Focus

This American Life podcast's current episode, 408: Island Time, covers the importance of focus in getting a job done.  In this case covering how focus has failed in the Non Government Agencies from improving the economic success of Haiti in 50 years.  At least this is the point of act 1.  The remaining acts deal with other trials and tribulations in Haiti.

FaceBook, What FaceBook?

I've started the deletion process.  Just in case I wake up screaming as if from a bad dream, FaceBook is protecting me from myself.  I have to wait for a fortnight, that's 14 days for those not part of the Commonwealth, for the deletion to take effect.

I was getting concerned with the changing privacy settings late last year.  This concern was heightened after the April 2010 change, after which some photos that I was convinced were only accessible to a group of friends could be found via a web search.  I think someone in the group sent the images on to others within FaceBook and effectively opened up the photos to others and are now available to the whole world.

Matt McKeon has posted a graphical representation of the changing access to information from the default privacy settings from 2005 to April 2010.  This highlights the importance of the default settings and being aware.

Add to the above FaceBooks recent changes which extends it's presence through the web, with 'like button' and 'Instant Personalization' and sharing with docs.com, yelp.com, etc.  The privacy settings for these are back in FaceBook and it appears you need to play whack-a-mole with the settings.  Each time a new service is integrated you need to actively go and adjust the settings.  There doesn't appear to be a global setting for these personalization and sharing options.

I've decided it is too much effort to try and get this working properly and it was time to opt out.  As opting in is to play the games as per FaceBooks evolving rules.  This is FaceBook's view on the issue, via Elliot Schrage (vice president for public policy at Facebook), presented on New York Times' Bits Blog:

Why not simply set everything up for opt-in rather than opt-out? Facebook seems to assume that users generally want all the details of their private lives made public. – abycats, New York

Everything is opt-in on Facebook. Participating in the service is a choice. We want people to continue to choose Facebook every day. Adding information — uploading photos or posting status updates or “like” a Page — are also all opt-in. Please don’t share if you’re not comfortable. That said, we certainly will continue to work to improve the ease and access of controls to make more people more comfortable. Your assumption about our assumption is simply incorrect. We don’t believe that. We’re happy to make the record on that clear.

Leo Laporte deleted his account recently, video evidence below.

Tea

 

Tea art over at The Evil Genius in Residence. I'm off to get a cuppa now.

Evil Genius

An artist involved with the Artifactory gave me permission to print some of her art for the wall of the 'factory.  Please check out her web site Evil Genius In Residence.