I recently caught up with a friend whom I hadn’t talked to in awhile.  We had usually chatted on IM with Yahoo or AIM and had been doing that for years.  Both of our lives had gotten busy with kids and work, so we had switched to email.  Even that had slowed down though as we got busier and busier.  With the new year upon us, I took it as a chance to renew old friendship and emailed her.

She’s an avid scrapbooker and she and her friends had all switched to GTalk and GMail.  She sent me an invitation to GMail and that is where we have been chatting.  After the first day, I went back to a logged chat with her.  I needed a web site link that she had sent me.  What a discovered was a little disturbing.

She is the only person that I have talked to on GTalk and the only email on Gmail that I have received is from her.  In both email and chats we naturally talked about scrapbooking.  It is her passion as is her son.  What discovered were the ads listed on the right side of the screen.  Ads that were superficially and narrowly targeted to scrapbooking. 

As I have posted about in the past, I understand the dilemma of what data to collect and how to use it.  After all, if I have to see ads I want to see those that would at least be of interest or use to me.  What was bothersome though is where the data came from.  I had created a brand new blank account for Gmail/GTalk.  I give Google credit as there were no survey’s or forms that requested personal data.  I now see why.  To get me target so tightly like that, they had to have scanned and indexed either or both my email and chat.  Remember I had only used this account for a day and only with my friend the scrapbooker.  Here is what Google says in their FAQ about saved chat logs

As with all major IM services, Google Talk will collect certain log information created in the course of a conversation. This information is for Google’s internal use only, to maintain statistics on usage and to improve our service and the user experience. We do not permanently store any personally-identifying information in the Google Talk logs.  Google Talk FAQ 

Google does mention targeted ads in their description of GMail

Are there ads in Gmail?

Yes, there are small, unobtrusive, and relevant text ads alongside your Gmail messages, similar to those on the side of Google search results pages. The matching of ads to content is a completely automated process performed by computers. No humans read your email to target the ads, and no email content or other personally identifiable information is ever provided to advertisers.

Again, to Google’s credit, they have at least documented this.  But just like the pay-per-post discussion does this make it right?  After the loss of data by AOL last year, do we know what is and is not being recorded here?  Its great that they might be of interest and relevance to me and that particular conversation, but at what cost?

The buzz about attention data has come up again and here with Google Reader announcing its trends feature. Should your data be your own or owned by the company that is providing the free service? It is a tough question. One that I have been on both sides of the coin and thought long and hard about. Its a free service and the price you pay might be your attention data and eventual ads targeted very specifically for you. On the other hand, it is my data and it is about me. I wouldn’t want my medical history shared. Why should my reading habits and interests be a whole lot different?

Who ever owns the data is not what I am getting at. If it is data about me why can’t I use it the way I want to? Nick and Google Reader team, et al. In my news reader you are collecting data about me and data about others, why can’t this data be culled to do recommendations? I shop Amazon, specifically for this reason. I love finding out new books and products that are geared towards me and my interests. Why can’t blogs and websites be the same way?

Google is a great web search tool, but this is “Web 2.0″. We are beyond simple searches. Social web sites are nice, but can be skewed and played. What I want is simple statistical recommendations not just search. What blogs and sites are like those that I have interest in? Based upon what I am reading now, what other topics might be of interest? What are others like myself looking at? These are the things that would be useful and more in line with the digital lifestyle.

The data is there and has been for a long time. Let’s do something with it that enhances the users experience. The marketers have had their shot with it and they missed the boat hard. It’s the users turn now.

Technorati Tags: Google Reader, Feed Demon, Attention Data, User Experience, Web 2.0

The conversation continues about blogging, your career, and what to and not to blog about. The latest comes from Career Builder in the form of survey results of hiring managers.

…one-in-four hiring managers (26 percent) say they have used Internet search engines to research potential employees. One-in-ten (12 percent) say they have used social networking sites in their candidate screening process. …Career Builder survey … Career Builder

Even Robert Scoble and his wife Maryam gave a talk about that you should blog about your passion, recently at Blog Business Summit. This is great advice. If you blog with your passion, then you are less likely to run into writer’s block and your passion/interest can be contagious to your readers. More and more hiring managers and HR people are using the Internet to get a better feel for the job candidates. They are looking at online forums, blogs, personal web sites, and social sites in general. As the next iterations of the Internet and applications emerge, expect that the analysis and search results of these people to be more detailed and in depth. Blog about your passions and direct their searches to what you want them to see.

Beware of the long tail. There are lots of stories about people being fired or not hired because of what they wrote. Google’s cached pages makes it even harder to make retractions possible. You can use blogging as a career and application tool if follow some basic guidelines.

