I just had to block someone else from my Google+ stream.  I think I’ve blocked more than a dozen people in the short few months I’ve been using the service, and I don’t think I have much more than that in my circles all total.

If Google+ was Facebook, this particular person would not have ever ended up in any of my friend’s lists or been allowed to post on my wall or share his political and religious views with me.  If Google+ was Facebook, I’d have gotten a request to allow this person onto my Google+ stream, and I could have chosen to say no.  But Google+ doesn’t give me that option.  Anyone at all can follow me and put me in any circle they’ve created, without asking, without my permission.

This is probably my biggest complaint overall with Google+.  I feel I have a distinct lack of control over who gets to post on my stream, and the only recourse I have is to block them.  I can’t even just kick them out of my stream.  I have to go to the extreme of blocking them completely.  If I’d have just been asked first, I could have decided on a “yes” or “no” to their request to add me without having to have suffered through a dozen or more anti-semitic posts on my stream first.

One of the things I like about Facebook is the ability to keep my wall clean and neat, to only allow a certain type of person to have access to what I say and what I see about them (which in my case is strictly limited to people I’ve actually met in person or have some sort of more-than-passing-acquaintance with).  I am not as likely to see an offensive posting or link since these are people I know and have some connection with.

In the case of Google +, I feel I have no control at all.  I don’t even know how this guy found me, or why he thought I wanted to see what he had to say about people of the Jewish faith.  I have no idea who he is.  Why the heck would Google+ think it was okay for someone like this to have the ability to shove themselves into my online life without any kind of how-do-you-do?

In fact, there is no way (that I’ve found) to keep the random person from just adding you to one of their circles so that you see their posts, however rude and childish.  I have no choice in the matter at all.

Google+ will have its adherents, and it will be popular in its own way, but it will never replace Facebook for me, at least in its current form.  Give me some choice, give me some control about who puts me in their circles, and I might just change my mind.  But for now?  Google+ will remain a fringe product that I use sparingly and only often enough to block more weirdoes from my stream.

I recently had a pretty disappointing encounter with someone on facebook.  He had been on my friends’ list for a year or so.  I was not close friends with him, but I had met him in in person at an event I attended, and he sent a friend request through an online photo album I had submitted pictures to (the event we both attended). He is also an acquaintance and facebook friend of my brother, who is also involved with the event through which I met this gentleman.

As is usual for me, I post a wide variety of things on my facebook page, from links to articles to pictures to commentaries to comics.  I also post about what’s going on in my life, my kids’ lives, books I’m reading, movies I’m watching, and good things that have happened to me.  I’m pretty much an open book on facebook, with one huge exception:  my profile is not public, and I limit my posts and comments only to those on my friends list that I want to reach or talk to.  This gentleman was one of those people, since he and I had a mutual interest in something.

So, I posted a link to an article from my hometown, about a Catholic school that had made a financial decision I didn’t agree with.  No biggie, I make such posts fairly often, and sometimes my friends agree with me, and sometimes they don’t.  There is usually some discussion at the comment level, and then we all move on to other things.  If there’s one thing facebook is, it’s a haven for “change the subject” or as the ADD crowd would say: “look, squirrel!”

This time, however, the comment conversation continued, to the point of some sharp words being spoken in the comments by several of my friends.  This gentleman was on one side, and everyone else was on the other, and it was getting out of hand.  I made one final post in the comment stream, telling all of them that the discussion was finished, it was time to move on.

It was at this point that the gentleman posted a comment that was rather ungentlemanly, and followed that up with a statement that if I didn’t want discussion then I shouldn’t post on a “public forum.”  Then he blocked me.

Of course I found this odd, since the original topic wasn’t all that controversial, and because I do not see my facebook page as a public forum of any kind.  Only the people I want to see what I’m saying are seeing what I’ve been saying; if I wanted it to be a “public forum” then I’d post my opinions somewhere else, something not locked down or limited to viewing by only a handful of people.  I consider facebook my “inner circle,” people who I share things with, people that I’ve generally met in person and that I have had more than just casual interaction with.

But it does make me think a bit more about what I share and why I share it.  Not because I wouldn’t have shared this particular link outside of facebook, because I’ve had some thought of making a blog post out of it on my personal blog at some point, but because we may think all these people who are on our friends list are sitting in our living room, that we know them well, and that they would never harm us.  Maybe they wouldn’t.  But then again, maybe they would.  Or at the very least, share our comments, intended for only certain ears, with those that are not in our “inner circle.”  How much of a public forum is facebook, even when it is locked down?

Things to ponder.

I have a Spotify Unlimited subscription which I created as soon as Spotify became available in the U.S. If I am not listening to Podcast or watching something I am listening to music on Spotify. I also have a Facebook account, mostly to keep up with my family and friends from high school and college. Occasionally if there is a song I really like or it triggers a memory I share it to Facebook, along with Twitter and Google Plus With the new Facebook update if you connect your Spotify account to Facebook, every song that you play is shared to it. There are several other music applications that also work this way, including IHeartRadio, Earbit, Rdio, Slacker Earbit and Songza.

