And a child shall lead them

There is a disturbance in the Facebook force. An uproar over the redesigned Live Feed/News Feed pages on its uber-popular website.

Of course, like anything on Facebook, when people get upset about something they start a group. In this case, it’s the “CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL” group and it boasts more than 1,500,000 members.

Who’s in charge of the group? A 14-year-old from Apex, NC near Raleigh named Jonathan Woodlief. His parents had no idea until reporters started calling the home to talk with the boy.

He actually didn’t start the group, but noticed it didn’t have an administrator so he “clicked a button” to make himself the admin.

It’s just another in a line of controversial choices by the powers-that-be at Facebook. Facebook contends that it made the changes in response to feedback from its users.

Some have posted workarounds for the new reality, but nothing makes it like it used to be exactly.

The only thing certain in the social media world is change.

Guardians of Their Smiles

The NY Times article Guardians of Their Smiles looks into the debate of the pros and cons of posting photos of your children online.  It begins with the story of a mom whose daughter’s picture was taken from Flickr and used on a Brazilian chat site.

It serves as a stark reminder to make sure that you are using privacy settings on social sites and blogs (just like you tell your kids too!) I go back and forth on using my kids names on sites like Facebook. I generally don’t on my personal blog.  I don’t want some employer years from now looking them up and seeing their baby pics.

A grayer area is what about when someone else is posting a photograph of you or your child. What is the etiquette for this new social taboo?

Read the article. It is definitely worth thinking about.

Is Facebook a bad flashback to high school?

I read this article on Switched about how people are posting old school photos on Facebook and tagging their friends.  I had to laugh because I know people who do this, and I’ve considered it myself before coming to my senses.

There is something fun about seeing the old pics and reminiscing but at the same time it is a little scary to think about what people may post about you from your past with no input from you.

This might be a good time to remind you that you can set your Facebook privacy options to know when people tag you in photos they post. It won’t stop them from being able to post some compromising or embarrassing photo, but at least you can remove your name from  it. Currently there is no “confirm” capability before someone tags in you in a photo (although I think there should be!)

There are two places you can set this information. One place is under Privacy Settings> Applications>Settings. Here you can select various information in your profile that will be available to various applications. There is a box titled “Photos taken of you.” Uncheck this box to prevent third party applications from being able to access those images where you are tagged. The other place is under Privacy>Profile>Photos Tagged of You. You can change this setting to be viewable only by you.  Also, you can change your Account Settings>Notifications to get an email whenever you are tagged by someone in a photo. You can then access the photo and remove your name from those that are tagged.

These are just the dangers of living in a hyper-connected world.  Surf safe!

Girls update Facebook status rather than call police?

I ran across this debate on Geek Sugar about the pros and cons of networking addiction.

Case in point a story out of Australia about a 10-year-old and 12-year-old girl who got stuck in a drain in Australia who instead of calling for police support put up a Facebook status update from their phones saying they needed help.

When a pal saw the update HOURS LATER, they called the police who came to help the girls. “local officials . . . are worried about the fact that they had cell phones, but didn’t dial 9-1-1.” Um, you think?

It is an interesting point though. Are our kids so tech-friendly that we forget the basics like call 9-1-1 in an emergency?

The original article goes on to say that there are serious issues to be faced about how to communicate to young people about these issues as their lives revolve around technology in a constant way that wasn’t the case a few years ago.

New Facebook Friends

As if Facebook hasn’t already taken over our lives enough lets add animal cuteness, animal training, and animal voices.

My Desk Friend by arimaz is a small robotic penguin that connects to any computer and combines with your facebook profile to perform actions. Through your profile you can exercise, feed, and play with your “friend”. These actions control your pets mood, which you can read by the changing color of the robot’s eyes. The penguin also alerts you when friends are online, read facebook messages to you, and poke other friends.

The robot itself, other than changing eye color, can also move and interact when you pet it or shake it, or use voice commands. It sounds cool on paper, but I feel like the thing will just end up taking up more desk space than I have. I don’t need anyone to read me facebook messages, reading is one thing I can still do on my own.

Kitchen Monki helps you with groceries, recipes

There is no shortage of sites to help you organize your life online, but in case you need another one, Kitchen Monki is here to help.

