Patent for office surveillance software

Times Online has a report on new office surveillance software being designed by Microsoft. The software will monitor worker’s performance by wireless sensors that measure “heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure.” Even more interesting is the fact that the technology is the subject of a patent Read more

By Andres Guadamuz, ago

The strange world of blog comments

While this blog has achieved decent readership figures, the comment function is still rather under-used. There are several reasons for that: in my experience there seems to be a critical mass of readers vs comments, which I have not reached yet; Blogger’s interface does not encourage comments; and also most Read more

By Andres Guadamuz, ago

GikII 2

(The cast of GikII visit Jeremy Bentham on their way to the obligatory pub visit) As I mentioned earlier, last week we held the second edition of GikII in London. PDF versions of the presentations can be downloaded from the site so that you can wonder at the geek’s superior Read more

By Andres Guadamuz, ago

Caught on Facebook

The Times Online reports on the use of Facebook to enforce some of Oxford University’s strict regulations on post-exam celebrations. I have it on good authority that students post pictures of drunken shenanigans on Facebook, some of which fall foul of existing rules. Staff have used those pictures to warn Read more

By Andres Guadamuz, ago

Data Protection film-making

Faceless is an unusual film for many reasons. The plot, apparently, talks of a world where everybody’s faceless due to calendar reform (huh?), but one day a woman wakes up and finds she has a face (Terry Gilliam meets Kafka). What makes the film truly unique is that it is Read more

By Andres Guadamuz, ago

Trouble with jurisdiction

While listening to the excellent podcast Digital Planet from the BBC, I heard a horror story about the problems of regulating cyberspace. While just a couple of days ago I sounded rather optimistic about the prospects of regulating online environments, this story lays bare some of the real problems of Read more

By Andres Guadamuz, ago

Privacy concerns

Thursday is privacy day, and we have been presented with two contrasting presentations. First Carlos Gregorio from Argentina gave a very interesting presentation about privacy concerns in Latin America, making specific comments about the theoretical distinctions between certain terms, such is intimacy, privacy and information self-determinism. Then Lilian Edwards has Read more

By Andres Guadamuz, ago