Done.

I’ve done my absolute best to eliminate any trace of myself on Facebook. It was a total PITA. And I only used it casually. I can only imagine how it long it would take someone like Scoble to manually remove each friend one at a time.

According to Facebook:

Wrong!

I still have all my friends. The only friend I don’t have anymore Facebook is you!

Here’s my parting shot…

I feel so much better now…

I’ve been increasingly irritated with the noise-to-signal ration Facebook creates in my life. I definitely had the “I just threw up in the back of my mouth a little” feeling during the Web 2.0 Summit Zuckerberg love-fest. And now there’s increasing evidence that Facebook Beacon, their ill-considered advertising engine (or is it their privacy invasion engine?) is potentially a new vector for so-called affiliate marketers, spammers, scammers, and other vermin to gain access to unsuspecting users. Worse, it turns out that protecting yourself from this new attack by trying to leave Facebook is no easy task.

Henry Blodgett reports that Facebook is in deep doo-doo with both the New York Times and Coca-Cola over their misrepresentations about the opt-in/opt-out nature of Beacon:

The “Beacon” fallout continues. The New York Times’ Louise Story essentially accuses Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg of lying to her about Beacon’s being “opt-in.” Coca-Cola got a similar impression from the company – and, having learned the truth, is holding off on using the program. Meanwhile, Facebook’s spokesman attempts to explain to the NYT’s Louise Story what Zuckerberg really meant – and makes matters worse.

And Dare Obasanjo blows the lid on why Beacon is totally broken and almost certainly unfixable:

Anyway, back to the title of this blog post (Facebook Beacon is Unfixable). The problem with Facebook Beacon is that it is designed in a way that makes it easy for Facebook Beacon affiliates to integrate into their sites at the cost of user’s privacy. From Jay Goldman’s excellent post where he Deconstructed the Facebook Beacon Javascript we learn

Beacon from 10,000 Feet

That basically wraps up our tour of how Beacon does what it does. It’s a fairly long explanation, so here’s a quick summary:

1. The partner site page includes the beacon.js file, sets a <meta> tag with a name, and then calls Facebook.publish_action.
2. Facebook.publish_action builds a query_params object and then passes it to Facebook._send_request.
3. Facebook._send_request dynamically generates an <iframe>which loads the URL http://www.facebook.com/beacon/auth_iframe.php and passes the query_params. At this point, Facebook now knows about the news feed item whether you choose to publish it or not.

When you read this you realize just how insidious the problem actually is. Facebook isn’t simply learning about every action taken by Facebook users on affiliate sites, it is learning about every action taken by every user of these affiliate sites regardless of whether they are Facebook users or not.

At first I assumed that the affiliates sites would call some sort of IsFacebookUser() API and then decide whether to send the action or not. Of course, this is still broken since the affiliate site has told Facebook that you are a user of the site, and depending on the return value of the hypothetical function the affiliate in turn learns that you are a Facebook user.

But no, it is actually worse than that. The affiliate sites are pretty much dumping their entire customer database into Facebook’s lap, FOR FREE and without their customers permission. What. The. F*ck.

Game over. This is more than enough to convince me that Facebook has more downside than upside for me. Look, I freely admit I am not the core demographic for Facebook. I’m a 50-year-old guy who’s been happily married for 25 years (and so doesn’t want to find a date or a new “special friend”), doesn’t play games, could care less about drinking games, zombie bites, and other frippery, and initially believed in the potential this framework offered.

Chatting with Tris Hussey and Sam Sethi on Twitter just now, I learn that jumping ship might not be as easy as I thought.

On Twitter, Sam Sethi says: “… just try and leave. You need to unsubscribe from every group and jump through a few more hoops,” and points here.

Facebook does allow people to ‘deactivate’ their accounts. This means that most of their information becomes invisible to other viewers, but it remains on Facebook’s servers - indefinitely.

This is handy for anyone who changes their mind and wants to rejoin. They can just type their old user name and password in, and they’ll pop straight back up on the site - it will be like they never left.

But not everyone will want to grant Facebook the right to keep all their data indefinitely when they aren’t using it for any obvious purpose. If they do want to delete it permanently, they need to go round the site and delete everything they’ve ever done.

