Tag: interwebs

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The Other Reason(s) For Smartphones

As most people I know, I’m a fan of technological “toys.”  Smartphones are one of those things, however, that I was a bit slower in getting, mostly due to the costs involved.  The phones themselves tend to be more expensive, and you frequently have to have a data plan attached for at least $15/mo with many carriers.

There are obvious reasons that a smartphone can make your life easier, and most of these reasons involve internet access.  Alternatively, they can also make your life more complicated, especially if you detest the feeling of constant connectedness (which I don’t).  I’ve decided, however, to compile a list of reasons that are a bit less obvious to consider a smartphone.

  1. Customization – In many cases, people will get a new phone with a contract renewal and are then stuck with that phone for 2 years until the contract is up.  You can always buy a new phone, but you won’t get the subsidized version, thereby making what was a $100 more like $500 (the price of a reasonable laptop…).  Over the course of 2 years, I tend to get tired of the interface, especially as I’m seeing new phones coming out to supersede mine.  It makes the phone feel old, even though it works perfectly fine.  Smartphones radically change this dynamic.  Phones that run the Android OS, especially, have “themes” that can be installed to completely change the interface, much like you can change the wallpaper, icons, and color schemes on your computer.  In the case of many Android phones, you can even get OS upgrades that provide many new features.  And you can install applications.  In total, it’s like getting a new phone every time you change the theme or upgrade the OS, much as getting a new version of Windows or Linux is like getting a whole new computer.
  2. WiFi – This could seem like an “obvious” or a “less obvious” depending on how you look at it,  I would argue that most people would look to the 3G or 4G radios as being the most useful feature of these phones, yet I find that I hardly use that particular technology.  With AT&T, for $15/mo, you get 200 MB of data to download.  Right now, about 3/4 through the billing cycle, I’ve used about 36% of my allotment, and I’ve actually been using it more heavily than I normally do this month.  This fact will change depending on where you work, but in my case, I typically work around WiFi, and I have WiFi at home.  So for me, the WiFi is a much more useful feature in the phone.  Sure, it’s nice to have 3G available, but living in the Midwest as we do, traveling between Iowa and Missouri, I find that we rarely have 3G access for the whole trip anyway.
  3. Camera – My phone, the HTC Inspire 4G, has an 8 MP camera and an LED flash.  It isn’t the greatest camera in the world, but it’s “good enough” for snapshots.  I don’t use it as a camera replacement, however I find that I’m much more likely to take a picture and upload it to Facebook for all to see, as it’s thoroughly convenient.  As simple as: take picture; click button; select “Facebook;” and then upload.  In the past, I had to grab the camera, take the picture, remove the SD card to transfer the picture to the computer, open the browser, resize the picture, then upload it.  Much more cumbersome, especially for something as “inconsequential” as a random picture of Meg eating her lunch.  Having a reasonably decent camera on me at all times has made me take more pictures of Meg for the sole purpose of posting it online.

Of course, there are countless other reasons to have a smartphone.  I just figure that these are a few that one may not consider as they’re shopping around.  At least, these are the things I find myself most impressed by and using more often than I thought I would (with the exception of the Wifi…I knew I’d use it all the time…).

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Lonely In The Middle

The last few weeks have presented a variety of issues within the American national discourse that warrant commentary, but I’ll let that aside right now and focus on something a bit more “meta” to the situation: how, exactly, we as members of society communicate with each other.

A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook on two unrelated subjects.  On the first, I stated the following:

Andy Linsenbardt wants help with a list of bands or groups worse than Coldplay. The only one I can come up with so far is LFO.

That status update started a discussion spanning 96 comments across 10 or so people.  I followed it up with this:

For those that don’t want to read through the 89 comments in my previous status posting, the following was decided, after much deliberation: ICP < Nickelback < Creed < Coldplay.

On the other side of the coin, for a completely separate issue, I posted a story published by the Des Moines Register regarding abortion laws in Nebraska and how a particular couple were forced to do something they didn’t want to.  The feed this post spawned went for 51 comments across 7 or 8 people.

