If you don’t already know about Facebook and privacy

You should be aware.

Here’s a New York Times article so you can get the background story.

If you are not a fan of this kind of approach to privacy at Facebook, check out this message from Moveon.org and sign the petition if you don’t agree with Facebook.

From Moveon.org site:

“
When you buy a book or movie online–or make a political contribution–do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook? Most people would call that a huge invasion of privacy. But social networking site Facebook began doing just that. People across the country saw private purchases they made on other sites displayed publicly to everyone they know on Facebook. Why? To benefit corporate advertisers. Other sites are looking at Facebook’s example to see if they can get away with similar privacy breaches. We need to draw a line in the sand–making clear that the wish lists of corporate advertisers must not come before the basic privacy rights of Internet users.

Let’s get Facebook to stop invading our privacy. Sign the petition.

Then join the Facebook group “Facebook, stop invading my privacy!” and tell your friends.
“

EFF Preserves Your Rights: Patriotism At Its Finest

This is straight from the email that the EFF sent me today. This has significant implications on our future. If you can only throw $10 bucks into their till, please click on over to help out.

“

At a packed San Francisco hearing today, the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) defended your Fourth Amendment rights and
urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to let our class-action
lawsuit against AT&T go forward. The case demands that AT&T
stop illegally assisting the National Security Agency to snoop on
its customers’ telephone and Internet communications.

There’s much more at stake here than stopping the Bush
Administration’s illegal spying and holding the telco giant
accountable, though. The President is arguing that thin claims of
“state secrets” can trump the courts’ constitutional duty to
uphold the rule of law.

Without judicial review, there’s no way to protect ordinary citizens
against government abuses of power. No president, now or in the
future, should be allowed unfettered authority to evade the courts
and trample on your freedom. As Judge Vaughn Walker wrote in
rejecting the government’s claims at the lower court, “The compromise
between liberty and security remains a difficult one. But dismissing
this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent
enhancement of security.”

For the past 17 years, EFF has been proud to take on the hard cases to
ensure that your liberty is not sacrificed unnecessarily. Please support
us in this critical case by donating to EFF at http://secure.eff.org/att .
And please spread the word to your friends and family.

Join EFF today! http://secure.eff.org/att

For a News.com story from the hearing:
http://news.com.com/Appeals+court+may+let+NSA+lawsuits+proceed/2100-1028_3-6202865.html

For more about the case: http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att

Tell Congress to stop the illegal spying: http://action.eff.org/fisa

“

More on Lauren from Google

So the post about how advertising can help save you from the big bad Michael Moore at Google was retracted. (sort of)

She says, “…some readers thought the opinion I expressed about the movie Sicko was actually Google’s opinion. It’s easy to understand why it might have seemed that way, because after all, this is a corporate blog. So that was my mistake — I understand why it caused some confusion.”

No, I wasn’t confused. I knew it was her opinion and not Google’s. However, she needs to take a course in how to not be professionally unwise. In her position, it was unwise of her to say anything about the movie or risk being ‘misinterpreted’.

No, I got you loud and clear, you want money and you intend to get it by using advertising. She goes on to clarify her point from the first blog post…

“But the more important point, since I doubt that too many people care about my personal opinion, is that advertising is an effective medium for handling challenges that a company or industry might have. You could even argue that it’s especially appropriate for a public policy issue like healthcare. Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore’s movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry, advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.”

Advertising is democratic? (insert jon stewart ‘Whaaaaaaa?’)

Advertising is not an effective medium for public policy issues like healthcare. Advertising is trying to sell you something. Always. Now, that’s not the worst thing in the world, we are a capitalist society so we’ve got advertising, that’s part of the deal. Google even makes it relevant, which is great.

The problem is that she is saying it’s democratic. I don’t think she is quite clear on what that word means. You don’t ‘pay’ for democracy nor is advertising a place for public debate unless you’ve got some pretty deep pockets.

This is a perfect Blogging 101 lesson. When you blog for your company on said companies blog site, it’s best to keep the politics out of it. She could have sent that first blog post to all the clients she was trying to reach as an EMAIL. That’s who she was targeting her message at and it probably would have been very effective. Instead, she garnered a bunch of blog o sphere negativity and probably didn’t make anybody internally @ Google excited about having employees blog if they are going to say things like that.

