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How Netflix Scores Top Movies and TV for Streaming
Streaming video is Netflix's future--it's no secret, not to their customers, not to the press, and not to their peers. But the company's difficulties in securing top-quality movies and TV shows from the studios to stream is well-documented. How is Netflix dealing with this problem?
Smartly, it turns out. CNET explains some of the ways Netflix is working to make sure their streaming video service moves as fast as their customers. First, it's a cyclical process. Mailing DVDs and Blu-ray discs out is far more expensive than streaming video, and it's also less convenient for the consumer. The better Netflix's streaming catalog is, the more people will use it, and consequently use their physical disc mailing service less. I can vouch for that--I use Netflix Instant Watch streaming nearly every day (I've given up cable) but have had the same three DVDs for months.
When people use the mailing service less, Netflix can cut costs from that part of the business--which is exactly what happened. In the most recent financial quarter, Netflix spent $24 million on the physical disc part of their business, almost half of the $43 million the company spent in the year-ago quarter. And while Netflix's monthly fee hasn't changed, they've exploded in subscriber base size: In the last year, the company added 5 million new members, and predicts a possible 18.5 million subscribers by the year's end.
For comparison, Comcast, the country's largest cable provider, has 24.6 million subscribers. Netflix will probably top 20 million sometime next year, putting them right in the same category as Comcast. That's a powerful position to be in.
Netflix is also making deals advantageous to the studios. In agreeing to not rent any Warner Bros. movies for 28 days after their DVD release, Netflix got into that studio's good graces. And now, with all the new revenue flowing in, Netflix is making friends the old-fashioned way: by buying them. In the most recent quarter, Netflix spent $66 million on streaming video acquisitions, more than seven times as much as it spent in the year-ago quarter.
Netflix's star is going to keep rising. They're very simply the best movie distribution service we've ever seen, and these kinds of shrewd moves are going to keep them there.
Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).
Major Companies Are Downloading the Data From Those 100 Million Public Facebook Profiles
Remember yesterday, when I said that you can all stop freaking out about those 100 million "hacked" Facebook profiles? Well, I wasn't wrong, but the number of major corporations who have been shown to have downloaded that data is big and scary enough to be slightly worrisome.
The data collected was public, of course--all of these corporations could have just found this data on Google. But after white hat hacker (the good kind, if your definition of "good" is malleable) Ron Bowles collected all of this public data and smushed it into one massive file, it may have sparked an interest that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Sure, these companies could have found this data elsewhere, at any time--but they likely didn't. Public information on a Facebook page is still public, and public means your friends as well as sort of scary corporations like Halliburton, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin have access to it.
A Gizmodo reader found that software called Peer Block (as well as others, but that's the one he used) can find the IP of any other user downloading that file. It also identifies the source of that IP, often an entity like a company, college, or other organization. So he looked through the list and picked out some of the ones that popped out at him.
Of course, we should note that just because an IP address associated with a company downloaded this file, it doesn't mean that that company requested the file be downloaded, or is even aware that it was. A single Halliburton employee might've read Fast Company and downloaded the torrent file at work to see what the hubbub is about, and bam, now Halliburton's on the list. Also, some of these organizations, like the BBC, Viacom, Time Warner, and Turner, have news branches, which would be a logical and forgiveable reason to download the file.
Without further ado, the list. The linked names are companies on our Most Innovative Companies list.
A.C. Nielsen; Agilent Technologies; Apple; AT&T, possibly Macrovision; Baker & McKenzie; BBC; Bertelsmann Media; Boeing; Church of Scientology; Cisco Systems; Cox Enterprises; Davis Polk & Wardwell; Deutsche Telekom; Disney; Duracell; Ernst & Young; Fujitsu; Goldman Sachs; Halliburton; HBO & Company; Hilton Hospitality; Hitachi; HP; IBM; Intel; Intuit; Levi Strauss & Co.; Lockheed-Martin Corp; Lucasfilm; Lucent Technologies; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co; Mcafee; MetLife; Mitsubishi; Motorola; Northrop Grumman; Novell; Nvidia; O'Melveny & Myers; Oracle Corp; Pepsi Cola; Procter and Gamble; Random House; Raytheon; Road Runner RRWE; Seagate; Sega; Siemens AG; Sony Corporation; Sprint; Sun Microsystems; Symantec; The Hague; Time Warner Telecom; Turner Broadcasting System; Ubisoft Entertainment; Unisys; United Nations; Univision; USPS; Viacom; Vodafone; Wells Fargo; Xerox PARC
[Image credit: Gizmodo]
Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).
Project Carmen Sandiego can track down your cell phone and your whereabouts
Be prepared to be scared about your cell phone privacy. Two security researchers showed today how they can track down cell phone numbers, identify the person who owns the phone, and then track the whereabouts of that person. And they can do it with technology available to ordinary civilians.
