Massive drop in Facebook users, and why?

Now, some of your thoughts, if you're anything like me and secretly want to destroy Facebook wih fire, might be something along the lines of  "MUAHAHAHAHA!"...

Of course that doesn't make for a very interesting article. We're here to look at WHY Facebook users are leaving. This graph, pictured above, clearly shows that a major ammount of people are leaving. Only 31.14% of the answers were from people that were staying. 30.33% of the people were leaving due to "don't trust it with my personal information". I'd personally group the 7.12% that said "It sells my data to advertisers." with that.

Apparently 2.01% of people are leaving because of bugs! One of these bugs, which apparently just occurred recently, is something so terrible I don't think even Myspace has screwed up that badly before.

Last night, in an embarrassing glitch for Facebook that raises questions about privacy on the site, some users of the social-networking service began getting hundreds of personal messages that weren’t intended for them.

Yeah... that letter about how you like turtles just went to your boss.

In short, Facebook has really screwed up. People are leaving en masse. Now if only it was less of a civil war to delete your account.

Let's take a look at IE9

What is this? The above image is a test showing the speed that javascript is processed in. To the far left is IE8, at a disgraceful high. In the middle, green, a bit behind Safari and Chrome, is the IE9 Platform Preview. What you're seeing here is a major change, one that would provide a much faster browsing experience for those of us that honestly don't care if IE has yet to meet the other Browsers in speed yet.

I don't know about the readers, but I'd be glad to use IE more often if it stops being so... slow. For now, I'll be sticking with Chrome for the most part.

First, we showed IE9’s new script engine, internally known as “Chakra,” and the progress we’ve made on an industry benchmark for JavaScript performance. With the differences between script engines on benchmarks approaching the duration of an eye-blink, we described our approach for making real-world sites faster. Chakra compiles JavaScript in the background on a separate core of the CPU, parallel to IE.
We showed our progress in making the same standards-based HTML, script, and formatting markup work across different browsers. We shared the data and framework that informed our approach, and demonstrated better support for several standards: HTML5, DOM, and CSS3. We showed IE9’s latest Acid3 score (55); as we make progress on the industry goal of having the same markup that developers actually use working across browsers, our Acid3 score will continue to go up. As part of our commitment to the standards process, we submitted test cases to the standards bodies. We also made these tests available for everyone to try in any browser.

What this means, in short language that even someone like me that uses a browser rather casually, is that IE9 will be freaking awesome. HTML4 is what we've been using for the last...decade? That means it's time for an ugprade. HTML5 has it's sights on taking the throne from Flash, by providing some of the core things Flash is famous for such as videos in a much smoother, faster environment. All this while being integrated with the browser!

For those that aren't aware of exactly what Acid3 is, typing "define:Acid3" on a google search produces this simple definition.

Acid3 is a test page from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a web browser follows certain selected elements from web standards

In short, Acid3 is one of many tests on Browser functionality. The higher the score, the better. The maximum score is a 100. 55 isn't exactly beautiful, but IE8 got a 20. That being said, it's definitely an improvement.

HTML5 applications will need great script performance and consistent “same markup, same results” across browsers. Great HTML5 applications will build on that foundation and go further, providing game-like interactivity and movie-like graphical richness to the user experience.

HTML5 will also be allowing web designers to implement graphics not unlike those you'd expect in a video game into the browser. Basically, it's freaking sweet.

Today we also announced the availability of the first IE9 Platform Preview for developers, and our commitment to update it approximately every eight weeks. The Platform Preview, and the feedback loop it is part of, marks a major change from previous IE releases.

 This is what looks to me to be Microsoft's own way of providing a public demo of their upcoming browser. I've yet to test it, but seeing as how it's free I will probably wind up installing and testing it sooner or later.



My recommendation is to look forward to the future, for IE9 is looking good. There is no currently known release date for IE9.

Chrome gets it's own 'app store'

Today at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google showed off a preview of a major new product: the Chrome Web Store. Yes, this is an app store for the web.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/chrome-web-store/#ixzz0oUM6ZiVw

  Google Chrome, gets an app store? Suddenly, Chrome is taking the leap into being more than a Browser. They'll be offering games, and essential apps in this new store, though apparently some will be at a price. I am eager to see how this plays out, though I do not appreciate them imitating Apple. As long as they don't make the same mistakes as Apple, though, things should go well.

“Developers care about monetization. But they need more than just advertising,” Google VP Product Sundar Pichai said on stage. With the Chrome Web Store, Google has simplified the process of buying apps on the web. Once you sign in to your Google account, apps are just one click away (presumably using Google Checkout). From there you can say, buy Plants & Zombies, the very popular game in Apple’s App Store. But this runs all on the web in Chrome, thanks to Flash. You can run the game full-screen as well.

Another game is Lego Star Wars. This game is run through Chrome’s use of native client (so developers can use native code to develop for the web). This is a full 3D game, built using rich HTML5 APIs.

There will also be apps in this store based around content. This means that magazines and periodicals will be coming to the store — and they’ll be able to charge for them. Sports Illustrated showed off its web app on stage.

