ArchAngel Wrap-Up

A slight hiccup in the world of BLIP outreach this week, but we’re back and stronger than ever!

If last week’s buzz was IP, this week’s is surely Internet privacy. For many, it was an odd and startling experience to receive emails from faceless sender “Google,” but it was the content of those emails that raised (many million) eyebrows. For those (unlike me) who haven’t tied their lives to nearly every Google product (still waiting for that bath towel…), Google has announced that it is ditching the piecemeal privacy policies of yore and creating a new, compiled, simple(r) policy.  Google says that the main difference in the new policy is Google’s ability to use info gleaned from one product to improve the user’s experience in another product. If history is any indicator, regulators may not be too keen on Google’s new approach in compiling user info.  

At BLIP, we are quite familiar with Google’s privacy policies. Last semester, a group of motivated tech policy do-gooders—aptly named Between the Lines—set out to thoroughly annotate and translate the Google policy.  We’re continuing that project this semester with the help of many BLS students and Docracy.  Ping us if you want to get involved in the mission to turn privacy policy terms into plain English!

In the real world, yet another crazy week was had. We attended the inaugural enterprise tech meetup on Wednesday, where we learned a bit about workplace psychology and a bit about enterprise compliance as it relates to social networking (thanks to Red Rover and bit.ly for that!).  Though you may have seen a few of us at Digital Dumbo’s Third Anniversary Party, the highlight of my week was a happy hour and pitch session with the Entrepreneur’s Roundtable Accelerator (oh, how those Times Square lights shine!). Btw, congrats to their new entering class!

Anyway, with so much to do, there’s no point in blogging all night. So until next week…

-Phil-