.

In the past, investors in Battery’s venture funds might have just taken one meeting to do due diligence on the new fund, with some deciding to put money in without any meetings at all, said Mr. Crotty. This time, “what was different was the absolute number of meetings and the volume of due-diligence calls,” he noted. Every single investor dug down this time, taking at least two meetings in Battery’s East Coast and West Coast offices, he said.

Investors “are really raising the bar on who their (venture-capital) managers are,” said Mr. Crotty. He added that this was a positive development that would lead to a restructuring of venture capital as a smaller, less crowded industry.

It helped that Battery proactively offered some investor-friendly terms. The firm lowered its carried interest fee–the fee that it takes on profits made in the fund–to 20% from 25% previously, though the fee would rise to 30% after the fund returns three times its capital, said Mr. Crotty. In addition, Battery’s partners showed their commitment by putting more money into the fund themselves than in its past funds, among other moves, he said.

Michael Taylor, a managing director at HarbourVest Partners LLC, a fund-of-funds that invests in venture-capital funds, said Battery’s investor-friendly terms were welcomed. Battery “listened to the market and did their homework and knew where the sensitivities were,” Mr. Taylor said. “They defused it right from the start.”

Mr. Taylor added that HarbourVest wanted to invest in Battery’s new fund because the firm is “consistently upper quartile” in terms of performance and is well-managed so that “there are no surprises.”

Battery’s new fund is the same size as its last fund, a $750 million fund that closed in 2007, though the firm didn’t close an additional “sidecar” fund this time as it did last time. Overall, 15% of the capital in the fund comes from new investors–primarily international capital souces and private pension money–while the rest comes from existing investors, said Mr. Crotty.

Battery plans to start investing out of the fund in the late summer of early fall of this year, he said. Battery will invest in both young companies as well as more mature companies, he added.

Target Targets Your Cellphone

Your iPhone can now save you $1 on cheese.

Giant discount retailer Target announced on Wednesday that it was rolling out a program to beam coupons directly to customers’ smartphones. The mobile coupons work just like their old-fashioned paper cousins: the checkout clerk scans them right from a barcode on your cellphone screen.

You get the coupons by signing up to receive SMS from Target, either at http://m.target.com or by texting COUPONS to 827438 (TARGET). After doing so, you’ll get text messages about once per month with a link to a mobile Web page that contains multiple special offers for super-techie shoppers. It would work on any cellphone that includes a Web browser.

Target is hardly the first brand to experiment with mobile coupons – there are apps aplenty that proffer deals at local stores, and J.C. Penney has tested a similar effort in some of its stores. But Target may be just about the largest retailer to roll out this sort of effort in all of its stores. The retailer claims its advanced point-of-sale technology makes it the first national retailer with the ability to scan mobile barcodes in all of its stores. (The checkout clerk has to use the hand-held reader for it to work.) Target also has an iPhone app that lets people access gift cards, manage gift registries, browse weekly ads, and check product pricing and availability at local stores.

It remains to be seen how convenient shoppers will find coupons on their cellphones, as opposed to snipped out of Sunday circulars. And just how much overlap is there between the average coupon-clipping Target shopper and the owner of an iPhone?

Target spokeswoman Leah Guimond said the company doesn’t have data on the penetration of smartphones among the retailer’s shoppers. “We know our guests are relying more and more on mobile devices, so we’re providing convenient, on-the-go mobile solutions to help them make the most of their Target shopping experience,” she said.

Target’s coupon effort is notable, too, for some of the elements it is missing. The offers aren’t customized for you, and they don’t appear when you are in – or even better, getting close to – a Target. Those are all features that the technology already built into most smartphones could accomplish. Target’s Ms. Guimond said the company is exploring more personalization.

Still, Target’s move is part of a wider trend: Retailers are hoping mobile technology can offer new ways to encourage shoppers to go into physical stores, rather than just buying everything online. Mobile coupons are just the tip of the iceberg. Last week’s sold-out Shop.org Innovation and Marketing Conference featured a host of brands and startups talking about ways to use mobile phones in stores to lure shoppers to deals — and even to replace the employees who often aren’t as knowledgeable about products as are their product listings and reviews on Amazon.com.

Wishful thinking, or the wave of the future?

Games in the Cloud Getting Closer, Two Startups Say

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to play fast-action videogames without needing a console or high-end PC? At least two start-ups say that feat is just months away.

The companies, OnLive and Otoy, have been developing technologies to deliver games from “the cloud”–industry jargon for serving up software over the Internet from remote data centers. Users won’t have to install game programs; the action will take place in a standard Web browser, aided by downloaded plug-in programs, the companies say.

This concept has become routine for standard software, but not for high-end games that require sophisticated graphics chips to simulate fancy three-dimensional environments. It means, among other things, that standard server systems are not sufficient; the machines hosting such services need special graphics cards and software, too.

Both start-ups began discussing their plans in early 2009 and gave updates on their progress Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. OnLive–which has received extra attention, in part because founder Steve Perlman has made news in past ventures–said it will begin operating in the continguous United States in June, with a basic service for delivering games to PCs and Macs that will be priced at $14.95 a month.

OnLive, of Palo Alto, Calif., said it will allow customers to purchase or rent games on an à la carte basis, which may require additional charges besides its base service. That service is expected to include “mass spectating”–live video of organized game matches–and the ability to take record footage of game play, which OnLive calls “brag clips,” and make video profiles of players.

“OnLive is delivering the first instant video-based social network,” proclaimed Perlman in a blog post.

Otoy, a Los Angeles-based company known for movie special effects, has been talking about similar capabilities since the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. At that event Advanced Micro Devices agreed to support the effort, along with contributing microprocessors and graphics chips. But Otoy’s plans have some new wrinkles.

