Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

I’ve always believed that a good rule of thumb, when it comes to Facebook, is to not post anything you wouldn’t be will to show your grandma or your boss or your significant other’s parents.

Yes, I realize that in theory, social networking websites are supposed to be places where you can cut lose and express yourself. If you hate your boss, why shouldn’t you be able to vent about him or her on your personal page? If you enjoy taking pictures of yourself in your underwear, then why wouldn’t you upload those pictures into a new album?

After all, what you put on your Facebook profile is your private business, right?

According to the latest reports…not quite. It shouldn’t come as a shock, but things on the internet are rarely private.

When Facebook was founded, however, one of its main appeals – when contrasted with its then-biggest competitor, Myspace – was the security it offered its users. Facebook didn’t have the customizable backgrounds and layouts that Myspace had – at least then it didn’t – but when you logged on to Facebook, you at least felt like the information you revealed about yourself was contained to your online friends.

Dan Tynan, a writer for PCWorld, offers a clever analogy for the privacy changes Facebook has undergone since 2005: imagine that a friend offers you a free apartment with the condition that, every once and a while, he gets to pop by and see what you’re doing. A free apartment is a free apartment, so you agree to his terms.

Gradually, over time, the friend amends his condition. At first, he just wants to bring a few friends along with him when he visits the apartment. Then he wants to allow bigger groups to move through the apartment as well. Before you know it, your friend is throwing parties pretty much around the clock, and the people he invites into the apartment are welcome to rifle through your personal belongings.

If you want to hide your private things, then your only option is a small and hard to access closet.

Basically, in 2005, you could pretty much control who saw what on your profile. Unless you changed your privacy settings, only your friends and sometimes your networks could see your wall, your pictures and your personal information.

Starting around 2007, information like your gender, your name and your friends became more public. Most of Facebook could see who you were friends with and what your profile picture was.

Now, very little of your Facebook profile is private. Unless you alter your privacy settings, just about anyone with access to the internet can see what groups you belong to and what pages you like. Many people (myself included) haven’t set their photos or walls to private, allowing perfect strangers to get intimate glimpses into the lives of people they don’t know.

What’s most concerning, according to recent media outcry, is that Facebook chooses to make it difficult for its users to privatize their profiles. Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle states, “Let’s be blunt: Facebook’s privacy controls are so complex and byzantine, it’s almost as though the company is doing its best to prevent you from withholding private information.”

Silverman also discusses instant personalization, a concept that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced at an April 21 developer event.

Instant personalization, Facebook execs like Zuckerberg feel, will allow users to personalize their profiles on an even deeper level.

For example, let’s say that my favorite movie ever is “The Count of Monte Cristo.” I could access the Internet Movie Database’s page for “The Count of Monte Cristo” and click the Facebook ‘like’ button, thereby signifying my love for the movie to all of my friends.

The catch is that Facebook considers whatever I ‘like’ on another website, be it a band or a restaurant or a book, to be public information. It will share whatever I choose to ‘like’ with the rest of Facebook. On the one hand, this feature might help me connect with fellow “The Count of Monte Cristo” devotees.

On the other, if I want to keep that information private, I can’t. I’d have to opt out of ‘liking’ things to keep my information from being shared.

Another aspect of instant personalization is that users can now follow their friends’ activities even more closely than before. A potential employer could glance at my Facebook and see what news stories I’ve been commenting on, what songs I’ve been recommending.

Which I guess brings me full circle, back to the beginning of this blog post.

Generally, it’s a good rule of thumb no to post anything on your Facebook that you wouldn’t show your grandma, because chances are, unless you know how to change your privacy settings, chances are she’ll be able to find it.

On a parting note, Facebook’s vice president for public policy, Elliot Schrage, answered the questions of incensed Facebook users via The New York Times. His sage wisdom?

No one’s forcing you to use Facebook, and it is free. So if you don’t want to share something…simply don’t.

The rapidly growing social networking website announced plans today to open a new engineering office in Seattle , and they’re looking for a “handful” of Seattle’s best and brightest programmers and engineers to start at their new digs in July. Upcoming Computer Science grads, you won’t want to pass up this opportunity.

Faceook’s  expansion was announced in a note posted by the company this morning. The official title for the positions they are looking for is “Software Engineer” and their jobs page says that these new recruits will work to “build the next-generation system behind Facebook’s products, create web applications that reach hundreds of millions of people, and build high volume servers.”

As we grow to meet these challenges, we need to continue to attract the smartest, most talented technologists on the Internet. Seattle has a strong history of innovation and is home to thousands of talented technical people who we want to help us solve the challenges of designing and building the next generation of Facebook.

No specific location for the new office is mentioned, but this is Facebook’s first expansion in the US outside of their corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

“This move means new jobs for those in our software development community and is a strong testament to the talent in our region,” Mayor Mike McGinn said in a statement.

If you’re interested in applying, head over to the Facebook jobs page

Customers at the University Village Apple Store got their first look at Apple's new device. Photo by Angelo Carosio | The Spectator

After several months of waiting and years of speculation, it’s finally arrived.  The Apple iPad has been called a “revolutionary” “”polarizing” “magical” and “useless” device by various reviewers, but today the public finally got to lay their fingers on the glass and try it for themselves.

Lines slowly grew outside the University Village Apple Store before the 9 a.m. opening, but there was no shortage of iPads for people who didn’t pre-order the device.  Jason Chan, an employee at the store, said that even though they had sold over 500 already, there was more than enough iPads to go around well after noon. Employees were cheering as people left the store with their new toys, and overall the environment was festive and exciting.

The table of demo iPads was bustling with people anxious to get their hands on the device, and there were lines behind every unit. The rest of the store was comparatively dead–it was surprising to see how many people just wanted to try the thing out.

“We’re encouraging people to give it a shot to see if they like it before they decide to buy one,” Chen said. “It’s really cool, a lot of people just want to come in, play with it, just see what it’s about.”

