Posts Under Technology Category
Google’s doing it:
Wikipedia is doing it:
(and causing quite the uproar on Twitter, I might add)
Reddit, Craigslist, Boing-Boing, WordPress, and thousands of other smaller sites are also doing it.
And so am I, even though I’m Canadian.
The Stop Online Piracy Act might be an American bill, but it has very, very bad consequences for everyone, everywhere. Essentially, SOPA would allow intellectual property owners (Hollywood, essentially) to more or less destroy any site (homeland or foreign) they have a copyright claim against.
And then there’s PIPA, SOPA’s little sister, which seeks to make websites – not users – responsible for pirated content.
“Internet policy shouldn’t be set by Hollywood.” – Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder
What does this mean, exactly?
It means say goodbye to a free, open internet.
Right now, if I upload copyrighted content to YouTube, I’m held accountable. With PIPA, YouTube becomes accountable for what *I* uploaded. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? And while the big sites – Facebook, YouTube, etc – have the means to deal with these kinds of copyright claims, many smaller sites don’t.
And under SOPA, if a torrent site hosted in a foreign country is offering movie downloads, the production company can (among other things) demand Google remove them from the search index, demand financing to the site in question is pulled, and tell ISP’s to block the site.
Yeah, as in Rogers/AOL/Insert-ISP-Here can decide what YOU, as a consumer, and as an internet user, are ALLOWED TO SEE AND ACCESS.
Sounds pretty big brother-ish, right?
What’s worse is the consequences this can have beyond torrent sites or streaming video content. Those pushing this bill through are claiming it’s only aimed at these sites that are pirating software, movies, and creative content.
What they’re NOT telling you is that the bill can – and very likely will, if passed – extend beyond those boundaries and start affecting us, as internet users, and start affecting “the little guy.” Basically ANY site the powers-that-be decide infringes on a copyright can be pulled – and just because I’m Canadian doesn’t mean I’m untouchable – that’s the problem, actually. This bill would be essentially be granting the American Government control over foreign hosted content, and, according to Google, “turn the internet into a police state”.
I have to agree.
What I am disappointed with, however, is that Google chose to only blackout on the American site. Though we as foreigners don’t have a direct say in this – I mean, I don’t have an American representative I can contact – but if passed it WILL be affecting us (and our daily internet habits). People – all people, whether American or not – need to be aware of how bad this bill really is. It’s going to allow the American government extraordinary – and worse, loosely defined – power to control the content and information available to us online.
It will essentially, and effectively, kill the internet.
Overly dramatic? Maybe, but maybe not.
I’d rather not find out.
I’m only just scraping the surface of this entire issue – for a more in-depth (but still easy to follow) look at the issue, check out this Gizmodo post, visit Wikipedia’s Q&A about why they’re blacked out, or checkout the SOPA Blackout page.
And, of course – consider joining the blackout and showing your support via Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
Back when GeoCities wasn’t owned by Yahoo (and still existed, for that matter)? When frames were considered “high tech”, when it was perfectly acceptable for backgrounds to be a picture repeated over, and over, and over; and when there were animated .gifs literally everywhere?
Oh, baby.
You can actually click through this screenshot to browse through the archived site in all it's glory; thanks to the Wayback Machine.
Oh, and in case you were wondering – yeah, that was MY website.
Okay, you can stop laughing at me now – I was 12, and it was REALLY cool back then. All my friends were jealous. And then they made their own sites. And recently, I embarrassed them all by finding all THEIR old sites and plastering them all over Facebook!
Ah, the wonders of modern day technology.
I still remember my first webpages address – which is kind of odd, considering it was SO. LONG. AGO. (And so long, in general) Good thing though – that’s what allowed me to track it down via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
It was http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/5503, in case you were curious.
Actually, that was only my FIRST websites URL because I RAN OUT OF SPACE (seriously) and ended up having to make a second, then third, then… you get the idea.
I always feel a little silly when applying for jobs (and in interviews!) when I’m asked how many years of web design experience I have. Because when you’ve only been out of school for 2 years, and you didn’t major in ANYTHING web related, claiming 5+ years of experience – let alone 10+! – seems a little ridiculous, right?
But truth be told, I made my first webpage when I was 10/11, in 1996 (my family got our first computer in 1993, and I thought it was the coolest thing since the mechanical cheese slicer we owned - hey, I really liked cheese and was clumsy with a knife, okay?) and from then on I was hooked.
I created my first .gifs in KidPix, than – oh my God – moved on to animated .gifs.
Also in KidPix.
This frog was my second one.
Pretty badass, right?
Please note the hot white background surrounding the graphic – yeah, transparency didn’t exist yet for me. 
I soon moved up in the world, and learned to work Paint Shop Pro.
Shortly after, I was making adoptable eggs that hatched into bunnies and pigs. We won’t talk about my first adoptable animals, a slew of unanimated KidPix bunnies.
And then I finally, FINALLY learned how to use transparency – no white borders here, folks.
Back then, I was sooooo proud of these graphics (and okay, you’ve got to admit – for a 12 year old in 1997 they were pretty damn good!). I wanted to be a graphic designer until I was about 15 and discovered law (surprise, I’m not a lawyer today either!). And there were a few weeks when I was 13 when I was insistant I’d be a marine biologist, until I realized I never, ever wanted to disect an animal in science class. And yes, I did avoid doing so all through high school.
Although I’m by no means a graphic artist, I do still make graphics (all the ones on this site are my work), and I dabble in some freelance graphic work when the opportunity presents itself (right now, I’m actually designing some material for Open Media’s “Vote for the Internet” campaign).