That includes every wall post, every picture, and every group membership. For a heavy Facebook user, that could take hours. Even days. And it could violate the UK’s Data Protection Act.

Summary - leaving Facebook has been made almost impossible and proportionately harder the more you’ve participated. Sorry. That sounds pretty much like my definition of EVIL. When will these people learn that this sh*t doesn’t fly? I agree with Open Garden who says:

and thats why opensocial is a step in the right direction ..

Here’s the final proof I’m right and it’s time to nuke any trace of my casual flirtation with Facebook. Fake Steve Jobs says so (and of course he’s always right… about everything:

See this story on CNET which refers to this story from some Harvard publication. Gist is that the Harvard publication dug up some documents involved in a lawsuit against Facebook. Facebook claims it’s an invasion of Zuckerberg’s privacy and went to court trying to have the documents yanked. As CNET points out this is a little bit odd considering that in recent weeks Facebook has been bagged for publishing info about its users’ online purchases and has defended itself, claiming it has every right to share private info about its users. Oh, the Harvard article also suggested Zuckerberg is kind of a sh*tbag. No idea where they got that idea.

Have you heard about Jing? It’s a project being run by the good folks at Techsmith (who make two of my essential Windows tools - SnagIt and Camtasia Studio). Jing is basically a free screen capture tool (still and video) for both Windows and Mac OS but with a number of twists. The new version adds the following features according to the Jing Project blog:

• Share to FTP
  • Both videos and images can be shared via standard FTP
  • The share and embed strings that are put on the clipboard can be customized
• Share images to Flickr
  • Existing Flickr users can have image captures sent directly to their account
• Streamlined sharing to File
  • You can now share quickly to your chosen directory with one button press
  • The share and embed strings that are put on the clipboard can be customized
• Usage reporting to help improve Jing
  • This is anonymous and optional
  • We use this to gather statistics about how these sharing methods are used
  • This lets us figure out where the Jing Project is headed

The Jing Project also offers a number of free goodies including a very useful wallpaper that has outlines of the most common screen sizes to aid you in setting up screen shots for your blog, web site, or other projects.

Here are a few interesting items that came across the transom today for the Mac users out there.

Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet reports that Office 2008 for the Mac (due in January) will include a feature that exports PowerPoint presentations to the iPhone or iPod. Using an AV cable, you’ll be able to connect your mobile device directly to a projector to deliver your presentation. That’s going to be popular I suspect.

Elinor Mills at C|Net (and others) report that a new version of Google Desktop for the Mac will be released tomorrow that allows Google Gadgets to be added to the Mac OS X Dashboard where they’ll reportedly coexist peacefully with Apple Widgets. That’s interesting as there are a lot of useful Google Gadgets but I’m curious how many folks feel the need for the extra disk grinding Google Desktop requires when Spotlight in Leopard (aka Mac OS X 10.5) is so good.

AppleInsider reports that an open source implementation of Java 6 for the Mac is in development (a preview release is already available) in response to Apple’s decision to ship Leopard with Java 5. This decision has not been well-received in the Java community as you might expect and some fear that adoption of the Mac in traditional early adopter markets (education and scientific research) as well as potential growth markets (the enterprise) may suffer.

Panic Software and The IconFactory have teamed up for the release of CandyBar 3 for the Mac which should address two of the biggest complaints about Leopard – the bland and arguably ugly new folder designs and the 3D Dock. The new release of CandyBar – for Leopard only – integrates the formerly separate Pixadex icon manager, uses QuickLook to allow you to see the contents of an icon Container file with a press of the space bar and all the icon swapping and Dock and folder skinning you could ever ask for.

Rich Mogull at TidBITS provides a good overview of the RTSP vulnerability in current versions of QuickTime (that affect both Mac and Windows users) and offers some suggestions on how to protect yourself from this serious security hole until Apple gets things patched up.  Short answer for Mac users – use the Little Snitch firewall enhancer from Objective Development. Or, if you want the free solution – be careful what you click on. Me? I already run Little Snitch so I’m covered. It’s a great product that watches for outbound traffic requests (the vector used by exploits that leverage this vulnerability) from your Mac and allows you to selectively block them.

