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Facebook makes big changes to Pages Interface

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Facebook has long neglected the Pages interface but that all changed today with some big changes. The best way to summarize the changes is that your Facebook page will function more like a user profile does. A couple of the extremely welcomed new features:

  1. The ability to comment on your page as yourself and not the page.
  2. Notifications via Email when users comment. (Cool but Hyper-Alerts is still better!)
  3. A cleaner more familiar user experience.
  4. A news feed for your home page.


This is the image that greeted me tonight when I logged into my page:
Facebook Pages Upgrade Dialogue
I will be providing a lot more data on this, but this ought to get you started with this new feature.

Rich Price appears on Press:Here and will join me live Wednesday night

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You might have read my post a few weeks ago about the “Chain of Life 2.0“. Since then this story has received (rightfully so, and certainly with little to do with my post!) a lot of coverage. Yesterday Rich and the app were featured on Press:Here on NBC. He was joined by Ben Parr of Mashable and Kym McNicholas contributor to Forbes. This Wednesday night he will join me, Adriel Hampton and Louis Gray on my Blog Talk Radio program to talk more about the app, and the implication of this app in tech, open source and gov 2.0. We will be live at 7PM PST and I would be happy to relay questions you might have for Rich, Adriel or Louis about this incredibly exciting new application.

Check out this video to learn more, and please join us Wednesday as we discuss the Worlds First Location Based Life Saving Mobile App.

(Disclosure: The San Ramon Valley Fire Protection district is a client, but I am not being paid to promote the app I am doing that because I personally support what they are doing.)

Chain of Life 2.0 and what it means to the San Ramon Valley Community

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I had the great opportunity to get a sneak peek of Chain of Life 2.0 a few weeks ago and several weeks to ponder the impact of it in the San Ramon Valley Community (and beyond for that matter). I was attending some of the afternoon sessions of the Leadership San Ramon Valley “Media Day”. I was present to observe Adriel Hampton‘s talk on Social Media in a political context. I had recommended him and they ended up booking him to be one of the featured speakers.

A Meeting with the Fire Chief

While Adriel was giving his presentation Richard Price, the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District Chief and current president of Leadership San Ramon Valley (Disclosure – the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District is a client) asked me if I could arrange a meeting for us to meet with Adriel to discuss something. That meeting ended up happening later that afternoon. During the meeting I learned what the Chain of Life 2.0 was and got to see the video that is at the end of this blog post. The video is amazing and the implications for open source, gov 2.0 and overall use of location based services of this new application are substantial. Or as Adriel shared in his post:

I felt the world change. – Adriel Hampton

What is Chain of Life 2.0?

The chain of life is the process used to describe the reaction and treatment of victims of a heart attack. The first 10 minutes after a heart attack are crucial. One of the key elements of heart attack survival in the chain of life, is how quickly CPR is initiated. It has a drastic impact on the survivability of a heart attack. That is where this exciting web 2.0 application comes into play. This iPhone (available on Android and other platforms eventually) app is location aware and allows people with CPR expertise to sign up as knowing CPR. The system then notifies anyone close to any heart attack incidents and also advises them where the closest Automated External Defibrillator or AED device is located. Here is a visual of the app in action:

Chain of Life 2.0 iPhone App

There is a hero in all of us…

The users of this application will be able to get to heart attack victims even ahead of the traditional first responders (The SRVFPD goal is 7 minutes). This will equate to lives being saved that would otherwise be lost. It is hard to quantify the impact that the loss of a loved one has, but it is great to know that this new breed of application will empower individuals to become heroes for heart attack victims in their community.

What does it mean to the San Ramon Valley Community?

We can be very proud that perhaps the most significant location aware application was born here. We will be empowered to help our neighbors in ways we never thought possible as the first market in the world to have it. Imagine the feeling that a heart attack victim’s family will have knowing that an initiative born in the San Ramon Valley saved their loved ones life.  It is worth mentioning that a Foundation is being formed to bring this open source effort to Fire Districts throughout the US. The end result will mean more people will survive heart attacks which is something we can all be thankful for.

You might also want to check out the landing page for the latest on the announcement.

