Path CEO Dave Morin
Path, the mobile app for cataloging your daily activities and sharing them with a relatively small circle of contacts, came under serious fire on Tuesday when it was discovered that Path’s iPhone app imports all of its users’ address book data onto Path’s own servers without notification or asking permission. Not surprisingly, many people saw this as a major breach of user trust.
Path CEO Dave Morin quickly responded to the fallout, telling app developer Arun Thampi, the blogger who first discovered the address book upload activity, that the data was only used to help users find their friends and “nothing more.” Even so, he also said that the Android app has the address book upload as an opt-in feature, and released a new version of Path for iPhone that does the same. The question still remained, though: What about all the address book data that has is already in Path’s hands?
According to Path, you can now consider it completely gone. In a company blog post Wednesday, Morin explicitly apologized for Path ever having such a feature and said that all the address book data that has already been uploaded will be erased from Path’s servers. The blog post, entitled “We are sorry,” reads in part:
“Through the feedback we’ve received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our ‘Add Friends’ feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.
…We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.”
It’s a very smart move by Morin and the Path team. Perceived privacy breaches can be hugely damaging to web companies, and especially so for a company like Path, which bills itself as a more private version of Facebook. Path is already on its second life of sorts (its first iteration as a pure photo sharing app did not take off so well) so its important for the company to value the users it has attracted. Path has not behaved perfectly, but its response to the outcry has been quick, sensitive and strong. The big test now is whether that will be enough from the users’ perspective.
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After spending a full week with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 I purchased from an importer, I’m thoroughly impressed with the small slate. U.S. consumers will see a version with LTE for Verizon’s LTE network in the near future, but my hope is that the Wi-Fi version I bought follows soon; it would be priced less than an full-cost LTE version and wouldn’t require a lengthy data contract.
The Galaxy Tab 7.7 is Samsung’s first tablet to use its Super AMOLED Plus technology, bringing vivid colors, deep blacks and super-wide viewing angles. It doesn’t hurt that the 7.7-inch screen has a higher resolution than most 720p HDTV sets either: the 1280 x 800 resolution is a treat for the eyes; especially when watching high-def videos.
A cheaper Android tablet option appeared this week as well. Sprint is selling the ZTE Optik for with a 2-year 3G data contract or 9 without a commitment. This 7-inch slate runs Android 3.2, not Android 4.0, but has a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, two cameras, GPS radio and 1280 x 800 resolution display.
Google later provided an explanation that suggests it will still provide the updates for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, saying certain software signatures on CDMA phones aren’t compatible with the Android Open Source Platform builds of Android. The situation is odd because the Sprint Nexus S, available since December of 2010, is a CDMA Nexus phone and this issue never cropped up. I suspect there’s more to this story, so I’ll be researching and watching for further developments.