I connected my Spotify account and it works. If you have your Facebook account open to your profile and you are listening to a song, that song will appear as you are listening to it. I connected my Spotify account to Facebook for a couple of days and then decided that my friends really didn’t need or want to know every song I listened to. Plus because I have music playing in the background and I like to try new playlist from ShareMyPlaylist I may not even like the song that is playing.  I am just doing some exploring to find new songs, artists and bands. One solution would be to disconnect Spotify from Facebook entirely, but I don’t want to do that.  I could see using the information later to set up playlist. I just want to have more control on what I share and when I share it. My solution to this has been to go into app settings in Facebook and click on edit and then go to custom settings and set the share to only me.  I hope this will work when the new Facebook changes go public. I want to use Facebook to collect the information, but only share the songs I want to. I wish there was a way to be able to share specific genre to specific groups, For example if I am listening to jazz music then I only want to share that with friends who like jazz and not those who like rap.

I am also not happy with the way apps are being integrated and dependent on Facebook. For example if you want to sign up for Spotify now you must have a Facebook account. To me this is a case of putting all your eggs in one basket. Granted Facebook is a big basket. However not everyone wants to have a Facebook account for various reasons including privacy concerns. Spotify has now cut itself off from these potential users. Plus it means as a user the more the apps I use are integrated into Facebook the harder it is to leave. I have already been through the walled-garden era with AOL, I really don’t want to go back.

facebook’s most recent changes are a big problem for many.  As a heavy user of facebook, I’m frustrated by their attempts to control what I see and how I see it, as much as the next guy.  I don’t particularly want facebook to decide what my “top stories” are, and the move of the “home” button to the upper right–hand corner of the content means I have to scroll to the right in order to get back to the top of the site when I’m using my laptop.  No amount of adjustments, installations of Firefox add-ins like Better facebook! have helped in this regard.  I would say that it’s just because I’m resistant to change, but the truth is, the changes have made it more difficult for me to navigate and to see what I go there to see.  In the five or so days since these big changes were made, I have found myself missing posts (due to the top post feature that I can’t seem to turn off), and spending three times as long to do what I used to do (moving around, reading posts, getting back to the top, adding photos, etc.).  Of all the changes so far in the years I’ve been using facebook, these are severe enough, and frustrating enough, for me to consider limiting my time on the site.

That being said, we haven’t seen anything yet.  The upcoming changes to how facebook is going to use our information (dubbed f8) are just about drawing a line in the sand for me.  These changes actually scare me, in the sense that facebook wants us to be “on facebook” no matter where we are.  We used to say that we should be afraid of Google.  Afraid of how we were putting all of our information in Google’s hands.  How Google was the gorilla in the room that we we shouldn’t ignore.

I feel far more threatened with facebook’s upcoming changes than I ever have with Google’s attempts to be everything to everyone.  facebook is moving in a frightening direction.  Soon, if you visit a web page, listen to some music, watch a video, buy a book, etc., that information will be posted to your facebook account without you having to have done a thing.  Imagine, all of your friends finding you’re a closet fan of disco music, or that you frequent sites about drag racing and cake decorating.  Maybe you don’t care that your friends know this, but then again, maybe you do!  The reason many of us share links or photos on our facebook accounts is because we want to share those specific items with our friends.  When everything you do starts being posted, how happy are you going to be with that?

Of course, this is all good for facebook.  They can begin to target advertising to you and to your friends based on your activities all over the Internet.  And honestly, is this something we want?

I have, of course, gotten a Google + account, and while it’s interesting, it’s not going to replace the things about facebook that I like.  I have a nice tight group of friends on facebook, and several years worth of conversations, pictures, links, discussions, etc. that I hate to lose.  I liked facebook, and I still like it somewhat, in that it gives me a great way to talk to my close friends and family on a regular basis, and to share with multiple people at the same time when something is going on.  But I don’t want to share EVERYTHING, and I want to have a choice.  Leaving facebook means cutting off a perfect form of communication for me.  It has been even more critical since I moved across the country and away from friends and family.  But I cannot and will not share every element of my life with everyone on facebook.  I do not want that control taken away from me, the control over what I share and with whom.

But the forthcoming changes are not just annoying.  They could be dangerous.  I’m still in a “wait and see” and “sitting on the fence” attitude.  But facebook may just have numbered its days with me.  I don’t think I can trust my information with them much longer, which is a sad, sad thing.  It was such a perfect thing before they started messing with it.

The following message showed up on YouTube. I have transcribed:

Attention citizens of the world. We are anonymous. We wish to get your attention hoping you heed the warnings as follows. Your medium of communication that you all so dearly adore will be destroyed. If you are a willing activist, or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information, then join the cause and kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy. Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so they can spy on people from all around the world.

Some of these so-called “White hot infosec” firms are working for a formatarian governments such as those of Egypt and Seria. Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your “Privacy” settings and deleting your account is impossible – even if you delete your account all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time.

Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more private is even a dilusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family. You cannot hide from the reality in which you – the people of the internet – live in facebook – is the opposite of the anti-sec cause.

You’re not safe from them nor any government.

One day you will look back on this and realize what we have done here is right. Think for a while and prepare for a day that will go down in history.
November 5th 2011. We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive, we do not forget. Expect us.

Why Nov 5th, 2011?

Guy Fawkes Mask

This is Guy Fawkes Day, which commemorates when Fawkes and others placed explosives under the British House of Lords in 1605. Fawkes is the mask Anonymous wears. Therefore, they chose this date to bring a social network down.

Joke or Reality?

That is tough to say. Anonymous is an established group, so the attempt can be taken a little more serious. Since we don’t know who makes up this group, it makes this harder to determine. For all we know, several of the members used to work for Facebook. Possibly even a programmer that might have created a secure back door to initiate this attack.