In both of these unrelated discussions, involving many individuals of completely different ideologies, we were able to “hold it together” and not get (too) personal.  We were completely capable of providing opinions without the need to tell each other that we were bad people or completely wrong (well, aside from the occasional sarcastic comment in that first thread…).  For the most part, it was a respectful discussion from ranging viewpoints.  On the latter discussion, I don’t think we came to anything close to a consensus, yet I feel we left more informed on the opposing viewpoints.

While the first status update was largely a “dig” at Coldplay (much-deserved…), I wasn’t thinking that I’d get nearly that many comments.

On the latter one, I kinda did, which brings me to the following point:

I think the thing missing most from the national discourse today is honesty and openness, especially from those positioned in The Middle.  There are quite a few folks out there on the political ultra-right or ultra-left that have their signs waving on the picket line, the so-called “activists” you could say.  These people are being very successful in pulling their ranks further and further from each other, making it appear that there is only a very distant “middle-ground” left between them.

It’s just sad when Facebook is the last bastion of reasonable discourse.

I won’t get into the abortion debate here or anything, but it’s safe to say that, aside from the folks out there with “Pro-Choice” and “Pro-Life” signs going on marches, the issue is frequently ignored in the middle.  I think it’s mostly out of fear, as those in the middle are afraid of being labeled one or the other, and what that may mean.  It’s the kind of issue we frequently ignore in schools.  Going to Lutheran and Methodist churches all my life, it’s an issue that’s frequently ignored there, as well.  It just seems as if there isn’t really a middle ground in that particular debate, let alone a variety of others.  People are afraid of the subject.  They keep it locked away.

In a related fashion, all too often, I hear of people not wanting to say anything about politics, or about religion, or about culture, because they are afraid of offending friends of theirs, or of “getting into it” to the point where they may not end up speaking with someone for a few days (or weeks…or ever again…).  These are people that don’t want to bring it up around the dinner table with their spouse, or with other family members.  Those that don’t want to bring it up at work so they don’t end up getting into some kind of long argument with their co-workers.  And most relevant to this particular post, those that don’t want to post anything on Facebook or other social networking sites so their friends (or future employers…) can’t see what they think about various issues.

And therein lies the problem.  If people aren’t willing to defend their positions, with intelligence and respect, then those on the ultra-left and those on the ultra-right with their signs will have effectively won.  They will have won by scaring those in the middle away from getting into the debate in the first place.  By causing them to hide from the discussion, keeping the issue from ever reaching any kind of moderate consensus.  Without a voice firmly planted in The Middle, then the opposing sides continue to pull apart with little to hold them together.

The problem is nothing new, and it exists in other instances.  Case in point: Years ago, at a Wesley House float trip, I had a great conversation with a Methodist pastor I greatly respect.  We were lamenting the decreasing population of Methodist campus ministries, while others were increasing in number.  In his view, the other ministries were offering a more “black and white” interpretation of the world, and the Bible, while Methodists (and ELCA, and others…) were allowing for the fact that there are “greys:” that black and white weren’t the only options.  The people we were trying to provide a service for weren’t interested in The Middle: they chose their extremes, likely because they wanted to be told what to think  The Middle, to them, was a scary place to be, a place where you may have to question things, have to think about the world, and have to make decisions.  Picking an extreme, there’s a clear-cut answer: you accept it and move on.

On a political spectrum, I technically fall center-left.  I’m a Moderate, by most interpretations.  But my thoughts on a variety of subjects, to some, would paint me as an ultra-leftist (because “The Middle” has been pulled more and more toward the Conservative side of the spectrum, but that’s another issue altogether…).

You can position yourself in the middle of an argument and still have strong feelings about it.  It’s possible.  And I try to do it all the time.

