Facebook, You’re Bugging Me

But it’s my choice and I don’t use the subterfuge of friending someone to accomplish my commercial goals.

facebook-page.gifWhen I first plopped myself onto the Internet in 1992 it was a very different place. This was the pre-browser, pre-WWW era. If there was anything commercial on the web I didn’t see it. Besides, the web (for me) was totally text based and running to my computer at either 300 or 1,200 baud (I can’t remember at the moment).

Things have changed! The Internet is full of ads and commercialism. Some companies, Google for instance, managed to find a way to make ads more valuable by making them contextual. Few find Google’s ads objectionable (though they’re often weirdly out-of-context)

Lets talk about Facebook. It’s relationship with ads is very different.

Modeled on Harvard’s actual physical “you can hold it in your hands” Facebook, it has become the leading social networking site on the web. They claim 350 million active users over the last 30 days! I can believe it.

Running the site must be expensive, because even with all the ads there are also commercially sponsored apps. I have railed about apps and their misleading come-ons in the past.

Either I’ve clicked enough buttons to silence most of them or their number is diminishing. Maybe their days are numbered?

Still, Facebook is too ripe with customers for businesses to stay away. Three of my last four friend requests were from businesses! That’s against Facebook’s TOS, but just wrong as a matter of common decency.

One woman (recently friended and now unfriended) sent an unsolicited invitation to her company’s wine tasting. I hit ignore (I’m a non-drinker) but was still spammed this morning by her ALL CAPS Facebook email with the details.

Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.

“[T]rusted environment.” That’s the operative phrase. That’s why I find this whole rush toward businesses wanting to be my friend smarmy. They want to take advantage of that trusted environment, which they’ve done… to the detriment of trust!

There is a place for business on Facebook. There are fan sites and other ways to communicate with customers. I am part of one. I am a member of others. But it’s my choice and I don’t use the subterfuge of friending someone to accomplish my commercial goals.

Facebook has in many ways become a pain-in-the-ass. There are many good parts. I like that I can see photos and hear stories from my friends (whether close friends or just Facebook friends). I don’t want to be hustled. We are approaching the tipping point.

If not careful Facebook will find, as MySpace has found, friendship is fleeting.

Twitter Is Holding My Attention

kevinrose Just walked into the bar with this dog (see earlier vid), holy hell, 5 girls came up in 2 mins. This dog is gold!

I’m still up in the air about Twitter. I like it, but I’m feeling unfulfilled. Maybe I don’t know how to use it correctly. It would work a whole lot better if “twits” updated in real time and the whole thing operated outside the browser.

Here are some random “twits” I enjoyed… and the raison d’ĂȘtre I come back.

Kevin Rose kevinrose Just walked into the bar with this dog (see earlier vid), holy hell, 5 girls came up in 2 mins. This dog is gold!

Harry McCracken harrymccracken Just felt it! (There was a small quake in Northern California last night – Geoff)

LanceUlanoff Curse you Brett Myers!

mattcutts Duncan Riley is auctioning his original Google Chrome comic book: http://bit.ly/ebaychrome .

mattizcoop Chilling with the boy, regretting the 5:55 AM flight out of MSP, bumming out that Heart put the kibosh on use of “Barracuda” for Sarahcuda.

anamariecox Forgotten Tweet from Google bash: asked vet GOP operative what he thought of the nite’s stagecraft and he said “my eyes are still bleeding.”

Brian Heater bheater @dancosta Microsoft is to the Future as McCain is to Change. Discuss

HowardKurtz So many media folks on this plane, hope the Repubs dont launch an elite-seeking missile.

Kirk Varner kirkv Anyone want to wager that these are the last political party conventions that ABC/CBS/NBC give up any primetime for?

Mr. TV Barn tvbarn Watching the Royals play a makeup game in an almost entirely empty Kauffman Stadium; you can even hear Jose Guillen grumbling in the dugout

geofffox Mixed emotions hoping winds/rain are heavy enough to justify my forecast, light enough not to injure. Always forecast with conscience.

The world summarized in 140 characters or less!

Looking To Get Out And Shoot

I just posted this on dpreview.com, but I guess I might as well post it here too

I just posted this on dpreview.com, but I guess I might as well post it here too:

I’m looking for some advice from forum members.

I am interested in doing a photo workshop sometime in September. I’ve never gone to one before. I am a reasonably competent amateur. I’m still shooting an original 300D Digital Rebel (over 40,000 shots) and use mainly Sigma lenses.

I’d like to concentrate on shooting skills. I’m already pretty good with Photoshop, which I use on a regular basis at work.

I am looking to go somewhere beautiful, not worried about some hiking (I’m 57, work at a desk and reflect much of what that implies), and will fly anywhere Southwest goes, rent a car and drive where necessary.

I looked at a website for a Rocky Mountain National Park workshop run by Andy Cook & Bruce du Fresne. It seems to be along the lines of what I’m looking for, though it might be too short for my long trip. I don’t know.

Actually, that’s the operative phrase: I don’t know. So, any suggestions will be appreciated.

I’ll let you know what comes of this.

