Jan
25
Google is the Big Brother You Invited and Now Refuses to Leave
January 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Google just announced it’s revamping of it’s Privacy Policy:
Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services,” Google privacy director for products and engineering Alma Whitten explained. “In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.
Google is combining 60 or so separate privacy policies into one global policy. It now offers ONE product as opposed to many disparate services. What this means for users is sharing of ALL google data and information across the board: and , NO, users cannot opt-out.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is troubled by the lack of an opt-out mechanism. “The lack of opt-out means users cannot pick and choose which data they want integrated into their Google profiles,” he wrote. “Private email messages might contain any number of personal, embarrassing, or otherwise damaging information, and Google’s attempts to amplify and contextualize this information through targeted ads, Maps suggestions, or Calendar reminders could have negative consequences for users.”
Finally,Information week writes that the inclusion of Android smartphone data is most significant change in terms of user expectations.
Jan
25
The Time for the Timeline is NOW
January 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Facebook is as Facebook does: and Facebook just DID force the Timeline on all it’s users (Here is the January 24 Facebook blog update). If you have not logged into your Facebook account for a while, you will notice some big changes. Facebook describes the new Timeline as a chronology of a users life from birth to present day. It has also published a guide to understanding the new layout.
The Associated Press has offered some tips:
You’ll have a week to curate the Timeline by moving stuff around, hiding photos or featuring them more prominently on your page.
Some things to consider:
— You can change privacy settings on individual items to control who has access. You might want to narrow embarrassing photos to your closest friends or delete some posts completely, or at least hide them so only you can see them.
— You can change the date on a post. For example, if you took a few months to post photos from a trip to Portugal, you can move them to appear with other posts from the time you took that trip. You can also add where you were, retroactively using a location feature that Facebook hadn’t offered until recently.
— For major events in your life, you can click on a star to feature them more prominently. You can hide the posts you’d rather not showcase.
— Besides your traditional profile photo — your headshot — you can add what Facebook calls a cover photo. It’s the image that will splash across the top and can be a dog, a hobby or anything else that reflects who you are. Keep in mind the dimensions are more like a movie screen than a traditional photo, so a close-up portrait of your face won’t work well, but one of you lying horizontally will. But you don’t even have to be in it.
— You can add things before you joined Facebook, back to when you were born. Life events can include when you broke your arm and whom you were with then, or when you spoke your first word or got a tattoo. You can add photos from childhood or high school as well.
— If you feel overwhelmed with so many posts to go through, start with your older ones. Those are the ones you’d need to be most careful about because you had reason to believe only a few friends would see them.
— Click on Activity Log to see all of your posts at a glance and make changes to them one by one. Open Facebook in a new browser tab first, though. That way, you can have one tab for the log and the other for the main Timeline.
Jan
23
MegaUpload’s Demise: Can Higher Ed Still Trust the Cloud?
January 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Many higher education institutions have come to rely on cloud services for everyday tasks. Personally, I use Dropbox almost daily to exchange files with my cross-campus colleagues; less frequently, I’ve also used Yousendit. However, with the recent demise of Megaupload, and the subsequent self-enforced neutering of FileSonic and uploaded.to ( they quickly limited their file-sharing services and are only allowing users to retrieve files they have personally uploaded), what is the future of cloud reliability? At issue was the silent and swift action by the government which took many of Megaupload’s users by surprise. Many who did not have backups lost their files and data.
So, should we be using Cloud services? If so, how should we secure our files? and how do we secure our privacy if a cloud service DOES go down? where do our files go? We should be asking these questions and having conversations at an institutional level about backing up data and security.
Jan
20
Nostalgic Moves at Facebook: Students-Only .edu Groups For Universities
January 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Back in December TechCrunch reported that Brown and Vanderbilt are testing new features for users with authenticated .edu email addresses to create groups for students at their universities. Facebook is considering rolling it out to other universities so that students can create groups for dorms, classes, clubs, parties, and other entities.
Only students who have used their .edu email addresses from schools that are part of Facebook’s test will receive notification of the new feature.
