Subscriptionization, eBook-style

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This week’s CBC tech column is about Amazon’s rumoured book rental service. A copy is up at cbc.ca/tech, and below, for posterity.

The podcast version, posted below, includes a full interview with bookfuturist and Wired.com staff writer Tim Carmody.

Subscriptionization, eBook-style by misener

(download mp3)
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Details are slim, but on Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon.com is in talks with book publishers “about launching a Netflix Inc.-like service for digital books, in which customers would pay an annual fee to access a library of content.” The Amazon service could offer an all-you-can-read model, or a rate-limited model that includes a certain number of books per month.

If it’s true, and if such a service comes to be, it’ll be the latest in a growing trend towards what Ron J. Williams calls the “access economy“, which emphasizes access to products and services over ownership.

The idea of paying a flat fee for all-you-can-eat media is nothing new. Just look at the rapid growth of Netflix, which gained almost one million subscribers during its first 10 months in Canada. Or look at the growing geographic footprint and popularity of subscription-based music services like Spotify and Rdio. Given our increasing appetite for e-books (which outsold both paperbacks and hardcovers for the first time this past February), the written word is a logical next step in the march towards a subscription-based post-scarcity media landscape.

If Amazon does launch a digital book rental service, it won’t be the first.Booksfree.com has been around for more than a decade, and ships physical books to subscribers through the mail. Or there’s 24symbols, which sells premium e-book subscriptions that can be read online or via a mobile application. In the education space, five of the largest academic publishers in North America have teamed up to create an e-textbook rental service called CourseSmart.

But according to Wired.com staff writer and book-futurist Tim Carmody, Amazon is uniquely positioned in this space: “They’ve got the credit card accounts. They’ve got the customers. They’ve got the devices. If anyone is in a position to do it, and to do it well, Amazon would be the one to do it.”

A big factor here is Amazon’s existing business selling its Kindle e-reader. In fact, reports of a possible Amazon book subscription service dovetail nicely with rumours about the next-generation Kindle, whichTechCrunch’s MG Siegler reports will be a $250 7-inch touchscreen tablet running a highly customized version of Google’s Android operating system. The device is also reported to have tight integration with Amazon’s existing App Store and video and music streaming services.

It’s worth noting that with its video streaming service, Amazon has already dipped its toe into the world of content subscriptions. Earlier this year, it launched Amazon Instant Video, a U.S.-only Netflix competitor that streams movies and TV shows.

Buy or borrow

It’s also worth noting that there’s another very prominent all-you-can-read book and e-book service out there, and I’m already a member (you probably are, too). It’s called “the library.”

Many Canadian libraries offer e-books, and though they may self-destruct, they cost nothing to borrow. Over at The Guardian’sBooks Blog, Sarah Crown wonders what Amazon’s possible e-book rental service could mean for libraries: “If you can ‘borrow’ the ebook instantly from your living room, why would you bother schlepping into town to pick it up in person? It’s a super-smart move on the part of [Amazon], but the real-world fallout could be extensive.”

I’m not so sure about that. Libraries are much more than publicly-funded e-book repositories. But even if that’s all they were, your local public library could have a better selection of e-book titles than an Amazon service at launch, which would likely focus on older, back-catalogue titles.

It’ll all depend on the deals Amazon can (or can’t) make with publishers.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s report, “Amazon would offer book publishers a substantial fee for participating in the program.” Indeed, Amazon’s existing relationships with publishers could work to its advantage when setting up this kind of service.

But publishers can be resistant to change, and a mass-market subscription model would represent a very big change in the way books get to consumers. Tim Carmody says publishers are skeptical: “They have no idea how to price access to a service like this. And also because Amazon already exerts so much power over the publishing industry, between print books and e-books, that all of the publishers are really wary of making themselves even more entangled than they already are with Amazon.”

For me, the most interesting part of such a book service is the effect it could have on the way we read.

In my own personal experience, flat-fee digital subscription options tend to lubricate the wheels of media consumption. As a paid subscriber to Rdio, I listen to way more new music than I would if I had to pay per song or album. After my parents and in-laws signed up for Netflix, both households reported watching more movies than with the a-la-carte options of the video store or their cable companies’ video-on-demand services.

Part of me wonders if an all-you-can-read book rental subscription would encourage me to read more, or try out new kinds of books I mightn’t otherwise.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/09/13/f-vp-misener-amazon-ebooks.html

“how does one get a job producing public radio?”