Bottom Line: This Needs to be Stopped!

This is a terrorist action and Anonymous should be treated as such. There is a famous term that most of us take to heart – We shall not succumb to terrorist threat. Violence does not beget violence.

If Facebook is doing what Anonymous says, then they need to be prosecuted in a court of law. No one group gets to decide their fate.

What will be next? Google+? Twitter? Your website?

Zero Tollerance – FBI Needs to Get Involved.

Think about it – You take down a giant in Facebook like that and it has a major economic effect. People build business around Facebook and with the site forcefully taken down like that, people can literally lose millions. Bringing in a new financial crisis to an already unstable economy.

We do not know how this organization will bring Facebook down – and that is the most important part. We assume that it’s going to be something like a DDoS or major virus. What if it’s a physical attack on their server farms or offices?

Remember: Guy Fawkes Organization used explosives to take down the British House of Lords.

This is not the way to do it. With these actions, Anonymous might find that they are protecting the one thing they want to bring down. A threat is a threat, whether a joke or not.

Facebook has many protocols in place to prevent such an attack. I would suggest, however, that Facebook change some policy and review their systems just to make sure there is no back door. Then make sure they have security in place on November 5th.

This is never something you should joke about. I hope they take Anonymous down. Period.

I have spent a week on Google Plus (and quite a bit longer on Facebook) and haven’t really formed an opinion yet because most people I know still aren’t on Google Plus.  Until it’s open, and everyone can join, it’s hard to get a real feel for which you like better.  They both have their features, and many of those are very similar.

One indication may be that we have seen an inundation of tools that allow Facebook users to migrate their content over to Google Plus.  Is that an indicator that those on Google Plus prefer it?  Or, is it simply the newness of of Google Plus that is fascinating people?

Until the day that Google Plus opens to the world we will see endless comparisons.  I recently came across one that seems a lot more comprehensive than the others I have browsed through.  The folks over at The Tech Addicts put together an infographic that does a great job of illustrating the features of each service.  View it for yourself below and see what conclusions you can draw from it.

Most people don’t know it, but there is a slightly modified interface for Facebook for Android floating around.  You could wait for it to reach and Android Market, but, thanks to the folks over at Android Central, there is a hack to get it on your device right now.  This may go down as one of the strangest work-arounds that I have ever come across, but it actually worked so I will let it slide.

To get started make sure you have the latest Facebook app installed (version 1.6) and launch it.  Once it is open, begin clicking buttons and then quickly clicking the “Back” button until the app crashes.

Go ahead and click “Force Close” and then reopen the Facebook app.

Once open you should have a slightly different Facebook app.  It still shows as version 1.6, but the look has changed somewhat.  I didn’t take a screenshot of the original, but there was one in the Android market.  Take a look below at the top menu from the “News Feed” page.

Now, check out the “News Feed” top menu of this newer version that is from a screenshot that I just took off of my device.

When you press the item on the right of the top menu (Top News in the above shot) you will receive a new pop-up menu that you can scroll through.

There is no word about when this will be legitimately available, but if you can’t wait, then this strange hack does seem to work.  Let us know if it works for you, and what you think of the new UI.

The website Advertising Age released a cool new infographic comparing various social media – namely Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  There are some interesting facts revealed here.  For instance the Social Media space is lead by the 35-54 age group, the leading country for Facebook is the US, but the second is Indonesia, the leading country for LinkedIn is also the US, but it’s followed by India, and females outpace males as Twitter users.

While some of this strikes me as common sense (like Twitter being dominated by the 35-54 age group), some of it amazes me (like there are significantly more female users and visitors to Twitter).  For anyone who runs a web site this is pretty good information to have.  It can provide a lot of aim to your marketing and SEO efforts.  For those who don’t run a site it’s still a bit of pretty interesting information to parse over.

The UK’s National Trust is looking for armchair farmers to farm for real with MyFarm. For a £30 annual subscription, 10,000 desktop farmers will take control of the farm on the Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire, England and work with farm manager Richard Morris to decide how it should be run. The subscription also pays for a family ticket to visit the farm for a day.

(For non-UK residents the National Trust is a charitable organisation that works to preserve and protect the coastline, countryside and buildings of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. For most people that means stately homes, castles and places of historic interest, but it also makes the Trust one of the largest landowners and farmers in the country with over 250,000 acres of which about 80% is farmed.)

Results from a new survey published to mark the MyFarm launch reveal that people in the UK rate their knowledge of food and farming at an average of only 4.5 out of 10, with 75 per cent of respondents hungry (sorry) to know more about how food is produced.  Mothers, in particular, show there is a need for a new way of learning – rating the importance of their children understanding where their food comes from at 7.5 out of 10, yet only 8 per cent felt confident that they knew enough to teach their children all about it.

Richard Morris, the National Trust’s Farm Manager at Wimpole, said, “MyFarm is Farmville for real: real farming decisions with real farming consequences.  By influencing the work at Wimpole our farmers will start to understand the effects and implications of their own decisions.  They will also witness first hand how unplanned events can turn a profitable year on its head. This winter hundreds of sugar beet growers have had to plough in their crops because of intense frost damage, resulting in a whole year of costs with no return.  What surprises the weather holds for Wimpole this year only time will tell; but it will affect the farm’s success and the choices the Farmers can make.”

