Monthly Archives: December 2011

New Technology

The Tech Release I’m Most Looking Forward to in 2012

December 31, 2011 – 2:45 pm

In a few short hours 2011 will be behind us, and a new year dawns. While the Mayan calendar portends next year as our last I’m still quite hopeful that we’ll see a slew of amazing software, hardware and services released.

2012 in Technology

2012 in Technology

For sure 2011 was a busy year in technology. New smartphones were announced almost weekly, with the iPhone 4s, Samsung Galaxy and Nokia Lumia topping the charts in terms of innovative and sleek design. The phones brought along their fair share of software updates too. Siri caused a stir, Ice Cream Sandwich was delightful and Mango was a healthy (if rarely seen in the wild) refresh.

Twitter received an overhaul, WordPress got more social and Facebook crossed the creepy line (again) with their stalk and share feature. Spotify came to the US and built a platform. Google released Chromebooks, while Microsoft showed a developer preview of Windows 8 and it’s tablet-focused Metro interface and Amazon released the blockbuster Kindle fire.

Yet for me, 2011 will be marked by two amazingly impactful products: the iPad 2 and Google+.

Steve Jobs was spot on when he said, ‘This year will be the year of the iPad2′. Sales figures alone don’t do it justice. It’s hard to describe how usefully delightful and functionally fun the iPad is if you’ve never had a tablet before. It’s the device you never knew you needed, and can’t truly appreciate until you own one. I went from a tablet skeptic to devote, and find that I use my iPad more often than my PC these days.

Google make a compelling entry into the social networking space with Google+, and many tech pundits went from lauding it as a ‘Facebook killer’ to panning it as a ‘Facebook clone that is dying’. Personally, I have found the community and conversation that Google+ inspires to be unlike that of any other social network. It combines the breadth of discovery that Twitter has with the depth of discussion from Facebook and adds a healthy dose of unique features with circles being the privacy breakthrough.

For more in the year in tech 2011, head over to Tech Cocktail, Frank put together an interesting look at technology trends in 2011.

Looking Ahead to 2012

There is so much to look forward to in 2012. The iPad 3, iPhone 5, Google’s mysterious super-tablet, a possible Xbox refresh and no doubt Amazon will further refine their hardware and services offering. Given that I’m surprised to admit that the release I’m most looking forward to is Windows 8.

Apart from performance and stability improvements I don’t expect much magic in Windows 8 for a desktop user. It’s clear Microsoft has been focusing on touch UI, and short of something miraculous from Redmond I don’t expect to give up my iPad (or it’s successor) any time soon.

So why am I so excited about Windows 8? It’s likely many of the ISVs are planning a plethora of  new devices to coincide with the release of Windows 8. This is a fantastic opportunity for them to capitalize on Microsoft’s marketing dollars and get a few innovative ideas out there before Apple perfects them. I’m most excited to see what Samsung will come up with. Their Series 9 laptops are gorgeous, and the Samsung Central Station has too much potential not to anticipate a v2.

So here’s looking ahead to a tech-filled 2012 – Happy New Year!

—
Photo courtesy of Creativity103

Tags | Comment (0)
Social

Welcome to Facebook. You can checkout anytime you like, but you can never leave

December 29, 2011 – 10:01 pm

Leaving Facebook is hard work. Really hard work. The kind of hard work that leaves you sweating in the desert heat wearing nothing but striped pajamas and shackles while the warden shouts derogatory cusswords in your direction. The kind of hard work that saps your soul as you watch it swirling down the drain like so much half-used soap while your fingers knead your rubbed-raw body that still isn’t quite clean.

Hard work. I spent three hours today copying contact information from Facebook in preparation for my year long Facebook fast, and it was vividly obvious to me that Facebook considers my social network their property. And that make me all the more eager to complete the process of extracting myself, even though I already had plenty of incentive to quit Facebook.

Before Leaving Facebook

Yet haste can quickly lead to regret, it’s good to make a few preparations before leaving Facebook.

  • Copy friends contact information across. Email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, etc. Anything that you’d like to remember after you leave Facebook. I did this manually for a few of my Facebook friends, but there are some automated tools to do something similar. Though unfortunately they keep getting blocked by Facebook. I believe Lifehacker’s workaround that uses Yahoo as an intermediary still works.
  • Download photos. You can easily download all your uploaded photos by using a built in feature of Facebook. Go to Account Settings, then click ‘Download a copy’ at the bottom of the page. This won’t let you download any friend’s photos, so you’ll have to do this manually.
  • Restrict access to your profile. Whether you’re deleting your Facebook account entirely, or just taking a brief hiatus it’s a good idea to doublecheck who has access to view your details. I’d recommend setting it to Friends only, and removing any sensitive information. Also take a look through the Tags settings, so you don’t get tagged in a bunch of photos while you’re away. There are no guarantees that your settings will stay private, since Facebook has a habit of changing privacy settings whenever them whim takes it.

If you’re really serious about leaving Facebook, then you might consider deleting your account. I don’t plan to delete my account just yet, I’d like to get through the year first :)

How to Delete Your Facebook Account

Deleting your Facebook account is again another mystery which you need to search to unravel. I find some great guidance here: How to delete your facebook account.

