Old Friends DO Die...

Don't it always seem to go, that we don't know what we've got...
'til it's gone. Ahhh, how true.
Many people have reconnected with friends, acquaintances and schoolmates over the years, on the kiwi website oldfriends.co.nz. But soon they'll have to find a new platform.

Old Friends, a subsidiary of Trade Me, is going to be shut down in Jan.2016 and all its data deleted (as required under the Privacy Act).
Spokesman for Trade Me, Logan Mudge, says it's not a decision made lightly: "We have to focus on what we can and cannot do. We haven't been able to give it the attention it needed so it was time to close." He said it wasn't a financial decision as the site was making a modest income, but rather so that Trade Me could focus on bigger business opportunities in its core areas.
Over the last few months, 600-1,200 users accessed the website daily. In comparison, Trade Me had 848,000 daily users. But saying that, Old Friends had other impressive numbers. These included 1,621,577 members - nearly half the NZ population - plus 2300 schools, 36,000 workplaces, 7100 clubs, 164 marae etc etc. But even those numbers weren't able to be converted into any sort of income. So it's goodbye, Old Friends, coz dollars talk.
Many Old Friends users have tales of reuniting with friends they haven't seen in decades - some have even caught up with childhood sweethearts.
Nothing will be launched to replace Old Friends. Users have been emailed to tell them the website is closing down in mid-late January. They've been urged to download and save any information, photos and data they want kept.
It seems to me such a shame that the service could not have been outsourced to save it. Surely, with the existing infrastructure in place, a couple of part-timers could have maintained Old Friends from a home base...?

Note: Sam Morgan, who founded TradeMe, NZ's largest online auction site, sold it in 2006 to Australian media company Fairfax for over NZ$750 million.

From The Backblocks To The Empire's Bosum!

Today marks one of myriad historical events that've been lost in the mists of time...
In 1924, from a sheep station in Shag Valley (near Palmerston), East Otago, amateur radio operator Frank Bell (1896-1987) sent a ground-breaking Morse code transmission on his amateur radio station Z-4AA. It was received and replied to by amateur operator Cecil Goyder

Cpl.Frank D.Bell,
NZ Field Artillery,
taken 1916.

(G2SZ)...in LONDON!
This was not only the first-ever, trans-world two-way radio communication of any type around the world, but also the first radio transmission of any kind to be sent and received at such a distance. Within hours, Bell was inundated with congratulatory telegrams, amateur radio call cards and letters.
These days we think nothing of having internet, skype, phone and wireless comms around the globe and into space. But back then, the wireless companies - already in possession of air time and armed with laws preventing interference by amateurs - had not been able to open up communications. This achievement was made by amateur Hams!
Frank and his older sister Brenda (1891-1979) were to become world radio pioneers. Their father Alfred, a keen amateur scientist, set up what was probably the first telephone connection in NZ, between two farmhouses in Shag Valley. As a boy Frank made his own crystal set and spent long hours listening to radio signals.
Frank was invalided home in 1917 after military service in France. While recuperating, he revived his interest in wireless. With a small group of amateur enthusiasts, he helped pioneer the use of short radio waves to communicate over long distances, initially through Morse-code telegraphy. He achieved a number of radio transmission firsts, including NZ's first overseas two-way radio contact with Oz (1923) and USA (1924). But it was his two-way radio conversation with UK on the evening of 18 October 1924 that made world headlines.

groundbreaking siblings in 1974

The humble and publicity-shy Bell was elected, in his absence, to the executive committee of the International Amateur Radio Union on its formation in Paris in 1925. But at this point he lost interest in radio, and focused on farming.
Brenda took over the wireless station, becoming NZ's first female amateur radio operator. Maintaining the groundbreaking work of her brother, she became the first NZer to contact South Africa in 1927, and went on to a professional career in radio.

Facebook Welcomes Stalkers

I warned you. Now the time is nigh.
Facebook is dumping a feature that protects your privacy!

Facebook: helping you share more
ads with the people in your life...

