Digital Life Simplified
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Facebook’s Open Graph API and Online Privacy
May 14th
A lot of information has been flying around the web for the last few weeks regarding Facebook’s privacy policy and Open Graph. My goal for this blog is to provide you with some sites that will help you bypass the volumes of information and get straight to the facts that concern the average Facebook user.
The main question is: Should you we worry about our own privacy? I mean, is our information safe in Facebook’s hands? I think it’s valid to question Facebook’s privacy changes, especially in relation to its new Open Graph API.
The New York Times posted an article criticizing Facebook for the complexity and length of their privacy policy. Accompanying the article is a map of all the Privacy Options in Facebook, which appear every bit as complex as The New York Times claims.
I’ll admit; it looks bad. But here’s the thing: there are so many privacy options because Facebook wants to allow the users to choose what they share. Facebook has offered a highly customizable user interface, so that we can select our own levels of privacy.
Facebook has implemented a really interesting program, the Open Graph API, which has the potential to enhance our online experiences. It can provide relevant information to marketers, who can in turn provide you with advertisements that are actually relevant to you, rather than random things you aren’t interested in. It can save you time by pulling information from your Facebook page to customize other web sites when you browse. Mashable provides an excellent summary of what Open Graph actually is.
One benefit I’ve seen is from the music-streaming website Pandora, as reported by Wired. With Open Graph enabled, Pandora can pull your music preferences from your Facebook page and create customized playlists based on your taste. You can then share music and recommendations with your Facebook friends.
The main thing I disagree with regarding Open Graph is the default setting that Facebook chose. Privacy settings are set to automatically share user information via Open Graph since Facebook put the new program into operation. Had Open Graph been implemented as an “opt in” system, I believe the media backlash would have been much less.
Inside Facebook posted a great review of the current issues surrounding Facebook, Open Graph and privacy. It’s pretty long, but if personal privacy on the internet is important to you, it’s well worth the read.
The bottom line is that as far as internet privacy is concerned, we all need to be aware of what information we’re sharing. It is each individual’s responsibility to know what he or she posts online. That being said, there is no need to close your social networking accounts immediately or to start using an alias. Just be responsible and cognizant of your online identity. Choose what content you want to share and customize your Facebook privacy settings. Use (or don’t use) Open Graph to create the web experience that you want.
May 7th
I recently asked several of my friends which news aggregators
they use. I was stunned to find out that most of them had no idea what I was talking about. They go to each individual website that they like and read what seems relevant. Who has time for that? We’re all busy, so having easy access to news is essential. However, we all need different news. For example, I’m an American MBA marketing and social media intern living in China. I need to know about what is happening in the USA, as well as in Asia. I need to keep up with general business and marketing trends, as well as more specific trends in social media and social networking. I also need a daily dose of laughter to keep me sane.
I’ve found some great websites to give me the updates that I want, but they’re scattered all over the web. That’s why I’m such a big fan of news aggregators. About.com provides a list of the top ten aggregators for Windows, but my favorite (and thus, the one I’m going to talk about) is Google Reader. Mostly it’s my favorite because I like having everything in one place: Google Talk, Gmail, Search, Buzz, Maps, etc., etc. Plus, I’m a fan of keeping info in the cloud so I can access from any computer with an Internet connection regardless of location or if I’m using a PC or an Apple product.
For those of you who don’t already know, an aggregator basically works by receiving messages (called RSS feeds) from your favorite websites when they are updated. It then puts the messages in one web page, so that you can access all news relevant to you in one place. Simple, right?
The greatest thing about aggregators is that they are personalized, so here are my personal favorite subscriptions on Google Reader:
Social Media and Tech News: Mashable, All Facebook, Gizmodo and TechCrunch
Celebrity Gossip: Pop Sugar (Found this one in the Staff Picks)
Humor: The Onion, College Humor (still funny, no matter how old you are)
World News: BBC News
Random interesting things: digg.com: Stories / Popular and Lifehacker
In Google Reader, you can view each article by just the headline or the headline with a brief intro. There are also several options to “like” or share the articles.
There are a few ways to sort your news as well; my favorite is “sort by magic.” Although not technically magic (but might as well be), this setting sorts your news based on what you “like” and share. This means that as time passes, your most interesting and/or relevant news appears at the top of the list.
There are many other features, but I’ll let you explore them on your own for now. If you have any questions or tips for fellow users, feel free to post them.
Happy surfing!
The NEW Digital Life Simplified Blog
Apr 23rd
Happy Lisa and the lollipop!
Hi, everyone!
We’ve been really busy the last few weeks at meshtop. We are about to release a new version (details to come), which has required a lot of man hours! And we’re re-designing the website to better express the essence of MeshTop. As part of these changes, we’ve decided to take this blog in a different direction, one that you guys can relate to and will find beneficial.
The idea came from thinking about some of our favorite things. For example, a few of mine are Diet Dr. Pepper fountain soda, lollipops, and strawberry bubblegum (note: it must be bubblegum; chewing gum is not the same!). I realize that this may sound a bit silly to some of you, but it really proves the conclusion we made: Many of the things that make us happiest in this world are the simplest things around. This lead to our new blog concept: Digital Life Simplified.
We began thinking about how using computers and other technology is meant to make our lives easier. Unfortunately, things have been getting more and more complicated in some ways. For example, as an expat living in the big city, every time I leave the house, I need to have three things with me: my phone, my camera, and my mp3 player. It’s a real pain to have to carry all that around everywhere; even worse for guys because most have to try to fit everything in their pockets! Fortunately, Apple came out with the iPhone. Not only is this a phone, media player and camera in one, it has the capability to download translators, dictionaries and taxi cards in the native language. Having all these conveniences in one hand-held device is much easier: less to carry, less to remember when you leave the house, less to learn how to use.