Simply, the instructions say:

  • Go to this address http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
  • Follow the steps to delete your account
  • DO NOT LOGIN for 14 days. If you login then your account will be reactivated. This includes logging in through your phone, or clicking like buttons on websites or logging in to any service that uses Facebook Connect.

Happy unFacebooking!

Tags , | Comment (1)
Social

My New Year’s Resolution is to Quit Facebook–Here’s Why

December 25, 2011 – 9:43 pm

It happens once a year, an opportunity to make promises to yourself without feeling bad that you’ll break them a few weeks later. Every now and then it’s even possible to stick with your New Year’s resolution for more than a few months as I did last year when I gave up coffee for 333 days. If you can survive the first two weeks without caffeine it’s totally worth it, but those first two weeks will rip your spirit from your body. But I digress…

This year one of my resolutions is to quit Facebook. That’s no posting, no reading, no glancing on my phone while I wait or wiling away time looking at other’s photos on my iPad. No Facebook for a year. You might think it would be the tech aficionado thing to do – jump to the latest social network from the last one while feeling a sense of exclusivity in a place other’s haven’t yet found. But as much as I prefer Google+ and Twitter, that really has nothing to do with my decision at all.

Here’s three reasons I could quit Facebook, and one reason I will.

Privacy violations

Facebook gives my privacy as much respect as a hawk gives to a scampering rodent. It pays just enough attention to know it’s there before using it in some nefarious scheme or another. I’ve grown weary of the frequent missteps and half-hearted apologies. From Beacon, the infamous ‘share what you buy with all your friends without really asking you’, to the latest stalk and share feature otherwise known as frictionless sharing, Facebook has done much to flaunt it’s ownership of your data. Other recent examples include using your likeness to endorse products (a class action lawsuit is currently winding it’s way through the courts), it’s ever complex (and opt-out by default) privacy settings and now their plans to sell the details on your timeline to advertisers as if your life story were a commodity to be traded.

I’ve had enough. Even thought I don’t believe they’re secretly a government spying program, I’ve had enough. I understand that free services need to make money through advertising, but I cannot condone such blatant disregard for my privacy.

Game spam

I really don’t want to spend hours of my life farming virtual crops, or spending hundreds of dollars on virtual goods. I’d also prefer it if I wasn’t constantly pestered to do so. Without constant tending my Facebook stream quickly becomes a cesspool of spammy invites and social gaming engagement strategies. Rather than build in adequate tools to stop the spam, Facebook is integrating mobile gaming, so I can receive game spam wherever I go. No thanks.

Facebook is Bad for the Open Internet

Facebook is building a walled garden to make old time AOL executives green with envy. Slowly they are moving to own more of your content, and keep it enclosed within their confines. Whether it’s hoarding your contact data so you can’t take it off the service, or disabling links to import RSS feeds and hence making 3rd party websites less valuable Facebook has a strategy for keep it all within their walled garden. It’s also concerning that they are becoming the de facto ID provider for the Internet, ahead of open federated solutions like Open ID or Mozilla’s new Browser ID effort. Many websites have also given over ownership of their comment streams to Facebook.

I don’t want to live in a world where one company controls so much of my online life, from identity to content to businesses I interact with to my social graph. Especially when their financial interests are directly aligned with keeping that control and never letting me leave.

This Pushed Me Over the Edge

In all honesty, all my complaints above are about a nascent technology that is taking longer than I’d like to properly serve my needs. While Facebook deserves to be chastised for it’s missteps, any company that launches and iterates should be given a small measure of our good grace as things improve (all these additional reasons to leave notwithstanding). All the reasons above brought me to the edge of leaving, but this alone pushed me over:

I feel lonely when I’m on Facebook.

My time spent elsewhere is infinitely more enriching. Whether it’s offline with friends and family experience the real world, meditating in yoga, connecting with others who have a shared interest on Google+ or Twitter, or engaging one on one with someone I care about through the many varied channels of communication we have available today.

It’s great to follow what my brothers are doing half way around the world in Bahrain and Cape Town, but weeks worth of Facebooking is no substitute for a 30 minute Skype conversation, a few paragraphs of an email with them or even a brief text message exchange. It’s fine seeing where my friends are going and who they’re with, but it’s a lot more fun spending time with them in person or talking on the phone.

I feel ashamed because Facebook tells me who I should care about, but I don’t enough to form a real relationship. I feel lonely because Facebook reminds me of all the people I think should care more about me, but don’t for the same reason as above.

So I’m quitting Facebook.

What will I do instead?

I hear good things about the outside world :) I’ll use the time to do something more constructive with my relationships and personal growth. I’ll be more diligent about answering the piles of email from friends that taunt my procrastination, engaging with conversations on Google+ and blogs, and setting up that coffee date I’d been putting off.

