Good Reads: Mars mission, gene patents, cellphone tracking, 'absurd' start-ups, Netflix streamlines

Verizon Wireless, America’s largest carrier, changed its privacy policy in 2011 to give itself permission to sell anonymous data to businesses, city planners, and marketers. For example, Verizon determined that there were three times as many fans in the stands from Baltimore at this year’s Super Bowl than fans from San Francisco. (The Ravens won, too.)

Data-tracking firm AirSage has signed its own deals with two major US carriers to monitor and look for patterns among the activities of about one-third of all Americans. AirSage does not know the identities of the millions of people it follows, but it can track their movements to within 100 yards. 

While these new practices raise many privacy concerns, Ms. Leber writes, “Research and experience suggest that in practice most people don’t mind, or don’t care as much as they think they do about privacy.”

Who would have believed it?

Revolutionary ideas can sound pretty dumb at first. On the website Quora, serial tech entrepreneur Michael Wolfe distilled a list of start-ups down to their absurd-sounding essence:

“Twitter – it is like email, SMS, or RSS. Except it does a lot less. It will be used mostly by geeks at first, followed by Britney Spears and Charlie Sheen.

“PayPal – people will use their insecure AOL and Yahoo email addresses to pay each other real money, backed by a non-bank with a cute name run by 20-somethings.”

“Google – we are building the world’s 20th search engine at a time when most of the others have been abandoned as being commoditized money losers. We’ll strip out all of the ad-supported news and portal features so you won’t be distracted from using the free search stuff.”

Netflix narrows its focus

Netflix’s transformation from rental service to Web video empire has taken many years and many business deals to pull off. “When Netflix first got into the streaming video business, it went to movie studios and TV networks and bought whatever they were selling,” writes Peter Kafka of All Things D. “It didn’t have a choice. Things are different now.” Netflix says that it will not renew its sweeping contract with TV giant Viacom. Instead, Netflix will cut deals for only the Viacom shows that it knows viewers want to see. (Think more quality dramas and fewer old reality shows.)

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