That last part is the shocking part. Government investigators and police can do this. But Don Bailey and Nick DePetrillo (pictured) showed they were able to do it by collecting bits of information and then amassing them into a powerful tool that can invade your privacy. They showed off working code and other proof from Project Carmen Sandiego (named after a computer game where you tracked somebody down as part of a geography lesson) at the Black Hat security conference today in Las Vegas.
“This is intelligence gathering for civilians,” said Bailey, speaking to a roomful of security researchers and hackers. “We can find out where you are, who you talk to, where you are most vulnerable.”
Bailey and DePetrillo joked that they could get actress Megan Fox’s cell phone number and sell it to the highest bidder. But they said the point of doing this isn’t to get the cell phone numbers of celebrities or executives like Apple’s Steve Jobs. They wanted to show how security should be stepped up for cell phones and how shockingly easy it is to do. If they could do it, they reasoned, then the bad guys with evil intent have probably already figured out how to do it. In effect, Bailey and DePetrillo said that they have enough information to put together a White Pages for cell phones, with home numbers for everybody’s cell phone.
Governments can pretty much afford the technology to do this now. But ordinary civilians can’t. One of the tools they exploit is a central database called a Home Location Register, which records the phone number of every SIM (subscriber identity module) authorized to use the cell phone network based on the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) standard, which is the standard used in about 80 percent of the world’s phones. You can access HLR data through various third-party resources, Bailey said. You can cross reference that with Mobile Switching Center information that determines where you are, generally.
That data tells the researchers what city the user is in. They reverse engineered this data to get more information. In other countries, the MSC data has zip code data embedded in it, making it much easier to find someone’s location. U.S. data isn’t that easy to figure out. But the researchers say that can take a given MSC number and find out its location and its cell phone provider.
“That information should be privileged, but it isn’t,” Bailey said. “I shouldn’t know that you switched from AT&T to T-Mobile.”
You can buy CallerID information from companies such as Targus, which gets data from Verizon and other carriers. They add your name to the CallerID database with phone number data. If you buy a cell phone in the U.S., your name will wind up in a CallerID database. With this data, the researchers were able to reverse engineer the data to create a White Pages for mobile phones, which means they can put a name to a cell phone number. With the name and phone number together, the researchers can assemble other information.
“It’s extremely easy to build your own database,” DePetrillo said.
The databases are more expensive if you want to get the most current data, but older data is cheaper, costing only 0.0024 cents per name looked up. One of the things they can do with names is piece together who your co-workers are, because they will be using company-purchased phones with similar phone numbers.
Some of the techniques they use to glean information include backspoofing. But if you don’t want to do that, you can buy databases from Bulkcname.com for around $100 per 1,000 name lookups. The researchers say they can get 10,000 names identified for just $30. You can verify the data by cross referencing it with HLR data, which tells which carrier is associated with certain phone numbers.
During the talk, the researchers showed slides of text that showed phone numbers, names, locations and company affiliations. They can even make educated guesses about which banks of phone numbers are assigned to prepaid phones, which are phones bought at stores and can generally disguise their owners. The researchers say they can pinpoint people 99 percent of the time. With Google, Facebook and other tools, you can often then put a face to the name. You can find out if there are multiple phone numbers associated with one person.
“Our intent is to get people thinking about their actions and their vulnerabilities,” Bailey said. “You can target people. You can locate private individuals. You can locate groups of individuals. You can track where people are traveling. That’s a lot of information. It can be scary.”
Added DePetrillo, “This is simple stuff to understand. I have information I shouldn’t have. I didn’t do any crazy, insane hacker tricks. It requires very little intelligence.”
People: Don Bailey, Nick DePetrillo
Google launches mobile banner ads which know where you are
Google today announced on its Mobile Ads blog that it has launched location-aware display advertisements for mobile phones. Through Google’s “location extension” feature, advertisers can now include their location and phone numbers to appear in display ads on iPhone and Android mobile websites.
The feature, previously available only on search ads, will appear as banner text advertising and will pinpoint business locations on a small map as well as a “click-to-call” phone number. Consumers will also have the option for generate directions if needed.
Giving consumers the option of viewing businesses in their area increases Google’s chance that the consumer will call the business or click to its website, which are the two ways Google makes money on the service. The move shows Google’s increased investment in mobile and display advertising, two areas that have traditionally played second-fiddle to regular search advertising.
The location aware advertisements might be just what local businesses need as well. According to TechCrunch, “Google says that mobile ads that offer a location generally see an average 8 percent increase in click-through rates over plain-vanilla mobile ads, and click-to-call mobile ads see a 6 percent increase in clicks.”
