The social web is an evolving ball of our society’s thoughts and behaviors. The awesome part of it, all that data can be cataloged and reviewed. Below are the top social trends from 2009 on Twitter and Facebook.
Ever wonder how the Internet sees you? What information would an Internet crawl bot would catalog about you? Now you can find out!
The project is called Persona’s, and it’s from MIT’s Media Lab.
Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person – to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.
The Persona’s project will crawl the Internet for articles and content that includes your name. If you have a very common name, your results may be skewed for obvious reasons. The project is far from perfect but it’s a neat little tool. Watching the bot crawl content may be more fun than the results itself. Give it a try!
Google is acquiring companies like I acquire candy on Halloween. This raises some big questions like; is Google getting too big for itself? They seem to be on a path to become another Microsoft or Apple, yea that big! Let’s take a look at their latest reason to salivate, Yelp!
Yelp! is a community of restaurant/food fanatics who upload user reviews of eateries and restaurants. From Bob’s Steaks just down the road to the most classy restaurants in New York City.
- Larry Dignan at ZDNet. Dignan predicts a dark scenario if the deal goes through: “See where this is going? Google is your friendly neighborhood local business gatekeeper. Google is already the gatekeeper for the big guys. The Google is a local content Borg. Resistance is futile. So is innovation. Any threat these days gets acquired.”
Larry brings up a valid point. Google is becoming such a dominant force could it stifle innovation in the areas they are involved in? Any start-up with any promise that could run with the big boys gets sucked up and purchased by Google. Does this sound familiar? Microsoft anyone?
David Coursey of PC World even published an article inserting the idea of Apple and Microsoft teaming up to take on Google. I’m not the only one seeing the GOOG as a threat, am I?
I will be the first to admit I love Google. They are one of the biggest and best tech companies in the world bar none. Their innovation, products, business ideals are all fantastic. I use many Google products including, search, e-mail, maps, docs, wave, voice etc. You name it, I probably use it.
Do we blame Google for their dominance and great business sense to this point? Or do we blame everyone else who can’t step up and compete with Google? I’m not sure which way the tide would go on that question.
2009 is coming to a close and the web went through radical transformation and progression as it always does. Lots of buzz words we’re thrown around like cloud computing, real-time, geo-locate and streaming video. These changes have been occurring under our noses for the past 12 months and their evolution will continue. Let’s first examine the issue of real-time.
Twitter and Facebook dueled for social supremacy in 2009 with Facebook the obvious front-runner. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, stole some special sauce from Twitter by adding some more real-time interactivity with content and user status updates. Users at first bucked at this change but is now becoming socially accepted among users.
Twitter had changes of its own by re-working their re-tweet system and adding server stability to their infrastructure. Twitter often crippled as breaking news occurred around the world.
Twitter wasn’t the only big real-time dog hitting the interwebs hard in 2009. Services like Brightkite, Foursquare and Latitude really took off as users need for ‘real-time geo awareness’ increased. The ability to track your friends every movement and make stalking easier than ever before really is becoming more accepted in our society. Perhaps the largest use of geo-location services is finding restaurants using services like Yelp.
Augmented realities are really taking off and will continue to do so in 2010. Many iPhone applications are taking advantage of extremely accurate cell-phone GPS and built-in accelerometer technology, your phone not only knows where you are, but where your looking. As you move down the street reviews and content pops up about restaurant reviews, in-store sales, lunch specials etc.
If there is one sure bet in 2010 it has to be mobile phone technology. Mobile platforms are the future of personal computing and mobile technology will continue to advance into 2010 and well beyond.
Everyone is worried about the H1N1 flu this season. This already in addition to the regular flu strain that kills thousands every year. Google developed this trending product to track the spread of flu worldwide.
We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries are added together. We compared our query counts with traditional flu surveillance systems and found that many search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in different countries and regions around the world. — Google Flu Trends
How accurate is it? Good question. I’ll let this graphic speak for itself.
This should be an interesting year to track the flu. It is worth a bookmark in your browser.
Check out Google Flu Trends
I know it has been awhile everyone! I have been super busy here at UW-Stout with classes and work. Here is a nice in-depth entry I prepared for UW-Stout administrators on the use of Facebook in their crisis management plan. Enjoy!
