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It’s certainly meant to be & they’ve certainly worked on it & done their best to get all their users to understand how to tweak it but has it worked? In an always on world it’s easy to leave your personal data public in places you’d rather not & with FaceBook in particular this can be a big deal. It’s all very well being impressed that everyone online can find you but in many sad cases there are those people who you’d rather be invisible from, these problems can be taken care of within FaceBook but it’s not always either easy or clear. Even within your own friends list there may be areas where a little discretion can work wonders, I don’t think people should be friends with their bosses online but if you’re going to do it then a few fences are justified. It may be that these precautions are a step too far for most people & that they couldn’t care less who sees what but these people are going to become fewer & fewer as time passes, it may seem trite now but if you can Google yourself & chuckle at the results then so can anyone else. (continue reading…)

The Summer holidays are well underway & like Santa at Christmas going to the cinema comes up a lot more often in the right season, the rain helps as well. Since this year 3D is being flogged as the greatest thing since they sold enough HD ready equipment it was only a matter of time before it came up, ok so you get the choice between 2D & 3D but it’s only a couple of quid difference & tech’s tech right? It is if I’m paying anyway & although I may not see the point of 3D television because watching a soap isn’t an event I do sort of see it working in the cinema where people have made an effort to be entertained. The kids were quite excited about it as well & were looking forward to seeing amazing special effects & having a new experience to scream out over Facebook, so off we went to see Toy Story 3D in the sure knowledge that Woody & Buzz would save the day but that it might be fun anyway. As far as it went the film was alright, there was one point where it looked as if all the toys were going to be incinerated but the director bottled it presumably in favour of Toy Story 4D, as for the 3D, well, it works but it has issues. (continue reading…)

It would seem that the legendary reliability of Blackberry privacy is ruffling feathers in the Middle East as a few of the countries there are demanding monitor rights over their networks. It may well be just a power play to bring a successful company to heel but if nothing else it shows what a fine line can be drawn between an individuals’ right to privacy & a governments’ need to know. Maybe given that Rim are so business orientated that they will only use their own servers for certain traffic this was bound to come up eventually but in a world scared rigid by terrorism this may just be another knee jerk reaction by the authorities. Most of us use mobile phones every day & we expect our private conversations & Emails to be just that, private, sadly we also expect the forces of Law & Order to be ever vigilant against those who would do us harm & so provoke the constant paradox we now live under. I get around it the same way most everyone else does by assuming that the government have every right to snoop on anyones’ privacy so long as they stay the hell away from mine because I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not saying that this solves the entire problem but as far as honesty goes it’s all I’ve got. (continue reading…)

I guess it had been coming for a while now, almost a couple of weeks had passed without any kind of Facebook related life interference, it’s back now though as if it was just saving it up. I wouldn’t mind but I hardly get any trouble concerning me from Facebook, okay so I don’t go on much except to update my status here & there & see what everyone else is up to but even so, it’s crazy how much of an effect it has on me. The teens have it the worst I guess as they always seem to do & say now & doing any thinking required later, this is not a good strategy when online both in public & in real time. Considering that just one hasty post made in anger can produce reams of anger & days of threatened retribution you’d think they’d know better but they don’t & afterwards go back to doing it anyway. Normally there’s at least one of the kids embroiled in some meaningless argument during any given week, sometimes it’s due to gossip, sometimes to their joining in with other peoples’ rows but there all the same.This week though it’s been relationship week on Facebook, relationship week is always a barrel of laughs & as the statuses change from single to otherwise & back again the only real surprise is that more people don’t get killed over this nonsense. (continue reading…)

Given that for the last few weeks & for the next one at least I’ve been restricted to mobile net only it seemed a good time to assess it. We’re all well aware that for most people it’s an option & that it’s meant to be the way of the future, the thing is though that there’s a few problems. These problems aren’t really of a technical nature, the mobile internet is no longer the crippled service it once was, to really rival a Pc though it needs more.
As the recent innovations from apple & others suggest the main issues raised by mobile internet are the devices we use to access it. The Ipad is a worthy attempt to solve this problem but as with netbooks it’s going to struggle for acceptance. As well as the normal apple snobbery to deal with it’s not clear as to where it actually fits in amongst the other devices, it’s not a flash issue alone that causes this, more that the phones can do more. They don’t however have the screen size which is a massive advantage when compared to sustained usage on a phone, the screens of phones can only reach a certain size. Mobile internet is brilliant for an instant fix & adequate for more when needed but without a decent screen is tiring in the long haul. (continue reading…)

