The Interaction-Design.org Foundation is a labour of love founded by Mads Soegaard in 2002, and in 2010, his wife, Rikke Dam, joined the project. Apart from Rikke and Mads, hundreds of people have helped out and continue to do so.

We're on a mission to make free and open educational materials: There are so many great minds in the Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design community and we want to empower these authors to reach all their interested readers around the world. We believe these authors have the minds to change the world and deserve a publishing venue truly designed for the author and the reader, not the publisher and the profit.

http://www.interaction-design.org/

http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/interaction_design.html

Martin Lindstrom is the author of Brandwashed, his book is about helping consumers understand how companies are gathering data about their their online activity. This somewhat narrow definition of a consumer Digital Footprint is a way to understand how Brands are gathering what consumers are looking (data) at and working out how to direct individual offers (personalisation) to people based on their digital footprint (preferences) – my definition of a digital footprint is a lot wider

The Filter Bubble: what the internet is hiding from you…

So our web experience is somewhat customized by our browsing history, social graph and other factors. Should we care that this sort of information-tailoring takes place. Eli Pariser, founder of public policy advocacy group MoveOn.org, explores the topic in The Filter Bubble.

Personally I have a load of issues with the whole concept that the internet is worse than what we already have. We all have filters, as irrespective of the amount of information; we filter, pick and choose things we like, align to self interest, motivate, warm to, find interesting, our background, our traumas and use friends, family, beliefs, faith to determine what we think and listen to. Least we forget the moment in time when this occurs, other distractions, stresses and items competing for our attention.

The concept that the internet filters based on what we view as a filter is better or worse than picking a TV channel, news paper or magazine – which itself has a editors who picks what they like and we pick what we like, it’s a filter.   If we did not pick what we like – we would never have facts to back our opinion. We like confirmation of what we like – the issue is not about the filter but is about understanding who we are and why we think like we do.  This has nothing to do with code!

As per another post on MyDigitalFootprint – I want to know your opinions and not the facts as I can always find a fact to back my opinions – your opinions are your filter.  Google (and all other search engines) also don’t allow you to overly filter and does make serendipity possible. Follow the writings at http://searchengineland.com/ if you want more about this.

What does worry me is that the coder may bias my views based on their interpretation of the algorithm – but this has nothing to do with the Internet.

When at SIBOS in September with SWIFT/ Innotribe, there were a few of us authors types there…. so I traded My Digital Footprint with Hugh.  I got the better deal :)

I have followed Hugh’s work for a long time as www.gapingvoid.com.  If you are not familiar with his work, do yourself a favour and take a few minutes to check out his website and the insights.

The books explains where he came from and why he does what he does, what I like about Hugh’s style is the cut down of corporate and human insights.  Having read it and I gave my copy to a young entrepreneur at www.theIW.org (my incubator) who’s only word of feedback and description was “massive”

My recommendation; top present from dads to screenagers!

Totally agree with the principal as I write about this all the time -  digital footprints are about what you say about yourself and what others say about you.  Have bought and will read when it comes out

original review : http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/digital-assassination-protecting-your-reputation-brand-or-business-against-online-attacks

In Digital Assassination, Mr. Torrenzano and Mr. Davis make it quite clear that protecting a digital reputation—your own, your business’s, a brand’s, or that of a long-lost relative—is a little like chasing after spilled water which seeps into every crack and crevice it finds. Mr. Torrenzano, a strategic communications consultant and New York Stock Exchange veteran, and Mr. Davis, a former White House speechwriter, bring their considerable knowledge and experience to bear on this new and very difficult area.

What is “digital assassination?” The authors describe it as “a willful act by someone wishing to do harm through the Internet. It unfolds as a deliberate campaign to spread harmful lies that the assassin has concocted about you or as an attempt to take a fact about you grossly out of context or embellish it, making an ordinary shortcoming seem ghastly. Words are then forged into swords to be thrust into the gut.”

All of this becomes a part of the personal or professional “digital record:” the online reputation of individuals, groups, companies, etc., that impacts customers, partners, profits, and popularity. It permeates the ether—and then spills out into the physical world.

