Technically Speaking

The big news today is the fact that Robert Scoble was banned from Facebook because he violated the terms of service (TOS) of the social network. Now even though he was doing some testing for Plaxo, the fact remains he still violated the TOS. Now some of you feel sorry for Scoble, but in a sense he knew the TOS doesn’t allow this kind of activity.

This brings up an interesting point about social networks. Once you join and click the “I Agree” box on their TOS page, you are bound to their service. Even though the majority of social networks are free, you are freely giving them data to do as they deem by their TOS. TOS is an interesting escape clause created solely for the company that binds you, the user of their free service, to them.

If you don’t read the TOS, it’s just like the old saying of buyer beware. Scoble bought into the whole social network of Facebook, but he thought he was above the law. He found out today he isn’t, and even though it’s a shame that he can’t port his own contact information (his own data, which he gave up his rights to by putting them in Facebook via their TOS), he should have known better than to try to circumvent their TOS. Even though he may have been NDA locked down by Plaxo in the testing phase, this still is only a mild excuse; such as “I was going 40mph in the 35mph zone because no one else was on the road.”

Many of you are probably in some sort of denial at this point in time. Some of you may even consider following Scoble to a data free zone that he is looking for. Good luck is all I can say.

This is an interesting question of privacy in some sense. In 2008 we are going to see more and more issues of this crop up. It’s not something that people have really given a lot of thought about until recently. There is probably billions of bytes of data online, private and public. In a sense, all of the data you put on the internet is public. There really is not a private place you can have data online.

One of the key items that will be leveraged here this year is advertising and data. My #1 prediction for 2008 was that there would be more money spent on advertising online. With this being said, the only way to truly maximize the ad dollar (or Euro) would be for the people doing the advertising to recoup their money spent. This will be done of course with targeting the customer base.

This gets into your data being used. We have heard reports of Google changing up the way Gmail works. But do you really blame some of these companies for starting to mine the data that is there? See above. Billions of bytes of data online. Floating out there in cyber la-la land for decade plus now. The thing is, most of the data floating around is not organized enough to make any sense of it. Someone (Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc… ) will be the ones organizing it this year. If not already, they are making plans to do so. What they say on one hand can easily be changed with - you got it - a simple change of their TOS! Didn’t believe me when I said the above - did you? TOS is an interesting escape clause created solely for the company that binds you, the user of their free service, to them.

What I see happening is there will be a big round of privacy advocates taking one side or another. This data snafu or being Scobled won’t go away anytime soon. This is only the first of many questions that will be raised in the data privacy wars in 2008. While the data may have been his in one sense, in another sense the conversation that Allen of CN had with Steve Poland sheds a bit more light on “who’s data” Scoble was really taking. I happen to agree, it’s a touchy subject - a gray area at best.

I say that because there is no safeguard’s in place where you can’t download one of your friends or anyone’s photos. There is no disabling feature on Facebook preventing you from going on a photo hunt. In fact there are a few fb applications that take your friends pic and use them in some cool way. Inside of Facebook, again the TOS keeps that cool. But what prevents you from taking it outside of Facebook and downloading it to your desktop. Nothing. As far as TOS goes, I see a new improved one coming from Facebook in the near future.

Technically Speaking, whether or not Scoble finds his own data-TOS-free for all place to play is going to be up to him. I personally don’t believe such a place exists unless you find or start your own social network that is invite only; private island of people that agree that TOS’ville and data hostage keeping is against their policy. Good luck on finding that place. It’s a Utopian dream at best. Vegas hotel

PodTech, the company that Robert Scoble works for has been reported as being dead. Of course Scoble came out with a blast that denies all of that. It seems that PodTech is a company that is every bloggers fodder lately.

This is quite troubling as now, if a blogger writes it, it seems to be fact. The difference between a blogger and a real blogger is the ones that go to the painstaking research that a good person would do. Now, even though Fake Steve Jobs does things for fun most of the time, I think that making statements such as this in the past were grounds for a lawsuit.

But that brings up an interesting point, as with the new world of blogs as “news” that we live in, are they really protected by any type of laws of the modern world? I mean, could PodTech/Scoble file a lawsuit against Fake Steve Jobs?

This is an interesting issue, as it would be very new waters to try in the court system. It could be a landmark case that would set precedence for years to come. It might also clean up the blogosphere entirely.