For those of you who know me (and well) – you might see parts of my “grown up” personality still splashed around that page. I still love bunnies and penguins, for instance. And if you read my “all about me” page (please note the bangin’ rainbow background), you’ll note I list my hobbies as swimming, reading, and drawing (yup, still do all those things).
Ace of Base and Spice Girls were my favourite bands, and Geri Halliwell was my favourite singer. Not sure whether I really want to admit this, but I still have music from all three (yeah, yeah, including Geri’s short lived solo career) on my iPod.
I guess something things really do never change (except technology, thank God!)
And, for a laugh, check out a few popular pages in all their frame heavy, blue underline linked glory:
- TheStar.com, circa 1996 (check out those buttons!)
- Apple.com in 1997 had a great deal: order CyberDrive today for a FREE CD Rom!
- Disney.com was high tech in 1997 with their transparent graphics, frames, and online store.
- One of the nicest layouts 1996 ever saw was probably ABC.com’s site.
- Google was still in beta form in 1996.
Enter Joon Maeng. I have no idea who he is, and I don’t follow him on Twitter. But despite that, I can tell you when he took this photo and posted it on TwitPic, he was near the I-105 in Hawthorne, California.
How do I know that?
His smartphone embedded metadata into the photo, and TwitPic uploaded it with the image online. Anyone with a specific kind of software can easily extract that same information – or worse.
I picked Maeng as my example, because his location at the time the photo was taken is relatively safe to publish forever online – its the side of the highway, and the photo was clearly taken at some sort of event.
However, I could also tell you way more information about a few not-so-lucky folk. One girl that springs to mind is a Justin Bieber fan – she posted a picture of her with her phone, showing off a Bieber sticker on the back of it. She looks young, maybe 13. As soon as she posted that picture, anyone with the right software could tell you where she took the photo – and I don’t mean “in her bedroom”, as evident from the shot – I mean her address.
That’s a real screen shot of the personal information of a tweeter (with the important parts blacked out for privacy by me, of course) as it appeared a few minutes ago on www.icanstalku.com; a website trying to raise awareness about the dangers of posting your photos online without being cautious about the metadata and geo-tags your smartphone may be attaching to the photo.
Here’s how Maeng’s tweet looked on the site:
And here’s how he intended it to look (as it appears on his Twitter page):
The information you see in the screenshot from I Can Stalk U is the metadata that their program pulled out of the photo Maeng posted to Twitter. Not to worry that this personal information (such as Young Miss Bieber’s home address) is going to be available on the site forever – since it’s an awareness site, the data is only briefly available on the site before the page refreshes and the tweets are replaced with new ones. The personal addresses of twitter users are not available online for longer than a few moments, making it impossible for someone malicious to track them down via I Can Stalk U.
But – anyone who downloads the correct software COULD extract the information from the picture as long as it’s available.
According to this article in The Toronto Star, some sites (such as Facebook) automatically strip the data from the photos when they’re uploaded. Flickr gives users the option to choose whether or not to enable geo-tagging. Some sites don’t offer users that privacy however - such as Craigslist, and many social networking applications for smart phones. That means all those lonely individuals posting anonymous photos of their, um, privates on craigslist may not be so private if someone was so inclined to grab the metadata of their photos. We’re talking instant address of the girl that posted photos of her hoo-ha online.
Unwittingly leaving these options enabled on your phone (or in rare cases, your camera) can potentially create some very scary situations for social media users, whether you’re vagina-girl on Craigslist or Bieber-fan on Twitter.
So, how do you remain safe?
I Can Stalk U gives really great step-by-step instructions on how to make sure your smart phones aren’t attaching personal information to your picture uploads, depending on which kind of phone you have. The iPhone one is a little complicated, but I am going to be sure to be MUCH more careful before posting photos on Twitter directly from my iPhone.
If you upload from TwitPic.com, there’s a box you can uncheck to ensure the metadata is NOT sent with the photo when you upload it. That option unfortunately isn’t available (yet) when you directly upload from your phone.
There’s also many free applications for both PCs & Macs that can strip the metadata from your photos before you upload them online – do a quick google search for “remove metadata from photos” and you’ll find tons of tutorials and software available.
I’m going to end with a note on the obvious – if you want to be protected, stop posting so much personal information online!
While I am registered for Foursquare, I haven’t really used it very much – it makes me nervous “checking in” in at venues around my city… helloooooo stalkers! Foursquare (and the matched public Twitter posts) are not only a goldmine for stalkers, but it’s also one for thieves – people literally announce when they are out of their homes. It’s a little too much for me. I might check into a festival or large-scale event here or there – but I would never check into my house (with an address! Come on, people!) or into a bar, grocery store, etc. I can see the social benefits of the application, but still… it gives me the heebiejeebies. I can tell you when half the people on my Twitter list arrive at work daily, when they leave for a vacation, what time they prefer to grocery shop… and so on and so forth.
And, if Foursquare and Facebook’s new “privacy” settings (read as: lack thereof) weren’t bad enough – now, metadata and geo-tags from smart phones are making it even harder to ensure our private information stays private.
So, I was a little bored just now and decided to see if there was a WordPress app for my iPhone. I figured there MUST be… A quick search later, here we are!
This is rather exciting for me, since it means I can edit and update my site on-the-go (more so than I already could with my laptop, that is)
If anyone else is interested, the application is simply called ‘WordPress’ and is free.
It’s simple to use, and has a nice, clean interface (bonus!)
So far, it seems pretty great! My only complaint is that you can’t place pictures within the post – they automatically default to the boron of the post. Hopefully they update this in the future!
I’d give the program 4 stars until it’s a little easier to customize a post.
