If the Wall Street Journal prints it, it must be true. The WSJ says that Google is preparing to launch Google Editions this month.
Here are the most salient points for book publishers and webby consumers, in my opinion:
"Google Editions is set to debut in the U.S. by the end of the year and internationally in the first quarter of next year."
Editions users will "be able to access their Google accounts on most devices with a Web browser, including personal computers, smartphones and tablets." Google's open approach is welcome. Now you won't have to be tied to Apple or Amazon stores or gadgets to be able to read an enormous number of ebooks. In fact, the lack of a Google ebook reader really opens up the market to any device that has an internet connection. The web isn't dead, Mr. Anderson.
"Digital book sales are expected to more than triple to $966 million this year, according to Forrester Research, from $301 million in 2009."
"Google is going to turn every Internet space that talks about a book into a place where you can buy that book," says Dominique Raccah, publisher and owner of Sourcebooks Inc. (Dominique was a keynote speaker at this year's PubWest conference.)
"Some independent booksellers that can't afford to open their own e-bookstores believe that Google Editions could be their gateway into the digital marketplace."
Google has scanned 10% of the world's 150 million scannable books.
"Spurred on by the launch of Apple Inc.'s iPad last April, more than 15 million e-readers and tablets will be sold by the end of 2010 in the U.S., compared with an estimated 2.8 million e-readers sold in 2009, Forrester predicts."
To me, it's hard to remember what the web looked like in fall 2000, much less digital cameras (did they exist?) and early forms of all the "convergence" gadgets available today that are just beginning to mash up the web and their legacy technologies.
Pogue identifies some trends that ring of truth and longevity. The trend I found most relevant is this: Nothing replaces anything. Technology simply splinters.
Pogue means that invention inspires copycats. From one iPod came dozens of competing mp3 players. None has "killed" the iPod. The technology simply splintered.
There are exceptions, of course, but the ones I can think of without a decade of reflection seem mostly to be data storage formats: BetaMax, HD-DVD, cassette tape, CD, 8-track tape, vinyl, film cameras, etc.
This should be a relief to purveyors of older standards. As long as your product experience is relevant, your product format can change without destroying your business. Hello? Book publishers?
I'm a dedicated PC lover. Since XP, I've loved Windows. I even paid for a completely legit copy of Windows 7, which rules.
I can't stand Macs. Macs "just work," but they just work in the ways Steve Jobs wants you to work. I'm a born tweaker. Without computers, I'd have grown up a greasy mechanic instead of a part-time computer nerd.
One of the big reasons I'm such a fan of Windows is the huge community of software developers creating hundreds of thousands of free, open-source, legal, and extremely useful software programs. Mac-fascists would claim that Jobs provides for all computing needs. That's an easy claim to make when all you need to do is sync your iPod, charge your iPhone, and make a few home movies.
Unfortunately, quality software from Microsoft doesn't come cheap. The standard Office suite is $400. And then you have to make sure you're eligible for upgrades.
So when my favorite tech blog Lifehacker explained that Mozilla's Thunderbird 2.0 was a reasonable alternative, I ditched Outlook 2000 and joined the new millenium. Since then, Thunderbird has upgraded to 3.0, which offers some big improvements. Still, there are some default settings that bother me. I offer my tweaks here (Take that Apple Mail users!).
First, download Thunderbird and install it. Set up your email accounts. If your email provider offers IMAP, you should use that instead of POP3. POP3 email downloads mail to one device, which can leave other devices with out-of-date copies of your email. IMAP mail syncs your mailbox across multiple computers and smartphones. Gmail and many workplaces offer IMAP while residential ISPs like Comcast offer only POP3 (Here are Gmail's recommended IMAP settings for Thunderbird).
To make these configuration changes, click TOOLS --> OPTIONS --> ADVANCED --> GENERAL --> CONFIG EDITOR. You'll get a warning about voiding the warranty, which is just Mozilla's jokey way of warning you to be careful. The beauty of free software is that if you screw it up, you simply uninstall it, download it again, and re-install it! Agree to be careful and proceed.
To make the various config changes below, copy/paste the bold and italic lines into the about:config filter field. Double-clicking on the result will toggle the values from true to false and back.
To automatically check all IMAP folders for new mail when Thunderbird opens:
mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new
Set to "true".
To stop showing the "sending progress" window when sending an email:
mailnews.show_send_progress
Set to "false".
