Social Networking’s Invasion of Privacy Just Got a Whole Lot Messier

Today, computer software giant Microsoft announced that their latest version of MS-Office will integrate seamlessly with Facebook.

Previous versions of the world’s most popular set of applications – which include Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint – have allowed users to connect to LinkedIn using a plug-in called MS-Outlook Social Connector. The latest version of MS-Office not only has this plug-in built directly into the interface, it pulls far more information from Facebook than it did from LinkedIn.

From pulling Facebook photos into MS-Outlook, so now you’ll know what the other person you are emailing looks like, to revealing all their status updates, news feeds, even their wall posts – so you not only know what they like and are up too, but who their friends are, and what their friends like and are up too – all of this – and more is now publicly available to anyone you email using MS-Outlook, or any of the other MS-Office applications.

Cool sounding at first, but then think about all the personal information being shared. Do you really want your boss to see the drunken photos of you that you posted after celebrating your last birthday?

What if you are looking for work – do you want potential employers to see you vent off your frustrations about your current or past employer thanks to having access to your newsfeed and status updates?

Think you are very social network savvy, and you are extremely cautious about what you post on Facebook?

Doesn’t matter – if a friend posts something which you just might not want the whole world to know, too damn bad – because wall posts and news feeds are now shown directly in MS-Outlook.

So that video of you doing an air guitar rendition of Stairway to Heaven in your underwear that your girlfriend posted on her Facebook, could now be playing on a colleagues computer. Worse – that colleague can simply forward the email to everyone in your office so even your coworkers without Facebook accounts will see you dancing in your undies.

Social networking has come a long way in a very short time. It wasn’t all that long ago that unless you actually knew someone personally, you’d never know that person at all.

But thanks to the information powerhouse of the Internet, just type a name into a search engine, and you can see what they look like, who they work for, their kids names, the kind of car they drive, and even some of their silly photos from real-world social activities.

And thanks to Microsoft’s new and more direct integration of Facebook – the most popular social networking site – you don’t even have to search for the information. It’ll just appear right in your MS-Outlook inbox.

Not that social networking is all bad. Knowing more about a client may earn you brownie points and make your job easier.

If you discover that a hard to read client has just come back from a business trip in San Francisco, for example, you could use that as an opening to try and break the ice. Seeing photos of that client, with a beautiful woman wrapped around him while on that trip may prompt you to ask about his wife and their shared experiences on that trip, only to find out, that he didn’t take his wife on that “business” trip.

Uh-oh.

Awkward.

Thanks social networking!

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Want to Get Laid? There’s An App for That

How far would you push the bounds of technology to get what you want? Would you go so far as to use it to select a sexually compatible partner?

Today, MEDL Mobile released an application for Apple’s iPhone to assist men and women evaluate prospective sexual partners.

Free for the first two weeks, the application – or “app” in Apple lingo – let’s you create a sexual profile based on six categories of likes, dislikes, positions, fetishes and kinks, and then compares them to other user profiles using the same application.

The application connects to other iPhones using the BUMP app, which allows iPhone users to exchange contact information by “bumping” phones.

Don’t worry about airing out your dirty laundry to complete strangers – the application keeps your preferences private, it only shares whether or not the pairing is a good sexual match, leaving you to still make the first move. Though there is an option to post the number of BUMPS you’ve participated in to social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, and you can always share your success or failure stories online.

In our ever increasingly techno-dependent world, this was just bound to happen – an application which helps the one-night stand.

Although sexual attraction forms the basis for many first and second glances, it can never replace a good meal and fine conversation to really get to know someone. So if you’re looking for applications which will help you find that long-term soul mate, this isn’t the “app” for you.

However, if you’re looking for an easy way to break the ice with someone who shares the same sexual preferences you do, you may just get lucky.

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There Just Aren’t Enough Days in the Year for Quit Facebook Day

Two Toronto, Canada men created a website to encourage the 400-million-plus users of the world’s largest social networking site to abandon it, because of privacy concerns.

Joseph Dee and Matthew Milan created the www.quitfacebookday.com website, calling for Facebook users to quit en mass today, because Facebook is too hard to use.

Oh boo hoo you.