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On a semi-regular basis, I get email messages and telephone calls from people who want to ask me about my job. Usually, it’s someone considering pursuing a career in radio who wants to pick my brain. And I’m happy to oblige.

Often, the questions are the same: Is it worth going to school? Are there actually any jobs? How do I get an internship?

I don’t have good answers to most of these questions, so I usually just end up telling people my story — how I came to work at the CBC — in the hopes that it might help.

Last week, I received another of these semi-regular emails asking about how to become a public radio producer. I started to type a reply, but then realized that it might be helpful to write a more public response. This blog post is that. So then, here are a few rambly thoughts on how I ended up in my current job.

Caveat #1: there really isn’t a clearly defined career path to becoming a CBC Radio employee. I took one route. You may (and probably should) take another route.

Caveat #2: I am a bit of an anomaly. By the end of high school, I had my sights pretty firmly set on working for CBC, and spent the next five years trying *really* hard to make that happen. A little more than a decade after deciding to pursue a career in public radio, I now have that job. I’m a producer on Spark, CBC’s national tech/culture show, and I serve as a technology columnist on most CBC Radio local afternoon shows.

OK. Let’s begin.

Journalism school?

I am not a good person to ask about journalism school, because I never went. Sure, I went to two great universities (King’s ’03, Ryerson ’05), both of which have decent journalism programs, but I didn’t study journalism at either. Why? At the time, both journalism programs seemed strongly focused on print, and my interest was very specific: I wanted to make radio.

So, coming out of high school, I took a 3-year BA at King’s, studying English and Contemporary Studies and the History of Science and Technology (and a bunch of other small-liberal-arts-college-type subjects), and volunteered at the small but mighty CKDU. Then, in my last year at King’s, I applied to Ryerson’s Radio and Television Arts program. At the time, RTA had an “advanced standing” option for university graduates, which gave me a second degree in exchange for two years of my life. The advanced standing option no longer exists.

While at Ryerson, I developed some production chops, and learned a bunch of technical stuff that’s now largely obsolete. I co-hosted a campus radio show, sold a bunch of my school assignments to CBC Radio and made a half-hour radio pilot, which was a gigantic TAL wannabe rip-off.

And while Ryerson was great, I’ll be frank: career-wise, the single most valuable thing I got from RTA was the license to call people up and say, “Hi, my name is Dan, and I’m an RTA student. Can I buy you a coffee and ask you about your job?” Holding a Ryerson student card gave me a non-threatening way to approach people with jobs that I wanted. “Hi, I’m a student and I’m interested in your job,” is a way better introduction than, “Hi, I’m some guy who wants your job. Can you tell me how to take it from you when you retire?” Generally speaking, I’ve found that if asked politely (and on a good day), most people are willing to sit down and talk about themselves. The nicer ones might even take pity on a starving student and pay for your coffee.

The lesson: if you decide to study broadcasting/journalism/media/whatever, one of the single most valuable resources at your disposal are professors with professional connections. Find them, then work the hell out of them. The connections, I mean. Which brings me to…

Networking

I hate this word. And I’m not naturally a “network-y” kind of guy. But when people ask me how I got a job at CBC, I usually tell them, “By pestering people.”

I asked my professors who they knew at CBC. I called those people up, name-checked said professors, and got coffee meetings, job shadows, and ride-alongs. After meeting someone, I’d tell them how much I wanted to work at the CBC, and the kind of radio I wanted to make. Then I’d ask, “Who else should I talk to? Can I use your name?”

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Especially when you’re starting out, who you know is how you eat. The best way to get a job is to meet people who are in a position to give you one.

That said, it’s easy to be annoying. I’m sure I was annoying. It’s like Goldilocks and the three bears: there’s too eager (annoying), not eager enough (forgettable), and then there’s just right. I remember asking people if I was too pushy. The straight shooters told me when I was.

Internships

The CBC has a proper internship program. However, I had a hell of a time getting one. Here’s the story, adapted slightly from a report I had to write about it for school:

One day in the summer of 2004, I was having lunch with Alex Mason, a producer for CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada. We were talking about internships, and he told me about his at CBH in Halifax. When I asked him for advice, he suggested that my best bet was not to approach a large network show like his, but rather a regional or local show. I asked him why, and he gave me a few reasons:

  • On a local/regional show, I’d be more likely to get my hands dirty with real work. On a network show, they might simply have me labeling CDs or doing more traditional “intern” type work.
  • On a local show, I’d have a better opportunity to try a wider variety of things.
  • Because I’d be doing real work, Iíd have a better opportunity to prove that I could do real work. This might translate into work after graduation.