To send emails in the background, behind the Thunderbird screen:
mailnews.sendInBackground
Set to "true".
Thunderbird offers a view called "threaded view", which sorts emails by conversation or subject line instead of by the sender or time the email was received. Threaded view is a good way to stay on top of a string of emails.
To show the threaded view even when you've sorted the emails by some other column (like "sender"):
mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads
Set to "false".
To change the default column sort order (for example, to set Thunderbird to show emails in descending order that emails were received):
mailnews.default_sort_order
Change from the default of "1" to "2".
One reason Mozilla's Firefox web browser is so popular is the community of add-on pieces of software that make the browser more customizable and useful. Thunderbird also has a wide variety of add-ons. Here are my favorite add-ons:
Text2Link: If an email shows a full URL but doesn't include a hyperlink, highlight the URL, right-click, and hit "open URL as new tab".
ReFwdFormatter: Removes the ">" prefix from quoted emails when replying or forwarding. Also removes "[" and "]" from subject lines when forwarding.
Show More Recipients: This add-on is a patch to fix the annoying default in Thunderbird 3 that shows additional email recipients as "More". This issue will be resolved in a future Tbird update. This problem has been fixed in Thunderbird 3.1.3, though you still have to enable the fix. The very bottom post of this help forum here explains how.
addressContext: Create new mailing lists from the header of an email with a large group of recipients.
KeyConfig: Allows you to customize the keyboard shortcuts. One application of this is to reassign the Thunderbird keyboard shortcuts to mimic Microsoft Outlook. (alt+w = forward email, ctrl+r = reply, ctrl+l = reply to all) Once KeyConfig is installed, you access it from Tools --> KeyConfig. The "reply" setting is found in "Reply to Newsgroup". The other settings are pretty obvious.
And then there's a great add-on for Firefox called Email This! which allows you to right-click on any web page and choose a way to email that page's title and URL via your default email client.
What are your favorite Thunderbird add ons? I'll update this if I find more add ons I like and watch for a future post on my favorite Firefox add ons.
In this mostly uninteresting article, the NYT says:"Almost everyone under 35 uses social networks, but the growth of these
networks over the last year has come from older adults, according to a
report from Forrester Research issued Tuesday. Use of social networking
by people aged 35 to 54 grew 60 percent in the last year."
The NYT cites Forrester Research's new ($500!) study:"Social technologies continue to grow substantially in 2009. Now more
than four in five US online adults use social media at least once a
month, and half participate in social networks like Facebook. While
young people continue to march toward almost universal adoption of
social applications, the most rapid growth occurred among consumers 35
and older. This means the time to build social marketing applications is
now. Interactive marketers should influence social network chatter,
master social communication, and develop social assets - even if their
customers are older."
Last weekend at 12:45 a.m., after 23 years of (okay, very intermittent) searching, the Internet answered a seemingly unanswerable question I'd had since 1986.
I played my first video game in 1984. I was in second grade and living in Massachusetts when one of my dad's coworkers gave him some ancient PC (even for then!). By PC, I mean it had a keyboard and a monitor. It must have been a Commodore 64, though I swear ours only displayed black and white. The "hard drive" for this thing closely resembled a cassette tape player. All the game cartridges, for games like hangman and various other semi-educational games, were cassette tapes. The thing was abysmally slow and I got more enjoyment out of watching it boot up than from the games. From the time you turned it on to the time it was ready to use, you could make a bag of popcorn and eat half of it.
Two years later, my family got an Atari 2600 along with games Air-Sea Battle, Centipede, Chopper Command (one of my favorites), Crackpots (a fun one), Defender, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong Jr., Dragster, Frogger, Joust, Missile Command, Moon Patrol, Qbert (which I despised), and Zaxxon.
I remember all of these games being just impossibly difficult. Then again, I had not yet reached the apex of my gaming skills (attained '94-'98 between the Super Metroid/Legend of Zelda/Super Mario Bros. years and Mario Kart 64).
But there was one game we owned that I didn't list and this is the game that has tormented me for 23 years. That game is Pitfall II: Lost Caverns. I don't at all regret my youth spent on Super Metroid, Legend of Zelda, or Mario Kart, but I truly wish I could take back the time I spent on Pitfall II. This game was a boring, lame youth waster. Yet it had a catchy soundtrack. Perhaps the ultimate catchy soundtrack.