A majority of Digital Assassination is devoted to explaining and illustrating what the authors call the “Seven Swords of Digital Assassination.” This includes: “New Media Mayhem” (disruptive forces), “Silent Slashers” (severe cuts to a reputation from anonymous attackers), “Evil Clones” (impersonators), “Human Flesh Search Engine” (crowd-sourced private information turned into public gossip), “Jihad by Proxy” (organizations which sound noble and good which attack for donors with malevolent motives), “Truth Remix” (turning common failings into vices and crimes), and “Clandestine Combat” (stealing the other company’s secrets).

Examples abound for all “Seven Swords,” and not only enough for the reader to get the point, but to tire them out. Half as many examples would have worked just as well and made Digital Assassination a more manageable length. Among the more famous examples are the “evil cloning” of presidential campaign sites, celebrity telephone calls and arrests gone “viral” through a myriad of web sites, product rumors which keep buyers away, and the seemingly endless issues of accuracy involving Wikipedia. Among the less infamous is the jilted boyfriend who changed his ex-girlfriend’s Netflix ratings to display a list of films which had “indiscretion” as their main theme (think The Scarlet Letter and Indecent Proposal).

For the famous and not-so-famous, the reasons for ruining a reputation, a product or business, changing an election outcome or “getting even” has not changed since the rise of modern newspapers, the 18th century coffee house, or even cave paintings. But using the Internet, through its many business, communication formats, and applications, allows those with power, as well as those without, access to so many ways to cleverly and quietly manipulate a persona, that digital assassination outpaces its many analog counterparts by a factor greater than we can imagine.

At the close of Digital Assassination, Mr. Torrenzano and Mr. Davis explain how the best defense is a good offense in “The Seven Shields of Digital Assassination.” They address each of the “seven swords” from the previous chapters. From being “Internet Savvy” to completing an honest “self-inventory,” to “looking at yourself from the point of view of a digital assassin” and creating a “new and improved” image on the web, the authors tell us how to survive and if necessary, to recover. Also included is game plan that can be personalized as a strategic and tactical approach.

It would have been easier to follow the themes if the “shields” and “swords” were integrated into the same chapter, bringing each problem and remedy closer together. Instead, by so significantly separating the cures from the illnesses, the reader needs to work harder to follow the flow. Better organization would have helped here.

Despite these issues, Digital Assassination is a comprehensive, knowledgeable exploration for anyone who wants, or needs, to know more about how best to survive in the digital universe.

Terence Craig (@terencecraig), co-author of "Privacy and Big Data,"

A different perspective and not sure that the interview really focussed on Big Data other than it is a trendy term

Original copy and interview from O’Reilly

Your book argues that by focusing on how advertisers are using our data, we might be missing some of the bigger picture. What are we missing, specifically?

o       Terence Craig: One of the things I tell people is I really don't care if companies get more efficient at selling me soap. What I do care about is the amount of information that is being aggregated to sell me soap and what uses that data might be put toward in the future.

o       One of the points that co-author Mary Ludloff and I tried to make in the book is that the reasons behind data collection have nothing to do with how that data will eventually be used. There's way too much attention being paid to "intrusions of privacy" as opposed to the problem that once data is out there, it's out there. And potentially, it's out there as long as electronic civilization exists. How that data will be used is anybody's guess.

What's your take on the promise of anonymity often associated with data collection?

o       Terence Craig: It's fundamentally irresponsible for anyone who collects data to claim they can anonymize that data. We've seen the Netflix de-anonymization, the AOL search release, and others. There's been several cases where medical data has been released for laudatory goals, but that data has been de-anonymized rather quickly. For example, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a piece that explains how a researcher was able to connect an anonymized medical record to former Massachusetts governor William Weld. And in relation to that, a Harvard genome project tries to make sure people understand the privacy risks of participating.

o       If we assume that companies have good will toward their consumers' data — and I'll assume that most large corporations do — these companies can still be hacked. They can be taken advantage of by bad employees. They can be required by governments to provide backdoors into their systems. Ultimately, all of this is risky for consumers.

