Agreement demands $32.5 million in refunds for in-app purchases made without parents’ OK. 10 Best iOS Apps Of 2013 (click image for larger view) To settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint, Apple will refund consumers for in-app purchase charges made by children without the consent of folks, paying at the least $32.5 million for this reason. The FTC complaint alleges that Apple violated the FTC Act by failing to produce adequate disclosure for purchases made on iOS devices. Before recent software changes, entering an Apple ID and password to put in an app or make an in-app purchase opened a fifteen-minute window during which subsequent in-app transactions were possible without further authentication. FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez characterized Apple’s concession as a win for consumers. “This settlement is a victory for consumers harmed by Apple’s unfair billing, and a signal to the business community: Whether you’re doing business within the mobile arena or the mall down the road, fundamental consumer protections apply,” she said in an... Read More »

Kaiser executives highlight potential for interactive, preventive care through a brand new generation of mobile apps — but how one can get patients to opt in? Remote Patient Monitoring: 9 Promising Technologies (click image for larger view) A young mother, Aashima Gupta, was returning home to Oakland from a ski trip to the Sierra Nevada, when her husband, who was driving, complained of drowsiness. She found a map to the closest Starbucks on her smartphone, and the family turned off busy Interstate 80 to get coffee. In three minutes, they were there. She got her husband’s coffee and two cookies for sleepy kids within the back seat. They were back on Route 80 when she realized her seven-year-old daughter, with a nut allergy, was showing the hives round her mouth that were the 1st sign of an hypersensitivity. She was eating a cookie with nuts in it. With a start, Gupta asked herself, what had she done. How had she missed something she was always... Read More »

Over the past year, the genealogy site’s repository of family historical data has greater than doubled in size. Here’s how Ancestry managed its growth. Businesses often use — or overuse — the term “big data” to explain every kind of knowledge-related services, however the buzzword certainly applies with regards to Ancestry.com, a favored genealogy service that helps people dig up their family roots. A little over a year ago, Ancestry was managing about 4 petabytes of information, including greater than 40,000 record collections with birth, census, death, immigration, and armed forces documents, in addition to photos, DNA test results, and other info. Today the gathering has quintupled to greater than 200,000 records, and Ancestry’s data stockpile has soared from 4 petabytes to ten petabytes. According to Bill Yetman, senior director of engineering at Ancestry.com, the large data explosion brought about growing pains. “We measured every step in our process pipeline,” said Yetman in a phone interview with InformationWeek. “We started with academic algorithms that folk... Read More »

A cybersecurity framework for critical infrastructure owners is voluntary but becomes the de facto standard for litigators and regulators. Here’s prepare. Any company this is managing critical infrastructure within the US and disregards the Preliminary Cybersecurity Framework, issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in late October, does so at its own peril. The framework, that’s now in its final comment stage and thanks to be released in mid-February, lays out a fixed of comprehensive but voluntary cybersecurity practices. However, critical infrastructure owners should recognize that, if a company’s cybersecurity practices are ever questioned during a regulatory investigation and litigation, the baseline for what’s considered commercially reasonable is probably going to become the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. The Department of Homeland Security defines critical infrastructure companies broadly to incorporate banking and finance, communications, critical manufacturing, the defense industrial base, energy, emergency services, food and agriculture, healthcare, information technology, utilities, and transportation systems. These companies have to be prepared to document and demonstrate that... Read More »