Would you trust facebook with your location?
Welcome to another slippery slope! Yes I do have a lamebook, err facebook account. I set it up to plant my flag, before anyone who also shares my name or those that would spoof me staked their claim. (metaphor overload).
I don’t use it and hope to never be put in situation where I must use it (multilevel marketing anyone!?).
Location based facebook is coming! A.k.a.: “Places” And of course based on their past history, you can be sure that facebook won’t overshare your information…
Check this out from Dan Gillmor at Salon.
Google + Verizon, isn’t that just perfect!
Update: Check out this article at Wired; great explanation of this issue:
Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey (UPDATED) By Ryan Singel
“Don’t be evil” How quaint!
If you want your big bandwidth delivered to your _wireless_ device, you’re gonna pay!
Give up now- just build for iPads!
Google and Verizon Announce Net Neutrality Proposal via NYT
Google, Verizon and net neutrality: what does it mean? via Guardian UK
First Thistle
Thistles grow fast. The flowers are beautiful, the plant is impressive – at the end of the season, they can reach six feet tall! Later this year, Goldfinch will feast on their seeds.
What would Elvis do?
The government of Iran has issued a decree regarding Hairstyles for men. It’s true, there are certain hairstyles that do not conform to the Governments’ rules. Ponytails, mullets and elaborate spikes are outlawed!
Read more here:
Guerilla Christian Burial
This disturbed soil and cross appeared on public land within a park near my house. I wonder: What’s under this soil? Why here?
AT&T Really? Part 2
This deal is no deal… AT&T’s bandwidth capping plan is a monster in the closet. As I wrote last week, it’s one thing to view web pages, emails and maps online. But once users begin to download and watch videos, they will reach the data limit, quickly.
AT&T’s $25-a-month DataPro plan, $5 less than the existing unlimited plan, offers two gigabytes of data, which amounts to 10,000 e-mail messages without attachments, 4,000 Web pages, 500 photos and 200 minutes of video.
200 minutes of video! An hour long TV show will use approximately 550 Mb, A streamed movie from netflix will use approximately 300 Mb. That’s 3.63 TV shows / month. So I guess you better hope your favorite show is on repeat or hiatus for one week a month or you’ll hit the limit.
Here’s a quote (my italics):
Sugar Inc., the blog network for women, has an app with videos featuring celebrity gossip and interviews. “Video for us is growing extremely fast — and it’s going to cost us and the consumer a bunch of money, because of the data going over the wire,” said Brian Sugar, chief executive and a founder of the company.
His company is already considering how to offer people lower-bandwidth video. “Back in the olden days on the Internet, you’d always have the high-bandwidth and the low-bandwidth version of your Web site,” he said. Sugar might ask users whether they want to view a high-quality video or a lower-bandwidth, more pixilated one.
This is progress?
We’re back to designing on line content for those with low bandwidth data caps and high bandwidth caps. Those of use who have been in the internet world for a while know that this isn’t hard to do – it’s just a lot of extra work that will evolve again (hopefully) to being unnecessary.
What a shortsighted bait and switch scam.
Link to: App Makers Worry as Data Plans Are Capped, via NYT by Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone
AT&T Really?
AT&T: Really?
[Links below]
Yesterday AT&T announced changes to their data plans. No longer can you run an unlimited plan, high data prices are up.
Those of you that use your iPhone to listen to music, via lets say Pandora for perhaps hours / day will be unpleasantly surprised when you get your bill. Price increases for large amounts of data also are coming for the iPad.
Also, a Verizon representative states that we won’t see the iPhone on Verizon’s network any time soon.
And, a customer who emailed the CEO of AT&T a letter expressing dissatisfaction with the changes in pricing received a warning of ‘’Cease and Desist’’ if he continued writing.
Using an iPhone on AT&T’s network is like driving a Ferrari on a road full of ruts, it will work, but not well. But now – they will change the price of the gas while you’re in the car!
Really AT&T? I guess at least you’re not BP.
For those of you who want a solution go Verizon with a Droid!
Also – if you think you’ll never use 2GB of data / month now -how ’bout when we’re all ‘watching TV’ on these devices?
Say Goodbye to AT&T’s Unlimited Data Plan For The iPad 3G By Rosa Golijan, Via Gizmodo
AT&T Kills Unlimited Data Plan For iPhones, iPads by Peter Svennson Via AP
Verizon Spokesman: No iPhone Plans in ‘Immediate Future’ by Eric Slivka, via MacRumors
My Face your Book?
A few interesting articles are posted at Gizmodo regarding Facebook. I am feeling a bit prescient, as I have been pressured by ‘Friends’ to join the social networking site, and have resisted. I guess I’m experienced enough to know that Facebook may be popular now, but soon, maybe sooner than people think – it will be an also ran.
I heard from a ‘Real Friend’ (via a voice call!) that he may be leaving Facebook as: “Some of these people should never be mixed together.”
If you are a frequent user of a social networking site, you will spend hours massaging your content and communicating with others. But Facebook’s rules keep on changing – what is true today when it comes to how they protect / process your personal data may be different tomorrow.