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A Lesson in Customer Service

Brooke signed us up for Amazon Prime last year, a $79/yr service that grants you various benefits at Amazon.com.  The most well-known service is free 2-day shipping on anything you purchase.  As we now live, for all intents an purposes, in the middle-of-nowhere, we figured it would be a useful service to take advantage of.  Typically, we can wait 2 days for an item, and now that we both have Android smartphones, we can shop for stuff in town, scan the barcode of the item with our phone, and see if we can get it cheaper from Amazon.com.

As I was shopping for components for my new web server box (which this site is now running on!), I was looking at Newegg.com, the computer company I typically buy components from.  I have no problem with Newegg, of course, and they tend to provide a wealth of details on each component, something Amazon doesn’t do very well, yet I still checked with Amazon to see if I could get the same thing(s) from them instead.  Turned out I could, and because we already had Amazon Prime, that meant I could get the same things for almost the same price, but not have to pay $13 in shipping.  And the $13 in shipping would have been regular Ground shipping.  In order to get the same, 2-day shipping through UPS, the same items would have cost $38.  Through FedEx, for some reason, it would have been $59.

So yeah, almost in a single purchase, Amazon Prime justified itself.

I started assembling the system last Thursday night, inbetween various baby duties.  Unfortunately, the thing wouldn’t turn on.  I had the components installed in the box, tried a few things, re-seated various wires and jumpers, and couldn’t get the monitor to turn on.  This, obviously, did not please me.  It could have been a few different things, but I eventually tracked it down: the power supply was, likely, not working properly (as another power supply I had booted the new motherboard just fine), and the RAM seemed like it had problems (as the BIOS screen would only work with one stick in, and it was a specific stick).

I did a bit more research on Friday on the interwebs and brought my multi-meter home from work, in order to try checking the output of the power supply.  Some folks online that had written in about the case I bought, which came with the power supply, had said that their power supply was “dead on arrival,” so they had to get replacements.  There was one poster, however, that said they had to “turn it on and off a few times, and eventually it worked.”  Therefore, I didn’t want to write off the power supply until I’d let it sit overnight.  The multi-meter would tell me definitively whether it was generating any power or not for the system.

Long-story-short, I tried it again on Saturday morning.  The multi-meter said that the power supply was providing power to the motherboard.  I plugged it back in to the full system and the thing booted.  I dunno.

The RAM, on the other hand, is still presenting problems, which brings us to the “Customer Service” part of this story.  I bought two sticks of RAM for $40 from Amazon, but only one of them worked.  In order to return/exchange them, both sticks have to go back.  Annoying, ’cause I’d like to continue using one of them until the replacements arrive.  So I log in to Amazon, go to my “Orders,” and select “Return” to go through the process of exchanging the RAM.  In then end, Amazon had me print off a UPS slip that lets me return the RAM at no shipping charge to me, and I have 30 days to do it.  And along with that, they’re automatically shipping me an identical replacement.  The kicker to this story, though, is that they’re shipping me the identical replacement Next Day, so I’ll have it tomorrow.

So, in the end, I can wait until the replacement arrives before sending back the defective product, and they’re sending the replacement as quickly as they can at no additional charge to me, even though I used Two Day shipping the first time around.

That, I tell you, is customer service.

Good on you, Amazon.com.

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T.M.I.

I have been slowly catching up on podcasts from late last year now that I’m back at work.  I was listening to one yesterday from NPR’s On Point discussing the Wikileaks scandal, but moreover, the world that we now inhabit with regards to leaks, the internet, and overall availability of information.

Toward the end of the segment, the host, Tom Ashbrook, was talking to the former Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte.  He asked Negroponte how we, the United States, would/could deal with a leak like this.  Negroponte answered that they would do their best to prevent it from happening in the first place, placing greater restrictions on the individuals that can access certain information, and then also help re-classify information that should be classified versus that which really doesn’t need to be.  Ashbrook kept pressing him on the matter, asking: “What would you do in the event of a leak?  How would you stop it?”  Negroponte kept going back to “stop it at the source.”  It was getting really annoying to keep hearing the same question over and over, when I kept repeating the answer in my head as often as Ashbrook could ask.

The correct answer?

You do nothing.

