semanticpool

…a pain in the ass. Let me tell you this story.

I just saw this advertisement on Facebook:

and i thought: ‘hey, i want a cartoon character, too’ and clicked on the ad. What i got then was not an easy-to-use cartoon generator, but a weird page saying this:

By clicking “Click Here – It’s Free” below and downloading the Fast Browser Search toolbars, I accept and agree to make Fast Browser Search my default search provider, abide by the Fast Browser Search End User License Agreement and Privacy Policy, and receive relevant search results in response to misspelled or incorrectly formatted browser address requests. Tattoons only works on Facebook.

So i read the privacy policy and the license agreement and found things like this:

Further, MTWB reserves the right to use your: (i) Social Networking Site Information to serve you targeted marketing messages within the applicable Social Networking Site(s) and other online venues; and (ii) Site Data for tracking and, where necessary, verification purposes with MTWB’s third party partners.

So in addition to your character (i don’t know if you get one at all, ’cause i stopped the installation process) you will install a browser plugin which collects data and annoys you with marketing messages.

This is pretty weird:

I have a Facebook-profile and i have set my privacy setting for my friends-list to the value ‘Only friends’ …

…which should mean, that only friends are able to see my friends.

So i logged out of Facebook, called my profile page and voila, there are friends displayed. Does this make sense? I guess not! Except if all the users of the internet are part of my ‘Only friends’-group. :)

Update: Ok, finally i have found how to solve this redundant stuff. Facebook differs between ‘Profile page’ and ‘Search’. So in the search privacy page i can select what the people are able to see.

Dave Winer criticized the behavior of the FriendFeed guys towards Robert Scoble:

For the last couple of years he’s committed himself to the success of FriendFeed. It’s really been awful to see how much he promotes it. All the time, as I watch, I’m thinking — “Those guys are going to screw him.”
[...]
All the effort he poured into FriendFeed is for naught. They sold to Facebook. In the announcements, no mention of the users, and certainly no mention of Scoble. Now would have been the time for them to tip him, throw him a few thousand. Or if not money, how about at least a hat-tip — an acknowledgement of the help they received from users, esp Robert Scoble. Nothing. They didn’t even give him the first interview.

Read the whole blog at scripting.com…

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.
(see Google Webmaster Central)

Happy times for all the ex-Googlers around Paul Buchheit. After Facebook has integrated in their own system a Friendfeed-like feed couple of month ago, Facebook has finally aquired Friendfeed for approx. $50.000.000.

Take a look at all the happy guys after signing the papers for the deal.

Habe mir gerade ein Profil bei myON-ID erstellt, welche einen ähnlichen Service wie idleaf anbieten und ziemlich gut ausschauen. Lustig fand ich allerdings folgende Foto-Auswahl bei der Profilerstellung:

Ich dachte eigentlich immer, dass Bildvorschläge aus einer Menge ‘neutraler’ Fotos wählen  und nicht Gesichter realer Personen vorschlagen. Man könnte sich natürlich jetzt mal die Wahrscheinlichkeit ausrechnen, dass der neue Benutzer genau eines dieser 8 vorgeschlagenen Gesichter hat. ;)