RE: Facebook Privacy

Paul F. Tompkins said it best – “’Friends of friends’ are people I don’t know. I don’t want them to see my stuff because I don’t know them.”

Eric Schmidt’s Privacy Comments

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, recently said "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."

This is the CEO of the largest search company and online advertiser in the world saying that we should not expect to do anything on the web that we wouldn’t want to be in the hands of a mega corporation, the police, politicians, or even the public. (Video here)

He continues, “The reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time…It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.”

This second part we have known for years. The last it was reported, Yahoo kept their data personally identifiable for ninety days, with Google retaining nine months of data and Microsoft eighteen. After that amount of the time the data is scrubbed clean of your IP address but retained for data mining.

A quick google (see what they’ve done?!) revealed this article from 2003 with people questioning Google’s retention policies. Back then, people were still concerned with cookies so it’s obvious why some would start to wonder just how much Google knows about them.

A year or two later people started using Gmail, Google’s “free” web-based email service. I put free in quotes because it’s not really free, of course. Advertising pays for your Gmail. Google’s advertising. Google knows lots of things about you. Advertisers are willing to pay lots of money to know things about you.

Google has now amassed a massive amount of user data with everything from email, search history and the results you clicked on after performing that search, to financial transactions, stock ownership, documents, and RSS feeds, to news that interests you and the YouTube videos you have viewed. With Google Voice, Google Latitude, and GPS in Google phones, suddenly they have your call history and your phone’s exact location. The more integrated your life is with Google, the more they know about you. And sometimes we forget just how much Google is in our lives.

Back to Eric Schmidt’s recent frightening comments. It’s not that there’s anything illegal I’m googling but at the same time I’m sure there are search terms in my history that I wouldn’t want my mother to see (Hi Mom!) I also close the blinds in my bedroom because I expect some privacy. People expect a reasonable amount of privacy when they search for things on the internet but Schmidt’s comments are quite telling that they should expect none.

Think about it. Would you want your (potential) employer or (potential) spouse to be able to see your search history for the right price?

“That rash you researched last year? That could be a pre-existing condition and you need to get it looked at before you can join our health plan.” “You searched for an abortion clinic two years ago? We can’t get married.” “You enjoy a taboo sex act between consenting adults? You can’t work around kids.” “You donated to the Republican party in 2004? You can’t practice your religion here.” These might be extreme examples but they raise some interesting questions about just how much data you create, how valuable that data is, and who has control of it.

Now I’m not a complete tinfoil hat-wearing privacy freak. I understand that target advertising works and is necessary to make money on the internet and I know that Google does it best. I don’t see any of these ads thanks to Adblock, but many people do. I prefer not to keep important email in Gmail but I  use Google throughout the day to find information.

So what can you do about it? Lifehacker has a great post about de-google-izing your life in areas that matter most to you. It boils down to this: don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. Remember that everything you create or seek out on the internet will be stored on a hard drive somwhere and probably be data mined to find useful nuggets about you. This data can be used for financial gain, identity theft, or maliciously. Don’t assume that any site is safe. No server is 100% bulletproof and there’s always a chance your data could be stolen. Handing your entire digital life over to Google could be a risky move if their popular slogan “Don’t be evil” ever becomes a thing of the past, or if it was never true in the first place.

Microsoft Live Labs Pivot

Just got my beta invite to Pivot have had a chance to play with it a bit. I’m having a lot of fun with it and I think the Live Labs team are on to something.

The basic idea behind Pivot is that it allows you to browse lots and and lots of data visually and very quickly. It’s a bit like a pivot table in Excel combined with a web browser, but instead of having a list of names, numbers, whatever, the data is displayed in a grid with nice, big graphical representations that you can browse and sort quickly and intuitively.

The data is sorted into chunks called Collections, which are groups of data that share a common attribute of some kind. For instance, there are collections for sports players. You can sort and browse through them by team, position, salary, years in the league, etc. Then with the click of a button you can throw these results into graphs that instantly allow deeper investigation. You can filter by a large number of keywords to narrow the data down to exactly what you want to explore.

When you pull up a specific entry using the Wikipedia Collection, “autobahn” for example, you’re given links to the full article (viewed right in Pivot), links to other subjects and categories related to autobahn, related searches, and search results from Bing. An interesting note here is that when you view a full Wikipedia article, it uses “Bing Reference” which is essentially the Wikipedia text with a Bing-branded sidebar that lets you search the article, among other things.

