Mojojoju

apophenia: Facebook's move ain't about changes in privacy norms

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:09:00 -0800

When I learned that Mark Zuckerberg effectively argued that 'the age of privacy is over' (read: ReadWriteWeb), I wanted to scream. Actually, I did. And still am. The logic goes something like this:

People I knew didn't used to like to be public.

Now "everyone" is being public.

Ergo, privacy is dead.

This isn't new. This is the exact same logic that made me want to scream a decade ago when folks used David Brin to justify a transparent society. Privacy is dead, get over it. Right? Wrong!

via zephoria.org

Danah Boyd eloquently voices the concerns I have been having over Facebook's recent moves.

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Google Quick Scroll - A Useful Extension

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:11:00 -0800

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

've been trying out some of the new Google Chrome extensions recently, and one of the most useful to me has been the Quick Scroll extension. Here's what Google has to say about it:

Google Quick Scroll is a browser extension that helps you find what you are searching for faster. After you click on a Google search result, Quick Scroll may appear on the bottom-right corner of the page, showing one or more bits of text from the page that are relevant to your query. Clicking on the text will take you to that part of the page. Quick Scroll tries to stay out of your way, and appears only when it is likely to be useful.

Imagine you are searching for a specific phrase on Google. A list of results comes up. The first one looks promising, so you click it. Now where does that phrase appear? You go hunting through the document. After several seconds, you finally find it.

Now imagine you had Google Quick Scroll. You click on that first result, and immediately Google searches through the page and displays an overlay at the bottom right hand corner showing the results for your search term. Click on the overlay text, and the page automagically scrolls to the term you were looking for.

It's one of those ideas that's very simple, but surprisingly handy.

iPhones as Credit Card Readers?

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:06:00 -0800

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

ne of my favorite Mashable authors, Jenn Van Grove, is out today with a new piece on the potential for iPhones and other smartphones being used for mobile transactions. She writes:

The buzz building around Mophie, the palpable excitement and interest stimulated by Square, and an increasingly competitive mobile payment system market means that 2010 will be the year that consumers will buy and sell from their mobile phones.

I must admit, the idea of mobile payment intrigues me. Chase and other banks now have apps through the App Store. The one thing that concerns me is security, not just with mobile payment, but with browsing on smartphones, period. I spoke to a Best Buy associate the other day (via their @twelpforce Twitter account; very responsive, by the way) who informed me that security on the iPhone and iPod touch is "unconventional." An article in MacWorld from November refers to smartphones as being "very vulnerable" to certain kinds of security attacks.

The authors of the study warn smartphone users to "seek out and identify applications that provide adequate encryption technologies to protect confidential or private information. Applications for doing so exist, but are still rare, the authors note.

BusinessWeek also explored the issue in some depth.

Many of the commenters on the Mashable post offer the typical gung-ho responses to news of the increased convenience - "bad ass", "Dude this is way cool. Right when I thought IPhone couldnt get any better."

Others echo some of my concerns, though. One says:

surprised there is no talk about security in this article. As much as I buy online I can't see myself using a ton of those things.

Another states:

i so see the feasability and helpfulness of this invention, but can also see some serious pitfalls such as ppl manipulating the software to store ppls credit card info and therefore committing fraud. not so thrilled about that. so something for the manufacturers to think about when they unveil this product it would be good for them to mention some of the safeguards they have put in place to prevent this type of exploitation...

I don't discount the "wow" factor of being able to log in to my bank account, or even to swipe my credit card, via my smartphone. I just hope we're not throwing our security and privacy under the bus for convenience's sake.

Avatar

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:44:00 -0800

Image via Wikipedia

Just went to go see Avatar in IMAX 3D. Amazing. I had seen the trailer, but neither that nor the photos on the Web were able to do the picture justice.

I won't give away any of the plot here, for those of you who have not yet seen it, but suffice it to say, the trailer, while seeming to show a lot, actually leaves out quite a bit. And the textures! Burning embers from a fire. The iridescent shimmer of the Na'vi faces (hinted at by the picture at right). Even something as mundane as droplets of water falling on leaves or smoke passing in front of a face is given incredible presence.

I was struck by how much the Na'vi (the nine to ten foot blue inhabitants of the planet Pandora, where the movie is based) were made to resemble Native Americans. Their war whoops, tribal headdresses, the reliance on and respect for the land and animals...and yet there was just enough different about them to make them their own unique construct. They have their own language, for instance (Papyrus); they also fly on huge dragon-like creatures (let me just tell you, the flying scenes in IMAX are incredible).

