Internet fun for the weekend…
By far one of my favorite websites of late is called GraphJam.com. Essentially, the website attempts to break down the world and how we interact with it in a series of graphs. It is hilarious when you see how the world around us can be so easily summed up in a pie or bar chart. It all makes perfect sense.
Users are encouraged to submit their own which are reviewed and posted if found to be humorous. Included are some great examples…enjoy!
see more Funny Graphs
see more Funny Graphs
see more Funny Graphs
see more Funny Graphs
Have great weekend !!
Are you sure that’s a good website name?
Great website that everyone must visit for a good laugh. Slurls.com lists the worst domain names on the planet.
To meet the criteria for Slurl, the site is legitimate and the name has to to be recognizably slurred into some other meaning.
Some of these are flat out awesome but I feel sorry for the creators who had no clue what their website name would turn into.
Here are a few of my favorites:
1hourscrap.com-scrapbooking site
carsexpress.com – Vehicle leasing and sales
teacherstalk.co.uk – Teachers forum
therapistfinder.com – California counseling directory
blindsexpress.com – Blinds shopping
childrenslaughter.com – Charity website
choosespain.com -Holiday rental site
Can you think of some good ones on your own?
Careless “Friend and Photo” control could be the biggest privacy threat for avid Facebook users
This is the second in what might become a small series of Facebook related blogs. My first was an earlier satirical rant of the 25 Random Things List. Recently, the Facebook gods responded to their users concerns with a general statement concerning content archiving policies and how much of this information they are disclosing to the user base. This came in the midst of a user backlash where thousands deleted their accounts out of protest to the statements made by the company.
The skinny- it’s complicated and your privacy is not high on the priority list, nothing on the web is people. In fact- the code behind Facebook is a complicated weave of spaghetti containing your content, photos, submissions, and any other items you submit for public viewing. What does this mean? It means your personal information is woven into a unregulated and uncontrolled virtual desert open to anyone – and FB can keep all your personal shit after you leave the party.
Whatever, whenever, or with whomever you send a photo, a wall post, a message, or an event – all that information gets stored on FB servers and can be retained for a long period of time. The reason- the FB gods have designed the site to allow a deactivated person to easily come back and reactivate their account. This being said- all content you submitted can magically “reappear” to make the process easier on you. The rational is that communicated information is always “there”. If you email me and five minutes later cancel your email account, does that email you sent me suddenly disappear? No. FB management has designed the site in the same fashion and for some reason it pissed a lot of people off – funny considering everything on the internet operates under the same logic.
There are two main blunders that users make. The first mistake is compiling too many Friends without organizational control of who they are, how you know them, and what their relationship to you is. The other mistake being poor security control over Photos and Tags. As an experiment, a college professor once asked his students to stand up in front of the class, plug in their laptops, and show everyone their profile on the overhead. Not one person volunteered for the request. The thought of a FB profile being exposed in a room full of people invoked thoughts of embarrassment, vulnerability, and shame.
The professor had intentionally created a startling reality for his students. They regarded their profile as private even though essentially millions of users, application developers, advertisers, search engine tracking software, and potential employers can see it everyday.
Back to the Friends and Photos thing. Okay, so you’ve added some people who now have access to view your profile and you’re pretty cool with the results. You do so some talking, share some photos, post some wall comments, update status to declare your current state of mind or relationships, or whatever. What is often overlooked is the information trail that is created. As your Friend’s list gets bigger, so does the audit trail of data, so does the list of people who can see it, which in most cases is cool, typically you add stuff because you want people to see it, no biggie.
However, as the Friend list grows, so does the accessibility to content that you might want to keep to yourself. In fact, I actually know of people in the workplace who have unintentionally alienated themselves from co-workers because of the status comments they habitually post to their FB page. Comments like “I’m tired of work” “Why am I here?” or “I can’t believe my manager just asked me to do something”. As innocent as it seems to the poster, the internet has a sneaky way of delivering it’s own interpretation of content to the on looker. You know that sarcastic email you sent to your best friend only to have them get pissed off? It’s a common occurrence in the virtual world, FB included. Apparently, these people forgot that they carelessly added half their office to their Friends list. The same goes for Photos- photos that you personally would never post, but can you control how someone else Tags you in one of their photos? Ahhh Haaaa – now that is where you’ll get in trouble.