Large batch of Google Chrome Vulnerabilities and How to Protect Yourself

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There is a rather large batch of critical Chrome Vulnerabilities in this weeks US CERT advisory report SB11-024. The CERT Advisories are part of a US Government effort to keep people informed of product security issues.  Most of them have a factor of 9.3 to 10 out of 10, the highest possible which means if exploited on your computer it is likely that the attacker could gain access to your computer. The actual bulletins include PDF and HTML document handling, denial of service and unknown impacts that lead to “stale pointer”. This would most likely occur when accessing a website or a PDF file with a vulnerable version of the Chrome browser.

Who should care?

Do you use the Chrome Browser or Chrome OS? If you do then you should take action to confirm that you will not be vulnerable.

How to tell

With your Chrome Browser open click the small tool icon in the top right of the browser window pictured below:

How to Open About on Google Chrome

Once the above drop-down menu appears click the “About Google Chrome” menu item. This will result in a screen that will tell you if your browser is up to date and what version it is running:

About Results Google Chrome

The critical piece of information is the green check mark at the bottom of the page. If Chrome is not update or in this case is a version older than 8.0.552 your browser is vulnerable and needs to be updated. In most cases Chrome will be up to date as it is configured to update automatically. This is actually one of the strengths of this browser platform.

Why 2011 may be the Year of Privacy

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As we roll into our 14th year here at Managed Solutions taking stock of the last 14 years many trends have dominated our priority list. In 2010 the focus was extending the life of under-maintained hardware, Cloud Computing and Security. Signs are pointing to privacy being a very relevant issue for 2011. The Wall Street Journal really started the ball rolling with their privacy series in 2010. That really set the tone with many consumers learning and becoming much more concerned about their data privacy. Also it seems like everywhere you looked in 2010 Facebook was being criticized for their at times what appeared to be utter contempt for the privacy of their users. See also “Frustrated by the new Facebook groups? So am I, and something you can do.” on amplify for some additional discussion on that.

Photo credit Opensourceway, Creative Commons

Spokeo.com got “spinsucked”

Gini Dietrich posted a great article this week that struck a chord with the readers. It’s been viewed, shared and commented on heavily since it came out. The post was about “Deleting Your Spokeo Profile” and it detailed what information could be found on Spokeo.com and how to delete the profile. I thought based on the comments that it was worthy of a screencast so I recorded it and shared it with Gini. You can view it on Youtube. At one point Spokeo was not able to process requests, so I joked with her on her blog that there is a new /. in town and that spokeo had gotten “spinsucked” so henceforth that will be my story, and I will stick to it.

As further proof that this issue really resonated with many of us, I had one person completely disconnected from the matter ask me on Facebook last night if I had “heard of Spokeo” at that point I realized this was really circulating far and wide.

Learning from the debate

Some debates did come up over the spinsucks post, here were the opposition arguments to removing your profile from spokeo:

  1. There are many other sites that mirror the same data
  2. They are probably harvesting the required email address to sell
  3. The information is public domain only, readily available

One less site is better

In response to argument #1, one less site is certainly better is it not? Not to mention Spokeo actually did a bang up job of getting a lot more data than other sites seem to have to offer. I’d rather not be listed there.

Avoid the harvest

Avoiding the email harvesting concept is easy, you should use either an alias that can be tracked and later deleted or a “junk” email that is only checked in these circumstances.

The information is public domain only

I don’t think this is the case, it appears that Spokeo has found or paid for some really unique data or at least their paid for service touts that. If it is all public domain it’s usually not in one place. If someone is going to go after it, let’s make them work for it, does that sound like a decent strategy?

What does it mean?

I think these developments solidify the position that 2011 is the year of privacy, why? We know now, and we care, and we’re reading and watching and opting out to the tune of disabling a website. Our current privacy laws are not reacting fast enough for the changes in this digital world. This disparity is creating a vacuum that will be filled one way or another.

What happen’s next? Predictions

So the question is do the companies that are gathering this information and making it available cave from the pressure cooker that is likely to develop from consumers this year? Does the government step in and pass new privacy legislation more geared to our digital and interconnected age? Or does a group of entrepreneurs put together a service that opts out and erases data that can be masked, opts you out of junk mail and create an opportunistic menu of other privacy features?

I’ll be talking privacy a lot more this year and making it a priority to educate and discuss both here on Managed Solutions and also on my blog. Please join the conversation and share your thoughts. The most compelling comments will be added to the post and the authors cited. Or perhaps you’d like to guest post about this, if so please contact me.