I start with praise.

Great way to handle a business mess-up.

It doesn’t erase that fact it was done, but shows that there is some self-responsibility at the top, rare in today’s world.

However, let’s not forget that there was another apology in regards to feeds last year and how they did not put in privacy controls.

There are two things at work here – although I admire that Facebook is trying to be innovative to support it’s business, it looks like there is a pattern developing of Facebook releasing services and not thinking, or underestimating, the value of or integration of privacy controls.

I’ve heard the argument that unless these companies can leverage your personal information in ways that work for advertisers the business portion of these social networking sites will eventually collapse – after all, they don’t make the amount of money right now close to justifying their current high valuations.

There has got to be a way that strikes a balance – there are plenty of “green” motivations for Facebook and others to figure this out.

Technorati Tags:
Beacon, Facebook, Facebook Apologizes Again

viaagency.net

The Virtual Interactive Agency has a history of building and being involved in really cool interactive items at auto shows (such as The Jeep Experience Simulator) and has various interesting clientele such as Mattel, Ford, and General Motors.

We’re honored to have built their new online site, utilizing Flash, CSS, HTML and other tricks to make a cool hybrid site that is still visible to search engines. Thanks to Joey Silvian for working with us and being a great client to work with!

http://www.viaagency.net]]>

Please, make one without phone capability. I want a mac PDA – and if we could add some pages capability, or something like that, I’ll get rid of my much loved hipster PDA/iPod. Cingular, being in downtown Detroit, and I are not friends… I couldn’t hold onto a call for more than a couple minutes… it’s why I switched to Verizon. More expensive, but, client calls are priceless.

Also, I think the AppleTV has tons of potential. The idea that a podcaster can create content and have it be right on their television is awesome… Alex Lindsay at the Pixel Corps (and TWiT) has it right on the head that it’s a brand new market that many smaller players can jump into with low distribution costs.

More later… friend is writing a fascinating article on localization of web site content, I’ll be sure to post it up for you folks as soon as I get it.]]>

Now, Mail isn’t perfect – however, no email program is. Somewhat like what I hear marriage is, compromise is part of the deal. However, I love the customizable features, and I miss no other now.

Even better, I’ve enabled IMAP on our servers which gives you a good percentage of the functionality that a Microsoft Exchange server does for…. free. I can check mail from anywhere, my multiple machines sync up – it’s great.

But more to the point – this rule has pretty much killed all image spam for me. Not that I’m as paranoid about nasties being downloaded being in OSX, however, I can say I’ve gained ten minutes of productivity a day thanks to this rule.]]>

Firefox is now 25% of the browser market worldwide.

It’s great to see so many switching – although there are alot of people who honestly love Internet Explorer. However, I find that they love it for the wrong reasons – such as it works better on their underpowered machine, or it’s blue… 25% is an amazing feat, however, I think that until it comes bundled with PCs (which some it does now) it won’t get to 50%. Also, IE 7 is a strong contender. As much as I’m for the underdog, the bottom line is that it is all about a solid computing experience for the user, regardless of the browser. If all the IE 7 improvement talk is not hype, I think a lot more people will be surfing safer. And that’s a good thing, no matter the browser.

On a personal note, thanks to the close to 2500 unique people who check in on this blog and the mother site over the month now. We really, really, really appreciate your support and your business and that kind of traffic tells us that there are people who really appreciate and are interested in what we’re doing.

2007 is going to be a huge year; we’ve negotiated deals with some great organizations and looking forward to serving you. We’re also working on various other educational programs and media to augment the work we do for-hire so that our clients are given every tool to succeed.

Thanks so much – there is so much to be thankful for – from Erik and I and everyone else. Also thanks to all those who have supported and believe in us in various capacities – Tom, Jason, Todd, Brandon, Rebecca, Steve (and another Steve), and all the others I’ve not mentioned but value no less than the others.]]>