There is nothing you can do.  Once the Internet has your information, you’re done.  It’s out there and you can’t stop it.  You can shut down a server or two, but the information propagates to such a degree that you can never fully eradicate any of it.

As happens frequently, this exchange got me thinking about generational differences and their views on the Internet as a whole, specifically to what degree each generation seems to embrace the sharing of information.  [Note: I have talked about this before…]  For those of us that grew up in parallel with the Internet (i.e. it was growing as we were growing), I think the transition was easy.  We learned to live together, gradually sharing some bits of information and withholding others.  We were using the Internet before Google even existed, when all you could do is use Yahoo! to find a website that you had to manually file within their database.  There was no Facebook.  There was no YouTube.  Primarily we were takers of information rather than providers, at least until we became more comfortable contributing to this new ecosystem.

The generation(s) older than me have taken to the Internet at a slower pace (at least in terms of creating new information…), largely because they’re more cautious.  Quite a few folks from those generations are now using e-mail and Facebook, and consequently are now starting to rely on it to a greater degree than ever before.  You can still see the delay in overall adoption in things like smart phones though, where these people are just now starting to get into the mode where they think complete and total connectivity is a necessity.  This is likely because their children and grandchildren are also more accessible, so if they want to contact them, this is how they have to do it.

It’s the younger generation(s) that I’m more curious about.  These people are growing up in a world where the Internet “just exists,” much like air and gravity.  It’s a reality.  It’s something you live with and use.  I guess the difference goes back to information sharing, the older generation never really shared things and stayed more private, my generation gradually let certain things slip and get onto the Internet, and the younger generation never really learned the restraint that should be applied to certain things rather than others.  However, I imagine that these kids are much more attuned into “what should go on the Internet” and “what should not go on the Internet” than I give them credit for.  They’ve seen things happen to their friends when something gets posted that shouldn’t, likely causing them to think twice about their choices.

Personally, I’ve always held the view that whatever I post on the Internet is viewable by The World At Large.  Anything I post on Facebook (and there are quite a few politics-based links I post up there…my views are pretty clear…) can be seen by practically anyone.  Anything on this blog can be seen by absolutely anyone.  Any future job prospects that I have will likely go a quick Google search on my name and this blog will be the first thing that comes up.  They can go back almost 6 years and read all about me, my family and what I’ve been up to.  Am I proud of all of it?  Not necessarily, but I also don’t hide from it.  That information is representative of who I was and who I am today.  If you want a snapshot of Andy Linsenbardt and all he’s about, this is where to find it.  Freely available and open for all to see.

This is also how I view information in general.  Sure, we have an inclination to hide things, but more often than not, we’re trying to hide things that we’re embarrassed about.  I plan on teaching Meg and her siblings someday that the Internet is a very useful tool, but anything you post on it can be viewed at any time.  If you don’t want anyone to see a certain picture of you drinking while you’re underage, don’t put it online.  Someone will find it.  Even if you delete it, it’s saved on a server somewhere that someone can get.  Anything that could potentially embarrass you should stay far away from the Internet.  Really, though, you just shouldn’t actually do things that could potentially embarrass you someday, but that’s another matter…

No matter what generation you come from, “honesty is the best policy” still applies to you.  Everyone is entitled to secrets, but there are some things that may as well be out in the open, freely accessible, so that others know more about how and how to deal with you.  It ends up saving time in the “getting to know you” stage.  You think about better strategies when dealing with others when you know more about them.  Sure, you learn how to take advantage of them as well, but hopefully this kind of openness spreads the naivety pretty thin.

Which brings us back to the Wikileaks deal from last year.  A lot of people were concerned that this information could hurt America’s standing in the world, and hurt our relationships with other nations.  Information that the United States was hiding was perceived as something to be embarrassed about, even if, at first glance, that information was innocuous.  In the end, the complaint that this leak somehow disrupted the fabric of space-time and all is lost is moot: if you really didn’t want that information out, then you should have classified it differently.

