With tourists flocking to the Boston to walk the cobblestone streets of the Freedom Trail and visit various historical landmarks, Boston is often thought of for its ties to the American Revolution. But Boston is also the birthplace of a revolution of a different sort. In 1946, Georges Doriot, a professor at the Harvard Business School, founded the American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) in Boston - one of the very first venture capital firms. In 1957, the ARDC invested $70,000 in Digital Equipment Corporation, a company founded by two former Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers working on transistor-based computing. The ARDC was later able to turn around and sell their investment for $450 million, quite possibly the best return on an investment ever at that point. Sponsor RWW's Never Mind the Valley series: Boulder Los Angeles Coming Soon: Portland, OR and Austin, TX Half a century later, Boston is a thriving and vibrant community not only for venture capital and startups, but also for large technology companies and research corporations. With nearly a hundred regional colleges and universities - like MIT and Harvard - and over a quarter of a million students, Boston has quickly become a breeding ground for innovation in the tech sector. "The thing that's amazing is we don't have to worry about attracting people into the Boston community," said Jeffrey Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners in a speech at the Harvard Business School last October (see video embedded below). "The challenge is to retain people." And retain them they will, thanks to a plethora of resources available to young entrepreneurs and startups in Boston. Monthly meet-ups like Mobile Monday and Tech Tuesday as well as other events like the biannual Mass Tech Leadership Council Unconference are just a few of the great ways startups can get their feet off the ground. Other organizations like TechStars and Stay in MA help Boston startups set up shop in Beantown with scholarships, funding, and mentorship. And why wouldn't startups want to stay in Boston? Massachusetts boasts the highest per capita VC investment rate in the United States, eclipsing California and New York with $457 per person. Data released today from information and data-services company ChubbyBrain shows that while other Northeaster states are suffering from floundering VC investment, Massachusetts is alive and expanding. While New York and Pennsylvania fell to just $513 million and $254 million respectively in the second half of 2009, Boston's home state soared to $1.2 billion. Figures like these have vaulted Massachusetts past New York into the number two spot behind California for VC investments. Bussgang says that reasons like these and the overall economic stability of the state have encouraged startups and entrepreneurs in Boston, despite being across the country from sunny Silicon Valley. "Yeah the winter sucks, but Massachusetts has delivered a budget on time and balanced the last couple years... unlike what's going on in California," he says. Bussgang also points out that California continually ranks last on Chief Executive Magazine's list of Best and Worst States for Business, though Massachusetts is usually not too far away. The close-knit technology and innovation community of the greater Boston area has fostered spontaneous collaborations resulting in several successful companies across numerous industries. Cloud computing solutions like Carbonite and GlassHouse , robotics companies like Roomba-maker iRobot , online video providers like Brightcove , and e-commerce startups Vistaprint and Shoebuy are all examples of the firepower Boston's potential can produce. Boston has even seen recent expansion from larger corporations, such as Google , Microsoft and Cisco Systems . Having these larger companies in the Boston area provides excellent opportunities for startups, says Bussgang. "Boston has become an outpost for a lot of these satellite R&D centers, and a place where the companies that we fund can find a home," he says. To learn more about the Boston startup scene, check out Don Dodge's extensive list of events, resources and people, as well as Larry Cheng's Massachusetts VC Blog Directory , which you can import right into your RSS reader to stay on top of what VCs in Boston are talking about. Photo by Flickr user the-o . Discuss

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Never Mind the Valley: Here's Boston

In the first generation of the social Web, the marketing groups and public relations teams would develop reports to provide metrics for a particular campaign. They were pretty much the sole users of "social media," technologies. That's a problem as far as WiseWindow is concerned. Social media is a poor label for describing how comments, blog posts, updates and other opinions can be leveraged to gauge views across social networks and thousands of Web sites. "Labeling of it as social media has limited its potential up to now," said Marshall Toplansky, president of WiseWindow. "That is why we are calling it mass opinion business intelligence and not social media analytics." Sponsor Now, the social Web is a real-time engine. Cloud computing is a reality and a new era is upon us that allows the enterprise to mine the vast sea of comments, reviews, updates and blog posts from millions of people. We're entering an era where the social Web will serve as the main territory for performing predictive analytics. WiseWindow is using artificial intelligence technology, web crawlers and the processing power of the cloud to get real-time results for enterprise customers. For example, this means that companies may leverage the social Web to make sales forecasts and gauge the opinions of mass society to immediately understand the current opinions about its brand or those of competitors. WiseWindow calls the product Mass Opinion Business Intelligence, describing it as a service that goes beyond keyword search and click-throughs to predict market movement. According to WiseWindow, sentiment analysis has failed as a strategic research tool. When matching words, the context is lost. People use words differently to describe their sentiments. The mass amount of data available makes the process overwhelming. Instead, the WiseWindow web crawler will search for comments and other opinions across thousands of sites that are not blocked by privacy restrictions. The artificial intelligence trains itself to look for a particular topic. It brings back all related opinions. The information is then distilled for the client or made available through a web portal where the data can be analyzed. Recently, WiseWindow worked with a client from the film industry. WiseWindow used its technology to research 400 films, generating 4.5 million comments from 70,000 sites. They distilled the data to lean what is hot and what is not. As another example, , WiseWindow did research for the film, Marley and Me , starring Jennifer Anniston and Luke Wilson. The pre-release promotions featured Luke Wilson. But the comments from the Web demonstrated that Anniston had greater appeal than Wilson. As a result, the trailers were changed to feature Anniston more than Wilson. WiseWindow was founded in 2007 by Rajiv Dulepet. He has an impressive background. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford's School of Management and Engineering, spearheading the development of presidential prediction projects for both the 2004 and 2008 elections. WiseWindow started developing its technology in 2007 and began working with clients last year. The company has four patents for its web crawling, auto-classifications of opinions, relevance recognition and in statistical language applications. Discuss