There are Friend and Photo Tag security features that most users do not use very efficiently, or they just don’t know about them. The basis behind these controls is to better categorize your Friends and place controls on who can see what, same thing for photos and who can see those you’re tagged in.
Nick O’Neill is a contributor to the website AllFacebook.com and is considered an expert on the proper and safe ways to use the site. These are strategies that he offers users to better secure your environment:
1. Use Your Friend Lists
I can’t tell you how many people are not aware of their friend lists. For those not aware of what friend lists are, Facebook describes them as a feature which allows “you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can create Friend Lists for all of your organizational needs, allowing you to quickly view friends by type and send messages to your lists.”
There are a few very important things to remember about friend lists:
- You can add each friend to more than one friend group
- Friend groups should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
- Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them
A typical setup for groups would be “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional”. These three groups can then be used to apply different privacy policies. For example, you may want your friends to see photos from the party you were at last night, but you don’t want your family or professional contacts to see those photos. Using friend lists is also extremely useful for organizing your friends if you have a lot of them. For instance I have about 20 friend lists and I categorize people by city (New York, San Francisco, D.C., Tel Aviv, etc), where I met them (conferences, past co-workers, through this blog), and my relationship with them (professional, family, social, etc)
2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results:
Now that you’ve decided that you would like to remove yourself from Facebook’s search results, here’s how to do it:
- Visit your search privacy settings page
- Under “Search Visibility” select “Only Friends” (Remember, doing so will remove you from Facebook search results, so make sure you want to be removed totally. Otherwise, you can select another group, such as “My Networks and Friends” which I believe is the default.)
- Click “Save Changes”
3. Avoid the Infamous Photo/Video Tag Mistake
At the least, a tagged photo/video can result in personal embarrassment. So how do you prevent the infamous tagged photo or video from showing up in all of your friends news feeds? It’s pretty simple. First visit you profile privacy page and modify the setting next to “Photos Tagged of You”. Select the option which says “Customize…” and a box like the one pictured below will pop up.
Select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.
Hope some of these tasty treats will make you a more intelligent FB user.
“Sick and Tired” joined the group “Those who are sick of 25 Random Things about me”
25: I didn’t need to know you were scared of closet monsters as a kid.
24: Wow? You’re humble, quiet, and a narcissist all wrapped into one?
23: I’m glad you love your bulldog puppy more than your parents.
22: I thought SPAM only occurred in my email.
21: They make creams and lotions for that issue on your leg.
20: Yes, it is sunny out and it’s winter…the irony?
19: I’m a fan of ketchup myself.
18: The scanner, both amazing and frightening.
17: Writing on a wall used to get your hand slapped from mommy.
16: Am I allowed a spiked club instead of a Pillow to fight with?
15: People You May Know, or just use them to bump your Friends tally higher.
16: Invite Your Friends to join Facebook, because they’re tired of the four people they hang out with.
15: Are you serious? As long as your brother doesn’t join Facebook, he’ll never know you felt that way.
14: I think the annoying chick on the Progressive car insurance commercials is cute.
13: I pick my nose…a lot!
12: Oh my – you’re hair hasn’t changed much from 1987.
11: Just completed a Mafia War on my neighbor, it’s not pretty.
10: Exhausted: John C. Holmes, the Real Story – I didn’t see that movie come up on the Which One Defines Me List?
9: Poke Me and I’ll kick your ass.
8: I just Saved The Planet by signing an electronic petition – it was that easy?
7: I was mentioned in the Note People I’m not real fond of…
6: No…
5: More…
4: 25…
3: Random…
2: Things…
1: Seriously!
New microsoft IE patch just releas~~~ oh we’re sorry – you’re infected
I hope you didn’t open your IE browser to read Heard it in a bar and got ransacked by viruses. The news of the latest fatal flaw in the Internet Explorer browser gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling as I persue over hundreds of websites. No wonder so many people rant and rave about Firefox or now the Google version called “Chrome“. Which by the way is archaic looking but interesting to use.
Who gives a crap? Nobody is going to stop using IE to browse the web, baby boomers will still get confused and ask their kids for advice, and porn on the web will still reign supreme in all it’s late night glory!
You know that Microsoft has its iron hand over the browsing world when it’s product continues to get penetrated (hehe, he said penetrated) by viruses and everyone of us still spends ten gazillion hours a day on the net.
