Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

I value my online privacy. Recently I joined Facebook, an online social networking application. While I enjoy using it to social with my friends in different corners of the world, but also I’m concerned about my privacy in Facebook. In this blog I will summarize some general rules that Facebook users can adopt to protect their online privacy.

What to protect

Privacy protection is about control, controlling who gets to see what information. There are two kinds of information that we should control. The first kind is personal information that can be used by people to commit crimes, e.g. identify theft. The second kind is information that can potentially damage the reputation of a person or can create a false impression about a person in minds of other people.

Information of the first kind is easy to identify, which includes a person’s date of birth, social security number, current and past resident addresses, and mother’s maiden name. Information of the second kind is a bit harder to identify because it is rather subjective. Here are some obvious examples. If a person is a CEO of a company, wild party photos of that person can easily damage his/her professional reputation. If a person is seeking a career in the child care profession, rumors about that person frequently smokes marijuana can create a false image about his/her characters in the minds of potential employers.

How personal information flows in Facebook

Personal information published in Facebook flows in three different directions. (1) It flows from the person who published the information to friends in the social network. When you post a new item or write a new wall message in your Facebook profile, information flows from your profile to the eyes of your friends. (2) Information can flow in an inverse direction. When you are tagged in a friend’s video, information (the video and information about you being in the video) flows from your friend’s profile to you. (3) Information that is not explicitly protected flows freely throughout “networks”, circles of social contacts from high schools, colleges or work. If I join the UMBC network, unless I explicitly protect my profile, all my information by default is readable by anyone in the UMBC network even they are not my friends.
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In many areas around the world, the price of milk and dairy products have increased greatly in the past few years. Analysts believe that this trend is likely to continue.

There are several factors contributed to high milk price:

1. Increasing global demanding for milk products, especially in emerging markets, for example, the average person in China now consumes more than 25 liters, or 6 gallons, of milk a year, up from 9 liters in 2000,
2. Rising cost to produce milk. Rising demand for biofuels is pushing up the price of corn and other grains which farmers use to feed their cows.
3. Unlike oil, milk has short shelf life, which means countries with high milk demand can’t depend on faraway countries to produce more milk.

In response to Tom Davenport’s blog on why Facebook and MySpace won’t change the workplace, a reader writes a pretty powerful use of LinkedIn:

When I left my prior employer to form my own company, I left behind my company-specific business contact database, because, after all, they own it, but I own my personal contact database developed over many years and many employers. It is a collection of LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing, and now Facebook contacts that cross business, charitable and social networks. As a former employee, I’m feeling pretty empowered, because on the day I launched my new company, about 800 key contacts in my network were immediately notified when I updated my profile. It was better than a press release, because the people who really mattered were the ones that were first informed.

- Posted by John McArthur

Mozilla Foundation announced its 2006 revenue: $66,840,8550. This result represents a 26 percent increase from its 2005 revenue. The financial state of the Foundation looks bright in the short-term. However, some analysts have concerns about it’s long-term outlook.

Here is the problem. In 2005, about 85% of the organization’s revenue comes from Google, which pays royalty fees to have Google search services integrated in the open source Firefox browser. Google’s contract with the Mozilla Foundation is to expire in November 2008. So far, no words from Google whether it wants to renew the contract. Analysts worried that Google may abundant the relationship and go on to implement its own browser strategies independent from Firefox. As a result, Mozilla could face a big drop in its revenue after 2008.

I think Mozilla can live well beyond 2008. First, if Google decides to end its contract in Nov. 2008, there is simply other potential clients to replace Google, e.g., Yahoo! and Ask. Second, Firefox can offer other kinds of royalty licensing to web business, such as EBay, Netflix, and Amazon. The Web is an important computing platform. It’s definitely worth paying to have your business displayed in the default page of the worlds’ second most popular web browser. Third, if Mozilla Foundation does run out of cash to operate, I’m sure some Silicon Valley VC will be happy to take over the organization and run it, perhaps, under a different business model.

Mozilla is here to stay, either with or without Google.

Non-stereotypical facts about fashion models:

1. Modeling job is one of the worst job in America. Median hourly wage is $11.22.
2. Not all supermodels are dumb. Supermodel Gisele Bundchen now demands her payments in euros because of concerns over the falling value of the US dollars.

Facebook is a social networking application. Unless you are a teen who tries to show off your 100+ social networks or a business person who tries to profit from the latest social networking trend, Facebook seems to be a waste of time. After playing with the service for two days, I conclude that while excessive use of Facebook can be a tremendous drain on time, but if the usage time is managed well, Facebook is a valuable tool for maintaining healthy social networks that otherwise is difficult to do in the physical world.

I was an anti-Facebook person. I used believe that for a great part of my life I was able to maintain my social networks without tools like Facebook and MySpace, there is simply no good reasons to use them. This thought is no longer valid.

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