However, the larger point is this: perhaps most of that information should have been out in the open anyway.  Much as reading this blog gives the reader some extra insight into me, perhaps a lot of that information provides extra insight into the world we inhabit and the cultures we interact with.

And I don’t see a problem with that.

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The Digital Generation

I was listening to NPR’s OnPoint podcast from November 2nd, where Tom Ashbrook was interviewing Douglass Rushkoff on his “Rules for the Digital Age,” discussing Rushkoff’s new book “Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age.” The discussion bounced around quite a few topics, but largely focused on the thought that people today take their digital presence for granted and that people interact with digital media in such a way that they don’t control the outcome, but instead they are controlled by their digital media.

For example, Rushkoff recounts a story from their PBS “Frontline” documentary, “Digital Nation,” where the producers ask a child: “What is Facebook for?”  The kid’s answer was “for making friends.”  It’s a relatively simple answer, and one that many adults would also provide, yet the true answer is “to make money off of the relationships, likes and dislikes of its users.”

As another example, Rushkoff says that students when we were growing up decades ago would go to the World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica in order to get a “primary source” for our book reports.  Now, for many people, simply using Google is “good enough” to find the information you want.  If you use Google’s Instant Search option, introduced a few months ago, your search results change by the second and are largely influenced by traffic on those sites, yet Google is perfectly capable of adjusting the results so that some pages show up first and others don’t.  For many users, they’re just “The Results” that they get, however the user typically doesn’t think about the vested interest that Google has, as a company, in making money off of their Search ventures.

Rushkoff’s solution, outlined in his “10 Rules,” is generally that people should be more computer literate.  He says that kids today that take a computer class in junior high or high school learn Microsoft Office.  To him, that’s not “computers,” but instead it’s “software.”  You aren’t learning how a computer works.  You aren’t learning about what programming had to go into those programs.  You aren’t learning about the types of programs available (i.e. closed-source vs open-source).  You simply accept what you are given as Gospel without critically thinking.

As I listened to the discussion, especially with regards to Google, I had to think about this past election which saw the rise of the Tea Party.  While many of them would have you believe that they were all educated, intelligent, active people, so many of them were taken advantage of by other third-party groups, primarily corporations.  These are individuals that believed what they found in Google searches without thinking critically about what they were discussing.  Rachel Maddow did an interview in Alaska discussing the Senate race of Tea Party favorite Joe Miller (who lost…), and the supporters outside were angry about all the policies that Attorney General Eric Holder had supported, and his voting record prior to becoming A.G.  Of course, Maddow points out that Holder never held public office, and thus had no voting record.  But these people believed it because that’s what they were told.  It’s what they read on the internet.  As if “The Internet” is to be equated with the Encyclopedia Britannica of old.

Rushkoff’s larger point, in my view, is that people today simply don’t have the critical thinking skills to handle what digital media has provided.  So much information is now provided with so many more sources that individuals can’t effectively wade through it and discern whether what they are reading is fact or fiction.

I’m not sure that a better understanding of computers alone would be enough to combat the problem, honestly.  Rushkoff suggests that some basic programming skills would be helpful for people to know as well, much as people thousands of years ago had to learn to write when “text” was invented.  He believes that the invention of text empowered people to write laws, to hold each other accountable, and to be more than they were.  He believes that giving everyone basic programming skills would do something similar, where they would be more likely to know and understand why a computer does what it does, and how the programs on your system interact with programs on the internet as a whole.  I barely have any programming training and I think I’ve got a relatively decent handle on how the internet works, but most of that was self-taught over nearly two decades.  I certainly don’t think it would hurt to have kids learn some basic programming, but they’re already missing the boat in various other subjects that programming is surely on the bottom of the list.

To me, it’s the critical thinking part that needs to be improved.  With some basic critical thinking skills, hopefully, people would be more informed about everything they do in their daily lives: in raising their children, in voting for elected offices, in thinking about where their food comes from, in choosing which car to drive, in where they get their information, and so on.

But hey: if people want to learn more about computers, I’m all for it.

P.S. Happy birthday, Mom.  🙂

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“Print” Lives?

