Okay, so perhaps it wasn’t a gift specifically for me, but it’s a gift nonetheless.
It was vacation time again for the web dept. at JLB and this time the winds blew me west to the amazingly beautiful state of Montana. Elk and bears and eagles, oh my!
For our 2 year anniversary, my wife and I took a trip down to Savannah, GA. We decided on Savannah for several reasons:
1) Though Elly took a trip down there a few years ago, I’d never been but heard great things about it.
2) We both love small towns (especially the ones that don’t necessarily feel small).
3) We both love bacon and fried green tomatoes. I can’t say all of our vacation destinations are influenced by our love for bacon and other southern fried food stuffs, but this one sure was!
Will the legacies we leave in our social networking spaces and blog posts dictate our future choices and otherwise define our yet-to-be?
At the end of July, The New York Times Magazine published a detailed and meaningful look into an array of professional, cultural, ethical and legal consequences of self-publishing on the Web. The article, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” written by Jeffrey Rosen, provides a few examples of “real-live people” and the unfortunate consequences in their professional and personal lives, resulting from their Facebook status updates and/or Twitter posts. To sum it up, the article posits the question, will the content we generate online follow us the rest of our lives?
It’s a fascinating question, and one with which no previous generations have had to reckon. In the workaday world, “societal forgetting” has its place… over time we tend to get a little fuzzy on the “in person” social missteps of our neighbors. But in the digital world, social missteps, like ill-conceived photo posts, are chronicled and archived, ready to be remembered and rediscovered. What if you and your 250 closest friends could see all of your 60-year-old Mom’s less-than-flattering high school party pics with the tap of a few keystrokes?
Enter companies like ReputationDefender, who, according to the Times “will monitor your online reputation, contacting Web sites individually and asking them to take down offending items. In addition, with the help of the kind of search-optimization technology that businesses use to raise their Google profiles, ReputationDefender can bombard the Web with positive or neutral information about its customers, either creating new Web pages or by multiplying links to existing ones to ensure they show up at the top of any Google search.”
We all know (or we should) that prospective schools and employers will use the Web to learn as much about their candidates as possible. Facebook has been the downfall of many an aspiring college grad in the past few years. But are companies like ReputationDefender the right solution, or do they just fight fire with fire?
It remains to be seen where this goes. According to the Times, “Google not long ago decided to render all search queries anonymous after nine months (by deleting part of each Internet protocol address), and the upstart search engine Cuil has announced that it won’t keep any personally identifiable information at all, a privacy feature that distinguishes it from Google.”
Stay tuned. This issue is likely to grow more meaningful (and divisive?) the older we get. Sound advice? Think before you tweet.
We here at JLB tend to work like pretty hard. We also like to take vacations.
Recently, I had the chance to hop a ride with a couple of beach-bound friends and head to St. Simons Island, GA. Having not seen American beach in almost five years, it was an opportunity I couldn’t quite pass up.
Check it…
This week my kids and I have been spending our (amazingly hot!) mornings at Family Bible Adventure at Christ Community Church. This year it’s an around the world adventure! The kids who come get to do everything from paint eggs in Russia to make mud sculptures in Africa to taste sopapillas in South America.
My little man has been helping me show kids how to paint Chinese characters. We also learned how to make yummy fried rice and can now speak a little Chinese. Well, I can say hi and sing a song. Little man just says “la.”
We’ve learned some interesting facts about China in the process. Did you know that the Chinese language has over 40, 000 characters? Did you know that ice cream was invented in China? Did you know there are over a billion people in China? Wow! I bet they eat lots of ice cream!
It only happens every four years…
You know what I’m talking about. Either you are a soccer fan, and you are excited that the World Cup is taking place as I type. OR, you might be a mildly irritated American (no one else in the world seems to mind), and you’ve already had enough of “the soccer.”
Either way, you can’t avoid it. The local and national nightly news, America’s sports bastion ESPN, late-night talk shows, and even Google are showcasing the World Cup on a daily basis.
