Myspace-ing not a great idea in this economy

Despite the title of this post, the truth is facebook-ing, twitter-ing and most other things-ings that involve social networking are probably not a great idea if you're posting stuff that current or potential employers might find offensive.

I was just listening to a CNN story about a former restaurant worker who got fired for "gossiping" about her boss. The fired employee then decided to file a lawsuit againt the restaurant in federal court. This issue is worthy of note because the decisions the court comes to will have far reaching implications on the privacy debate-- and on the way information can be accessed and used, and by whom.

I couldn't find a link to the CNN story, but here is a WSJ story that mentions it. Please post comments and share what you think of this issue.

update:
Two employees actually got fired. There is some discussion going on on the CNN twitter channel if you're interested: http://twitter.com/cnn

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SixthSense-- how cool is this?

Photo credit: MIT; CNET news

A few weeks ago a good friend sent me this link about an innovative gesture-driven computer platform called SixthSense. I was (and still am) quite intrigued by the many prospects this new system offers in the field of information management-- if adopted as mainstream. However, after speaking to a few "regular" people (as opposed to super tech nerds), I've found that most are concerened with how this new platform will impact the privacy debate-- if it goes mainstream. I tried to explain to them that they wouldn't HAVE to check their e-mails on a blank wall in the airport OR check their bank account balance on a crowded subway platform if they didn't feel comfortable. Furthermore, I explained that this system seems to to be one build upon the already existing system of the internet. Thus, most privacy issues that may arise would be pre-existing problems, and not new ones created by SixthSense.

O.k., enough with the boring stuff already! Do you remember Tom Cruise in Monority Report? Yes, that's exactly what I thought when I first saw heard about sixthsense-- the computer Tom Cruise was using. Take a peek and tell me what you think:


Video

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Swurl

Swurl was an aggrigator of all one's web content, a life stream if will, of all one's activity on the interweb. Then one day it was no more. Just like that. Gone.

Certain blogs have made mention of some sort of "goodby note" that was left by the creators of swurl.com that read:

"We built Swurl as two guys doing something we love in our spare time. Unfortunately, due to the pressures of our day jobs and other distractions, we can no longer support or maintain the service at the level that we think our users deserve."

I for one never saw that note since (as you might have noticed) swurl.com now takes you to some ebay page, so I cannot verify this. Good news is, since swurl was an aggregator, no user content was lost. However, the fact that swurl just shut its doors and dissappeard raises an intersting question and and sounds a distinct alarm: in this world where everything is quickly going "paperless", and massive amounts of information are being digitalized and stored on the net (in some cases ONLY on the net), what safeguards have been built to make sure that information published online don't just disappear when the platform it was published on does?

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Web marketing in developing countries

A friend recently sent me this link: http://tinyurl.com/da2756 with the word "Thoughts?" attached to it. I had a little to say about it and I figured I'd post my response here. Please let me know what you think about this by sending my an e-mail or leaving a comment. Thanks.

"I think Henry (friend 1 on e-mail list) and Seyram (sender of link) have between themselves presented the crux of the problem: 1. FB and other social networking sites that depend on advertising to survive cannont charge local companies the same amount of money they charge here (U.S.) for advertising. 2. Ghana and other developing countries are not integrated into the global payment processing system so even if people wanted to buy, they couldn't. Additionally however, I strongly believe that home grown businesses in developing countries like ours have not gotten to the point where they fully appreciate the power of internet marketing (and it makes perfect sense that they should not-- I don't believe that more than 30% of the population of Ghana even has access to the net). For that reason, most people might be quite reluctant to shell out the big bucks for this purpose.

Now if some Ghanainan company came up with an awesome online advertising business like Paa Kwasi suggested, that would be quite nice for all involved. However, they'd still have to contend with the high bandwith vs. low return on advertising sales problem. Paa Kwasi, you made mention of myjoyonline: does anyone know how much profit (if any) myjoyonline is making from the advertising business? Also, is it sustainable or are people just jumping onto the bandwagon for the moment because some sweet tongued exec. has promised them that it's the wave of the future? Are companies going to stop advertising when they realize that their advertising money isn't being translated into sales? I don't know the answers, but I do believe that before we can get full swing into the internet advertising game ( and be profitable at it) learn to walk before we run, otherwise, invent a way to fly so you can skip the walk phase. This basically translates into us (Ghana and others) building the infrastructure to allow us to plug into the global payment system so people can actually buy, otherwise, we should figure out an entirely different way to allow advertising to translate into money. If/when this happens, people will be less reluctant to spend good solid amounts of money on internet advertising.

Thank you :)."

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