This sounded good to me, so I tool Alex’s advice, and emailed all the local/regional CBC shows produced in Toronto. On July 21, 2004, I heard back from Metro Morning and Here and Now. Both shows referred me to a woman named Joan Melanson, Executive Producer of Current Affairs for CBL. I got in touch with Joan by email. She wrote back, explaining that “the exact policy around CBC and interns is up in the air. As it stands right now, we are required to pay interns for any work they do. So, as a result, in Toronto anyway, we are not bringing in interns to work as volunteers.”

I came to Ryerson hoping to pursue a career in public radio. Executive producers around the country were telling me a CBC internship was something I needed in order to be considered for any kind of work. Joan’s news didnít bode well for my chances. But at the end of her email, Joan did invite me to give her a call once I returned to Toronto and she returned from holidays. So I did. I called and left several messages on her voicemail. I sent her more email messages.

And then one day in early September, Joan called me back. We talked about school, and radio, and why I wanted to intern at CBL. We found out that we both have Nova Scotian roots. She explained again that the CBC was unclear about its policy on interns, but promised me that sheíd look into it for me. At the end of our first phone call, Joan promised that if there was any way she could make a CBL internship happen for me, she would try. I apologized for bugging her so much. She said it was no problem. Ever since, Iíve not worried about bugging her with my persistence.

And for the next few months, I was persistent. I probably emailed her or called once a week, just to check in. For a long time, there was nothing for her to report. The CBC was still confused about interns. On one hand, they recognized the importance of interns, but on the other hand, there were union issues. Plus, because I was an Advanced Standing student, RTA’s official internship course wasnít available to me, so I couldnít do an internship for credit.

Over the next couple of months, I visited the Broadcast Centre several times. I asked everyone I could about internships. None of them could tell me anything concrete about the CBCís official stance on internships. One day in November, job-shadowing reporter Geoff Ellwand, I met Joan Melanson in person for the first time. We shook hands, sat down for a few minutes, and with little new to report, Joan told me that weíd make an internship happen. Near Christmas-time, a CBC exec who was working on the CBC’s official internship policy told me that without school credit, there was no way I could get an internship. So I concentrated on getting official school credit for any internship that might happen.

After very little success with Ryerson admin, I approached my Case Studies professor Charles Davis early in the winter term. I explained my situation, and asked if he could offer me official credit in his course for an internship. He agreed, and I had what I needed. I contacted Joan, letting her know that I had official school credit. Again, interning was a “maybe.” It continued to be “maybe” until one day, Joan got the final word from those in charge. The word was “no.” I was disheartened.

But Joan pleaded my case. Eventually, someone had a change of heart, and on January 28, 2005, Joan emailed me, saying “I have some good news ñ the approval for your internship at CBL has gone ahead. They are making a bit of an exception since technically, RTA is not part of the agreement CBC has with various schools about bringing in interns. But you can now officially intern with us at CBL.”

I will stop here and try to explain what a wonderful feeling it is to have someone believe in you. Joan didnít know me that well, other than as a Ryerson student who kept leaving messages on her voicemail. Still, she took time out of her day to deal with the CBC bureaucracy, trying to find internship answers for me. And when neither of us liked the answers that she found, she cared enough to champion my cause, convincing the higher-ups to let me into the building. I am very grateful for what Joan has done for me.

So when she emailed, I was delighted with the news. I jumped around my apartment for a bit. I called my mom in Halifax. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. On February 11, 2005 I started my internship at CBL.

I wrote that in 2005. Reading it back, I’m still flabbergasted by the bureaucracy, and delighted by the Joan. I spent several months with CBL, assigned to Metro Morning. Sure, I did some pretty “interny” things, but I got a chance to participate in story meetings, pitch ideas, and chase guests.

When CBC internship ended, I already had a job offer for a short-term (2-3 month) contract in Windsor, Ontario. The local morning and afternoon shows needed an associate producer/technician, and somehow, my name ended up on a list somewhere. I took the job, and have been working at CBC on a reasonably steady basis since then (with a 2005 lockout and a few months of freelancing thrown in for good measure).

Freelancing

People sometimes ask me how long I’ve worked at the CBC. “Depends on when you start counting,” I reply.

You could start counting when I sold my first freelance piece to Radio Syndication in 2004 (I sold a bunch of my Ryerson radio productions to CBC as short documentaries). Or you could count my first contract job in Windsor in 2005. Or, you could count the six months I spent freelancing full-time.

