Prototype of a Person

Scaremongering at the Symposium?

As part of the Darklight Festival over the weekend a number of symposiums were held to discuss and debate various popular topics related to the online world. I was invited to be a member of the audience by the organisers and found the experience to be rather… interesting.

Privacy vs. Publicity in the Virtual World

Daniel Solove, author of “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet” (available for free here) opened this discussion with various anecdotes pertaining to the negative effects of personal details being shared online, either on purpose i.e. through your personal blog, or without the person’s consent e.g. the Star Wars Kid. Coming from a background in law, Solove suggests that the only way to curtail personal details being posted online without your consent is by the threat of legal action being more heavily employed.

“Be responsible”

Solove suggests that allowing anonymity online is irresponsible as it removes any control we have over our personal data (e.g. intimate personal details being posted online without consent) and that the law can only do so much to provide protection. For example, while it may be possible for a photographer to have an unapproved photo removed from an unlicensed website, the individual in the photo has no legal standing. This is because copyright law is much more powerful than privacy law.

“Intertwined with the lives of others”

Solove described how we all have expectations of privacy and anonymity in public, despite always being exposed and how this notion of privacy is mistakenly expected online. Claiming that 50% of bloggers were under the age of 19, he described these Internet users as “Generation Google” – individuals that have had their lives chronicled online, leaving behind fragments of their past that are pervasive and destructive to their future.

Opinion

I disagree with Solove’s judgment that anonymity is irresponsible on the part of ISP’s and websites that encourage and allow it. Anonymity online has always provided Internet users with a constructive means for liberal expression and play, without the risk of social impairment. Though anonymity provides users the facility to post lies online without any apparent risk (except in a serious case where your IP address might be used against you), the power of an anonymous message is certainly not as strong as a message coming from a reputable source.

“Generation Google” is something that I myself am a part of, but it is a heavily constructed and thought out self, which is something anyone reading a blog or a social networking profile needs to consider. Using google search results as a basis for a decision on a job or college applicant is something that I would consider irresponsible, and lazy. Nothing we post online is a 100% true reflection of ourselves, imagine a youthful, boastful comment left on a friend’s social networking profile that might actually be sarcastic or part of an in-joke. It’s all about context, and if the context is unknown then the information is invalid. It is lazy to think otherwise.

Panel Discussion

Following this keynote address was a panel discussion chaired by Caroline Campbell, featuring Jim Carroll, Cormac Callanan, Niall Larkin (read his thoughts on this symposium here) and Damien “almost blogs for a living” Mulley. Daithí Mac Sithigh was also in the audience and has written up a great summary of the panel discussion.

“Whatever goes on the Internet stays on the Internet”

The most prevalent message from this one-sided discussion was that everything you do online is being used to build behavioural profiles for marketing and advertising. On Facebook (and probably other social networking websites) your actions are logged and combined with your profile information for contextual marketing and advertising. Sophisticated data mining tools are used in Gmail and other free online services. Law enforcement in the US use these data mining techniques to track down possible terrorists and it was suggested that all of these combined could lead to surveillance and stalking by commercial and non-commercial companies for negative reasons, debt-collection is an example used by a member of the audience.

Privacy in this instance is not about the actual collection of the data, it’s what happens to it afterwards. Suggestions were made that it would be preferable to have access to this profile and to be notified when your data is being accessed and by whom. However, when Mulley asked the audience “Who actually cares?” a minority raised their hands.

Opinion

In my opinion, many of the members of the panel seemed to be scaremongering the audience. It would have been a more interesting discussion if even one of the members of the panel was under 30 (correct me if I’m wrong). All of them seemed quite outraged by the idea that their personal details and behaviour online could be used to help companies make more money. I would argue that there are many positive things about this type of data mining, for example, attempts (unsuccessful so far) at contextualising advertising on websites such as Facebook.

Contextual ads make advertisements entertaining and informative. Personally, I’d rather this than being bombarded with irrelevant ads (like when I watch television). However, this does not mean that the advertising is more successful because of this. Despite the fear of behavioural profiles being sold to marketing and advertising executives, these sets of data are in no way accurate at predicting human behaviour. Behaviour changes on a daily basis and can’t be actualised using selective pieces of information we ourselves post into the likes of social networking websites. Our reactions to advertising and products can change based on far too many variables for a behavioural profile to predict.

Websites like Facebook and Google give us a service and our payment to them is our content. Without our content these websites are completely useless and no-one would be willing to pay for them. It’s naive for anyone to think that you can get something for nothing online and if you’ve nothing to hide, why be so afraid of a little data mining? How does this even affect your every day life? I would argue that it doesn’t. It’s a pity the panel were so strongly of the opinion that it was 100% negative. I do however agree that users signing up to these services might need to be informed more readily of the fact that their data might be used in this manner.