Kitchen Monki is designed to help you share recipes with friends, make shopping lists, create menu calendars and more.  Another interesting feature is that you can log-in using your Facebook account.  The site also has a mobile feature so you can search the site from your mobile phone and text your grocery list to your phone.

I like that it has the menu calendar planner as I like to plan a month in advance when I can. Now if it would just send me a Facebook message reminding me what I had planned to cook for dinner each night  . . . I’ll have to investigate.

What is your favorite way to manage recipes and grocery lists online?

Is your Facebook page a little too ho-hum?

Facebook is simple by design but if you are feeling the urge to put a little touch of personality on your profile PageRage has what you are looking for. It’s the first web application that lets you place graphics on top of your Facebook profile.

The site has a variety of layout options including those based on movies, cartoon characters, music, TV, causesand  many more. You can also create your own.

You simply download their plug-in, select and layout and then you will see the profile when you log in to Facebook. For your friends to see the layout, too, they will need to install the plug-in as well. The actual layouts appear in your web browser and have no direct effect on your Facebook profile underneath.

The program works on Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Prison Limits

Really?

The Study Ball is absurd. It’s basically a 20 lb prison style ball and chain to keep a kid from wandering about during homework (or presumably) any time. It comes with a programmable clock (you can punch in anywhere from five minutes to four hours, and the shackle won’t come off until then (supposedly). I’m as distractable as the next student, but come on. Sure there’s facebook, and cell phones, and a host of other average everyday distractions, but this is just unnecessary. Besides, facebook and cell phones are probably staring you straight in the face from the desk you’re being forced to sit at anyway.

Lets be realistic, close the door, set limits, work in the kitchen, there’s a hundred other ways you can force a kid to study without chaining them up. Have a discussion. How about threatening to take that distracting facebook away. Maybe you’re lucky, the kid’s bored cause they’re not being challenged enough. Maybe the Study Ball is a statement to teachers everywhere, when something like this shows up on the market maybe it’s time to reexamine your own styles and efforts in the classroom. Learning can, and is, boring sometimes, does it have to be? Lets just say, on a positive note, as a Halloween or April Fools joke, this baby takes the cake.

You Diligence

Finding it difficult to keep up with all of your child’s social networking pages–like MySpace and Facebook. Worried about what people might be discussing or posting on his page? Afraid your child may be being bullied but won’t talk to you about it?

YouDiligence is a new service that allows you to receive emails when pre-selected words are used on your child’s social network account page. For example, words referring to weapons/violence, drug use, bullying, obscenity, slurs, or sexually explicit languate can be screened for. You can also add personalized words or terms.The service is customizable to allow for differing levels of parental comfort.

When one of the terms appears on your child’s page, you recieve an email containing the word, the context in which is it used and a link to the page where it appears.

To use the service, you must know your child’s login information and have been friended by them on the applicable website.  YouDiligence encourages parents to have open communication with their children and to set boundaries and discuss that you reserve the right to check their pages if you find something troubling.

Another service is the SlangSpotter e-newsletter which helps parents stay up on the latest slang terms to maintain your “POS” position (Parent-over-shoulder).

Of course, there will be parent who wonder if this is an invasion of their child’s privacy to which the site responds:

Q: Is this violating my child’s privacy?

A: All of this material is being posted on the internet by your child and his/her friends. Anyone can gain access to it. With incidents popping up weekly from bullying, to fighting, to sexual predators coming after unsuspecting tweens and teens, it only makes sense to review their internet activity, especially in a responsible way like this. YouDiligence is effective and efficient, and will alert you to when you need to go take a closer look at your child’s site

Remember that what you child posts on the Internet is out there forever, for everyone anyway. At least if they think you might be watching they will think twice about what they post.

The service runs $9.99/month or $14.99 for a family plan.

Ping.fm

I knew it had to exist–A way to update all of your social networks via a single site.  I’m sure there have to be others but I found Ping.fm via Geek Sugar.

You can update up to 30 different social network sites like Twitter and Facebook via text or email to the Ping.fm site.  Can you imagine the time-savings if you have multiple accounts?

This might be enough to make me jump into the Twitter-sphere.