The project will find and capture in film, photography, music and text 100 individuals who represent the global population, proportionate to annual global surveys and statistics. This World Portrait will be used to make an introduction between the peoples of the earth and to facilitate a greater understanding of the diversity and the commonalities among us.   

Looking through the stats of the people who would be part of the ‘ideal’ 100, it’s interesting to compare the world you would picture in 100 people to the actual 100.  I’d love to see the same idea applied to one of the world’s many global firms.  Take a look at some of the stats after the jump to see how different your image of the global 100 is to the actual. 

Gender

• 50 would be female
• 50 would be male 

First Languages 

• 17 would speak Chinese
• 8 would speak Hindustani
• 8 would speak English
• 7 would speak Spanish
• 4 would speak Arabic
• 4 would speak Russian
• 3 would speak Bengali
• 2 would speak Malay-Indonesian
• 2 would speak French
• 45 would speak other languages (this one suprised me) 

Drinking Water

• 83 would have access to safe drinking water
• 17 would use unimproved water  
• 50 would live in poverty  

Religion

• 31 would be Christian
• 21 would be Muslim
• 14 would be Hindu
• 6 would be Buddhist
• 12 would believe in other religions
• 16 would not be religious or identify themselves as being aligned with a particular faith 

Technology

• 34 would be cell phone subscribers
• 17 would be active internet users
• 1 would own a computer 

 A few more. 

Downloading and streaming high definition movie files (both .FLV and .MOV) is increasingly becoming both quick and convenient through the combination of the H.264 compression codec, high-speed internet connections (getting faster constantly as Rogers now offers 16mbit down connections, and Verizon offers 20mbit), cheap hard disk storage, and decreasing bandwidth costs – the perfect storm. It resembles the MP3 phenomenon of 2001 that was accelerated by Winamp and Napster.

The Net Generation norms include Speed (we want things NOW), Freedom (when and where WE want them), and Entertainment (keep everything fun will you?). As David pointed out earlier in his post here, we Net Gener’s are not against spending money. We’ve grown up in fruitful times (which may be ending very soon), and have always been able to scrounge up money to spend (credit – could be why things may turn bad now). A lot of us choose to pirate because it’s just that much more convenient and flexible. We can grab the files via Bit-Torrent, watch them when we want on our PCs, burn them into a DVD, resize them for our iPods and mobiles. One file – many screens.Consumer electronics are quickly becoming networked internet appliances – many TVs and set-top boxes already have integrated Ethernet ports. From the other end, computers are showing up in the living in the form of home-theatre PCs. The saturation of internet connected devices with displays is far higher than any HD optical disk player.

Content delivery networks (CDN) are the backbone of delivering this rich media to users on demand and have seen large venture capital funding rounds as large as $97M this year. With this advancement there has been an influx of online movie rental portals with big names such as NetFlix, Amazon, and even Blockbuster entering the space (who has started to close brick and mortar locations). A set-top box called the VUDU has also entered the market, which is a unique combination of traditional consumer electronic device (much like TiVo) which connects to the internet and allows you to download for purchase or rental, DVD or HD quality movies as quickly as it is available in stores.

So this holiday season, don’t fret over HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Actually, don’t ever make this decision, because I believe that 2008 and beyond belongs to the digital file.

We’re coming up to the one month anniversary of Beacon’s announcement and the privacy concerns surrounding it have yet to disappear. Concerns have actually grown and now include their landmark advertising partners–an original list of over 40 websites including Coca-Cola, Sony Pictures, Sony Online, Blockbuster, The Knot, TripAdvisor, TypePad, Overstock.com, Yelp, WeddingChannel.com, Zappos.com and Verizon. It is quite the impressive list of web sites that attract large amounts of traffic on a daily basis. However, a few of these early-adopters (Coca-Cola, Overstock.com) have yet to implement it on their end, and may never will.

For those who have been bombarded with Beacon in the title of their RSS feeds and have ignored them, here is the gist on how it works.

Beacon is part of the Facebook Ads platform that was introduced on November 6th. Beacon tracks certain activities of all users on participating web sites, and then sends all of this data back to Facebook. Within the data, those who are identified as Facebook members and have opted-in to Beacon have announcements inserted into their news feed. Activities that are sent to your Facebook friends include purchasing a product, signing up for a service, and adding an item to a wish list.

The biggest cause for concern is that ALL visitors to the site, Facebook member or not, will have their information sent to Facebook for some sort of analysis. At the bare minimum it is to identify which visitors are Facebook users (a Facebook cookie is pulled by the affiliate). They state that all additional data will be deleted. However, Facebook broke consumer trust when it was revealed that members of their staff spy on members–and it may take more than a simple promise from Facebook to reassure their betrayed user base and their affiliates such breaches of privacy don’t occur again.

