Anyway, I was listening to another TED address today that I found a link to somewhere – just where escapes me now, but I’m getting sleepy early.

In the address, the speaker talks about how Facebook is tailoring what they display on your news feed by what you’ve clicked on in the past.  Those who have clicked on conservative links aren’t as likely to see many links posted by liberal friends.

A dear friend would say just stay off Facebook, they collect too much information anyway.

Did you know, Google does the same thing?  So do other news sites and search engines.  Not just from your browser history, but even analyzing the browser you’re using and your operating system.  Two people on two different computers will get 2 totally different results when searching Google for the exact same search term.  (See the video and the search for ‘Egypt’ on Google).

Smacks of Big Brother doesn’t it?

Check out the presentation below.  It’s only a bit under 10 minutes so won’t take much of your time.

Both of these bills would allow an entire website to be taken down because of any suspected pirated or stolen content.  This might sound great to an artist, but think of it this way.  Someone sings a Beach Boys song and uploads it to YouTube.  YouTube can be shut down.  The whole site, not just one specific video.

DCMA currently allows a copyright owner to go through legal channels to get copyrighted content removed.  Apparently for some copyright owners, DCMA isn’t enough.  The number of companies and organizations supporting SOPA have been at times surprising and other times no surprise at all.

GoDaddy was vocal in supporting SOPA until a very public backlash that turned into a PR nightmare.

SumOfUs is encouraging people to email Google to withdraw from the US Chamber of Commerce because the Chamber supports SOPA.

Now Sony, Electronic Arts (EA Games) and Nintendo have apparently withdrawn support for SOPA.  Yet though they’re not listed as supporting this bill, they’re still members of the Entertainment Software Association, and the ESA supports SOPA.  Oops.

This bill is turning into a PR nightmare for companies that rely on the Internet for their business.  Yet they’re still pushing for the bill’s approval.

Since I’m not as eloquent as I’d like to be tonight, I’ll end with this.  Adam Savage has an article in Popular Mechanics that’s available on their website.  In this article, he explains why SOPA and PROTECT-IP are a bad idea.  Check it out here. (Opens in a new window).

For more information, check out http://blog.archive.org/2011/12/07/please-donate-to-the-internet-archive/ (Opens in a new window).

That’s all I have to say about that.

On the other hand, Regretsy.com’s donations have been freed by PayPal, and going to the people that were supposed to get it.  If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out this article at TechCrunch. (Another new window/tab).  Now if only a real alternative to PayPal would come along.

I know there are some, and a dear friend of mine would simply say don’t buy anything online.  BUT, I do write for a company online, and they pay through PayPal.  So… I guess I should simply transfer my money ASAP so I don’t have a lot to lose, huh?

I assumed that the software publishers were the ones adding the bundles.  That is, I assumed so until last night when I was looking at headlines on PopURLs (http://popurls.com/ Opens in a new window).  According to one of the headlines in Hacker News, at least one software company didn’t want this bundling to happen.  CNET assumes that the users want this bundling to make their experience go more smoothly.

Here’s the link to the article on Hacker News. (Opens in  new window.)

Here’s the link to the article on Extreme Tech talking about CNet’s motivations. (Also opens in a new window.)

http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html (Opens in a new window)

On the one hand, it’s great news for most mobile devices, including phones.  LOL except for those of us who are using very old devices that can’t be updated to use the latest browser.  My BlackBerry doesn’t like much, and I have to borrow my brother’s phone if I want to check my bank balance or something similar when I get paid.  (See the BlackBerry is not working clip posted last year sometime lol).

Now developers need to work toward doing more with HTML5 and ditching Flash.  It’s fairly well supported, and you don’t need to mess with learning iOS or anything else.  Just HTML5.  Which means you can develop one app and sell it in several places if that’s what your interest is.  Sounds good to me.

Oh wait, I don’t have time for something like that… or creativity lol.  I prefer to come up with story lines instead.  One of these days they’ll even make it into a book.

On that note, I’d best get some sleep.  Though I’m no longer lectured by my dear friend when I don’t, it makes for a very long day when I drive over an hour to my p/t job.  G’night all.  Dream well.

They’ve worked with companies like Spotify, Netflix and Foodily, as well as a Nike app, to integrate with the timeline.  You’ll be able to link your Netflix account to your Facebook account and let your Facebook friends know what you’re watching.  You can choose once to share the information, and after that it’ll just automatically post without you having to do a thing.

Listening to music on Spotify? it’ll post that to your timeline and your friends’ tickers as well.  You grant it permission once and you’re done.  Just hope that you don’t listen to music that your family doesn’t like (I know my husband does lol), or music that others might find easy to make fun of – I wonder if Weird Al qualifies?

But wait, there’s more.  If you run (or even walk or any other exercise outside), you can use a Nike GPS app to map your route and post that to your Facebook timeline.  Because letting your friends see where you run isn’t stalkerish at all.

Foodily lets your friends see what recipes you’re cooking for dinner.  Every time you log into Foodily, it can post to your friends’ tickers so they know what recipe you’re cooking.  The presentation made it out to be like having a number of friends making the same thing, but to me it just seems like a bit too much TMI.

