The Ramblings of Rob Cooper

So, I was thinking last night, following on from me previous post, I am going to migrate to Blogger and cease posting to Live Spaces.

If you are intelligent/crazy enough to be following my blog, then please update your RSS reader to: http://cantgrokwontgrok.blogspot.com.

I like the title better, definitely describes me a lot more accurately :D

Hopefully this will give me the opportunity to get more feedback from [any] followers, as well as “do more” with the blog (polls etc). This will be both interesting for me as well as possibly enhance my learning, as well as others. We are all on a journey here.

Also, as a note to Microsoft and the People on the Live Team:

Just because I am leaving Spaces, it does mean I am leaving Live. I LOVE the other things happening with Live, and I really cannot stop praising Live Writer, Live SkyDrive and especially Live Mesh (as well as the other bits going on)! Keep up the great work, I really hope Spaces comes on enough to perhaps attract people wanting “more” back to it.

See you at “Can’t Grok, Won’t Grok”!

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So, looks like I am again reviewing some of the services I use against others I could be.

I have actually been contemplating leaving Live Spaces for a while. Sadly, I don’t think Spaces have moved enough in the right direction. I think I have remained is due to the excellent production on the rest of the Live Services teams (Writer, SkyDrive, Mesh etc.). However, none of these require this blog.

Put simply, I dislike the following:

• Ad banners.
• Anonymous comments are not allowed.
• Email notifications of comments etc are not available.
• Unable to choose an address I want for the blog.
• Lack of support for custom scripts.
• Tagging/Categorisation is extremely limited.
• Only 1 space/blog per account.

And I do like:

• The look, I think its nice and clean.
• Works superbly with Live Writer.

So, watch this space, I may be migrating, need to run a few more tests to see what Blogger can do for me, but so far looking positive.

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Even though online privacy has been a subject that everyone has known about for a long time, I still cant help but feel that with the explosion in social networking, a lot of the basic principles seem to have been lost somewhere.

By “principles” I mean:

• Make yourself as hard to personally identify as possible.
• People on the Internet should not be able to find where you live (unless you want them to).
• You need to protect your friends and family as well as yourself, don’t put their information on display without permission.
• In short, people should only ever know what you would be happy with someone shouting from a top of the building, with everyone stood around it, and pointing at you.
• Not sharing information from one source with another (e.g. automatic “I’ll email your friends for you, just give me your ID and password for [service]”.

Some of the Problems

There have been numerous issues with private information being found on the Internet about people ranging from silly pranks being pulled to people losing their money, jobs, or even their lives. People often only think about the former and never the consequences of the latter. It’s serious stuff.

Some obvious examples:

• People are being fired for finding “inappropriate” items on Facebook (or whatever) of their staff members.
• Obvious harassment and threatening behaviour towards individuals.
• Children and Adults alike (not only children are at risk) being stalked, or worse.
• Personally identifiable information being used to access other information (bank details etc.).
• There are tons of website’s that regurgitate information on other sites, so you data can be inadvertently copied from one site to another, without you knowing about it.

As said before, a large part of this is due to the fact that social networking has exploded. With MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. There is literally MILLIONS of people posting huge amount of data about themselves on various servers around the world.

I, like a lot of others think social networking is great. I am now back in touch with people from school, I never forget friends birthdays, its nice to see us all growing up and doing our things and being happy.

What people fail to realise is that, left unchecked, ANYONE can see this, and this can be dangerous.

Some Solutions

So? What can we do to help get some sort of control over what the Internet can find out about ourselves? There are several things:

1. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS check the privacy settings for ANY sites where you put information about yourself in any way, shape or form. If you cannot find them, check the help, if its not in the help, contact them, if they do not help you, then you may well want to consider not trusting them with your data!
2. If your unsure, don’t. If you ever think “should I put this on here” then you are probably best not to.
3. As mentioned above, never enter your password and ID for one service into another, unless you trust the application vendor. 9/10 if I see anything like that, I either get out or skip it. Remember, just because they may not use your information directly, they could sell it on.
4. If you don’t want your employer to see photos of you throwing up in a gutter on Saturday night or doing inappropriate things with the girl next door then don’t give them access to such material. If you want them on your contacts on Facebook (or whatever) then put them on a limited profile, or not add them at all. There are other networking sites designed for work such as LinkedIn.

The Biggest Winner (IMO)

I am all for rolling your sleeves up and having a go. So, check yourself out. The first place most searches start is Google. So, go to Google, type in your name, what comes up? Can you find information about yourself? Are you happy with it being there? If not, change it, go to the website, log in and check the privacy settings!

Vary your searches, name? Phone number? Email address? As soon as you can see where your information is being leaked from, you can fix it.

Remember, Google also offers Google Alerts which is a great way to keep on top of it. I have several Google Alerts trawling the net for me to check for my personal information. As of yet, there is nothing on the Internet about me that I would either be unhappy about you knowing, or wouldn’t tell you myself.

Exactly how it should be.

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I have recently started trying to invest a little more time in GTD (Getting Things Done). Part of this investment has also meant me signing up to RememberTheMilk (RTM) which is a great, simple-yet-effective “ToDo” list site.

Prior to reading this post from Doug Ireton (which RTM posted on their blog) I hadn’t really customised RTM a great deal. This was perhaps a mixture of me not really knowing what I am doing with GTD and lack of time to “play” (expect it was more the former).

I found the article clear, concise and damn useful! I spent a good chunk of this morning getting all my work, personal and study items nicely organised within RTM. I feel I perhaps have a little way to go before getting the system refined to my taste, but it’s certainly a hell of a lot closer than it was!

It sounds silly but I feel much more confident in the system and can happily “forget” about items and concentrate on actually getting the things done I am supposed to be working on.

I will continue to try and let you know how I get on with GTD and any other bits of productivity-boosting bits of information I come across.

Links:
RememberTheMilk
Doug Ireton’s Post on RememberTheMilk
GettingThingsDone on WikiPedia

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Hi All!

Sorry its been so long since my last post, been crazy busy of late!

Here’s a run down of the things that have been chewing up my time:

• New project at work in ASP.NET, which is all new to me! So its been hard on the brain (trying to remain productive yet needed to consume a lot of info to *try* and make sure I do things right.
• Study study study. Same old. Was studying extra hard since wanted to sit the 70-316 exam.
• General thoughts (both personal and professional) that needed ironing out in my mind.
• World of Warcraft is far too addictive, making my allotted “chill time” overrun. However, I think this is probably a good thing as I have been kinda needing it lately.

Good news is, the study and the work seems to be paying off!

I passed the 70-316 exam with a score of 906 (700 was pass mark)! Making me a happy geek! I am now studying towards 70-315 which coincides nicely with my current work project(s). This is one of the main reasons I was pushing hard for 70-316 since I desperately wanted to get into Web.

I believe thought and reflection is always good for the soul, so that always deserves some time :)

World of Warcraft is addictive! But I have started to limit my time somewhat more on there!

Expect more blog posts to follow. Good to be back on top of things :)

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