Stefan Berteau of Computer Associates points out, “There is, to a certain extent, a privacy concern with the affiliate site; in that it’s important for them to disclose that they’ll be sending information about user actions to Facebook”. Concerns like these are what have stopped certain affiliates from implementing Beacon – along with the obvious analytics Facebook can mine on their affiliate’s websites.

Facebook has gone ahead and implemented some of the feedback (demands) from its outraged users by changing the default setting of having to opt-out of Beacon to having to opt-in. That was a big blow to their advertising platform – the number of exposures they can offer their Beacon affiliates decrease significantly.

If you’re really paranoid, and want to surf the 40+ affiliate websites without Facebook getting “your information”, the power of web 2.0 has already created a wikiHow page on how to put on the internet version of a tin-foil hat.

No real sane Facebook user is going to opt-in to Beacon – everyone wins but the user.

Now, Digg is bringing their version of democracy to the US Elections with ‘Digg the Candidates’.  Click through to read more about this new section of Digg, to see Barack Obama’s Digg profile, and what candidates are achieving by joining Digg.

Presidential candidates were invited to join Digg and have been interacting with the Digg community like every other member. They post stories, they Digg stories, they favourite stories and the driving factor behind their ‘Digg the Candidate’ standings is the number of friends they have accumulated. And by they, I mean the candidates campaign team.

Apparently, Ron Paul has been a Digg member since February and Obama since May, long before this site feature was available – so they do have a head-start on all other candidates. As of now, Ron Paul leads the pack with ~3300 friends. Surprisingly, Hillary is a no show thus far, but her profile is reportedly in the works. She has been great at adopting Web 2.0 best practices. Her campaign website is essentially a social network of supporters where individuals can even create and manage their own online fundraising campaign for Hillary.

This is a great example of a Web 2.0 strategy being implemented in the election. With Digg creating this outlet for their members, the candidates that choose to get involved (most if not all it seems), are effectively engaging and communicating to males of the Net Generation who predominantly browse Digg. You can learn a lot by viewing the stories someone chooses to Digg. Go ahead and befriend your favourite candidate.

Now I bet you still have no clue what it is – many bloggers have tried to define it. But, alas there is no classification for this device – it’s carving out a market of its own. From looking at the applications that have been created for it, it seems to be trying to remove those annoying walks to the PC for pieces of small information. It’s a pretty much a throw pillow stuffed with Wi-Fi, a 3.5” touch screen, two USB 2.0 ports, an accelerometer, speakers and a headphone jack. Click through for more pictures and to read what really makes this device unique.Out of the box, it displays your Flickr and Facebook accounts when you want to show those digital photos to friends and family when they come over, there’s no need to crowd them up the stairs and to your office. Instead, you can throw them a Chumby and let them pass it around. It displays the 5-day forecast in the mornings, it updates you on that EBay auction you’ve been watching, watch a quick YouTube video, view some RSS feeds, or grab a quick Rotten Tomatoes review on your way out the door to the movie.

Most importantly, it is an open platform. So the applications won’t end there. Not only do they have a software developer kit for it to create widgets, but it also has hardware developer kit too. So use Chumby as it was intended or don’t and build whatever you please from it – they like to call them Chumby crafts.

It’s somewhat launched now but will be official in January of 08’ where it will be selling for about ~$180. I like the direction of this unique new product and hope to see more consumer electronics heading in the same direction in the near future. I can’t wait to get my hands one of these things, the fun widgets can have with the accelerometer are endless (ala iPhone) – at the very least it’ll be an alarm clock that I can throw at the wall in the mornings. Go get one and start developing!

New York’s well-known statute creates both a misdemeanour and a civil cause of action for “any person whose name, portrait, picture, or voice is used within this state for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade without the written consent first obtained.”

As expected, the new ad platform has raised an onslaught of privacy objections, not unlike the ones raised when Facebook revealed the news feed feature. But unlike the news feed feature, this move by Facebook has profit motives behind it and will obviously be only beneficial to Facebook and its advertisers.

…users are only asked in general if they want to share information, not if they want their name and picture to be featured in an ad for some product.

The information made available to advertisers may not be personally identifiable but privacy laws treat information that can possibly be used in advertising distincitively different from regular privacy information. One of four common-law privacy torts does not allow appropriation.

“One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name of likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for an invasion of his privacy.”

As William McGeveran noted on his blog, “I don’t see how broad general consent to share one’s information translates into the specific written consent necessary for advertisers to use one’s name (and often picture) under this law.” The platform is going to be challenged and is looking a lot like a paradigm shift in advertising. The outcome of all of these challenges will create precedence for similar platforms to emerge.

Much like Google’s OpenSocial, what if marketing networks like Federated Media were to handle the monetization of all other remaining social networks – if Facebook can exploit its users, it’s only fair (and good business sense) for the others join in too.