You see, there was this one section of the game where you had to jump and catch a horizontally travelling balloon which would, of course, being a balloon, stop travelling horizontally and, as if sensing Pitfall Harry's urgent need to ascend, begin travelling vertically. During your ballooned ascent you had to dodge horizontally travelling bats which, being a particularly vicious type of bat and the variety for which balloons are mortal enemies and perhaps occasional prey, would explode your balloon, sending poor Harry plummeting to his demise. Quite a pitfall, as it were.
But most importantly, whenever Pitfall Harry was ascending on a balloon, the game soundtrack would switch to this magnificent! Reeling! Airy! Drunken! Free-wheeling song! The song so perfectly suited a precarious balloon ride that it was etched into my brain! Well, perhaps it was an endless repetition of bad balloon rides and slow-to-improve balloon-piloting skills that contributed. Repetition being the key to learning and all. And to be honest, I really don't remember any stages past the balloon ride part, so it's quite possible my 23-year old quest is the result of this particular failed quest on the Atari 2600. I swore to my wife that I'd heard this same song in other contexts: a ferris wheel or a carousel, on cartoons, in a tipsy movie scene, etc. Yet I could never remember quite enough detail about those contexts to be able to check song credits.
At this point, I knew the balloon ride song was a waltz. It had the three beat of the 6/8 time signature. Years of grilling my classical music-loving mom and hours spent skipping through Strauss's works and the works of other Viennese composers turned up zilch. I'd sing the song for musically well-rounded friends and they'd be no help at all.
So I hadn't checked in with the all-knowing Internet on my Pitfall balloon song question in maybe a year. On Saturday night around midnight, struck by a particularly interesting and dramatic tuba rendition of the "dun dun duhhh!" sound of suspense on 30 Rock, I began Googling "dun dun duh suspense drama sound effect". (But to no avail. There are an unfortunate few results that might be turned into an entertaining ringtone.) Pretty soon I was thoroughly rabbit holed into Googling sound effects when I suddenly remembered my little "Pitfall II problem".
I Googled "pitfall atari video game hot-air balloon ride" and the glorious result? A YouTube video of the balloon ride! (Go ahead, watch it now. This is where you decide I'm nuts.)
Pitfall II was taunting me. After two decades of not hearing the song, I got to hear it again. It was exactly as I'd remembered but I was no closer to discovering its name. (No, I didn't notice the first comment about this video.)
I Googled "Pitfall II". The top entry was this Wikipedia entry. I clicked skeptically. Lo and behold, the sixth paragraph:
"Another enhancement over the previous game is the addition of a soundtrack. The musical cues act as subtle rewards and punishments for performance. The main "heroic" theme plays for a short while before reaching a loop of atmospheric music. When Harry collects a treasure, the main theme begins again. If Harry dies, a downbeat version of the theme plays, continuing until Harry succeeds at finding more treasure. Finally, if Harry ascends using the Balloon, Sobre las Olas ("Over the Waves") is played."
A classic waltz by a Mexican composer published in New Orleans? Now I can understand why it took the Internet 23 years to answer my question.
Listen to the Edison Military Band play Sobre Las Olas and picture yourself floating from a balloon high above the Earth (or below, as in Pitfall), walking precariously across a tightrope, enjoying a circular trip around the carousel or carnival swing set, reeling drunk on the high seas, Googling aimlessly...
Next up? The intro music to the WWII u-boat simulator Wolfpack, the between-programs string music I heard on our local NPR affiliate KCFR (sounds like Copland?), tunes from the Japanese pop band "Seagull Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her", oh, and a "dun dun duh" ringtone! Because now, after 23 years, the suspense is finally over.
But Google isn't paying much for all that bandwidth. Why? It seems that Google has been buying up huge amounts of previously unused fiber optic cable. Google doesn't just draw traffic, Google actually transports its own traffic. Google also seems to trade traffic with other large cable owners in a "swap", with no money changing hands. Wired.com "YouTube's Bandwidth Bill Is Zero"
Microsoft released Windows 7 today. Lifehacker, my favorite tech blog, released its Complete Guide to Windows 7 which includes:
how best to install it (upgrade vs. clean, partition vs. traditional)
new features in Win 7
new mouse and keyboard shortcuts
tweaks, hacks, and more
I've been using Win 7 since July, and I'm loving it. Then again, I've been using Win 7 on a screamin' new PC, so that might be juicing its performance.
