Category Archives: The Internet

Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phonebook

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Reason 5,395 not to use Facebook:

[…] At first I was baffled – I guessed maybe Facebook had copied something across from my previous account via a cookie or similar. But it turns out that FB used my mobile number (which they took as a security check) to match up with people who have me in their mobile phone book and have synced the Facebook app.

I fully understand why they’re doing this – it connects new users into existing networks, it’s an evolution of the ‘import your Hotmail contacts’ facility. I just didn’t like the approach at all. They demanded my mobile number under the pretence of a security check, but then used to it find people who have me in their mobile phone contacts.

This has badly violated the privacy of a friend who has, I now know, been operating a second Facebook account to hide the fact that he is gay – something which he has good and important reasons to hide. It also showed me that an ex-girlfriend of long ago still has my number saved – which is understandable because I am great.

Facebook privacy fuckup reveals who has your number in their phonebook – alexmuir.com

Kindle Format 8

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Kindle Format 8 overview – amazon.com (via arstechnica.com)

We’re pleased to announce a wide range of new features and enhancements – including HTML5 support – coming in Kindle Format 8 (KF8). KF8 is the next generation file format for Kindle books – replacing Mobi 7. As showcased on Kindle Fire, KF8 enables publishers to create great-looking books in categories that require rich formatting and design such as children’s picture books, comics & graphic novels, technical & engineering books and cookbooks. Kindle Format 8 replaces the Mobi format and adds over 150 new formatting capabilities, including fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics, opening up more opportunities to create Kindle books that readers will love.

I wonder if there is a market for people who can build high quality ebooks for writers?

Link

A fascinating look into the design of the new Guardian iPad app.

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We have created something that is a new proposition, different to other digital offerings. It works in either orientation and nothing is sacrificed. Instead of it being based on lists, breaking news, and the fastest updates it’s instead designed to be a more reflective, discoverable experience. This gives it the potential to have a design capable of responding to the news… just like a newspaper.

The Guardian iPad edition: ‘Put the newspaper on the iPad’ – guardian.co.uk

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Facebook, Facebook, Facebook

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I just followed a fb.me link to a Guardian story about the Occupy protests going on around the world. Heading over to 15october.net, I zoomed in to find a protest happening in Bristol – which is being organised on Facebook.

It’s disgusting how prevalent Facebook has become. Even among the geeky crowd at Dorkbot last night, many people were using Facebook pages in lieu of having their own website. Dorkbot itself, despite having their own site, uses Facebook to organise events and host videos. At least that’s what I hear – I am effectively denied access to this material.

Perhaps I should just come to terms with the fact that one company is going to own so much of the web, but I wish everybody else would instead.

Canton Social Media Surgery, Wednesday 5th October

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This coming Wednesday I’ll be at my third social media surgery in Chapter Arts, helping to orient those new to social media.

If you have questions about the hows (and whys) of social media, these surgeries are an excellent opportunity. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well attended these events have been, and it has been satisfying to help – even in a small way – some non-profits trying to make better use of social media and the web in general. So long as I have the time to donate, I’ll be happy to continue to come along and help others.
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PressPausePlay: Download the documentary about our new digital culture for free

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PressPausePlay, an award-winning documentary about our new digital culture, premiered at SXSW earlier this year. It is playing at film festivals and you can buy it on iTunes, Amazon, and other digital pay sites. If you don’t want to pay for it, you can now download it via a torrent for free. This free option was essential to the filmmakers. As Seth Godin says in the film, ideas that are free spread faster.

(via Buy This Movie Or Legally Download It For Free: Your Call – techcrunch.com)

I haven’t seen this yet, but I expect this will be something that all aspiring content creators will need to watch.

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

presspauseplay.com

UPDATE 2011.10.22

I finally around to watching this, and found it to be very lightweight. It was inspirational to see so many people working in cool workspaces on personal projects though.

I had a hard time taking these two seriously though:

SEO for non-dicks

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The key thing to understand is that the rules of SEO aren’t magic or arbitrary. They’re based on the goals of a search engine, which is to find relevant results. Relevance implies genuineness, and genuineness implies trust. So, shockingly, you should try to make your site’s content trustworthy, genuine and relevant. All of the rules have come about due to their utility in detecting those three positive metrics. Good SEO is a by-product of not being a dick on the internet.

