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Would you like to become an infamous blogger?

Posted on April 11, 2010 by Jeremy Toeman

Been a big fan of LIVEdigitally for hours/weeks/years?

Have opinions on gadgets, convergence, digital home stuff, or other consumer lifestyle technology?  Or just an opinionated guy/gal?

Want to get on random media mailing lists from big companies, get PR blasts, butthen get questioned when you ask for review units?

Feel like expressing yourself in more than 140 characters at a time?

Enjoy writing opinions months before the “big guys” do, only to see them share the same thought but as front-page headlines?

Like saying “no it’s live digitally, not living digitally or live digital” over and over again?

Want to toil until the wee hours of the night writing stuff, all for no compensation whatsoever?

Then this is the place for you!  Shoot me an email, or leave a comment here and I’ll get in touch!

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Posted in LD Approved | Tags: blog, blogger, blogging | 5 Comments |

Your Privacy Online: The Internet's Greatest Bait and Switch

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Jeremy Toeman

There was a time when things like decency, self-respect, and privacy mattered, and that time was not too long ago. I’m not going to spend this post lamenting modern society abandoning the concept of self-respect, poise, decency, and other things which seem practically alien in our show-all, tell-all, midriff-sporting, trampstamp-pride (yeah, I hate the word too, but it’s appropriate) oriented culture. I may seem like one heck of an old fogie, but I’m talking about a time I remember that was less than 15, maybe even 10 years ago! With regards to the “living near the bottom” mindset America seems stuck in, I think (hope) it’s just a natural cycle and it will just get better in time. But when it comes to the privacy topic, I’m more than disappointed, I’m near outraged. And I’m going to point some fingers.

It’s hard to say when and where we decided to give up our rights to privacy online. Note that I’m focusing to the online world, and have no commentary regarding people’s ability to do things like steal credit card receipts, dumpster dive, or other methods of specifically targeting an individual, as these take concerted and directed effort. One could argue the entire concept of the “social web” might be in exact defiance of personal privacy. Some of the early players (this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all things social on the web!), in semi-chronological order:

  • Geocities – instead of, well, not really existing online, you can have a home page! Unquestionably the first time people chose to give up personal privacy for some flirtation with Internet fame – but – it was at a time when there was little “networking” from one site to another, so a given person’s home page actually was it’s own disconnected “island” on the Internet (as opposed to the inherent connected nature of services like Facebook). Geocities deserves special mention for being the first (but far from last) time an individual could not only create their own customized page, but make it extremely ugly and hard to read. Privacy impact: moderate.
  • Delicious – instead of keeping your favorite bookmarks to yourself, share them with the world! The reality of the potential harm here is fairly low, as one still has a local bookmark capability through the Web browser AND one can easily choose not to share a bookmark they don’t want shared. Privacy impact: negligible.
  • MyBlogLog – instead of being able to read a blog post in relative anonymity, a “footprint” is left of the trail you have as you surf various blogs. Again, this is extremely opt-in, however, the mere enablement of this plug-in on a blog meant a third-party could specifically “follow” you as a unique Web surfer. Privacy impact: low.
  • Flickr – instead of having to manually share your photos with your friends/family, automatically upload your photos into the public eye unless you specify otherwise. Flickr represented a massive shift in thinking, and I’d personally argue it ushered in the concept of “live in public” to the masses. Example search for pictures that are probably going online without consent of those who are actually in the pictures. Privacy impact: major.
  • Friendster – technically not the first attempt at social networking, but the first one to bring it to a wide spectrum of users. I honestly don’t even remember what I did on Friendster, other than befriend the fake users others had so much fun creating (except for the management team, who clearly thought using the Internet for anything fun was a bad idea). Friendster marked the first time people really paid attention to “numbers of friends” as a metric of importance (ah, the implacable human ego). Privacy impact: moderate-to-low.
  • YouTube – Take Flickr up a notch, by enabling anyone, no matter how dreary and boring, to have their own special place to upload pirated commercial personal videos. Prior to YouTube one was judged purely on their attractiveness (based on the best-looking picture of themselves ever taken, regardless of how long ago), but now we could take every embarrassing, awkward, and goofy moment we have, and immortalize ourselves online with it. It didn’t take long for YouTube to be the haven for people falling off skateboards, failed catapult launches, or (one of my personal favorites) take the video of your friend accidentally hurting herself and further embarrass her by putting it on the Internet – but don’t worry, she didn’t bleed or anything (now that is a great example of friendship!). Privacy impact: major.
  • MySpace – It’s like GeoCities, but now with 10 times the ugly, and more ways to connect than ever before. Originally started as a way for bands to connect with their fans (and for fans to connect with each other), MySpace evolved (or devolved) into a haven for bizarre methods of self-representation, a lustfulness for comment-writing and a bizarre desire to have as many friends as is humanly possible. Today it’s a bit of a “black sheep” in the social networking world, but still has millions of people sporting the most outrageous color schemes (oh look, it’s red-on-red, hey thanks!) and online “bling” imaginable. Privacy impact: massive.
  • Blogging – While there’s no specific technology at play here, the notion that one and all could have a “web log” aka a public diary became very in vogue in the latter half of the aughts (you know, the decade that just ended?). Blogs were key to creating the illusion that one’s deeper thoughts should be shared, in written form, with the world. Since there’s actually a decent amount of work required in order to blog, and most blogs are rapidly abandoned, on an individualized basis it’s not a big deal – except for those who go overboard. And yes, I do get the irony of this blog post. Privacy impact: minor-to-major (highly self-inflicted!).
  • Zoominfo – You might not have heard of this one, but ZoomInfo.com uses all the content it can find about you to build a profile of who you are (or might be) – screenshot is below. On the plus side, they will allow you to effectively delete your profile, and it’s really focused on your business “identity”, but if you ever needed an example of how scary the concept of being stalked online is, this is the one. To be clear, the company itself is not doing anything wrong, they are simply finding information about you through completely publicly available sources, that’s the scary part. Privacy impact: N/A – they themselves merely aggregate stuff.
  • Twitter – Without analyzing use of the service, Twitter is just a “public update” one can make, in 140 characters or less. Not a big deal. However, the cultural shift one is inclined towards after deep adoption of the use is where the problems show up. For those who actually use the service (which is not the majority of Twitter’s users), there is a sensation wherein it becomes more and more challenging not to share things. And for those with poor critical-moment-decision-making skills AND a lack of extreme discipline, Twitter is the ultimate tool in accidental self-representation online. Self-censorship is a difficult thing, and a tool like Twitter makes it way too easy to accidentally tell a lot of people something you’d rather have kept to yourself (and yes, we can make the argument that people should just be better about how they Tweet, but that’s like blaming bullets for shooting deaths). Privacy impact: massive.
  • Foursquare, Gowalla, and other location-based services – Take Twitter (above), now apply it specifically to enable you to proactively tell the general public where you are at a given moment. This plus the free white pages is about the easiest way in history to explicitly tell thieves when your house will be unoccupied. Granted it’ll take a bit before the average criminal gets quite so sophisticated, but the mere concept of it should be giving you the willies. And if it doesn’t, check out Blippy. Privacy impact: so high it’s amazing anybody uses it.
  • Facebook – The grand-daddy of them all. Over 300 million people use Facebook today, one could call it an individual’s “hub” of personality on the Internet, not to mention the best place to buy fake farm animals and even throw sheep at each other – awesome. Now when Facebook first launched, it was for (and from) college kids only – us old folks couldn’t even see what crazy fun was ensuing inside the closed doors. They then opened it up for anyone to use, however all activities were “private” within Facebook – only your “friends” (a term the service has effectively destroyed) could see your activities. This notion of privacy is what got people really using Facebook to share personal moments en masse. Facebook then, and this is the worst part, threw that precedent out the window. Facebook not only shares your content, updates, photos, friend lists, and everything else in public, it does so with the entire world! Privacy impact: words don’t describe.