In late summer 2005, CBC management locked out CMG employees (like me). Rather than stay in Windsor, I packed up and moved back to Toronto. Personally and professionally, it was maybe the best decision I’ve ever made. In Toronto, I spent hour after hour on the picket line with people I would *never* have otherwise had access to. Executive producers and hosts of the shows I wanted to work for. As we circled the Toronto Broadcasting Centre, I talked about the freelance radio pitches I could sell them once we were back inside. When we eventually got back to work, I had the names and numbers of a bunch of people who were willing to buy pieces from me. Most notably, I started a four-year freelance stint with the Saturday morning show GO!

Freelancing is a hustle. It keeps you hungry. Luckily, I only spent about 6 months freelancing full-time, before getting a “job job.” But it was long enough to learn how to survive on a sporadic public radio income. In my (short) experience, here’s how to make a go of freelance radio at CBC:

  1. Find out who has money to hire you. Not everyone does.
  2. Find out how those people prefer to receive pitches
  3. Be awesome. Deliver great stuff.

For me, freelancing was a stepping stone to a more stable job. If that’s your goal, I have one additional piece of advice: do your freelance work AT the CBC. Even if you have better equipment at home, still do it at the CBC offices. It sounds obvious, but if you’re not there, you’re not top of mind. And you want to be top of mind when the fill-in jobs become available.

Getting a “job job”

Getting a “job job” at the CBC was the goal from day one. Here’s how it happened for me: I interned, then got a 3-month contract, then freelanced, then got a series of 1-week-at-a-time jobs, which turned into a short-term contract job, which turned into a slightly-longer-term contract job, which turned into year-long contract job, which eventually turned into a permanent staff job.

It doesn’t happen that way for everyone, but that’s how it happened for me, and a bunch of other people I know. Little jobs turn into bigger jobs, if you’re good at what you do, and reasonably easy to work with.

Right now, I am staff at CBC. I work on a show that I really like, alongside people I really like. I have a ton of creative license and latitude to explore things that interest me. It’s my job to call up smart, interesting people and talk to them. I’ve been lucky enough to do a bunch of different things, and I got almost all of the most interesting assignments because I knew someone, and had built up a body of work.

People sometimes ask me if it makes sense to pursue a career in public radio, given today’s job market. I won’t lie: I would *not* want to be looking for a job in public radio right now. I know a bunch of smart, talented people who have pursued work in this field, and been left nothing but unemployed and frustrated. But I also know a bunch of smart, talented people who are doing great work, and love their jobs.

So on the “do I or don’t I” question, I’m afraid I don’t have a strong suggestion.

It’s nice work… if you can get it.

Buying travel medical insurance

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As part of our ongoing plans to move to France, Jenna and I need to get some health insurance for the year we’ll be away. According to the 2E Working Holiday visa application, we need:

An additional medical insurance certificate that will provide full coverage (for health risks, medical bills, medication, hospitalisation, repatriation, etc.) during the entirety of the stay is compulsory because the provincial medical plan is insufficient (original + copy).

I’ve spent the past little while researching what’s often called “travel emergency medical insurance,” and here’s what I’ve learned: Holy smokes, it pays to shop around! There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the wild variance in prices I’ve seen.

Jenna and I are both thirty-ish and healthy. We’re planning to be in France for ~365 days. Based on those factors, here’s a rough sample of what several providers would charge to cover both of us. I looked at CAA, Manulife, Ontario Blue Cross, and TravelCuts (RBC), plus my existing CBC insurance:

1

Right now, TravelCuts seems to be the best deal (thanks for the tip, Jess Whyte!).

I’d love some advice from seasoned travellers here. Am I missing any companies I should look into? Are there massive differences between various providers and their plans? Really, I’m looking to satisfy a visa application requirement here, and also, keep from losing an arm and a leg if I (heaven forbid) actually lose an arm and a leg.

  1. A note: the CBC/Great West Life option isn’t in the same category as the rest. It’s my regular health plan through work, which I have the option of continuing while I’m on deferred leave. It’s not travel medical insurance, but it would cover us while in France. ↩

Home Recording 101 Redux

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A few months ago, with the help of Tony and David, I led a workshop called “A beginner’s guide to multitrack audio recording.” The goal was to help singer-songwriters develop the skills necessary to make basic home recordings of their songs.

It went really well. Not to toot my own horn or anything (toot toot!), but here’s what some people said about the workshop:

Dan did a great job and gave us enough to enable us to try it on our own. What more could one ask for from a 101?

