The Creepiness Continues: So yesterday we told you about that new app Creepy, well here is another example of how easy it is to find and use geolocation information to map out a person’s life, literally. German politician Malte Spitz, in an effort to raise awareness about data privacy, sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom release six months of his phone data that he then made gave to the newspaper Zeit Online. The newspaper then combined this geolocation phone data with information relating to Spitz’s political career (taken from online sources like Twitter, blogs, and websites) to create an animated map that tracks Malte Spitz. Just push play. Really, really creepy. Zeit Online
Facebook 101: Some New York libraries are starting to offer Facebook 101 classes for the AARP set. I think my dad, who just turned 59 yesterday, needs to sign up for one of these classes ASAP. He still doesn’t understand “The Facebook” or search engines. (“Wait a minute, so you’re telling me that I can type a question in and it finds answers?”). NYT
Blog to Bookshelf: See, sometimes the Internet doesn’t kill print. The 2-year-old blog My Parents Were Awesome, which features user-submitted photos of parents and grandparents, is being released in a print edition by Villard Books/Random House. urlesque
Parting Words: Joshua Topolsky, former Engadget editor, and a bunch of his old staff have left Engadget to start a new gadget site with their former boss Jim Bankoff at SB Nation. On his personal blog, Topolsky explains his new venture and subtly takes a few jabs at the quality of journalism at AOL. Gawker
Video of the Day: Awwwww! Japan ‘tsunami dog’ Ban is reunited with owner after surviving at sea.
More in Media
Brands turn to creators to build World Cup buzz amid a logistics nightmare
A US-based World Cup poses unique problems and opportunities for brands; activating creators away from the games may be the solution.
Reuters and Time adopt bot-blocking whitelists to rein in AI crawlers
Reuters and Time adopt a ‘block-all’ AI bot strategy, part of a broader publisher move toward whitelist-only access.
Google’s AI opt-out leaves publishers with a choice they can’t safely use
The CMA has, on paper, given publishers a right to refuse AI in search. But because it’s opt-out, and Google is slow-walking the data needed to judge the impact, that right is barely usable, publishers say.