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It’s Time For A Tech Industry Intervention To Address Misogyny

News junkie that I am, I see a lot of headlines.  And four came in over the last 30 hours or so that paint an astonishing picture of a  tech industry that is in complete denial about the intense misogyny that permeates the industry.  Let’s take them in the order that they were received: First, programmer, teacher and game developer Kathy Sierra.  In 2007, she became well known enough to attract the attention of some nasty people, who set out to, pretty much, destroy her.  On Tuesday, she chronicled the whole sordid history on her blog, and Wired picked it up as well (I’m linking… Read More »It’s Time For A Tech Industry Intervention To Address Misogyny

The Increasing Price We Pay For The Free Internet

Picture : Rhadaway. This is a follow-up on my previous post, A Tale Of Two (Or Three) Facebook Challengers. A key point in that post was that we need to be customers, not commodities.  In the cases of Facebook, Google and the vast majority of free web resources, the business model is to provide a content platform for the public and fund the business via advertising.  In this model, simply, our content is the commodity.  The customer is the advertiser.  And the driving decisions regarding product features relate more to how many advertisers they can bring on and retain than how they can meet the… Read More »The Increasing Price We Pay For The Free Internet

A Tale Of Two (Or Three) Facebook Challengers

For a website that hosts so many cute pet videos, Facebook is not a place that reeks of happiness and sincerity. It’s populated by a good chunk of the world, and it’s filled with a lot of meaningful moments captured in text, camera and video by people who know that, more and more every day, this is where you can share these moments with a broad segment of your friends and family. And that’s the entire hook of Facebook — it’s where everybody is.  The feature set is not the hook, because Google Plus and a variety of other platforms offer similar feature sets. And many… Read More »A Tale Of Two (Or Three) Facebook Challengers

Why You Should Delete All Facebook Mobile Apps Right Now

It’s nice that Facebook is so generous and they give us their service and apps for free. One should never look a gift horse in the mouth, right? Well, if the gift horse is stomping through my bedroom and texting all of my friends while I’m not looking, I think it bears my attention.  And yours. So tell me why Facebook needs these permissions on my Android phone: read calendar events plus confidential information add or modify calendar events and send email to guests without owners’ knowledge read your text messages (SMS or MMS) directly call phone numbers create accounts and set passwords change network… Read More »Why You Should Delete All Facebook Mobile Apps Right Now

Two Thoughts On The New FaceBook Timeline

Facebook announced that, on October 3rd, our profiles will all turn into “Timelines” that describe our lives (as Facebook knows them) in a glossy, magazine like format. And, as of right now, you can enable magazine apps (for WaPo and Guardian, more to come) that will randomly post what you’re reading to your wall without asking your permission first.I have two thoughts on this:

Is Google+ The Future Of Networking, Social And Otherwise?

This article was originally published on the Idealware Blog in July of 2011. Google unleashed their latest attempt to grab the focus from Facebook and Twitter with Google+, a Social Network that, at first glance, looks like a Facebook clone, but differentiates itself in at least one significant way: the people you communicate with on Google+, along with the way that you do it and the tools for inviting and connecting people are far superior to the social networking competition and they emulate the way we communicate in real life.  This makes for a very engaging and, once you have a handle on it, comfortable… Read More »Is Google+ The Future Of Networking, Social And Otherwise?

How Google Can Kick Facebook’s Butt

This article was first published on the Idealware Blog in May of 2010. (XKCD Cartoon by Randall Munroe) Facebook really annoyed a lot of people with their recent, heavy-handed moves.  You can read about this all over the place, here are some good links about what they’ve done, what you should do and why it bothers some of us: Facebook’s Announcement (from their Blog) Understanding the Open Graph from Chris Messina Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that internet privacy is “over” from Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb Three Ways Facebook Will Dramatically Change Your Nonprofit (from John Hayden) Why I Don’t “Like” Facebook and Void Rage: Unable To Muster… Read More »How Google Can Kick Facebook’s Butt

Void Rage: Unable to Muster Facebook Anger

Following is a guest post from Jon Loomer, offering a different perspective on Facebook’s privacy changes:

It took a few weeks, but internet rage over Facebook’s Like button and latest privacy ramifications is in full swing. Bloggers swinging at Facebook’s knee caps with aluminum bats seem to outnumber those who come to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s defense 20:1. And if a blogger does post a defense, duck and cover as soon as you hit “publish” because the rage will bubble up from the comments section.

Why I Don’t “Like” Facebook

Big changes are happening at Facebook, and they mean that what you do and say, on and off of Facebook, is now being more heavily tracked and more broadly shared. If you think that your Facebook data is somewhat private — e.g., shared only with friends and people you specify — you are wrong.