Holding an iPad in my hands was a distinct experience. It’s different than anything you’ve held before, the bright display and amazing thin-ness combine to make it seem like you’re holding nothing but pure screen. It may be “pretty much just a big iPod touch,” but the size (Over three times the screen real-estate) turns it in to a completely different machine entirely. Web pages don’t require you to scroll around to see everything, you can view both a list of your emails and the emails themselves on one screen, and the iTunes and Remote applications blow the ones on the iPhone out of the water.

The iPad has a large, 10-inch screen and runs the same OS as the iPhone and iPod touch. Photo by Angelo Carosio | The Spectator

The iPad makes for a perfect couch, bed, and casual browsing computer. While I didn’t get the chance to sit down with it, trying it in a variety of different scenarios (on a table, on a dock, holding it completely) made me realize that there doesn’t seem to be a wrong way to hold this thing. While holding it made it a bit awkward to type on, with it on a table on on your lap the keyboard seemed accurate and much easier to use than it’s iPhone counterpart, mostly due to the extra space.

“This is a completely new way to browse the web,” said one customer while browsing NYTimes.com on a demo iPad. “It’s just amazing.”

The next step for Apple after such a successful product release will be to ensure the quality of apps on the iPad app store live up to the quality of the device. Such a large screen will give developers much more to work with, and it seems that the store is already seeing innovative, useful apps that might not have been possible with the iPhone. Apple’s already created an iPad version of it’s iWork software, which allows for document creation, and new apps from giants like Netflix, ABC and Amazon ensure that the iTunes store isn’t going to be the only place you can go for content.

It’s hard to say whether or not this device will gain traction as fast as the iPhone and iPod lines did after their initial releases, but if the scene today was any indicator, it seems very possible. The price helps too: the iPad starts at $500, which is half the price of their entry-level laptop. For people who mostly use their computers for surfing, watching and playing games, that price seems pretty attractive.

As a student pursuing, among other things, what feels like a degree in screwing around the internet with a minor in childish self-distraction, I’ve come to fancy myself an expert on this subject, so here’s a list of seven list sites, all guaranteed to counteract some of the intellectual expansion you’ve gained from all that studying with the mind-numbing goodness of crude sexual humor and testosterone-laden random-facts; good luck on that term paper!

Cracked.com

Once a failed knockoff version of Mad Magazine, then a failed men’s periodical a-la-Maxim, now a successful online mecca for all things middle-brow and amusing. I personally recommend anything that Daniel O’Brien has written about Kanye West.

Nerve.com

With syndicated links to Savage Love and legitimate advice columns in between the usual 8th-grade humor, this site clearly makes a bid to be more mature. But while Nerve may go beyond the puerile, it’s still the kind of mind-candy we crave in our study breaks. (Check out the list of lists or the “Ten Revelations on the Road to Love“)

BuzzFeed.com

Everything on this site, from articles about emergency shipments of condoms to the Vancouver winter games to an Avatar-dubbed Pocahontas. The best page, however, is the list of things that look like Joe Jackson.

11Points.com

I haven’t had a chance to check this one out  much, but this article was fairly amusing…

MentalFloss.com

Fun facts on everything you didn’t know was so interesting in the field of cultural literacy. Check out the 15 Reasons why Mr. Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever

Asylum.com

Completely asinine- more, please… or maybe not. (OK, this one’s kind of scraping the barrel, but “seven sites” sounded better than “six sites”)

HuffingtonPost.com

Raging liberal diatribes on raging liberal issues- always factual, and either amusing or tragic. You’ll either be entertained to action, or just get really depressed about the country and start stress-eating…. on second thought, you should probably just cut to the comedy section.

TeuxDeux

“What deux yeux have teux deux teuxday?” asks TeuxDeux.

And if you’re like me—always making to-do lists on scraps of paper that are with you one second and lost the other—you’ll appreciate it.

TeuxDeux is a Web-based to-do list that presents your daily tasks in a clean way with several key advantages over other sloppy methods.

Unlike paper, you can always just bookmark your TeuxDeux account and find it again later. And TeuxDeux developers are promising apps for iPhone, Air and Blackberry.

TeuxDeux is simple. Some calendars and to-do applications are confusing or consume too much of your time requiring you to fill in fields that you won’t even need most of the time. Making a TeuxDeux account takes seconds, and there’s no learning curve.

The application is entirely private. I used to (and still do occasionally) make little events in my Google Calendar to remind me to do certain things. The problem is, my Google Calendar is shared with other users and is used for work, and even though I can mark something private, I’m just one sloppy to-do entry away from letting everyone I share a calendar with know that I’m reminding myself to [insert something embarrassing here].

One of my favorite things about TeuxDeux has to be its “Someday” list. This little slice of perfection allows you to enter long-term goals or projects.

TeuxDeux's "Someday" feature

After one week of using TeuxDeux, I already have 15 entries. And I experienced great satisfaction when I was able to cross out two of those already.  If you’re a big thinker, put your ideas on the “Someday” list and take comfort in knowing that they won’t get lost.

But the best, if not meanest, feature of TeuxDeux is that it doesn’t just let you not do something. If you don’t mark an item complete for the day it’s located on, you’ll wake up and find that it has moved to the current day. And so on and so forth. So unless you lie to yourself as well as TeuxDeux and mark the item as completed, that to-do item is going to follow you. And trust me, that’s effective motivation to just get it done.

If you’re not convinced yet, here’s a video demo of TeuxDeux:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to@kthcswll on Twitter, whose tweet about TeuxDeux came across @SU_Spectator’s feed and got me hooked. Speaking of that tweet, there’s another good reason to use TeuxDeux: It’s more environmentally friendly than that notebook or organizer.

And with this blog post, I gladly get to check another thing off on my TeuxDeux list.

Courtesy 5-Minute Games

The goal: war proliferation. This is the tag line for an all-new iPhone game titled “Balance of Power,” by 5 Minute Games. This action puzzle thriller has the player taking on the role of an arms dealer in an unnamed modern war. With dollar signs for pupils, the player has to strategically deal weapons to both sides of the conflict in order to maximize profit.