The MyFarm website will include video updates, webcams, live webchats, debates and comment and opinion from both well known farming experts and National Trust tenant farmers. The real-life farm on the Wimplole Estate is 2,500 acres with a mix of arable land, pasture, woodland, lakes and gardens on mainly clay and chalk soil, currently producing meat, eggs, wheat and oil seed rape. The farm manager will set monthly options for the 10,000 farmers, who will debate and vote on issues including whether to grow wheat, barley or oats as part of the autumn sowing, through to which animals to buy and rear.

There’s additional coverage over the The Guardian.

If you want to become a farmer and learn more about your food and where it comes from, sign-up at MyFarm.

For full disclosure, I am not a user of Twitter.  I have a Twitter account and dabbled in it a year or so ago, but haven’t logged on in months.  I am, however, a daily user of Facebook.

Eventbrite recently concluded a study of Tweets and facebook posts as connected to event sales showed that facebook “likes” resulted in higher sales than Tweet posts.

I’m actually not surprised by this.  Despite the fact that Tweeting is “hot,” the fact is that more people are using facebook than Twitter.  On Twitter, I can follow tweets from friends and public figures and entities.  I can follow those same sorts of people on facebook, for the most part.  But the fact is, most of my contacts on facebook are friends.  There are maybe a handful of contacts on my facebook that I haven’t met in person.  And I take my friends’ recommendations highly.  On Twitter, I can have thousands of “contacts” but those aren’t people I know. I’m also not swayed easily by recommendations from the “stars” or others that I don’t personally know.

I wonder if other companies will research which of their social networking nets the most gains in sales and/or income.  I am inclined to believe that, for the moment, facebook is the overall leader.

I learned today that making usable audio on Chrome OS is impossible. I tried several times to make a short voice recording and each time it came out really noisy. The built in Mic is not of high quality on the CR48. So my next try was to record with my Sony IC Recorder. The recording turned out great, but the OS wouldn’t recognize the recorder when I plugged it in. It also would not recognize my USB thumb drive. Not sure if that’s an OS thing or a hardware thing. The device does have a SD Card slot so if you had a recorder that used SD Cards, you might be able to go that way with audio (or video for that matter). I am able to do a complete podcast recording, upload to my server and post it using just my Android Phone. So, maybe there is a way with Chrome that I haven’t found yet.

I’ve been doing a lot of typing on the netbook this week and I have to say I’m getting used to the keyboard. The trick is to keep your thumbs up when not using the spacebar. If you don’t, the curser will jump when you are not looking at the screen and then you are inserting text in another part of your document. I guess this is good for better posture but it does take a while to get the hang of. On my Macbook, I don’t have this problem.

I decided to give it the acid test to see if it was ready for prime-time. I let my wife use it. She had no problem creating an account using her Google account login. Step one went well. Let me tell you a bit about my wife. She is NOT a techie person. She uses computers at work because she has to and is very good at what she has to do but doesn’t tweak things. At home, she uses a Mac desktop to play facebook games and keep up with her friends. She also does some light email and web browsing. That’s about it. I gave her the CR48 to use for a while tonight and she picked it right up. Had no trouble playing the flash games she likes (Restaurant City and Hotel City on facebook) She commented on how fast she thought it was compared to her Mac. I found that part strange as I always thought her Mac was quite fast. Anyway, she used it for an hour or so and said “Nice Laptop” and then she asked me “Why did Google send you this for free?” I think she still doesn’t believe me After I’m done testing this thing, I think I might have found a home for it next to the couch.

For Day 4, I’m going to take the CR48 in the field. I want to try out the free 3G from Verizon and how well it connects to public Wifi.

As I am now on the prowl for a new job since I am being laid off from my current one, I’m thinking about all the things that could go wrong.  My credit might not be good enough, and is that speeding ticket I got a couple years ago going to be a problem?  And what about my online presence and activities?  How much of that will be a determining factor?  How far, really, will an employer attempt to go to dig into who I am and what I do with my life?

In the case of the Maryland Department of Corrections, background checks now require applicants (and those getting recertified or taking promotions to new jobs) provide their facebook username and password.  I, personally and professionally, think this is  a step too far.  What’s to stop them from asking me for my email accounts and passwords, and the usernames and passwords of any accounts I may have on a news website, blogging site, or forum or bulletin board?  At what point will they want to know what I watched on television last night, what YouTube videos I may have searched for, and what political, religious, or medical terms I may have Googled last week?  Where does the invasion of privacy end?

I purposely set my facebook privacy settings pretty high.  I am careful who I friend, and careful whose profiles I post on.  In other endeavors, I do blog on several websites, under my name, but none of these are likely to be issues, I don’t think.  I have other blogs that I post to that do not use my name at all, for good reason.  And my emails?  Well, aren’t those privileged communications too?  It would be like a potential employer asking for the box of love letters I keep under my bed that were between my husband and I when we were courting.  Pretty rude, even at just face value.

The ACLU has sent a letter off to the Maryland DOC asking them to cease the practice, and they have agreed to suspend it until they have given it a closer look.  But it seems to me that it should have never been a policy that was implemented in the first place.  While I understand the need to be sure that a potential employee is not a danger to the job, clients, or organization, I think there are limits on what it is okay to ask people to provide.  Yes, we should all be careful what we post online, who we connect with, and what information we give out.  But when it comes to personal communications, I think those need to be completely off-limits to any potential employer.

Would love to hear thoughts and comments on this.