Google Announces Its Ebook Store The world's largest ebook library announced "Google Editions", a 500,000 title ebook store that will launch during the first half of 2010. Reactions to the news varied. Bezos, with his 350,000 ebooks, was overheard muttering "Dang!".* Barnes & Noble's 200,000 non-Google-provided ebooks alternated cheers of "Crap!" and "Yahoo!"*. Manufacturers of the 15 ereader devices expected to launch by mid-2010 cheered for joy* while Kindle owners sighed with disappointment*, victims of their all-too-familiar love of glitzy proprietary formats (ahem, Apple).
Meanwhile, a Popular Science magazine reader explains How to Build Your Own Kindle A Popular Science reader builds an ebook reader that's full color and can read any ebook format. Cost? 1 hour and $100 less than a Kindle. Disclaimer: Okay, the guy just loaded a few ereader software programs onto a tablet PC. Not that cool. Still, the point remains: Kindle is overpriced and underfeatured and, courtesy of Google, about to be out-titled.
Meanwhile, the RIAA and MPAA learned that they have no hope against BitTorrent. Book publishers attending the Frankfurt Book Show this weekend fretted openly at this sign of things to come.*
Meanwhile, the Association of American Publishers scratched its head*, noting that ebook sales accounted for just 1.6% of the $5.25 billion in U.S. book sales in the first half of 2009.
Whoa! I really fell off the blog pace there, didn't I? What happened? Well, I was training for a 5K, ran it, got sick, and went to Interbike. Now I'm back, still recovering, and just now checking the news. Funny how the world moves on, even when you check out for awhile. So here's where I'm behind the curve:
Tungle makes Google Calendar, Outlook, and iCal talk to each other. No more "I didn't get your meeting invite because you're on a Mac!" excuses?
Take a look at Lifehacker's intro to Google Wave, Google's new integration of email, IM chat, and web apps for online collaboration.
I've been a die-hard eat-lunch-outer. I spent thousands of my first job's meager salary exploring Baltimore's Lexington Market. When I moved to Washington, DC, I blew my cash on Starbucks and pay-by-the-pound buffets (blech). In Boulder, I've been burning cash at Salvaggio's Deli, the Spicy Pickle, Ozo, and the like. This isn't the most affordable noontime nosh strategy. Here are some suggestions I haven't yet tried on how to make packing a lunch less like tossing a frozen burrito into a sack:
Biologists are beginning a new round of experiments on life-prolonging chemicals called sirtuin activators that activate the same life-prolonging pathways as the 30% calorie restriction diet.
If you feel like you're in a rut, you probably are, and it's likely been (temporarily) engraved into your brain. To break out of a rut, you need a vacation.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, despite having the word "safety" in its name", seems to have withheld data demonstrating the dangers of distracted driving. "The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002...'We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.'" The Adminstration was pressured by members of Congress to conduct the study and keep the findings private. The telecommunications industry is a large political donor.
There's another reason to run all your email newsletter subscriptions through Gmail: the new auto-unsubscribe button.
I just read about Nissan's upcoming Leaf electric car. Hybrid and electric cars tout all sorts of tree-huggy, heart-warming benefits, but for me to shell out for a car that can only go 100 miles at a time, it has to have some cold, hard benefits to yours truly. Others can sell the emotional benefits; here's my list of immediate, tangible, self-centered benefits of electric cars. Add your ideas in the comments!
No more oil changes! For people who pay others to have their oil changed, this means no more attempted ripoffs by grease monkey mechanics. If you're a DIY oil changer like me, this means no more tedious trips to Auto Zone, flipping through a tattered parts catalog, lugging cases of oil home, messy driveway oil changes, and lunchbreak trips to your local HAZMAT disposal facility to drop off a few windshield wiper fluid bottles full of used motor oil that's been sitting in your garage for a year.
More reliable: Fewer moving parts means less wear and tear, fewer maintenance costs, and better reliability. Batteries have no moving parts and electric drives apply force directly to each wheel. They're also low heat. This means no more pistons, crankshaft, transmission, transmission fluid changes, radiator, engine coolant, fans, catalytic converters, exhaust systems, mufflers. You don't have to maintain those things, repair them, or burn gasoline moving their weight around. Electric cars should be simpler, lighter weight, and more efficient systems.
Less expensive: Better reliability combined with not using gas should make electric cars cheaper than gasoline ones. Electricity is cheaper than gas. Its price doesn't fluctuate as much so the costs are more predictable.