Yes, there is a complex web of settings to go through, but all it takes is a little time and even a child could figure out how to set their settings just the way they want.

And Facebook has since resolved this issue – last week their CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes to make it easier to protect private information.

Having a day of protest for a website?

Speak of lazy protesting. Back in my day, you would have grabbed a placard, your running shoes and a megaphone, and walked a picket line.

That’s how you make a statement. Or rather did.

I think that’s what concerns me more than the 6,000 nuts that joined the Quit Facebook Day website – the lack of real social awareness thanks to technological advances like the Internet.

These days, it is all too easy to create some online site to badmouth whoever or whatever you want, without any real thought.

And what’s even worse, is millions of people can join into these causes, with just as little thought or effort as the causes creators.

SO what you end up with, are a bunch of people YELLING AND SCREAMING online for reasons which they themselves don’t fully comprehend.

All it takes is for someone with an understanding of the issues to cleverly manipulate these naive protesters, and you end up with a group of people, yelling and screaming online, for something they didn’t intend too.

Either way, it certainly raises concerns over grass roots democracies which formed the basis of our current governments, via real protests over real issues, with really intelligent, thoughtful and aware individuals that actually knew what they were protesting and why.

Many of our greatest leaders have risen from the protest movement of the 1960’s – former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau was known to cause a ruckus in his university days, even current American President Barack Obama was known to take a stand on controversial issues in his pre-political days – much as he does today. Just look President Obama’s healthcare and fiscal reforms – they are very clearly taken in part from his younger days of action.

But these days, protests are days of inaction – by asking anyone with half-a-brain to “sign” online petitions, mass email everyone they know, and even going so far as to quit using online sites.

Can’t get any more inactive than to quit.

Inaction leads to no action – it is a basic law of physics, which just so happens to work with policies and procedures just as well as it does an apple falling from a tree.

Does this mean the end of grass roots politics – and in turn – the end of real knowledge, power and good governance?

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Texting I’m All Thumbs

You know you’re old when the kid sitting next to you on the park bench is happily typing on her mobile phone with her thumbs as fast as she can talk, meanwhile, you are struggling typing “Hi” using every finger possible.

“How many messages have you sent?” I ask the kid as I continue to struggle with my “thumbing.”

“Fifteen,” she says, not even breaking her concentration as she continues texting.

Even in the office, I am starting to feel like an out dated paper weight, as I watch the new generation on the corporate ladder text their way to the top. In meetings, I see these new young people sitting off on the corner of the table, thumbs moving so fast you can see the motion blur.

“One meeting,” I interrupt.

“Uh?” they scoff.

“May we have one meeting, PLEASE?” I scold, as I sternly tell the new kid in the office to stop texting and pay attention.

That’s another thing – attention spans just don’t exist anymore, everyone under thirty these days seems to pre-occupied with their digital devices.

Evrythn is shortened thse dys. SO even if I were to take away the kid’s BlackBerry, I’d never understand what was on it.

The short forms used for texting help the kid thumb her messages lightening quick, but a side effect is she talks the way she texts, so half the time when you talk to her, you haven’t a clue what she just said.

I wonder if scientists have come up with a long horrible sounding phrase for that condition?

If they aren’t texting a friend, tweeting their latest thought on Twitter, chatting on Facebook, then they are fiddling with their MP3 music player, or they are watching a video on their mobile device, or they are shooting a “pic” to send to their buddies.

With their heads constantly buried in their electronic gadgets, it’s a wonder they can see where they are going.

I swear the new kid never looks up from her BlackBerry.

Whatever happened to the old days, when people used to actually talk to each other face-to-face? Those were the days, when you could actually see how the team was doing, instead of being texted emoticons – punctuation marks combined together to graphically represent emotions.

Since when did :) replace a smile?

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You know you’re old when the kid sitting next to you on the park bench is happily typing on her mobile phone with her thumbs as fast as she can talk, meanwhile, you are struggling typing “Hi” using every finger possible.

“How many messages have you sent?” I ask the kid as I continue to struggle with my “thumbing.”

“Fifteen,” she says, not even breaking her concentration as she continues texting.

