Flock may be losing its steam to Firefox

Recently both Flock and Firefox released a new version of their browser product, namely Flock 2.5 and Firefox 3.5. While both browsers are based the Gecko engine, Firefox 3.5 is certainly beating Flock 2.5 in terms of performance.

My default browser used to be Flock, a social web browser that has built-in support for many popular web sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Del.icio.us. But, when Firefox 3.5 becomes available, with its latest support for HTML 5, a faster JavaScript engine, the awesome bar and the Personas extension,  I immediately switched.

Before I had switched, I was worried that I will missed the integrated social web browsing experience provided by Flock. But, after I had installed various Firefox plugins for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Blogger, I didn't feel losing much functionality. A faster browsing experience is what I loved about Firefox.

I'm worried about the future of Flock. I wonder if it has become a bloatware.

Socialable geeks

Am I a geek or a nerd? Where do I stand in the modern society? How do other people think about me being a geek or a nerd? Answers can be found in this New York Times article by David Brooks. Central to his article is the idea that an explosion of social web technology has given geeks an opportunity to be cool and smart, and today geeks are often enjoying a higher social status than the jocks, preps, frat boys and sorority sisters.

What's difference between "nerds" and "geeks"?

At first, a nerd was a geek with better grades. The word described a high-school or college outcast who was persecuted by the jocks, preps, frat boys and sorority sisters.

A geek possessed a certain passion for specialized knowledge, but also a high degree of cultural awareness and poise that a nerd lacked.

Why geeks are cool and socialable?

But the biggest change was not Silicon Valley itself. Rather, the new technology created a range of mental playgrounds where the new geeks could display their cultural capital. The jock can shine on the football field, but the geeks can display their supple sensibilities and well-modulated emotions on their Facebook pages, blogs, text messages and Twitter feeds.

They [Geeks] can visit eclectic sites like Kottke.org and Cool Hunting, experiment with fonts, admire Stewart Brand and Lawrence Lessig and join social-networking communities with ironical names. They’ve created a new definition of what it means to be cool, a definition that leaves out the talents of the jocks, the M.B.A.-types and the less educated. In “The Laws of Cool,” Alan Liu writes: “Cool is a feeling for information.” When someone has that dexterity, you know it.

SocialDevCamp East, so much fun

I attended the SocialDevCamp East today. It was a lot of fun and very rewarding. The event was kind of like a conference, but unlike a typical research conference it didn't have any specific agenda or planned breakout sessions. I have attended many planned research conferences in the past, but this bar camp (bec it has free beer after 4pm) was definitely a unique experience. I would recommend future bar camps to anyone who is interested in technology.

My lessons learned from this event are as follows. First, the start-up culture on the East Coast is very different from which of the West Coast. On the East Coast, it's difficult to find either VCs or angel investors to fund start-ups that don't a sustainable revenue stream. Second, there is a large pool of talents on the East Coast (in the DC/MD/VA area) that is not currently being utilized to create social web and social media innovations. Third, it's possible to get non-AI developers to be excited about the Semantic Web.

By chance, I hosted a session on the Social Web + the Semantic Web. My original intent was to get people to talk about Semantic Web technologies and businesses that are crucial to the success of Social Web applications. But, it turned out that the audiences were very interested to explore the possibility of using Semantic Web technologies as differentiators to help them to stand out in the fast-change social media world. If you missed the discussion, you can find our discussion topics in this Twitter stream. Also you can find materials covered in my Social Web + Semantic Web slides.

I'm convinced that Twitter is useful (sometimes). While I was attending the conference, I sent my wife the Twitter stream of the SocialDevCamp (#SocialDevCamp). She was able to follow my session and see photos of me in an almost real-time experience.

How Web 2.0 has empowered our creativitiy

All humans are capable of creating new ideas. In the past, to communicate creative ideas would require a deep marketing and sales budget, if you really want your voice be heard. For example, if you were an artist or a writer, your best hope was to seek a media company to back the distribution of your creative products. Without an army strong marketing and sales, individuals (including myself) have limited opportunities to express unpolished ideas and share which with the public. Today, Web 2.0 applications have changed the way individuals communicate their creative ideas.



While preparing my lecture slides on SlideShare, I stumble upon a presentation titled "the thin ideal" -- an interesting look into the history and culture expectation of thin women. On SlideShare, not only you can browse through the presentation slides, but also you can hear the narration of the presentation given by the author. This is an extremely powerful way to expressive an individual's creativity.



Sites like SlideShare and YouTube encourage individuals to create. They eliminated the expensive cost that were previously required for marketing and sales. People are now free to create without worrying that their ideas can't be heard.

Also, Web 2.0 applications have made easy for audiences to submit feedbacks. Take "the thin ideal" as an example. After the slides were posted, a reader submitted a related YouTube video as a comment. As I accidentally discovered the slides, I also discovered a separate video presentation that is relevant to my context.

Web 2.0 is changing the way people share and communicate ideas. If you have ideas to share, examples like "the thin ideal" should encourage you to publish your thoughts online. You publish, they will come.

Rules for protecting privacy in Facebook

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.