Who wins the war doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how deep your pockets are when the dust settles and the inevitable cease-fire brings your lucrative business to a standstill. Care to take a shot at it?

For a game designed to be played for just a few minutes at a time, “Balance of Power” can get furiously addicting. Play starts by choosing a setting for the conflict and two sets of cartoon sprites to duke it out on screen.

For my first run, I chose the stalwart Viking-like people to battle against marine-esque soldiers in an urban setting.

As combat between the two sides begins, you simply have to tap either the left or right side of the screen to sell a weapon to that side. The more weapons one side has, the greater of an advantage that side has, tipping the scales of the battle in their favor. The more powerful the weapon you sell, the greater advantage it affords. These weapons range from a lowly mini-gun to the ultra-powerful laser gun. Of course, each weapon sold means more money (and more points) for the player.

While you could sell 100 flamethrowers to one side, that would end the battle too early for your wallet to stand. The key to achieving the highest score is to sell weapons as evenly to both sides as possible so that neither has an advantage while your bank account fattens.

This becomes harder and harder to do as the game progresses as random events occur every few seconds; the balance of power is not always in your control. One side could increase conscription, giving them vastly more soldiers. In response, the other side could call in tanks to help support their foot soldiers. Compensating for events like these by selling more weapons to the disadvantaged side is a big part of Balance’s game play.

The biggest thing “Balance of Power” has going for it is its tongue-in-cheek attitude. The tutorial starts with some very cheesy yet hilarious voice acting as the game instructs you how to play. During an actual battle, fake news headlines sprawl across the beginning of the screen such as “Mob bosses ask for government bail out” or “Fireman horrified by destroyed bird bath.” Combined with the cartoony graphics and the inclusion of my favorite weapon, the Bubble Gun, this game has a rare sense of political humor.

“Balance of Power’s” biggest weakness is its lack of depth and variety. Granted, it is an iPhone game meant to be played for only a few minutes at a time. Still, battles can only take place in two possible settings; a forest or a city. Furthermore, there are only three different factions to pit against each other. Watching Vikings fight Russians is cool, but I would have liked to pit say, ninjas against British redcoats.

The game’s soundtrack is described as variable. It changes based on how intense the on-screen conflict is and how many guns you are selling per minute. Though there are only two different backgrounds, both gradually degrade as the battle rages on. After level 10, for example, buildings in the city setting will begin to sport holes and flames.

For $2, you could do much worse than “Balance of Power.” The game is deceptively simple, yet its stoic sense of humor and addicting fun suggest otherwise. If you’re ready to deal with it, give “Balance of Power” a shot or two.

This is the basic premise of IAmA, a recently-added sub-page of the social news site reddit. Reddit usually has its users voting on links to stories and content submitted from elsewhere on the Web, but IAmA takes a different approach: turning the comments page that is part of every submission into a large-scale virtual interview.

Instead of a link to a news story and comments about that news story, people in reddit’s user base are encouraged to pick an interesting part about themselves and answer questions about it. There are no restrictions: people can answer questions about their job, a previous experience they’ve had, even their sex life. Other reddit members will then ask questions and vote on other’s questions, and the most popular will drift to the top where the submitter will be able to answer them easily.

“I Am A, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal,” reads the title of the site’s homepage. That slogan comes across with the variety of the submissions. On the homepage now there are IAmAs from ex-Scientologists, former NFL athletes, Jeopardy contestants and even a federal lobbyist.

The NFL IAmA about a very retired Packers player from the 60s who worked under coaching legend Vince Lombardi has hundreds of questions and thousands of views. The former place-kicker talks about his Super Bowl win, the medical issues surrounding pro football and the differences in the sport now versus the ’60s. If you’re wondering what an 80 year old man is doing on an Internet forum, all you need to know is that it’s his grandson relaying the questions to him and answers back to the Internet.

“Lombardi didn’t put up with a lot of bullshit,” he wrote.  “Apparently one guy had his agent call Lombardi to negotiate his salary. Lombardi promptly hung up, dialed a number and traded the guy to another team.”

Musician Steve Vai submitted an AMA so people could ask questions about his Grammy Award-winning recording career.

While most of the IAmA’s are from everyday people who have an interesting part of themselves they wish to share, celebrities and other well-known people have also popped up to answer questions, either on their own or through a correspondent friend. In September 2009, a post was quickly rushed to the top of the page. “I am a Grammy Award-winning career musician who has been actively playing and recording for almost three decades. AMA.” (AMA stands for ask me anything)

The musician didn’t reveal himself, but answered questions about his Grammys, the major label recording industry, his stance on the music file-sharing debate, and his personal favorite music. Before long, the reddit userbase determined that the musician in question was Steve Vai, a former guitarist for Frank Zappa and solo artist with 14 albums.

The unveiling prompted Vai to post a photo confirming that it was indeed him, shown here. Once people knew who he was even more questions came about Frank Zappa and his career in particular. Although he didn’t get to every question, it was still an incredible thing for so many people to be able to ask questions of a famous musician.

IAmA shows a different side of this hyper-connected world we live in. While it seems like most user-driven content lacks real depth, this gives everyone the chance to feel important and share their lives in a way that goes a whole lot further than starting a blog that nobody reads or posting a badly written comment on a news article. Everyone can learn something from reading about other people’s interesting lives, and everyone can also learn something about themselves by answering others’ questions. There’s a reason that IAmA won the best reddit community of 2009 award.

The rumors surrounding an Apple tablet running some form of Mac OS have been around since shortly after the iPhone was released. There have been many a press conference where geeks held their breath hoping for that “one more thing” to be announced at the end, only to have their hopes and dreams shattered when the only noteworthy product release was slightly redesigned iPods. The speculation is immense: some bloggers are saying it’s going to have a new version of iPhone OS on it, essentially making it a huge iPod Touch, or, as a source close to Apple put it, an “iPhone on steroids.” Others are claiming it will run a full-fledged version of Snow Leopard, like a normal Mac computer with new touch controls. Nobody really knows anything for sure.

