Merry Christmas Facebook

Wow Facebook had itself quite a little holiday. After gorging myself on leftover turkey, I was perusing through the meager feeds that made their way into Google Reader today and came across two interesting headlines.

The first was from Ryan Block, of Engadget, titled “Oh, so that’s why Facebook Beacon is so evil” where he was venting a little frustration at how he finally actualy “saw” why people have been so up in arms about Beacon. In his words:

Kind of a duh moment because I followed the whole Beacon controversy and all, but I’ve never used Facebook enough to notice how much of a completely seamless, fantastically engineered, and revolting invasion of privacy Beacon is. I also didn’t realize they’re referring to these Beacon snippets as “stories,” which is a really finessed way of phrasing the reality of the “feature”: information about my personal life that I never explicitly gave you or your partners permission to share or syndicate.

Pretty strong words.

The I saw this one from DavidNYC over at DailyKos titled “Deleting My Bleeping Account, Facebook !“. David was expressing his utter frustration at the difficulty involved in trying to delete his Facebook account. He also says that the main reason he was deleting his account was also Beacon.

As I say above, Facebook’s Beacon service was the key reason for wanting to delete my social networking accounts. The fact that this issue has even got MoveOn up in arms tells you it’s for real. So I suppose it should come as no surprise that the worst offender both hides information on how to delete your account and makes you jump through numerous hoops (some possibly bogus) to actually delete it. (I’m aware that Facebook now claims to offer a universal opt-out, but the company’s constantly shifting stories and Beacon UI have not filled me with confidence.)

But he had a hell of a time getting rid of his account. He actually had to Google and found through that means he needed to email the Facebook support. They had instructions for “Deactivating” your account, not Deleting it.

Deactivation is not deletion - it merely puts your account in limbo and allows you to restore it at a later date. So if you are concerned about, say, the security of Facebook’s servers, deactivation does nothing for you.

After various emails, it took him three days to get his account deleted. He makes an interesting historical reference to a case against AOL years back for making it too hard to cancel the service

A few years ago, AOL was investigated by the NY Attorney General for making life incredibly difficult for customers who wanted to cancel their accounts. AOL was forced to clean up its act and pay a seven-figure fine. Facebook is already on the new AG’s radar, so they’d be smart to change their ways sooner rather than later.

After reading these I had even more of a feeling of the magnitude of how Beacon has affected peoples perception of Facebook. I am just recently familiar with David, but Ryan is up there in the web stratosphere with a rather large following. I will be really interested to see how this all plays out. We all know Mark Z came out with the apology and made some “changes” to the Beacon program, but will it stick. Google has made it this far in large part due to the fact that people “think” they are not evil. I am not sure we can say the same about Facebook.

OatmealStout Hits Top Of Blogrunner

Okay so there I was, laying in bed after a long day of unwrapping presents, entertaining my little girls, and dressing their new hannah montana Barbie in all sorts of cool outfits (my daughters, not mine), checking the days news.

I saw Justin Thorp’s post on Oatmeal Stout called Random Thoughts While Watching tv and left a comment on the AppleTV.  Then I headed over to Blogrunner to check out the day tech news.  I went to the “Latest” tab and what do I find at the top of the list but Justin’s post on Random Thoughts.  Wow I thought, that is really cool, and then it dawned on what a slow news day it must be … Just teasing Justin.

Anyway here is a shot.  Way to go Justin.

Hulu: Almost Perfect, Almost

Until 2 days ago, I did not have a Hulu account, and to be honest I didn’t think I even wanted one. I will admit I am a bit late to this party, but I was kind of mad when NBC and Apple had their tiff and NBC took their shows off of iTunes. I travel a lot and it was great to have the season of 30Rock on my iPod for the plane or even the hotel room to connect and watch on the tv.

So the other day I aw Ars Technica was giving away some invites to Hulu and I went over to grab one and check out out. I will say that my first impression was very favorable. The site is clean and easy to navigate and find the shows you want to watch. I watched several episodes of 30Rock and was shocked at the video quality. I even pushed it out to full screen on my Dell Ultrasharp monitor and the resolution was great. I was very impressed. There are a few ads interlaced, but they are very short and quite unobtrusive.