Well organized material; clearly presented, interesting, knowledgeable instructor with great basics logically through to more complex tasks made the information non-threatening.

The course provided exactly what you claimed it would, but I was surprised that I got even more out of it than I expected. I thought I’d get enough info to “know about” the subject, but I went home feeling confident that I could actually DO it – and keen to get started experimenting.

An enormous thumbs up to Dan for presenting a meaningful and enormously worthwhile course on digital recording.

It was so much fun, we thought we’d do it again. So we’re putting on the exact same workshop for people who missed the first time around.

It takes place on Saturday, September 17, and you can reserve your spot today.

.ca -> .fr

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Here’s the news: Jenna and I are packing up, leaving Toronto, and moving to France. For an entire year. Starting in January 2012.

If you’re family or a close friend, this is probably not news. We’ve been planning this for almost three years, and though we haven’t kept it a secret, we also haven’t widely publicized the fact that we’re moving. Until now.

With less than five months to go, I suspect I’ll be writing more about our plans here on this blog, and I bet Jenna will do the same over at ahbon.ca

Why are you doing this?

Because we can. We’re child-less, mortgage-less, car-less, and for the most part, responsibility-less. Which won’t always be the case. If there was ever a time in our lives to pick up and skip town, it’s now.

I’ve lived in Toronto for seven years now, and Jenna’s been here for more than a decade. Part of the goal is to escape the scale of a city like Toronto, and simply to live somewhere else for a change. Right now, the plan is to move to Lyon, about two hours (by train) southeast of Paris.

How are you doing this?

France and Canada have this thing called the France-Canada youth exchange agreement. We’re eligible for 12-month “Working Holiday” visas (2E), which are for “Canadians wishing to travel to France for touristic and cultural purposes, all the while being authorized to work for financial sustenance.”

Neat, huh? It’s great being a “youth.”

So, why France? Why Lyon?

First off, we’re moving to France to learn French. Right now, my French isn’t great, but it’s halfway passable. I can order food and get directions, but I’m can’t have deep conversations about philosophy and literature. Jenna’s French is much better than mine, but we could both stand to improve. We figure immersion will help, and where better to immerse ourselves?

We chose Lyon for a few reasons. First, because it’s not Paris, and thus, we can afford to live there. It’s the third largest city in France, and feels not too big, and not too small. Plus, it’s la capitale gastronomique française, so chances are we’ll eat well.

Lyon is decently well-connected to other parts of Europe by rail and air, and we’re really hoping it’ll be a good home base for a bit of travel.

What about your jobs?

One of the perks of a staff job at the CBC is the Deferred Salary Leave Plan (schoolteachers have something similar, which they call “4 over 5″). Essentially, I’ll be on an unpaid leave of absence for one year, after which I come right back to the job I left. Appropriately enough, 2012 will be my seventh year with the CBC, so I’m calling this “roll your own sabbatical.”

As for Jenna, she’ll be leaving her plum position at the HDI. She’s done a lot there over the past few years, and it’ll be tough for her to leave. But with so many successes under her belt (2500+ WWII veteran interviews!) and fluent bilingualism by the time we return to Canada, she’ll be unstoppable.

While we’re in France, we’ll probably both do a little bit of work. Financially, we won’t have to worry too much about housing and food (we’ve been squirrelling cash away for a few years now), but the degree to which we’re able to travel will depend on how much part-time or freelance work we’re able to pick up.

Personally, I’m also planning to spend part of the year doing some serious self-directed study in the service of becoming a programmer-journalist.

What about your super-awesome apartment in Toronto that you really love and would hate to give up?

Um, yeah, we’re working on that.

Know anyone who wants to sublet a super-awesome apartment in downtown Toronto for 12 months starting in January 2012?

Wait a second, is this really a good idea?

We really think so. A few weeks ago, we did a short scouting trip to Lyon, and loved it. We met so many nice, friendly, helpful people, and the city itself is beautiful.

I’m sure there will be challenges, but that’s part of the point. For example, as we work through the visa application process, I’m getting a small taste of French bureaucracy’s love of paperwork. The language will be tricky, I’m sure (especially for me). Getting set up with an apartment and bank account may be tricky. But if it means we can live abroad for a year, expand our horizons, and get some perspective, it’ll be worth it.

The past few years of my life have become very comfortable. The same city. The same apartment. The same job. There’s nothing wrong with comfortable, of course, but increasingly, I feel the need to shake things up. To do something that makes me feel uncomfortable. To get outside of the ordinary.

