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10 Nov 2010 11:17

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Tech: That Facebook-Google fight over your friends gets nasty

  • The war over importing contacts escalates. The other day, Google decided to stop allowing Facebook to import their contacts, partly for competitive reasons. Facebook then devised a way around it that was actually pretty clever. Google has now put up this scare page to let people know that no, you shouldn’t offer your data to Facebook so quickly. So, why won’t Facebook bend on this issue again? And what does this mean for other services that aren’t Google? Well, a key Facebook engineer argues that Google doesn’t practice what it’s preaching. This is a pretty drama-laden fight that keeps getting bigger. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 Nov 2010 22:36

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Biz: Rip your employer on Facebook all you want: It’s protected speech

  • This is a fairly straightforward case under the National Labor Relations Act — whether it takes place on Facebook or at the water cooler, it was employees talking jointly about working conditions, in this case about their supervisor, and they have a right to do that.
  • National Labor Relations Board acting general counsel Lafe Solomon • Explaining why they stepped in after an employee at American Medical Response of Connecticut, an ambulance service, was fired for criticizing her employer on Facebook. (She was upset that she wasn’t allowed counsel with her union, the Teamsters, and ended up ripping on her supervisor.) It’s the first time that a worker has been defended by the board specifically for Facebook-related reasons. While American Medical Response denies the allegations and claims they’re without merit, at least one powerful law firm sent an alert out to its corporate clients informing them that this could be a big problem for them – especially if their workers have unions. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 Nov 2010 19:47

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Tech: Proxy war: Facebook, Google fighting over your friends

  • cause Google, looking to build its own social networking product to compete with Facebook (Orkut doesn’t count apparently) wants Facebook to open up its data stream so they can use it.
  • reaction Facebook says no, so Google changes their policy so Facebook can’t simply grab contacts from Gmail accounts anymore. You joined Facebook five years ago, so it doesn’t matter. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

31 Oct 2010 21:27

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Tech: Why did super-developer Lars Rasmussen leave Google, anyway?

  • what Lars Rasmussen, a key Google staffer who famously crated Google Maps (and Google Wave) decided to leave the company recently. Understandable, because they killed his Google Wave baby.
  • why He’s going to Facebook! He revealed the news to the Sydney Morning Herald, saying: “It feels to me that Facebook may be a sort of once-in-a-decade type of company.” We can see that. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Oct 2010 22:27

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Tech: Facebook’s “privacy breach”: Meet Rapleaf, circa 2007

  • This is an e-mail we got way back in 2007. Good time of our life. We were living in Norfolk, Va., probably drinking an iced coffee and getting dumped on by an old ex or something. Well, one day, we got this e-mail in our inbox. Something seemed pretty bizarre about this e-mail. We don’t have the old page, and it no longer exists, but this company, Rapleaf, had a significant amount of information about us that it was publicly sharing with other people we didn’t know. And the service wasn’t opt-in for some reason. After getting really pissed about it and yelling and stuff, we opted out and didn’t think about it again for a while. We were reminded of this e-mail when we read the WSJ’s Facebook story today.
  • What’s going on?The WSJ investigation suggests that certain app developers have been giving away personal information about their users to services like Rapleaf, who then sell the information to marketers, who were then able to trace the users by linking their e-mails and user IDs. Rapleaf says it was unintentional.
  • LOLApps was doing it Over the weekend, Facebook game company LOLapps, known for their quizzes and other games, was kicked off of the site unexpectedly. (They’re back now after a cooling-off period.) Their platform is super-popular and has millions of users. Nobody knew why – that is, until the WSJ made it clear.
  • Don’t blame Facebook Facebook isn’t the bad guy here; they’re just the indirect conduit. We’re much more inclined to question Rapleaf. Based on our prior history with them, we can say that they have a history of directly violating end users’ privacy. And we find it hard to trust their explanation at face value. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Oct 2010 11:08

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Tech: “Social Network” criticism: Here comes the Facebook movie backlash

  • As one of the few journalists who’s interviewed Zuckerberg numerous times and is familiar with the history of Facebook’s early founding and continued growth, seeing the movie is a jarring, disorienting experience… The real Zuckerberg… has a much more varied personality.
  • Huffington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas • Regarding “The Social Network.” Well, no crap, buddy. Have you not been listening to Aaron Sorkin? He’s basically been saying that he made most of it up for weeks. And it’s fairly possible that you might have some bias anyway, due to the fact that you have exclusive access to Facebook. But we digress. He’s not the only reporter to say something to this effect: “The Facebook Effect” scribe David Kirkpatrick had this to say about the whole thing: “Even before Hollywood got involved… Facebook was the subject of quite a bit of lore — not all of it true,” he said. Which is pretty much how we feel about the matter. Sorkin wrote the Facebook tall tale, and it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s real. That tall tale, by the way, scored $23 million at the box office, and it’s also awards bait, so it may be with us for a while. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Oct 2010 15:00

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Culture: “The Social Network” on track to top box office this weekend

  • $8 million made by the Facebook movie in its first day alone source
  • » So how real is it, anyway? Not particularly. Writer Aaron Sorkin took artistic license with the idea of the film. While many of the plot points are true (Sean Parker did leave the company after a cocaine arrest, for example), the tone of many of the characters, as well as the school itself, didn’t match those of the Harvard students who saw the film. And cyberlaw expert Lawrence Lessig, while praising the film itself, took issue with the lessons that Sorkin took from the storyline, both with its characters (“I know Parker. This is not him.”) and with its feel of what makes the Web tick (“Sorkin boasts about his ignorance of the Internet. That ignorance shows.”). The movie is very good and one of the year’s best, but don’t let the wool get pulled over your eyes. It’s fiction based on fact.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

30 Sep 2010 23:08

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Tech: Facebook now wants hi-res versions of your photographic memories

  • Why is this couple so happy? Because they know that when people anonymously stalk them on Facebook now, they’ll be able to see a super-huge high-quality version. Silent stalkers, Facebook just upped the game! source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Sep 2010 21:06

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Culture: Reviews: “The Social Network” receives epic amount of praise

  • » What Roger Ebert says: If you only trust Roger Ebert like us, you can feel free to know that this is in fact the movie of the century: “David Fincher’s film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive.” So yeah, we’ll be at the theater on Friday wearing a “Free Zuckerberg” shirt.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Sep 2010 09:09

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Culture: “The Social Network” early reviews are in! Here’s a sample

  • one “Despite its insistently unsexy moving parts (software, algorithms), the movie is paced like a thriller, if one in which ideas, words and bank books blow up rather than cars.”
  • two “Thanks to lightning-fast line readings by Eisenberg and other actors, there is probably more dialogue in “The Social Network” than all of [David] Fincher’s other movies put together.”
  • three“[Fincher’s] portrait of campus life among America’s elite is pitch-perfect, every bit as much as the drug-and-party excesses of Silicon Valley and the war rooms of corporate attorneys.”
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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