The Federal Labor Relations Board has settled a lawsuit brought against a Connecticut ambulance company that disciplined an employee for criticizing a boss on Facebook.  The ambulance company had policies in place that included employees not being allowed to talk to others or coworkers about work, coworkers, and working conditions.  This was a pretty blatant suppression of freedom of speech rights.  And while it may not always be wise to dis the boss on your facebook page, it is a right of free speech to do so.

I find it unfortunate that some of my money (the government) had to be spent to reiterate to companies that employer rights do not trump employee rights when it comes to free speech, amongst other things.

Venting to friends and coworkers about unreasonable working conditions, the attitude of a boss, or pay rates is pretty normal.  Some of us do it in writing (emails to family/friends, chat messages set to family/friends, or facebook wall/status posts) and some of us do it in person (venting to a spouse over dinner or a friend over lunch).  Whichever way we do it, it is our right as Americans to have that freedom of speech.

Does this mean we shouldn’t be careful what we post on facebook?  Absolutely not; this forum should still be carefully considered when choosing where to post your words.  I choose not to have work-related “friends” on my facebook friends list.  This is for self-preservation at the least.  There are just some things that shouldn’t hit the rumor mill, especially in writing.  And it’s so easy to repost what someone says.  I don’t want to find myself backed into a corner by something I said within “earshot” of a coworker on facebook.

On the other hand, I do vent on facebook about work and other annoyances in my life.  It’s no holds barred when it comes to my life on facebook.  I complain about my husband, work, what I paid for Super Bowl snacks at the grocery store, car repairs, the weather, you name it.  I also post about things that make me happy: when my kids are successful, when I get a job interview, when surgery goes well, when my cat does something funny/stupid, etc.  Facebook in many ways is no different than talking to a girlfriend over lunch for me.  We share all kinds of things.

My company can’t come on my lunch date at a local cafe and tell me to stop talking about work, coworkers, bosses, or problems with a friend or spouse.  They can’t discipline me for doing the same on facebook.  It’s the law, and the NLRB has clarified their position on the matter.  Too bad we needed a lawsuit to make the point.

If you got an iPad for Christmas, here’s what you did with it over the holidays, according to mobile telco Three.

- You had your iPad unwrapped and working by 10am on Christmas Day.

- You downloaded Maps, Skype, Angry Birds, ebay, YouTube and Sky Sports News apps.

- You visited Google search, iTunes and Facebook the most often, followed by ebay.  Were you selling unwanted presents or looking for the gift you didn’t get?

- While you were out and about and using 3G data, you were using GPS navigation, reading news websites and playing games.  You were also dreaming about your next holiday, surfing travel sites.

- But it wasn’t until Boxing Day that you really got to play with your new toy.

I know this isn’t exactly surprising but I think it captures in a snapshot the essence of consumer technology and activity at the end of 2010. Remember the iPad didn’t exist at Christmas 2009, Angry Birds wasn’t yet the phenomenon it was to become and no doubt 2011 will bring its own crazes and defining technology. It will be interesting to look back at this in a year’s time and see what’s changed.

Facebook hit critical mass and managed to move into the mainstream and is now sucking in mass numbers of new users. Much of the value of a many goods and services revolves around mass adoption – it becomes beneificial for people to use Facebook simply because so many friends and family are already on it.

We keep hearing statistics about smartphone adoption rates. No doubt about it, smartphones are increasingly popular devices and are quickly moving into the mainstream.

How does this translate into the real world?

I came across a guy a few days ago that had recently gotten an iPhone 4.0 specifically so he could do Facetime chats with his brother. This guy was in his 50’s and had never owned a computer or dealt with the Internet in any way. I was surprised at how well he had learned to run his phone. He was clearly thrilled with the smartphone and what it was capable of. Even though this fellow had somehow managed to resist getting a computer and the Internet, the smartphone managed to pull him in. Furthermore, this guy was using a lot of data above and beyond WiFi and Facetime. Even as a novice user, he had already purchased a few iphone apps. Additionally he expressed a lot of interest when I was describing Audible.Com audio books.

There’s a segment of the population I run into personally that doesn’t like the idea of or see the need for or perceive any benefit from paying for mobile data connections. These are the people that are hanging onto more basic phone models. I suspect that these same people likely resisted the idea of getting a cell phone in the first place – in other words, they are late adopters when it comes to cell phone technologies and services.

We are now entering the phase of smartphone adoption of where mass numbers of people will get smartphones simply because everyone else has them. I believe smartphones are poised to outstrip even a service like Facebook with the total number of smartphone users.

These new smartphone users are likely to use mass amounts of data. Cell phone companies wanted people to have data plans because of the extra revenue from larger data-enabled bills – now they’d better be prepared to deliver on the promise.

Every other week, it seems, we hear about some Facebook change or other that opens up more privacy concerns.  The most recent change is Facebook “Groups,” which I’ve looked into but don’t quite understand.  I had filtered some of my friends through the available “lists” function, which worked just fine for me.  But apparently that was too complicated, so Groups was rolled out, which is incredibly easy to use, but is also a big gaping hole in the privacy wall many have built.  Turns out you can create groups and add people to them without their permission. Yes, that person can then remove themselves from a group they’ve been added to, but that whole “opt out” thing just sets a lot of people’s nerves on edge.  I rather agree; I’d rather be opting in than opting out.