The real question that the idea of an Apple tablet brings up is the who factor. Who is Apple going to cater this device to? If the market they’re looking for is the e-reader market, and they’re trying to go toe-to-toe with devices like the Kindle, a modified iPhone OS would work great. But the price would have to be low for any legitimate competition, and that’s something we all know Apple isn’t very good at. If it’s aimed at creative professionals like artists, photographers and filmmakers, it would almost have to run a full copy of OSX. I’d like to see them try to market a device to professional artists without Illustrator and Photoshop or to filmmakers without Final Cut. It just wouldn’t work.

As it stands right now, it seems like Apple isn’t really doing anything groundbreaking here, but rather doing what they’ve done in the past: taken emerging tech and made it easy to use for the masses. They did it with smartphones and the iPhone, with MP3 players  and the iPod, and with old-school command-line computers and the Mac. There are plenty of tablet PCs out running Windows right now, but none of them are impressive, none of them do anything too exciting out of the touch or pen input that people are buying them for. For Apple to be successful here, they have to provide something new and exciting to get everyone’s attention, as well as the ability for the kind of people who usually buy tablet PCs to do what they’ve been doing for years on the friendlier Mac OS.

Since this device has been kept under wraps so well, the only thing that exists is rumors and guessing. There are rumors that magazine publisher Conde Nast is making tablet-formatted versions of its magazines for use on the tablet, which would point to a more iPod or iPhone like gadget with an emphasis on content consumption. There are also rumors that it will cost around $1000, which seems like a bit much to pay for a device aimed at reading magazines and e-books. Again, nobody really knows anything.

This tablet announcement is perhaps the most significant Apple announcement since the iPhone. We pretty much knew almost everything about the iPhone before it came out (including the completely obvious name), because a smartphone is a little bit easier of a thing to pin down. The idea of a “tablet” Mac could mean a whole load of things, and really the only thing to do is wait patiently until the 27th. Plenty of blogs will be posting up-to-the-minute reports of the announcement, and I know I’ll be glued to my screen for the duration.

Check back here for more information as well when an announcement is made.

]]> http://blog.su-spectator.com/2010/01/get-ready-apple-promo-for-jan-27-event-invites-you-to-come-see-our-latest-creation/feed/ 0 http://blog.su-spectator.com/2010/01/lucky-number-windows-7-my-personal-adventure-in-the-world-of-computers/ http://blog.su-spectator.com/2010/01/lucky-number-windows-7-my-personal-adventure-in-the-world-of-computers/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:02:05 +0000 Seamus McKeon http://blog.su-spectator.com/?p=5475 The charms of the consumer help-line are few and far between, but this winter I was blessed with a Christmas miracle: after months of maintenance calls, telephone wait lines and soul-crushing elevator music, the Dell Technical Support Team chose to grant my wish in the form of a new “Studio 1515” laptop.

The reason for the benevolence of my Calcutta-based friends was vague; perhaps they were tired of getting my calls-I’m sure the staff knows me by name at this point. Perhaps the globalization that brings a Texas-based computer company to a cubicle in India had sprinkled some Christmas spirit across the west-Asian subcontinent; or maybe they’d just taken pity on me–after all, hell hath no fury like the IT support victim. But at any rate, the offer was made, I gladly accepted, and not long after December 25^th the UPS man showed up on my doorstep with that glorious corrugated cardboard box, emblazoned with a message of hope for my computing future: “Dell- Yours is Here.”

However this is not an article about the chaos of the IT help line at Dell computer, but one about what exactly I received in the mail from my favorite PC company this winter- or, rather, what I did not receive.

This is because I, like every college student, Generation-Y member, or frequenter of the independent coffee shop scene, find myself perpetually wrapped in the cutthroat debate that stands poised to define our generation: Mac or PC?

I should begin with a disclaimer; I am not a computer person, I know very little about hard drives and screen resolution, and I have no idea what a motherboard does. However, being an American under the age of 70- and what’s more, one with a Facebook account- I seem to find myself in front of the computer for a good deal of my waking hours typing, clicking, and profile-picturing away. Perhaps this is why I’ve grown so attached to the little plastic box on which I check my e-mails and upload my online assignments- after all, we’ve spent enough time together to almost justify romanticizing a laptop the way a member of a past generation might his hot-rod or his Little-Deuce Coupe or whatever else it was that the Beach Boys were singing about.

So, that said, I, like everyone else in my generation, have picked a side in the great debate- and apparently an unfashionable one at that, judging by the smug disdain of a campus filled with the hip and the trendy, all toting their MacBooks, and their Powerbooks, and whatever other adorably designed computer software Steve Jobs has bestowed upon us this week.

Such is the life of the PC owner- hiding in the shadows with my apparently inferior computer, shamed into self-consciousness over what is ultimately a glorified household appliance. There’s a particular style of disdain, a unique expression of smug superiority that the Macintosh-bearing crowd reserves for the rest of us; even if you can’t quite catch them at it, you can always feel that piercing gaze, and almost hear that mocking voice:

“I just really feel like it’s a more user-friendly experience.” They must think to themselves. “I really prefer the editing features- it’s just necessary because I do a lot of amateur photography and graphic design work; my Mac just really reflects my lifestyle.”

I’d made all the excuses- “it’s the same to me,” “it has such a bigger screen,” “I actually PCs better,” but ultimately to no avail- I’d condemned myself to tote about an ongoing token of my lack of computing finesse, and no excuse could redeem me, because it is, ultimately, agreed that Macs probably do work better, crash less, operate faster and are more user-friendly, and so on and so forth. Thus, I had no option but to accept begrudging defeat at the hands of my self-righteous peers- that is, of course, until that blessed package arrived at my door last month.