The retirement of the "Who can look up your Timeline by name?" privacy setting means now anyone can find the profile of someone else through the search bar. People used to be able to make themselves disappear from the search functions, and hide their presence on the network to strangers, by modifying the setting.
Facebook says it's removing that setting (which controls whether users could be found when people type their name into the search bar), because only a single-digit percentage of the nearly 1.2 billion people on its network were using it. But it says users can still protect their privacy by limiting the audience for each thing they post about themselves.
Of course, being careful about what you post doesn't get rid of the fact that you can now be found on Facebook by anyone...stalkers or admirers alike!
As Facebook is an advertising-backed business whose revenue growth depends on its users (YOU!) sharing as much data as possible, the company's main motivation is to wipe out your user privacy over time. The removal of this search setting goes hand-in-hand with the expansion of Facebook's search feature, which people often use to find people they know - or wanna know - on the site. This will force more ad content to be readable by everyone, so more pages can be served up and more ad revenue generated.
Is that really what you joined Facebook for?

Facebook: More Friends, Less Love

We may feel more connected online, but Facebook might not be our friend.
TVNZ reports that a new study shows the more people use Facebook, the less we 'feel the love'. Social scientists at the University of Michigan found, although using the social media site helped people to feel more connected, it did not make them happier.

Social psychologist Ethan Kross: "On the surface, Facebook provides a valuable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. But rather than enhance well-being, we found that Facebook use predicts the opposite result - it undermines it."
The study of 82 young adults found the more time people spent on Facebook during the day, the worse they reported feeling. Participants were texted randomly five times a day for a fortnight, with a link to an online survey. Questions included how worried and lonely they felt, how much they used Facebook, and how much direct contact with people they'd had since the previous text.
Life satisfaction was tested at the beginning and end of the study. Those who'd spent more time on Facebook had declining happiness levels. Conversely, more direct interactions (either face-to-face, or over the phone) led people to feel better.

Gee, what a revelation! Mum was right all along!!!
Background:
The latest Nielsen research shows 80% of New Zealanders use Facebook, higher than Australia (74%), the US (69%) and UK (68%).

The Secret To Happiness

Your local newspaper may carry a wee story about - say - Mrs Cecilia Snagglebothom, who lives in the local rest home and has just turned 100.
"What's your secret to happiness, Cecilia?" asks an eager young journalist. And Cecilia may cite a litre of sherry every evening, loving grand-children...anything relevant that she feels may have prolonged her life.
You will never hear a centenarian say: "Well, deary, my century of happiness is all due to Facebook!"
Real people do NOT spend every waking moment on Facebook. And those who DO live vicariously are now suffering from the latest modern malady: social media envy.
Yeup, it's a real thing! German researchers report that Facebook can create negative feelings in envious users - especially over holiday pix!
Researchers from two German universities found that looking at Facebook may cause you to see green. "Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users' Life Satisfaction?" is based on a survey of 600 people in Germany. The study says one in three people feel less satisfied with their lives after browsing Facebook. People who don't post at all, but still read about their friends' lives, fare the worst.
The No.1 culprit of Facebook envy? Friends sharing vacation and travel photos. The second most common cause of upset is social interaction, which includes birthday greetings, and likes and comments on photos and posts. Other things that bring out the green-eyed monster: family happiness (which is most resented by people in their mid-30s) and physical attractiveness (which tends to bug women).

Will the real people please stand up?

The study also found people react to these feelings of jealousy by posting about achievements. Wow. People trying to make themselves look better on Facebook? No shit, Sherlock!
When blowing their own horns, men are more likely to brag about their accomplishments while women raved about their looks and social lives.
The good news: there IS a solution. If you wish to avoid social media envy in your life, simply switch off Facebook. Talk to REAL people. Maybe even read about the life of Mrs Cecilia Snagglebothom? It'd be more REAL than those of the 5,327 'friends' on Facebook...