I said it was almost perfect though. Here are the problems I have. NBC has gone and taken a HUGE market out of the picture. People want to be able to buy these shows and watch them on their television. Granted NBC is selling the content via Amazon’s Unbox, but there are limited options for this service. They only allow download to non iPod devices and also to only Tivo subscribers. Oh yeah, and no player for Mac’s, big downer. At last count there are how many iPods out there ?? a lot ! NBC has taken content off those players and out from under all those paying eyeballs. I would be curious to see some numbers as to how NBC is doing as compared to selling their content on iTunes
All in all, if you are one who watches most of your shows on your computer, Hulu is awesome. I was completely impressed by the whole package. The selection is great, player clean and easy to use. They offer selections form Bravo, Fox, FX, NBC, Sundance, and Sci-Fi just to name a few. If you can get a hold of an invite it is well worth your time to sign up and enjoy.

Mozilla Weave, Where Exactly Will My Data Be ?

I am sure by now you have all seen the recent news of Mozilla’s new foray into a web service called Weave. Michael Arrington has a post here, Om Malik here, and Mathew Ingram has one here. While Michael and Om basically describe the service itself, Mathew touches on a few of the questions that popped into my head when I first read of the service

Basically Weave, as Mr. Arrington summed it up

is a new project that will store user information - like bookmarks, passwords, history, preferences and customizations, and sync it to your Firefox account. Users can then access that information in the event of a hard drive failure, or if they are on a guest machine (say, at a cyber cafe).

On the surface, like many ideas that turn out not to be so good (Beacon), it seems like a pretty cool idea, one that is most likely inevitable and one that could be very useful as our computing habits continue to expand beyond a single logon location. I do however question the integrity of how our data will be stored. I mean if you are talking about a place to store bookmarks, thats is one thing. but when you start talking about passwords, browsing history, and personal customizations that is another matter entirely.

According to the Mozilla web site, here are a couple of the organizing principles:

• provide users with the ability to fully control and customize their online experience, including whether and how their data should be shared with their family, their friends, and third-parties
• respect individual privacy (e.g. client-side encryption by default with the ability to delegate access rights)

The first one struck me as a bit similar to the previously mentioned Beacon. I wonder if it will be in an opt-in or opt-out fashion. It is not the friends and family part that bothers me, it is the third parties that worries me. At least they are planning on client side encryption by default.

The have a web page set up showing the details of the project to include roadmaps and how to get involved. I think it is a very interesting concept on the surface and most likely a direction we need to be moving toward, but I am not sure the masses are ready to have all their data out of their direct control.

The Queen Takes YouTube By Storm

Wow times are changing. According to this article from BBC News, the Royal Family has opened it’s very own YouTube channel called “The Royal Channel - The Official Channel of the British Monarchy“.

There are old clips of the Queen’s previous addresses up for everyone to see and the annual Christmas Day message will be posted there as well. I think it is pretty cool such an institution in our history taking the step into a new technology and social media. I can only imagine though the Queen’s aides trying to explain to her the technology, etc. They probably had to go get Prince Harry or William to try to explain the whats and whys of it all.

The history of it all is pretty cool. They have historical clips dating back to the Queen’s accession to the throne along with her very first Christmas broadcast from 1957. Now the younger people of the UK all over the world can see a piece of their history at their fingertips.

The Demise of the Brick and Mortar Electronics Retail Stores

Richmond, VA based Circuit City announced a wider than expected loss yesterday just one day after announcing they were giving away millions in bonuses to keep executives and some management. I think this may be the beginning of the end for many of the traditional retail electronics stores.

Granted BestBuy posted a huge third quarter profit, but that was attributed to an

extra week of holiday shopping and sales of higher-margin items such as video game consoles and GPS devices.