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Gauging Mass Opinion: Don't Label it Social Media

Research from Harvard Medical School has resulted in a pretty sharp SaaS learning system. SpacedEd , as it is called, uses a simple question and answer format that adapts to the person's level of knowledge. Today the adaptive technology is taking a leap into the business world with SpacedEd Enterprise , a service designed for corporations and for-profit educational groups. Sponsor SpacedEd is based upon the spacing effect, which states that people learn more effectively when presented information that is repeated over spaced intervals. Spaced Education is the company managing the technology. It conducted studies that show some pretty compelling results from training they did with doctors. For example, the SpacedEd training helped decrease cancer screenings by 26% in random clinical trials of 95 Virginia primary care providers, representing a potential cost savings of $650,000 per year in test costs alone. Here's how the service works: The learner receives course materials that are delivered electronically in a question format. People may receive questions by email, through an RSS feed or through a web site. Answers may be posted using any connected device, reflecting the nature in which people are conducting their lives. People receive two questions per day. If the person gets one of the questions wrong then it is posed again one week later. If answered correctly, the question is repeated three weeks later. If the person get it right a second time then the question is dropped from the course material. Course material is delivered to the recipient based on their knowledge level. SpacedEd Enterprise is designed for corporate clients and for-profit learning organizations. Administrators may control the access that users have to the courses. The service includes the capability to answer questions in a blog format so they may elaborate and create their own questions. SpacedEd offers a 30-day trial. Customers may use the technology on a pay-per-use basis. Discuss

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Harvard Medical School's Learning Technology Must Be Smart...Right?

Consumer watchdog group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation , has initiated a lawsuit against multiple U.S. government agencies for failure to disclose their policies regarding the use of social media for surveillance. According to the filing, the government has been making use of social media sites like Facebook , MySpace , YouTube , and Twitter to aid in various investigations where the crimes range from the relatively minor infringement of underage drinking to more serious endeavors, such as the coordination of protesters during the G-20 summit . However, when requests were made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for details about governmental policies, several agencies failed to respond with information regarding what data is collected, under what circumstances, and who has access to it. Sponsor About the Suit The EFF is working with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Samuelson Clinic) on this lawsuit. The Clinic filed the original FOIA requests on EFF's behalf and later filed the suit when government agencies refused to respond. Named in suit are the Department of Defense (DoD), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of the Treasury, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Department of Justice (DoJ) which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), among others. The filing mentions several recent media articles where criminals have been apprehended thanks to government surveillance of social networking sites, including the case of Maxi Sopo whose Facebook status updates led to his arrest on bank fraud charges. Another example involved programmer Aaron Swartz who helped an open-government activist with the collection of millions of public and free court records. His activities led to a full-scale FBI investigation, as detailed here in this Wired article . Twitter's name came up when, as mentioned above, the service was used to notify G-20 summit protestors of police movements. Although this suit may lead some to believe the EFF is against the practice of utilizing social networking sites for investigative purposes, that is not the case. The filing notes that government use is "often for laudable reasons" - they just want the scope clarified so as to prevent abuse. Social Media Investigations are the New Wiretap No longer solely used by tech-savvy individuals, social networks have seen explosive growth over recent years. Sites which at one time catered only to the young, such as Facebook which began as college-only network, now include demographic groups that range from pre-teens all the way up to grandparents. As more mainstream users join sites such as these, there is a growing need for privacy awareness. Specifically, internet users have the right to know who can access their data as well as when and how it can be used. Initiatives like Facebook's recent privacy updates hope to help users maintain some control over that data, but that may not be enough. As graduate student Christopher Soghoian recently revealed on his blog , government agencies routinely request information from the operators of social networks when investigating criminal activities in order to access data users have hidden from public view. In fact, most companies even have documented policies regarding the procedures for requesting this data - for example, Facebook's Subpoena and Search Warrant Guide is here and MySpace's Law Enforcement Guide is here . In this new technological age we live in, using social media to gather data and track criminals is commonplace. It's the new wiretap. And while social network surveillance is usually used for beneficial purposes, people deserve to know what their rights are in this area. Hopefully, this suit will shed some light on that. Discuss

