FaceBook takes a step too far?

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Very interesting article in today’s New York Times…

But alas, it turns out that even among the MySpace generation, there is such a thing as too much information.

That threshold was reached, unexpectedly, earlier this week when the social networking site Facebook unveiled what was to be its killer app. In the past, to keep up with the doings of friends, Facebook members had to make some sort of effort — by visiting the friend’s Web page from time to time, or actually sending an e-mail or instant message to ask how things were going.

Facebook’s new feature, a news “feed,” does that heavy lifting for you. The program monitors the activity on its members’ pages — a change in one’s relationship status, the addition of a new person to one’s friends list, the listing of a new favorite song or interest — and sends that information to everyone in your circle in a constantly updating news ticker. Imagine a device that monitors the social marketplace the way a blinking Bloomberg terminal tracks incremental changes in the bond market and you’ll get the idea.

But within hours of the new feature’s debut, thousands of Facebook members had organized behind a desperate, angry plea: Make it stop.

“You pretty much are being tracked with every movement you make on Facebook,” said Emily Bean, a pharmacy major and Facebook user at Ohio Northern University who signed an anti-Facebook petition on Tuesday, when the new feature made its debut. “It’s like someone peeking in on my conversations. People now know exactly when you became friends with somebody. When you hook up with somebody is now documented. Before it took some extra effort.

”While much of the anger was directed specifically at Facebook and its chief executive and co-founder, the 22-year-old Harvard graduate Mark Zuckerberg, some of the site’s users saw the episode in a broader context.

“Because our generation has been so obsessed with putting themselves up on the Internet and obsessed with celebrity, we didn’t realize how much of our personal information we were putting out there,” said Tim Mullowney, a 22-year-old aspiring actor in Brooklyn and a Facebook user. “This really shows you how much is out there. You don’t see it until you get it served on a platter to you.”

Mr. Mullowney said the Facebook episode had opened his eyes to a surprising conclusion: “I don’t need to know every little detail of everyone’s life.”

The Vista trauma

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This morning’s Observer column…

Well, the long wait is nearly over. Microsoft’s elephantine parturition has produced an heir. Last week the company distributed ‘Release Candidate 1’ (RC1) of Vista, the new incarnation of Windows, to about 5 million favoured customers. Think of it as the final beta of the software. Microsoft says it is still on course to deliver a version to corporate customers in November, followed by a consumer release to high-street dealers in January.

Microsoft also released details of US pricing for the new operating system. The ‘Home Basic’ version will cost $199. ‘Home Premium’ comes at $239. ‘Vista Business’ is priced at $299. And ‘Vista Ultimate’ weighs in at a whopping $399. Security vulnerabilities come free with all versions. There is also to be a ‘Vista Starter’ edition which will be marketed to people in poor countries in a futile attempt to stop them pirating Vista Ultimate and selling it on the streets of Shanghai, Bangkok and Singapore for a dollar a pop…

No talent needed

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A house in our Provencal village, photoshopped in a painterly way. Such a cheap trick, really, but — as Oscar Wilde said — one can resist anything except temptation. Were it not for the car and the satellite dishes on the roof, it might have been almost convincing!

Me no Leica*

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A new (tacky) tack in Leica’s attempts to counteract the threat of digital photography. Seen in the Financial Times‘s absurd How to Spent It supplement. That whirring sound you hear is made by Oskar Barnack whirring in his grave.

*And yes I do know that this was the headline on Dorothy Parker’s famous review of Christopher Isherwood’s I am a Camera.

The HP bugging saga: contd.

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From today’s New York Times…

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 7 — The California attorney general’s investigation into the purloining of private phone records by agents of Hewlett-Packard has revealed that the monitoring effort began earlier than previously indicated and included journalists as targets.

The targets included nine journalists who have covered Hewlett-Packard, including one from The New York Times [John Markoff — JN], the company said. The company said this week that its board had hired private investigators to identify directors leaking information to the press and that those investigators had posed as board members — a technique known as pretexting — to gain access to their personal phone records.

In acknowledging Thursday that journalists’ records had also been obtained, the company said it was apologizing to each one. “H.P. is dismayed that the phone records of journalists were accessed without their knowledge,” a company spokesman, Michael Moeller, said.

Hang on, let’s deconstruct that last sentence. “H.P. is dismayed”: legally, “H.P” is the Board of the company. But the company said earlier that that same Board “had hired private investigators to identify directors leaking information to the press”. So the Board is “dismayed” by what the Board did? And that same Board has done nothing yet about sacking its CEO.

Goor Morning Silicon Valley reports…

“Colossally stupid.” That’s how California Attorney General Bill Lockyer described Hewlett-Packard’s ill-conceived investigation of boardroom leaks to the press …. On Wednesday afternoon Lockyer’s office subpoenaed some of HP’s officials after the company, in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (PDF), acknowledged that a controversial data-gathering technique known as “pretexting” had been used in the investigation. “I have no settled view as to whether or not the chairwoman’s acts were illegal, but I do think they were colossally stupid,” Lockyer told the Mercury News. “We’ll have to wait until the investigation concludes to determine whether they were felony stupid or not.”