I was about to comment on the whole slapfest at Gnomedex, relishing in the fact, of course, that I am on the other side of the continent, and am absolutely unqualified to write about any of the high school drama going on.

However, I did stumble upon Ethan Kaplan’s blog today — the chap who was at Mesh this year, and who is also the head technology guy for Warner Bros., and who is also wicked smart (who writes a great angry blog — not always angry, but angry sometimes in a good way), and I think he pretty much sums up a lot of sentiment in one sentence:

We pay attention to some stupid fight between overweight white guys inside a conference hall, where outside there are significant problems that we ignore for the sake of our own false prophet building.

Allen Stern remarked over at Mat Ingram’s blog: “ever notice that the drama centers around less than 5 people?”

I think the answer is an unequivocal “YES”. Which should be followed up by an addendum. “Said drama is almost always self-centered navel gazing, which often has no bearing outside of the self-centered navel gazing technology side of the blogosphere.” [yours truly sometimes guilty of that too, however].

File this under “off-topic”, but I couldn’t help notice a post by Mark Cuban (which has some how made it on to Techmeme), involving how he basically realized that he’s lost the ability to write quickly and take notes, as he probably hasn’t done so in years (he usually does it via laptop or some kind of electronic device).  But more specifically the following:

I literally couldn’t take notes fast enough because as I wrote, I realized I couldn’t read my own writing. Not only could I not read my own writing, when I tried to slow down so that everything would be legible, I realized that actually writing each letter as part of a complete word was actually difficult

When I started clerkship, the second half of medical school (and an incredible seven years ago) where, in North America, you spend the majority of your time in hospital and not actually in class, did I actually learn the same lesson Mark did.  And the reason why, I suspect, that most doctors hand writing is chicken scratch.  Its not that they were always this way, or that they enjoy writing illegibly.

Rather, that at some point in their career, they’ve had to write faster and faster because of how busy you are (that was one thing about being in a hospital that I just didn’t appreciate at the time). And in writing faster, and quicker, you tend to develop shortcuts in how you write, and of course, the writing tends to get a little bit more illegible over time.  What makes it worse (to lay people) is that on the only bit of communication that patients see, the prescription, we tend to use abbreviations as well — but not just English abbreviations, *Latin* ones, which make it doubly hard to understand.  If you’ve ever read “PO” on a prescription, it stands for “Per Os”, which is meant to be “by mouth”.

Anyway, I thought it was ironic that this kind of phenomenon would pop up, and be documented by, one of the biggest personalities in *Technology*.  I wonder if anyone else has noticed this kind of phenomenon by other people in other industries?

Something for everyone to chew on on a sunny Sunday afternoon. ;)

You may have heard that as part of the fall line up of new shows, ABC is producing a show based on those Cavemen from those Geico commercials.  I feel like that there should be a commentary for advertising as art selling advertising should pop up somewhere, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for this blog.  But perhaps its “clever” foray into wilds of new media *is*.

For example, did you know that the Cavemen guys have set up a fake twitter profile, and are sending out fake twits?

Unbelievable.

We should make a distinction that fake blogs, i.e. flogs, are usually the form of some kind of attempt at deception, that is, on the surface the blog might appear authored by someone or be about something, but in reality is authored by someone else (see the Edelman Flog scandal of 06).  On the other hand “character blogs” are usually not at all deceptive, but are clearly authored by some corporate marketing wag who is supposed to be a corporate character, or embodiment thereof.  If Ronald McDonald were to author a blog lamenting the loss of the “super-size” option?  That would be a character blog (and a fine satire, actually).  You could make an arguement that Fake Steve Jobs is both, actually.

So, right now thecaveman twitter profile *is* a fake profile / twitter, I wonder if it would be more appropros to use the term “character twitter”? Nah, doesn’t roll of the tongue as nicely. ;)

At any rate, listen, I “get” how continuous partial attention is a new thing and its something we’re all trying out.  And yes, I “get” that people in my “demo” don’t mind be advertised to as long as its new and entertaining.