Facebook Overview
Facebook is the Internet’s phone book. It is way to connect with friends, find old classmates and stay in touch with loved ones who live far away. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg at the age of 19 while attending Harvard University. It was originally founded to be used at Harvard by students only. Facebook spread like wildfire on-campus and soon Zuckerberg and his co-founders distributed the service to forty-five schools and had hundreds of thousands of users within 6 months. They were onto something. It was at this point Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to pursue Facebook as a full-time venture in the summer of 2004. Zuckerberg is still the CEO of Facebook to this day and has a net worth of over 2 billion. Facebook has been estimated at a staggering $15 billion dollars by Microsoft Corp. (Wikipedia, 2009) In 2008, more than 93% of UW-Stout students had an active Facebook account. (Kaskavitch, 2009)
Facebook User Count: Over 310 million active users
Facebook Behavior during Crises
Virginia Tech, I35 bridge collapse, US Airways 1549 all have one thing in common. Each event spurred dozens if not hundreds of Facebook groups often within an hour of the actual even occurring. These groups on the network provided an open platform to share information at a very fast pace. Facebook groups were setup during the Virginia Tech tragedy within 15 minutes of the news breaking on what was occurring. News and information spreads faster than ever before. So fast sometimes it can cause information overload. A study published in New Scientist magazine in 2008 found that social network sites like Facebook, instant messengers, blogs and micro-blogging sites like Twitter spread warnings and information more efficiently than traditional communication channels. (Catone, 2008)
How to utilize Facebook for crisis management
The big question: How does UW-Stout utilize this tool in its campus crisis management planning?
The answer to this question is by creating “dark groups” on Facebook. Dark groups are groups that are only visible to the creator and those whom the creator selects to invite, these are known as “secret” on Facebook. These dark groups can then be pre-loaded with crisis plans and content that students, faculty and staff will need to know in the event of a campus crisis.
These groups will need to be altered and information about the actual incident will need to be added to the group description because of the fluidity of emergencies, but that should only be a paragraph or two.
Once a crisis occurs, you simply make the group public and invite the first ten or fifteen students. With that small starting cluster of users, the group should grow exponentially will little administration effort. It would also be worthwhile to put it on the UW-Stout home page to align it with other official channels of communication like news releases, blogs and messages from Chancellor Sorensen. The power of viral spread via Facebook was demonstrated when students organized the Westboro Baptist Church counter-protest in under 36 hours. All this organization and information exchange was done with a simple Facebook event.
You will need to consider a few things before considering yourself prepared to use Facebook as a platform in crisis management
- Will you include photos and videos in the group? If so, will only administrators be allowed to upload media or will everyone be allowed to contribute?
- Do you want to enable the ‘wall’ to allow open conversation?
- Do you want the discussion board enabled?
- Who will manage it in the event of a crisis?
Organizations want very tight control on the messages being delivered and content being passed between users, especially during something as serious as a campus emergency. Locking down the group and making it a billboard inside a walled-garden is not effective. You have to be willing to open up and let information flow across the channel in an unfiltered manner. The speed at which is can go back and forth across this medium could be incredibly useful during an emergency. You want your message to get out, and you should want feedback from your receiving audience as well.
Creating dark groups on Facebook will not stop other groups from forming. Having the official group will bolster much more credibility than groups created by students. You will not be able to censor these groups and the information exchanged on them. Having the official group and positioning/advertising it as an official channel of communication will make it more relevant and more likely ‘the place to be’ for your target audience to gather and exchange information. You will be able to:
- Censor information (only if absolutely necessary)
- Direct message all members of your group instantly.
- Control the message and information presented within the group.
All these become possible only if you have administrator privileges in the group. You would not be able to do the above points if you simply joined a student’s group and tried to calm the flames or correct information as a regular member.
There is one ‘issue’ with pre-creating these groups ahead of time. You will need to name them right away and you cannot change them later on. Therefore, you won’t be able to put actual situation specific information in the group name. Some advocate practice setting up these groups, know the setting’s you want and have the information ready to paste into the group. You would actually create the group once the emergency or crisis occurs allowing for a detailed group name.
New technologies and communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook connect large clusters of students like never before. Information is exchanged at light speed and exchanged more efficiently than more traditional channels of communication.
UW-Stout has announced it has selected Microsoft’s Live@edu product to provide e-mail for students. The choice will save hundreds of thousands of dollars for the University while providing the students a better e-mail system. The aging campus-based e-mail server would have cost about $300,000 dollars to replace over a three year span.