Suddenly I was awash in all the features, all the bells and whistles of a brand new and irrefutably beautiful navy-blue and shiny chrome laptop- but best of all, it simply worked faster and better than any other computer. Having come equipped with the excessively hyped Windows 7, I was dubious about whether it would be better than my old laptop, which had come with the similarly advertised (and, as it turned out, detestably bad Windows Vista just one year before; but once I began to use it, I was hooked.

Everything you saw in those obnoxious round the clock commercials is true- you can do the sync the computers together thing,  you can do the pop your windows into equal halves of the screen thing, you can do just about anything, it seems; I’m a PC and it sure feels like Windows 7 was my idea.

You can click, you can drag, you can zoom, you can turn, and you can literally plug and play because the moment you open your laptop, the welcome screen is immediately there to greet you. This is not the snail-paced junk that’s always inspired you to buy a new computer just so you could ravage your current one with a baseball bat a la Office Space, but rather a smooth, sleek, sexy beast of a computer. But best of all, of all its tools and tricks, Windows 7 has just about everything that a Mac does, with a few extras of its own (and all for about $780 less, of course). So now, finally, I can trawl the coffee shops around Capitol Hill with pride, or confidently type away on campus without feeling the disdain of a depressingly large subculture of technological self-righteousness.

A Christmas miracle? I think so.

However praises be answered! Instead of having to find sites yourself, now you can simply lazily click your interests online and the magical people of Stumble will find websites from around the inter-webs that match what you selected! All without you having to use any of your precious time to find them!

Stumble is filled with categories of interests from cars to geology to music to just about anything (except for really messed up stuff. Probably.). You just sign up for their fun e mail list and pick your interests and you’re all ready to stumble upon the internet!

The first few Stumbles I did immediate made me fall in love with the program because it sent me to everything from the best sunset photograph I have ever seen, to this ridiculous but amazing site. So next time you have some time on your hands and don’t feel like stalking that cute person you’re sorta friends with on Facebook, head over to stumbleupon.com and start finding the real gems.

The Google Nexus One. Image courtesy Telegraph.co.uk

Google released its Nexus One on Tuesday, a new smartphone that despite the incredible amount of hype ended up being, well, just a really solid new smartphone.

When rumors first starting floating around about this device, first referred to as a “Google Phone,” they got out of control very quickly. Amidst rampant speculation and absolutely no official information, the tech news and blog scene erupted with coverage about the device and how it was supposedly going to change the entire wireless landscape in the US.

“Here’s the price: $199 unlocked in stores. $100 rebate online if you have an active and old Google account” – AndroidGuys

“The phone does not use the conventional network for voice calls. Instead, it uses Voice over IP (VOIP), just like Skype” – ZDNet

Even The Wall Street Journal got in on the action, quoting a source saying “The phone, called Nexus One, was designed inside Google and will be sold, at least initially, without being subsidized by a wireless partner.”

A quick check over to google.com/phone will show you that none of these rumors turned out to be true. The Nexus one, despite largely positive reviews, is simply another Android device like the Droid and G1 before it. It’s being sold directly by Google, however, and can be purchased either with a T-Mobile contract for $179 or unlocked for $529.

The hardware is more similar to an iPhone than the Droid, is designed by HTC, and is running the latest version of Google’s Android mobile OS. The new version features an improved user interface and voice-to-text features for writing emails and text messages, among other features. But it will still make voice calls on your cell network, and you still probably need a text messaging plan.

It seems that Google isn’t shaking up the wireless landscape, they’re just prying into it a little bit. By offering this phone unlocked, Google is taking an important first step in giving people who want the ability to have a carrier-independent phone an easy way to get one. An iPhone bought at the full, out-of-contract price is still locked to AT&T’s network.

While it might have been nice if some of those rumors were true, the Nexus One is still a solid smartphone, and another great chance for Android to bring in more users. It also shows Google’s continued commitment to making the OS better. All of the changes in Android version 2.1, which is debuting on the Nexus, will make it to other devices before too long.

Gives Me Hope is a website that began in May 2009 as a hopeful counter to F-My Life, a website dedicated to how posters days were ruined. On Gives Me Hope, posters write of incidents and moments of their life where they were inspired, sometimes by the simplest of things. In turn, the stories leave readers a bit more hopeful. The website was created by two University of Notre Dame grads, Gaby Montero and Emerson Spartz, who write in their about us section, that “with all of the hurt and suffering in the world, who couldn’t use a few more reasons to hope each day?”

The site is described as “Chicken Soup for the Soul – the 21st Century, Twitter-style version.” yet don’t expect it all to be sappy, goopy stories. The insight into the goodness in people is tempered by the self-professed battles we all face. A kind word, a show of tolerance are powerful indicators of humanity than that sweet, “right” word. GMH demonstrates how that old adage “it’s the small things in life that make it worth living” is demonstrated through the simple acts of kindness we are all capable, and sometimes overlook in our rush-rush lives.

Akara in Madison, WI posts about her fears and reinvigorated hope in people ”Yesterday, I missed the bus to school, so my Muslim Afghani mother dropped me off with her headscarf on. I was scared about what the other kids would think when they saw her, but instead they bombarded me with questions about Islam and seemed fascinated to learn about another culture/religion. Their religious tolerance GMH!”

 Another post by Mary J. of Boston expressed the beauty of friendship and the randomness that “Last summer, my best friend came over to cheer me up after a tough breakup. In the middle of our conversation, she jumped from my couch, and chased the ice cream truck four blocks down the street, because she thought ice cream would make me feel better. She was barefoot. Her love GMH.”

Take a moment from your hectic life and smile. It’s nice to have a reminder of the beauty and hope that exists in the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you ever catch yourself frustrated with Seattle University, sit back and take in this video. You’ll be feeling better by the end.

The video, filmed for Seattle University’s 2009  Gala, is superbly done. Because I’m in it for about two seconds but watched it get filmed all over campus, I know that it was made using Canon’s delectable 5D MK II DSLR (camera of choice of The Spectator’s photo editor, Braden VanDragt) and tilt-shift lenses. The resulting shallow depth of field makes for stunning imagery—even though it’s captured in dreary fall weather.

