I got this email from Facebook the other day, and a couple of thoughts struck me as I read it (the bold is my emphasis):

Facebook is sending you this notice of a proposed class action settlement that may affect your legal rights as a Facebook member who may have used the Beacon program. This summary notice is being sent to you by Court Order so that you may understand your rights and remedies before the Court considers final approval of the proposed settlement on February 26, 2010.

This is not an advertisement or attorney solicitation.

This is not a settlement in which class members file claims to receive compensation. Under the proposed settlement, Facebook will terminate the Beacon program. In addition, Facebook will provide $9.5 million to establish an independent non-profit foundation that will identify and fund projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security.

For full details on the settlement and further instructions on what to do to opt out of, object to, or otherwise comment upon the proposed settlement, please go to: BeaconClassSettlement.com.

If you have never heard of Beacon, or the lawsuit against it, check this information out. Not only did they have to shut the service down, but they have to now do the corporate equivalent of Bart Simpson’s chalkboard punishment? This is really great news, but I wonder how effective a deterrent/punishment the ruling really will be. It is one thing to rule in favor of the customers in a large class-action lawsuit and award massive damages in order to prevent a company from engaging in invasive or abusive behavior. But this strikes me as a slap on the wrist, and the punishment of having to fund a non-profit company that essentially duplicates the EFF’s incredible efforts will probably be about as effective as having Steve Ballmer write a two page essay on why monopolies are bad. I doubt Facebook learned a lesson here, in fact the lesson learned might very well be “next time, don’t get caught”.

As more and more ‘private’ information is moved online, it is going to be those companies that demonstrate an unswerving loyalty to the privacy and security of their customers who will be allowed to continue doing business. You had better believe that the day Google is caught exposing or misusing user data, it is going to find itself in deep, troubled waters. Personally, I don’t really put anything on Facebook or other sites that I would be embarrassed or endangered by, were it to leak out. But this case has served as a reminder that you can’t really trust any company to put your rights and expectations above their own need to turn a profit in order to survive.

In my time spent using Joost so far I have decided a few things about it that I have been meaning to post here, so I guess now is as good a time as any. But first, check out Babelgum, it looks like it is basically just Joost minus the major partnerships. To say anything about it I need to first explain how I feel about Joost. For those of you who have not checked it out, I can give you a free invite, just ask. For anyone who has used it, let me know if you agree with what I am about to say about it.

(more…)

Radical Wacko has posted a great email fwd. on how to approach the IT types; I liked it so I just had to link it for you all to enjoy. Here is a quick excerpt, the full text is available here.

Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

When the printer won’t print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

When the printer still won’t print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call IT support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a master’s degree in nuclear physics.

When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call IT support. We love to hack.

When we began the rebuild of this very site, Ben turned me on to the good folks of 37 Signals. I don’t even know where to start with these folks, they have had such a wide influence on everything you see before you. First and foremost, the basic framework of our site is built in Ruby on Rails, a very powerful and simple language that has allowed Ben to build us a very sweet back end that still has a lot of features we are tweaking to roll out soon. Rails is easy enough that I have actually begun to learn it, which is big because I haven’t programmed since DOS and BASIC (my dad is a mainframe programmer, so I have it in my blood, but I have focused my efforts elsewhere on other software).

During the main development period, Ben introduced me to Basecamp, an extremely simple online project management application. It lets many people collaboratively set milestones, todo lists associated with those milestones, and share document creation. We used it to split up the tasks of building this site- Ben built the back end, I created all of the content and Chris did all the graphic design. Basecamp made tracking the rebuild a lot easier, and definitely made it clear who needed to do what by what date. Since the rebuild, we are using Basecamp to coordinate the PR for the AV Club in general, and it has again made that a much more easily managed task.

More recently I read the 37 Signals book called “Getting Real“. This book is about creating a web app, but it puts a lot of wider reaching ideas into coherent, organized language that helped me organize my own approach to working with a group, designing anything for an audience, and general marketing ideas. I highly recommend you check into it, it is definitely great.

And now finally why I bring all of this up. Today I read a simple little breakdown by 37 Signals of how they designed a new interface for part of Backpack, another one of their apps. This is a great blow by blow behind the scenes look at how they approach design, and it is definitely interesting to see why they choose what they choose. If you have read “Getting Real”, this is like a great appendix entry where they show you step by step how they apply the theories they subscribe to when creating anything. I hope some of this will help someone, as I feel it enriched me.