But the truth is, nothing about Facebook considers individuals’ privacy.  It has never considered privacy concerns at more than a superficial level, and that is not likely to change.  Whether that is right or wrong, if you signed up for Facebook and have posted on Facebook and have used Facebook, your privacy is like the horse out the barn door — long gone.

All the privacy settings employed fully will still make it possible for people to find you.  It’s all about associations, and how others who are in your inner circle protect their privacy.  And considering I have quite a few people on my friends’ list who are not geeks or are young and/or immature or just ignorant about how it all works, then it is inevitable that more people will know about my comings and goings, and my attitude, than I might realize.

It’s one thing to draw graffiti on the wall with a Sharpie.  It’s a whole other to draw that graffiti and signing it with your full name and hometown and finishing it off with a picture of yourself next to your graffiti.

Of course, now that the horse is out of the barn, what can you do?  You can pretend you never owned a horse and burn down the barn to remove all evidence (i.e., leave Facebook and cancel your account) but the reality is, the forensic science of today would easily find evidence of the horse and what exactly you were doing in that barn.  Once it’s gone, it’s gone.  And even caution up front and vigilance along the way has not saved most people; I’m about as cautious as they come and I have found myself exposed in more ways than I’d like.

The best advice, always, is to be careful what you post online.  If you don’t want a particular someone seeing something, then don’t post it, anywhere.  Period.  Because things have a way of finding their way to the person you lease want to see it.  There is truly no such thing as anonymous on the web, much less on Facebook.  The web is an open book, and anyone can find and read that open book.

Facebook rolled out Places late on Aug 18, it allows you to check in where you are through Facebook. In its default mode it also allows your friends to check you in. Lifehacker has a good article on how to adjust your privacy settings for Places to a level you are comfortable with.

This again brought out the issue of privacy. Some of the answers to the issue of privacy by those who believe being public is best ranged from impractical to absurd, such as don’t be on these social sites, to change your name, which is what Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt suggested in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. (if you are unable to get the Wall Street Journal article PC world has a good review of it ) On the other side, privacy evangelist can sound like members of a lunatic fringe group, when they talk about things like RFID tags being the work of the devil.

Both sides are trivializing an issue which can very serious for a lot of people, especially women who have been in an abusive relationship, it is important that their lives remain private. In fact for them it really can be a matter of life or death. However they should be able to participate in social media sites to connect with their friends, like anyone else. If they can’t then the abuser wins. How public or private someone is should be an individual’s choice. They should be able to control that privacy level how ever they see fit. My biggest fear is that the decision making is being taken away from the individual. Just because I make part of my life public doesn’t mean I have given up my right to privacy in other parts of my life.

Anytime an application or website is created or changed in a way that affects a person privacy, that change should be made clear and public. It should not be hidden in the middle of a 65 page software license agreement. Each person should make their own choice on how public or private they want to be and it shouldn’t be a decision made others. I have made a choice to be public in most areas of my life, I however don’t presume that I have the right to make that choice for someone else.

It seems in the world of computers and the Internet there is always a steady stream of new things on the horizon, as well as a steady stream of new products and services. It’s been this way for many years at this point.

There are always winners and losers. Winners can win big, and losers at worst fail to make any marketplace splash or even a ripple and end up in the tech dustbin of obscurity with few people ever knowing that the product or service ever existed.

What is it that makes for a successful product? Why is it that some products and services that seem very similar to other products and services end up becoming household names, while others end up being cancelled domain name landing pages?

It’s obvious there are a variety of factors that come into play. If it were easy to predict these things, we would have a lot fewer losers. Why did Twitter become a household name, whereas similar services such as Plurk and Jaiku languish in the shadows? What enabled Facebook to steal most of the MySpace thunder?

New products and services that end up being successful frequently incorporate elements and principles of previously-existing successes, but package them in more compact and useful forms.

Initially when Twitter came along a couple of years ago, I heard people talking about it, but I was a bit resistant to sign up. I felt like I had plenty of ways to communicate with people, so why did I need to add yet another account to a service that would steal away time I already had filled, only to ultimately let yet another account go dormant? I finally signed up for Twitter, and after I began using it I began to understand the value of it. With a service like Twitter, the more people that are using it, the more valuable it becomes.

About the same time I signed up for a Twitter account, I also signed up for a Plurk account. After a few visits to the Plurk website over a period of a month or two, I haven’t been back to the site since.

I believe what is valuable about Twitter is that 140 character limit per Tweet, forcing people to be succinct with their wording. Twitter and Tweet are cute names. The site design is simple, the blue bird logo pleasing to the eye, and the developers kept the API and name open to other developers, allowing an entire ecosystem of ancillary products and services to develop around it at the same time it was rapidly increasing in popularity. Twitter is very much like chat, which was already well established, but it had the added value that it either could be in real time, or not, able to be accessed from a vast array of devices beyond the Twitter website. Twitter also allows you to subscribe to just the people you want, and ignore or even completely block the rest. Twitter also allows you to reach out and touch people, and it allows you to monitor what others are up to whose lives are at once very similar to your own, yet often radically different. You can spend as much or as little time as you wish interacting with the service. Another thing that turned out to be incredibly useful with twitter is the vast 24/7 real-time data stream that it generates. Real-time Twitter data mining has proved to be quite valuable to many people.

To be honest I have always thought that many MySpace pages were often monstrous, unbelievably cluttered messes that often took a long time to load. Nonetheless, MySpace became popular because it obviously served a need with a younger demographic.