And the video’s message is consistent and clear, with voiceovers complementing the visual storyline. You can’t help but be impressed.

The Gala raised $620,000 for scholarships and featured Gladys Knight for entertainment.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T, the top wireless carriers in the country, are about to engage in a fierce legal battle after AT&T sued claiming that Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” TV ads are misleading.

The ad in question, viewable above, compares the two carriers’ 3G U.S. coverage maps. 3G is the fastest kind of cellular data network currently in use in this country, and it’s no lie that Verizon has more 3G coverage than AT&T. Verizon’s whole network is 3G, whereas AT&T has only deployed the technology in major metropolitan areas. AT&T’s grounds for the lawsuit is that the ads make people believe they offer no cellular data service in the “white” areas, when in fact they do offer the slower 2G service in those areas.

Coverage map shown in the Verizon commercials.

If you take a look at the map to the left, is seems extremely clear that this map is talking about 3G data, not data overall. It’s saying that if you want a faster network, Verizon is a better choice for your cell phone dollars. There is nothing misleading about the ad in any way, it’s not saying “AT&T doesn’t provide data service in 3/4 of the country, but simply “We have faster speeds in 3/4 of the country than AT&T,” which is true.

Verizon is already on the defensive, issuing a statement about the lawsuit defending their ad from their competitor’s criticism.

AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts.

It seems this issue is turning into an all-out PR smackdown. The funny thing, however, is that AT&T isn’t even disputing the content of the ad–which shows the 3G map exactly as it’s depicted on AT&T’s site, but instead the fact that they believe the average American isn’t intelligent enough to decipher it.

This whole thing really brings AT&T’s judgement into question. Why would they bring so much attention to the fact that they have an inferior network? If it wasn’t common knowledge already, it will quickly become so as news of the lawsuit spreads and people get interested in the content of the ads. It seems like AT&T is trying to use the court to hide its network’s shortcomings.

Maybe AT&T could take the money they’re spending on legal fees for this lawsuit and spend it on, you know, improving their network? As of right now, they definitely do not have more bars in more places.

A new contender has emerged in the smartphone wars: The Motorola Droid. Does it threaten the iPhone's supremacy?

The buzzword in the cell phone industry since 2007 has been “iPhone Killer.” Since mere days after the release of the iPhone the other players in the industry were talking about how they were going to compete with the amazing piece of technology. Many have been up to bat since then: LG Prada, T-Mobile G1, Palm Pre,  Nokia N90, the list seems to go on and on. The one thing they all have in common? They failed miserably at replicating the great experience that Apple offers with the iPhone. They just weren’t the same.

Enter the holy trifecta of Motorola, Google, and Verizon Wireless. Motorola is looking for a bump in business after they have failed to see success with any device since their RAZR, Google is looking for a way to push their Android OS to new levels of popularity, and Verizon Wireless is just looking to carry a smartphone that people actually want to buy. The three have teamed up to create the Droid, the kickoff phone for version 2.0 of Android as well as a new Verizon campaign to bring Android devices to the carrier. Is this the perfect storm needed to knock the iPhone off its pedestal? We’re going to compare the Droid and the iPhone in a category-by-category, side-by-side battle to the…death? Let’s begin after the jump.

Category 1: Hardware

The Droid hardware is the antithesis of the iPhone hardware. The iPhone is full of curves, soft lines and shine, while the Droid embraces a more utilitarian look. The edges are sharper and the phone is almost entirely black. The Droid feels heftier than any phone I’ve ever held, which is very reassuring. Holding phones that feel like they’re going to break in your hands is never a good thing. Both phones are very sexy pieces of hardware, and the only thing the Droid is lacking when compared to the iPhone is a hardware button. It’s nice to have that one button that will work whenever you want it to. The Droid’s hardware buttons are still touch based. Another plus for the Droid is the hardware keyboard, which slides out satisfyingly and provides a way to type is touch keyboards aren’t your thing. It gets the job done, but it’s definitely not the best phone keyboard around–the keys are all flat, so it’s sometimes hard to tell what you’re typing without looking. WINNER: Tie.

Category 2: Display

This is probably the easiest category. The iPhone 3GS sports a 480×320 display, pretty standard for phones these days. The Droid takes it a step further and ups the resolution to 854×480, and the difference is stunning. Text looks amazingly crisp, is less of a strain on the eyes, and colors pop like never before. Seeing an iPhone screen after getting used to the Droid was surprising: even though the iPhone’s is viewed as a pretty nice display for a phone, the Droid’s just blows it out of the water. Gadget blog Gizmodo even said that looking at the iPhone display after the Droid is like seeing Nintendo 64 games after getting used to the graphics on PS3 games. It’s that different. WINNER: Droid.

Category 3: Android 2.0 vs. iPhone OS

A screenshot of version 2.0 of Google's Android OS

Google has really raised the bar with Android 2.0. The OS has gotten more consumer friendly, easier to use, and sports better built-in apps. The built in apps for the Google services like GMail, Google Calendar and Maps are all perfect distillations of their larger-display counterparts, and the whole experience is easy to use. It’s nice being able to have apps easily accessible but not cluttering up the home screen (all apps are stored in a drawer that you flick up, you can drag the ones you want to your home screen), and official support of widgets on the home screen is also nice. The whole experience is full of little touches that make the experience better, such as automatic Facebook syncing of contact photos. I added a new contact and within a minute the phone had automatically downloaded his picture from Facebook and set it as his contact image. The real killer part of Android 2.0 is built in free Google Maps turn-by-turn navigation. It’s like having a free GPS unit built into your phone.

iPhone OS is also great. The media applications built in to iPhones and iPod Touches are much better than the ones built into Android, and that’s where iPhone OS really shines. It’s also easier to use for people who aren’t as adept with computer interfaces as your techie blogger here. Everything is easy to find, and generally things take less taps to do. Multi-touch support in Safari and in Maps is also helpful, but not necessary in any respect. The double-tap to zoom in Adroid works fine and is more accurate overall. The other thing that iPhone OS has going for it is interface consistency. Every app behaves nearly the same, and it’s not hard to use an app if you’ve used another one before. Android apps, both user and Google made, can sometimes have weird quirks in their interfaces and they’re not as consistent as iPhone apps. WINNER: Android 2.0 (by a hair).

