Tag Archives: Facebook

Keeping it real

Seen whilst browsing ESPN.com comments section using the ELinks console web browser:

You are using an incompatible web browser.

Sorry, we’re not cool enough to support your browser. Please keep it real with one of the following browsers:

  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Safari
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer

Hah! :D

Of course, since this page consists of text-based comments on a blog entry, the argument could be made that the Facebook-powered webpage is the incompatible element of this equation…but let’s not split hairs. ;D

Closing the book on Facebook

Just in case stomping on privacy and selling its users’ data to other giant corporations wasn’t reason enough to loathe Facebook, here’s another one for you:

“Facebook exposed in Google smear campaign”

The social network has admitted that it hired a PR firm to plant anti-Google stories related to user privacy.[...]

“Let’s not forget we are talking about two companies that have spent billions in positioning themselves as ‘nice, cuddly, sandal-wearing, Californian surfer dudes.’ This has in fact resulted in blowing that carefully constructed image out of the water,” said Mr Merrin [managing director of an unaffiliated PR firm].

I’m about done with Facebook. It’s not like Google is much better, but at least it does somewhat more than pay lip service to user privacy.

If you want to keep track of what I’m up to, I have a perfectly fine website doing just that. Want to get in touch? Email me.

William Gibson in NY Magazine

NYMag.com: “The Vulture Transcript: Sci-Fi Author William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter, Thinks Facebook Is ‘Like a Mall,’ and Much More”

When William Gibson published his seminal sci-fi novel Neuromancer in 1984, it seemed improbably dystopic. More than a quarter-century later, so much has changed that he now writes in the present tense. His latest book, Zero History, is the final volume of a loose trilogy that concentrates on a culture increasingly obsessed with branding and, well, stuff (though Gibson prefers the term “artifacts”). “I’ve always been, for whatever reason, very conscious of the world of things,” he says. We spoke at length with him about plenty of these things — from the iPad to those old-fashioned anachronisms called “books.”