Advertisers have to opt-in to the Google Ad Network and make sure they check the “Display Network” option. From there, the advertiser includes its number and address as well as the option to upload a logo. The last step is to check the box for iPhones and other mobile devices will full Internet browsers.
Companies: Google
Google Says Its Services Are Now Blocked in China, Chinese Residents Say Otherwise
After the long, storied mess that is Google vs. China, with its accusations of government-sponsored hacking, flimsy workarounds, and censorship debates, Google's legal status and availability in China ended up varying day to day. So the company set up a site that monitors the availability of lots of Google's services, like Search, Images, YouTube, News, Gmail, Blogger, and Picasa, updated daily.
That site is reporting today that several Google services that had previously been available no longer are, including important ones like Search, News, and Images. That's a major change, especially Search--that Google's bread and butter would be shut down in China is major news, and was reported by, among others, Reuters, AP, and the New York Times. Google's shares fell 1.72% at the day's end of trading, in large part due to the news.
But reports on Twitter and elsewhere suggest it's all some sort of misunderstanding. Check the #googlecn hashtag on Twitter for evidence: Users are all saying that it's a false alarm, and that Google is working just fine for them in mainland China. Users in Hunan and Beijing, among other places, confirm that Google is not down at all.
Google finally responded, saying that a "small blockage" caused a misrepresentation of the total block in China. The site set up to monitor the availability of Google services does not do so in real time, so it remained incorrect all day. That statement:
Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it's possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.
Please also note that the dashboard is not a real time tool.
Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).
Google Teams Up With CIA, Invests in Analytics Firm
Wired's defense dude, Noah Schachtman, has a fascinating story about Google and the CIA being joint investors in a web monitoring firm. Both Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment arm, have injected sums (less than $10 million each) into Recorded Future, a company that goes through "tens of thousands" of websites and looks for related actions and conversations between, for example, Twitter accounts, blogs and websites, and analyzes them in order to spot events and trends as early on as possible.
Describing its analytics as "the ultimate tool for open-source intelligence," Recorded Future markets itself towards corporations and brands, but it's also got one very large foot in the counter-terrorism field--which is what makes it so attractive to In-Q-Tel. The firm's CEO is an ex Swedish Army Ranger who holds a PhD in Computer Science, and he says that what sets Recorded Future apart from other analytics firms is "you can actually predict the curve, in many cases."
As well as the "business intelligence" side to the firm, there's a real feeling of Minority Report, here. It sounds like the kind of tool that will be used to predict crimes and terrorist activity as well. Analytics are already being used by the Memphis Police Department, whose Operation Blue CRUSH uses predictive analytics by IBM.
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Now, at first glance, it looks like the hardest thing that Google is going to have to deal with is the way this (coincidental, or accidental, surely) hook-up with the CIA looks. The PR is going to be mighty tricky--I mean, try explaining this to Consumer Watchdog's John Simpson, as the potential for consumer data leaks is significant, not to mention Google's increasing presence in governmental bodies. Now that yet another connection has been established between the "one-trick pony" (as Schmidt described Google to the Wall Street Journal yesterday) there may be calls to establish a Chinese wall so that Google's user data isn't shared with the guys with earpieces. That is, assuming that the two investors are actually using the service rather than just being vanilla investors.
Not only is the White House close to Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, but it's leaning towards the idea of granting the FBI powers to force firms such as ISPs to hand over an individual's data. However, for all the intelligence agencies' fanatical interest in technological tools that, while plowing through the idea of individual privacy, seem (to them) to be the only way of tackling the increasing security issues both at home and abroad, there is one thing to remember, as Charles Homan's piece in Foreign Policy this week shows.
For all the hi-tech know-how, the only way of really proving that the intel gathered is bona fide is common sense. And, rather like FIFA's stance on technology in football (although the CIA is much more pro than Sepp Blatter ever will be) the ultimate decision needs to be made by an individual, not an algorithm. Gut instinct still trumps tech.
Enterprise Adds Electric Vehicle Rentals, WeCar Sharing, Massive Tree Planting
Say hello to electric car-renting-sharing fusion goodness.
Next time you stop by Enterprise Rent-A-Car, your vehicle rental may be electric and by the hour. These and other wide-sweeping company changes were announced earlier this week as part of a company overhaul.
Another new feature is car-sharing, similar to what is already offered by Hertz Connect and pioneer Zipcar:
“WeCar car-sharing technology--complemented by Enterprise Rent-A-Car's extensive local car rental network--provides an environmentally friendly transportation solution, whether it is for an hour, a day, a weekend or longer. Totally automated and membership-based, WeCar serves local businesses, universities, and government offices looking to enhance their fleet management operations and sustainability initiatives.”And if that’s not enough, the company planted 5 million trees this year. And they'll plant another 45 million in the next 50 years! Look out, Zipcar: As crunchy as you are, have you planted 5 million trees yet?