This is an opportunity to do exactly that, and I can’t wait.

I spy with my little ISP

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This week’s CBC tech column and podcast is all about lawful access legislation. The podcast features a special extended interview with Tamir Israel of CIPPIC. It’s online now in written and audio form [mp3 download].

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“Stop spying.”

That’s the message from OpenMedia.ca, a Vancouver-based internet advocacy group, to government and law enforcement officials. They’ve set up an online petition at stopspying.ca to protest something called “lawful access legislation.”

I’ll admit, it’s an unfortunate name. When you say “lawful access legislation” out loud, it sounds like pretty much the most boring thing ever. But it’s not. I promise.

When Parliament resumes in September, the debate surrounding this controversial legislation will start to heat up, and it’s well worth paying attention.

In a nutshell, lawful access has to do with how law enforcement can access your communications. That includes activities like wiretapping, and obtaining access to your email or your web surfing history.

Of course, right now, police can get access to any of that stuff, but it requires legal authority (like a warrant) and reasonable grounds to believe you’ve done something wrong. But proposed new lawful access legislation could change things, making it easier for police to get detailed information about you from your internet service provider, your social networking accounts, or from your cellphone company (in some cases, without a warrant or without reasonable grounds to believe you’ve done something wrong).

Understandably, these proposed changes freak some people out.

So why are we hearing about this now? There are a couple of reasons.

First, because new legislation is expected soon. Over the past several years, there have been a number of attempts to pass new lawful access legislation, but for a variety of reasons (including Parliamentary prorogation), nothing has materialized. The most recent attempt took place in the last Parliament, in the form of three separate bills: C-50, C-51, and C-52. They all died on the order paper.

During the last election, the government promised to bundle these three lawful access bills together (along with a bunch of other related legislation) into an omnibus crime bill. And they promised to pass this omnibus bill within 100 days of taking power.

The other reason the lawful access issue is heating up is that stateside, a U.S. House of Representatives committee recently approved similar legislation. It’s not exactly the same, but the bill would compel American ISPs to store detailed information about their customers’ online activities.

People have been asking, “Could the same sort of thing happen here in Canada?” The answer seems to be yes.

Warrantless internet snooping

From a civil liberties perspective, warrantless internet snooping is a big deal. But when it comes to the day-to-day online activities of most Canadians, the effects are harder to explain.

Right now, almost everything you do online is being tracked. Your browsing history, e-mail communications, and GPS location data — it’s all being collected, and police can already get access to that information ifthey have legal authority (like a warrant). If new lawful access legislation is passed, it could become much easier for police to get access to that kind of information.

Police could approach your ISP or your email provider and compel them to keep their logs about you for longer than they ordinarily would. In some cases, police could force service providers to hand over identity or tracking information, even if they don’t have reasonable grounds to believe you’ve done something wrong.

Privacy advocates worry about the lack of oversight in this whole process. And they worry that this could turn private companies like internet service providers into state agents who spy on their customers.

Why it matters

“But Dan,” you might say, “I have nothing to hide. Why should I care?”

Even if you have nothing to hide, there are plenty of reasons to care about lawful access.

For instance, you might care about this on principle. You might not like the idea of your ISP or your cellphone company violating your reasonable expectation of privacy, even if all your communication is along the lines of, “Honey, do you need me to pick up anything at the grocery store?”

Personally, my concern has to do with personal data security. My ISP or cellphone company has the ability to keep a staggering amount of information about me and my family. Those detailed records could become a really attractive target for hackers with nefarious intentions. Imagine what you could do if you knew everything about someone’s online activity: where they went online, when they went there, who they talked to, what they said. Simply collecting and preserving this information presents a security risk.

In addition to the stopspying.ca petition (which has upwards of 40,000 signatures), there have been several other strong reactions to this proposed legislation. For instance, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and her provincial and territorial colleagues have written an open letter to William Baker, Deputy Minister of Public Safety, expressing their concerns about lawful access.

This issue is just starting to heat up, and I suspect we’re going to hear much more about it in the coming weeks and months. I’ll definitely keep a close eye on it, from underneath my tinfoil hat.

Google, PittPatt, and facial recognition

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This week’s CBC Radio tech column is all about Google’s aquisition of PittPatt, a facial recognition company. It’s online now in written and audio form [mp3 download]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Also, if you’re awesome, you’ll subscribe and rate Misener on Tech in iTunes. Pretty please.