I’ve had magazine subscriptions of various types for years now, beginning with Boy’s Life (the Boy Scout magazine…) and various computer game mags, and then eventually to Popular Science and Consumer Reports.  However, in recent years, there have been a number of news stories discussing “The Death of Print Media,” including magazines and newspapers, primarily.  This is mostly due to the Internet and its ability to get you the same information much, much faster than a weekly or monthly periodical can, and cheaper as well.

Recently, however, certain magazines have begun to toy with digital versions of their material.  These are magazines that have either dropped in subscribers to a substantial degree, or have already folded for a variety of reasons.  For example, while TIME Magazine is apparently weathering the storm, Newsweek just got hammered by a drop in subscribers to the point where they were looking for a buyer.  Gourmet Magazine shipped its final issue at the end of 2009.  On the gaming side, Electronic Gaming Monthly was shuttered at the beginning of 2009.

Some magazines have gotten around this problem by increasing the quality of their material.  Edge Magazine, a gaming periodical in Europe, has proven to be successful by starting to use thicker, glossy paper, raising the perceived value of their product over their competitors.  The magazine just looks good sitting on your table, with its larger paper and glossy images.  It’s the kind of thing you want to keep on your coffee table, as opposed to other magazines that are constantly including more and more ads and thinner, newspaper-like print.  They also limit the number of individual magazines they produce, only making enough to send to subscribers (all over the world…) and keep a limited number on news stands.  This helps keep their costs down, rather than making more magazines than the public will buy.

Alternatively, some of the aforementioned publications are going digital…and in a big way.  The advent of the iPad has allowed Newsweek and Sports Illustrated (amongst others) to get weekly content to readers on-the-go very cheaply, effectively replicating web-based content in a magazine-oriented format.  You can turn the pages as you would with a book, but now making a touch-based gesture on your iPad screen.  The images are very colorful, print easy-to-read, and perhaps most important of all, they can now include hyperlinks and video content that you can’t with a regular magazine.  Recently, it was also  announced that Gourmet Magazine was relaunching as Gourmet Live, also releasing on iPad (announcement video below).

Similarly, Electronic Gaming Monthly was bought out by the guy that started the magazine in the first place back in the 90s and relaunched in both print and digital formats.  For a demo, click this link and it will take you to a freely available copy of the magazine (pictured above) so you can see what it looks and feels like (and you should “Experience in Full Screen”).  While you may not be interested in video games in the least, at least you’ll get an idea of what is possible through digital distribution of magazines.  EGM also has an iPad version, but this particular example is representative of what you can experience in any web browser.

So, is “print dead?”  Probably not, but it’s definitely evolving.  Everything I’ve heard suggests that print journalism majors are finding it difficult to get jobs once they graduate from college, as many newspapers and magazines are scaling back, if not shutting their doors.  The primary hurdle appears to be advertising, as very, very few companies have been able to make it with their large-scale operations solely on the advertising revenues of web-based content.  The New York Times tried unsuccessfully to require subscriptions on portions of their website years ago (and they’re trying again in 2011), but our culture tends to shun pay-for content on the internet, at least with regards to news.  There are just so many blogs available, or other free sites, that get you the same information for no money at all.

Personally, I’m on board with a model like Edge or EGM is using, one where they produce magazines in limited quantity for the people that want it, but otherwise provide digital versions for those that don’t care either way.  Honestly, I still read everything on blogs and only go to the “primary source” sites when linked there.  I like the way EGM has set up their content, but I think I’d rather have an iPad or some other similar device for that purpose, rather than use my heavier and more unwieldy laptop (imagine sitting in bed and reading…would you rather hold your laptop or your iPad?).

I think a lot of people value the content they get from magazines and newspapers, as the journalists that write them get access to news and information they otherwise can’t.  Bloggers generally don’t have correspondents in Afghanistan, so they rely on organizations like NPR and the Associated Press to gather the news, and bloggers just put their own spin on it and spread it as well.  We still need primary news sources to survive this transition from “old media” to “new media!”