Here’s some advice:
1) Don’t use home based software like Quicken, Quickbooks, or whatever the heck is out there. The thought of you logging all of your vital financial assets into a software program is suicide. Leave that stuff to the companies who manage your accounts and financial records, it’s their job to keep it safe. Secondly, your vital information (SS#, account #s, etc) is logged on so many computer systems right now anyway, why display it somewhere else? If you do use it, you better be damn sure you have really really good anti-virus software and it’s updated all the time. If you like online banking- same thing- keep your anti virus updated and don’t leave your windows open for hours after you’re done. Log out – don’t just close out!
2) Don’t open links in emails that look too good to be true. No, the King and Queen of Zamunda are not bequeathing $10 million dollars to you and they need your bank account number in order to finalize the transaction. Come on people! I still see stuff on the news about folks getting bamboozled by an internet scam. That email asking you to verify something is bologna, you’re account will not be closed if you don’t respond. It’s fake- not real – a phony- a scam artist. Call your bank if you have a doubt. Would you hand your account numbers or a credit card number to some dude standing at your front door?
3) Educate your parents on this idealology as well. The web based world is daunting and unfamiliar to a lot of people who grew up with calculators and carbon copies. Face it – this is the truth. Most of that generation does not know the do’s and don’ts of the net, unless they already work with it everyday. Do them a favor and assist them instead of laughing at them.
Cruising the net is dangerous enough already – so don’t set yourself up to get hosed.
Heard It In A Bar RSS Feed- Texas – what the hell is wrong with you!? September 3, 2010I’m going to be honest with you, it is going to be very difficult for me to be calm about this. First, we had the Rep. Barton apologizing to BP for the Obama “shakedown”. Even his own party rolled their eyes and popped their Tums. I was up in arms over this and even got [...] […]She
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- Teetering on the edge…how does Bret Michaels do it? September 3, 2010I have to give Bret Michaels credit, he has battled a life of disease and he keeps bouncing back. At the age of six, he was diagonosed with Type I diabetes and has struggled to maintain his health all the while becoming an 80’s glam metal rock god, a history of hard hard partying, and what [...] […]kansasview
- A softball player who just happens to know the law, sign her up… September 3, 2010Does this woman really matter to you? If you look deep into the background of a possible supreme court justice, do you want actual bench experience or do you prefer someone who knows the law and has written a few hundred papers on well…the law? Princeton graduate, Harvard Law Dean,…on the surface at least Elena Kagan [...] […]kansasview
- When it rains for Tiger, it pours… September 3, 2010The muscle of this man has shrunk and shows more sign of atrophy as each new story surfaces. This blog did a pretty good job of leaving Tiger alone and I have to say after the recent events, I still stick to that credo. The bomb of the last couple months has dropped, the shrapnel has [...] […]kansasview
- Where have we been? September 3, 2010Well, a few good men and an even better woman started the idea of this blog and we owe it to someone to unspill the contents of our head, or at least mine. The time has come to once again say all the things I want to say and it’s an invitation for you as well! It’s [...] […]kansasview
- Brittany Murphy’s death is troubling September 3, 2010Not that it’s another tragic celebrity death, not that it’s another young life taken so early…these are all troubling and sad in their own right. It’s another tragic case of someone getting caught up in the web of drugs…the legal type! It truly saddens me that so many of these stars seek out more and more prescription [...] […]kansasview
- Internet fun for the weekend… September 3, 2010By far one of my favorite websites of late is called GraphJam.com. Essentially, the website attempts to break down the world and how we interact with it in a series of graphs. It is hilarious when you see how the world around us can be so easily summed up in a pie or bar chart. [...] […]kansasview
- So why are more companies not yet hiring? September 3, 2010U.S. Workers are still filing a large amount of unemployment claims and this is after five weeks of declines in this area. Where are the culprits and which industries are still hurting? It’s apparent as we have seen over the last year is that a gradual stabilization of the economy does not naturally translate to a increase [...] […]kansasview
- Facebook is down…Facebook is down…5:42 (cst) September 3, 2010This website is not a help desk for Facebook but it’s a civic duty to keep the American public aware of all possible natural disasters!! Facebook is down! Facebook is down! Don’t toss your Iphone in the river or hurl it at your wife and complain that it doesn’t work worth a s***. Here is the current [...] […]kansasview
- Texas – what the hell is wrong with you!? September 3, 2010
