| And Speaking of Different Approaches |
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Here’s another UI difference between Google and Bing. Bing’s introduced Streetside view — their answer to Google’s Street View — for more than 50 U.S. metro areas. But you have to install Silverlight to use it. I know I’m being cranky here, but I don’t want to load a whole bunch of crap on my laptop if I can avoid it. Google Maps didn’t make me do that. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (1)December 2, 2009
| Facebook’s Gonna Simplify the Privacy Process (Real Soon Now) |
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As I reported back in July, Facebook’s going to simplify its privacy controls. Real Soon Now. The changes are: No more regional networks. “As Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy … The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.” Granular access control for your info. “We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload.” When these changes finally become live, you’ll get a heads-up from Facebook to review your privacy settings. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 23, 2009
| Wiki-fatigue |
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The WSJ has an article today (sub required) discussing a new endangered species: the Wikipedia editor. Apparently 49,000 of them disappeared during the first 3 months of 2009 alone. One of the reasons the Journal cites is the Wikipedia’s “plethora of rules” about the editing process, which has led to infighting among editors: “‘People generally have this idea that the wisdom of crowds is a pixie dust that you sprinkle on a system and magical things happen,’ says Aniket Kittur, an assistant professor of human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied Wikipedia and other large online community projects. ‘Yet the more people you throw at a problem, the more difficulty you are going to have with coordinating those people. It’s too many cooks in the kitchen.’” I have 3 comments about this: (1) Mr. Kittur appears to be channeling Fred Brooks. (Coincidentally I ordered a copy of the Mythical Man-Month on Saturday.) (2) “Too many cooks spoil the broth” was yet another of my mom’s pithy phrases. (3) I’m not thinking the Wikipedia’s going away any time soon, despite the dire warnings we read from time to time. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| AOL is now Aol. That’ll Help a Lot. |
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Their press release claims: “The new AOL brand identity is a simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever changing images. It’s one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal.” I’m sure that’ll be a comfort to the 2,500 sacrificial lambs. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| It’s All About Appearances |
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When I was a young person, my mom used to lecture me about the “appearance of evil”. She was trying to tell me that if I was seen in a suspicious situation, people would jump to conclusions, even if I was innocent. (Like this guy, for example.) The CBC has a story that would make my mom say, “Uh-huh … told you so.” A young woman from Montreal is out on disability from her job at IBM, suffering from depression. Her benefits have been cut off by her insurance company because they say she’s well enough to go back to work. The insurer based its decision, in part, on photos posted to the woman’s Facebook page showing her, for example, in a bikini on a beach. (There’s also a video attached to the story, in which the woman was interviewed about her plight. Ironically, the first time I viewed it, it was preceded by a 15-second IBM ad.) Sounds suspicious, huh? She’s gaming the system, right? I can’t say. But I’m sympathetic, especially since I got rear-ended by a distracted driver on Saturday. There was no damage to either car. But I woke up on Sunday with stiffness in my neck and shoulders and 2 days later it persists. Who would believe me if I tried to say I was suffering from whiplash? Anyway, I *am* going to judge the young woman for one thing: she made it too easy for the insurance company. If you’re depending on disability payments in order to survive economically, then you have to look at everything you post on social networking sites — even if you’ve locked down your profile — and ask yourself, does this qualify as the “appearance of evil”? My mom had another pity phrase: “If it’s doubtful, it’s dirty.” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Microsoft Attacks. Google Responds With Zen. |
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Microsoft has offered to pay News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, and other publishers to block their content from Google. This is an effort to make Google cough up cash for news content as well, thus reducing its profit margins. And it also fits nicely with Rupert Murdoch’s world-view, to boot. Google is unperturbed. It knows that news stories, once posted, become available everywhere, even from Twitter. As the haiku error message says: The Web site you seek |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 19, 2009
| Heads Will Roll at AOL. Voluntarily, That Is (For Now). |
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AOL CEO Tim Armstrong wants 2,500 staffers to quit voluntarily between December 4 and December 9 as part of a cost-cutting move prior to the company’s IPO. That’s one-third of the company, btw. If Armstrong doesn’t see enough empty cubes, he’s gonna have to do the volunteering for some people. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 17, 2009
| Quick Hits |
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The New Oxford American Dictionary has anointed “unfriend” as 2009’s Word of the Year. Um … OK. Beats “tramp stamp”, I guess. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I wish him well. Lexis now has an iPhone app that allows you to search for a case by citation and review its Shepard’s Summary. (Link via ResourceShelf.) Google Scholar now searches federal and state cases, plus law journals. (Link via BeSpacific.) … And speaking of hits, here’s why I’m glad, apart from the cost, why my son has chosen cross-country/track over hockey. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| AOL Spinoff Set for December 9 |
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Time Warner will say “So long and thanks for all the fish” to AOL on December 9. Shareholders will get 1 AOL share for every 11 TW share they own. AOL is now valued at around $3.5 billion, down from the $5 billion I reported 4 months ago. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 3, 2009
| Ever Been to Argleton? It’s Just a Couple of Miles Away from Erewhon. |
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Last Saturday the Daily Telegraph ran a story titled “Mystery of Argleton, the ‘Google’ town that only exists online“. Google Maps has plunked a town named Argleton in the middle of “acres of green, empty fields”. A local academic went to check Argleton out and found it to be, well … romantic: “I started to weave this amazing fantasy about the place, an alternative universe, a Narnia-like world. I was really fascinated by the appearance of a non-existent place that the internet had the power to make real and give a semi-existence.” Sort of like Second Life, but with grass. Anyway, the answer is probably a lot more prosaic. Argleton may simply be Google’s version of a trap street — a deliberate error introduced into a map in order to catch copyright-violaters. But according to the article, the “Narnia-like world” won’t last long: “The data for the programme was provided by Dutch company Tele Atlas. A spokesman said it would now wipe the non-existent town from the map.” Sort of like World of Warcraft, but without the Orcs. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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