Interesting Facts

Allegedly, image recognition software that detects brand logos on pictures uploaded to blogs and sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr is being used to glean marketing information for targeted advertising. (For example, Twitter is using image-based ad targeting through image analytics firm, Ditto Labs.  They are able to pick out photos posted to Twitter -- either directly or through Instagram -- that contain a brand's logo, collect the Twitter handles of the people posting those photos to create a list that an advertiser can then submit to Twitter as the audience it would like to show particular ads to. Maybe it's time to stop wearing branded items when we have our photo taken.)

According to career website, CareerCast.com, the people with the worst jobs in the US are newspaper reporters. (The five worst jobs were:- Oil-rig worker Actor Enlisted military personnel Lumberjack Newspaper reporter The top five jobs were:- Actuary Biomedical engineer Software engineer Audiologist Financial planner Poor old Clark Kent.)

According to Bloomberg, the computer trading error that cost Knight Capital, the US market maker $440m (£282m) (see IF 9th Auguts 2012) can be blamed on disused software. (On August 1, the dormant system was accidentally reactivated when a new program was installed. As a result stock trades were multiplied by 1,000, causing wild swings in the share prices of almost 150 companies. So, now we know. The big question is, what are we going to do about it?)

According to ZDNet, 51 per cent of website traffic is through automated software programs, often with      malicious activity in mind. (The breakdown of an average site’s traffic is as follows: - 5% = hacking tools looking for an unpatched or new vulnerability within a site. - 5% = scrapers. - 2% = automated comment spammers. - 19% = “spies” collating competitive intelligence. - 20% = search engines (non-human traffic but benign). - 49% = real people who are actually browsing the Internet. Maybe I should cut my visitor logs in half.) Source