I’ve always thought Facebook’s interface is somewhat confusing, though allowing for far less cluttered and confusing-looking profile pages. I still don’t quite understand what got Facebook to the level of critical popularity – perhaps the less-cluttered, faster-loading profile pages gave it the critical edge over MySpace.

It should also be noted that Facebook allowed for an open API, allowing a myriad of interesting and often useful applications to be plugged in to its interface.

However it did it, Facebook managed to get to a critical mass of users where it became THE thing to sign up for and THE place to be to stay connected with family, friends and business associates. Something interesting has happened with Facebook that has never happened before – everyday, non-geek people who had never built website profiles in all the years they had been doing email and web browsing were suddenly signing up for Facebook in unbelievable numbers. Mothers, dads, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, etc. were suddenly showing up on the same service with their kids, nieces, nephews and grandkids. Once the ball rolled, Facebook became an incredible success.

I started noticing a while back that many people were starting to use Twitter and Facebook to communicate with each other in lieu of email. At this point I find myself getting pulled into that trend myself. These services don’t offer the relative privacy of direct email, but they allow for easy, frequent public conversations and easy sharing of personal media such as photos between friends and family on a global scale.

What I take away from the success stories versus the less-successful competitors is that oftentimes the differences in design and implementation can be slight, but those slight differences can offer real, tangible advantages to the end user. If those often-slight advantages can somehow help get the product or service to a critical mass threshold, they can find themselves catapulted to the point of planetary awareness.

When it comes to certain types of software or social networking sites, I have tended to hold back and let others to be the first to jump on the bandwagon. For example, Twitter was around a year or two before I decided to sign up and see what all the fuss was about. I did the same thing with Facebook. After all, it seems in the initial stages there are dozens and dozens of similar types of sites that are trying to compete for the big prize, and I refuse to sign up for any or all of them until it becomes clear that they are doing something to set themselves apart to garner real interest. In the past I’ve signed up for plenty of sites and it seems like I’m the only one present. The formula is easy – the more people that sign up and actually use a site, the more useful it becomes.

In the smart phone realm I’ve been hearing people talk a lot about Foursquare. I kept hearing it mentioned, but really had little clue what functionality it offered. I kept hearing about Starbucks discounts and Mayors in conjunction with Foursquare and wondered what on earth that was about and what that had to do with a smart phone app.

Since I’m the proud owner of the Sprint Evo 4G smart phone, I’ve been checking out all sorts of interesting Android apps. The Foursquare name kept periodically coming up, so I decided I would check it out.

Once I loaded Foursquare on my Evo and opened the app up for the first time I was presented with a Foursquare login screen and realized I had to go to their site in a browser to create an account, which I did. As part of the Foursquare account generation process, they present you with options of connecting your new account to Facebook and Twitter – very smart on their part, because it helps to connect with friends that are already Foursquare members.

After I logged in on my phone, it was cool to be able to see where those friends had been when they “checked in” from various restaurants and businesses around the country and the world. That’s cool. However, the “Location” tab makes the app EXTREMELY useful for me. I’m an over-the-road truck driver, constantly driving up and down freeways across the country. I happened to be at Gas City, Indiana when I installed Foursquare, so I was a bit surprised to see listed all the restaurants and convenience stores at the exit I was at along I-69, and the distance in meters they were away from where my truck was parked. It uses the phone’s built-in GPS chip so that it knows exactly where it’s at and what businesses are around – within “four square miles” perhaps?

All of these GPS-enabled smart phone apps are great, but they don’t solve all of my problems. I’m constantly looking for truck washes (refrigerated trailers constantly need washed out before reloading) as well as truck stops and truck parking. Even Google’s database has been gamed – try typing “truck stop” or “truck wash” along with the city name of your choice into Google and see if the search results aren’t misleading. “Truck wash” and a city name will often result in car wash business listings, useless for my purposes.

The bottom line is there’s still plenty of room for future smart phone app development. More specialized apps and better databases are two elements that can result in more useful apps.

Facebook Logo

I went searching for a buddy on my Facebook profile. It wasn’t there. I searched and searched, but couldn’t find him. I caught him on Twitter and asked where he went. He told me that he deleted his Facebook profile due to all the privacy issues. I was not surprised – With all the issues that Facebook has seen in the last couple months, I could see why he did.

He was not alone. I have heard of a few social mediates also reducing their usage, if not nixing their Facebook profile. I definitely think about what I post on my wall and send in my message area. I delete those that post a game or other application on my wall and I don’t post anything that can be considered ”Private” – Basically, try to keep the profile as clean as possible.

Recent privacy issues with Facebook make one realize that your online data could be open to users within a heartbeat. We hear about someone finding a vulnerability, usually after the problem was fixed. Too many in a small amount of time, and we have a crisis where the FTC might have to step in.

No different than in years past…

Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, email, websites or whatever, people try to get in and people test the limits. I just put up a Wiki site. I put on certain privacies, but within a week, someone found a new way to get through. They posted jibberish sites – nothing that would be malware, which I could easily correct. I fixed the hole and moved on.

Facebook is the site that is under fire because everyone has a profile. At least over 400 million users. In comparison, the US population is at 307 million, over 6 Billion around the world. Heck, my mom is on Facebook.

These are people that might not be tech Savvy. They don’t understand how the site works and they don’t care. They just want to connect with friends and family. They may have heard the rambling about privacy and some may have taken heed, but most haven’t and are not upset with them right now – until their profile is infiltrated.