But jeez man.  Paying some corporate wag write fake twits in the persona of *caveman* as marketing pop for an upcoming comedy?  And then interacting with fellow Twitterers?  With witty twitters like “Just watched the Bourne Ultimatum. He brings out the primal caveman in me. I wanted to hit a woolly mammoth with some jujitsu!“  — it seems so cutting edge, my brain is bleeding.

I honestly don’t know how the Twittering community will take to thecaveman, but early adopters being earl adopters, my money’s on plenty of derision, scorn and ridicule.

Update 0030h: Well, that was quick. Brandy Baker of Facebook has left a comment which explains the leak. It turns out that it was the result of “single bug on a server” that exposed the code to a “small number of users” that was fixed “immediately”. Which is a fine enough explanation, I suppose. On the other hand, I am no security expert, but I do wonder if the number of users were small, and the time exposed was relatively short, what were the chances among those users was someone malicious enough – and savvy enough – to know enough about Facebook to pull down the source code, and then [turns out you may not need to be savvy at all, as it may have pushed raw code right to the browser] republish it? Perhaps the real issue now is not “Facebook’s security is suspect”, but “what will Facebook do to improve its security now that [a part of] its source code *has* been published?

By the time most of you read this, it will have splattered all across Techmeme and associated blogs. But thanks to a tip at TechCrunch (where else?) it looks like Facebook has been hacked and in a big way. Either that, or its the result of an inside job at Facebook. The end result is that [part of] the source code behind Facebook has been put up on a public blog with a single entry. I am no PHP guru so the exact meaning of said code will be best left for others to deciper, but this is a serious blow to Facebook with respect to how it manages its own security — and therefore, how it manages privacy issues.

Anyway, what I’m about to say next is something we all know, but it bears repeating. One of the many things that makes Facebook “special” is its ability to make sure that the identity that you claim you have is the one you actually have. This has changed somewhat since anyone can sign in and essentially join “no network”, but for many years, there was *some* test to make sure that you were a real person, and that was through the college that you went through (your email address specifically).

For this reason, I think many people probably trust Facebook more than other social networks. They don’t mind using real names. Real jobs. Posting real photos. And letting people know what their real relationships are.

I don’t really need to write any further to tell you that a breach of Facebook’s security could be, as a proxy, an indication of how secure it manages to keep its own information — and in turn *your* information. I mean whether its a technical hack or a social one, that led to this security breach, I shudder to think how the mainstream news media is going to pick up on this, and turn this into one giant spectacle — particularly seeing how large Facebook has gotten (in some cities anyway, such as Toronto) — because the issue does have merit.

What hope do any Facebookers have to safeguard their privacy if Facebook’s own source code has been leaked? In fact, how will its source code *being* leaked lead to *further* security and potential privacy breaches?

I have no idea how this is going to play out, save that the days for Facebook as Web2.0’s golden child may be coming to a quick close with this news. I don’t know what the title of next chapter will be, but I think that it will probably have to do with defending its credibility, which, if it leads to changes in subscription numbers, might in turn lead to serious talks about re-evaluations of its valuations.

Which, of course, would be huge.

I’d like to think of myself as pro-Microsoft.  I know it has its fair share of detractors amongst the geek community (at last poll: 95% of them, which had an error rate of +/- 5%), but I figure as long as you know what you’re getting into, as I feel I do (most times) it does the trick.  Well, anyway.  Last week I upgraded to Vista.

By “upgrade” I mean, I actually bought a new PC as I was sick and tired of using a five year old piece of hardware.  Elitest to some, I know, but it had just gotten unimaginably slow to use.  I mean, I shuddered every time I right-clicked in explorer because I knew I was in for a 30 second wait.  Or, even worse, trying to create a “new folder” in the windows explorer area.  That’s about a 45 second wait.  As I say, my every day Windows experience, even after defraging and deleting and spyware blasting efforts (and actually much more) had become an abomination.

So, I upgraded my PC, and along with it came Vista Premium.

Now, there are a lot of complaints with Vista, but I think that many of them stem from the fact that its a processor and memory hog.  I thought this wouldn’t be a problem with a new PC (quad core, 3 gigs of ram) and its not.  But there was one thing I heard about but was still unprepared for.  And that was how much stuff — software and hardware — is *not* Vista compatible.