I want to make sure I explain my premise again properly, as by now I’m sure some people just think I’m a loony laggard who doesn’t “get it”. I get it. I get how we’ve been tricked. I see it very clearly. Let’s face it, Friendster was clearly the “gateway drug” which led us down the path to sharing crazy intimate details in the public eye, and thinking how it’s expected. Heck, it was an easy path to follow, and it played into so many people’s desires to feed egos – finally it could be done unilaterally! The Internet basically enabled the individual to be famous. And if it’s not clear, fame sells – and sells well. But it’s at a cost – simple google searches showed me information like prominent bloggers’ home addresses, birthdays, and other data that makes identity theft (an actual real crime) something so easy that a clever hacker could probably write a web program to do it automatically.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg even went so far as to say something to the equivalent of “that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years” (source). Guess what Mark – you might not be at the helms of a huge company had you made that choice. I hear a lot of industries afraid to make certain decisions because of the “slippery slope” they lead to. Well, it’s happened, and there’s really no one company to blame. Sure, each played their part, and some more aggressively/offensively than others, but let’s face it – we all got suckered in.

Please note and be aware – your privacy has been in violation for a long time. Public records show home ownership details, birth certificates, licenses, and much more. These have been available to the lowest bidder for quite a while. I view this as a different (albeit serious) issue, as none of these are opt-in privacy flaws. But just because someone can do things like dumpster dive to find your most recent credit cards statements does not by default imply that one should sign up to Blippy and voluntarily throw this information info the public eye. Further, I’ll completely acknowledge that I am just as guilty as many others for living in oversharing mode – but I guess the first step is being aware that there is a problem.

I read today (I’ve been working on this post for a while, so the timing is a little ironic coincidental) that people are starting to give up social networking for a variety of reasons – privacy being one of them. I don’t know if that’s necessary, but I think it’s certainly understandable. What I think is more important is for people to make certain choices about the public scrutiny they choose to live their lives under.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

  • Make sure you are personally aware of the various nuances and ramifications of each of the services you use (for example, did you know that your status updates on Facebook will, by default, be seen not only by your network, but by their networks as well? – here are some tips for improving your Facebook privacy settings – go do them immediately upon finishing this reading).
  • Think about how your choices to proactively share can impact not only yourself, but your family, coworkers, and friends. Take into consideration that you might think it’s adorable to put up a photo of your kid in some embarrassing moment now, but they might not appreciate it when they are an adult and it’s still on the Internet (and it will be)!
  • Don’t forget about the future you – who may not want to have the world know about some incident better left in private.
  • Finally, consider your real objectives. Do you actually care about Twitter followers? Does it matter to be the Mayor of your local Starbucks? Of course not, and there’s nothing wrong with having some fun and frivolity – but remember that it all comes with a cost. When you proactively give up free information, companies are profiting from it.

Your privacy is an asset. Take care of it.

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Posted in That's Janky, Web/Internet | Tags: blogging, delicious, facebook, flickr, foursquare, friendster, geocities, illusion, internet, mybloglog, myspace, privacy, twitter, youtube, zoominfo | 4 Comments |

Not-So-Live at CES 2010

Posted on January 10, 2010 by Jeremy Toeman

En route to Vegas, I got myself completely ready for “liveblogging” CES 2010.  My plan was to walk the show floor, find interesting stuff, and either make a quick video or take a picture and blog.  In order to achieve this goal, I had the following technologies prepped:

  • My Droid Eris.  I was fairly confident that the Verizon network would hold up well during the show, giving me 3G bandwidth when and where I’d need it.  Further, it has a 5MP camera – good enough for CES picture taking. Usefulness: 9/10.
  • Ardica jacket w/Moshi Power Pack. Stage Two is doing some consulting work with Ardica, so they gave me a jacket to use during the show in order to keep my Eris charged (since the battery while doing 3G connectivity drains ridiculously fast). Usefulness: 10/10. And as a bonus it kept me warm outside!
  • Flip minoHD. As my backup to my Droid, I had a Flip ready to make all sorts of interesting videos, just in case. Usefulness:2/10. I only made one video with the Flip, but it did work when I needed it.
  • WpToGo (Android App). Gave me near-perfect mobile access to the WordPress blog. Usefulness: 8/10
  • Ustream Broadcaster (Android App). Gave me live videostreaming directly from the phone. Usefuless: 9/10
  • TwiDroid (Android App). Gave me access to Tweet and monitor Tweets. Usefulness: 9/10

Right now you’re probably thinking “well golly jee, Jeremy, it sure sounds like you were set up as the ultimate mobile blogger. What ever could have gone wrong?”

First, while the network connectivity far outpaced my iPhone friends, it still just wasn’t good enough for really watchable mobile video. My friend “Tivoboy” sent me a note that said “live stream is cool and novel, but vid quality is poor doesn’t make for real viewing or ANY future use.”  After receiving that (4 videos later), I pretty much stopped.  Here’s a sample video:

So, now that I was reduced to still imagery and blogging, I ran into the next hurdle: I’m amazingly slow at typing on my Eris, and CES is really busy.  Every time I took a pic, I wanted to upload and write right away, but in reality I pretty much had to keep moving.  So I decided to keep the major storytelling for after I returned, and used Twitter for any “real-time” updates.  I’ll spend the rest of the week getting all the content online (depending on how much MW2 I end up playing).

Overall I thought it was a pretty decent CES.  Nothing outstanding, but then there really hasn’t been much amazing to see at CES in years anyway.  It’s the fundamental branding problem of the show.  Further, the rapidity at which content was shared by Engadget and others radically diminished the in-person wow factor.  When you already know about the various 3DTV, ultra-slim TVs, netbooks, tablets, e-readers, and everything else that’s being shown, it takes a bit away from the in-person showiness of it all.

I think this is the fundamental challenge to keep the show interesting and excited for the attendees (beyond their busy schedules full of meetings).  By Friday afternoon (day 2) when I was walking the show with Robert Scoble and Rocky, we had already seen everything we wanted to see.  This is compounded by the (and forgive the word) “lemming-ness” of the big players.  Once 3DTV was pre-established to be a hot thing, it became the only thing, and as a result, boring.  You simply can’t get excited by 5 different demos of the same technology (especially not one that many of us just aren’t excited about).

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Posted in Gadgets | Tags: ardica, blogging, ces, CES 2010, conference, consumer electronics show, convention, droid eris, flip, gadgets, mobile, robert scoble, twitter, verizon | 3 Comments |

Let the blogging recommence

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Jeremy Toeman

Between the family & kids, the job(s), the venture(s), and everything else, I’ve let blogging slip.  For shame.  I’ve been sitting on a few different reviews and other pieces, all 80% written, for weeks and weeks now.  For shame.

But no longer!

And now, in beautiful non-sequitur format, here’s a montage I put together of all the times in the show Arrested Development where they do the “her?” gag. 

Let the great experiment begin!!

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Posted in General | Tags: arrested development, blogging, busy | 1 Comment |

Publishing Twitter's stolen docs: the prisoner's dilemma in action

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Jeremy Toeman

The backstory – some hacker broke into some Twitter employee’s email, grabbed a bunch of docs, and sent them to some bloggers. This guy is clearly a grade-A jerk, no debate there.

Lots of juicy tidbits in the emails, ranging from personal stuff to revenue forecasts.  Now since these were stolen it’s pretty obvious the guys at Twitter didn’t want them out in the open. This of course didn’t matter to a variety of “news-breaking” bloggers, who just “couldn’t resist” putting them up while throwing up a series of rationales like “if we didn’t, someone else would’ve.”

