Facebook: The Courage to Step Away

Facebook has been a constant struggle for me. I got in early because I worked at Sun Microsystems. They let us in shortly after it was opened up to all campuses. It was kinda fun, really addictive and interesting to watch the progress.

What I didn’t know then, I know now.

Read the Terms of Use.

It’s like a roach motel in there. You can get in but you can’t get out.

The thing is – in the end – they have to make money. They know so much about me already that I wish I could take back. However, I can’t. Every single connection that I confirmed, every photo I’m tagged in, all of it is captured. I just wanted it to stop. It takes people like me standing up and saying that the practices are not OK. So here I go again.

If they open it up, I’ll be back in a flash. They can advertise to me if they share with me the info that they know. Google in contrast does share that info.

I’m not actually up in arms about privacy as much as everyone else. It’s more about the fact that I know what Google knows. That leaves the power in my hands. Where do you want the power to be? You should ask yourself.

Amazing Infographics for Olympics Biathlon Shooting Rounds

If you’ve never seen a biathalon, part of the sport is stopping to shoot at targets. If you miss, you have to do and extra lap. You have to do this each time you miss so there is a strong incentive to hit the target.

Here is a picture of what they did. It’s ingenius, communicative and active interface that communicated to the viewer exactly what was happening.

You can see the country of each athlete, a name, the status of success of shots, how many shots completed/remaining. And it was very active as you can imagine. It updated in real time. A very nice example of visual communication.