Brij’s One More Idea

Charlie Cheever from Facebook has hurled first real bomb in closely observed attempts by  social networking platforms to "open up".  Data portability promise got first reality check of ToS violation.

Facebook spent couple of days brainstorming on Google's "grand design" and came to conclusion that it's better to block them right away. So no Google FriendConnect for Facebook developers. 

In the past, when we found applications passing user data to another party (for instance, to ad networks for the purpose of targeting), we suspended those applications and worked with those developers to ensure they respect user privacy. Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology. We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service. Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance. We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.

This is NOT  a good news for Facebook developers as well as for other vendors who have interest in cross network applications. 

I have been following recent announcements in this context. Very soon all these major platforms need to stop and think about how Twitter platform has emerged right under their nose and enabling next generation applications (For example - TwisterNow, Summize, and MessageDance) . It's time for these platform vendors to read Twitter tea leaves (or tweets! ). That's where we are going to see truly open platform in action. 

After Myspace Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google Announces FriendConnect.

Facebook Connect: Data portability done right

Myspace’s Data Availability - The walls are coming down

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Finally Comcast bought Plaxo. We have been hearing rumors of this event for some time now.

It's equally fun to watch how Arrington is matching CNet on every news story out there. He managed to get most important bit of information. Price tag:

Over at CNet, Sam Schwartz, exec VP of Comcast has this to say:

"The address book and Pulse combined will change the way people navigate through thousands of choices of content. You could know what shows your friends are watching, what they are downloading or what they are recording on DVR. Plaxo can help us build that vision. It's less about the Comcast.net portal and more about bringing the social aspects to all media consumption."

Amen to "bringing the social aspects to all media consumption". Plaxo wil join Comcast Interactive group.

Congratulations John. Pulse finds a new home.

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I was  playing with special characters in Mail application and realized there are many creative ways to  overcome 140 character constraint in Twitter. I must add that I love that constraint. It's right there as one of the top reasons I like using Twitter. It's part mental challenge, part expression tool.

Since I mostly tweet from mail client so symbol selection feature is easily available to me. If you are using other cool tools like Twhirl or AlertThing, then you will have to do little bit of copy/paste and related keyboard gymnastics.

Screenshots best explain how to do this.

Open your Mail client ( I have taken Apple Mail example, but I am sure similar options are available in Thunderbird and Outlook). Browser based mail clients don't support this.

Select Special Character option and open Character Palette

Fun part is in exploring different special characters. Given enough patience, there is plenty of opportunity to bling your tweets. Currency symbols and misc symbols sections look useful to me.

Now go and bling your tweets

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This is a very old presentation but the lessons are still valid.

Blog Attachments

rcapr2003.ppt (PPT, 650K)

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In case you haven’t seen this.

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Last couple of days we have seen flurry of bad news. Earthquake, cyclone, tornado and now this morning bomb blast in tourist city of Jaipur, India. Bomb blast has all the signs of by-the-book implementation - multiple simultaneous attacks, targeting city based on high global awareness, timing which involves surprise. To me this evokes bizarre sense of resignation. This happened in the past and will happen again. It's terrorism.

Relating this event with the online world, I found this strange mix of news, video clip and targeted ad. This got me thinking on the impact of putting automated rules out there. 

How many more black humor situations there will be in the future. Should Google (or other ad serving technology providers) implement a constant check on the appropriateness of an ad. Time dimension is the one which these technology providers have to carefully manage.

When online media becomes primary channel for getting news, reaction one gets after reading the news will be shaped by the context in which news was delivered. I think Google and other ad serving vendors should implement algorithm check for ad appropriateness as a function of overall news climate.

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