Well, I'm blathering on. But honestly, you should go see it. I thought it would be pretty good judging from the trailer, but I would have to say it even exceeded my expectations.

UPDATE: BoingBoing has a very good look into ways Avatar could have veered from relative predictability, plot-wise.

Nexus One: The Google Phone Has a Name

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:39:00 -0800

via mashable.com

So it seems that there was a Google Phone in the works after all. First Techcrunch, and now Mashable have confirmed the existence of a phone that will be built by HTC and will be called the Nexus One. Mashable claims the launch date is rumored to be January 2010 (that's less than a month away, wow).

UPDATE (12/31/09): Ben Parr of Mashable reports on videos of the Nexus One in action.

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Google Social Search Launches in Labs

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:38:00 -0700

Google Social Search is an experimental feature that helps you find relevant public web content from people in your social circle, when you're signed in to your Google Account. For example, search for [ restaurants ], and restaurant reviews by your friends and other contacts may appear more prominently in your results. Join the Social Search experiment at http://www.google.com/experimental

Social Search adds relevant content from your contacts to your results.

When you join the Social Search experiment, Google may bring up results from your friends and other contacts. These special results appear at the bottom of the search results page, in a section labeled "Results from people in your social circle."

via google.com

Today brings news of the experimental launch of Google Social Search within Google Labs. According to Google:

With Social Search, you'll be able to more easily find relevant public content from your social circle, such as the following:

Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends' Google profiles.

Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles.

Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions.

In the video example above, Google suggests that if, for example, I'm trying to decide whether to get an iPhone or a Bla ckBerry, Social Search can help me by providing relevant content from my friends (or friends of friends). After all, this is typically how we make purchases in real life - relying on the judgments of people we trust.

What potential implications for privacy does this feature have? Does Google retain some knowledge of your social graph after the search has been completed? I'm not sure as of yet, but if anyone knows, please feel free to comment.

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eCSSTender - CSS3 in IE6?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:37:00 -0700

via ecsstender.org

"Take control of your CSS. Say goodbye to the browser-specific properties and hacks cluttering your files and say hello to lean, mean CSS. With eCSStender, when you write the rules, browsers pay attention."

eCSStender is the brainchild of Aaron Gustafson (one of Jeffrey Zeldman's "HTML5 Superfriends"). It appears to be a Javascript library that allows you to author modern CSS (read: CSS3) and have it work more or less the same in modern browsers - even one that's not so modern (and the bane of web developers) - IE6.

I haven't tried this out in a project myself yet, but I did check out one of the examples - the CSS3 rotation property - in IE6, and it worked like a charm. Has anyone else tried this? Your thoughts, please.

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Twitter Expands Lists Beta Testing. A Great New Feature.

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:53:00 -0700

via techcrunch.com

Thanks to @scobleizer for pointing this article out.

"Twitter has rolled out its new Lists feature to a larger portion of its user base right now. The feature allows you to group users you follow together and then lets you share those for others to also follow."

I'm interested to see how this works. At first blush, it doesn't sound like it would be a whole lot different than what you can do in 3rd party apps like Tweetdeck or Seesmic. Perhaps the ability to subscribe to a person's lists.

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The Mystery Of The CSS Float Property

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:38:56 -0700

via smashingmagazine.com

Once again a (very) thorough review of the CSS float property (and related bugs) by Smashing Magazine. Great read!

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Interesting Facts About the Internet and Social Web

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:20:51 -0700

via labnol.org

Interesting stats about the internet and social web.

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Recommended: Seesmic · Build Your Community

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:21:36 -0700

Seesmic Desktop

A desktop client to manage your lifestream from Facebook & multiple Twitter accounts. Create groups and searches and view them any way you like.

via seesmic.com

I don't usually do recommendations online, but this time I'm going to make an exception. There are a lot of great 3rd party Twitter apps out there - Tweetdeck, DestroyTwitter...plus more corporate/business apps like Hootsuite and CoTweet (especially helpful for managing multiple accounts). My personal favorite right now? Seesmic Desktop.

Seesmic is from internet entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, and the one thing that impresses me is the emphasis on customer service. The client itself is great - I can group contacts from both Twitter and Facebook into userlists, save searches, and more. But the customer service, at least as I've experienced thus far, is superb. Several times I've sent tweets to Seesmic's Twitter accounts (@seesmic, @askseesmic), not expecting to get any sort of response to my suggestions on how to improve the service. Without fail, they've tweeted me back within the hour. Great stuff.

