Facebook is not only a social phenomenon, it is also one of the most successful companies in the world. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg in a college dorm room, Facebook has proven to be immensely popular, 400 million members strong, using the site daily and searching for friends, past classmates, childhood friends, potential dates, and many other people. Facebook also features games, created by outside developers, the results of which can be shared with your friends. Along with all of this social activity comes a price: privacy. Facebook has had its share problems regarding its lackadaisical approach to privacy, including recent FTC filings against it, and numerous articles in the popular and computing press and privacy watchdog websites, all of them bemoaning the terrible things Facebook is doing to our private information. There is no reason to abandon Facebook because of this, however. Facebook can be made into a reasonably safe and private social network experience, as long as Facebook members take proper care to modify and continually monitor their privacy settings, fully understand what these settings do, and understand exactly how their information is used.
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Bebel Gilberto – All Around
Despite having two newer albums since this was recorded, “All Around” from her self-titled second album is still a major favorite of mine. A great late-summer song. Here is the song, with video…enjoy!
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Motorola Droid: Four Month Update
The Motorola Droid has been an intresting experiment. Basically just a small handheld computer, an Android phone loads a very small version of Linux, upon which you load all of your apps. Part of it reminds me of the old days of DOS, when you had to watch your memory usage and fit as much as you could onto a floppy disk.
Android phones are no different than those old DOS computers I mentioned: you have to be careful to not overload your phone with too many apps, and not to run too many processes that could drag your phone down. That old excitement of trying different combinations of applications and experimenting has returned!
Read on to share in my adventures with the Droid over the past few months.
The Latest at The Speakeasy
The Audio Speakeasy is doing quite well for a young forum! We were very fortunate in that we could invite over some good friends for conversation, and some of us feel it is almost like a reunion of sorts. Still, we are looking to beef up the community and get more of our old friends over to join us, as well as make some new ones. We have a lot of potential, and the staff and I have been looking forward to building a new community in perhaps a different direction than other audio and music forums out there. We want to be flexible and incorporate some new topic areas that others have overlooked. I’m also very proud to have a staff that is experienced and eager to improve our forum to be the best music and audio forum on the web. Be sure to stop by, sign up and pay us a visit! The link is over on the sidebar. From the main site, follow the link to the forum and you’ll be on our doorstep!