No more emissions inspections: Okay, depending on your state, this might be a 1 hour, $25 commitment once every two years. Still.
4WD: Since electric drives can apply force to each wheel, more electric cars should be four-wheel drive or at least all-wheel drive. That should equal safer cars.
4WB: Regenerative braking should be safer. I'm not sure how regenerative braking works, but I think it might involve resistance magnets. If so, then each wheel should be able to brake independently, meaning that more electric cars should have all-wheel or four-wheel braking.
More data: Ever since some friends and I accidentally rented a Chrysler Sebring convertible in the late '90s, I've been 0ften annoyed that cars don't offer more data to drivers. We got all excited seeing the Sebring's real-time reports on gas mileage. There's nothing inherent about electric cars that they should offer more data, but they all seem to. After you park, Toyota's Prius rates the efficiency of the driving you just did. Why don't more cars offer higher tech features like this?
Safer? I haven't seen any burning or exploding cars lately, but not carrying 10-15 gallons of flammable liquid that is designed to explode when ignited inside a hot hunk of metal seems safer than doing so.
Your Facebook profile photo might appear in a "Fakebook ad", luring your friends.
A reporter reviews Baltimore's new WiMax network: "WiMax delivers speeds much faster than many DSL circuits, rivaling many cable modems. I often clock downloads at 6 megabits per second (equivalent to basic cable service in many areas) and uploads at faster than 1 megabit per second."
Twitter explains itself to unhip business owners using language like "best practices" and "highly relevant" and offering "case studies".
Microsoft is offering a pre-sale discounts on its next generation operating system. You can pre-order Windows 7 for 50% off the full retail price until midnight Eastern time tonight. Microsoft has said that the offer is good "while supplies last", which is sort of funny considering that the software won't actually be available until October.
To upgrade from Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, that's just $50 for Windows 7 Home edition and $100 for Windows 7 Professional!
Many software columnists and tech reviewers have called Windows 7 the "fully baked" version of Microsoft's Vista. Where Vista was widely criticized, even despised, 7 is earning positive press from Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and the New York Times's David Pogue.
Google announced this week that it will release an open-source operating system for netbooks this fall. The Google Chrome OS will operate netbooks, which are scaled-down laptops designed primarily for doing webby things, like reading the news, checking, email, etc.
Google has mentioned several goals for its Linux-based OS:
It will be free and open-source.
It will boot quickly, getting users onto the web in seconds.
Its design will be minimalist, much like the Google Chrome web browser.
Most of the functionality of computers powered by the OS will come from web-based applications, like Gmail, Google Docs, etc.
Files will also be available offline, presumably using Google Gears and Google Apps.
Here's a scientific study that's near and dear to my heart. The Journal of Experimental Psychology published a study "Social support and the perception of graphical slant" which confirms something all backpackers and hikers have known intuitively: climbing any hill seems easier with old friends. From the New York Times article "What Are Friends For?":
"Last year, researchers studied 34 students at the University of Virginia, taking them to the base of a steep hill and fitting them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the exercise, while others were alone. The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared."
Perhaps this is why we seem more likely to get ourselves into trouble when friends are around!
Fructoses Raises Your Bad Cholesterol and Triglycerides "The researchers found that those study participants consuming fructose beverages had significantly increased blood levels of triglycerides and [bad cholesterol] compared to those consuming drinks sweetened with glucose."
Living Near a Highway Linked to Arthritis "Researchers found that the women who lived within 55 yards of a large road had a 31 percent increased risk for rheumatoid arthritis compared with those living 220 or more yards away."
Even Skinny People Sporting a Gut Better Watch Out for Their Hearts "The researchers found that a four-inch increase in waist size was associated with about a 15 percent increase in risk for heart disease, both in people of normal weight with a B.M.I. of 25 and in the obese with a B.M.I. above 30."
The Heart Can Grow Back...But Just a Little Bit "About 1 percent of the heart muscle cells are replaced every year at age 25, and that rate gradually falls to less than half a percent per year by age 75, concluded a team of researchers."
Breast-Feeding Benefits a Mother's Health "Most doctors agree that breast-feeding is best for babies’ health. Now a large study suggests that the practice benefits mothers as well: women who have breast-fed, it says, are at lower risk than mothers who have not for developing high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular disease decades later, when they are in menopause."