I got an interesting e-mail yesterday from Jason Nazar, founder and CEO of docstoc.com. They did some Alexa and compete.com analysis of how the TC40 companies have fared since that event. The document, which can be viewed or downloaded from docstoc reveals two interesting trend lines. The first, which will come as no surprise, is that all of the companies in the TC40 enjoyed a nice spike in traffic leading up to and climaxing on their day on stage. The graph for all of the companies reveals the same pyramid-shaped spike.  So… interesting but not surprising.

You can read our own Ewan Spence’s live blogging coverage of TC 40 here.

More surprising is that only a handful of the 40 companies have managed to sustain that sppike in any meaningful way. In addition to docstoc, TripIt (a favorite of mine in that they actually solve a real problem I and other frequent travelers have), clickable, PubMatic, and a couple of others have parlayed their moment in the sun into meaningful increases in site visitors. Reach, as measured by Alexa, doesn’t necessarily track in a symmetrical fashion however. It’s an interesting snapshot for those interested in understanding web traffic vooodoo.

docstoc also shared some interesting news about their company’s progress following their launch:

• Matt Coffin – founder of lowermybills.com has come on as an investor
• docstoc has closed a series A round at $750,000
• They were, as discussed above, among the top tier in traffic resulting from Techcrunch 40
• Over 50,000 new professional documents have uploaded in the last 4 weeks
• In the same time period, docstoc has added more than 6500 new registered users

Beating Google to the punch, Zoho today announced that they’ve used Google’s Gears technology to enable full offline editing with their Writer application. Google’s “Docs” word processor (based on Writely) s still online only. Like other applications employing Gears (Google’s most excellent Reader has been “Gear-ed” for a long time now), you simply click on an Offline link and the current content you have open in the application is saved to a SQLite database on your Mac, Windows, or Linux PC.

It works quite well. Zoho has posted a video demonstrating the capability and an official announcement on their product blog. The limitations of working in the browser chrome notwithstanding, this is a critical step towards making web apps truly competitive with rich client applications and if a browser-based word processor meets your needs, Zoho has taken the lead in delivering critical functionality for those times when you cannot be connected to the net.

There’s nothing official posted to the One Laptop Per Child project site yet but there are a number of reports circulating that the Give One Get One promotion has been extended through December 31 of this year. Initially, the donation/purchase promotion was schedule to last until November 26. Reportedly, the donation rate since the project kicked open the doors has been $2 million per day. The program provides a way for people in the U.S. and Canada (and apparently anyone else who can have their unit shipped to a U.S. address) to pay $399 which provides one XO unit for a child in a developing nation, one for the purchaser, a $200 tax credit (in the U.S.) and one year of T-Mobile WiFi hotspot access. There’s some question about the viability of the tax credit since the value of the T-Mobile access far exceeds $200 but that’s a question best left to tax professionals. I’ve thought about participating in this program but between my recent Kindle purchase and the upcoming holiday gift season, I’m not sure I can swing it. Nice to know I have some extra time to think about it though.

My Kindle eBook reader arrived today and I’ve had a brief chance to put it through its paces. I can tell you this: the experience of using this device is far outside of the sense of things you can get from reading specs or watching testimonial videos. There is a really “whole” feeling to the experience and, with one exception, everything “just works” (there’s that phrase Scoble has come to hate yet again). From turning it on and, out of the box, finding it already synced to my Amazon.com account with a lovely welcome note from Jeff Bezos himself (just for me, I’m sure) to the first shopping spree in the Kindle store to taking it out for a test drive while my son attended his guitar lesson, it was smooth… really smooth.

Here are the five things I really like so far (and it took some work to whittle this list down):

