Google Latitude API Now Available

Posted by BA on May 24, 2010 in Internet, Internet Privacy, Location based services | 42 comments

We’ve covered Google Latitude in the past. Google Latitude is an-add on to the Google Maps and a location based service that allows you to share your location with your friends and family. In case of mobile version of Latitude + Google Maps, you control who gets to see your location but with Google Latitude API, your location can not only be shared with some of the people you choose to share your information with, but you may agree to share your current location with websites, software, third party software solutions or other location based systems.

What are the possibilities?

The possibilities are unlimited with basic information being very simple. For example, if a lot of people in your city use Google Latitude on your mobile, a software solution may get to know about a traffic jam on the road ahead and can recommend you a different path. This is how Google Maps application could possibly show traffic information for several parts of the world without having physical traffic surveillance in place.

Similarly, you can turn on your home lights, air-conditioning or heating systems as soon as you reach near your house. Even your garage door could open automatically on your car’s arrival. I can write an app which could recommend few friends about a coffee shop that will not be far for all of them and they can meet up over a cup of espresso.

Privacy Concerns

Exciting possibilities but I’m not here to discuss application ideas that could be made on top of Google Latitude and maps. This actually concerns me one step further about the privacy. If I have Google Latitude running, I’m leaving a trail of my location and this trail could be used for all the malicious things one can think of. Good old days are gone when a Sniper could miss a chance of killing a movie hero just because he took another path :p

I know Google has been very responsible about the privacy issues but that always opens the possibilities for nasty advertisers giving me a call on my cell phone on the middle of the road saying “Hey, look to your left, that’s the ice-cream shop you always wanted to go to” or a telemarketer calling me, “Good morning! As you are standing on traffic crossing and you have another 3 minutes to wait for the light to go green, do you want me to tell you about our latest credit card?” Life will be way trickier if not insane.

Regardless of all the issues that could arise with this kind of service:

• I’m still ready to use Google Latitude to share my location with my family and close friends.
• I’m still ready to work on the Google Latitude API to come up with yet another killer application nobody else can think of
• I’m still excited to know yet another possible way application developers can come up with very interesting solutions for us

Are you impressed, excited, happy, worried, concerned or disappointed about this new development? Please do leave a comment

Facebook Pages go even more Weird – Fans become Likers

Posted by BA on Apr 21, 2010 in Internet, Social Networking | 26 comments

I already wrote a post on Facebook Privacy when it comes to Facebook pages and becoming fans. So if you became a fan of a page, the page can access quite some information of yours just as your friends can do. Isn’t that bizarre? Actually Facebook wants to try to make public, more and more ifnormation about the facebook users. Obviously, it cannot do it right away, so they keep changing their privacy policy and the way this site works.

Here is another weird change that eventually deceives the users. From now on, Facebook pages will not look for fans anymore. This is another trick Facebook is playing to bring more fans to the pages eventually. Fans will now be replaced with Likes. Huh? What does that mean? Well, if you click “Like” under the name of any Facebook page from now on, you will be added to the “Fans” of that page actually. Well, to be tricky, they don’t call them fans anymore. They call them the people who like this page.

So if you see a page for your street’s corner grocery store or a 1960 model car you liked in your childhood and you click “like” , you are added to the fans. Anything that is posted onto that page by the owner of the page as well as the fans (pardon, likers) of that page will start showing up in your news feed making your facebook experience more cluttered and messed up.

So, either you accept that fact that you’ll have more messed up Facebook experience due to these pages from now on, or you simply stop “Liking” things on Facebook.

Facebook Pages can access all your posts

Posted by BA on Mar 16, 2010 in Uncategorized | 36 comments

Are you a Fan of something on Facebook?
Facebook privacy policy has been creating some stir out on the web already. Like every Facebook user, I have been trying to be careful when posting things on the Facebook. Moreover, I have created friend groups. As I have pre-defined access levels assigned for each of these groups, all I have to do is to add all my friends to the appropriate groups. Moreover, I make sure I do add new friends to a group too. In this way, everyone has an appropriate access level in my friend’s list.

Pages are your friends and they have all the access
I was shocked recently when I figured out that all the pages I am a Fan of, are showing up in my friend’s list. Wow, what is that supposed to mean? Well, anything that is posted on those pages are posted on my profile and everything I post on Facebook will also appear on that page’s feed too. So if you think posting your family photos is safe because you know who has access to that post, you are mistaken. The photos will actually get posted onto the Page you are a fan of. Facebook does give you an option of adding a newly added friend to a group, but ironically when you Fan a page, there’s obviously no reason of adding the page to a group. Hence all your posts are visible to the Page you are a fan of.

How to fix that? From your Facebook home page click on Account -> Edit Friends . You will see the list of your friends. You will be surprised to see that the pages you became Fan of, are showing up as your friends. You can either click the small cross next to the name to remove yourself from being the Fan of that page, or you can add this Page to one of your Friend’s Group to give similar access level.

Now it adds one more step for me, if I become a fan of a page, I should go set its privacy setting too to make sure my content dont openly get posted to these pages.

Everything you post is visible to everyone in  your Networks
Then you have Networks that you have joined. Your college, school, locality, city networks and so on. By default, your posts and content are public to these groups as well. That means, everyone from your old school whose group you joined, can view your content. Crazy, is’nt it? Make sure you revoke this access from Account->Privacy Settings-> select each of your online item and set its access level. Yeah, I know its tedious but that’s how Facebook wants it. They want it all to be public.

Posting and Privacy Guidelines
In general, one should follow these guidelines to ensure you are not compromising your privacy:

1. Don’t post anything online that you think should not be posted in public.
2. If you post something online thinking it is appropriate for now, think if it will be appropriate to stay online in the future? If not, just don’t post.
3. And then what you post online, make sure you have absolutely clear privacy settings defined. This is tricky because you’ll have to be as efficient as a watch dog to keep updating them for every new user joining your network and things even get worse with every update of the privacy policy of social networks.

Happy social networking. Keep your private content private!

Those who die, live forever on social networks

Posted by BA on Dec 19, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Recently, a very dear friend of mine passed away and left us for ever. A very young and a very nice guy. Like most of us, he was an active user of online social networks as well and had an account on Facebook as well. As soon as he died, everyone on his friends’ list started posting content on his profile and soon his wall became a huge memory board and prayer room.

When I’ll die, I’ll leave an online account on Facebook as well?

This is a question that we all have to ask ourselves. No, I’m not telling you to delete your accounts. I’m pointing you to a service by Facebook that lets you report that a person is dead. Once Facebook is sure about this fact, they will mark the person deceased, will disable his account so that nobody gains control of it even if they have his password and only the friends he or she added when alive will be able to view the deceased’s virtual wall. So if you have anyone in your family or friends who is no more with us, please visit this link and report deceased and the account will be memorialized.