If you’ve been having trouble making your car payments, or you’ve fallen behind on a couple payments, you should consider an auto loan refinance before Facebook helps the finance company repossess your vehicle. Facebook’s new feature–Facebook Places–is a new feature offered by the social media giant that lets your friends know exactly where you are at any given time. The new feature was announced in August 2010, and it could help car repo agents find you easier if they are sneaky enough to make friends with your friends or even get into your Facebook account. By knowing where you are, repo agents can come to your location and repossess your vehicle if they have an order to do so from the finance company.
Facebook Places is currently available only as an app for the iPhone. The newest generation of iPhones has impressive GPS technology, which taps in to the surrounding Wi-Fi networks to get your location. Despite its impressive technology, however, the application will not be able to pinpoint you within a few feet. For instance, if you’re the local Wal-Mart, Facebook Places will be able to tell if you are in the store, but it won’t be as specific as to say which aisle you’re in.
Of course, Facebook Places has its limitations in order to provide people with their privacy. For instance, you have to let your iPhone know where you are and give it your permission for your friends to see where you are. So, if you’re worried about stalkers finding you, it isn’t as easy as looking you up on a Facebook page and finding your location.
Facebook Places is the application’s biggest upgrade in technology since the social media network began several years ago. Hopefully, it will be useful technology for millions of Facebook users worldwide.
The battle between Google and Facebook is heating up. Google is working on “Google Me” – a social network alternative to Facebook. This article explains some of the perceived threats. It really boils down to a battle between two of the biggest titans on the web, and the decisions of these two companies will have huge implications on how we use it going forward.
Google has already had a dud with Google Buzz, and it seems clear that they don’t understand the concept of social networking. They understand math and algorithms, but they seem to have little understanding of how humans interact with one another. They seem to avoid human input at all costs, always trying to solve problems with an algorithm.
We’ve seen this with some of the heavy-handed tactics used by Google with users of services like Google Adsense. If Google perceives a problem with an account, that account is shut down automatically, and the user is forced to endure a bureaucratic as they implore Google to restore their account.
If Google wants to compete in the social network space, they will need a team that understands this very different environment.
Meanwhile, Facebook is reportedly on “lockdown” as Zuckerberg rallies his team to deal with the coming threat.
A recent story on Digg censorship has caused quite a stir. Apparently a group of conservative Diggers have been manipulating the results to vote down liberal stories and to pump up conservative voices.
Who knows how much of this particular story is true, but many of us have suspected for a long time that Digg is rigged, and large sites can goose the results, along with certain powerful (or well-connected) users. The question is to what extent is Digg a part of or privy to the rigging process? And, do they turn a blind eye when it comes to friends, allies and sponsors? I wonder . . . .
The aim of the site, the creators explain, is “to use virginity as a significant compatibility tool to bring people together. Some people may overlook the bonding power of virginity. Virginity as an important common aspect between people can lead to close friendships, or can even serve as a mutual precious gift of marriage.”
The founders of the website, Lety and Jose Colin, explain that they were virgins until they were wed.
We have to admit we’re impressed. With all the niche dating sites out there, they may have found the most exclusive one of all!
You know Kevin Smith as a very successful movie director, despite the recent box office disappointments. He’s also become quite a force online, with a huge Twitter account and a very popular podcast – called the SModcast.
Wired recently caught up with Smith and he gave them a very funny interview in which he discussed his social media popularity.
Wired: But online, you can do just that, right? You seem to have amped up your Web presence since that movie.
Smith: Oh, I’m online all the time now. I’m not an outdoorsy type. Everything I do that’s not related to filmmaking or child-rearing or trying to fuck my wife is online. The medium of Twitter is built for me. I recently did a 24-hour tweetathon, and people asked me how I did it. I said, “The only difference between this and my normal regimen is that I let you know I was doing it.” I have 1.6 million followers—this army of people who think like me. There aren’t enough of us to invade a whole country, but we could probably take Quebec.
Wired: They’re numerous enough to put a book-length collection of your blog posts on best-seller lists and fill auditoriums to see you talk about whatever pops into your head.
Smith: Yeah, I used Twitter to sell out Carnegie Hall. My dream is to never have to take a real job again. If my next movie bombs and nobody ever gives me another dollar to make more, I wouldn’t care. I don’t need to do it anymore. I was never convinced that the film thing would last anyway. It just made me interesting enough to have a Web site.
Smith also discussed the tweetathon recently with Will Harris on Bullz-Eye.com.
I thought it was awesome. I’ve been training for it for, like, 15 years, though. We’ve been on the web since 1995, so I guess that’s actually 14 years. But I was ready. I was always curious, because I’ve spent hours upon hours on the web answering questions over the years, but the one that I’d never done was do it for 24 hours straight. I was kind of curious: “Can I pull it off?” And, alas, I could. (Laughs) It’s a mean feat. It’s not like someday my kid’s gonna be standing over my grave, and somebody’s gonna hang her a folded flag and say, “You know what? This is ‘cause he did 24 hours straight on Twitter.” But it’s just one of those little personal victories, like, “I wonder if I can do this.” And I did it. A stupid goal, but I accomplished it. Life’s all about…for me, at least…having very stupid achievable goals. That way, you always feel like a winner.