1. The “heft” of this device is just right. We can throw 1o ounce statistics around all we want – the Kindle feels “right” in your hands. It’s not as heavy as some of the paperbacks I read and far less than almost hardback book. The angles and edges may look awkward in a 2D photo but it feels really good in your hands (although there is propensity for accidentally hitting the navigation buttons at first).
2. The screen is brilliant. Contrast is just right – no glaring white background or too-hard black to the characters. There’s just enough softness to make it really easy on the eyes on more than enough contrast to work in a variety of lighting conditions from a dimly lit room to outdoors in the New Mexico sunshine (about 7000 degrees Kelvin here at mile-high altitudes). In a completely dark room,a clip on book light works very nicely although you do need to position the light to avoid a bit of glare in that environment. I can see this being just perfect on a night flight with just the overhead lamp on a plane. If you’ve never seen electro-ink before, it’s difficult to describe. Kind of like an Etch-a-Sketch but with better resolution and contrast.
3. The LED cursor strip is visually arresting easy to manipulate with the scroll wheel and intelligent in the sense that it jumps to the most likely needed position as you perform actions. I’m not sure what the technology used in this strip is but it’s a lot like watching mercury. It looks that liquid. The spinning effect that indicates a process is taking place had my daughter completely captivated (she’s 23 – more on her impression of Kindle below).
4. The Whispernet (EVDO) connectivity is strong around my house and around town and the download speeds are every bit as quick as promised. I bought my first book (Getting Things Done 0f course) and it appeared in seconds. I’ve also set up trial subscriptions to The Onion, The Huffington Post, Salon, and The Nation (yes, I am a left-leaning progressive). If I decide to keep the subscriptions active, new content will be downloaded automatically on a daily or weekly basis. If I choose not to, I can cancel any time in the next two weeks. N.B. there is only one trial per title per Kindle user.
5. The ability to follow hyperlinks from the content you’re reading is really quite cool. I’m reading an article in Salon that contains a link to an online column and I simply scroll the cursor to that line of text, click the scroll wheel and jump to the column in the built-in browser. The page loads quickly, I read the reference, and press the Back button to return ot the original article. Fast, easy, and intuitive. I think magazine publishers who format their content for Kindle have an extraordinary opportunity here to add another dimension to their content that’s simply not possible with paper. Yeah – it’s old hat for us web folk but it’s going to absolutely blow way the mass market who generally does not care to read content of any length on a PC monitor.
6. Bonus (I knew I couldn’t keep it to just five!): the “experimental” browser is more than adequate for quick surfing. There’s a much more extensive set of bookmarks than I expected and the performance is quite good.

There’s much to be explored. I haven’t yet tried converting or transferring infomration to the Kindle from supported formats nor have I added any music or podcasts. That’s tomorrow adventure. I’ve also donwloaded a copy of the MobiPocket Converter software (Windows only BTW) to see what kind of PDF conversion is possible and to try authoring some original content for transfer to the Kindle. While this is certainy a device focused on the act of reading, there’s a wealth of opportunity here.

Oh… and by the way… Amazon is temporarily sold out. Current product availability is slated for November 29.

That’s enough for now. I’m off to do some reading!

Update: I’ve decided to spare blognation readers from my ongoing fascination (some might say obsession) with this device and will continue my coverage on my personal blog at Platform Agnostic. If you’re interested in Kindle, please pop over there for updates. I will, of course, cover any truly breaking news about Kindle here.

One of the high points of the recent Web 2.0 Summit was the final interview between Silicon Valley legend John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins (and a Google board member) and John Battelle. The discussion covered a range of topics including Google but the most compelling moments for me (and most of the audience) were Doerr’s discussion of investing in “green tech” and how eco-friendly and -focused investing can help save the planet.

This was a perfect bookend to the moving talk Doerr gave earlier in the year at TED. He’s a man on a mission.

The video is now online – check it out.

Amazon.com today began shipping the Kindle Ebook Reader, a new device that will, if my suspicions are correct, completely redefine the eBook market in much the same way the iPod did for digital music and video. That’s a big prediction I know, but I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I just ordered a Kindle and it will arrive tomorrow today so a hands-on look at the breakthrough device will coming along in short order. There’s been quite a bit of chatter in my Twitter stream and on a number of blogs this weekend as the embargo on this device/service began lifting culminating in a scoop piece in Newsweek by Steven levy which appeared yesterday Sunday. To say that Levy really likes Kindle would be a serious understatement.

Note: I had intended to post this yesterday but technical gremlins got in the way. The Kindle arrives today.

Now that the embargo has been lifted and the product is shipping, I can reveal that I’ve actually had an opportunity to try the Kindle. While at Gnomedex earlier this year, the Amazon.com folks attending that event brought a Kindle device to the evening party held at the Seattle Aquarium (a beautiful facility BTW an a must-see when you visit that city – especially if you have kids). After agreeing to abide by the NDA and getting sequestered off in a remote corner of the aquarium, I got a chance to work with the device for about 20 minutes and talk with the Amazon team about the vision for the device and the service platform behind it. Make no mistake, this is not just a book reader. This is quite possibly the biggest initiative Amazon has made since exploding into retail years ago (has it been years ago? gosh I’m getting old!).

