Yule get Spam for Christmas

I’m trying really hard to be jolly and festive.  But it doesn’t help when - in amongst trying to tie off numerous work-related loose ends – I’m getting bombarded with junk e-mail. 

Not just the usual stream of junk e-mail, but Christmas spam with all the trimmings. 

From companies I’ve bought things from, from companies I haven’t bought things from but who want me to buy things from them, from companies I’ve never heard of.

And with the BBC today reporting that more people in the UK are expected to do online shopping on Christmas day than will attend church, you’ve really got to wonder what it’s all about.

Fun with Microsoft Tag

I’ve been having some fun with Microsoft Tag. 

 

Microsoft describes Microsoft Tag as “a breakthrough technology that transforms everyday things in the real world into live links to online information and entertainment.  From your mobile phone, simply snap or scan a Tag image anywhere you see it – in editorials, advertisements, product packaging, signs and storefronts – and gain instant access to Websites, videos, reviews, schedules, contact information, social networks, discounts, promotions and more!”

 

Or put another way, Microsoft’s snappy tagline (excuse the pun) describes Tag as - “Linking real life with the digital world.”

 

I’ve created a couple of tags below to illustrate the principle.  It works better when the tag appears in a non-digital environment (a poster, a business card, a magazine advert, etc) and links you into a digital environment (a web page, the contacts section of your mobile phone, etc).  But hopefully it gives you a flavour.

 

One is a tag for my LinkedIn site:

Microsoft Tag: My LinkedIn Site

 

The other is a tag to this very blog:

 

Microsoft Tag: Howie's Blog

You’ll need to install Microsoft Tag application onto your mobile phone, which you can do quickly and easily by following the instructions at http://www.microsoft.com/tag/content/download/.  Then you point your phone at the tag and it recognises it and executes the appropriate action.

We (at Company Net) will be putting vCard tags on our new business cards.   Recipients with Microsoft Tag installed on their phone will be able to scan the tag on the card with their phone, and this will automatically transmit our contact details to their phone.  A small application of the technology perhaps, but the potential applications are limitless. 

A few of them are showcased on the Microsoft Tag site. 

Global Data Protection White Paper

Most individual countries worldwide now have their own legal framework with respect to Data Protection and Direct Marketing. However, standards vary widely from country to country. In recent decades, a number of collective mandates have been initiated which attempt to standardise the treatment of data flows between countries, some more successfully than others. These are commonly referred to as there is ambiguity over how legally enforceable such initiatives are:

“The common feature of all these initiatives is that they are non-binding international instruments, or in international law parlance, soft law.”

(The EU Data Protection Directive: An Engine of a Global Regime, Michael D. Birnhack, 2008).

Company Net has drafted a Global Data Protection White Paper, the purpose of which is to set out the historical background to the emergence of these initiatives, and to summarise the current position which seems to favour the EU Data Protection Directive (and its associated directives, the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications, and the EU Data Retention Directive) as the most dominant, and most stringent initiative worldwide. That said, there are still significant complexities and anomalies of the treatment of data even within EU member countries, even within the EU. This document assesses some of these complexities. You can view it at: Global Data Protection White Paper.