Digitivity » social networking

Heise’s 2-Click Solution for Facebook Privacy

Digitivity — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 15:24:00 +0000

Heise, a German computer magazine, tweaked their website to force users to click on the Facebook ‘Like’ button before it activates.

This protects your privacy because, normally, the button image (downloaded from Facebook’s servers) automatically tells Facebook that you’re visiting that page when it loads.

Facebook didn’t seem to like that very much, which they said as much in their reply to the site. The fact is even if you don’t click on the Like button, it’s giving all sorts of valuable data to Facebook, namely the site’s you’re visiting, whether you “Like” them or not.

But if the “Like” button isn’t loaded from Facebook (it’s a locally-hosted image in Heise’s case), it doesn’t know what site’s you’re going to.

My comments

Of course Facebook doesn’t “like” it if you disable their Like button: that’s where they’re getting all their tracking info. My opinion: don’t browse the web logged into Facebook.

So is the “Like” button something you can live without, or can’t live without?

Resources

Heise article on 2-click Like button
Slashdot article
JWZ’s rant

MyOuterSpace: MySpace for Trekkies

Digitivity — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:57:27 +0000

OK, you’ve heard of MySpace. Been there, done that.

In fact it’s become fashionable to make fun of MySpace in favor of Facebook, the flavor-of-the-month social networking site.

Now get ready for MyOuterSpace at http://www.myouterspace.com/.

I kid you not.

Social networking for Star Trek

The force behind this bold new venture is none other than the captain of the Federation Starship Enterprise, Capt. James T. Kirk.

The way MyOuterSpace set up is that you you can sign up to be a citizen of one of six planets or a crew member of five starships. Planet governors and starship captains will be interviewed and approved by William Shatner.

Discussion at Slashdot.

Cadmus Helps You Avoid Social Media Overload

Digitivity — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:20:41 +0000

I found out about a new social media organization service called Cadmus the other day.

If you’re active in social networking like Twitter, you probably get a lot of updates in your incoming streams.

Cadmus

organizes these streams and prevents you from having to wade through duplicates.
identifies trends among your friends’ Twitter conversations
groups @replies and groups those too. You can open or close an entire conversation instead of looking through all past updates to find the original post to which they are replying.

Signing up for Cadmus

On the Cadmus website (thecadmus.com) , click on the signup link:

You’re taken to Twitter.com, where you’re asked to authorize Cadmus accessing your Twitter account. Note: Cadmus doesn’t take your password. Rather, Twitter gives an authorization token to third-party websites to allow them to update your account. Click on Allow:

After signing up, you’re taken back to the Cadmus homepage. Like Twitter, if you’re not signed in, the homepage gives you information on Cadmus. Once you’re signed in, the homepage shows your account’s updates. Initially there are none, because Cadmus hasn’t had a chance to analyze your tweets:

After a few minutes, Cadmus shows your tweets:

Cadmus identifies major topics within your tweetstream. Click on a topic to view related tweets. Cadmus calls this “personal trending topics“:

You can also view trending coversations within the last 6 and 12 hours, and one, three, and seven days:

Cadmus also organizes your FriendFeed and RSS streams. Click on “Add a Service” and choose what you want to add:

Cadmus API

In addition to the website, you can add access Cadmus’s organized streams through the Cadmus API (aplication programming interface). That means you can view or show Cadmus info in a desktop or phone application or on your website.

Check out Cadmus here: http://thecadmus.com/

Backupify Social Media Backup Free Account Offer Extended

Digitivity — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:14:31 +0000

I wrote the other day about social media backup with a new service called Backupify.

It was offering free accounts till January 31.

Now the offer has been extended until the 15th of February.

Granted, sometimes companies like to extend offers many times just to get everyone that could possibly be interested in their product. But since it’s totally free, there’s no reason not to sign up.

See my previous blog post about backing up Google, Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress for details on how Backupify works.

