Posts tagged Transparency
Google Transparency Report Now Shows User Data Requests
Oct 27th
The Google Transparency Report has been updated to include data on Government requests for user information. The U.S. made requests for over 11,000 accounts in the first half of 2011 alone, making them the leader in user data requests.
The Trans…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Insights from the Google Transparency Report
Jun 29th
In swift juxtaposition to the official opening of the U.S. FTC antitrust investigation, Google released a new version of their transparency report. The report gives additional levels of insight into government influence on censorship.
The Improv…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Twitter Offers Better Transparency About What Third-Party Apps Can Do With Your Account
May 18th
Twitter has just announced a change to the way in which it handles permissions for third-party applications. The update will give users a better understanding of how this process works and what information third-party apps can access.
When users authorize to a third-party app for the first time, they’ll see a new permissions screen detailing what that integration with Twitter means. This can include activities like reading tweets, seeing who the user follows, tweeting on a user’s behalf, or accessing Direct Messages.
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It’s the latter detail that often makes people balk, not realizing that up until now, this is something that’s been granted to the various third-party apps that they use with their Twitter accounts. Starting today, Twitter is going to remind users that that is, indeed, something that third-party apps can do, and apps that do access DMs (such as third-party Twitter clients) will have to ask for permission to do so again.
Then at the end of the month, those apps that needn’t access DMs will no longer be able to do so.
According to Twitter, this change has been something both users and developers have long been asking for. But until now, developers have not had granular control over the content they could access, unlike for example apps on the Facebook platform. With Twitter, it’s been all or nothing. Users have had to hand over the keys to all these activities when authorizing a new app, something that might make them uncomfortable when just trying out a new service.
But now there is a new permission level called “Read, Write, & Direct Messages,” according to Twitter Developer Advocate Matt Harris. If an app does require access to this permission, developers will have to make some changes and will have to use OAuth, not xAuth. “To ensure users know that an application is receiving access to their direct messages,” says Harris, “we are also restricting this permission to the OAuth /authorize web flow only.”
Applications that don’t need to read direct messages won’t need to make any changes, and users of these apps won’t notice anything different when these permission levels change.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Ready For Zero – Bringing Transparency to Online Debt Management
Mar 16th
As of June of 2010, the total U.S. consumer debt was $2.40 trillion. As much as 98% of the revolving debt in the U.S. is credit card debt, and the average household carries about $8000 in credit card debt. As daunting as those statistics are for the country as a whole, the choices faced by the individuals who are in debt and who want to eliminate it are just as depressing.
Information about debt reduction can be difficult to find, and there are plenty of questionable practices by banks and by debt consolidation companies that just serve to muddy the waters.
So making the task of tackling your debt easy and transparent is a big part of the mission of the YC-backed company Ready for Zero. Ready for Zero a free service with a very simple interface that helps clarify your financial status and plan your way out of debt.
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Much like Mint.com, you sign up and link your credit card information, and then Ready for Zero offers you counselling based on your interest rates, balance, and target date for being debt-free.
The emphasis here is on transparency and interactivity, and users can see how adjusting payment amounts, for example, change their status. The software also offers other advice, including tips on how and when to approach a bank to renegotiate your interest rate.
Launched last month, Ready for Zero co-founder Rod Ebrahimi says that the system is already tracking $29 million in credit card debt.
But it isn’t simply a matter of tracking – and helping users track – debt. Ready for Zero has recently partnered with the peer-to-peer lending network, Lending Club. By monitoring its users debt and their work towards paying it off, Ready for Zero can give a snapshot of one aspect of someone’s financial health, and Ready for Zero makes it easy to share that with potential lenders at Lending Club. This means that people can apply for P2P debt consolidation loans at rates that are typically far lower than other banks and lending institutions.
As the startup expands, Ready for Zero says it plans to eventually give users the option to make payments, not just monitor payments, through their interface. “We’re just three guys and we’re a technical team,” says Ebrahimi. But the startup is hoping that by merging that technical expertise with more open data, that Ready for Zero can scale up while helping the rest of us scale back our debt.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
East Timor Govt Opens Financial Transparency Portal
Mar 15th
For most people, East Timor, known officially as the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, came to public notice in 2002 when it gained official independence from Indonesian occupation after a long, violent struggle that included the use by the Indonesian military of starvation as a tool for genocide.. In the time since, the country has experienced the usual amount of election violence and corruption that a new nation sees.
Now, the Timorese government has opened a FreeBalance-powered portal devoted to government financial transparency.
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FreeBalance is a Canadian company that provides software for public financial management, including online portals for government customers include the United States, Afghanistan, Uganda and Iraq.
On their website the government of Timor-Leste declared the goal of the project:
“The Transparency Website will allow people to participate, in real time and interactively, in the process of the Timor-Leste national budget and to contribute to National Development.”
FreeBalance explains the use a Timorese citizen could put the portal.
“Citizens can investigate projects further to view budget transactions to ensure the budget is being spent as intended. This ensures honesty and transparency to improve citizen and investor confidence. The Timor-Leste Transparency Portal provides 10 years of budget information: the budget that was approved and the actual budget spent. Reports and filtered results can be exported in PDF, Word, Excel, XML and HTML formats.”
Can such portals provide real transparency? Can transparency itself really make a difference in difficult situations like that in East Timor? Or do so many interests militate against it that the transparency will either not last or never be truly see-through? It’s something I don’t have an answer for.
If you do, having worked in government or for an NGO on the financial side, please leave a comment below.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Transparency is the key to building SEO trust, according to expert – Vertical Leap News (press release)
Oct 7th
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Transparency is the key to building SEO trust, according to expert
Vertical Leap News (press release) Trust is a fundamental part of the SEO process, with business owners investing a great deal of faith in specialists to improve their company's fortunes. … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Google’s New Forced Transparency: Is Your Agency Ready?
Aug 16th
Google is making changes that require agencies to be more “transparent” in their reports to advertisers. But will this change benefit advertisers—or is it a move by Google to build its own brand and assure customer loyalty? The answers aren’t entirely… “transparent.”
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View full post on Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