Category 4: App Stores

The iPhone has an easier-to-use app store than the Droid.

Both iPhone OS and Android have places to download additional software for your device, dubbed the “App Store” on the iPhone and “Android Market” on the Droid. The one clear thing that the App Store has over the Market is volume of apps. There are over 100,000 apps on the App Store, and only around 10,000 on Android Market. But what does that mean, really? In my time using the Droid there has only been one time when I haven’t had “an app for that” and there was one on the iPhone app store. Android Market still has Twitter apps, Facebook apps, and games a plenty, and overall there are more free choices than on the iPhone. It’s also open, meaning that Google isn’t approving every app like Apple is doing. That means that there are apps springing up that duplicate the built-in features of the device and improve on them (Google Voice, alternative media players, etc.), something that’s nowhere to be found on the iPhone. Overall, however, the experience on the iPhone is better, with more quality apps and more competition to make those apps better. Android also lacks really in-depth games such as Rolando and Monkey Ball. The App Store should watch out though, because as more and more people buy Android devices it will draw more developers. WINNER: iPhone.

Category 5: Camera

Both phones have a camera capable of both stills and video. The iPhone 3GS boasts a 3 megapixel sensor and the Droid has 5 megapixels. The Droid’s camera, despite boasting a larger sensor, is definitely not as good. The iPhone’s camera produces more vibrant colors and has the ability to tap to focus on whatever part of the picture you want. The Droid’s camera only has autofocus. While the Droid’s pictures generally have more detail than the iPhone’s due to the larger sensor, that statistic is largely worthless when the pictures come out grainier and with less color than the iPhone’s. The Droid camera app is also sluggish and clumsy to use, so overall the iPhone offers the better experience here. Pictures talk louder than words in this respect, so if you’re interested check out Andy Ihnatko from the Chicago Sun-Time’s shot-for-shot comparison. WINNER: iPhone.

Category 6: It’s the network

The most important part of a cellular device is the network that it’s tied to. The Droid has Verizon and the iPhone has AT&T. Every day I hear iPhone users complaining about dropped calls, low bars, and slow surfing speeds. None of these problems exist on the Droid. Verizon’s 3G network blankets almost the entire country, and the Droid has full bars almost everywhere in Seattle. 3G surfing speeds are fast enough, and Verizon has offered plenty of support for new Android users. When I went in to buy the phone they had staff dedicated to answering people’s questions about the software, and I was even told about a class being offered to show new Android users the ropes. While Apple might have offered similar things at their retail outlets (which are few and far between), AT&T was doing nothing of the sort. Verizon’s network and customer service are just better than AT&T, hands down. WINNER: Verizon.

Let’s tally up the scores:
Hardware: Tie
Display: Droid
OS: Droid
App Store: iPhone
Camera: iPhone
Network: Droid

There you have it, folks. 3 points for the Droid and 2 for the iPhone make this a pretty tough call, especially considering that the OS experience is entirely subjective. Other, less tech-savy people may favor the iPhone OS. The real point of all of this comes down to one thing: finally, we have a smartphone that can hold its own in a head-to-head with the almighty iPhone. This reviewer thinks the experience is better overall, but your milage may vary. If you have Verizon, now there is no need to switch to AT&T in order to get a smartphone actually worth using. And with all of the devices running Android coming out and scheduled to come out, expect this battle to get a lot more heated in the coming months. This can only be good for consumers.

As iTunes grows, so does its Genius recommendations to the user. It started as a way to hear your music gathered into lists that sound similar, then to whole sections of your library, and now they look at applications for your iPhone or iPod Touch. With over 2 billion applications downloaded since their start in July 2008, the app store itself brings in around $1 billion annually to the company by third parties which create these apps and sell them, 70% of the profits go to the third party and Apple only takes 30%. Now Apple uses their Genius technology to give suggestions as to what apps you might like.

All of these features make organizing music, discovering new artists and even buying new applications extremely easy, with no research or even any knowledge of the item you are about to purchase necessary. However is this how we want to learn about new bands? Through a for-profit company that is quickly becoming the leading way to buy music? iTunes is jumping way over the CD business; as CD sales drop substantially each year, iTunes gets more and more gains.

Second, is their piecing music so easily taking the fun out of creating interesting mixes? Why should we now create our own personal master piece playlists when we can click a button and have iTunes do it for us?

iTunes is genius. Even if they are making music too easy, their technology is truly fantastic; how it can pull songs that it might not even recognize and place it with similar songs easily, with little to no mismatched songs.

Twitter's new 'lists' feature allows you to create customized groups of users that can be viewed together and even followed as a group.

It might not have made it to your account quite yet, but over the last several days microblogging powerhouse Twitter has been slowly rolling out a new feature to its users: “lists.”

Lists are essentially customizable groups of Twitter accounts that anyone can create. The lists can be public or private and can contain as many individual Twitter accounts as you’d like. The best part? The whole group can be followed with one click.
Over the last 24 hours most Twitter users have been given access to the new feature, which should appear as a blurb above the main website after you’re logged in. You can create a new list there, but once the blurb box is closed you’ll have to do it from the sidebar. Lists should be right under the search box there.

Lists are already popping up everywhere, some even from Twitter celebrities like Fake Sarah Palin, who created an exclusive list of “People I hate” that currently includes accounts from CNN, The New York Times, David Hasselhoff, and Cindy McCain.

Look for implementations of the lists feature in popular Twitter desktop apps like Tweetie and TweetDeck soon too: Twitter is rolling out the API for lists to developers as we speak. Overall it’s a major new feature on a site that doesn’t really pride itself in it’ large amount of them.

