Interesting Tidbits for December 22nd through December 23rd

Things worth reading for December 22nd through December 23rd:

Hits and Misses From Madison Avenue – WSJ.com – Nice year-end review by Suzanne.

IPhone and Android Apps Breach Privacy – WSJ.com – And people wonder why customers don’t trust big internet?

“An examination of 101 popular smartphone “apps”—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone’s unique device ID to other companies without users’ awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone’s location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.

“The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them.”

Start-Up Scoops Up Unsold Tickets – WSJ.com – “ScoreBig Inc., which has raised $8.5 million from investors including private-equity firm Bain Capital and media executive Shari Redstone, has been quietly testing a system that aspires to do for concert and sports tickets what Priceline.com does for airline seats and hotel rooms: Allow customers to buy them at cut-rate prices, while avoiding the whiff of desperation that typically accompanies discounts.”

‘Mission: Impossible’ Director Takes on Challenge – WSJ.com – Interesting!

FCC Chairman to Propose Approval of Comcast-NBC Deal – WSJ.com – “WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on Thursday will propose approving Comcast Corp.’s deal to acquire control of NBC Universal from General Electric Co., according to sources familiar with the matter.

“The proposal still needs full commission approval, which isn’t expected until early 2011. And it will include a number of conditions on the deal, requiring that Comcast make NBC and its other Comcast-owned video content available to pay-TV competitors at reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms, according to people close to the FCC’s negotiations.”

E-Mail’s Big Demographic Split – NYTimes.com – Interesting data, but note that it’s hampered by comScore’s webmail bias. That is, what about on-the-computer email clients like Outlook? “In the last year, time spent using e-mail sites like Yahoo and Hotmail has fallen 48 percent among 12- to 17-year-olds, according to comScore, a market research firm. The statistics only include time spent with e-mail on computers, so the decline may be somewhat offset by teenagers using e-mail on their phones.”

Facebook Passes Yahoo To Become Second Largest Traffic Source For Videos On Media Sites – “When it comes to getting people to watch online videos from media sites, Google is still the largest source of outside traffic. Search drives views. But the second largest source of traffic is not Yahoo, Bing, or another search engine. It is now Facebook. According to a report on Online Video & The Media Industry put out jointly by Tubemogul and Brightcove, Facebook passed Yahoo in the third quarter to become the No. 2 source of traffic to online videos at media sites. (The study measures videos across the Brightcove network, with a focus on newspaper, magazine, broadcaster, brand, and online media sites).”

Net neutrality: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile react — Engadget – VERY useful… “Amazingly, the FCC still hasn’t released the full text of the net neutrality rules it passed by a contentious 3-2 vote yesterday, so we can’t really say much about what’s in them — and while this sort of delay is typical of the Genachowski FCC, it hasn’t stopped the carriers from issuing statements on the new rules… Sprint commended the FCC, T-Mobile needs some time to look things over, AT&T called it a “fair middle ground” but railed about “radical voices” and “heavy-handed government regulation” (seriously) and Verizon — well, Verizon issued what appears to be a veiled threat to sue everyone. That’s pretty interesting, since it sure looks to us like the FCC all but rubber-stamped last summer’s Google / Verizon neutrality proposal, but you never know what’s happening behind closed doors… We’ve rounded up all the reactions below — check ’em out. ”