Resources

Backupify

Back Up Gmail, Facebook, WordPress, and Other Social Media with Backupify

Digitivity — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:40:48 +0000

These days many people prefer to have their applications in the cloud, instead of hosting them by themselves.

For example, people who use Gmail prefer accessing e-mail through a web browser instead of downloading their e-mail and viewing it with an e-mail program.

But what happens if Google loses your e-mail? The answer, for some, might be Backupify, a new cloud backup service.

Coincidentally, today is the last day they are offering free accounts, and today is the day I found out about it. So before you read the rest of this article, go and sign up for an account here: https://secure.backupify.com/signup

Note: Although it asks for your personal details (including address and phone number), all you have to enter is your name and e-mail address to get signed up.

Why you need to back up your social media accounts

How much did you pay for your Gmail account? For your Twitter account? Facebook? $0?

Well, how much liability do you think they have if they lose your e-mail, your tweets, your updates? Right, zero dollars.

While it’s true that these services have all kinds of great servers hosting your data, it’s also true that problems do occur. If you get a lot of advantage from your social networking presence, you’ll likely not want to take the risk of losing all of your hard work.

Cloud services that Backupify backs up

Backupify backs up:

Flickr
Twitter
Delicious
Zoho
Google Docs
Photobucket
WordPress
Services in Beta
Basecamp
Gmail
Facebook
FriendFeed
Blogger
Hotmail

It will back up the following cloud services later:

Youtube
Xmarks
RssFeed
Tumblr

After you sign up, you’re sent to the Settings screen:

Backupify Settings

Just click on a Manage for a given service to back up your account on that service.

Backing up Twitter

For example, to back up your Twitter account, click on Manage for Twitter, and then provide your account credentials:

Backupify: Backup Twitter

Backupify goes out to Twitter, downloads your tweets, and backs them up.

You can choose to back up daily or weekly.

Backing up WordPress

Backupify can back up your WordPress blog, too. To do this, you first have to install a WordPress plugin.

How Backupify works

Backupify uses account information that you give to access your accounts. For some kinds of services, it doesn’t send a username/password over the wire, but rather depends on something called a token to avoid having to exchange authentication information.

To the extent possible, Backupify keeps your data in encrypted format. It’s true that you have to trust them to a certain extent. If you don’t trust them, don’t give them any of your user account info.

It’s worth mentioning that, according to Alexa, Backupify is about the 15000th most popular website in the United States, so it’s not just a fly-by-night operation.

My comments

Although I haven’t decided to what extent I want Backupify to back up my social media accounts, I’ve gone ahead and signed up for the free account, which, again, they say the last day for is January 31.

Thanks to Bob Buskirk, whose article on Backupify I just caught today.

Resources

Backupify

Digital Photo Frames Meet Social Networking

Digitivity — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:30:23 +0000

It had to happen some time, I suppose. Digital photo frames, which up until now have just been limited to displaying photos from your USB flash drive, have not only Wi-Fi, but are also doing something with that Wi-Fi.

The new generation of digital photo frames are social networking-enabled. They’ll download and display photos from Facebook, Flickr, and so on.

HP DreamScreen 100

Hewlett-Packard is selling the DreamScreen 100, which has a 10 inch screen, for $200 (after rebate).

HP DreamScreen 100 Digital Photo Frame

The HP DreamScreen:

Displays Facebook updates
Displays Snapfish photos
Plays music and photos from your other computers
Plays Internet radio from some sites

eMotion Social-Connect Digital Photo Frame

The eMotion Social-Connect Digital Photo Frame is cheaper at $149. It also supports more social media than the HP DreamScreen.

eMotion Social Connect Digital Photo Frame

In conjuction with the LifeGoRound photo and social network aggregation site, you can display photos from the following:

Facebook
Picasa
Flickr
Photobucket
Walmart

You can also display:

Twitter Feeds
Weather Widget
Facebook News Feeds & Status Updates

Resources

New York Times on Digital Photo Frames