Actually, no, they wouldn’t necessarily have unless y’all didn’t pave the way.  You just got caught playing a classic little prisoner’s dilemma game, and you all failed, head directly to jail, do not pass go.  Here’s the visualization for you…

The Prisoner’s Dilemma of Being Ethical in the News-Breaking Blogging Industry

Blogger B respects privacy Blogger B endorses theft
Blogger A respects privacy Bloggers contribute to culture with high standards Blogger A gets scoop, traffic spike, short term revenue through ads, no long term benefits

Blogger B holds head high, but probably rues the day

Blogger A endorses theft Blogger B gets scoop, traffic spike, short term revenue through ads, no long term benefits

Blogger A holds head high, but probably rues the day

Bloggers contribute to culture that rewards “bad” behaviors

But this is par for the course if your job is breaking news as fast as possible, as there is no reward for being late nor is there a penalty for being inaccurate.

In my opinion the race to be first is full of nothing but losers, as it is utterly unsustainable as there is no loyalty being built by readers who will simply follow a trail to the news, rapidly forgetting who was first yesterday or the day before.  While the publishing industry has never exactly rewarded accuracy, modern technology and communications tools are clearly worsening the problem for us poor souls who simply want to be informed.

Incidentally, regarding the ethics of publishing stolen documents, I think it pretty well speaks for itself.  It’s not about how “easy” a hack was to steal something (despite the funny as shown here). If anyone feels the need to “justify” the actions, well then they are doing just that, aren’t they?  Funny how rarely you need to justify actions that are obviously ethical…

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Posted in Web/Internet | Tags: blogging, ethics, news-breaking, prisoner's dilemma | 7 Comments |

Am I too old a dog to learn a new trick?

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Jeremy Toeman

My music collection appears frozen in time somewhere in the mid-90s.

Despite knowing a boatload about them, I rarely buy new gadgets, almost never replacement gadgets (which is fitting in quite nicely to my shift in living a more sustainable lifestyle).

I use Office XP/NeoOffice (OXP is much, much better, but I don’t quite feel like booting up parallels all the time). The ribbon sucks.

I write long blog posts…

I was talking with Robert Scoble this weekend about blogging, FriendFeed, Twitter, online communities, and, of course, potty training.  On the call I mentioned one of my greatest stumbling blocks to writing a blog post is that as I research a given topic, I tend to find others have said the same thing I was planning to say (put enough monkeys in front of a keyboard…), and as a result don’t feel I’m adding more value, and tend to drop the post.  As constant readers have noticed, this has caused a drop-off in my blogging.

The problem for me is I really like the 5-7 paragraph “long post” format.  2-3 paragraphs aren’t enough for me to set things up the way I like, and I try to generally make some kind of point when I blog.  I’m actually fairly proud of some of the posts I’ve written over the years.  But these days I find it hard to muster the energy to get a “quality” post together.

I’ve experimented with some “roundup” posts – to good feedback, thanks!  So I’m going to try some more “quick blast” short form posts. 1-2 paragraphs on a given topic I encounter.  Don’t worry, I’m not planning to lifestream, just give more content with quick thoughts, opinions, and commentary on more things.

I’ll still keep the yawners flowing from time to time, but hopefully this will kick my butt into being a bit more regular with the ol LD.

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Posted in General | Tags: blogging | 1 Comment |

Thoughts on corporate blogging

Posted on December 15, 2008 by Jeremy Toeman

From my post on the Stage Two blog:

Jeremiah Owyang, of Forrester, put out a couple of good blog posts last week analyzing the general distrust of corporate blogs (which, I guess, includes this one).  Here’s a nice chart of the study:

What’s surprising to me is how much people are surprised by this news…

Read the rest of the article…

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Posted in Marketing | Tags: blogging | Leave a comment |

About

Jeremy Toeman is a seasoned Product leader with over 20 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, smart TV and consumer technology. Prior ventures and projects include CNET, Viggle/Dijit/Nextguide, Sling Media, VUDU, Clicker, DivX, Rovi, Mediabolic, Boxee, and many other consumer technology companies. This blog represents his personal opinion and outlook on things.

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