Though it still plans to offer a gaming service itself, Otoy also wants to help others to host their own games. Otoy is partnering with Supermicro, a Silicon Valley computer maker, to sell specialized collections of servers for delivering online games.

A typical configuration is two refrigerator-sized racks, each capable of delivering 3,000 streams of video games, says Jules Urbach, Otoy’s chief executive. Each circuit board inside the rack has two of AMD next version of its Opteron microprocessor, known by the code-name Magny-Cours, that each have the equivalent of 12 calculating engines. Each board also has four graphics processing units, he says.

“It’s about ten cents an hour to deliver a high-definition game through our system,” Urbach says.

Besides streaming games, Urbach says, the company’s technology also will support the gradual download of games, so they could be played directly from a PC. Otoy is not discussing pricing of its services yet, but says what it calls Fusion Render Cloud Servers should hit the market in the second quarter.

One reason for the strategy adjustments, Urbach says, is the belief that online games will propagate more quickly if more companies can offer services. Some publishers also want to retain the direct relationship with consumers, rather than work through some service like Otoy. “They want to own the servers,” Urbach says. “That is why we’ve changed the model.”

OnLive executives dispute that argument, noting that their service will allow game publishers to have transparent access to customer information. They also contend that they will have a unique edge–a device called the MicroConsole TV Adapter, which will allow games to be played over the Internet on high-definition TVs, not just PCs. That’s where console games are played, and represents a major piece of the gaming market. OnLive has not indicated how much the device will cost.

One remaining question is just how well remote gaming will work over long distances. OnLive says that users will have to be within 1,000 miles of its three data centers, which it is establishing in California, Texas and Virginia. It is disclosing few details about its game content, but said a few of the anticipated early titles include Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins, Assassin’s Creed II, Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands, Borderlands and Metro 2033.

CERAWeek: LNG industry struggles with supply abundance, global recession

March 10,2010 –

Global LNG players are struggling with the current abundance of LNG capacity and the companion spike in supply from unconventional sources, mainly shale gas in North America.

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Bing Continues Slow Advance in Search Rankings

Two recent reports show Microsoft’s Bing advancing slightly in search rankings — but the surveys differ on who is losing out.

Data from Hitwise today show Bing rising a bit to 9.7% of searches in February from 9.37% in January, while Google’s giant share fell from 71.49% to 70.95%. Yesterday’s report from ComScore also showed a boost for Bing — to 11.5% from 11.3% in January. But ComScore’s data showed that Bing was taking search business not from Google, but from Yahoo, which fell to 16.8% from 17% in January.

Microsoft has been spending heavily for Bing. Jefferies & Company analyst Youssef Squali writes that Bing’s gains are “aided by the company’s aggressive marketing” but writes that its rise “is an indicator of sustainable traction.” He also writes that, with the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership this year, “Bing should become a viable competitor to Google.”

But Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider has another take, writing that “We think Bing is buying these share gains, which means that they won’t be building a profitable search business anytime soon.”

Google Adds Bike Routes To Maps; Beware Bear Gulch Road

From Tech Trader Daily:

Google this morning added bike routes to Google Maps, making it easier to plot your way by choosing bike trails, roads with bike lanes and other cycling-friendly byways.

That’s pretty exciting news for cyclists like yours truly, but a quick test found some kinks in the system.

My first test: a route from Palo Alto to Half Moon Bay, a challenging route that takes you over the Santa Cruz Mountains. The result was ridiculously complicated. But more importantly it included a long stretch on something called “Old Canada Road,” in a place which would be quite convenient for road riders, if only it were actually a road. Old Canada Road would appear to be a hiking trail that takes you around the western side of Crystal Springs Reservoir. Assuming you were even allowed to access that area, I don’t think you’d get very far on a road bike following those directions.

My second test: a route from Palo Alto to San Gregorio, another route over the Santa Cruz Mountains. This time, Google Maps wanted me to use Bear Gulch Road to climb from Woodside Road to Skyline Drive. That would be a nice idea, except that you can’t get through. Even worse, Google Maps wants me to take the rest of Bear Gulch from Skyline down to an intersection with San Gregorio Road, which is better known as Highway 84. The problem: after a huge, steep descent, of more than 1,000 feet, you’d come to a screeching dead-end; the road runs through a ranch owned by singer Neil Young. He might be able to take the road the rest of the way. But you can’t. No, at that point, your only option would be to turn around and take one seriously nasty climb back up the hill, with grades that soar well past 10%.

Ergo, riders, beware.

Here’s a little video from Google on how it works (or at least, how it is supposed to work):

Digits Live Show: Mobile’s Role in Technology’s Future

On the 10-year anniversary of the bursting of the technology bubble, Stacey Delo hosts a discussion with MarketWatch’s Mark Hulbert, WSJ’s Julia Angwin and AllThingsD.com’s Kara Swisher on mobile technology’s dominance of the tech sector.

Follow @staceydelo on Twitter.

MARKET WATCH: Oil and gas prices slip lower

March 10,2010 –

Oil and gas prices declined Mar. 9 under the weight of a stronger dollar, but crude still settled above $80/bbl for the fifth consecutive session in the New York market.

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Pedro Molina Becomes First Assistant Secretary for Native American Veterans Affairs

Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger swore in Pedro Molina as Assistant Secretary for Native American Veterans Affairs, the first such appointment in the nation.

The swearing in ceremony was attended by nearly 200 people, mostly Native Americans from California, according to a press release issued by the California Department of Veterans Affairs.

Molina, Yaqui, served in the U.S. Army from 1970 to 1973. Before his appointment, he served the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as American Indian program manager and marketing and community relations representative since 1998.