The Dark Side Of The Force

Networking. Social Status. Facebook. Hundreds of apps. Thousands of friends...and "legitimised stalkers".
I've written cautionary posts in the past about information flow, and how much can be given away unknowingly. Cameron Scott wrote an article for Computerworld last week, about how a new app was compiling data from Facebook and other social networks, to help users track down single unsuspecting women! The mobile app Girls Around Me has now been pulled.
But this reveals just how much people still have to learn about social networking. If you're not some tragic soul who updates your status every five minutes, then you may know someone who (sadly) does. The Girls Around Me app collected data from the social network FourSquare - showing local bars where women had checked in - and matched that with info from their Facebook profiles, including photos and dating status. Hey presto: instant "no-strings nookie radar"! Crawlers could see how many single women were in a particular nightspot, what they looked like, what their names were. Creepy!
But the real tragedy? All these details were supplied freely by social network users. Bambi thinks it's harmless fun to tell her friends she just arrived at Rocky's Roadhouse wearing a tight pink halter and Daisy Dukes, having dumped boyfriend Chuck last week. But if that info is taken out of context, it could have potentially dangerous consequences.
Many people have no idea the amount of information they're sharing on-line. Remember the 2010 dramas over Facebook's privacy settings? Mind you, app developers often think, if information is available they can develop it any way they see fit. Combine that with users not always understanding how revealing their digital information can be, and privacy breaches are bound to occur.
Just because it's technologically possible, is no justification for necessarily doing it. At the same time, Bambi must engage brain before revealing all to her 14,391 genuine friends...
PS: 11 April 2012 - Wall Street Journal has just published an interesting article about personal details being used by Facebook...

Makin' Bacon With Facebook

Ever heard of the Kevin Bacon Game?
Connecting a movie star to Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon if they're been in a film with him...the higher the number of “hops” between an actor and him, the higher that actor’s Kevin Bacon Number is. [Here's a link to the Oracle Of Bacon, where (using the International Movie Data Base or IMDb) you can find out your favourite actor's Kevin Bacon Number!]
The game's origin is a 1960s experiment which claimed every living person is connected to any other through only six friends. Now, according to a recent study, Facebook has reduced those "six degrees of separation" to only four! The study shows 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with five degrees (six hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (five hops), with the average distance between users getting smaller over time.
Facebook also put out another study about the average number of friends on Facebook. According to that, 10% of people have less than ten friends, 20% have less than 25 friends, while 50% have over 100 friends. The study shows even in an online social network supposedly crossing the boundaries of geography and age, people tend to have friends their own age and in the same country.
The research also shows that if you limit the analysis to a single country, the “four degrees of separation”
theory shrinks even further, with most pairs of people being only separated by three degrees.
And all of these contacts are real genuine deep-and-meaningful friends. Riiiiiight.
Anyway...Kevin Bacon's coming to my barbeque next weekend: nyah-nyah! (if you don't know who he is, maybe you should've skipped this entire post).

Social Networking's Most E-Mailed Articles

There're plenty of theories about who spreads gossip and news on social networks — now, research is measuring what kind of information travels fastest.
Researchers studied the NY Times list of most-e-mailed articles for six months, analysing thousands of stories and variables. Surprising results: I'd have thought, to make the Most E-Mailed List, the article would be about sex, celebs or something bizarre like: "How Your Vegan Pet’s Diet Threatens Your Lesbian Civil Union, and Why It’s The Peruvian Government's Fault." But it turns out that people prefer e-mailing articles with positive themes, and long articles on intellectually challenging topics. Within that grouping, there is a leaning towards scientific articles and, analysed further, people choose articles that are awe-inspiring!
An awe-inspiring story needs to be on a big scale, and it must challenge the reader to view the world differently. Researchers feel people who share this kind of article are seeking an emotional link ie: "If you read this article and feel the same as I did, it will bring us closer together." They also found readers shared other emotions like anxiety - which, based on the old journalistic adage of 'fear sells', might be expected to be the top influence on readers. But of all the variables studied, awe had the strongest influence on an article making the Most E-Mailed List.
So if you find something in my blog which stimulates your mind and you'd like to pass a link on to a friend, feel free to share! That would be...awesome!