The big draw for students will be increased storage capacity. The top problem students encounter every single year is filling up their mailbox with messages. So many of us today are use to unlimited storage of our data. ‘Delete Message’, what’s that? Services like G-mail offer the ability to keep a running archive of every electronic conversation you engage in. The risk associated with that luxury is your e-mail is only stored in the cloud, not on your hard drive. That is what makes so many nervous. If the ‘cloud’ goes down, then what? Oh my godddddd!!!!
Some administrators at other campuses cite the recent G-mail outage that occurred for one-half of a business day as a reason to stay away from cloud-based e-mail. Really? Do you think your universities IT department has the technology, hardware and abilities to that of Google? Your out of your mind if you think your better off just because the server is on your campus. Google maintains a 99.9% up-time, and that figured isn’t carefully crafted with formulas and exceptions to make it seem amazing. It is real 99.9% up-time. What service can even approach saying that truthfully? Not many.
There is no question universities are afraid to ‘lose control’ over their e-mail system; a life blood of any university, especially UW-Stout. Companies like Google and Microsoft can provide better solutions than any university IT department in the country. Google has some of the best network infrastructure in the world. Why not utilize the power of their technology for your students benefits?
These positives do come with risks like:
- Network outage possibilities
- Glitches in the network (See Brown University Google Glitch)
- Difficulties complying with ‘Open Record’ laws.
Microsoft Live@edu rolls out on-campus today. I’m anxious to see the new product and all of its features. I’ll post a follow up blog with how the transition is going here and my thoughts on using the Microsoft product first hand.
Securing wireless networks has been a headache for broadband users for years now. I wanted to write a short blog on how the average home user or small business can secure their wireless network and keep moochers and even more malicious users at bay.
Your Not Secure Out Of The Gate
Most users think just having a router is an automatic shield after listening to various media stories praise routers for their firewall abilities. This is not the case. Most routers you purchase at your local electronics store (Best Buy, Wal-Mart etc.) is not secure when you first plug it in. Routers are normally pre-configured to be open wireless access points. This means anyone within its range will be able to use your connection, no questions asked. This is done to make setup easy and compatible with most operating systems. The only problem is it leaves your network open to attack.
The very first thing you’ll want to is login to your router’s administration panel. This is done by typing in a 192.168.x.x address into your browsers address bar. The actual number varies by router manufacturer, look in your user guide or online to find the local IP address for your router. Linksys for example is 192.168.1.1. The manufacturer sets very easy non-secure passwords. These are easily found online as well as in your user guide and if left unchanged will make your network exceptionally vulnerable. You’ll want to change the password to your router right away. Make sure it is a secure password of at least six characters and preferably with upper and lowercase letters and numbers.
Bad Advice From GeekSquad
Local sales associates at places like Best Buy are often clueless on network security and sometimes offer up misleading advice. Here are some steps that aren’t harmful, but mostly just a waste of time because they don’t secure your network.
- Turning off your SSID broadcast. - The SSID (Service Set Identifier) is an identifier broadcast by a wireless router. You might know this as your network name. Most routers default SSID broadcast is the manufacturers name (linksys, netgear etc.) Turning this off does nothing to protect your network. With the proper software, a malicious user could easily spot your networks presence even with the SSID off. It is a false sense of security. Changing the network name won’t make you more secure either, though I would recommend doing it. Just make sure you SSID isn’t identifiable making it easy for outside users to know where the network is located (i.e. last name, home address are all no no’s)
- Turning DHCP Off - This in theory is a good idea but really doesn’t make you more secure. It is easy to detect the method in which ip addresses are being assigned and make a request matching that method.
- Filtering MAC Addresses – Filtering MAC addresses is a good practice to get into, but for most households and businesses it causes more headache than what it’s worth. For homes with many devices on the network like game systems, multiple computers and cell phones, filtering MAC addresses simply isn’t practical. That being said, a malicious user with easily attainable monitoring software can replicate a MAC address and still penetrate your network. This method has some value for keeping the average user off the network but will crumble with ease against advanced computer users.
What You Should Do
The easiest thing you can do to secure your network is protect your wireless access point with encryption. There are two different kinds of encryption you can use. One is known as Wired Equivalent Privacy or WEP. This encryption is better than nothing but it does have a huge problem.
Beginning in 2001, several serious weaknesses were identified by cryptanalysts with the result that today a WEP connection can be cracked with readily available software found online within minutes. — Source: Wikipedia
WEP can be easily cracked within minutes therefore it should not be your first choice, though it is better than having no encryption at all. It will keep your pesky neighbors with no computer skills from using your bandwidth, but even the most novice 13 year-old could brute force their way into your network. You want something with a little more ‘umph’.