This interview also goes into great detail regarding Smith’s Smodcasts. The guy really gets this stuff.
Is Apple going too far with some of its restrictive policies surrounding the approval of apps, or is Apple just having a hard time setting the rules for something that exploded in popularity? I guess we’ll find out in due time as Apple’s policies evolve, but in the meantime Apple is on the receiving end of some tough criticism.
An app store lets companies tap into ideas from third-party innovators while retaining firm control over their brands. And that’s both its charm and its flaw. “The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed its reputation with programmers more than anything else they’ve ever done,” wrote Paul Graham, cofounder of the venture firm Y Combinator, on his blog.
The central problem is Apple’s heavy-handed management: Nothing gets into Apple’s store without the company’s express approval. Its restrictions have pushed several high-profile developers to quit the iPhone, and have bred ill will with the programmers who’ve remained. Apple may feel it has room to misbehave. No other phone can offer developers anywhere near the number of customers to be found in the App Store, so what choice do they have?
That’s a miscalculation, because the App Store’s true rival isn’t a competing app marketplace. Rather, it’s the open, developer-friendly Web. When Apple rejected Google Latitude, the search company’s nearby-friend-mapping program, developers created a nearly identical version that works perfectly on the iPhone’s Web browser. Google looks to be doing something similar with Voice, another app that Apple barred from its store. Last fall, Joe Hewitt, the Facebook developer who created the social network’s iPhone app, quit developing for Apple in protest of the company’s policies. Where did he go? Back to writing mobile apps for Web browsers.
Apple’s app bonanza won’t end anytime soon, but you’d be a fool to ignore the long-term trend in software — away from incompatible platforms and restrictive programming regimes, and toward write-once, run-anywhere code that works on a variety of devices, without interference from middlemen. As different kinds of mobile devices hit the market, from phones to tablet PCs to smartpens to e-book readers and beyond, developers will find that trend harder to ignore. They’ll need to create programs that can work not just on iPhones but on everything. Fortunately, there’s an app for that: It’s called the Web.
Apple is riding an incredible wave of success with iPhone apps, and things will only get more hectic with the introduction of the iPad that goes on sale tomorrow. Apple needs to redouble its efforts to control this situation in a manner that is fair to all participants.
Google Buzz has gotten off to a very rocky start, and the company is moving quickly to address privacy concerns resulting from its auto-follow feature.
The Buzz fiasco is encouraging, however, as another example of how the privacy police can alter the development and implementation of products. As we’ve seen, the Internet can be self-correcting, as users and self-anointed watchdogs work together to police new technologies and policies that can threaten our privacy. Google is the most powerful Internet company in the world, yet they understand that they have no choice but to take these concerns seriously.
This phenomenon will also strengthen our democracy and democracies (and fledgling democracies) around the world. Governments will think twice before imposing intrusive policies on their citizens.
Motorola hit a home run with their Megan Fox Super Bowl ad promoting their Blur social networking capabilities on Motorola phone. The ad achieves its purpose which is to get people to talk about MOTOBLUR capabilities, and the notion of sharing a picture of Megan Fox in a bathtub that she took with her camera phone definitely drives that point home!
Wired is one of my favorite magazines, and the recent story by Evan Ratliff is one of my all-time favorites. Ratliff tried an interesting experiment, as he tried to disappear without a trace and then challenge the world to find him.
The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to write a story for Wired about people who’ve tried to end one life and start another. People fret about privacy, but what are the consequences of giving it all up, I wondered. What can investigators glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real life?
It’s one thing to report on the phenomenon of people disappearing. But to really understand it, I figured that I had to try it myself. So I decided to vanish. I would leave behind my loved ones, my home, and my name. I wasn’t going off the grid, dropping out to live in a cabin. Rather, I would actually try to drop my life and pick up another.
Wired offered a $5,000 bounty — $3,000 of which would come out of my own pocket — to anyone who could locate me between August 15 and September 15, say the password “fluke,” and take my picture.
The story is a compelling read, so I won’t reveal what happened. Read the story first, and then go back and read some of the follow-up blog posts.
The struggle for privacy will be one of the enduring issues facing us in this century, and we’re just getting started. The Ratliff story poses some interesting questions for all of us to ponder.
A federal judge has ruled that Craigslist is not liable for ads listed on its site.
A federal judge in Illinois has dismissed a lawsuit by Cook County sheriff Thomas Dart accusing Craigslist of creating a public nuisance by allegedly running prostitution ads.
U.S. District Court Judge John Grady in Illinois ruled Tuesday that the federal Communications Decency Act protects Craigslist from liability for unlawful ads submitted by users.
“Sheriff Dart may continue to use Craigslist’s website to identify and pursue individuals who post allegedly unlawful content,” Grady wrote. “But he cannot sue Craigslist for their conduct.”
Good. The attacks on Craigslist have been ridiculous and unfair. Imagine the consequences of holding sites liable for everything posted on their sites. Social networking and new media are revolutionizing the way we communicate and will have significant implications for business as well. We don’t need the morals police holding companies liable for individual behavior they deem to be problematic.
You know Kevin Smith as a very successful movie director, despite the recent box office disappointments. He’s also become quite a force online, with a huge Twitter account and a very popular podcast – called the SModcast.