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Watchdog Group EFF Sues Government Regarding Social Media Surveillance Tactics

In a late night post on Facebook's company blog , CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a round of upcoming changes that will affect all users of the social network. Specifically, the changes focus on new privacy controls for information sharing. For those who have been following Facebook closely, the announcement doesn't deliver any new information, it only confirms some previously discussed plans. However, for Facebook's user base, now 350 million strong, the updates represent a major overhaul as to how privacy is handled on the site. Sponsor Change #1: No More Regional Networks Over the years, Facebook has grown from a tightly closed social network designed for connecting college students to an entirely open network which anyone and everyone can join. At first, Facebook's privacy model revolved around "networks" - communities for your school, your region, or your company. "This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students," Zuckerberg writes, "since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students." Over time, the company added more networks, including some for entire countries. But now, thanks to Facebook's ever-growing popularity, these "regional" networks have grown so large that some have millions of members. The problem with networks of this size when it comes to privacy is that people who had opted in to sharing content with their network (via the setting share with my "networks and friends" ) were inadvertently be sharing personal updates with far more people than they intended to. To address this issue, Facebook demoted cities and regions from being considered networks although the information still exists in user profiles, listed under "Current City" and/or "Current Region." This update isn't exactly news - the company revealed their plans to remove regional networks back in July of this year. Zuckerberg's mentioning of this update seems to be more of a confirmation that indeed, this process is underway, than any sort of major announcement about a new direction for Facebook. Change #2: Control Who Sees Each Piece of Individual Content You Add or Upload A second privacy update involves Facebook's plans to allow its users more control over individual pieces of content uploaded or added to the social network. This control will be implemented on a per-post basis through a mechanism dubbed the "Publisher Privacy Control." Simply put, this change adds a new feature to the publisher box on Facebook - aka the status update box. From here, Facebook users post their status, upload photos and videos, and share links. At the moment, when you click the "Share" button, who sees that content is governed by settings tucked away under a cavalcade of menus (Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Profile -> Status and Links.) With the the upcoming Publisher Control functionality, already in beta testing , a new button featuring an image of lock will appear beneath the status update box. Click on this button and you'll be able to choose precisely who is allowed to see that update or other piece of content ("everyone," "friends," "friends of friends," etc.) Change #3: A Simplified Privacy Page Facebook's granular privacy controls have always been sort of a blessing and curse for the social network. Although savvy users could drill down into each individual setting and adjust it to their needs, the majority of the site's users don't even know where these settings are, much less how to change them or to what . The problem, as noted above, is that many of the privacy settings are buried in a series of complex menus. Even if you can find the Privacy Page, the drop-down boxes and their lists of choices stump average users who aren't sure what a setting like "my networks and friends" really means. To make privacy simpler, Facebook's controls will be changed to permit sharing with three groups: "only friends," "friends of friends," or "everyone." In addition, the Privacy Page itself will be simplified to combine some settings which currently overlap. This, too, was announced in July . Although neither post details specifically what settings will be combined, a quick glance at the Privacy Page allows for some speculation. Perhaps the "basic info" and "personal info" boxes will become one? There really isn't that much distinction between the two, despite what their names imply. For example, "basic" information includes what many consider "personal" information such as birthday, hometown, and religious views. Meanwhile, the so-called "personal" information setting controls more innocuous content like favorite books and movie. The "Photos Tagged of You" and the "Videos Tagged of You" settings also seem like worthy contenders for combination. It seems that you're either okay with people seeing content you've been tagged in by others or you're not. Whether that's a photo or video doesn't really matter to most. However, these are just guesses, mind you - until the update goes live, there's no way to tell what will and will not be changed. How the Transition Will Occur Although not mentioned by name in Zuckerberg's blog post, the July post mentioned a new "Transition Tool" that would be rolled out to users to aid them in configuring the new settings. This is likely what Zuckerberg was referring to when he noted that "we'll suggest settings for you..." With the Transition Tool, users are prompted to pick from different privacy level options like "open," "recommended," or "limited." According to the recent post, the recommended settings will be based on your current level of privacy but you'll be able to read through the other options to make changes if you so desire. Beginning with a small group of users, Facebook has been testing six different versions of this tool to determine what works best. Based on feedback from the group, the testing tool will be refined to a final version before all the changes are made available to the entire network. However, since the recent post made no mention of a timeline for these changes, the implication is that these new updates are not going live just yet. Instead, the post was merely setting the stage for what's to come. Why Facebook Cares About Privacy It's good to see Facebook taking the issue of privacy seriously. Although it's easy to blame the user for over-sharing and then having to deal with harsh consequences like job loss or even, remarkably, the loss of health-care benefits by sharing some items too publicly, at the end of the day, affected users will not blame themselves, they will blame Facebook. And those reading these "social network horror stories" in the media could ultimately become too afraid to post to the site, leading to a less active user base, or worse - users deleting their accounts. Privacy issues are bad news for Facebook, just as they were bad news for MySpace back when they were king. For years, there were so many news stories about sexual predators on MySpace that eventually the public perception of MySpace was that the network wasn't very safe. Instead of going that route and allowing the media stories about Facebook blunders to control the network's public image, these privacy changes are designed to preempt the missteps and mistakes the not-so-savvy user base may make by making Facebook privacy simpler and more refined while also more representative of the large network Facebook has become. Discuss