In hopes of cleaning up Italy’s publishing-related regulations, the law would require non-professional, not-for-profit blogs and editorials to register with Italy’s registry of “communication operators”. By doing so, they would inadvertently be accepting a new journalistic standard which if not followed carefully, can lead to fines and even jail time for what many blogs could be guilty for – libel and defamation of character. This is already the case in Poland, their Act of Press Law (Prawo Prasowe) which like the Italian law, forces newspapers and magazines to register was amended by High Court to include websites and blogs in July.

A lot of the success of the blogosphere can be attributed to the fact that the internet is a soapbox for many of us with very few rules and to increase the potential liability for a blogger would definitely encroach on our freedom of speech online.

Now, libel and the blogosphere have met in the past. There have been many cases where blogs have been sued for libelous comments or defamation of character. But for the most part, it is generally accepted that if the piece of libelous writing is only available on the internet – then you’re pretty much guilty of nothing. It’s looked upon as the equivalent to writing rumours about a friend on a Facebook wall. Not that big of a deal right?

Not too long ago (last week actually), these words were written on our blog regarding Radiohead’s move to offer their new album via their website. Clearly, we were hopeful that other members of the music industry would catch on… and a few have caught on faster than most of us expected.

In the past week we’ve seen a few more large recording acts announce that they will be moving forward without the big music labels in tow.

Nine Inch Nails – in true Web 2.0 fashion they posted their announcement on their blog.

Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed.

Oasis – without a contract with a big label, the group is rumoured to be following Radiohead’s example. Additionally, they have announced that their next single will only be available via a 99 pence download.

Jamiroqua – also without a big label contract, the group is also rumoured to be following Radiohead’s example.

Madonna – in a deal consisting of $120 million US in cash and stock, she is reported to be entering a contract with Live Nation (largest promoter of live concerts in the world – they are not a record label) to distribute three studio albums, promote concert tours, sell merchandise and license her name. This would mean she is officially done with Warner Music after delivering one more greatest hits CD as per her current contract.

One characteristic common in all of the above artists is that they are all well-accomplished and well-known acts. They’re all veterans and products of the current music industry and yet they are jumping ship – a strong sign of something seriously wrong with the industry’s current business model.

That said, the new web is one of direct delivery from creator to consumer and vice versa, one that removes the middle man. Is there even room for record labels anymore? Maybe, but I don’t think they will resemble its current size and glamour.

The ‘free’ business model topic is discussed by Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail) on the latest edition of the GigaOm Show, where he speaks about certain topics covered in his upcoming book entitled “Free: The past and future of a radical price”.

It has become obvious that in order to have a chance at becoming big on the internet these days, you’ll need to be free in one form or another. There is very little reason not to offer at least one service for free since technology has made startup costs low and maintenance costs such as bandwidth practically free. Taking a glance at Web 2.0 heartthrobs such as Facebook, Digg, YouTube and Flickr, two distinct business models have surfaced and Chris describes them as: Give away the product and sell the audience (ad supported like Digg, Facebook and YouTube) and give away to 99% of the customers to get 1% to pay (premium service such as a pro account on Flickr).

The best part about Chris Anderson’s upcoming book is that it too will be available for… that’s right… free. The book will be available for free as an audio book in MP3 format, in an eBook format as he believes those who own eBooks are influential, in a typical online format, and surprisingly he is working on getting his book ad supported and ideally it too will be free. Personally, I think that last one is going to be a tough sell to the publishers.

Now what would be the reasoning behind a free book? Well, he argues when you give the book away for free, the book becomes a marketing vessel for the author. More people will read the book and become aware of the author Chris Anderson. Chris would essentially be building his personal brand. By doing so, he will see a spike in demand for his other ‘products’ such as speaking engagements, which unlike downloading an MP3 has become more expensive due to travel costs. The economics behind this one is simple, there is only one Chris Anderson, so supply remains the same, but demand will increase significantly, which makes the scarce resource of his time more valuable.

Click the image below to view the short interview with Chris Anderson, taken from The GigaOm Show Episode 10 – TechCrunch40.

There are also other great interviews you can see in the full version of the show that includes interviews with Marc Andreessen, David Sacks and the guys from Engadget. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned this show – I’m a big fan of its an awesome look into the business side of Web 2.0.

The violation allegedly occurs when companies using DRM within their products (i.e. DRM protected music) fail to disclose in their privacy policies the personal information the vendor collects and embeds for DRM purposes.

“If there’s personal information collection use or disclosure going on, there has to be consent and the form of consent has to be appropriate to the circumstances,” Fewer said.

“We agree that in many cases consent doesn’t have to come in the form of expressed consent. But, in other circumstances, particularly where it was unexpected or whether what was being collected was related to core biographical data, we would have thought you would need to see expressed consent.”

