Month: November 2010

On Facebook and Relationships

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Mr. Brooks:

I quit Facebook back in mid-May of 2010, it has not been a year yet, but it has been a significant amount of time. What I can tell you is that not a single relationship/friendship that I have has suffered because of it. There has yet to be a single instance where I regretted quitting Facebook.

I think that if a friendship suffers due to a lack of Facebook, it probably wasn’t a great relationship to begin with. Social media makes the art of relationships appear easy, while in actuality, it creates a false feeling of closeness that wouldn’t be there otherwise.

I’ve turned my account on and off several times, and late last week, started the process to delete it entirely[1. So the service says. I have doubts my files will be expunged from their servers any time soon.] after my uneasiness with the service grew too large to ignore.

‘The World Soundtrack’

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Andy Ihnatko, on today’s iTunes/Beatles announcement:

The Beatles don’t need the money. What they really want is to make sure that “Hey, Jude” remains part of the world soundtrack. A move towards the iTunes Store is yet another move towards that goal.

Facebook is Creepy

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Jacqui Cheng:

“This is not an e-mail killer. This is a messaging system that has e-mail as part of it.”

That’s how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company’s revamped messaging system, introduced at a special press event in San Francisco today. The more-than-just-e-mail system is meant to consolidate all of a user’s interactions with other people—whether it’s via SMS, Facebook messages, or e-mail—into one spot. Of course, Facebook wants it all to live on its own servers.

I started the 14-day process to delete my account[1. It has been deactivated for weeks, but deletion means my data isn’t stored in a “frozen” state, just waiting for me to return.] yesterday. It’s more complicated then deactivation, and isn’t clearly defined on the company’s site. However, this article explains it all clearly.

Star Wars Weather Widgets

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Kit Paul:

Nice and sunny in Aldera today, on beautiful Alderaan. Some showers are expected tomorrow. Unfortunately there seems to be a glitch about Tuesday’s high temperature and no readings from Wednesday on for some reason—we apologize for the technical difficulty. On the bright side, we have a new artificial moon called The Death Star and it’s crescent is clearly visible and awesome. Enjoy.

[via Kottke]

Netflix, on Android

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Greg Peters, from Netflix’s product development group, about the company’s forthcoming Android app:

The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices. Setting aside the debate around the value of content protection and DRM, they are requirements we must fulfill in order to obtain content from major studios for our subscribers to enjoy. Although we don’t have a common platform security mechanism and DRM, we are able to work with individual handset manufacturers to add content protection to their devices. Unfortunately, this is a much slower approach and leads to a fragmented experience on Android, in which some handsets will have access to Netflix and others won’t. This clearly is not the preferred solution, and we regret the confusion it might create for consumers. However, we believe that providing the service for some Android device owners is better than denying it to everyone.

Android is starting to feel more and more out of control.

[via Phandroid, who didn’t see any downside to this whole thing]

Ted Koppel on the ‘Death of Real News’

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In The Washington Post:

We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly – individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.

The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.

And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.

Just let that soak in. How can these changes be good for anyone except the networks themselves?

[via Joshua Schnell]

On Delays

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Dave Caolo, bringing some logic to the whole “iOS 4.2 is delayed” thing:

Here’s the thing. That November 12th release date was supplied by the rumor mill, not Apple. If iOS 4.2 fails to ship by then, it will still be on schedule.

Jobs said that iOS 4.2 will ship by November. Let’s not call the delivery “delayed” until it actually is.