Richard MacManus – who many of you may not know was a big eBook evangelist before he launched Read/Write Web, agrees and says in his first (but not last I’m sure) post:

What is most interesting though is how Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, is positioning Kindle in relation to the e-commerce behemoth. Yet again we hear the word “service” being conjured up: “This isn’t a device, it’s a service”, Bezos said in Newsweek. The Kindle is being seen as “an extension of the familiar Amazon store”. In other words, the Kindle is shaping up as a highly strategic move by Amazon. Probably much more important to its future business than the Web Services stack that has gotten so much (deserved) hype over the past year. Because the Kindle is literally going to change Amazon’s core business model. This will take years to play out, but it all comes down to the dream that eBook fans have held for years: that books delivered electronically can offer much more flexibility, richness, search, communities, etc etc.

I couldn’t agree more. This is a long play – Amazon, from everything I have come to learn about the company as a customer and as a blogger who’s followed them for nearly five years, rarely makes hasty decisions. They take a very strategic look at the business they’re in and the direction they need to steer the company to sustain their growth and have an admirabe and enviable history of good decision-making.

The sphere has been rocking with discussion, debate, prognostication, and empty-headed criticisms of the device – the latter mostly from people who have not yet seen or used the device and some of who have not even bothered to watch the introductory videos or visit the product page. You can get the facts straight from the Kindle product page and read a tremendous amount of coverage on blogs. I suggest you focus on posts by people who attended the launch, received one, and have actual hands-on experience. Joel Johnson at BoingBoing Gadgets, for example, put up a great post yesterday describing what he’s discovered after using the device. Eric Shonfeld at TechCrunch adds some good analysis as does Michael Hyatt (who is not only a great blogger but also CEO of one of the largest publishing houses in the world).

Here’s my take - based on an admittedly limited first-hand test of the device a couple of months ago and my own personal applications for the device:

• This is not a device most techies will love. It’s a bit klunky from a design perspective, especially in a world spoiled by the iPhone and other really slick industrial and UI designs. It’s also a relatively single-purpose device which, in my experience, many techies hate the idea of. If you want a great reading device that can do many things, get a Tablet PC or Nokia Internet Tablet. And be prepared for the trade-offs – you get increased versatility at the expense of simplicity, long battery life, and (in the case of the Tablets in particular), reduced portability.
• This is a device that will appeal to two large constituencies - people who buys lots of books and people who like to read while traveling. Kindle is ideal for both of these groups (I happen to be a card-carrying member of both – hence my enthusiasm).
• If you’re looking for a PDF reader, this is probably not the device you want to look at. Like the Sony Reader, it simply doesn’t do a great job of working with that ubiquitous file format. The conversion process for both devices is a bit kludgy and the results are not high fidelity. Use a Tablet PC, UMPC, or Nokia Tablet if you want to read PDFs in their native format.
• Yes it is expensive – most first-gen devices are. You’re either willing to pay the early-adopter tax or you aren’t. No whinging.
• My plan is to use Kindle as a digital binder. Much of my work involves reading, annotating, and researching. Kindle seems like a great tool for those applications. I plan to toss a large quantity of documents on the device, buy a few Kindle edition books, subscribe to a newspaper (I’ll cancel my Sunday NY Time subscription in favor of the daily Kindle sub and, for a few dollars more, enjoy every day access any time I want) and see how things go. In my GTD workflow, Kindle becomes a new reference location that saves paper, offers search, and a number of easy ways to add content (SD Card, USB connection, and e-mail in).

More to follow. Stay tuned – this is going to be fun!

Update #1: Wow! Guy Kawasaki says he’d choose a Kindle over an iPhone if forced to choose. As an aside, in the promotional video on Amazon’s site, I thought it was pretty bizarre that in the segments featuring Guy, there was a Dell laptop in the background.

Update #2: I just got an automated phone call from UPS advising me the Kindle is en route for delivery today and that someone must be here to sign for it. Never got one of those before. Cool!