The article goes on to mention that the main concern comes from a privacy policy’s lack of disclosure regarding the third-party companies and marketers found linked with the DRM systems and where your information is used. They use Intuit’s QuickTax as an example.

“It wasn’t the use of QuickTax itself that triggered the concern, but rather the use of Intuit’s online filing service where we found buried in one of the disclosures the notice that, as an international corporation, Intuit would send information across the border,” Fewer said.

“Now if you’re Canadian and are concerned about your financial data going to the U.S. where it might be vulnerable to the Patriot Act, you may want to know that kind of information up front,” he added.

Another major piece of the study looks at IP addresses and how it is collected, used and disclosed. Currently under Canadian laws, IP addresses aren’t regarded as ‘personal information’ so it may be communicated freely.

However contradictorily, certain Canadian courts along with the Privacy Commissioner have released decisions where the IP address has been interpreted as personal information. It isn’t just government who is taking camp on both sides of the argument, but big companies as well. For example, Sony BMG, who have said that IP addresses are not personal information, happily sue people in file sharing lawsuits on the basis of IP addresses and linking them to activities. The IP address argument is one that involves many nations and is continually debated.

Copyright and privacy laws in Canada have always been slightly differing from those of the United States, proving to be tricky for many corporations to operate in both environments with the same policies. A good example of this was Canada’s levy on blank media that was suspected to be used to record copyright material (yes, that’s right, they assumed we were all guilty and charged us for it). At first it included MP3 players, adoringly labeled the ‘iPod tax’ – roughly equating to $1CDN per GB of storage. The Canadian Federal Court of Appeal eventually ruled that it was unlawful to include MP3 players as blank media and Apple reimbursed their customers.

PlaySpan’s business model is based on selling virtual goods from within virtual worlds and have signed up seven MMOG publishers to access a potential customer base of 10 million MMOG users. According to PlaySpan, in-game transactions have just surpassed the $2 billion mark, and their upcoming product well help facilitate more of these micro-transactions.

Oh and the best part of this story is that the founder of PlaySpan Inc. is in the 6th grade.

PlaySpan is founded by Arjun Mehta, a 6th grader, passionate about gaming and software programming that can make game playing experience exciting and more importantly rewarding!

PlaySpan started in Arjun’s garage in Silicon Valley in 2006 and was incorporated with Arjun’s earnings from selling online game items won from quests he fought while attending 5th grade at Challenger School in San Jose.

The most controversal topic seems to be the length of data retention. Most would naturally want companies such as Google to drop the data as soon as possible, but the government would like it to exist for as long as they say so. Google’s chief privacy officer Peter Fleischer stated the following, regarding international privacy standards:

“To be effective, privacy laws need to go global…But for those laws to be observed and effective, a realistic set of standards must emerge. It is absolutely imperative that these standards are aligned to today’s commercial realities and political needs, but they must also reflect technological realities.”

Other companies in search of the same set of standards include Yahoo, Ask.com and Microsoft.

“Visitors to Netscape.com will see a more traditional news experience very soon. …Many of you may remember that Netscape.com used to be much different than it is today. In fact, it used to contain more mainstream news before we shifted to the social news site you see now. We received some feedback that people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled.”

Netscape.com’s portal was similar to Digg’s concept where the community was able to control what was made popular but it also featured an editorial layer monitoring the stories that made the front page. It has had limited success since last June, when it was introduced as a ‘social experiment’ by Jason Calcanis (founder of WebLogs Inc).

Netscape made headlines when Jason announced on his blog that he was willing to pay $1000 to the top Digg, Reddit and Flickr users to start posting on Netscape. This move also created a small ‘spat’ between Jason and Digg founder, Kevin Rose. Since then, Jason has left AOL and on Episode 2 of the GigaOM show, Kevin and Jason are interviewed by Om Malik where they discuss the similarities between the two sites.

They continued the ‘opening’ of the Facebook by releasing the Facebook platform, allowing anyone to create applications for Facebook. It even allows creators to display their own ads within the applications – making the business of writing Facebook applications a financially lucrative one. Could they really open up any more?

Apparently yes they can, as someone at Facebook accidentally revealed the PHP code behind their homepage – a cause for alarm as a mistake like that could lead to breaches in security. At this point one would think that Facebook would stop revealing itself, at least until their community felt 100% secure again. However, not shortly after they announced that they would be opening up their data feeds.

The latest attempt to open Facebook up is with the ‘Public Listing Search’. This allows anyone to visit the site and search Facebook for a specific person. Doing so could potentially reveal your name and you current profile picture. The privacy option to opt out exists as well. The real cause of concern comes from what is one month away, as Facebook plans to open the ‘Public Listing Search’ to search engine indexes – so change that risky profile picture now before Google caches it in their Image Search.

All of this ‘opening’ up has led to a healthy amount of growth (and privacy anxiety among members) with their latest estimated value pegged at $10-billion.