Even in the office, I am starting to feel like an out dated paper weight, as I watch the new generation on the corporate ladder text their way to the top. In meetings, I see these new young people sitting off on the corner of the table, thumbs moving so fast you can see the motion blur.

“One meeting,” I interrupt.

“Uh?” they scoff.

“May we have one meeting, PLEASE?” I scold, as I sternly tell the new kid in the office to stop texting and pay attention.

That’s another thing – attention spans just don’t exist anymore, everyone under thirty these days seems to pre-occupied with their digital devices.

Evrythn is shortened thse dys. SO even if I were to take away the kid’s BlackBerry, I’d never understand what was on it.

The short forms used for texting help the kid thumb her messages lightening quick, but a side effect is she talks the way she texts, so half the time when you talk to her, you haven’t a clue what she just said.

I wonder if scientists have come up with a long horrible sounding phrase for that condition?

If they aren’t texting a friend, tweeting their latest thought on Twitter, chatting on Facebook, then they are fiddling with their MP3 music player, or they are watching a video on their mobile device, or they are shooting a “pic” to send to their buddies.

With their heads constantly buried in their electronic gadgets, it’s a wonder they can see where they are going.

I swear the new kid never looks up from her BlackBerry.

Whatever happened to the old days, when people used to actually talk to each other face-to-face? Those were the days, when you could actually see how the team was doing, instead of being texted emoticons – punctuation marks combined together to graphically represent emotions.

Since when did :) replace a smile?

Ensuring Your Facebook Account Doesn’t Harm You

Over the weekend, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart expressed concerns in a newspaper story about the world’s most popular social networking site, Facebook.

Last week, Facebook changed the way its estimated 400-million members could share information – most without really knowing it. The thumbs-up symbol with the innocuous “like” next to it has been a familiar and easy way for Facebook users to positively comment on a friend’s posting on the social networking site.
But as of last week, that like symbol will not be exclusive to the Facebook domain – now anyone on any partnering Internet site can click that symbol.

For Step-By-Step Instructions on How to Protect Your Private Personal Information on Facebook, scroll down to the end of this article.

At first glance, it seems pretty harmless -- if you like something on your travels through cyberspace, what’s the harm in telling your Facebook friends?

But just by clicking that thumbs-up symbol you are automatically linking your Facebook account to that participating site’s, and the next thing you know, someone you don’t know has access to information all about you – from your name, age and sex, to your hometown, even your email address, and telephone numbers, if you provided that information to Facebook when you initially joined.

“I’m very concerned about these changes,” Stoddart says in the article. “More than half-a-million developers will have access to this data.”

Stoddart goes on to explain how unlike previously, where Facebook’s policies forced developers to delete this personal information within 24-hours, the new changes allow developers, and many other partner companies participating in the new “like” program, to retain personal information indefinitely.

Unscrupulous marketers could use this personal information for any reason beyond the traditional marketing of goods and services for sale.

It could increase the amount of scams, trying to lure unsuspecting Facebook users away from their hard earned coin. We’ve all seen those annoyingly obvious emails from some long lost relative in some third-world country, trying desperately to contact us about collecting an outrageously large inheritance.
Those scams may not be so obvious if the scam artists have obtained your personal information – in fact it could look very legitimate. All the worse – you voluntarily gave these scum bags your personal private information just by using Facebook’s “like” feature.

Other malicious uses could be to blackmail you, or to harass you, forcing you to pay up just to get those you willingly and without thinking gave your personal private information too, off your back.

Not that the partner companies are all bad seeds, but that could change. Partner companies can keep your personal private information forever – even when the company changes hands, or ceases to function.

Think a disgruntled employee can cause a lot of harm? What about a disgruntled employee with yours and millions of other Facebook users addresses, phone numbers, email accounts, and other personal information.

And it isn’t just those partner companies you have to worry about, Facebook isn’t exactly harmless either.

Last year, Stoddart accused Facebook of breaching Canadian privacy laws, by holding onto personal information from deactivated accounts. After a lengthy Canadian government probe, Stoddart’s office made a series of recommendations last July, to assist the American-based company in complying with Canadian privacy laws.

Almost a year later, Facebook has not complied fully with Canadian privacy laws. The recent changes only further complicate the issue, showing that profits over privacy, it is profits that win out at Facebook.