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IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:29:32 -0700

via mashable.com

Internet Explorer 6, a web browser brought into being with the advent of Windows XP in 2001, is still being used by15-25% of internet users worldwide. Why, you ask? According to Mashable's Ben Parr, it's mostly because 1)Windows XP's default installed browser is IE6 (and users either don't see the reason to change it, or don't know how to), or 2)some IT departments don't believe it's worth the hassle to upgrade.

The first reason is about to become history with the impending release of Windows 7 this October. Time will tell how long it takes for IT departments to get the message.

Is there another reason your company is still using IE6 (that Ben doesn't mention in his article)? Comments are welcome.

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Check This Out - Slatebox :: Visualize Everything

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:01:00 -0700

via slatebox.com

I've been hearing recently about a renewed interest in mindmapping to flesh out ideas and concepts (for websites, or just to facilitate thought processes). Steve Rubel (steverubel.com) claims he uses them frequently.

Now here comes Slatebox, a new beta web app with embeddable mindmap widgets and real-time collaboration. I haven't tried this out yet, but have been paging through the demos, and so far it looks like a neat idea.

Have you tried this? If so, what do you think?

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Concept Feedback - A Social Network for Design Feedback

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:18:19 -0700

How It Works

Designed specifically for small and medium business marketers, graphic designers, and web developers, Concept Feedback provides a simple tool to get quality feedback on marketing concepts. Best of all, it's 100% FREE!

via conceptfeedback.com

Interesting concept - a social network for designers to get feedback from other designers on their designs. Could come in handy. My question - how will they be able to limit the network to only designers? What plans do they have to deal with possible spam?

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Font-ificating: Delivering Web-Native Fonts (ReadWriteWeb)

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:56:02 -0700

via readwriteweb.com

This blog posting from ReadWriteWeb talks about the different methods in use today for delivering custom fonts to the Web. It is amazing, now that I think about it, that we've come so far with the Web, and still we're having difficulty making use of fonts other than Arial or Verdana.

What do you think is the way forward for web typography?

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Pure CSS Timeline – Notebook | MattBango.com

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:00:58 -0700

Let’s take a look at a screenshot of the timeline that we’re building in this tutorial.

We have a nice looking timeline styled completely with CSS, but what happens if the visitor doesn’t have CSS enabled? Since we used unordered lists, we still have a nicely accessible list of events.

via mattbango.com

This looks like a creative use of CSS that I hadn't seen before. If CSS is turned off, the visual timeline turns into a series of unordered lists. Seems like a potentially accessible solution. What do you think?

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Blend, a jQuery plugin effect for CSS backgrounds

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:53:53 -0700

Blend

A jQuery based animation/effects, progressive enhancement plugin for CSS backgrounds. (1.4KBs)

via colorpowered.com

Just discovered jQuery Blend, an animation plugin for jQuery that helps produce slick rollover effects. I have been really impressed so far with the explosion in jQuery plugin ingenuity (jQuery Impromptu, jqZoom are two that come to mind).

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Steve Rubel Interview With Posterous Team

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:56:44 -0700

Video Interview: The Posterous Team on their Vision, Strategy and Growth

via youtube.com

In this video I talk to co-founders Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan about the vision, strategy and growth of Posterous (traffic is up 20-50% every month). We also discuss lifestreaming and some forthcoming news: an iPhone app and theming.

via posterous.com

PR professional Steve Rubel sits down for a quick chat with the Posterous founders. One interesting tidbit - theming of your Posterous blog is apparently "imminent." As much as I like the clean, minimalistic layout of the default Posterous theme, it will be interesting to change it up a little.

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Social Media Real World Stalking

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:27:49 -0700

via youtube.com

Found this posting from one of my new favorite social media bloggers, Jenn Van Grove (Associate Editor at the influential social media blog Mashable). She discusses the "catch-22" about social media - that, yes, it can be amazing to help you discuss with people of common interests...but, if you're not careful, it can turn into a tool for predators or...bad people to find you, harass you, etc.

I have to agree with her. In an ideal world, perhaps, we could all use social media to connect with others without reservations...but we do not live in an ideal world. It's a shame, but...we do need to be careful out there.

I'm curious what you think. Is there a potential dark side to social media?

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All About Floats | CSS-Tricks

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:43:37 -0700

via css-tricks.com

The latest from Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks. Chris gives a concise rundown of floats - what they are, how they are used, etc. I know floats are something I'm still trying to master, so this article will be a helpful reference for me.

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