It’s generally accepted that Facebook is a massive phenomena & has hundreds of millions of users, it’s safe to say that just amongst my family I can think of only three members who don’t regularly spend a portion of their day there. It’s brilliant for keeping in touch with people & when it’s late & we’ve all retired for the day we can still catch up & hang with the people we like. It’s almost the same for the children too, instead of huge ‘phone bills being the result of chatting to their mates they can gossip away freely without messing up anyones’ day. There are a few differences though, the beauty of Facebook is that it allows where people were earlier to carry on, the downside of course is exactly the same thing & it’s nowhere more apparent than amongst the kids. Bullying used to be schooltime only unless you were unlucky enough to live too near the bully, now it can go on & on with the added problem of attracting more & more people to latch onto a victim, there’s been a lot done to stop this & it does sort of work, except for the fake accounts. (continue reading…)

It’s an odd world these days, as the online realm rushes in to almost every aspect of our lives & our off-line life data rushes just as relentlessly the other way it’s sometimes difficult to locate any part of our day that is wholly one thing or another. When I was growing up kids played out, & that’s all we did, if we wanted to know if someone was coming out we had to actually walk all the way to their house & interact physically with their door & then with whoever answered it. Nowadays the kids wont take a chance on such an impractical method & organise who they’re meeting,

Progress meant yet even more work for the modern shipwreck survivor

where they’re meeting & what they’re doing long before they get dressed some days. This is a damper on the sheer spontaneity of what six or seven kids sat bored rigid in a field can come up with but then again considering some of the things we came up with this may not be all bad news. It does have an unfortunate consequence though on the social life of our teenagers & to a lesser extent their parents, if the Internet goes down for whatever reason then their social lives stop dead & they’re no longer involved in the constant stream of vapid commentary. They fall back on to their mobiles but since these are almost mini-net devices now having to actually talk to people is frowned upon & even this is credit dependent & kids murder credit. It’s all very well uploading your entire world on to the servers of the Internet but it only works so long as you’re in contact with it, the worst thing about this is that just because you can’t contact your online self it doesn’t mean that no-one else can. (continue reading…)

Perhaps extreme in some ways but socially at least the striving to stand out has become a much less appealing choice now, blending in with the crowds & belonging is much more important these days as to be seen as different is somehow threatening. It’s certainly an age where to be a loner isn’t the best move you can make, much like the witch hunts against old ladies in times past the loner is an easy target for the rampant paranoia of today, some of the loners don’t help much with this it’s true but to be honest as a population we con ourselves with stranger dangers when most of the trouble is caused much closer to home. We seem to be operating a sort of shoal system where we’re only happy doing those things that millions of others also do whilst as a kind of sop to individualism the celebrity cult gives us glimpses of what people can do on their own although a quick examination of the celebrity cult reveals that it’s really just a lot of people doing the same things only being watched by millions. Maybe there’s just too many people these days for individuals to stand out or perhaps there’s just not enough time for any standing out to be done, in too many cases it seems that the amount of people involved anywhere is intrinsically more important that the actual people themselves, this should be a problem but it isn’t, it’s almost a bonus. (continue reading…)

It’s been rushed through into law in a fairly ham-fisted way & it has to be said that it’s causing a lot of uproar except within the offices of media barons the world over, like many people I’m not quite sure what this bill will do. Ostensibly it’s meant to put an end once & for all to illegal file sharing & allow the media companies to ensure that they get paid for their products with all kinds of penalties for those who break the law. This is odd in itself since it’s quite clear that this bill isn’t going to prevent illegal downloads other than in the cases of naivety which seems a bit harsh, tech savvy downloaders may alter how they download but they’re not going to have to stop. Much has been said about tracing illegal activity to an IP address but in reality this isn’t all that helpful & in any case assumes that the IP address in question is being used by the person paying the Internet bill at the physical address, this is a stupid assumption. The government may appear to be gunning for the P2P networks but in allowing the media industries to pretty much write their own laws they have failed to do this, they must also know this. Surely even our government employs a few geeks who have looked at this bill & gone off somewhere for a quiet snigger? Since this must be true then it stands to reason that the government has got something out of this bill that’s more important than prosecuting kids who can’t afford the latest CDs. (continue reading…)

The world is an ever changing place & nowhere more so than online where the speed of change is breathtaking & non-stop, the wild vista of cyber-town is constantly evolving amid the demands of consumers versus the greed of capitalism. The Internet itself is constantly watched & studied as myriads of people around the world try to either predict the next big event or if they’re clever enough, invent it. For the normal user all this means nothing but even for them cyberspace is altering although it’s difficult to spot the differences & will take a few years to fully take effect, also the changes aren’t going to be visible online. I was thinking about this as I waited in line for a go on my own PC, the holidays can be tough on your online life, put simply the Internet itself will always constantly evolve but our means of accessing it are going to become much more limited in scope. I laughed myself at all the things the new Apple Ipad can’t do but whereas there are some glaring omissions that I’m sure will be rectified there are areas where it makes an ominous amount of sense, I can’t say that I care for the Apple philosophy but I suspect it’s a growing trend. (continue reading…)