There hasn’t been any word yet from American legislators on Facebook’s privacy rules, and until then, it is up to you to take an active role in protecting your own personal information, or else “facebook” the consequences.

How To Protect Yourself

The best way is simply NOT to click on any thumbs-up “like” icons outside of the Facebook domain(facebook.com) – if you are not on Facebook, no matter how tempting, don’t do it!

As a further way to protect yourself, you should make sure your privacy settings prohibit anyone but those you want (such as your friends) to know your likes and interests. To change these settings:

1. Log In
Login to your Facebook account as you normally do, with your email address and password.

2. Go to the Privacy Settings
From the top-right, click the Accounts drop-down menu, and then select Privacy.
The Privacy Settings options appear.

3. Go to the Privacy Settings for Profile Information
Click the very first item from the top – Profile Information.
The Privacy Settings – Profile Information page appears.

4. Change the Privacy Settings Affecting Likes and Interests
The second item from the top – Likes and Interests – displays who can access your personal profile information every time you click the thumbs-up “like” button, regardless of whether or not you are on the Facebook site. Change this setting to what you are comfortable with from the drop-down menu to the right. For interacting with your Facebook friends, select Only Friends, or for total security (and what we recommend), you can select Customize and limit this to just yourself, or to specific Facebook friends.

5. Save Your Changes and Return Home
Click on the Facebook logo at the top-left to save your changes and return you to your Facebook home page.

You should go through all your privacy settings, to make sure you aren’t sharing personal private information with anyone you don’t feel comfortable with.

Just follow step two above to get to the privacy settings, and go through every single menu, choice and option – if you can select it, and change it – do so.

The most secure options (where available) are None or No One But Me but these will seriously limit your ability to interact with anyone on Facebook. A happy middle-ground is selecting Only Friends which limits the information being shared to only those you are friends with on Facebook, but if the option is available, select Customize and specifically choose which friends or groups of friends to share the information with (this option isn’t available for all settings, though it should be).

There are also settings under the Accounts section, from the Accounts drop-down menu which also affect how your image and personal information are shared with Facebook advertisers and partners.

By limiting these settings to restrict access to your profile, you are going a long way towards protecting the most important asset you have – yourself.

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We're Back!

Welcome to 2010!

Jordan's Daily -- Almost! took a bit of a breather over the holidays. We all need a break, even us nutty newsie muckrackers.

But we are back in full swing, covering hot topics in current affairs from a straight, no bull point of view. We'll keep you in the know about what is really going on around you, in plain English, and with lots of analysis breaking the news into bite-sized pieces for easy digestion.

From the latest in American, European and Canadian politics, to cool high-tech gadgets, gizmos and the wonders of the cosmos, to right here down on planet Earth, we'll give you glimpses into your world just not available in the traditional news media.

Last year, Jordan's Daily -- Almost! grew -- thanks to you, our loyal readers. We added new widgets to apply keywords and related articles automatically to all our posts, giving you even more sources for related information. We redesigned the layout to make this thing easier on your web-soaked eyes. And we were even ranked number one international political blog, and we're constantly in the top 500 of the most active Twitter posters in our hometown of Toronto, Canada.

We'll make more changes, and possibly bring home some more awards in 2010 -- but the main focus of this place isn't to be best in some ranking sites' eyes -- we want to be the best in YOUR eyes. The eyes of our readers.

We'll continue to tackle the issues from an easy-to-understand, no bull perspective. And we'll continue to listen to you, our dedicated readers, for story ideas, opinions, and more, to make this place the best it can be for you.

We always welcome your thoughts, ideas, rants and raves. Email us directly at jordansdaily@columnist.com, join us and debate the issues on our Facebook fan site, and keep current on the latest by following @jordansdaily on Twitter.

To the hundreds of regular readers, to the 25 or so that stop in on a semi-regular basis just to poke around and see what's new, to those newbies that just managed to land here while surfing the net -- t h a n k y o u for reading Jordan's Daily -- Almost!

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The Dire Pleas of Missed Connections

Did something I rarely do – read the “Missed Connections” section in one of those tabloid free daily papers the other day.

Had a good chuckle, wondered what kind of person would actually write these things, and how much the paper was making by charging these characters for providing the service – assuming they do.