If there’s a trend in what people are doing or watching, it will go from your friends’ timeline to their news feed.  Like if a bunch of friends are listening to Manic Monday (go Bangles) or a number of people are all watching movies with Jim Carey in them.  Or even a number of people all making the same recipe.

Speaking of TMI, your timeline will now go back to before you were on Facebook, you can post pictures and add information for everything that happened to you from the day you were born.  The demo for that showed Mark Zuckerberg’s date and place of birth, because obviously no one thought about the possibility of identity theft.  People can get close to your social security number just from knowing those 2 pieces of information.  Doh.

It’s going to be interesting to see if they change their privacy policy as well.  I know right now, several Zynga games are having issues if you use a secure login – so of course the suggested fix is to stop using secure login.  Maybe it should be stop playing the game instead.

I see them focusing more on people and less on the small businesses that are trying to use Facebook to grow.  The question remains whether these companies will adapt or if they’re going to stop using Facebook for their advertising.

Then I started reading this article (opens in a new window) where MMObility interviews the developers from Illyriad, who have a game out that doesn’t use Flash.

It seems when they first started developing their game, they realized that many people don’t have Flash.  Those that do, only have a certain version.  I know that it can be difficult to remain backward compatible with many Flash applications.  I haven’t done serious designing in a few years, but I remember my (then) supervisor creating a Flash intro to a website we were working on.  It worked great on his computer.  Not so much on mine since I had an earlier version of Flash.

Now, you can use HTML5 to do much of what you would have used Flash to do.  Most of the newer browsers will support HTML5 without a problem.

That’ll leave many more options for the casual gaming sites, and hopefully get rid of some of the bugs in the games.

On Monday, Sony announced that they would be offering DC Universe Online as free to play starting in October.  They’ll still offer a pay to play option for those who want the extra benefits.  After reading a synopsis of the story on /.  I thought that it’d be free because like Everquest or Asheron’s Call, you’d have to buy the game.  Turns out, I was wrong.

According to DC Universe Online news (opens in a new window), there will be levels of the game that are free to download to a computer or PS3.  It sounds like you can either play for free, purchase items and equipment within the game, or pay a monthly membership fee.

Sounds like one company finally understands that people can only afford so many monthly fees for MMO’s.  Or maybe Sony is just feeling the pinch with the competition out there.  Either way, gamers win and the company still makes money.  Sounds like a decent compromise to me.  What do you think?

The article is http://tech.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=11/09/17/2237256 (Opens in a new window)

How much oversight is there for big companies.  According to NewsWorks.org, Merck reported high profits last year.  Yet now they’re planning on laying off 13,000 jobs by 2015.  From what I’ve read, the CEO makes wonderful money though.  If you want to consider a mere $24mil in 2010 wonderful money (pay rate from FiercePharma.com).  Maybe it’s just scraping by for those high paid CEO’s.

Yet from the looks of things, some of these high paid CEOs couldn’t find their butt with both hands and a map.  Sorry, but someone needs to regulate what’s being done (and no, I’m not talking more government regulation, let’s try for some self discipline by the companies).  If the company is making enough profits to pay their CEO that much money per YEAR, why are they laying off employees 2 years later?  Does anyone on the Board of Directors stop to think about who makes the high pay possible? I know some people serve on multiple Boards.  Others serve on a Board of Directors in addition to their own full time jobs.  Do they have the time to sit down and figure out the budget and look over work load reports??  Do they even bother gathering work load reports? Are they concerned about just the bottom line?

At the company I used to work for, my former coworkers are working 10 and 12 hour days to keep up with the work load.  Some were doing it before I left, now everyone is.  Yet when I complained about the work load, the department manager kept saying there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  I sincerely hope for my friends’ sakes, the light isn’t an oncoming train.  Or a hyperactive kid with a glow stick.

In other news, the ice cream truck just passed by, yet it’s thundering and getting ready to pour.  I wonder how much business he’s going to get.  LOL

No, this post isn’t going to be about what you’d think at first.  There was actually an article on Yahoo! news about getting married online.  That people are getting married in person, then having their characters in online games get married on the game.  Yahoo! is treating it as something new.

I guess they don’t count weddings on MUDs since they’re not graphic MMOs.  Yet, I know they were having weddings on Apoc before I started playing there in ’94.  I remember playing Realms of Despair in ’95 or ’96 and they had weddings on there as well if I remember correctly.  It’s been a few years now.

After reading the article, the only thing I saw that stuck with me was the link to the YouTube video where they held the wedding on a PVP/PKill server – I think on World of Warcraft.  I giggled a little because I remember how upset I used to get on Apoc.  They may not have allowed player killing except on certain nights, but stealing from other players was allowed more often.  And of course, if memory serves, one of the … I won’t say best PThieves, but definitely one of the most prolific was played by none other than SaTaN himself (or the guy who also played the character on Apoc named SaTaN).  I often wonder how he’s doing, and some of the other higherups that were around when Shar was a little mort.

Now that Mozilla spellcheck has gone crazy.  It’s bedtime.  Laterness.