Assuming that data can't be anonymized and companies don't have malicious plans for our personal data, what expectations can we have for privacy?

o       Terence Craig: We've moved back to our evolutionary default for privacy, which is essentially none. Hunter-gatherers didn't have privacy. In small rural villages with shared huts between multi-generational families, privacy just wasn't really available there.

o       The question is how do we address a society that mirrors our beginnings, but comes with one big difference? Before, anyone who knew the intimate details of our lives were people we had met physically, and they were often related to us. But now the geographical boundary has been erased by the Internet, so what does that mean? And how are we as a society going to evolve to deal with that?

o       With that in mind, I've given up on the idea of digital privacy as a goal. I think you have to if you want to reap the rewards of being a full participant in a digitized society. What's important is for us to make sure we have transparency from the large institutions that are aggregating data. We need these institutions to understand what they're doing with data and to share that with people so we, in aggregate, can agree whether or not this is a legitimate use of our data. We need transparency so that we — consumers, citizens — can start to control the process. Transparency is what's important. The idea that we can keep the data hidden or private, well ... that horse has left the stable.

What's the role of governments here, both in terms of the data they keep but also the laws they pass about data?

o       Terence Craig: Basically anything the government collects, I believe should be made available. After all, governments are some of the largest aggregators of data from all sorts of people. They either purchase it or they demand it for security needs from primary collectors like Google, Facebook, and the cell phone companies — the millions of requests law enforcement agencies sent to Sprint in 2008-2009 was a big story we mentioned in the book. So, it's important that governments reveal what they're doing with this information.

o       Obviously, there's got to be a balance between transparency and operational security needs. What I want is to have a general idea of: "Here's what we — the government — are doing with all of the data. Here's all of the data we've collected through various means. Here's what we're doing with it. Is that okay?" That's the sort of legislation I would like, but you don't see that anywhere at this point.

Book by Douglas Rushkoff "ScreenAgers Lessons in Chaos from Digital Kids" and a word now famous thanks to Lady Gaga

Not what I expected - somehow I thought the book was going to be about how kids interact with screens and how having been bought digital what their psychology was.  Well it was a lot about kids and trying to understand them, but was about their entire lifestyle and not just digital. He also offers a controversial view that attention is not about concentration on one thing (classical old thinking) but putting things together from dragging them together from many sources at the same time.

The book describes the end of linearity, how the youth are not evolving but jumping (innovating) discovering what we are capable of, but are doing with chaos, more than searching, discovering, not breaking the rules but recreating them..... they are time rich and therefore have that one precious resource

Given that evolution is loosely based on survival of the fittest - some how just keeping ahead with the adoption in adversity, a dependency on a mutation for survival or improvement.  This model is not right for the innovation and the screenagers...  What happens when you jump significantly beyond and gain something that is not useful today but could change the future......innovation.  

http://www.peterhinssen.com/books/the-new-normal/

Good book - quick read for anyone who is already thinking digital.

The book, describes the idea of "The New Normal", a concept that states we are now halfway to somewhere which is a digital revolution. Although we have already gone through a lot of change, what lies ahead of us involves you and I; and our data. The past 25 years were about technology getting into the hands of consumers. The next 25 years will see those who engage get some value from the trade of personal data. Digital has become the New Normal, and this will have an enormous impact on the way companies organise data, their communications with customers and the way they have to be organised internally.

Peter presents digital without limits, pointing out that organisations are increasingly faced with customers and consumers who no longer tolerate limitations in terms of pricing, timing, patience, depth, privacy, convenience, intelligence

A number of new rules will apply post The New Normal:

- Consumers will have zero tolerance for digital failure.

- Good enough beats perfect

- The era of total accountability

- Abandon absolute control (client/ server is dead)

- Every interaction with a customer must be viewed as a ‘make or break’ moment for the relationship with the customer.

- IT departments too will have to adopt a new way of working. They no longer have to build pyramids, they must put up tents instead.

- Companies have to adapt their information strategy, their technology strategy, their innovation strategy and the way they are organized internally.

However, we have moved on again.... terms (that you do business on) will become determined at the point of purchase ....