Late breaking news, there is an ‘official apology/retraction’ on the blog now.

Let me be clear. I do not blame Google for this. I blame Lauren. If Google’s policy was more like my employer’s blogging policy, maybe she would have thought harder about the ‘think about consequences’ part.

Google mentions that they review every blog post. This puts them in a position of responsibilty for every single post. We don’t do that at my company which makes the individuals responsible and not the company. I believe strongly that this forces people to think harder about what they put out there. If the company is approving my post, I may not be as careful. If Google wants to encourage coporate blogging, they might want to think about getting out of the way.

Qui Tacet Consentit

It means silence implies consent. It’s also one of the more articulate and important blog posts I’ve read in a little while.

It’s an article that is questioning why Dick Cheney is able to continually profane the Constitution with his actions and why the media is hardly mentioning it.

From the Washington Post.com, “Cheney is not subject to the executive order, she said, “because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he’s decided that he should.”

More constitutional shenanigans, but that’s not really the point of the blog post. The real point is that while this happens, very few places are talking much about it because they are so busy with other key topics. Paris, the slain pregnant woman and the Iphone are all at the top of the list. Silence is approval. If our journalists don’t challenge this kind of overreaching behavior (again) from the Vice President, well no wonder they are trying to dis bloggers all the time.

Safe Harbor

So many amazing things are happening on the web now. It’s very scary for industries that don’t understand how to evolve, but that does not give them the right to try to destroy it for everyone.

Google is taking Viacom to task on their lawsuit…

It would seem that Viacom’s only thinking of themselves as they challenge the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Google said (in part)
“By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for Internet communications, Viacom’s complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression.”

All I can say is I don’t steal your stuff don’t take away my right to work on my stuff the way that I choose.

Is the interest of big corporations really more important than the interests of the ‘crowd’? A balance must be maintained and the industries that are suing and scared must evolve. Even though there is much kicking and screaming now, an evolution must occur.

Linked In

I really like the site linkedin. It’s got a nice professional feel to it and many of my friends and colleagues have joined so it seems like it’s kind of become a little bit of a defacto standard (for now, everything seems so temporary these days….)

They just added (or maybe i just noticed) a way to import your addresses from another account (google, yahoo, etc) and match up your contacts with linked in members. I really like this because they fixed something that I always felt was a problem. My addresses were already in another tool, finding people on linked in to invite them just became much easier and leverages the work I’ve already done building my contact list somewhere else. Chalk another one up for sharing. Thanks linkedin.

Eboy-Social Media and Web 2.0 Visualized

Have you seen Eboy yet?

It’s a pretty nifty site, they make art with pixel objects. Their newly available poster is full of the new and old web companies. It’s like a visual virtual version of what it would all look like if it were in one physical place.

SEC and Blogs

The CEO of my company, Sun Microsystems has been asked to speak to the SEC.

It’s happening because he asked a question on his blog. Why couldn’t companies use blogs to disseminate information. “The Commission should make clear that options such as adequately noticed website postings, fully accessible webcasts and electronic mail alerts would satisfy Regulation FD.”

The chairman of the SEC responded to the blog post in a comment (and by mail). Important and amazing conversations are happening out here, right in public.

I feel lucky work for someone like that. He asked a question and he’s changing things-pushing evolution in communication because of our new tools.

The World’s Radio Station?

I just found this neato music service. It’s called SpotDJ. It hooks up with iTunes and lets you record a DJ spot about the song you are listening to. If there is already a spot, you get to listen, you can also add your own even if a song has a spot. It’s a chance for everybody to be a DJ and share that with the world. I’m having a fun morning, I’ve already spotted three songs. I’m DJ evoljennifer (as if you couldn’t guess that!).

And it’s definitely adhering to all social media principles, because when I joined I got to be a featured new member on the home page.

home page of SpotDJ after I signed up

And if you squint real hard, you can see my latest spot in the lower left hand corner.

New Stuff Every Day on the WWW

Today I discovered Netvibes. It’s like the google home page, but i like it better. I’ve been playing with it for about an hour and i’ve found almost all the tools and content i need. These aggregated views of the Internet are definitely where it’s at. You can suck in everything you are interested in. It’s the come to me web and I like it.