Social Networking Could Land You In Jail

Social networking websites are filled with videos of people in humorous situations or making prize fools of themselves: the 2007 clip of Miss South Carolina earning the title of 'Blonde Bimbo Of The Millennium' is a classic case in point!
These sites are also filled with people exercising poor judgment in the real world, and then making things worse by posting videos of their actions online. They're obviously unaware that now the police are using these sites to help fight crime. US cops policing state forests often surf YouTube, to find video evidence of 4WD-drivers damaging forest parks or driving down fish-bearing creek beds.
To make a case with YouTube, police need to see a licence plate and identify a landmark to confirm the illegal off-roading is happening on their turf... and they're having some success. Those who post such self-praising videos don't think beyond illustrating how much fun they may be having at others' expense. A positive spin-off is that now many off-road clubs, who use the internet to increase their membership, have instigated self-policing on their websites, to show their sport in the best possible light.
Earlier this year, a YouTube video showing Norwegian backpackers shooting a protected New Zealand native wood pigeon (kereru) caused public outrage. In NZ the maximum penalty for killing such wildlife is a $100,000 fine and up to a year in jail. The five were lucky to have returned to Norway by the time the video was posted.
While tracking offenders via YouTube videos is not a failsafe method for police, it's another option in their crimefighting arsenal.
PS: 16 October 2010 - In NZ, three men who viciously attacked a protected leopard seal by throwing rocks at it and dragging it down a beach have been busted by placing their photos on Facebook. Beware!!

Mobiles Off While Meetings On

New Prime Minister...new rules.
One of David Cameron's first decrees as Brit PM was to ban the use of Blackberrys and mobiles in meetings.
Some say: quite right, meetings can't be interrupted by Googling, e-mails, texts, tweets, thumbs dancing across devices... you need focus. Does anyone read a newspaper during business meetings? No! So why is it seemingly acceptable to check e-mails? Or worse - receive a call, and have to leave the room to answer it? Does this sort of thing happen in your workplace meetings?
The other side maintains the 21st Century is the time of the multi-tasker. Surely one of the uses of surround-technology is to be able to do several things at once. And it's always nice to know that "if something happens", we can always be contacted, right?
One of technology's social impacts has been the blurring of the divide between work and life. As we answer e-mails in the evening and make work calls at weekends, it's no longer clear where work stops and life begins: that necessary work/life balance has tilted without serious objection. If meetings are to be protected from technological distractions, surely other parts of life should be just as sacrosanct.
Perhaps, after so many years of growing techno-intrusions into our lives, Cameron's decision is a sign that the tide may be starting to turn...

"Quit Facebook" Day

Facebook members unite! And quit!
Following issues over users' privacy, a global Facebook exit is being urged for Monday May 31 2010. And momentum seems to be building: just last week, the phrase "how to quit Facebook" generated nearly 17 million Google results and "how do I delete my Facebook account?" close to 16 million...in a one-day period! Granted, the 33 million search results do not mean all of those users will actually delete their Facebook accounts, but it indicates a lot of pissed-off people!
One of the major problems users had was new privacy settings: lengthy, confusing and many members made private information public unknowingly. Then there was the constant stream of notifications and puerile quiz results. Plus there have been tragic cases where women have gone to meet men they'd met on Facebook, only to be murdered.
There're many articles to help users delete their Facebook accounts. Of course, they need to know that, although deleting their account means they’ll never see that data again, Facebook can - and will continue to use it for data mining.
If you're going to quit Facebook, remember it takes two weeks to be fully deleted (note that 'delete' is different to 'deactivate'). If you log-in to your account within these 2 weeks (just to check you're actually deleted), the request to delete your account will be voided and you'll still be in the loop.
PS: 27 May 2010 - Facebook suddenly announces easier privacy settings! Sounds desperate to me!
PS: 30 May 2010 - ...and reviewers are saying: "Is that the best you've got for us?"

Google On The Gigglebox

Now with control of the web's largest video library YouTube, Google is setting its sights on another new frontier: television. It's teaming up with Intel and Sony to access the web's most popular services through TVs.
For Intel, it's a way to get more of it's low-end chips into more TVs...for Google, the money's in the advertising potential...and naturally it'll be a Sony TV bringing this into your living room.
Many of the newest TVs on the market do have internet connectivity and built-in Web-based programming. Sony's latest HDTV, for example, comes with access to YouTube (owned by Google) as well as a variety of websites. But streaming internet-based media has been hampered by regional restrictions and licensing agreements - many popular sites can't be accessed outside USA.
Google TV plans to make the Web as accessible on TV as it is on computer, giving users everywhere access to sites across the spectrum, from social marketing to media content.
What's interesting to me is that this concept was first floated back in 1995 by Nicholas Negroponte who foresaw how the interactive, entertainment and information worlds would eventually merge, conceptually and technologically.
(See? I have remembered something from uni!)

