I agree with you that using nicknames is hankering back to the "old" way, but I can't see why it wouldn't be possible anymore to separate on & off. Simply because a couple of IT moguls (Schmidt, Zuck and such) have predicted one future for us? We humans have enough talent and imagination to escape, distort and nullify those bleak predictions. AT least I hope so.
And yes, using a nick on FB means exactly this: you don't want anyone to call you. I simply don't want to network with my friends & family on facebook (better ways are available), but i needed access to the API ^^
I did the same thing two days ago for the exact same reason, with the name "Aleph Zadik", and it worked like a charm.
Is there a human being deciding what looks like a real name or not, or is it algorithm-based?
On a local level (which is on par with this whole open insurgency thing), opening up your WiFi and using Bonjour services (and why not some kind of custom landing page) seems like a brilliant idea. Big plus: it doesn't require a computer degree so that's something that can spread easily, and cover a wide range.
Maybe it's just me, but I find it amazing to have all the elements at hand and already working, and never having thought of this
Hold on a minute, you think that asking for, let's say a public data retention policy is just a meme?
For a big company, "we take our end-user data privacy incredibly seriously..." is generally the mandatory first sentence in a 30 pages document. This is not just about ads.
Hi. It's too late for that now, but next time you buy a drive, i suggest you look at the partitions table. Most hw companies now tend to include a tiny additional partition where the bloatware sits and waits (happens also on USB keys), so before doing any backup on your new drive, crush that table and create a shiny new unique partition. This can avoid later problems :)
Maybe this is too small scale to be relevant, but i recently designed a site for a rockabilly clothes webstore, with a complete panel of tools: myspace (traditional friending, exchanging thankyous), facebook (fanpage & paying ads), google ads and twitter... And since day 1, myspace has been the nr. 1 referrer (to such an extent that bandwidth quotas exploded, and my customer had to upgrade their hosting plan). So I would say that for some niches, myspace is still nr. 1.
Also, coding css for myspace is really fun, if you like a good challenge
Yes, you are probably right.
But then, it's just a feeling, and feelings can be pretty nonsensical sometimes. I've been an enthusiastic mac user for 20 years, now i'm surprised to realize I slowly grew to completely distrust and dislike apple's vision of what the computer ecosystem should be. File this under 'Snobbish rantings of a disappointed user' ;-)
Call me old fashioned, but I fail to see how implementing a corporate middleman between developers and users can be a progress... OK, from a developer's stand point, this could be really beneficial (distribution, centralization etc), but as a user, it feels like seeing independent record stores about to be crushed by a shiny new Virgin Megastore.
I can't help to hope this will be an immense failure
I'm sure google is not as "evil" as those recent bashing campaigns tend to insinuate, but the fact is, if google could publish clearer, more-defined data-privacy or data-retention policies instead of the vague assertions you can find in their TOS, things would be clearer. The current situation is just feeding doubts, and nothing serious or accompanied by hard facts comes to contradict this illustrated guide
i won't expand much, but it looks pretty simple to me:
it may be illegal to publish 'Sentence A', but reporting that someone did it is not.
- 'X is a liar and a thief' = illegal
- 'X is a liar and a thief, says Y" = legal
The only thing is, he's not advocating the collectivization of FB (that would be stupid), but merely calling for new companies to enhance the user-generated-content model by sharing the wealth. Maybe the Diaspora people should look into this?
The point of view is rather extreme, but he's also touching something relevant at the end of the article, and may give some ideas.
the term 'cognitive slavery' doesn't apply that much to google, i think. They may not create content or jobs, but they provide a lot of tools (cheap ads, free hosting) empowering a lot of small businesses and giving them something they wouldn't normally have access to (as a designer, i complete my clients website with a lot of google tools, and they very often express their amazement at the added value). So that's a point for them.
aha! We've been waiting at least one full day before some mighty pundit starts claiming that Ping would be the future of this or that.. Next step: How Ping is about to kill this or that (this one is likely to come from Wired).
Sure (i just googled my favourite username, and found indeed some pretty old stuff that i'd rather keep forgotten). But listing all the appearances of your online persona is one thing, being able to search for your real-life name and retrieve all the embarrassing info attached to it is another. I'm not saying privacy-conscious persons should obfuscate absolutely everything they publish, but considering how things work, the least anyone should do is to make the retrieval of such information a bit more difficult.
The funny thing about all this is that since the beginning of the internet, no data privacy issues were ever raised, and that at some point (i may be wrong, but symbolically i would say it started when facebook became really huge) it became a real topic. Coincidentally, facebook becoming huge marked the moment when everybody started to use their real names instead of nicknames. Maybe it's time to do the math, and start wondering if using your real name for every post, every comment, every little lolcat action you take online is really worth signing it with your real name. Returning to nicknames for most of your online appearances would probably render Mr Schmidt's point moot
wow, really nice!
Now, you homepage claims 'have fun!', but where's the fun when you don't have access to the css or the page template, and can't start tweaking those immediately? :o)
Ideally, yes, i agree with you. But when the site's users are not necessarily computer litterate, a few hints can prove helpful (sometimes it is also a designers responsibility to take people gently where they have to go). And for some playful designs, rich on graphics and taking the conventions a bit further, it can be complicated. <br>
Hover also works as a confirmation: mouse pointers turning into a finger, that means 'yes, click'. This has been conventional for a very longtime, and it works. Watching touchscreen users tapping blindly on their ipad, checking what works and what doesn't, will probably become a frequent spectacle :)<br>
But you know what would really annoy me with the disapprearance of hover? It's slightly like the bit.ly scenario, only worse, and it's unrelated to css or submenus: The mouse over a link have since ages showed the link's url. A reasonable part of the website-reading process is made of avoiding bad or irrelevant links, not speaking of nastyspamsite.com/fakeapp.exe addresses, and hovering hover links is capital. How do we do this on a touchscreen?
10 years ago, users could identify a link from underlined blue text or a highlighted blue border around pictures. We did so much visual progress since, and hover (especially in css) is good design and a good interface tool, in that it lets people know something might be clickable. For any user, hover means 'link', so i wouldn't start digging its grave anytime soon.
Do we really need to break something that works here (mouse+display) because it doesn't work there (touchescreen)? somehow it doesn't make a lot of sense, and probably calls for more thinking