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- The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are suing the Department of Justice to obtain official records concerning the U.S. government's possible use of cell-phone-tracking technology to spy on individuals without first obtaining a court order based on probable cause. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the civil-liberties groups said the DOJ failed to provide an adequate and timely response to a records request filed last year under the Freedom of Information Act. "This is a critical opportunity to shed much-needed light on possibly unconstitutional government surveillance techniques," said Catherine Crump, the ACLU lead attorney. "Signing up for cell-phone services should not be synonymous with signing up to be spied on and tracked by the government." Complying With Current Law At least some U.S. attorneys may have violated a DOJ "internal recommendation" that "federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas," according to a Washington Post article published last November. Moreover, the ACLU said other media reports have raised the possibility that law-enforcement officers may have obtained tracking data directly from the nation's mobile carriers without any court involvement. Due to the limited amount of information currently available about the government's tracking practices, the ACLU said it believes the lack of information on the issue raises serious questions about whether the government is complying with current law and the U.S. Constitution. "The government's policies and practices for monitoring the locations of mobile phones are unclear," the ACLU noted in its original records request. "It is not even apparent whether the government routinely obtains mobile-phone location information without any court supervision whatsoever." Information pertaining to the DOJ's procedures for obtaining real-time tracking information is vital to the public's understanding of the privacy risks of carrying a mobile...
- A federal judge orders YouTube to disclose who watches which video clips and when to Viacom and other copyright holders involved in a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against the video-sharing service.
- Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Yahoo's Judgment Day; Avoid Getting Coding Problems Flagged by Search Engines; and more.
- FranklinCovey (NYSE:FC) with COMPLETExRM today announced the beta release of PlanPlus(TM) Online SYNC, a synchronization solution designed to allow business professionals to update contacts, tasks and calendar items with Microsoft(R) Outlook(R). The new SYNC utility enables Outlook users to fully utilize the planning, CRM, team collaboration, task and contact management offered by PlanPlus(TM) Online. PlanPlus Online is built on COMPLETExRM's xRM(TM) Foundation, a Java-based, service-oriented application. PlanPlus Online provides individuals, small businesses, departments and organizations with full Enterprise 2.0 CRM functionality to leverage and extend the management of business processes, while applying FranklinCovey's proven productivity and effectiveness methodology via the Web. "To be fully collaborative and productive, people need to access critical information from a number of different applications, locations and devices," said Jeff Anderson, Senior Vice President of Product Management for FranklinCovey. "Microsoft Outlook users can now utilize PlanPlus Online as a CRM tool to access important data via any Web browser, allowing them to collaborate, track and report on key business information from anywhere at any time." Currently, PlanPlus Online SYNC enables users to synchronize CRM data, specifically contacts, tasks and appointments with Outlook and with PlanPlus(TM) for Microsoft(R) Outlook(R), FranklinCovey's desktop planning application. A mobile client of PlanPlus Online is already available, which provides users mobile access to and management of their contacts, tasks and calendar on any smartphone. "We are pleased with our customers' response to SYNC and their ability to now synchronize contacts, tasks and calendar appointments from Microsoft Outlook with our current CRM solutions," said Bob Neeser, CEO of COMPLETExRM, "Additionally, SYNC provides PlanPlus Online users the flexibility to integrate other systems and applications with their PlanPlus Online account." The beta release of PlanPlus Online SYNC is currently available for free to all current and new...
- News from Portfolio.com Also on Portfolio Microsoft Still Carrying a Flame for Yahoo Struggling Starbucks to Cut Stores, Jobs New Morgan Hand-Built and High-Tech Subscribe to Portfolio magazine The news about the crummy tech IPO situation seems to worry a lot of people. But some of the best technology gets built in times like these because there is no quick payoff. In the past quarter, for the first time in 30 years, not a single tech company went public. So far, that's more of a blip than a trend, There's no reason to belive this situation will last forever. Still, you've got folks like Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, calling the news a "crisis for the startup community." Bah. It's a crisis for the kinds of people who do tech startups mostly to get rich. Let them move back to Greenwich and become hedge fund managers. When there's no IPO exit, tech startups have to do one of two things: try to get bought by a big company like Cisco or Google, or build an actual, working business with profits and everything. The former is a heck of a risky strategy. The latter tends to push startups to spend more time getting it right. Many of the major tech companies were founded in shaky economic times: Microsoft in 1975; Cisco in 1984; MySpace in 2003. There's another element, too: The cost of starting a company in bad times plummets. Rent is cheaper, computers ditched by some bankrupt start-up can be picked up used, good people can be hired for less. As it is, the cost of starting most kinds of tech companies is one-tenth what it was 10 years ago, because the technology and tools have gotten so much cheaper and more effective. So a company that needed $5 million just to get off the ground in 1998 now needs maybe $500,000. More and more, that money is being raised from private investors instead of venture capitalists, and the money is more patient -- not pushing so hard for an IPO payday. Again, that's probably better for the long-term prospects of a start-up. It wouldn't be good if the IPO situation stays this bad for very long, but it's not the end of the world, and it's no worse than when the IPO market is ridiculously hot and people are starting companies with nothing but dollar signs in their eyes.
- Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: Some New SEO Services Not So Special; Newspapers Bleed Red Ink: Death by Internet; SEO Quarterly Web Site Review: Villas of Distinction; and more.