“Missed Connections” sections are springing up in the “Classified” sections of newspapers and online sites all over the world. Essentially, people write about others they encountered during their daily journeys, but for whatever reason didn’t get a way to reconnect with that person – no

Image via Wikipedia

phone number, not even an email address to write too. They write in, hoping the exact same person they made eye contact with, or happened to talk to about the weather, reads the very same section of the very same paper or online site, and reaches out to the author.

They read like desperate attempts by stalkers trying to lure victims into their web of psycho-babble. That’s harsh – but if you strike up a conversation with a total stranger on the bus, in the park, or anywhere else, wouldn’t it make more sense to ask that person for their name and number or business card at that point in time? It certainly makes more sense than putting any chance of further meeting into the complete randomness of a “Missed Connection” in a publication which may be read by thousands – but never by the very person you want to read it.

A “Missed Connection” reads something like this:

You were walking your pet poodle through the park. We started talking, sat on the benches by the big oak tree and talked about dogs, work and cooking. I was wearing a green sweater and blue jeans, you wore a neon pink top and hat and bright red shoes. Wanted to ask you out, but too shy, dinner? Call me at . . .

Rejection is one of the hardest things to overcome – I was shy once, I ought know. But if you feel that connection upon meeting someone new, the time is in the here and the now, not the later.

It is like that saying, never cry over spilled milk – it doesn’t make any sense dwelling on the past. Next time you’ll know to make your move. In the here and now, get on with your life.

Apparently though, these “Missed Connections” work. There have been stories about people who met in the park, chatted up a storm, and then went their separate ways. But then they reconnect after one person posts a “Missed Connection,” the responds, and now they are happily married. Speak of target marketing.

Though with all the nuts placing these ads, and all the more nuts responding, makes you wonder just how many of those people who respond are really the person who the ad was meant for? And if the person who wrote the ad even cares – if the shoe fits, wear it – maybe they’ll take

Image by Stitch via Flickr

someone who is close to their intended person?

You have to be pretty desperate to take out any form of personals ad, especially in this high-tech world, where all you need is a computer and an Internet connection to instantly chat with millions of other people, just as lonely and desperate for some company.

That raises the question of safety too – desperate times call for desperate measures. Just how well can you trust a complete stranger who posts one of these ads?

Not everyone who posts a “Missed Connection” is crazy, but how do you really know the person you are calling isn’t one of the few who is?

Though without some risk taking, none of us would ever really meet in life – we’d all be too afraid to leap out of our own universes.

But if a person is desperate enough to take out an ad in a newspaper or online, begging for you to contact them, is that someone a sweet and romantic-type of person, or a stalking crazy psychopath to be avoided?

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MySpace VS Facebook War Over – MySpace Concedes Defeat

The battle to be the largest online social networking site is over with a clear winner and loser. This past Thursday (October 22), the recently anointed chief executive officer of MySpace told the Financial Times that the company is no longer competing with Facebook.

Former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta, who became MySpace’s executive officer a mere six-months ago told the newspaper “Facebook is not our competition, we’re very focused on a different space.”

Image via CrunchBase

This announcement comes as MySpace (owned by Rupert Mudoch’s NewsCorp) has taken a severe – and now fatal – beating. Just this past September, Facebook had over 58 percent of the American social network traffic, while the older, and once larger MySpace’s share crashed to a low of just 30 percent – a substantial drop from their 66 percent score a year ago, according to online research firm Hitwise.

Looking at the unique number of people using each site, again MySpace has taken its lumps. Although MySpace is still one of the most popular websites on the Internet, it averaged about 100 million unique members worldwide, the new king of social networking, Facebook has about 300 million unique users worldwide.

In the six-months since Van Natta took the helm at MySpace, the comp

Image via Wikipedia

any has slashed costs and jobs, eliminating 30 percent of their workforce. They’ve also removed the least used features, which include the weather and classified jobs sections.

MySpace has also been known to have unusual – some may say downright odd – methods for determining membership. When Jordan’s Daily – Almost! signed up for a MySpace account, and had spent over two-hours customizing and designing the page for our reader’s engagement and interaction, within a handful of hours later MySpace deleted the account, without giving any reason whatsoever.

