Project Titan(?) Real Email for Facebook?

This is from an article at allfacebook, but lots of chatter (Techcrunch, lots o’ blogs) all over the ‘net about facebook’s new (or perhaps, just improved) if it’s scaled off of the current private messaging (PM) feature…

According to Mike Arrington, Facebook is preparing to roll out its own email client, code named “Titan”. We’ve suggested to Facebook in the past that they roll out an email client as they have an opportunity to redefine the product. Additionally, Paul Bucheit, the lead developer of Gmail, is now an employee of Facebook which means he may have another opportunity to redefine the email experience.

All of my facebook writings are located here.

Facebook changes (more new ones!)

Just in case you weren’t one of the 800000 to be surprised with a new version of facebook yesterday, you can read all about it at mashable. Also, lots of broke stuff at facebook today: likes missing, PM not working, etc.

Sigh. I wish they would give us a bit of break before they roll out a new change, or perhaps, allow us to opt into the new change, instead of just surprising it on people. My mom already has the new version, but no one else I know does. I know, my mom! LOL Oh, and you can see the demo, here.

I’m beginning to think facebook is throwing anything out they can, to see what might stick. Not really a good business or web design model…

smart dust — nano computing…

HP’s goal to connect the physical world to computing as never before,” using so-called “smart dust” sensors to enable “buildings that manage their own energy use, bridges that sense motion and metal fatigue, cars that track traffic patterns and report potholes, and fruit and vegetable shipments that tell grocers when they ripen and begin to spoil.”

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/02/smart-dust–the-emergence-of-sensor-computingthe-science-fiction-dream-of-smart-dust-is-still-a-ways-off-but-moving-closer-t.html

the story of you

Very interesting idea…

“Photographer Robert Weingarten’s portraits are digital composites of several photographs which give an overall vision of his subject’s history and accomplishments. View a clip of Weingarten explaining this part of his process.

In order to do this, Weingarten asks his subjects (Quincy Jones, Sandra Day O’Connor and Buzz Aldrin, to name a few) to create a list of places or objects that they feel define them, and photographs each item. Weingarten then combines these photographs to form one large “portrait” of his subject.
Robert Weingarten, “Hank Aaron”
What’s your list?”

–from the High Museum of Art (ATL)’s facebook post.

..and the answer is – 150 (how many facebook friendships you can actually maintain)

Ever heard of Dunbar’s Number? According to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, it’s the cognitive limit to the number of people you can be friends with. The number is 150, meaning your brain can only handle that much friends, and – shockingly enough – it also applies to Facebook.

Very interesting, more about mashable.

What color is your… those color posts on facebook

I’m sure many of you have been wondering about all of the facebook status updates:
PINK!!!! screams one of my friends…
another has a purely made up color combination (complete with technology enhanced decorations….)

……………..
According to various posts on the ‘net such as this one:
“Something fun is going on,” the message reads. “Write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY women no men. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men wonder why the women have a color in their status…..LOL!”

So, there ya go… A little fun on facebook, proving the nature of viral marketing, as it has gone way beyond the early potential orginating networks mentioned in the articles (Detroit, being one).
It will be interesting to see if anybody ‘fesses up to starting this…

The history of online video

Very interesting overview of the rise of online video, especially as relates to journalism.

2004:

Coinciding with the election of 2004 was the prevalence of broadband speeds, and with half of American homes reaching better than dial-up transfer rates, along with all the noise created by the blogs and pundits of the internet, an audience was born, capable and accustomed to online payments (i.e. market potential) and finally able to watch video, on demand by the masses.

..and now we can watch tv online, both episodes from network television as well as original programming.

85 reasons to love your librarian

heh heh… some of these are actually well thought, while others are clearly humorous…

1. Librarians take care of libraries, which are still invaluable today.
2. Not all information is on the internet.
3. Older books still hold great cultural significance.
4. Libraries are still repositories for some of the most valuable works of literature in the world.
5. Even with the internet, the library is still the best place to do research.
6. Girls with glasses can still rock the “sexy librarian” look.
7. “Sexy Librarian” is still a popular costume at Halloween.
8. You can’t exactly find periodicals like The New England Journal of Medicine in Barnes and Noble.
9. For that matter, looking at turn-of-the-century National Geographics is still pretty entertaining.

Love LOVE no. 15: Somebody has to help lazy people find what they want.
…and wait, there is more!

scrubbing your identity from facebook accounts

Alot has been written about how hard it is to really get rid of your facebook life should you so want to (just google — lol), but facebook does say that you can do it in one shot, which this fb group explains. Deleting an account is supposed to scrub facebook of all of your posts, comments, tags, your virtual footprints… You can go directly to the link, here.

Of course, you can always manually delete each tag, post, video, photo, comment,etc. (which was the original way to do it, and then your account just moved to inactive at some point); but deleting your account (in theory) should scrub the site.

Another option is Seppukoo which allows you to not only erase your fb info, but to do it with a bit of humor, by killing off your alternate (?) virtual identity.

Facebook is now taking legal action against them. The thing with fb is that it is a COMPANY building a huge db of consumer info, which is an obvious minefield for privacy issues, both from 3rd party access (games, quizzes, linked accounts to other services like twitter, etc.).

The short answer is: WATCH YOUR BACK. The information you are giving out to a company (not just facebook, but any company including google) is not only available on the web, but on their servers, and anywhere else they store your data. Just because you might be able to delete info from a publicly available website, does not mean that it still does not exist, either in a backup file or in a cache somewhere.

Who owns the digital version of books?

Interesting article about licensing of older works (print) and ownership…

But the question of exactly who owns the electronic rights to such older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry’s last remaining areas of growth.