Something Isn’t Right In Space

So what the hell is going on? Why would we jeopardize our low Earth orbiting fleet (which doesn’t include most weather, communications and TV satellites, but does include the International Space Station, Space Shuttle, GPS, mapping and spy satellites) in an act we’ve already condemned when executed by others?

Back in January I wrote about the US spy satellite that will soon come crashing to the Earth. Sure, it’s got all sorts of scary chemistry (specifically hydrazine) on board, but there’s nothing to worry about, right?

Last week most of the experts were poo pooing the danger this satellite’s fiery reentry would bring. Satellites… even big satellites… come down all the time. That’s what they said until Thursday.

All of a sudden we want to shoot this school bus sized piece of space junk down. Shades of Bruce Willis!

From the Chicago Tribune:

Speaking to reporters, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , and James Jeffrey, the deputy national security adviser, said the Navy’s window of opportunity to strike the satellite before it enters the Earth’s atmosphere begins in the next three or four days. Cartwright said the window would likely remain open for seven or eight days.

If the satellite is not intercepted, it is expected to enter the atmosphere in late February or early March.

“This has no aerodynamic properties,” Cartwright said of the satellite. “Once it hits the atmosphere, it tumbles, it breaks apart. It is very unpredictable and next to impossible to engage. So what we’re trying to do here is catch it just prior to the last minute, so it’s absolutely low as possible, outside the atmosphere, so that the debris comes down as quickly as possible.”

A satellite is one lone object. Shoot it down and you get thousands, maybe tens of thousands of tiny objects, all unguided and some likely to remain in orbit for a long time. At orbital speed, even a small object with little mass is destructive.

Back in 1996, after the space shuttle had shifted its course to avoid a dead satellite, the New York times published this:

Dr. Donald J. Kessler, NASA’s senior scientist for orbital debris studies at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in an interview that space junk was a growing problem threatening the safety of spacecraft and astronauts. The Air Force tracks more than 7,000 pieces of debris larger than a baseball, including old rocket parts, outmoded satellites, discarded tools, remnants of explosions, and other odds and ends moving in orbit at more than 17,000 miles per hour. And researchers estimate there are more than 150,000 smaller objects that also pose a danger of collision.

“It’s common for space shuttles to show evidence of frequent hits, but nothing catastrophic has happened,” Dr. Kessler said. “We are now getting good international cooperation to control space debris, but it will continue to be a problem for a long time and we have to take precautions.”

Illustrating how real the problem is, Dr. Kessler said astronauts servicing the Hubble Space Telescope found a half-inch hole punched through its main antenna. And after a flight of the shuttle Columbia last October, engineers found a similar-sized crater in a cargo bay door caused by the impact of a tiny piece of solder, he said.

Here’s the operative sentence: “We are now getting good international cooperation to control space debris.” In other words, space debris is bad and everyone should stop creating it.

In fact, last January, after the Chinese blasted one of their own satellites out of orbit, the US Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said:

…the January 11 event created hundreds of pieces of large orbital debris, the majority of which will stay in orbit for more than 100 years. A much larger number of smaller, but still hazardous, pieces of debris were also created.

The United States is concerned about the increased risk to human spaceflight and space infrastructure as a result of this action, a risk that is shared by all space-faring nations. The United States and many other nations have satellites in space in conformity with international agreements that provide for their national security, and foreign policy and economic interests.

So what the hell is going on? Why would we jeopardize our low Earth orbiting fleet (which doesn’t include most weather, communications and TV satellites, but does include the International Space Station, Space Shuttle, GPS, mapping and spy satellites) in an act we’ve already condemned when executed by others?

Is there something that vile or that secret in this spy satellite? Are we looking for a little target practice to show everyone we’re every bit as capable as the Chinese? I don’t know.

My “educated amateur” space knowledge says, something doesn’t seem right… something doesn’t smell right… something doesn’t add up.

There are missing pieces to this story I neither possess nor understand. I sure hope someone else does, and they are free to speak.

Reframing An Argument

Stef called tonight. It’s Sunday night, but there was schoolwork to be done. We spent a little time discussing an assignment from one of her courses.

The professor mentioned George Lakoff and the concept of reframing an argument.

It’s actually a pretty effective tactic. Can’t win an argument? Reframe it by making the overlying concept something no one could disagree with.

No sooner did I hang up the phone than I read an example.

By PAMELA HESS

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

If I’m reading this correctly, Kerr says get used to having anything you say or do connected directly to you.

Right now, where you are, or what you say and do, is your business alone. This blog is out in the open, but if I send you email, it is private. At least it is now.

I’m not sure how this privacy will disappear, but I’m guessing it’s a combination of eavesdropping, spying, snooping and database aggregation.

Who would go for that? Not too many, especially if you use words like eavesdropping and spying. Kerr didn’t, though he works in intelligence, also known as spying.

Kerr reframed the argument. Here’s the operative phrase:

… government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

Of course, safeguard! Who could be opposed to that?

You seldom get to put an abstract concept from a university course into practical terms so quickly. I’m afraid that’s not a good thing this time.