December 31st is my last day on Facebook – I’m looking forward to all the extra time and energy I’ll have available. Join me, and make 2012 a better year. #quitfacebook

Tags , | Comments (9)
Open Internet

GoDaddy Supports SOPA–Learn How to Transfer Your Domain and Save the Internet

December 22, 2011 – 9:06 pm

It was with some shock that I awoke today to discover the one of the most used domain registrars supports SOPA. For those of you who aren’t aware, SOPA is a piece of legislation currently under consideration by the US congress that would effectively destroy innovation on the Internet. Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Yahoo!, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, Human Rights Watch and many other organizations oppose this legislation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great guide on what SOPA is, and how it will irrevocably harm the Internet.

In my personal opinion it’s abhorrent for an Internet company to support legislation that would crack the very foundation of openness upon which the Internet was built. Which is why I’m transferring have transferred all 11 domains I host with GoDaddy over to www.hover.com today, and sharing step by step instructions for how you can do so as well. I’ve used www.hover.com in the past, and had good luck with them, but others are recommending registrars like www.cheapnames.com .After transferring, please sign this pledge to help fight for the future of the Internet. You can also follow this thread on reddit for more info.

A few things about Hover before getting started:

  • Hover offers free private domain hosting (unlike GoDaddy who charge for this)
  • Transferring a domain will cost $10, but you get an extra year registration, so it’s effectively free
  • Hover is a lot cleaner than GoDaddy, almost making domain registration easy and fun. Almost.
  • If you rely on GoDaddy for email forwarding, file hosting, or anything more complex than just domain registration you can call Hover at 1-866-731-6556 and they’ll help walk you through the process

Three Steps to Transferring Your Domain

  1. Create an account on www.hover.com – this is fairly straightforward
  2. Prepare your account for transfer by making sure it meets the three criteria: Domain is not private, Verify you’re the owner, Domain is not locked.
  3. Transfer your account. Get an authorization code for each domain and initiate the transfer

Beginning the Transfer

This is fairly simple, just click the ‘Transfer a Domain’ link and you’re off. Hover will check your domain and let you know if there is anything else you need to do to prepare your domain.

You’ll see a message similar to the below, and next to each domain a count of ‘tasks done’. Most folks will just need to verify ownership of the domain by having Hover send you a test email. By clicking on the link in this test email you have completed verification. If your registration was more complicated you may need to mark as not private, and turn off domain locking as well. I’ll cover these in just a second.

Turn off Private Domain

The trickiest part of this step is remembering where you put your Domains by Proxy username and password, which you probably don’t use every day. Go to Domain Management in GoDaddy, click on the domain you want to change and you’ll see a manage option next to ‘Privacy’ in the ‘Domain Enhancements’ setting. Click this and you’ll be taken to domains by proxy. Click the no-smoking sign and confirm you’re cancelling private domains.

Now on the Domains By Proxy site click the no-smoking sign next to the domain – it will be lit up if you have private domains on.

Don’t worry about marking this as not private, you can make it private again once the transfer is complete.

Unlocking Your Domains

This is probably the easiest part, since you can select multiple domains in bulk and unlock them. First by selecting all the domains and clicking ‘Locking’

Then by unchecking ‘lock domains’

We’re Now Ready To Transfer

Once you’ve completed the steps above you’re ready to transfer your domains, and pay the nominal $10 fee. Before doing this you’ll need to request an authorization code for each domain, this can be done by going to GoDaddy domain management and selecting ‘Send by Email’. In a few minutes you’ll receive a code by email. You’ll need to input this code on the final step of the transfer process.

If you use the offer code ‘twig’ SOPA you’ll receive a 10% discount. I first heard about Hover on This Week in Google, which is a great podcast about Google and cloud services, and where I heard this offer code. If you’ve gotten this far you’re probably the kind of person who would find this podcast intriguing.

For more information about moving your domain you can also view the help and support pages on hover.com.

Congratulations!

You’ve taken an important step towards ensuring the open flow of information on the Internet. Share this with your friends so they don’t inadvertently support censorship.

Tags , | Comment (1)
Intellectual Property

Copyright holders gone wild

December 14, 2011 – 6:35 pm

Copyright holders have gone crazy, forcing a legitimate music video advertising a file upload service to be taken down from Youtube, and then doing the same to a tech news story that reported on it.

The actual song is available here still – Megaupload song

The news isn’t just that so many super star musicians are endorsing the service, or that music labels are stuck in the 20th century, or even that they’re doing this in spite of success stories to the contrary.

I believe the real story here is the speedy and widespread backlash that emerges each time they try trample on fair use and freedom of speech. First with SOPA a few weeks ago, and now the outcry against this incident. Society has changed, and a larger and larger number of Internet users are now savvy and aware enough to stand together to protect their rights.

It hasn’t yet tipped and we still need to be vigilant, but I think we’ll look back at 2011 and 2012 as the time when the interests of users and artists aligned, and the interference from rights holders and publishers began to diminish.

I still believe that labels, publishers, publicists and the cadre of various other folks in the music industry still have a role to play, but it’s very different from the past. Their role is no longer as gate keepers but as enablers. No longer as those who shy away from technology but those who embrace progress to benefit users, artists and their return on investment.

The music industry will change. From hit makers who quest after longer super stars to taste testers and gourmet chefs. They will need to bring together the best musical ingredients for the season and offer up a smorgasbord of delights.

Tags , | Comment (0)

Next Page »

Next Page »