It is enough for most of us to be vigilant with our Critical Content; credit car numbers, dob’s, SS numbers, etc. But Facebook by their ‘flexible’ policies adds another layer of concern.
Also, maybe Facebook has outlived one of it’s primary uses – to connect with people you haven’t communicated with in years.
We may already have found everyone we want to find…
Hey- have you checked your status with MySpace or Friendster lately?
Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook By Dan Yoder, via Gizmodo
More Reasons Why You Should Still Quit Facebook By Dan Yoder, via Gizmodo
Update 05/12/2010, 11:00 a.m.: Disclosure: I do have a Facebook account, it is a placeholder that I have never done anything with, other than a small barrier to those who would use _my_ name.
Fresh Fungus
Not sure if this is a result of secretion, or the flow of dew / rain.
That’s one Red Tree on a Bright Day!
I’m not sure what kind of tree this is, but it’s RED and it’s Spring!
Photography Show Opens May 7
Myself and three other photographers, eleven photos by me.
Show runs through August 29.
Hemlock Cones
Squirrels will chew through these pinecones when their normal food supplies are low, leaving small chips throughout the yard. It takes years for these cones to decompose and distribute their seeds.
Spike Pods
Thousands of these seed pods fall on my street every year, all four seasons. Cleanup involves hundreds of pounds of raking / shoveling. If you step on one of these in bare feet – you’ll remember it!
Critical Content
Apple iproduct plus WPA / Library of Congress
Critical Content is the data you need, or want, a combination of your Legal and Personal data. Legal Content- specifies ownership and identity. Personal Content feeds needs and wants.
Legal and Personal Critical Content
Your Legal content exists to define you to them. Your official ID in their databases, your capacity to interact. We need a reference point to start a transaction with these companies. Our account number, our customer number, name and address. You need to have the document / card and most important the Number to get their attention, once you’re in – you’re in.
It starts with a form -your data, in their system. A printed identifier on a physical document, seemingly the only point in the interaction process where printed content is necessary. (Soon to be outmoded by mobile device as identity verifier).
When your number is fed into the system, the document or device that you have stored your critical content on (your debit card for instance) is secondary. The physical record of the identifier is deprioritized, made an archaic accessory used to access a modern databased and networked system.
How quaint to pay for downloads with a mailed paper check.
Critical Information Here
Personal content is your favorite stuff – some of it might be kept forever. Supplying emotional wants and needs -the stuff that you’ve chosen to be important. This data that’s important to you can be any variety of media, from books to letters and digital music and movies, the media platforms are expanding constantly.
From your favorite song, to a picture of your friend, to a movie clip – this is the stuff that is critical because we want it to be. Job, Hobby, Interest, Preference. Records of your favorite People, Places, Things. Snapshots of Grandma, Favorite Songs, Movie dialogue quotes, and perhaps even some printed material; posters, books and magazines.
This picture of Susie became important because it’s Susie.
What content is kept forever?
Some of your important stuff was deemed important before its creation, family data – marriage photographs, new baby pictures, first day of school, graduation. Records of these events must be captured; this is critical content before content creation. Through Jr.’s on stage cell phone camera with a fast link to facebook, through the hired gun University photographer who shoots 1000 grip and grins with the Grad and the Dean, or through Aunties’ 35mm cardboard disposable camera – you can bet that those graduation pictures will be shot!
How Much?
Everyone has some Critical Content
Some may have more than others as they may have more data leading to financials, contracts, and legal agreements. Others may have personal content that they freely distribute to others via web 2.0 technologies. Some people photograph, videotape, blog and perhaps even tweet about themselves. Others purposely limit the amount of personal information distributed by web 2.0 technologies. What is interesting is where most draw the line, as intimacy can of course be easily ’shared’ from our multitudes of channels and devices.
Personal Critical content can also be Public Personal Critical Content.
Where is the important stuff?
Personal papers should be kept in a safety deposit box, or a fireproof safe at home, and al of your digital data should be backed up in at least two places with off site storage. How many people actually do these things? Not many…
Most likely we have a drawer where the important papers go and a hard drive where the personal content resides.
Is there only one copy on your cell phone?
A question we hope to never answer; “What would you grab in a fire?”
A file or form may not be important at creation, but will become important over time. The decision to ‘keep it forever’ is likely not known at content acquisition.
Soldiers on the battlefield looking at pixel images of loved ones.
The Family Album
Snailshell Cache
This collection of empty snail shells found in a meadow, Brighton New York. I wonder what animal / bird feeds on the captured snails here?
Wisteria Pods
After hanging onto the branches all Winter, these pods ‘pop’ away from the Wisteria when the temperatures rise in the Spring, snapping is like a small firecracker – seeds fly yards away.
Too Shy to Rip a Paper Slip?
Wouldn’t someone with these issues be afraid to reach out to a study about their ultra shy selves?
Orpheus by Rodin
Rodin at Stanford University. Palo Alto, California.
This entire sculpture is named Orpheus Imploring the Gods, and shows the Hero playing his lyre. Original casting 1890-1900.