This concept is exactly what we aim for at meshtop. Social Networking has become a huge part of the business world. Many of us rely on social networking concepts such as Twitter, Facebook and MSN to communicate with our customers and build leads. By merging the information from these sites into Outlook, you can quickly see status updates from your friends from all sites in one place, without logging into multiple websites and juggling several tabs or windows. meshtop matches the email addresses in your Inbox with your Facebook/Twitter contacts, so you can quickly check someone’s recent updates before replying to an email. Meshtop also automatically searches for an email address on Facebook to see if the contact has a profile if you aren’t already linked to that person (Note to Ye: does it do this with Twitter and MSN too? I only noticed Facebook before, but I think it probably checks them all. Please confirm.), helping you remember who you have forgotten to add as friends. As our new tag-line indicates, meshtop truly is Digital Life Simplified.
Over the next few months, we will be introducing some new products to make your lives easier. We will also bring you information through the DLS blog. We will tell you about new products and articles to make your life simpler through technology. We hope you like our changes, and as always your comments and questions are welcome.
Outlook Productivity Tips and Tweaks
Sep 22nd
Outlook 2007 is the email client that I use daily at work, but as I was perusing through some of my archived articles on Google Reader I came across several articles on using Outlook as a project and task management tool, but had never gotten around to reading. I’m still in the process of working through some of these tweaks and tips, but I wanted highlight the top four tips that I’ve found most helpful in my daily workflow.
Outlook on the Desktop is a pretty cool application that puts a fully functional Outlook calendar onto my desktop. The hardest thing that I had to change and customize to use this calendar was actually my desktop wallpaper- since I had to find one that wasn’t too busy so that I could see my calendar clearly while still keeping Outlook on the Desktop somewhat transparent. Besides that little hiccup, its great to have my calendar visible- and the tray icon even displays the day of the month when I have other windows fully expanded. Outlook on the Desktop also includes the ability to switch between calendar, inbox, contacts, tasks and notes views, though I’ve only been using the calendar feature so far.
Sync Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook
I’m an avid Google Calendar user- I’ve used it through college and I’ve got my whole day planned out on Gcal. Fortunately – there’s a step-by-step walk through to sync up Gcal into Outlook.
Time Management with Microsoft Outlook
There’s an awesome blog post by 7Breaths that details how to use both OneNote 2007 and Outlook 2007 as a time and project management tool. Head over to the blog to read more about the specifics of the workflow, but the general gist of the process is as follows:
OneNote is used to collect ideas, and when a task or action step is identified, it is flagged into the Outlook ToDo list by using the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+5. The Outlook calendar is then used along with color codes to map out commitments for the week.
I’ve grabbed a screenshot from 7Breaths’ article to show his color coded calendar layout.
Speed Up Microsoft Outlook IMAP
I work on both my EEE 1000HE netbook on the road, but also have my desktop workstation while I’m in the office- this creates the problem of how I access my email, since I want to make sure that the emails that I read on my desktop, will be marked as read (or correctly filed in its respective folders on the server). I found out that the solution for this is IMAP. However, one of the weaknesses of Outlook 2007 is that its implementation of IMAP is quite slow, and even causes my Outlook to hang. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I’m not the only one with this problem, and someone has figured out a small fix for this issue.
Apparently, the slow-down is due to the default Outlook 2007 setting which only dictates Outlook to download the email headers, so when you want to read the emails, Outlook stalls while it finishes downloading the complete email message.
To fix this, Press Ctrl+Alt+S in Outlook to to open the Outlook Send and Receive groups. Select the account you have set-up with IMAP and click Edit. The option that you want to select is under
‘Account Options’: Download complete items including attachments for subscribed folders.
This will increase the time of your periodic send/receive process, but will speed up the time that it takes to open up messages. Head over to the article to read some other tweaks to speed up Outlook.
Do you have any other productivity tips or tweaks that you’ve used to speed up your Outlook workflow? We’d love to hear them!
A Word From Our Developers – Simultaneous Updating to Twitter and Facebook
Aug 17th
(image from: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/)
MeshTop and Twitter
Twitter has always been in the back of our minds during the development of MEshTop. We had integrated Twitter in MeshTop before it became a fashion phrase in the news and in politicians’ words. No later than the summer of 2008, we had already built a demo version of MeshTop with the Twitter REST services. MeshTop continues to evolve with each new release of Twitter’s services, which are pretty resource intensive, to continually catch the changes using Twitter’s REST. Sometimes we have to abandon our implemented ideas, but fortunately, more often than not, we are watching MeshTop users enjoying more and more powerful support for Twitter’s services.
“What are you doing?”
As seen in our 1.0 release, MeshTop introduces the “What are you doing?” gadget to the sidebar view, which supports the feature of updating the status of both your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Updating to Twitter can be performed both by clicking on the ‘Reply’, ‘Direct Message’, or ‘Retweet’ buttons in menus, or you can tell MeshTop what your response method by typing directly in the box, and MeshTop will identify the Twitter gestures, “@”, “D” and “RT”.
MeshTop also offers interfaces for users sharing links and images through the use of shortened URLs. Shortened URLs are highly praised by some bloggers for avoiding long encoded links (meaningless for most users unversed in CS). Currently you can select between the TinyURL and Bit.ly service providers in ‘Options’ menu, which are both popular with Twitter users. MeshTop also allows you to share images through the TwitPic API. After clicking on’ Share an Image’ on TwitPic, you are able to select an image in your computer file browser to send to TwitPic, which will return the shared image location expressed in a shortened URL. MeshTop also allows users to post these shortened links for webpages and images on their status updates on Facebook as well.
Follow us on Twitter @hellomeshtop
Email us at: hello@meshtop.com