The question is - Do you care? (Take a second to Take the poll or leave a comment below).

3 Ireland: Homophobic?

Damien points out today that a number of Irish gay discussion sites are blocked by 3 Ireland when you try to access them via 3G on one of their handsets. Curiously enough their argument for doing so is because these websites are deemed unsuitable for children. However, as noted back in 2007, when 3 took down it’s “walled garden” to allow full Internet access from your handset they introduced a policy of only allowing Internet access if you registered with them and if you were over 18. So there is no need for this at all because children can’t access Internet from their handsets full stop.

Also, another point - you can infact access plenty of “unsuitable” content from your 3 handset. It’s simple really, turning off the “safe search” in google image search will bring up all the pornography you could want on your tiny 2inch screen.

3 Ireland need to remove this ban immediately or face a massive backlash from not just the gay community, but from the blogging community too.

Describe Yourself in 6 Words

Becs has “tagged” me… so I am required to describe myself in 6 words (either 6 individual words or a 6 word sentence) and then “pass it on” to other people (Liam, Darragh, David - you’ve been tagged!). This is my 6 word sentence:

“Wants to know something about everything.”

The Next “Big Thing” in Communications and Social Networking Tools

In a bold move (inspired by my wonderful foe - procrastination) I’ve begun using Twitter - it’s like mini-blogging. So, if anyone is interested in finding out what I’ve been up to between blog posts, you can find out here. Although, I will warn you - if you’re a certain lecturer expecting a certain topic for a certain research proposal on Friday - do NOT click that link. Recently I started using Linkedin too - for social networking in professional circles.

It’s really interesting how different the web is to the Internet I first started using as a teen. Today there are so many incredible communications and social networking tools available online, but it has always seemed like everyone in the States have been consistently 100’s of steps ahead of us (the Irish) with regard to embracing these as valid methods of communication and expression. Although, 10 years ago I could barely manage to find a synchronous online conversation with anyone - because everyone was asleep after that faithful 6pm-the-dial-up-charges-are-cheaper hour. At least times are starting to change and there are a few (definitely not comparable to the Americans) Irish people using the likes of LinkedIN and Twitter.

When I really got thinking about it though, I realised how many different communication and social networking tools I had embraced in the past. It goes a little something like below…

E-mail address @ hotmail > Newsgroups > Chat Rooms @ Yahoo! > mIRC chat > American Message Boards > Home Page with Guestbook @ Geocities > E-mail address @ Yahoo! > Yahoo! Messenger > Own Group with Message Boards and Chat @ Yahoo! > MSN Messenger > Irish Message Boards > Livejournal > MySpace > Blog @ own hosting site > Youtube > Bebo > E-mail address @ Gmail > Gtalk > Facebook > Second Life > Flickr > LinkedIN > Twitter

It’s a strange progression as you move from one online communications technology to the next, thriving on the newness of each new site. But like all things, boredom soon sets in or your motivation for interacting with it diminishes and you move on. Even the Irish Bebo explosion, at least in my own social circles, has become recently very subdued. Which is surprising as I had assumed the new features (facebook like applications) would bring everyone back into the fold.

What causes so many of these once “revolutionary” websites to fall to the wayside? How is it that something new can come along and steal all your users/customers? Why aren’t interfaces upgraded and features added and removed? Why weren’t they tracking trends online to keep up with change? When there are existing social networks in place, wouldn’t it just be easier for us all to stay in one place, rather than moving to the next “big thing”.

Wordpress Themes

I’ve only just caught up with everyone else online and have upgraded to the newest version of Wordpress. In the upgrade I lost all of my tags and all of the customisation of my theme. Unfortunately, I’ll be stuck with the current blog design (which I’m not happy with at all) until I have more free time - currently trying to finish up a consumer psychology essay and write my thesis research proposal for the purposes of gaining ethical approval from the college.

As soon as college is wrapped up I think I might just build my own theme from the bottom up - it’s been a long time since I’ve had any web or graphic design projects, so it’ll be a nice challenge. If anyone has any experience in designing their own Wordpress theme I would love to hear from you, or if anyone can steal Sabrina Dent’s beautiful theme for me, that would be even better!

Myspace Isn’t So Good for Music Afterall

Not only are music fans beginning to prefer Wikipedia over Myspace for finding out information about musicians, other fans are using the Myspace forums and blogs to post links to their illegally uploaded mp3s. There are numerous threads within the music forums on Myspace that contain active and unbroken links to full album downloads.