Although this international current affairs blog wasn’t deemed worthy enough to hold membership by the MySpace administrators, one can easily find profiles on MySpace geared towards get-rich quick scams from third-world countries (such as those your junk email filter usually catches), mail order brides from Russia, prostitutes peddling sex for cash, and even one profile which appeared to be someone selling babies from China to couples who couldn’t conceive, and were turned down by adoption agencies.

MySpace executive Van Natta told the Financial Times “the engagement with our users wasn't there.”

Perhaps that’s because those running MySpace did not have a clue as

Image via Wikipedia

to who exactly their users were?

Congratulations to Facebook – a company that takes the time to explore and understand their members and their needs – and a place where Jordan’s Daily – Almost! was welcome from day one. You can check us out on the new champion of the social networking world here.

MySpace may have lost the war, but they are not gone for good. The company is changing direction and trying to reinvent itself to bec

Image via Wikipedia

ome an online music distribution site. It has recently signed agreements with Apple Computer Corp. to run its own iTunes-type of online store, using the computer company’s iLike application.

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American Vice Presidential Candidate LinkedIn to Rescue Career

Only in America could a person striving for one of the highest positions in the country end up looking for work online.

Sarah Palin has posted her resume on LinkedIn – a social networking site with over 50 million people for professional networking and to look for jobs.

The former Alaskan governor’s profile says she is interested in: “Job inquiries, expertise requests, business deals, reference requests and getting back in touch.”

Maybe the last item on that list will prove the most challenging for the Am

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

erican politician, whose old fashioned values conflicted with her own real world.

When Palin was Alaska’s state governor, she was very outspoken about teen pregnancy – she banned condom vending machines in public high schools, claiming that it gave teenagers the wrong message. The only way, according to Palin at the time, to avoid teenage pregnancies, was to convince kids to abstain from sex.

Though that obviously didn’t work in Palin’s own family, her young 16-year-old daughter’s impending pregnancy, and what appeared to be a hastily put together shot-gun wedding for the poor young man who got the kid pregnant, stole the spotlight from Palin’s vice presidential campaign.

So “getting back in touch” for the former governor and American vice presidential candidate may be quite the challenge – who wants to associate with someone who publicly expresses one set of values, but lives another?

Granted, it isn’t Palin’s fault her daughter got knocked up, but it does show just how out of touch her own values and beliefs are with those of society.

Ironically, Palin’s running mate during the same American federal election, John McCain, joined LinkedIn during the campaign, to participate in a section of the site called “LinkedIn Answers.” This section allows participants to ask and get responses from professionals. McCain was answering questions about the campaign, politics, and other topics to promote his presidential footprint.

However, Palin hasn’t joined the social networking site to just provide advice – she’s looking for her next gig.

This raises an interesting issue for social networking sites – what happens when celebrities join the site to network with us regular folk?

Many celebrities are already on most of the popular Internet-based social networking sites – just do a search on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or even Myspace for your favorite singer, actor, politician, or sports hero and you are bound to find them.

For the most part, these online celebrity sightings are an arms-length kind of deal. The celebrity – or more likely someone who works for the celebrity – posts short, brief, updates promoting whatever that person is working on or appearing in. They very rarely – if ever – respond to people who message them. It is usually a one-way form of communications, where you get a quick summary of their latest news.

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Sarah Palin didn’t join LinkedIn just to share advice or information with us non-famous types, she joined to network and connect with us normal types to forward her own career.

It’s like Johnny Depp, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, or even President Barack Obama posting their profiles online, with the hopes of actually connecting with non-famous faces to get a job.

Now Palin isn’t the most famous person out there – she’s not wh

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at is often referred to as the so-called “A-List.” She’s not in the same category as Johnny Depp, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise or even President Barack Obama.

But she’s still a famous person, so how does she know that those who connect with her online are on the up and up? How does she know that out of all the nuts on the Internet – of which there are many – that the people attempting to connect with her online are who they claim to be, and that they have no intention of causing her harm?

Palin is risking more than her pride by taking out a virtual job-hunting profile online. She’s risking her life, and that of her family and friends.

One of the great things about the Internet is its ability to bring people closer together, from all walks of life and from anywhere around the world.