MySpace, AOL, GeoCities

Remember when we were all on MySpace? Remember when you switched to Facebook? Did you delete your MySpace profile, or do you still check it randomly?

Back in 2007, when MySpace was king, we had different types of privacy issues. The big issue was online predators. Sex offenders on the social network site set one raid to remove over 350 profiles from MySpace.

AOL had many privacy issues in the early years. 1998, we heard of how people found back doors to the “Walled Garden”. GeoCities was under fire for selling personal information. They settled with the FTC just days before they set their first IPO. Business before privacy?

Twitter, Friendfeed, MSN, Compuserve, BBS – These all have had privacy issues at one time. As a site grows, the bad guys realize it can become a great portal to try and take down or get someone’s money. They strike, the site counter-strikes – The battle continues. Rinse and repeat.

Step in the FTC

Privacy issues have escallated to the point where Facebook hired former Bush regulator Tim Muris to defend the social network and it’s privacy problems to the FTC. Of course, if you have a product that is 400 million strong, you definitely will have scrutiny. Regulation is there to protect. Whether the government should step in for regulation might be a whole other topic. Add in the fact that some of those Facebook profiles are non- US citizens; The rules get different.

So is it different, or just the same old?

Privacy is a big issue on the Internet. Whether it’s getting your email hacked or finding a back door on a social network. We don’t want our personal information in the wrong hands. But we also want to connect to the people we care about. In all reality, Facebook is working on their issues. If you leave Facebook for privacy, you might want to just leave the Internet altogether.

So when is too much? Are you thinking of or have you deleted your Facebook profile?

I was late to the iPhone game. Having lived in an AT&T free region of the U.S.A., it was out of reach until I moved abroad to do some teaching.  I really thought I was satisfied with my iPod Touch 1st generation. Except that is was slow in running the updated operating system, didn’t have a camera, etc. Matter of fact if the last iPod Touch update would have had a camera I would probably have bought it and still would be without an iPhone.  However, on a trip to Thailand I saw my friend’s wife’s iPhone, I was bitten not to recover.  And so I purchased an unlocked iPhone in Thailand for way to much money! What has changed for me since I, a normal computer user, bought my iPhone? I have been surprised.

1. I leave the laptop at the office and browse on my phone. That is not to say that I browse as much on the iPhone as I did on the laptop.  I do use the iPhone to browse the news and GNC links and such.  It has probably helped me reduce my browsing, time wasting, computer time.  It’s browsing is nice enough, and quick enough, to be enjoyable but also tiring enough to get me off to more productive things.
2. I do all of my of my Twitter reading on Tweetie for the iPhone. All of it.  Again I’m not a heavy user but it works really well and simply for what I need.  For certain, it has increased my Twitter activity since my other phone really struggled with it.
3. I handle 75% of my Facebook activity on it. I use it to upload quick fun photo’s, add status updates, and comment all the time. LIke browsing it’s not as easy as a laptop so maybe twice a week I use the laptop to do a bit more thorough connecting with friends.
4. I am amazed at the speed. Because of the speed boost I am using several different programs that just would have been painful on the first gen Touch. Awesome Note, Documents to Go, and PS Mobile are wonderful.
5. The camera has been wonderful both for stills and videos. I’m not looking for HD just for a way to capture daily happenings. For that Reel Director and PS Mobile are very cool.
6. Living abroad I have a Google Voice workaround that connects to my foreign cell phone for a total of 1.6cents/minute. The Google Voice App was really buggy and wouldn’t work for me. Enter Voice Central by Black Swan (I think anyway). It has worked superbly! Now I enter Voice Central and make my call.  Soon my iPhone rings then the U.S.A. number I dialed rings. International magic.

The phone isn’t perfect, and the price is way to high in my opinion.  That said, I’m incredibly happy. It has really helped my productivity, ability to connect, and my mobile enjoyment. Of course I’m just a normal user with an opinion in the flooded blogging world.  Did I mention my total mobile bill is about $9/month? Nice.

As most of you know, Facebook has changed their page layout. Without notice or choice, they flipped the switch. One minute it’s one way and the next minute it’s different.

That’s normally not a problem for a web savvy person such as yourself. (I’m assuming if you are reading Geek News Central, you are above average computer and web skills) For those people like my Mom, who are happy just to know how to do the basic things, this can throw them for a loop.

Non Geeks tend to learn a system or a web site and then as long as stays the same, they are fine. That covers a large percentage of Facebook users. I’m not saying we should all be geeks, I’m just saying that the geeks that run most web sites should think about non computer people when they decide to change something major on a popular website.

Same with software makers. If your program works one way with version 1, it should remain similar for version 2.

Back in the day, I remember that Quark Express (a once very popular page layout program used in graphic arts) went from version 3 to version 4 and 90% of the way things were done changed. This really caused a support problem in our art department where 5 out of the 7 people there were not “computer people”. It took a very long time to get everyone back up to speed on how to use the main program they did their jobs in.

I’m guessing that most of you reading this are “tech support” for your friends and family like I am.

My wife and I were sitting in our easy chairs with our laptops and my wife asked me. “What happened to Facebook?” “I can’t find my friends list” . I took a look and sure enough, the switch had been flipped. I didn’t know what to tell her as I hadn’t been on Facebook that day. About 5 minutes later, my phone rings. It’s my mom with the same question.

I get enough family and friends support calls as it is. Facebook, Stop moving stuff around!