Technically Speaking, I for one would be interested in seeing what legal actions PodTech/Scoble intend to take for future speculation that comes out as a blog post for everyone to read and believe. baby clothes

According to one blog, it appears that Microsoft may have the inside track to winning the Facebook bid. Now this is just one person’s opinion, but I think it would be interesting to be inside the negotiations that are going down. The question of course posed by Scoble was if Microsoft understands advertising.

I think that the guys from Redmond understand just a bit about it. Now as far as this being a fact, I wouldn’t bet my last dollar on it. It’s never over until the deal is leaked and announced. Even though he has the inside track, I just wouldn’t feel it’s the Vegas thing to do at this point.

What has kept Facebook the viable company that it is, is that Mark Zuckerberg plays by a whole new rulebook. His own. That is why his company has zoomed to the top of things and the forefront of all discussions. He is writing his own rulebook, and for those that are entrepreneur’s, you have to love it.

Not that I totally agree with everything he has done, it does seem to be working for him. Working quite well. If you jump on Techmeme, you can see all the great fb chatter going on.

Technically Speaking, Scoble called it first, but I will wait for the official announcement. Speaking of Facebook, where the heck are all the fb app developers that want to make some money? How about a few financial bloggers that also want to get paid?

More coverage: Mashable
More coverage: VentureBeat

Now here is something that I have been preaching. Preaching to the choir I see by Scoble’s take on it. Yes, statistic services are all over the place. I’ve probably talked about statistics at least once a week. Why? Because all the services really, honestly, just suck.

Why? Because none of them are accurate. You get some degree of figuring out who is viewing your material. Yes, I’ll give it that much. As I said a little while ago, you either “get a hit, page view, unique” or you don’t. Period. End of story.

It’s really quite simple. The only way to figure it out is to be “standing over your server” and watch each hit, view, unique come in. Stand there with a hand held counter. That is about the only way any of these services can be truly accurate.

I personally watch like 3 of the services. I have scripts installed in the same spot on my pages. It still doesn’t matter. None of them count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc… It’s really simple. It’s not rocket science. Why do these stat counters act like it’s a big technical deal? Money.

Bottom line, it’s the money they receive, the money they work with. The more money, the more inaccurate the counting mechanism becomes. How so? Well whoever funds these simple counting services can easily skew the numbers simply by asking. Simply by making a phone call.

Now I’m not saying that it all works like that, but it can. The point is again back to how simple this really is. In technical terms, when there is a view, hit, unique created - one IP address called a web formatted page from another IP address. Unless you are huge like Google and have many IP addresses, that IP address just called your IP address (or your servers where you site is hosted). That’s it. That is counted as ONE.

Technically Speaking, I can’t believe that in 2007 someone hasn’t figured out yet that these statistic people are all full of it. Should I just append the “sh” with that last two letter word? Yeah, I really wanted to do that, but I try to keep this blog as clean as possible. Why? For more hits, uniques, and page views baby!

I am sitting here catching up on things. This weather around the STL kills me at this time of the year. Enough about me, more about Silverlight right? Well maybe.

Now what I’m reading by two of the top bloggers or most reputable bloggers out there today, Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble, is that we all had better pay attention to Silverlight. Ok, I’ll agree, from some of the excited overview of it, it sounds like a great 4 mb application that makes AJAX look like a bicycle and Silverlight the Ferrari.

That is really cool, you have me hooked. Now I jump over to the ex-Microsoft VP’s site. I have to see what he is saying about it. First off, he didn’t get a free pass to the MIX event, and secondly he plays both sides of the fence in his post.

As always, I casually see what people are saying. As you know, no matter how hard someone shoves down a new process, software, OS, etc… it’s the people that are going to bite or spit. Well right now the people are spitting. In fact, one of the more prominent comments under Scoble’s post goes like this

Microsoft rebooted the web? Why, did they crash it? Sorry, couldn’t resist.

What I’m not sorry about is that I don’t trust Microsoft. I don’t trust Ballmer. I don’t trust Gates. I don’t believe that the old Microsoft - the one that lied, cheated, and stole its way into becoming a monopoly has turned over a new leaf.

Ouch! But it gets even better, as I scrolled down further to find more Mac and Linux comments. Then the very last comment, I thought I would get to see something. There was a comment by Michael S. Scherotter who has a web site that he used to learn Silverlight on. He is a Microsoft employee.