Basic Blogging Guidelines

1. You are writing online. If there is something personal or something you don’t want others to find out about, don’t write it. Let’s face it, people like dirt. The more popular your writing becomes, the more others will dig for dirt.
2. If you are going to ignore rule #1 then back it up with facts and don’t make it inflammatory. You might gain some temporary traffic, but it won’t be quality readers that will keep on coming back to you. If a hiring manager happens upon your blog and see a lot of negative postings it won’t look good. You will come off as a trouble maker.
3. Ok, you have gotten this far and maybe you have followed the above, don’t be like the guy robbing the liquor store who dropped his wallet with his real ID in it. It’s all out there folks. I am not saying go and commit a criminal act, but don’t brag about it online. See rule #1 and #2.
4. Work is a good thing to blog. You can expand your network and brand this way. You are still bound by confidentiality agreements. Don’t write about the breaking technology you are working on, unless you run it by your manager or hr department. If they give it an official ok then go right ahead. Most of the time though, they will have special appointed people to talk about it or specific channels to go through. Blogging about work is a slippery slope.
5. Like rule #2 says don’t be inflammatory. Let’s face it the Internet fan will blow it right back in your face. It might not be today or this week, but it will come back and bite you. Don’t flame and especially don’t flame an employer or co-worker.
6. It’s your passion. If you truly believe it, then go ahead and write about it. Be inventive and trying writing about a different aspect of your passion. After awhile you may get traffic because of your fresh view point.
7. Finally, blogging is just like everything else, it is about people. Egos are involved as are real people and personalities. No pun intended here, but its all about networking. You are building a place to exchange ideas and meet other people. It may be online, but all of the standard social skills still apply.

These guidelines are pretty simple and blogging can have some great impact on your life and career. Hiring managers do use the internet as a tool to filter candidates. It can also be a tool for you to filter as well. If you are blogging about your passion and use facts to back up what you write about, then you are informed about your passion. If you present your case well, then even if a future employer disagrees, they can see that you don’t jump to conclusions or make false accusations. If they can’t see beyond it, then you have filtered out a possible mismatch.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Blogging Guidelines, Career, Development, Career Guidance

Google has changed the world we live in numerous ways, to the point that they have to fight to maintain their company name as a trademark and not a verb. I use google every day. I subscribe to news.google.com’s home page. I use google analytics and webmaster tools. I even gave them liberty to see my search records so that I could have more power in my searches. I think google has done a lot of good and brought all of publicity to the open source movement and in turn given us more choices and better options in the long run. Which brings me to their latest foray in the world of search, “Google Code Search.”

I’ve written about being responsibility in the past. I am a believer in experimentation and curiousity, but when a company that has the resources of Google experiments, the implications have to well thought out before it can be made even a public alpha. “Code search” is such an experiment that has far reaching ramifications. On the surface, it seems harmless enough. Search open directories for source code and index them. Ok, but isn’t that what hackers did and do? Think back to code red, melissa, and any number of viruses and trojans that exploited unprotected and “open” systems. So, ok Google isn’t a hacker organization. Indexing is not a malicious activity, but what about those open systems? What about the lay person who has set up a web server and open source projects on their server? While Google isn’t directly or legally responsible for the uses that there tool is used for (or should they be, just like the RIAA/MPAA and the courts would like us to believe with P2P filesharing and oddly not the gun manufacturers yet another story.)

Reasonable and conscientious people should be able to see at least some of the flaws in this kind of searching. Now, maybe it is their intention to force people to be more careful with the security of their code and sites. But even such a noble thought, leaves me wondering about the wisdom behind it. Just look at this search on digg. Lots of reasons why the immediate wisdom of this leaves me worried. It’s like the security industry announcing to the world (of hackers) the flaw they have found in whichever operating system or application they were working on that day.

If anyone from Google reads this, please think through your actions and their implications. You have a great set of services and offer a lot, but you also wield alot of power through your brand and people will always at least try what you have.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Code Search, Privacy, Security, Open Source

Albert Einstein once said, “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” I look at the progress we have made in the past 20 years and especially in the last 5. We have gone from technology being in the hands of geeky privileged few, to it being common place everywhere. It is no more apparent than watching how people view and use the web. We live in a world where people can not go from place to place without a GPS; Google is now considered a verb (much to their chagrin); email is now passe amongst 20 somethings; and anyone can interweave services from Yahoo, Amazon, Google, and the likes of Zillow to create some scarily accurate and inaccurate pictures of us.

This generation or iteration of software and the internet is one of openness and transparency. This means as technologists and corporations, we have a responsibility not only to our shareholders and employers but also to our user community. We can still be socially responsible and still make a profit. Even if that responsibility means that we only create a trail of how people are using our hardware and software. Some are going to scream about Privacy. Others will call out that we are just feeding big brother and making him into an ever more aware beast. We need to do something to protect us and yes perhaps help big brother and the authorities.

Just look at what is happening all around us. Go to MySpace, Facebook, Google a friend or colleagues name, or choose your favorite topic and find a forum on it; you’d be surprised at the amount of personal information you will find, most of it is posted out in the open. Molly H. found out that a lot of her personal info was posted on Aboutus.org. Some that she may not have chosen to be posted. My 13 yr old niece set her away message on AIM to be her cell phone number. Whether or not if its voluntary or not, there is a lot of personal information out there that can be pieced together pretty easily and quickly. Until the public and the government is fully educated and appreciates the ramifications of such transparency, then we are obligated to assist them when possible.

Should we keep detailed records, with names and personal records available? Its not necessary, but we
can keep an auditable trail for a time period and insure that it is purged on a regular basis. This we have in our individual abilities. Through my career I have emphasized this with my employers and customers. If something ever happened like on MySpace, then we should be able to help them when necessary.

Storage space is cheap. The required computing power is minimal and the technology required to create is very straightforward. In a subsequent article, I will detail some of the steps that I have done to do this (programmatically in VB) and what I am using today achieve this (SQL triggers). If we are going to make the Axe and WMD, then let’s at least try to make it difficult for the psychos to use it.

Technorati Tags: Albert Einstein, responsibility, MySpace, SQL, triggers, Google, design