The day my wife joined Facebook, she described the experience as a never-ending high school reunion that you don't have to actually attend. You catch a glimpse of what long-lost acquaintances have done with themselves without the risk of awkward conversation.
By design, Facebook is a many-tentacled thing. The website makes money selling ads; it's goal is to keep large numbers of people on the site for a long time. Facebook achieves this in several ways:
1. We like thinking we have lots of friends. 2. Our friends are good at keeping our attention. 3. Facebook is terribly user unfriendly.
When you first join Facebook, you search for the names of your friends. This first wave of friends is likely worthy of the meaning of the word. You send each person an invite to become one of your Facebook friends. Facebook then goes to work figuring out who your friends are. Its database takes advantage of our tendency to belong to overlapping circles of friends and begins suggesting common denominators as "people you may know". These suggestions appear every time you log in to Facebook. Every time you navigate to a new page within Facebook, the suggestions rotate to new possible friends.
There is a happy thrill to unearthing long lost friends and enemies—and of adding to your burgeoning friend count. This diabolically clever combination of technology and human nature has cultivated a Facebook etiquette that you become friends with everyone who requests your friendship. And soon the average user is up to 100 friends. In this way, there is no one you know on Facebook with whom you are not friends.
The benefit of Facebook is that it offers new ways to stay in touch with more people than ever before possible. Let's be realistic: how many of those friends are really friends?
Facebook's most prominent feature is the "news feed" which is a list of all the "status updates" of everyone in your friend network. A status update answers the question, "What are you doing right now?". Typical updates are often inane—and because the average user has 100 friends, Facebook's most prominent quality is that it is riddled with inanity.
In this way, Facebook may be redefining what it means to be "in touch". Does knowing what you had for breakfast make me a better friend? Can social networks bring people closer together? As with any other way of relating, it all depends on the quality of effort put into the relationship. "I'm eating a donut." is unlikely to strengthen the bonds of friendship stretched hundreds or thousands of miles.
Many of the self-publishing formats on the web (this blog included) are a one-way street: the publisher produces a personal message that few people care about. At least Facebook makes this self-publishing a little more relevant; your readers might actually have an interest in your message.
This leads to Facebook tenet # 1: Only "friend" people who are actually your friends. Ignore invites from everyone else.
Sure, you might bruise a few egos (this is self-publishing, after all), but clogging up your Facebook account with chaff will make the Facebook experience worse for you and for them. Look at it this way: by avoiding worthless "I'm eating a donut." updates from people you haven't talked to in a decade, you're spending more time actually staying in touch with the people you care about.
In fact, this tenet may be the most important. Facebook is rife with opportunities for distraction. Not only are friends notified within Facebook about status updates, profile updates, photo updates, etc., most users receive email notifications (though this feature can be turned off).
The site allows third-party software developers to create "applications" designed to entertain, advertise, or glean information about you. An application may be a trivia contest, a coupon, an online greeting card, etc. Relatedly, users can become "fans" of businesses that have set up commercial Facebook accounts. Every time one of your friends participates in an application or becomes a fan of a business, you will hear about it somehow, often through your "news feed" and in an email notification from Facebook. Suddenly your friends have made you a tool of the marketing gimmicks they have fallen for. Your friends force you to read ads. It's diabolical.
On Facebook, choosing your friends wisely is critical.
Facebook is now rivalling Google for total time spent on the web. Users have long worried about Google and privacy. I've read Google terms of service and privacy policy, and I'm willing to sacrifice some privacy in order to take advantage of Google's cutting edge IT. It amazes me, though, that people are willing to give up both privacy and intellectual property to use Facebook. Obviously, they have no idea what they've gotten themselves into.
Most people sign up for web services without reading the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy. Facebook is the one name-brand web service for which users should definitely read both. Here they are: http://www.facebook.com/policy.php http://www.facebook.com/terms.php If you're on or considering using Facebook, you should read them right now, or at least read the digest below.
1. Facebook's layout is a disaster Creating a Facebook account is a snap. Logging onto Facebook is a piece of cake. Finding friends takes no time at all, partly because Facebook will find them for you. Intentionally finding a feature, however, is terribly difficult. Facebook is a navigational nightmare.