So here I am. All excited to finally see this hype. Then it all became really clear. Just go there yourself - http://xmldocs.net/ - I’m sure you will be jumping up and down all over for this Silverlight exhibition.

Technically Speaking, if you are going to post a comment and link your web site while saying how cool Silverlight is; make sure it works. If you are going to state “how I work at Microsoft, and how I made this web site to test it“, just make sure the site works.

Black on White is not impressing me. Not one bit. I’m currently siding with the Linux and Mac people at this time. Remember, I’m from the STL, you have to show me. Please don’t mistake that with SHOE ME; that is north of here in Wisconsin!

Facebook - To launch local classifieds; maybe!

CrackBerry - BlackBerry Anonymous will be forming right around the corner - Angel’s/VC’s take note - great investment, you have plenty of customers!

MyBowlAd - Super Bowl ad time for some dudes. Sounds like a plan to me!

Business Ops Mistakes - A great article to read if you are in business.

Always On - Not for the whore Scoble! Watch Dave Winer’s video on that link first.

Setdot - Uhm, just like eVite, so why? Is there anything different? I say - try Planypus.

Another Day - At the Microsoft office. Not the that office, but the one where they cut the checks to the lawyers!

Technically Speaking, that is it for the moment. Need to take a break, rex.tv if you are bored, Link Blog if you want to read good articles; unlike this round up.

Al Jazeera launched their own YouTube channel, and SplashCast has it in their player (below). It was first reported by the New York Times. In regards to Marshall’s opinion, I’m with him on this one. I consider myself an open minded American, and the mainstream media in this country has a lot to be desired. Al Jazeera does cover the news well.

In regards to who does it the best - I would have to say it’s the blogosphere; the online only media. We do it faster, are more timely (see the twitter Mexico earthquake as a good example), and there are more of us. I’ll shut up now. Watch the videos:

NBC-News Corp - Now available on Comcast. Now all you Comcast customers know the reason why they didn’t want you to have true “unlimited” broadband these past few months.

Google - What me worry? Same thing Microsoft said. Same thing AT&T said decades ago. If I were Google, I’d be very careful.

Technically Speaking, that should keep you busy for now.

It’s going to be hard pressed to keep up with a major conference going on this week. My computer memory, along with everyone else’s out there will probably be cooking to fry mode this week keeping up.

Let’s start off with some interesting financial news. Why? Why not! I think these two items are quite important:

Sallie Mae $25 billion - Sold! The housing market is something that really everyone needs to know about.

Wachovia - Profit’s rise by 33%. I remember when I interviewed for them; never heard of them back in those days!

Now on to the tech stuff. We kick it off with one of the most reliable sources for good information, CenterNetworks:

Viddler - Now Allen is a big Viddler fan. Everytime I see a post on it, I think “Batman” as in the RIDDLER! haha.

Want to watch people? - Web 2.0 conference hallway cam is about to be live and world wide! Better then watching my chair!

Fun Reading - It seems everyone has a bit of Jeff Foxworthy in them.

Technically Speaking, more in a few.

Legal TABS - Tablature for guitarists; legal this time!

Just Because - The ignorant mainstream really ticks me off; so yeah, this is a repeat of the last post!

Vomit! - Yup, I know how you feel, but oh well - gotta try with rex.tv nevertheless. What makes me really vomit is that YouTube was bought for $1.65 Billion.

Robert Scoble - He is back!

Technically Speaking, there are some worth checking out to make your Monday a little brighter.

Nice ones by Google this morning. In fact I won’t believe anything until sometime tomorrow, April 2nd. It is quite apparent that the web loves the April Fool’s jokes. There were plenty flying around yesterday, as well as days before. No matter, this blog keeps on going forward.

I did like the way Google went to the trouble of putting out ideas, as well as TechCrunch, and even silent for the past week Scoble. Good stuff, and I have no April 1st jokes. I guess my only joke is something that launched right after midnight.

rex.tv - it’s live, it’s stupid, and it was fun for me to set up. It’s running now, and the IRC channel is up. Let’s take it back to 1999 for a bit. This is not justin.tv, but it’s more like JenniCam. What happens when I need to relax and just do something fun - rex.tv - it’s there, not an April Fool’s joke; but maybe it should be?

Technically Speaking, more in a few.