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Overconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet by William H. Davidow, January 2011.

This books needs to be set in context of other books like The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus, Kevin Kelly's  What Technology Wants and Delete by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger   as they tend to bias towards the way technology affects the way we think or have actually recreated how we think.

Overconnected, is not about email, iPhones and the other distractions that seem to direct our modern lives. William Davidow is focussed on how strong connections, instead of idyllically solving problems, and what they mean.

Being connected has certainly made us more efficient. But there's now the risk of reacting so quickly that we don't give the thought we might have given to our actions and reactions even twenty years ago.

Strong connections, it is presented, have only magnified the problems, turning local problems into national ones and national crises into international ones. Now, as all other forms of interconnections have improved, and as those interconnections have grown more robust thanks to the Internet, society is increasingly subject to interdependencies—not always for the better.

I have just ordered http://www.amazon.com/How-Disappear-Digital-Footprint-without/dp/1599219778  I will read and blog.....

From the world's preeminent people finder—an insider's guide to disappearing

How to Disappear is the authoritative and comprehensive guide for people who seek to protect their privacy as well as for anyone who’s ever entertained the fantasy of disappearing—whether actually dropping out of sight or by eliminating the traceable evidence of their existence.

Written by the world’s leading experts on finding people and helping people avoid being found, How to Disappear covers everything from tools for disappearing to discovering and eliminating the nearly invisible tracks and clues we tend to leave wherever we go. Learn the three keys to disappearing, all about your electronic footprints, the dangers and opportunities of social networking sites, and how to disappear from a stalker.

Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan provide field-tested methods for maintaining privacy, as well as tactics and strategies for protecting personal information and preventing identity theft. They explain and illustrate key tactics such as misinformation (destroying all the data known about you); disinformation (creating fake trails); and, finally, reformation—the act of getting you from point A to point B without leaving clues.

Ahearn illustrates every step with real-life stories of his fascinating career, from undercover work to nab thieving department store employees to a stint as a private investigator; and, later, as a career “skip tracer” who finds people who don’t want to be found. In 1997, when news broke of President Bill Clinton’s dalliance with a White House intern, Ahearn was hired to find her. When Oscar statuettes were stolen in Beverly Hills, Ahearn pinpointed a principal in the caper to help solve the case. When Russell Crowe threw a telephone at a hotel clerk in 2005, Ahearn located the victim and hid him from the media.

An indispensable resource not just for those determined to become utterly anonymous, but also for just about anyone in the brave new world of on-line information, How to Disappear sums up Ahearn’s dual philosophy: Don’t break the law, but know how to protect yourself.

AN EXCERPT: How Not to Disappear

There are several books and Web sites that explain how to obtain a new identity. If you are a not a criminal or international spy you do not need a new identity to safely and discretely disappear. . . . What people fail to take into consideration is how they can test out their new identity. Do you book a trip internationally and just wing it past customs? Do you speed in your car and wait till you get pulled over and a have the cop run your new license? Perhaps you walk into social security office with your birth certificate and apply for a social security number at the age of thirty-five and explain you have been living in a cave for the past twenty years? . . . New identities are a bad idea. Imagine that you are now Mr. Vincent Vega from Palm Springs, and you’re hanging out with your lady friend and her family sipping Pina Colada’s and over walks your best friend from high school. This dumb nut starts calling you by your real name, Dexter Plaidpants. Just try explaining that to all at the table—cover blown. New identities are like roulette: It is only a matter of time until your number comes is up!

About the Author

Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan are known as the “devious duo.” Veteran privacy consultants in the business of helping people who want to start a new life, they run AhearnSearch.com, a global skip-tracing company, and Disappear.info, which works with people and organizations in fulfilling their privacy needs. They have been featured in over fifty newspapers and magazines worldwide, including GQ, London Times, and Die Welt, and as far off as China, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, and Hungary. They have been guests on over 100 radio shows and on BBC and CNN television programs. Born and bred in the Bronx, Ahearn divides his time between Venice Beach, California, and New York City. If you can’t find him in either one of those places, visit frankahearn.com.