• Some favourite shareware games (have you heard of the Cradle of Rome, perhaps?)
• My new terrabyte external hard drive (I had announced it on Pownce a while back — incidentally I have 5 more invites if you’re interested) from Western Digital.
• My dual VTech Skype phone.
• And — *almost* — the xbox media center.  But I got *that* to work, thank God, because Vista’s Media Center is also an abomination when compared to the sleek awesomeness of the Xbox Media Center.

For me, everything else about Vista is pretty solid.  I don’t quite understand how it cost *billions* to produce, but that’s a post for another time.  I mean, the new “search” function is pretty slick, and so is the aero interface, but this incompatibility thing? Its rendered $600 dollars worth of hardware un-usable, and is actually changing what I have to do and buy because of it.  I can’t talk using my VTech phone for skype conversations, so now I have to buy another headset.   Thank goodness the external hard drive came from Costco, which has an extended return policy on hardware, so I plan to take it back.

But amongst the many things that Vista *doesn’t* have going for it, the incompatibility thing is one thing that cannot, and should not, be ignored for anyone wishing to upgrade themselves out of Windows XP.  Even if you have the latest and greatest hardware running it, incompatibility issues may (as they did for me) change, and make more expensive, your every day computing experience.

[and no, I don't think upgrading to Vista pre-SP1 will help -- although I'm doing that as we speak]

For the second time in recent memory, Reuters has published photos that were clearly erroneous.  The first time was last year when they published doctored photos of the Middle Eastern conflict.  Now, they’ve come clean after a 13 year old boy has spotted more photographic chicanery with some photos of the recent expedition of a Russian submarine trying to claim the arctic.  It turns out that the deep sea photography *isn’t* a dedicated Reuters photographer doing due diligence in the watery depths of the North Artic — its stock footage they already had from taking pictures of the Titanic … 10 years ago.  Was this 13 year old boy some kind of photography geek? Or merely a Titanic geek?  Well, perhaps the latter, if by Titanic you meant, Titanic The Movie, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio!  It turns out the same stock footage was *also* used in the movie, which is what this boy spotted!

While journalism and the press (and photojournalism is lumped in there too) are supposed to be the fourth estate — that is, an important body in the function of a society “both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political issues” — I do wonder if we (and I use the collective “we”) are the Fifth Estate, as a collective body who watches these watchers.  And in the age of social media / new media / continuous partial attention / interwebs I suspect this is a role that we will necessarily evolve, and I think this is a good thing.  I mean, how can thinking critically, and being critical of the media we watch, read, and consume but be a good thing? [tip: digital inspiration]

There are many, actual, “eternal debates” amongst bloggers.  One of them is the whole full vs. partial feeds debate, which has reared its ugly, ugly head again, with respect to the Freakonomics blog (you know, the really popular one, based on the New York Times bestselling book — but more on the latter in a moment) as it is moving to the New York Times.  Long time fans of the blog have been clamoring that the move from full to partial feeds “teh suck”, to put it mildly.

I’ve never quite understood how militant people can feel about their need for feeds, and how this sometimes come out, again, to put it mildly, as a little entitled.  GRrrrrah! I deserve full feeds! GRrrrra! I will unsubscribe if I don’t get them and never come back! GRrrraaa — <cough, cough>  RRrraa!  Partial feeds only serves to feed The Man!  Partial feeds are antithetical to the freedom of the interwebs! GRrrrrah! I don’t care that blogging is a business, I still want to read your content the way I want!

Meh.  :)

While the issue is a little more nuanced than I’m making it out to be — namely, the issue of alienating a small but vocal part of their core audience versus growing it through the New York Times (do you know which side I fall onto?) — and that some respected bloggers clearly fall on one side of the full side of the partial feed debate … at the end of the day, there’s probably a way to assauge everyone’s feelings by offering both kinds of feeds for the time being.  Sure, it might not be the NYTimes “policy”, but on the other hand, they don’t acquire a blog like Freakonomics every day either.