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Eric Schmidt and I have at least one thing in common: we both find facial recognition software creepy.

In an onstage interview at this year’s D9 conference , the executive chairman of Google said, “I’m very concerned personally about the union of mobile tracking and face recognition.”

He went on to explain that Google had actually developed facial-recognition software as part of its Google Goggles product but withheld the technology because of privacy concerns.

Imagine being able to identify a stranger simply by photographing them with your smartphone: up would pop their name, age, social networking profile. From a technical perspective, with modern face-recognition algorithms and a large enough database of faces, it’s entirely possible. It’s also creepy.

That’s something Schmidt and I agree on. So, then, given Schmidt’s stance, I was somewhat surprised to learn that Google recently acquired PittPatt, a software company that specializes in — you guessed it — facial recognition software.

PittPatt’s software, spun off from research done at Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University, is part of the growing computer-vision industry. According to the company, the software can “search images for faces, determine if faces are the same person, track faces in video sequences and pinpoint constituent landmarks in faces.”

The software does both facial detection (simply identifying the presence of faces) and facial recognition (identifying individuals based on pattern matching). The latter is what has privacy advocates most worried.

So, what will Google do with PittPatt’s software? In short: we don’t know, yet.

Could be used in image search, YouTube, Google+

A spokesperson told me the company has “nothing to announce at this time.” But it’s not hard to imagine some likely applications.

For example, Google has a photo-management program called Picasa, which already uses facial recognition software to help organize images by person.

It’s also not difficult to imagine facial-recognition software being rolled into a service like Google image search or YouTube. But it’s also possible — and this, for me, is where things begin to cross the line into the realm of the creepy — that PittPatt’s technology could be folded into Google+, the recently launched social network.

Google+ already has photo sharing and photo tagging functions that are very similar to ones used by the rival social networking site Facebook. If Google does add facial recognition to its photo-sharing functions, it certainly won’t be the first site to do so.

Late last year, Facebook did exactly that and got itself into hot water with a feature called Tag Suggestions. It used facial recognition to automatically identify people in Facebook photos in order to make tagging them easier. The feature isn’t currently available in Canada, but in parts of the world where it is available, it’s been quite controversial.

Critics take issue with the fact that facial recognition is enabled by default, that the feature is opt-out (rather than opt-in) and that the settings are confusing. This past June, in the EU (which has strong data-protection laws), the Tag Suggestions feature was probed by regulators. If Google does incorporate facial recognition technology into its own social network, it would be wise to pay especially close attention to the Facebook example.

“We’ve said that we won’t add face recognition to our apps or product features unless we have strong privacy protections in place, and that’s still the case,” a Google spokesperson said.

I have to wonder, though, might Google consider its much-touted “Circles” feature, which allows Google+ users to organize people into separate groups, as having “strong privacy protections”?

Are the granular sharing options built into Google+ enough to make web-scale facial recognition software any less intrusive? It’s hard to tell.

For me, the key will be transparency. As creepy as I find facial recognition, I completely understand that others really like it. I understand that it can have practical (even fun) uses. And I have no problem with large companies automatically scanning photos and videos for faces — as long as users are aware that it’s happening and have the opportunity to make informed choices.

I’ll take the creepy face recognition I know over the creepy face recognition I don’t any day.

Why the wait on Google+ for businesses? Ads.

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So far, Google+ is for people only.

Google has advised businesses, organizations, and brands — basically, any entity that isn’t an individual human being — to hold off on setting up a Google+ presence.

Eventually though, Google will allow businesses to join. Over at VentureBeat, Jolie O’Dell quotes a nameless Google spokesperson:

While Google is mum on exactly what the business profiles will include, the spokesperson did say, “You can expect to see a level of analytics and measurement that you’d typically find in Google products as well as a nuanced approach to how things are shared. It encourages and enhances conversation, it doesn’t just put things in the stream.”

A “nuanced approach how things are shared” sounds an awful lot like code for Google+ Ads.

My bet: when these Google+ business profiles go live, they’ll be heavily tied into Google’s existing advertising infrastructure, and we’ll see the rollout of something very similar to Facebook’s ad targeting system:

Think about it. If you’ve bought into the whole Google lifestyle, they have your search history, email, breadcrumbs scattered across the web through Analytics… and now, your social graph. What would you do if your company had all of that?

Here’s a fun experiment you can do at home: if you’re on both Google+ and Facebook, go take a look at each sites. Compare and contrast. Did you notice what’s conspicuously missing from Google+? Yup. Ads.