(SEO for Non-dicks – mattgemmell.com)

File under things that are very true.

Posted in SEO

Link

I’m always sending myself notes via email – in fact I have a special Gmail account just for to-do and to-read items. This cc:to me bookmarklet will make it loads easier to send myself links to websites I want to check out later. I can even include text and images just by dragging it off the page and into the bookmarklet. It’s very slick.

The only flaw I can see is that it doesn’t use the subject line. Ideally, it should at least put the page title in there for quick reference.

(via The Next Web)

WordPress.com vs. Posterous

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It’s been a week since I switched this blog from Posterous to WordPress.com. I’m very happy with the change, but it is clear to me that Posterous offer very compelling features for a free service.

What follows isn’t a complete comparison of the two services, it just highlights what I consider the most important differences between the two services for a typical blogger.

WordPress.com Posterous
Big library of free themes (100+). Premium themes. No custom themes. Decent library of free themes (46). No premium themes. Custom themes.
Custom domain mapping ($12 per year). Free custom domain mapping.
Regular users may see ads on your blog. Signed in WordPress.com users won’t. ($29.97 to remove.) No on-site advertising.
No direct HTML editing. CSS access paid upgrade ($30 per year). Full free access to HTML and CSS.
Image-heavy posts are a pain to manage. Excellent, intuitive image galleries.
Excellent, but expensive HD video support (VideoPress: $60 per year). Free video uploads (100MB per video limit).
A basic stats tool in the dashboard. No export functionality. No Google Analytics support. Support for Google Analytics.
Threaded comments. No threaded comments.
Fantastic commenting and comment moderation features. Comments can be a bit buggy for users. Poor moderation features.
Both services offer great customer support and have good iPhone and Android apps.
Neither service permits the use of JavaScript.

Note that I stopped using Posterous just before it transformed into Posterous Spaces. Their blogging service remains basically unchanged, so these points are still valid, but there is now a whole social aspect you may want to consider.

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Site traffic: Posterous vs. WordPress.com

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Curiously, I seem to be getting much more traffic now I’m hosting this blog on WordPress.com. I used to get 100-200 visits per day on Posterous, but now I’m seeing 200-300.

It could be a simple reporting difference, but I know from personal experience that Posterous could be slow to the point where the page never finished loading. I wonder if it regularly prevented the Google Analytics script at the end of the page from getting loaded?

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A Dribbble for writing

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Dribbble is a community site for very talented graphic designers. It’s not their role to debate these details. I would love to see a Dribbble for writing. A place where I can post the latest Intercom broadcast, email, even a sentence from the interface and get feedback. “You can strip the word currently there.“, “The important word here is buried in the middle of the sentence!“. “The message makes sense, but what I am supposed to do next?“.

(via The Language of Interfaces – contrast.ie)

A clever idea. I could see this being useful outside of UX circles. Perhaps for crafting the perfect marketing tweet or optimising a paragraph for SEO? I could even see some ways to make this profitable…

Static brands don’t belong on Twitter. Discuss.

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I just asked a question on Twitter:

Static brands like Coffee #1 and Clark’s Pies are very dull on Twitter. Besides running promos and RTing complements, what else can they do?

Now, I don’t mean to call out Coffee #1 or Clark’s Pies in particular. (I happen to love coffee and pies, though not necessarily together!) Both of these brands are small, local companies who are interacting with followers. They look and sound professional, and are probably doing everything a ‘social media expert’ would recommend. But the experience of following them can be, to choose a charitable word, repetitive.

Should brands like these be on Twitter? What better ways could static brands take advantage of a fast-moving medium?

The Museum of Obsolete Objects

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The Museum of Obsolete Objects is a snazzy YouTube channel:

Sadly, as our daily lives become more and more digital some things fall by the way side as they are replaced by newer, «better» devices.
Let us not forget those fallen appliances, tools and gadgets and relive those bygone times by taking a visit to The Museum of Obsolete Objects. Step inside to step back in time!

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New home, same address

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You may have noticed a slight change at this blog – it was finally time to give up on Posterous and move over to WordPress.com. There’s still a bit of tidying up to do, but I’m really happy with the change.

All the old Halfblog.net content is still available at foomandoonian.posterous.com. Gradually, I may migrate some more content over and eventually shut down the Posterous blog entirely, but I haven’t really decided yet.