From a business perspective, Facebook's main goal is to keep you happily thrashing about the site so you are continually viewing its advertisements. Retail stores pioneered this strategy back in the '60s and grocery stores and casinos have got it mastered: the longer you're in the store, the more you're likely to spend. To keep you in the store longer, grocery stores try to achieve a balance of confusability and usability. Casinos have abandoned all veneer of customer friendliness—they all but lock you in.
2. Facebook owns your content Facebook can do anything it wants with anything you have posted on the site, including your photos, music, video, messages, etc. including selling it to others.
3. Facebook Applications are allowed to have different terms of service and privacy policies from those of Facebook (and those differences are nearly invisible) Applications you enable may have terms of use and privacy policies different from those of Facebook. Facebook does not screen application developers or check that their applications do not misuse your content or violate your privacy.
4. "Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience."
5. If you invite a friend to join Facebook, Facebook can keep your friend's information on file. This information includes, at a minimum, that friend's email or IM contact information.
6. Facebook can "supplement" your profile using other sources "Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook platform developers, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags)...to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links)."
7. Facebook may use information in your profile "Facebook may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties."
8. Facebook owns and can sell everything but your name. Combining these terms, Facebook can sell everything but the name you registered in your profile. They can sell your entire profile, all the content you have on the site, and any information they've gathered about you from any source.
9. Facebook can share everything everything you post on Facebook without telling you. "We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you."
So Facebook does not provide contact information to third party marketers, but Facebook can make the call to share your information with third parties whenever they want. I.e. "Reasonably necessary to offer the service" in marketing-speak means "if you want to keep using Facebook, we have to stay in business by making a profit selling your info".
"...we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies." Facebook can share your information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies to protect its interests or property. That's not a particularly assertive privacy standard.
What to do?
You can opt-out of some of these conditions at http://www.facebook.com/privacy/, though opting-out of information sharing through Applications requires removing many of applications that make Facebook functional (like causes, events, gifts, groups, mycalendar, notes, photos, posted items, video, and more).
This February, Facebook made what some are calling a "digital land grab", revising language in its terms of service that stated quite clearly that Facebook would own a user's content forever, even after they deleted their Facebook account. Here's the coverage of that controversy:
This was not Facebook's only public revolt. Where Google's slogan is "Don't Be Evil.", this February's debacle was Facebook's third attempt to be evil. The last six paragraphs of this New York Times overview of Facebook explains.
"If Google search revolutionized the Web, and Gmail revolutionized free e-mail, then one thing's for sure: Google Voice, unveiled Thursday, will revolutionize telephones. It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens. And that's just the warm-up."
"Google Voice allows users to route all their calls through a single number that can ring their home, work and mobile phones simultaneously. It also gives users a single and easy-to-manage voice mail system for multiple phone lines. And it lets users make calls, routed via the Internet, free in the United States and for a small fee internationally."
Science is beginning to learn that human beings are even more social than we'd realized.
Strangers May Cheer You Up, Study Says "How happy you are may depend on how happy your friends’ friends’ friends are, even if you don’t know them at all. And a cheery next-door neighbor has more effect on your happiness than your spouse’s mood. So says a new study that followed a large group of people for 20 years — happiness is more contagious than previously thought." Click to continue.
Which is why it's so critical for our spouses to have a healthy work environment...
370: Ruining It for the Rest of Us "A bad apple, at least at work, can spoil the whole barrel. And there's research to prove it. This American Life host Ira Glass talks to Will Felps, a professor at Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands, who designed an experiment to see what happens when a bad worker joins a team. Felps divided people into small groups and gave them a task. One member of the group would be an actor, acting either like a jerk, a slacker or a depressive. And within 45 minutes, the rest of the group started behaving like the bad apple. Felps found three types of bad apples: 1. the jerk 2. the slacker 3. the depressive pessimist Click to continue on to the TAL website, where you can listen to the whole episode.
...and friends who don't smoke...
Study Finds Big Social Factor in Quitting Smoking "Smokers tend to quit in groups, the study finds, which means smoking cessation programs should work best if they focus on groups rather than individuals. It also means that people may help many more than just themselves by quitting: quitting can have a ripple effect prompting an entire social network to break the habit." Click to continue.
...and friends who are thin...
Find Yourself Packing It On? Blame Friends "Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers are reporting today. When one person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too... Researchers report...that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent. There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less influence than friends. It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away, the influence remained. And the greatest influence of all was between close mutual friends. There, if one became obese, the other had a 171 percent increased chance of becoming obese, too. The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the investigators say." Click to continue.
