First up a Facebook focus:

Jared:

Certainly, it’s another round of Facebook Fail because these changes simply need to be communicated more clearly. This is a company that routinely finds itself in damage control mode about once every four months, whether it be design changes, Beacon, or now this TOS change. Certainly we’ve seen that Facebook has not completely learned its lesson in good communications with its user base; this in turn leads to a reputation of being kind of shady (which was really cemented with the Beacon incident). Facebook’s also the poster child for “walled garden” — thus, something like this will (rightfully) raise the ire of folks who care deeply about the ownership over their own data.

So, content creators are left with a tough call: Spend time and money on self-hosting — including the technical requirements, promotional materials, and the time getting content into their own system, or use a platform like Facebook to publish faster, with all the technical handiwork in place, but with the understanding that in return for these services that the content creator is likely to surrender some of their rights and have to play by the service’s rules.

Ian:

Now today, I’ve seen lots of indignant words going back and forth over this issue, on Twitter, and Friendfeed, and in numerous blogs.

Now, whilst I’m not saying that everyone should simply roll over and let Facebook run over them; will our protests about the change to their TOS really cause any change to their change?

I think not, any more than all the protests that went on about the ‘old’ interface. There are approaching 200 million users on Facebook now, and I think it’s true, that for Facebook, there’s safety in numbers.

The Stuckey Family:

I’m just not the type to get into that sort of thing. To me, it falls under the same category as a chain letter or one of those emails where you have to send it to 10 friends in the next 24 hours or your 3 wishes won’t come true. Anyway….here it is, the 25 Things I hate about facebook.

Did you SEWE?

Michael Phelps won’t be facing drug charges after all.

Becky just isn’t that worked up about paying taxes.

Dan kindly posts two versions of his latest effort From Jefferson to America 4.0. There’s the full version, but pour yourself a cup of coffee before digging in:

America 2.0 began not with the shots on Fort Sumter in 1861, but with Abraham Lincoln’s decision to address, once and for all, the sin at the heart of our nation’s founding: slavery. Lincoln did so incrementally, but committed the Republic to a future that was not only far less hypocritical but also far less decentralized. At the start of the Civil War people referred to “these United States” in the plural form. By 1865, “The United States” had become a singular noun.

America 2.0 largely looked inward, concerning itself with the settling and development of North America. This required enormous pools of immigrant labor, and so the world flocked to our shores. Commerce flourished, and along with it came corruption. America 2.0 saw the growth of cities and industries. It saw the rise of a great labor movement that is barely taught in modern American schools. It was a time of vibrancy and violence and bustling domestic optimism.

This second America lasted until The Great Depression, failing in increments for at least two generations before its collapse in 1929-32. Despite the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt and other reformers, robber barons, unregulated financiers, newspaper tycoons and political patronage machines brought the country step-by-step to disaster.

If that’s a little heavy for you, no worries, he has posted the rundown, in list format.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 11:09 pm by heather and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.