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How Facebook's New Privacy Changes Will Affect You

A backlash against anonymous commenters and trolls seems to be underway. Only last month, a court case was settled where anonymous commenters ended up having to pay big fines to the women who they defiled using vulgar, derogatory remarks on a internet forum. And previously, an anonymous blogger in the modeling industry was forced to reveal her identity after numerous malicious posts about a colleague showed up on her blog. Now the latest scandal in this new trend of "giving the trolls what they deserve" is causing a controversy all of its own. And this time, the nasty comment didn't just lead to an embarrassing reveal or a heavy fine, it cost someone their job. Sponsor A One-Word Comment Cost a School Employee His Job A vulgar comment was made by a reader of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's website on Friday on an article about the strangest things you've ever eaten . The headline was practically asking for a juvenile response and, thanks to the anonymity of the internet, that's exactly what happened. In the comments section of the article, one user posted a single word response referring to a part of a woman's anatomy. Of course, the site's moderators quickly deleted the comment but it soon reappeared - obviously this juvenile was intent on having their say. But this time, instead of just deleting the comment in question, the site's director of social media, Kurt Greenbaum, did a little sleuthing too. He found that the commenter's IP address was coming from a local school...and that's where this story starts to get interesting. Greenbaum contacted the school and made them aware of the situation. In his defense, he probably thought he was simply tattle-telling on a naughty student who would learn a valuable lesson about internet anonymity and would have to sit through a week's detention or something of the like. Instead, he cost a school employee his job. Yes, as it turns out, the commenter in question wasn't a juvenile after all, just someone with a juvenile mind. Greenbaum learned of the firing when the school phoned him back six hours later to report their findings. They had confronted the employee and he had resigned. Crossing the Line? Or Justice Served? The question being hotly debated now is did Greenbaum go too far? Or did the commenter get what they deserved? Mathew Ingram, the blogger and communities editor for Toronto's The Globe and Mail , writes on his personal blog that his paper's site has seen hundreds or even thousands of comments, most of which are much worse than the one Greenbaum saw, but he would never - and has never - contacted someone's workplace about them. He calls Greenbaum's actions "over-the-top" and apparently, many commenters on STLtoday.com's website agree, calling out Greenbaum over this incident. And yet Greenbaum seems to show no remorse, responding to one commenter who accused him of hating moderating so much that he decided to get someone fired by saying: "Yeah, you caught me! I made him log on to his computer at work, visit STLtoday.com's Talk of the Day, read the item, type a vulgarity and hit the 'submit' key." Sixteen pages of comments now follow that initial interaction, and the majority of them seem to agree that Greenbaum crossed a line, save for the occasional concerned parent who didn't like the idea of this vulgarity-posting person hanging around their children instead of doing his job. Lesson to Be Learned: Watch What You Say! We can't blame Greenbaum for the sleuthing bit - any blogger will tell you they've been tempted to hunt down the identities of nasty commenters from time to time. But calling someone's work? That's just wrong. Yet while Greenbaum may have been seriously misguided to do what he did, this should be another sobering reminder to anyone trolling the net that what you type may come back and haunt you one day. There's no such thing as true anonymity on the net these days, and thanks to new technologies like Facebook Connect, the days where you can hide behind a made-up web handle may be numbered . In fact, Facebook itself may even owe its success to how it forces users to post with their "real" name and identity notes blogger Kent Newsome . "With a name comes accountability, and there is a direct correlation between accountability and behavior," he writes. That may be true, but the fact of the matter is that the STLtoday website allows anonymous comments. When you make that choice, then you have to expect that some of them will need moderation - it's just part of the job. Regardless of the site's policies about vulgarity, phoning the employer seems like an over-reaction to the incident. But that's just our opinion. What do you think? Discuss

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Leaving a Vulgar Comment Online Might Cost You Your Job