All of this data is pulled from the web so it’s always the most current. Pivot uses Internet Explorer 8 for its rendering and has tabs so you can jump back and forth between collections and have other tabs open just for browsing the web, searching Google, etc.

Live Labs are calling on developers to put together their own Collections. Right now there are just sample Collections put together by Microsoft but it’s already an impressive and fun list. Here’s what’s available right now:

Sports Illustrated Covers
Magic: The Gathering
Yoga Journal Featured Posts
Kiva Loans
AMG Movies
AMG Actors and Actresses
Hard Rock Memorabilia
Wikipedia
NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB Athletes
NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB Teams
Endangered Species
National Parks
World Leaders
US Presidents
Dog Breeds
New Cars
Concept Cars
Xbox Marketplace

I don’t think Microsoft expects to really push Pivot in its current form but this would be incredibly useful built right in to Internet Explorer. I’d like to see pricing comparison built-in, as well as the ability to export reports to Excel for further analysis and the option to print your results. Importing your own spreadsheets and data would also be a cool feature.

If you are interested in trying Pivot, go to http://www.getpivot.com to download the software. Enter code 923D5325F66B7359 when you are asked for it. There are eight invites left using that code at the time of this post. Be aware that Pivot is somewhat graphics intensive and may not work with integrated graphics. It should also be noted that Pivot does not run on Windows XP at this time. Vista or 7 only and Internet Explorer 8 is required.

Check out the embedded video below to see more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZuFUZpEZ-A

Soma FM

I was recently turned on to a fantastic streaming internet radio site named somafm.com They have eighteen free, commercial-free, listener-supported stations featuring music you’ve likely never heard before but might love.

Stations are based on genre and feature an amazing catalog of chill-out, ambient, downtempo, trip-hop, jazz, drum and bass, indie, lounge, trance, and even Halloween and Christmas channels. Most of it is instrumental and is great for when you’re in a certain mood and just want to hear a great mix of stuff in a certain genre.

My favorites are Groove Salad, Drone Zone, and Illinois Street Lounge. I listen to about two hours a night and haven’t even checked out a lot of the stations yet. Even though I have not donated yet, I plan on it. In the interim thought I would give them a plug to all five of my readers So click the link and check out some channels. Expand your musical horizons!

 

Windows Media Center

Many people don’t realize that there is a really great media center application built into a lot of versions of Windows. If you’re running Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate, or any version of Windows 7 Home Premium of higher, Media Center is available to you. Why would you want it? Lots of reasons, which I’ll get to. But first, some history.

Windows Media Center first became available in Windows XP Media Center Edition in 2002. It was only sold via the big OEMs and the computer had to have a TV tuner card included. It never really took off (much to the chagrin of the cable co’s, I’m sure) because of some silly hardware limitations and the fact that TV tuners were pretty much garbage back then. There were a couple of updates to the OS and in 2005 it first became available to anyone who built a custom PC. It gained a niche audience of home theater PC enthusiasts but the overall audience was very low.

With Windows Vista came the news that Media Center would be built in to Home Premium and Ultimate and you could use any hardware you wanted. Great news. TV tuners had improved during that time and driver support got better. Obviously this widened the audience significantly as Home Premium was the version of Vista most commonly sold. The downside was that Vista Business and Professional did not include Media Center.

Now, Windows 7 is available and every version except Starter and Home Basic include Media Center. Starter will only been seen rarely on netbooks and Home Basic basically does not exist for most of the developed world. So unless you’re running a netbook or an extremely cheap desktop or laptop, you have Media Center.

Now, why would you want to use it? Media Center gives you access to your videos, pictures, music, free Internet TV, and more all from one beautiful application. Even better, if you have a TV tuner, such as the HDHomeRun, you can watch live television on your computer or TV. Full DVR functionality including great recording options, pause, fast forward and rewind, captions, full guide, and more can be controlled with your mouse, keyboard, or remote.

I have an OTA antenna plugged in to my HDHomeRun which gives me access to live, free, HD content streamed to three devices across my network. It’s a great alternative to cable television. Once you pay for the hardware there are no monthly fees, no rising prices, no junky cable boxes, no pixelated picture, and no shoddy customer service to deal with.

If you have a version of Windows that includes Media Center, open it up, run through the configuration to add your media, and play around with it. Most people like what they find. You can find TV tuners in any major electronics store nowadays and with today’s technology it’s easier than ever to connect your computer to your TV, which is where Media Center really shines. Give it a try!

Here are a couple of screenshots of my Media Center to pique your interest.