"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" - The Little Prince

So this is it.

This is the last day.

I must admit I’m a little upset. Despite all the hatred and loathing and complaining, I love Farmville. How could you not?

Farmville is just like a little kid- this little thing that runs around wildly ruining things. It requires constant attention and care that quite often dominates your life and all of your time. Sometimes it barfs on you after you feed it, and sometimes you have to sit there and burp it, waiting patiently for it to be OK.  But in the end, you love that terrible little child because it’s yours.

And it’s cute.

And today is the last day I will have with my child. My farm. To be honest, I don’t really know what to do. In my rage the other day, I planted a bunch of crops that take more than a day to grow, not thinking about the fact that these plants will never be harvested.

What will become of these plots? Will they just wither away and die?

Can digital plants die if nobody is there to see them die?

This, I feel, is a question that will come to define our Facebook Generation.

Luckily I planted some berries, which I can harvest now. I do so with a twinge of sadness.

Is this really it?

My moustache is gone. Because this is our last day, I forgive Farmville. I replace my facial hair not with my characteristic moustache, but instead a 5 0′clock shadow which I feel is a more appropriate reflection of the bedraggled state I’m in.

Ravi and Howard are surrounded by a myriad of animals I’ve acquired throughout this week. I miss the intimacy we had when it was just us three. We had something, something special that seems to have been lost. Now that I can’t even tell which elephant is Ravi and which are just the nameless others I’ve been gifted.

What would Howard say now? Does he know I’m leaving? Does he know that this is it?

I remember back to one of my favorite books, The Little Prince. In it, a fox asks The Little Prince to tame him, because only by taming him will he become special. Because once we have spent time with something, it becomes unique, not like any other on the planet. A dog would simply be a dog if it weren’t your dog. A blanket would just be a blanket if it weren’t your blanket.

 And an elephant would just be an elephant unless it were Ravi.

I still don’t have enough Farmbucks to buy a lawn gnome. I still don’t have nearly enough coins to buy a villa. And my plot is still the same size it was when I started, unexpanded and small. But regardless, it’s mine. I spent time on it, I invested in it, I cared for it, I grieved over it, I wrestled it, and it grew into a reflection of me.

But I made a promise at the beginning of this. I knew this might happen. I told myself, you have to stop once the 7 days have passed. And they have passed.

Goodbye Howard.

It’s been great.  

Goodbye Ravi.

I’m sorry I got so upset that you grew circus peanuts. We’re all different, and I accept your odd traits just as you accepted mine.

Goodbye little farm guy. I hope your facial hair grows thick and permanent into the eternity of Facebook until it weaves itself into the very fibers of the internet. That way, a little bit of you will always be with me no matter what webpage I’m on.

My pointer hovers over the “log off” button in the Facebook toolbar. I take in one last final breath.

I click.

EPILOGUE

These blogs were not posted in real time. I played my week of Farmville and wrote notes on each day well in advance of actually posting the individual days on this blog. Since I stopped playing Farmville, I have recieved, a total of 44 Farmville related requests from friends and strangers who have followed my adventures here on this website. I have met a number of people who began to play Farmville after reading my story, sending me neighbor requests and friend requests with notes of encouragement attatched. To those of you who followed me, thank you.

In the end, I will let you decide whether or not Farmville is a cute diversion, or a dangerous addictive beast. I think that just like in any relationship, there’s a lot of both. So here’s to wishing a happy, healthy relationship to you all.

And please, help Howard and Ravi live on in by remembering them as they were. Wonderful friends.

Kelton Sears

The new facebook homepage. Image courtesy of Facebook.

Oh yay! Look it’s another one of those amazing and constant Facebook makeovers! Honestly, that site changes its set up more than most people change their clothes.

Well here it is, the latest change to the Facebook homepage is the ability to switch back and forth between a live feed and a news feed version of updates.

The live feed does exactly what it sounds like it does. It shows the immediate updates of everything that every one of your friends are doing. It also has moved the event box up so that updates such as friends birthdays will be easier to view. You can also edit the way you want this view to be set up by clicking the edit options tab at the bottom of the page when in this view.

The news feed shows the highlights and things that Facebook determines will be of most interest to you. It also shows notification type things like when people have tagged you in photos or written something on your wall recently. Basically it shows what the old home page did just without the constant updates of people you never even really talk to.

While, yes, this is another improvement in the efficieny of the site and everyone will eventually love it, there is always the factor that now we all have to get used to another new layout before they go and change something else.

Instead of spending all this time updating the look of each page, they should spend time working out all the kinks in the systematic set up so that people have less problems with logging in and uploading pictures in an efficient way. I am pretty sure that they get more money or something every time they change the layout because unless there is incentive behind it, no one likes change that much.

But hey whatever floats their boats!

Hulu.com has let you watch free streaming TV shows and movies online for several years. Image courtesy Hulu.

The glory days are officially numbered. Hulu, one of the most popular online streaming video destinations, will begin charging for content in 2010.

Chase Carey, Deputy Chairman of News Corp. said in a speech at the B&C OnScreen Summit that he sees hulu heading towards a pay-for content model in the next year.
“It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online,” he said. “We’re exchanging analogue dollars for digital dimes.”

He went on to say that not all of hulu’s content would be behind a pay wall, but saying “it’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online” raises a few red flags. If there’s some sort of tiered system for hulu videos, shouldn’t broadcast be the lowest on that list? The shows are free to begin with, so it seems extremely silly to pay to view them online. Keeping over-the-air shows free but charging for cable or premium channel shows would make more sense.

“I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value,” Carey said. “Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”

This news comes after much blogosphere speculation on the issue, with many people thinking that hulu’s free-ness was too good to last, especially since last week’s statement from Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes about paid hulu saying “”That’s not an if, that’s a when.”

Only time will tell, but Carey supposes that the changes will happen sometime in 2010. In the meantime, enjoy all the free content on hulu while it lasts.