The increasing use of social networking services poses a difficult problem to users – how much information should you share? Do you talk about work, family, personal problems? Do you use names or pseudonyms? Do you make everything private or share your warts and all with anyone willing to pay attention?

This has been a problem for as long as people have communicated with each other but now that everything is archived online and potentially forever it becomes an acute issue. Do you think it isn’t a problem?

Here is an interesting case that points out a problem. Someone has created a new website that takes public information from a popular web application, foursquare. Foursquare encourages people to check in when they go out and about and let’s them know when friends are in the vicinity. A cool concept perhaps, but take this into consideration:

PleaseRobMe.com

Built using the public interface to foursquare and Twitter, it shows when someone has checked in somewhere other than home, presumably leaving that person’s home unoccupied. I don’t know whether the site is a social networking commentary or a joke but the idea is clear – when you share information that is identifiable back to you, you are putting yourself at some level of risk.

This isn’t new. Every time you sign up for a grocery reward program, enter a contest, hand someone a business card, you provide that person or organization with the means to do something you don’t want them to with that information. You can reduce that risk by being cautious but you can’t eliminate it.

How do you (if you do) protect your information online?

Today, NASA officially declared the Phoenix lander dead as the Martian winter sets in. By all accounts, the Phoenix mission was a tremendous success, completing scientific missions on 149 of its 152 days active on the Martian surface.

While it is possible that the thaw in spring might revive the Phoenix, it is doubtful as the Martian winters are very harsh and “…the temperatures here will drop to -180F, low enough to destroy circuit boards and crack my solar arrays,” wrote the human voice of the Phoenix lander in a guest blogging stint over at Gizmodo.

As I’ve read the various articles about these last days this evening, a line or two from a recent song popped into my head:

This was a triumph.
I’m making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

“Still Alive” by Jonathan Coulton

The last Twitter message today from the human voice of Phoenix was simply

01010100 01110010 01101001 01110101 01101101 01110000 01101000       <3

which is binary for “Triumph”, except for the emoticon heart at the end.

Exactly.

Sometime in February, I grabbed a Roomba off of Woot during a woot-off. I got it partially because we are notoriously bad at vacuuming and with the baby about we need the bits and pieces gone.

And, partially, because it is so freaking cool – a robot! In my house! Vacuuming! Jane, get me off this crazy thing!

Fast forward a couple of months… the baby has been sitting up for quite a while on his own but dislikes ‘tummy time’ and has no inclination to crawl about. That’s fine, it means I don’t have to proof stuff for a bit longer. I set him down, put toys within reach and he is a happy camper.

Then the Roomba comes on. It does its little start up chime and a few seconds later it starts its whirring, backs out from underneath the ancient radio and starts Doing It’s Thing. It works its way around the room and the baby is simply fascinated. It moves. It makes noise. It is cool!

After a while, it works its way over to where the baby is at and gently bumps into him and then turns away. I’m waiting in vain for him to cry, weep, gnash gums but no, he is still simply fascinated.

That’s my boy.

After a couple of days, he is still watching it, rapt, and I watch him lean over and voila! He is on all fours, watching it. The next day, same thing. Nothing else seems to be worth the effort of trying to crawl except for when the Roomba is going. Each day he is a little more brave and tries a little more until he is actually crawling about, always facing the Roomba as it moves. He learned that it is hard to crawl on the hard wood floor so for a couple of days he is stuck crawling on the area rug, but desire is a strong motivator and he learns to sit on the wood, lean over and scoot across the slick surface.

This is the undoing of the Roomba, unfortunately.

Prior to the conquest of the hard wood floor, the Roomba could always retreat under the radio to charge and hide out until the next day at its appointed time. With the invention of scooting, the Roomba is vulnerable in its lair and, even worse, has glowing symbols on its surface that beg to be pressed. Power. Max. Spot.

Clean.

Yes, the boy learned to start the robot at will and now the poor wretched mechanical must dance to the whim and attention span of a highly inquisitive and perpetually happy one year old. Who can now crawl on carpet and hard wood flooring and thinks it is great fun to start the Roomba and then chase it throughout the living room, kitchen and hall until the battery dies and it sits forlornly, a pulsing red power button the only sign of any life left in its carapace.

If the elder boy’s memoir is “Don’t Bite The Dog And Other Things I Never Thought I’d Have To Say” then the younger boy’s might be “Leave The Roomba Alone Already” or perhaps “Stop Teasing The Roomba!”.