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Collecting Data

So, I am still maintaining the Webster Hills UMC website, which will hopefully undergo a redesign in the upcoming months (depending on whether I get the “go ahead,” and when they decide what system they want to use…but that’s another story). Within the last few months, I instituted use of Google Analytics in order to help track where the web traffic was coming from, what search queries led people to the site, and generally which pages on the site visitors were viewing.

I instituted the same system on this website as well. We were running a similar bit of software to do the same thing, but the Google system is quite a bit more powerful and, as it’s built into Google, it’s very easy for me to access anywhere and look at who is visiting Linsenbardt.net.

Google Analytics tells me a variety of things, such as:

  • 57% of visitors use Firefox; 22% use IE; and 16% use Chrome
  • 26% use cable internet; 16% use DSL; and the remainder use other things (T1, OC3, etc.)
  • 86% of visitors are “returning,” and 14% are “new” to the site.
  • Most visitors are from Missouri (and now Iowa).  Wisconsin, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are the next in line for visitors to the site.

I find the “keywords” to be amongst the most interesting data, however.  The top keyword used to find the site is “andy linsenbardt,” followed by various others, including “brooke and andy” (which, by the way, is crazy that searching for “brooke and andy” on Google takes you to our site…as if we’re the only ones on the internet?!).

The keyword that prompted me to write this post in the first place, however, was “lee strobel drop denomination.”  Sure enough, if you search for that phrase, you find a blog posting I wrote way back in 2005 as the sixth down the page.  Apparently, in one of his books, Lee Strobel suggested that it’s alright for churches to drop the denomination from their name (e.g. rather than “Webster Hills United Methodist Church,” call it “Webster Hills Community Church”).  Incidentally, if you search for “Lee Strobel is an Idiot” on Google, my blog post comes in at #10.  Not bad!

On a side-note, I’m starting to get a bit bored with the WordPress theme we’ve been using. It’s really only been up for a few months (September?), but with the newly announced WordPress 3.0 upgrade, I figure I may make a few changes. Could take a bit – depends on how motivated I am!

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Of Facebook and Privacy

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Toward the end of May, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that the company was revamping their privacy controls yet again. It has become something of a yearly (or more) change at Facebook, as they’re constantly changing things “behind the scenes” that affect the end user’s applications, posts, photos, etc. Part of the problem that Facebook has had, overall, is that they tend to make changes that affect users globally, in the sense that no matter what their privacy settings were, they are then changed without informing them as to what is going on.

The picture above shows the simplified Privacy Controls. Bear in mind that all these controls have existed in Facebook forever, but as Zuckerberg describes it, they became so “granular” that it became confusing for the end user. It used to be that you could set all of these things with a series of “check boxes,” but now all you have to do is select that only “Friends” can view your information, or “Friends of Friends” (allowing a little less restriction, in case a “Friend” refers to something you posted and then a “Friend” of theirs comments on it), or you can make your information available to Facebook at large. All this can be done with a single click. Or, you can pick a Custom profile that allows for the granular control you’ve always had.

I listen to podcasts practically all the time, and this particular story has been covered over the last few weeks on NPR’s Science Friday, as well as NPR’s On Point. The Science Friday piece is shorter than the On Point one, if you care to listen, but the discussions and the callers all provide very interesting debate on the subject. The discussion ranges widely, with mostly adults that didn’t grow up with the internet worrying about young people that are using the service without regard to their future. They point out that the business model Facebook uses to get money in the first place (i.e. advertisements) relies on freely distributed information from each person, as essentially, your information (e.g. likes/dislikes) is what is being sold to advertisers, thereby funding your use of Facebook.

In having conversations on this matter with Brooke and Kristen, they rightly point out that things being posted on Facebook aren’t entirely under our control. Hypothetically, a person could be out at a bar and have a picture taken of them, and then have that picture posted on Facebook and “tagged” with their name on it. Of course, as they both pointed out, if the individual wasn’t participating in anything they would be ashamed of, they’d have nothing to worry about. Keep in mind that, if anyone posts a picture and “tags” you with it, and you remove that “tag” yourself, it can never be re-added, thereby limiting the ability for anyone to search for that incriminating picture with your identification attached to it.