But when a person becomes famous – or maybe that’s infamous as in Palin’s case – you give up some of those freedoms, just to protect your well being and those close to you.

The Pope Mobile – a vehicle with a giant bullet-proof clear glass enclosure -- wasn’t created to encourage and allow everyone to reach out and talk to the highest of world religious leaders. It was created because of the few crazy nuts in society that could cause the Pope – and other famous people like him – harm.

American President Barack Obama doesn’t ride around in an armored vehicle (nicknamed “The Beast”) surrounded by an army of body guards just because it’s cool. He travels this way because his fame makes him a target.

Although you can’t shoot someone over the Internet – at least not yet – you can still inflict quite a bit of damage over the net. It is easy to steal someone’s identity, destroy a person’s reputation by posing as them, or even just use the information they are foolish enough to put online to track them down in the real-world and then kidnap, rape, or kill that person or someone close to that person.

There aren’t any Pope Mobiles or armored vehicles with complimentary armies of body guards for members of LinkedIn or any of the other online social networking sites.

Love her or loathe her, Sarah Palin is taking a big risk by posting her profile on LinkedIn.

She has the right to use these sites just as everybody else. Hell after her fall from grace during the last American federal election, she can use all the help she can get. But whether or not a famous person can achieve the same benefits from these online social networking sites safely, remains to be seen.

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Bubble Boy a Hoax – No? Really?

As fast as our world rotates, some things always stay the same. Take the news media last week, when they all rode the wave of “boy accidentally takes off in a hot air balloon” story.

I was at the office and just passing by one of the many lunch rooms which have TVs tuned to a local all news channel. People were gathered around the TV, watching in horror, live coverage of a giant silver hot air balloon, which supposedly was carrying a little boy who had “accidentally” taken off in it.

I know not everyone that is a parent is really cut out to be a parent, but even the worst parents on the planet wouldn’t let their kid go up in a hot air balloon unattended. And even if they did, just how does one accidentally take off in a hot air balloon?

When I was a reporter, I covered a handful of hot air balloon stories – so I know, these things are typically tethered to the ground by two or more thick, long and strong ropes, tied-off to bolted anchors in the ground. One doesn’t accidentally just go up in one of these contraptions – you have to make a very concerted effort to untie all the ropes from the anchors – and not just one of them – all of them.

Something smelled like rotten tuna as I watched the TV coverage. That and later on when I got home, I heard on the news that the little boy was never i

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n the balloon in the first place, he was always safe on the ground.

Sure enough, the next day, rumors started spreading about how the whole thing was a hoax. Just some media stunt to give some trailer-park trash people the attention they crave. I guess they didn’t qualify for the Jerry Springer Show.

Although the family is obviously not playing with a full deck of cards for even conceiving of this stunt, and children’s aid should be called in to look at the parenting skills and quality of life these nutbars provide to their kids, all the blame rests squarely on the media.

Sure, had a little boy really been caught up in a hot air balloon, drifting over the American mid-west out of control, that would be newsworthy.

But there were so many holes in this story that anyone who’s been in a newsroom long enough should have known it couldn’t possibly be legit.

The news media gets so wrapped up in their own fiction sometimes, they forget to do their job. What exactly is the job they forgot to do.

Think, ask, and report.

THINK about the situation. Really think about it – does it make sense that a little boy could have accidentally taken off in a hot air balloon all by himself – no of course not! Whether or not the little boy was really in the hot air balloon, it was not an accident. Either he was placed in there by someone else and set adrift, he untied the ropes with help from friends (it usually takes more than two people to launch one of these massive balloons), or -- hello – he’s not in the hot air balloon to begin with!

ASK – always ask questions, that’s the primary job of all reporters in the news media. And if you’re thinking – as you should be – you’ll ask questions relevant to the situation which should tell you if you’re chasing a hoax, or your next Pulitzer Prize winning story.

My question – why didn’t anyone ask how a little kid could have launched a hot air balloon all by himself? I’ve seen groups of big strong men struggle to launch these things – here we have one little boy and he’s supposed to have done this all by himself?