This is rather interesting, especially considering that just recently Universal Music, Sony-BMG and Warner Music signed a deal with Myspace to create “Myspace Music” where fans can listen to free streaming music (of their choice, of course), whilst being bombarded with advertisements. All this, in an attempt to retrieve revenue lost, from… illegal mp3 file sharing.

I found these forums searching for information on the upcoming Breeders album, Mountain Battles, set for release on the 7th of April, only to find a leaked copy fully available to download.

The question is - was the temptation to download it too much? Or did I simply click the “report abuse” button and quickly move on.

What do you think?

Spotted: Tim Loves Phantom

I just spotted this rather interesting advertisement on Facebook. I wonder if my own face will be appearing along side the products and services that I am a fan of. I wonder what Tim thinks of his endorsement.

Tim is in my network of friends, so I assume this is why this ad has been targeted towards me. I must admit, it got my attention pretty quick and I’m very impressed. It is neither intrusive nor annoying because I actually care what my friends online might be a fan of, though, for those on FB with 100’s of friends they don’t actually know, this might be a tad annoying, especially if they are incompatible taste wise. Not like Timmy and I!

It’s a pity the ad wasn’t targeted enough to know that I’m already a fan of Phantom.

Simple Solution to Irish Broadband Problems?

A relatively inexpensive wireless technology that has been developed by Intel, with underdeveloped countries in mind, could work for rural Ireland.

The new technology can extend a wi-fi signal between two antennas up to a maximum of 96 miles. Considering Ireland is only about 190 miles wide, why not implement this kind of system? Rather than forcing Irish rural and island internet users to connect via ridiculously expensive satellite systems or leaving them lagging behind on dial-up.

Will someone please let the Department of “Communications” know about this, because according to Silicon Republic (and everyone else in the country) Ireland is below the EU Broadband average, and it’s all down to the rural “deficit”.

Getting the most from Google Reader

For the past month I’ve been using Google Reader on a daily basis. Not only have I discovered a wealth of information from the 100’s of blogs I’ve subscribed too, I’ve also discovered some wonderful functionality - some of which you can find on the sidebar of this blog.

Thanks to Elly I learned how to display an accurate selection of my currently subscribed to blogs. This is usually reserved for the Wordpress links feature and came under the Blogroll heading. The difference being, my blogroll was never 100% up to date - it’s an easy thing to forget between posting new articles and tweaking the occasional feature or blog design. Today if I want to add a blog to my Blogroll I simply drag and drop it into the folders that I’ve created in Google Reader and it immediately appears on my own blog.

I went through a phase of using Digg, to social bookmark - to display a list of articles that I had read, that I found interesting and wanted to share. Google Reader has a similar feature built-in, though it doesn’t tell you how many other people have also marked an article as sharing-worthy, this might be something they will add once it has come out of beta. The last 5 articles I have marked interesting also now appear in the sidebar and the full list can be viewed here, you can even subscribe to this as it has it’s own RSS feed. If anyone else has one of these going, let me know. Sharing IS caring after all.

As I do most of my blog reading from work, I often don’t have the time to read everything, especially the longer articles. Obviously I’m not going to want to add it to my shared items if I haven’t read it, for this I can add a little star and view these starred articles on their own at a later date. This is especially practical if I find something related to my studies but don’t have the time to completely process the information. This is also great if someone posts a video or mp3 you want to watch/listen to when you’re in the comfort of your own computer.

2002 Called - it Wants it’s Web Design Back

The PermanentTSB website won a Golden Spider back in 2005 and since then hasn’t really changed it’s overall site design, infact, it has been virtually the same since 2002. A heuristic evalution of the site (undertaken in the Human Computer Interaction module of the MSc in Cyberpsychology) easily leads me to believe that it is in dire need of a redesign (yet their more recently launched “Yourmortgage.ie” is almost a replica of the main site). Out of a possible 23 heuristics, it only fully complied with 12 of them - meaning the site is littered with design inconsistencies, broken links, very clearly deviates from the current standard web practices (PDF files? really?) etc., etc.

It’s just another fine example of Irish web design firmly stuck in web 1.0. The .ie domain is virtually (no pun intended!) littered with them. I’m sure there are plenty more examples of badly designed Irish sites (not necessarily .ie) and would be thrilled to hear everyone’s own personal “favorites”.

Eircom.net is another firm favorite of mine for its sensational orange menu with white text, and dark grey text on a grey background for its sub-menu. Wonderful stuff.