Students that have registered with Facebook their .edu email address of a school in the test bed will see be alerted to the feature. Once they’ve authenticated their email address, they’ll be able to create Groups with the same open, closed, or secret settings as the standard Groups feature Facebook launched last year, but no one outside their school will be able to see them. Within their Groups at [University] home page they can invite schoolmates to the feature, and view suggestions of Groups to join and a feed of recent open Group activity.
Brown and Vanderbilt were chosen because they use different email addresses for students vs alumni. Only those with current student addresses can gain access, which keeps sketchy recent grads from crashing the party.
Jan
20
Social Media LAW Milestones infographic
January 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment
With the recent events of the internet SOPA blackout of January 19th in mind, this infographic from Socially Aware presents a Social Media law timeline that starts with 1984’s Sony v. Universal Studios -
Wikipedia reads:
Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984),[1] also known as the “Betamax case”, is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time-shifting does not constitute copyright infringement, but is fair use.
It is worth noting that that in 1998, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act similarly protected sites relying on user-generated content.
Jan
20
Social Media Milestones Infographic from the Barbarians
January 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment
In their 2011 Timeline of Social Media Milestones post the Barbarian group presents 65 of the most memorable milestones. How did your Higher Education Institution keep pace with the many lightningspeed changes in 2011?
Jan
19
One Law Professor Creates a Teachable Moment out of the Web Blackout of January 18, 2012
January 19, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Yesterday, Junuary 18, 2012, thousands of websites perticipated in a virtual anti-SOPA/PIPA sit-in: Google, Reddit, Wired, Craigslist, Wikipedia, WordPress, Mozilla, MoveOn.org, and O’Reilly to name a few. Widener University School of Law’s Professor Tonya Evans joined the list of internet sites and created a teachable moment for her students:
She explains:
We’re doing a law firm simulation in class where the students are divided into 5 law firms, maintaining their own websites and blogs and tracking intellectual property issues”
Jan
17
WikiPedia to Shutdown! Occupy SOPA Protest!
January 17, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has confirmed that the free online encyclopedia will shut down on Wednesday, January 18 in protest of the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), two anti-piracy bills that are currently being debated in Congress. Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at NYU had posted on Twitter, “Wikipedia Will Shut Down on Wednesday to Protest SOPA tnw.co/xRk6oc Twitter, Google, Facebook should join in.” However, this may no longer be true. Reddit, TwitPic, Mozilla and Worpress will join Wikipedia tomorrow and shut off their sites for 12 hours, while Google will feature a homepage link stating their opposition to SOPA. Other popular services like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and eBay have voiced disapproval of SOPA but will not take part in the blackout.
Jan
17
The Cleanup at YouTube Continues
January 17, 2012 | Leave a Comment
YouTube Staff reported on the YouTube Creator blog that the video site would be stepping up their efforts to ensure that subscriber counts are as fair and accurate as possible. To this end, they will be removing inactive and closed accounts.
UPDATE (1/11/12):
We will be holding off on the single day adjustment (the January 12th date is being postponed) until we can address some discrepancies we found in synchronizing the public counts with YouTube Analytics. Everyone involved in this project is determined to ensure that this change is clearly understood by users, so we will postpone the single day adjustment until we can ensure that both the public count and YouTube Analytics data are consistent and unambiguous. We will let everyone know once we have a firm date in mind. However, the enhanced techniques for despamming new subscriptions will be implemented as scheduled (tomorrow), as there are no such complications. We will continue to keep everyone up to date on how this develops.
Jan
12
Is Google+ the Next Facebook? Maybe Not so Much….
January 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment
The comic strip xkcd explains it best: the difference between Google+ and v …is.. well? There are a few differences to note: while G+ integrates well with other Google products, it’s a bit more tedious to cross post to and from other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Also, if you use Flickr for photos, you have to upload them both to Flickr and to your Google+ page. On the plus side for higher education, there are some possibilities for integrating G+ into the classroom.