Report the news, based on your thoughts, questions and observations. This they did – problem is because the media didn’t think, they didn’t ask the questions that needed to be answered, so their reporting of events was misleading, false, pure speculation and hype.

Thanks to that media hype, everyone is kicking themselves around the water cooler, as the truth about this hoax is revealed.

If you are one of those people kicking yourself because you fell for the prank – don’t. It’s not your fault the news media failed to do their job.

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The Future Now

Yesterday as I was going through my snail-mail, I came across an interesting promotional letter from my telecom provider.

They were advising me that since I subscribed to their home phone service, and digital TV service, that I was receiving a new service completely free – TV Call Waiting.

This new service will display a person’s name and number on my TV screen, as well as on my phones. The feature even allows me to send the call directly to voice-mail simply by hitting a button on my remote control.

Pretty cool tool. It could be annoying, especially if you are glued to the couch watching your favorite shows, but there still is an element of “wow” to this new technological development.

Whether you love it or hate it, the real “wow” factor comes from a little forward-looking thinking. Back in the 1990’s, there was all this talk about the convergence of communications technologies.

The first big convergence brought on by technology was the Internet and the mass media. Television, radio and newspapers were the most popular forms people around the world got their information. As the Internet developed, it became possible to watch live streaming video online, listen to live streaming audio and even to read complete newspapers online – with hyperlinks for additional information. This became known as the media convergence, and many say it sparked a death sen

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tence to for newspapers, because it is far easier and more efficient to watch a video online, than it is to read an entire series of stories in print.

Convergence was the buzz word given to discuss the morphing of television, radio, home theatre systems, phone systems, even your kitchen appliances with computers. Futurists dreamt allowed about a world where you could call home from work, turn on the oven to start your pot roast remotely while checking your messages. Then later that day, you’d arrive home with a nice hot pot roast just waiting for you.

We’ve seen the greatest form of convergence in the mobile telecommunications market. The first cell phones were huge clunkers that often didn’t even have a signal, because cell phone technology was so new and expensive. These days, cell phones are teeny-tiny, and do more than act as phones. Most have cameras in them, some allow you to play music, others allow you to surf the net, send video messages, open Word and other MS-Office documents, you even can use a built-in GPS to tell you where you are, and how to get to where you want to be.

Smart home technology has improved over the years, but it is far from the wild dreams of the futurists back in the 1990’s. But with small technological first-steps, like my telco’s TV Call Display, we’re slowly but steadily moving closer to that automated world.

I’ve had digital cable for years, and as long as I’ve been a subscriber, you can order movies onDemand or Pay-Per-View with a click of a button. Simple point and click, and the movie begins, while the charges appear on my next cable bill.

This two-way form of communications over a cable TV connection was never possible under the older analogue system, and it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

One day, you will be able to order products the same way you can order movies – just by pressing a button on your remote control. Imagine watching some infomercial late at night, and seeing a fantastic product that you want right then and there. All you have to do is point your remote at the cable box, click the button to order it, confirm your order by entering your PIN code, and wait for your new fangled thing to arrive in the mail.

Other cool “wow” factor technologies which we may see from these developments include – of all things – home security.

Many people have wireless home security cameras in and around their homes, and can view these cameras from anywhere in the world over the Internet. There was one incident just this past summer, where a lady called police from work, to report a break in at her home, which she was watching live over the Intern

et.

Many automated security systems will alert the police when something isn’t just right. Imagine having all the doors lock on the inside and outside – trapping the intruder until the local law enforcement agents have arrived.

But where convergence has the most impact isn’t on technology, it is on us. Convergence is affecting our socio-economic world in ways unthinkable back in the 1990’s.
Online social networking sites like Facebook an d Twitter make it possible to reconnect with long lost friends and family, or to just meet completely new people in a non-threatening way.

“Texting” has become a socially acceptable form of communications, and “sexting” (sending sexually explicit text messages) has become a big problem for parents with pre-teen and teenage kids.

You no longer have to ever go to the office, just work virtually from home, checking email and logging into the network remotely to do your work.
Smart technologies are already making their way into our lives, just not as quickly as those singing the convergence song back in the 1990’s told us they would.

Technology is constantly changing and converging with. It will be interesting in five and ten-years, looking back, to see how far forward we have come.

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