Right now, my Google+ experience is entirely ad-free. But my gut tells me that’s going to change pretty soon.

Audio: How can we build a city that thinks like the web?

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Back in June, I moderated a panel at the 2011 Subtle Technologies Festival. It was called How can we build a city that thinks like the web?, and included Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing), Mark Surman (Mozilla) and Sara Diamond (OCAD University).

This week, on my CBC tech podcast, I’m really pleased to be able to play the full (1 hour+) panel:

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MP3 download

My thoughts on Shortmail and email clutter

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Cross-posted from my weekly CBC Tech column. Podcast MP3 download here.

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My intention this week is to write about Shortmail, a new email service. But to set the stage, I need to share three examples of Personal Email Policies I Greatly Admire.

Example 1: When danah boyd needs a break from digital communication, she goes on an email sabbatical. Her mail server sends all incoming messages to the trash, and an auto-responder lets all would-be correspondents know that while danah’s away, their messages will not be received. As danah wrote on her blog, “You cannot put anything in my queue while I’m away (however lovingly you intend it) and I come home to a clean INBOX.”

Example 2: I have a friend whose email signature includes the following expectation-setter: “I respond to short emails at 11:30am and 3:30pm daily. I reserve Mondays to respond to longer emails or in-depth responses – that way I have the time for a proper answer.”

Example 3: A while back, I heard about five.sentenc.es (and its siblings two, three, and four.sentenc.es), “a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less.” The idea here is that you adopt this policy, link to it in your email signature, and don’t allow exceptions.

Now here’s the thing: I love all of these ideas. But only on paper.

Practically speaking, I can’t imagine putting any of these into practice. Maybe it’s a lack of guts. Maybe it’s a lack of discipline. As much as I admire these ideas, the closest I’ve ever come is the standard out-of-office message.

And thus is my initial reaction to Shortmail, a new email service from Baltimore-based 410Labs. I like the idea, but mostly on paper.

Shortmail will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s used a web-based email service like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. But as its name implies, the major difference has to do with length. Shortmail imposes a limit on how long your messages can be: 500 characters. This clearly seems like a page borrowed from the playbooks of pith-obsessed micro-messaging services such as Twitter and Canadian-based StatusNet.

Not only does Shortmail restrict the length of outgoing emails, it imposes the same 500-character limit on incoming messages. If you send me a message that goes over the limit, Shortmail will bounce your email back along with a notification that it’s too long. You’re then given an opportunity to edit your message to fit within the limit. This is the digital equivalent of saying, “Get to the point.”

I understand why that might be appealing, but I can also see how that might come across as, well, rude. An @shortmail.com address effectively says, “Play by my email rules, or don’t play at all.”

Beyond message length, Shortmail has taken other cues from social networking and micro-messaging services. Its other big difference has to do with sharing. On a one-to-one basis, email has historically been private by default. But Shortmail shakes this up, adding a public option. For example, I can send you an email, mark it as public, and in addition to showing up in your inbox, it’ll also be published to the web. For example, here’s a public email conversation I had with Shortmail creator Dave Troy.

Public messages sent through Shortmail are clearly labeled as such. Still, the idea of “public email” is a pretty big paradigm shift. It’s not hard to imagine inadvertently publicly publishing a message intended for a private recipient.

Of course, Shortmail is just one reaction to the decades-old love/hate relationship many of us have with email. Last month, Chris Anderson (of TED conference fame), published the Email Charter, which outlines 10 rules to “reverse the email spirals” – rules that cover principles like writing better subject lines and avoiding unnecessarily open-ended questions. The Email Charter isn’t a piece of software or a web service. It’s more of a personal pledge.

Anderson’s Email Charter (and the aforementioned sentenc.es policies) take a Ghandi-esque “be the change” approach to email. Shortmail, in contrast, imposes its vision of better email on all messages sent through its service.

Beyond length-limitation, I wonder about Shortmail and the “one more thing to check” factor. I mean, I already have a handful of email accounts. And Twitter accounts. And a barely used Facebook account. And now, a Google+ account. Do I really need yet another inbox to check on a regular basis? If the goal is to spend less time dealing with email, having a separate account just for short messages seems a bit counter-intuitive to me.

While it’s interesting to see how the form and function of contemporary social media tools are rubbing off on the decades-old system of email, for me, Shortmail is a bit too much like danah boyd’s email sabbaticals: something I wish I could pull off, but probably never will.