Sunday, March 14, 2010

Two articles discussing the consumers view of privacy, rather than the corporate view.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20000408-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Privacy is not dead, says SXSWi keynoter Boyd

by Daniel Terdiman March 13, 2010 5:06 PM PST

AUSTIN, Texas--Privacy is not dead in the era of online social networking. It just needs careful curation.

That was the message Saturday from Danah Boyd, a social-media expert who works for Microsoft Research and who was Saturday's keynote speaker at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival here.

Boyd is one of the original social-media researchers, having spent years studying the dynamics of how systems like MySpace and Facebook impact teens and youth culture, and how that culture is impacting such services. But she also has demonstrated over the years a keen sense of how people across all age groups use social networks, and her talk touched on many different communities.

To begin with, she said, privacy is by no means dead. "People care very much about privacy, no matter how old they are," Boyd said. "The challenge is that what privacy means may not be what you think...Fundamentally, it's about having control over how information flows...When people feel they don't have control over their environment or their setting, they feel as though their privacy has been violated. And they cry foul."

To begin with, Boyd used the recent Google Buzz debacle as an example of how people of all stripes demonstrated that they care deeply about their privacy. She explained that while there was nothing technically wrong with the way Google's new social-networking system integrated with Gmail, it nonetheless resulted in a PR nightmare for the search giant because "they made nontechnical mistakes that ended up in social disruption."

First, Boyd said, Google failed by interfacing Buzz, a public-facing system, with Gmail, "one of the most private systems imaginable." The problem with that, she explained, is that "people genuinely believed that Google was exposing their private e-mails to the world."

And while that widely held perception was not technically true, Boyd said, Google's lack of understanding about how people would react to the forced opt-out provisions of Buzz caused an unnecessary panic. And, she said, Google is hardly alone in what is, in the best case, a basic misunderstanding of what users want or, in the worst case, a new corporate strategy of trying to get as many users locked in right away, regardless of the consequences.


(Related)

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/13/privacy-publicity-sxsw/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Danah Boyd: How Technology Makes A Mess Of Privacy and Publicity

… Boyd’s second case study was Facebook’s privacy changes in December, when Facebook changed ‘everyone’ to the default. We’ve written extensively on this fiasco, which may take years to really reveal the extent of the damage it has done.

  • Facebook said 35% of users had read the new privacy documentation and changed something in the privacy settings. Facebook thinks this is a good thing, but it means 65% of population made their content public. Boyd has asked non-techie users to tell her what they thought their settings were. She has yet to find a single person whose actual privacy settings matched what they thought they were.



A business model for the US? Could we “own” the cellphone market?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/13/india%E2%80%99s-rural-cell-movement-can-you-hear-me-now/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

India’s Rural Cell Movement: Can You Hear Me Now?

by Sarah Lacy on Mar 13, 2010

Last time I was in India I wrote about the amazing business model innovation that had allowed telecom operators to make money on a paltry $6 a month per average user. That compares to a desired average monthly payment of $50 or more in the U.S.

The results have been phenomenal—550 million people in India have phones, and it has transformed the poorer service economy by giving them an affordable way to be reached and arrange jobs. Just last month, nearly 20 million new mobile accounts were opened. That’s more than double the people than have high speed Internet in the entire country.



It amazes me how frequently I find articles like this AT THE END OF THE QUARTER! Oh well, I can always save them for next time.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/quick-guide-tables-microsoft-access-2007/

A Quick Tutorial To Tables In Microsoft Access 2007

By Jim Henderson on Mar. 13th, 2010



Another tool that turns pictures into videos

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/flixtime-create-videos-from-photos

Flixtime: Create Videos From Photos In Seconds

www.flixtime.com

Similar Tools: Animoto, Masher, and PhotoFilmStrip.



For my more egotistical friends? If I printed this blog, I'd need (5 pages per day for 4 years) 7300 pages. Not only would I need to sacrifice whole forests for the paper, but I could kill readers from either sheer boredom or by crushing them if the printout fell on them.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/14/famebook/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Famebook: Because You’ve Always Wanted To Have Your Facebook Feed On Paper

by Robin Wauters on Mar 14, 2010

Remember that time when a marketing agency’s labs unit cooked up an application that allowed you to print your tweets in a custom notebook (aka, Tweetnotebook)?

Ok, fair chance you don’t – I sure do because I have one of those lying around here somewhere.

Anyway, it was only a matter of time before they did the same for Facebook – and lo and behold, here’s My Famebook.

… Once personalized with a custom lay-out, message selection and cover design, you can preview your Famebook and choose to order the 320-page paperback version for €14 ($19) or go for a 200-page hardcover edition at €18 ($25) – shipping costs not included.



And something to put my math students to sleep...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100314/tc_pcworld/abriefhistoryofpi

A Brief History of Pi

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