P2P Crackdown

New legislation's been unveiled in Parliament to crack down on illegal file sharing, including music, videos and games. The bill allows three warnings to be given and enables copyright holders to seek up to $15,000 compensation through the Copyright Tribunal. They can also seek the suspension of internet accounts via the courts for up to six months.
I can see a few hiccups in the proposed legislation, for example:
+ Suspending people's internet accounts: surely if that happened, users would simply start a new account at another ISP?
+ Clarification about which sites actually constitute illegal file sharing: is a global site offering free movie downloads illegal because users have not personally paid a copyright fee?
+ Target: is this legislation aimed at those who download/reproduce for commercial gain, or will Little Jimmy down the road get burnt for sharing his Green Day favourites with his classmates?
Public consultation over the next month or so may spot a few other glitches so watch this space...

Instant Aural Appetisers!

In Australia from November, radio listeners'll be able to actually control what's being played on-air in real time and even dump bad songs as they're playing, in a radical new experiment.

The Austereo radio network, in partnership with US internet radio station Jelli, will unveil a new 24-hour national digital radio station, Hot30 Jelli, next month.

On its website, listeners will see the live queue of songs to be played and can vote whether each song "rocks" or "sucks". The songs played will always be the ones with the most votes, and the next song to play is decided a split-second before the last song finishes. The initiative pampers to young people's desire for "instant gratification".

But I ask: why bother? The central core of radio is and always has been communication. If it's turned into an instant on-line jukebox, you might as well stick to an ipod. *sigh*
PS - Along the lines of the "evolution" of radio, you might like to read my 04 Feb.2009 post about the devaluation of journalism, then see what Rupert Murdoch plans to do about it...click here.

"Wag The Dog" Meets 9/11

It was a sorry case of 'life imitating art' yesterday, during memorial services in Washington USA for the 9/11 tragedy. A Coast Guard exercise was mistaken for a terrorist attack: read all the Associated Press details here.
The whole thing may have gone unnoticed...except that two TV networks confused simulated chatter over a Coast Guard radio for actual events and reported that the Coast Guard had opened fire on a suspicious vessel. CNN stated 10 shots had been fired. The story hit social network Twitter: "Coast Guard confronts boat as Obama visits Pentagon, police scanner reports say shots fired." Fox News followed suit: "The U.S. Coast Guard ship of some type fired on a suspicious boat in the Potomac River." The public was panicked, the headlines blazed, the FBI was mobilised, flights briefly halted!
And so the story grew...
In fact, no shots were fired and there was no trouble on the river.
While hindsight might tell the Coast Guard that running an exercise of that type in that location on that day at that time was...err...less than tactful, the onus must fall heavily on the news outlets to GET IT RIGHT!
Just because it's heard on a radio...does not mean it's fact. Just because a Coast Guard spokesman doesn't know about it...doesn't mean it's an attack. Stories must always be verified from at least two sources...this is Journalism:101. When in doubt...get a man on the ground.
It's Wag The Dog revisited. Nice one, CNN and Fox!

If Anyone Can, A Kiwi Can!

Every New Zealander knows about keas - our cheeky mountain parrots – but their namesake is a global community: KEA, or Kiwi Expats Abroad.
More than 750,000 New Zealanders live overseas...that's 16% of our population, a quarter of all our highly skilled workers! While some see this as a huge skills drain, others regard it as a unique competitive advantage for the country.
Since its inception in 2001 by the legendary 'Warehouse' founder Stephen Tindall, KEA has helped business people connect with and leverage the knowledge and contacts of talented New Zealanders around the world. It now has 25,000 members, with membership growing at over 20% per year.

Imagine KEA as an enormous global Old Boys Network, with tentacles reaching into 178 countries. For a business seeking overseas commercial or professional contacts, KEA could be damn useful.
And furthermore, you're working with ex-pats on the same wavelength: thinking kiwi, talking kiwi, doing it the kiwi way...what could be better?