In my case, I’ve used Facebook for years, but I have always kept some amount of control on what I post on it. I do my best to keep my Facebook profile as uninteresting as possible, yet still keep other people abreast of what I’m up to. The service, for me, is helpful in keeping me in touch with other people that I may have otherwise lost touch with over the past decade. For that, I am very grateful in having Facebook available. At the same time, my generation grew up with the advent of the internet, where it took minutes to download a single photo. Generations now are entering a different world where social networking is almost considered a requirement before you even enter middle school (Facebook’s Terms of Use suggest that you be 13 before using the service. Obviously, it’s up to parents to police that). Kids now are taking cell phones to elementary school, which was unheard of back in the 90s. The newer generations are dealing with privacy in ways that my generation never had to.

Ultimately, I come down on the subject in the following ways. Facebook is a service that is free to use, yet certainly isn’t required. No one is forced to use the service. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, no one is forced to post things onto the service for all to see. It is up to the individual to decide whether a). they want to be a member of Facebook in the first place, and b). whether they want to post anything or not.

So, with all this under consideration, I come to a related (but thus far unaddressed) question: Is it possible that Facebook, and the internet in general, acts as a distributed “Big Brother” such that everyone (that cares…) ends up acting better than they otherwise would in public situations for fear that anything they do could be recorded and posted somewhere?

I guess we’ll find out in the next few years. Somehow, I kinda doubt it.

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Carol of the Christmas Pickle

So, many a year ago, we were given a plastic pickle Christmas tree ornament because, apparently, it’s something of a German tradition (though Wikipedia says it’s “completely of American origin”) to hide a pickle on the tree and have the kids look for it. The first one to find the pickle is supposed to get an extra present (although, neither Kristen nor I ever did!).

Anyway, with this in mind, please enjoy the following! 🙂

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A tele-what?

So, I was listening to an interesting “On Point With Tom Ashbrook” from NPR during my various runnings around tonight whilst they discussed young people in the digital age. They were largely talking about how youth today, whether in middle school or college are constantly “connected” via text messaging, e-mail, Facebook and IM. The discussion was sparked by a recent study saying that having your kids on the internet all the time may not be a bad thing, necessarily (a link to the study is on the On Point website).

It didn’t really get me thinking about anything specific, but a little about my history with similar forms of “connectedness.” My oldest IM name is alinsenb17…which means I started it when I was 17…which means that I will have been using AIM for a decade next year (eeesh!). Before that, I was already e-mailing “pen pals” of sorts and using another chat program, ICQ, that I don’t really use anymore (if I remember right, I was using ICQ for a good amount of time before AIM, meaning that I’ve actually been IMming for longer than 10 years already).

It’s also rather crazy just how many people are online at a given time, and generally available to “chat.” At the time of this writing (9:00 PM CST), there are 14 people on my Facebook Chat, 12 on Google Chat, 2 on MSN Messenger, and 7 on AIM. Nice way to stay connected, and still kinda crazy that all these people still use IM services when text messaging has largely taken over for instant messaging via computer. There was a time, back in my first year at Truman, where I’d have 9 AIM windows open at one time, with 9 separate conversations going at once…which was (obviously) difficult to manage.

I guess the part that really intrigues me about this is that I’ve been doing IM for 10 years, and e-mail for a little longer, and there are still people that don’t have computers, let alone an e-mail account, let alone an IM account of some form. I realize it’s a “different generation,” but I wonder how it’ll all, eventually, equal out. We’re already starting to see some integration of all these protocols, where one can couple their Facebook status with text messaging, or both of those with their Twitter account (which is a separate beast entirely).

Will it come to a point where all of these separate forms of communication (social networking, text messaging, e-mail, IM, voice/video chat) are all integrated into a single protocol? Where someone can communicate with someone else with the touch of a button?

Oh wait…that’s called a “telephone“…