You will want to use Wifi Protected Access, otherwise known as WPA, for your wireless encryption. WPA was designed after flaws were discovered in WEP that led to its demise. Recently, researchers have found a way to crack WPA-TKIP connections, though it is still tougher than cracking WEP. Since this has happened, you’ll want to make sure your using WPA-AES encryption to remain secure. AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard and the encryption contains three block ciphers. It has been adopted by the U.S. government as their standard for encrypting sensitive networks and has yet to be cracked.
WPA2 is an even newer advance in WiFi network security. If you have an older router or a computer older than 3 years old you may have compatibility issues. For less headaches and still secure network, stick with WPA-AES unless you have all ‘newer’ hardware.
Conclusion
The simplest thing you can do to protect your wireless network is still encrypting it. There is no need to cause yourself more trouble by turning off DHCP or hiding the SSID identifier. It will only give you headaches and nightmares down the road. Most need for securing your WiFi comes from nosey neighbors or passer-by’s looking to score free Internet. They don’t want to steal your credit card info or read your e-mails bur just score free interwebs. However, there are individuals who go around looking for easy targets to steal sensitive information from.
| Device | WEP | WPA-PSK | WPA2-PSK |
| PlayStation Portable | Yes | Yes | No |
| Nintendo DS | Yes | No | No |
| PlayStation 3 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Wii | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Xbox 360 WiFi adapter | Yes | Yes | No |
| iPhone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Nokia N800/N810 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Asus Eee PC | Yes | Yes | Yes |
So many of us do it daily, but hardly anyone does it efficiently. E-mail has rapidly become as important as checking your physical snail mail box outside your home. Nothing annoys me more than having to wait more than 24-48 hours for an e-mail response unless they have auto-reply turned on notifying you otherwise. My gripe to people I know who do that is, “would you check your physical mailbox every three or four days?” They always reply with the common answer, no.
Here are some guidelines for effective e-mail
- Don’t Ramble! - When people sit down to check their e-mail they often have lots of messages and little time. Don’t tell your life story only to get to the point in the very last sentence. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) often works well for e-mail. No more than five sentences, that’s it!
- Be Careful With E-Mail Directories and pre-defined mailing lists - I’ve seen people I know make this terrible mistake. When loading up multiple recipients or using a pre-defined mailing list make sure you know who it’s going to! Double check and re-check the recipients you’ve selected or know who the mailing list contains. You could send information and have it seen by users who you definitely don’t want seeing it.
- Don’t E-Mail Angry - Sometimes you will receive a message that angers you or maybe your upset for outside reasons. Never, ever send an e-mail while angry. Just leave it sit till the next day and approach your e-mail with a calm and collected mood.
- Respect Privacy – I’m not terribly strong on this point, but some people are really hypersensitive about their e-mail address. I am personally not one of these people. When sending an e-mail to a group of people consider using the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) option. This will mask everyone who receives the message so none of your recipients know who else received the message.
- Have A Good Signature - Signature are important and everyone should have one. Often times they are over done and sometimes down right distracting. Don’t use photos in your signature as it will increase the likelihood of being caught by a spam filter. Don’t put any kind of quotes in your e-mail, they could end being offensive or confusing to your recipient. Use eight lines to compose your signature, anything more is just too much. Only include what you want recipients to know! I know it is kind of obvious but if you don’t want business calls at home, don’t include your home phone number. Lastly don’t get flashy and fancy, keep it simple. Your not designing a poster, use easy to read fonts.
- Check It Often - As I described above, nothing gets under my skin more when someone does not check their e-mail daily or respond in a timely matter. Check your e-mail at the bare minimum once a day, I recommend checking it twice a day. Don’t just read, respond! Techno geeks like myself have e-mail on constantly with push notifications to our mobile devices. When you send me an e-mail I get it within a minute or two. If it is critical i’ll respond within minutes, not days. You wouldn’t let your physical mailbox outside your home go unchecked for days, would you?
- Don’t Use HTML - Don’t use HTML to link to your website or blog or anywhere else on the web. (i.e. “My Website”) Actually spell out the address. (i.e. http://www.techization.com) You never know what kind of e-mail client the recipient is using and how it could display or not display your address. This leads to a distraction within the message and could result in a lost opportunity if your link doesn’t work.
And for goodness sakes spell check before you send!