Personally, I will be happy to see them go.  With sites like newegg.com, amazon.com, and even costco.com, I am perfectly content to do my research and make the buy online without stepping foot in those stores.  There was a thread on twiiter going last week about the retail chains and how they thought BestBuy service had gotten better.  It is all relative I guess, but I can relate this small story.  A couple was in BestBuy purchasing a $3k LCD HD television, and the “expert” salesperson was selling them the set of $10 RCA cables to connect their equipment …  Gee that will look great.  Those poor people are going to start watching HD content and say “We spent how much to get this ?”.

I realize that the massed are yet to adopt the online shopping experience, although the number is growing fast.  But I think the system of ratings and reviews that Amazon has set up will only help the shift to online.  When I need a product, I go to Amazon read the reviews and then go to newegg and buy the product after checking out the reviews there.  A day later and it is at my house.  I also think that a bulk store like Costco will fare better as well.  With great prices and generous return policies I have had nothing but good experiences purchasing from Costco and I will most likely buy all my future HD tv’s there.

It is curious to me why Circuit City would be wanting to pay bonuses to management who are tallying record loses, but it does not surprise me.  I do not want the employees to lose jobs, but I think the market space for a Circuit City is shrinking fast and wont be surprised or disappointed if they went away in the very near future.  CompUSA ring a bell ? ….

The Fate of Business Cards

I saw an interesting post today by Jeff Pulver titled “Will Business Cards Still Be Used in 2015?“. Jeff brought up the point that the business cards he garnered throughout the year, usually ended up in the bottom of his computer bag.

I recently bought some business cards to represent me in my new company and my new venture. I went through a process in deciding what exactly would go on the card. As Jeff mentions in his post, we have recently gone through and evolution of the business card. It used to be an office phone number, address, maybe a pager number …. But what do we put on it now. We have so many different things we can put on paper to represent and identify us. Should we put our Facebook profile URL, a LinkedIN URL, cell phone, email address, Twitter userid? The options seem endless. And then we have to decide just how much of us we want out “there”.

Jeff’s next question is whether or not we will even exchange business cards in the future. He suggests that maybe will simply bluetooth or info to each other. I would love to say this will be true, but I as it stands now, the wireless providers still see fit to lock down such features such as bluetooth file transfer.

In any case, I decided to go with a non traditional card from a company called Moo. They are integrated with flickr and use your flickr images on the face of the card. The cards are an odd size too, smaller than a traditional business card. I can say that they do get peoples attention because they are different. Maybe this difference will help people remember you later on when they pull it out of their pockets and take note of your info instead of tossing it in the bottom of their computer bag and in the circular file.

So how about you all ? Bought any business cards lately ?

Do Not Open Til Xmas, Please !

Let this little story be a lesson to all of you out there. This poor guy wanted a peek at his xmas present and take a look what it got him …

A 911 call and trip to the ER … So for the love of god, wait till xmas. There is not telling what some people are capable of.

So What Exactly Do You Do During A Twitter Downtime ?

I saw this and thought it quite funny.  The guys over at Geek & Poke have the answer.  You tell me, what did you do last weekend ?  Or will we all find out in .. oh say 9 months or so.

Funny or Die Gets Another $15 Million

The comedy video website Funny or Die has been reported to have obtained another $15 million round of financing from Sequoia and other unnamed companies. I remember hearing about this web site a little while back. I think it was shortly after YouTube had hit it big and got their $1.65 billion from Google. Amongst the winners in that lottery if you recall was Sequoia. They made like $400 million off a n $8 million dollar investment. At the time I was shown Funny or Die, I remember thinking that somebody was trying to capture that magic in a bottle that occurred with YouTube. And we all know that does not happen too often.

I do know that no matter what Will Ferrel stands pretty in the whole deal. he was paid a lot of money to lend his name to the project. Granted he has contributed some funny stuff. “The Landlord” video has over 50 million views according to the web page, not bad huh .. it is very funny though. You should definitely check it out

What is surprising is that there have been reports of the sites demise. It will be interesting to see where the $$ and the web site go form here.

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