It’s not just that the sport is the most popular in the world (with the World Cup garnering somewhere between 250 million and 330 million viewers in 2006; compared to 100 million watching that year’s Super Bowl). But it retains that “not every year” kind of allure held by sporting events like the Olympics.
For those who want to get the intel without watching 90 minutes (or 270 minutes a day for all three first round games), Google has created a special widget. Type “World Cup” and you’ll be served with the normal organic results, along with a “Latest Matches” block at the top of the SERP.
As Google explains in its official blog, “So when you complete a search related to the World Cup, you’ll see live scores, latest results and match schedules at the top of your search results. You’ll also find TV broadcast information and quick links for game recaps, live updates, standings and team profiles. The feature works on all Google search domains in 44 languages, including Afrikaans, Amharic, Swahili and Zulu.”
Pretty nifty.
But I don’t think it starts and stops with the World Cup. It’s a good debut for this widget, which I think this is yet another search experiment by the folks in Mountain View. It works well for sports, but a similar search result tool could be applied to just about any national or international news event. And with the perfection of Google Alerts and Caffeine, the most popular search engine is continuing to put a new shine on “relevance.”
Last week, Google unveiled an updated and bona fide encrypted web search option. By using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption, the search engine offers all users the ability to shield search queries from third-party interception. (see Google’s official blog story, here.)
The bottom line? You can search from any public WiFi connection without fear that your neighbor might spy or sniff your search terms and results. As Google puts it, when you search https://google.com, “an encrypted connection is created between your browser and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network.”
Google even has developed a special “locked logo” (see right) to convey that you are searching with an SSL (secured) connection.
This is a fascinating development. Sure, Google will still receive an end-user’s search data. But now, there is no chance for third-party sniffing. Additionally, there is some grumbling amongst SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts that encrypted search will hinder pay-per-click services, like AdWords, and their respective networks. Other search experts are worried that SSL searches will be invisible, essentially off the grid, which means there will be an entire catalogue of searches that are unknowable and unmeasurable.
Regardless, Google has delivered a new way to search — one which is undoubtedly customer-service oriented and one which improves overall privacy. Consider it another option in Google’s ever-growing arsenal.
You may not be aware that we have some long-standing traditions here at JLB. One of my favorites is birthday lunch! The name pretty much says it all–we go out to lunch to the celebrated person’s place of choice.
Last Monday we ventured out of the Franklin city limits and celebrated yours truly at Country Boy Restaurant in Leiper’s Fork. This quaint little place on the side of Old Hillsboro did not disappoint. Everything from the sweet tea to the fried pie (with ice cream) was mighty tasty! I enjoyed my first hot brown and it was delicious, right down to the tomato.
If you’re ever in the area and want some good country cookin’, be sure to check it out!
…is coming soon. I don’t love gift giving as a general practice. I think it’s mostly an important custom, and I do like getting free stuff, but it has never been my favorite thing in the world. That being said…my wife just got me a Canon EOS Rebel XSi and I’m pretty thrilled.
The XSi has received nothing but glowing reviews and is a great starter camera for me. Though I don’t actually have the camera in my possession yet (I equally love / hate waiting for packages), I assure you, I will not start posting every single picture I’ve ever snapped on my Facebook…though I may post a few.
Recently, I had the incredible opportunity to take a 5-day rock climbing vacation to Hueco Tanks. The days were spent trekking miles through the barren, yet still amazingly beautiful, Texas desert and climbing razor-sharp volcanic rock, while the nights were spent screaming over brutal ping pong matches and perhaps my new greatest addiction ever… Settlers of Catan.
I tend not to be a terribly nerdy guy. Yes, I’m a developer and wear glasses, but I’ve never once touched a Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft game. However, Settlers of Catan somehow magically traps even the manliest in an all-out nerdfest that quickly escalates to fun-to-watch temper tantrums and name calling.
Seriously, get the frickin’ game… it’s amazing.
Social Media #ohsnap