Yeah, I’m still working on that title.

Chris Pirillo is an uber-geek and proud of it.

It isn’t a bad thing, far from it.  He is smart, personable, passionate about technology. These are all good things.

He also annoys me on a regular basis.  Allow me to explain.

Mr. Pirillo (we haven’t met that I know of) runs a web site or two and provides lots of commentary and insight into things technical, computer, and the Internet.  One of my favorite geek shows of the past, Call For Help from TechTV, used to have him as a host for a while and the occasional guest host on The Screen Savers. He also sends out a intermittent email filled with links with cryptic titles about all things tech.  It is a great resource and I really quite enjoy the articles.

Which is why he annoys me.

On every web page on his web site he has a little flash applet that shows his office in streaming, live video.  This is neat. Unfortunately, this is not an ‘opt in’ service.  You load the page and it is running.  You do have the option to pause the video, but I shouldn’t have to; I should opt in to his content not be forced to view it.

Annoying, but not the worst part.

No, the worst part is that if I pause the video or turn the audio all of the way down, there is NO WAY TO SAVE THESE PREFERENCES.  That’s right, I have to do it every time.  Couple that with the fact that in one of his email newsletters there are 20 to 25 links to different stories and I might click on three or four of those links. This means that for every page, I have to find the page and either turn down the audio or pause it.

It isn’t horrid, it isn’t life threatening but it is really annoying.  I have the habit of going through my email, clicking on the links of interest and then during the day going back to a link or two at a time while I work.  I can’t do that with Mr. Pirillo’s email so I have to wait until I can pay attention to it, which means that often I leave it for a few days and then end up deleting it, unread.

I haven’t unsubscribed yet; I really do get a lot of value out of it and have bought software and services based partially on his recommendations.

Still, he annoys me.  A few minor changes to a very nice flash app that almost every other major web site does would turn this from an amateur night to a professional gig.

But, hey, what do I know; I just use this stuff.

For some reason, the last 30 hours or so I’ve had lots and lots of spammers that snuck through my Akismet filter in an attempt to tell you all about cheap deals on erectile dysfunction medication, free videos of consenting adults, inexpensive airfare, and the like. I’ve removed them all from the management queue but if you have left a comment or find that one has made it to publication, please let me know by email or other method so I can address it.

Thanks!

So, I have returned from my holiday vacation to 465 emails, 332 of which are brand new.

I think I shall ignore them a few moments more before committing to that pile.

As one or two of you know, I love to play around with old computer hardware, especially some of the devices that were very well designed but just didn’t catch on for one reason or another or have been left by the wayside, passed by with supposedly superior successors.

I’ve got a working eMate with the flip screen, a Mac Powerbook (a recent acquisition), a iMac (now running Ubuntu linux), and a HP Jornada 690.  I finally took the time to work on the Jornada a bit and replaced the back up battery and it works like a charm.  Problem is, I have Active Sync 4.5 installed and it will only sync with version 3.5 or earlier. 

Not a problem; I uninstalled my 4.5 and went up to the Microsoft web site to download the older version.

Except that they don’t have it available anymore.  What?  Is it so much to keep a 3.5 megabyte file around for archival purposes?

I usually get my old hardware without any extras; I’m ecstatic if I get a power cord and a data cable.  Not a chance I got the software with this one.

Fortunately, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine has come to my rescue yet again.  I took the link from the HP web site that was supposed to go to the download screen at Microsoft (it redirects to a page to download the latest version) and pasted it into the field and pressed the ‘Take Me Back’ button.  A few seconds later, I can see every version of that page that they archived from Microsoft.  A few clicks later and I’ve downloaded the old software from archive.org’s cache of the data and after installation it works like a charm.  I’m going to test to see if my new Windows Mobile 6 device will work with it and if so, I may keep this version around – at least it works.

I’m trying out the smartphone version of the Sharp MT blogging tool. Now to see how it looks on the PC!

A wonderful collection of vintage watches designed for military service.

Many military watches had a special feature for those “in the shit”. A Trench Guard, grid or grille covered and protected the dial with medieval-style armor. Those not intended for war were classified as Hunter cased, often more decorative than protective.

Very cool.

This gentleman was PAID to build a desk out of Legos:

A desk… made from Lego blocks

I want a job where I get to build with Legos…