I'm excited to see that HTML5 is being implemented and used in this, especially for video games, being a gamer myself. While the app store looks nice, I do fear that price tag. Will it be on games? Will it spread to things nobody should have to pay for such as themes, or extensions? I hope price is not used on most things, because I don't know about my peers but I'm sick of paying for things there should be an open source / free version of, but just so happens there isn't.

Sure, video game makers need money. But the inevitable maker of "ChromeCalculator" surely does not. This is my main worry concerning this "app store". Hopefully Google will realize that since Google Chrome is not proprietary it does not have the same monopoly the original "App Store" does. Trying to charge for every little app would hopefully result in an open source backlash. Otherwise, some of us would be denied the ability to experience the store.

More on the Facebook scene

It's been a rough few weeks for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ever since he unveiled his company's plan to personalize the Web. After a string of Facebook security breaches and outcry from US Senators over Facebook's new privacy policies, the New York Times revealed the complexities of Facebook's new privacy policy (now longer than the Constitution). Now, it seems users are stepping back and taking a hard look at their relationship to America's most popular social network--some dissatisfied users even planning a "mass exodus" from the site.

Aaaah... Facebook users. You know somehow I saw this coming a mile away. It's as if it was completely obvious to me that Facebook was NOT a place to have a private life. It was as if I was immediately tipped off that they wanted the truth and nothing but the truth and would go to any means to get the truth to the questions they asked so that they could have your info. I must have a sixth sense that allows me to see these magical things.

Satire aside, Facebook is carving it's own little niche in the world as the 'real life' social network. The problem with it is that Facebook itself is not a part of 'real life'. In short, the two should not mix so dangerously. Those of us who are experienced with the internet know exactly what happens when offline and online worlds clash. Bad things happen, generally to individuals.

On the note of the article at hand, not being directly about Facebook's screwups, but rather about Facebook's CEO being depicted as a sex maniac. I find this giant gaping flaw that makes the article seem mis-leading to me.

Hot on the heels of this controversy comes news out of Hollywood that probably won't help Zuckerberg's image. A leaked version of the script for The Social Network (aka the "Facebook Movie"), which dramatizes the fledgling company's rise, paints the young entrepreneur as a "ruthless and untrustworthy sex maniac," writes the Times of London.
The film, slated for an October release, is set to star Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake. Written by Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network is based on Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires. The film unfolds during flashbacks that occur while Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) faces former business associates in court in 2008.

 Reading the above quote, one should come across the answer to the fill in the blank that someone forgot to add to the title of the article. "The Social Network Depicts Facebook CEO As 'Sex Maniac' IN A MOVIE.

 My immediate response after seeing that part of the article was "Wait hold on my care meter just about twenty yards.". I mean, really?! It's a big deal that a guy starring in a movie is portrayed as a pervert? I don't know about my readers but I definitely don't think of the actor when I see a character in a movie.

Firefox 4, and what to expect in upcoming releases of Firefox 3

Don't get your hopes up. Firefox 4 isn't coming out around the corner. Mike Beltzner simply announced his vision for the next upcoming major release of Firefox. What does he have in mind, you may be eager to know? Well, nothing very specific. Good intentions are a great start though, right?

Fast: making Firefox super-duper fast

Powerful: enabling new open, standard Web technologies (HTML5 andbeyond!).

Empowering: putting users in full control of their browser, data, and Web experience.

Upcoming versions of Firefox 3 are more out in the open. You can expect some of the following major updates in future firefox. In Firefox 3.6.4, you can expect Firefox to finally take a step into the security spotlight by stealing a security feature Chrome has been using for a long time.

"Uninterrupted Browsing" is the term, and if Flash, Quicktime, or Silverlight are crashing your browser, they will simply crash instead, leaving you free to continue browsing or reload to try again.

Quote from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6.4/releasenotes/

"Firefox 3.6.4 provides uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.

If a plugin crashes or freezes, it will not affect the rest of Firefox. You will be able to reload the page to restart the plugin and try again."

In addition. I have done some beta testing of the Firefox beta. The specific version is 3.7a5pre-release. Some of the notable things I see in this release are a change to the interface, and a brand new way to handle your addons. In the future, according to this pre-release anyway, you will use about:addons as your browser URL to manage your addons. What we're looking at is the death of the traditional addons.mozilla.org web-page and it's reincarnation in a more sophisticated, user friendly form.

I took the liberty of taking a screen-shot of both of these obvious changes to the new version. The operating used at the time was Windows XP, as I was in a work environment. I do however support the use of less obsolete operating systems.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/4061/95008296.jpg

Why you SHOULDN'T board the Facebook bandwagon

I would highly recommend reading the original article on Gizmodo before reading mine, as there is plenty that needs reading and I do not want most of my post to be in quotes. (This is a good thing. It means their article is not full of fluff you don't need to read.)

10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided

 It should be a well known fact by now that Facebook is about as private as high school. That is to say, it's not very private. There is no predictability like in any normal respectable business. The use of gray areas where it's up to Facebook's complete discretion how problems are handled proves this. Basically, their terms of service allow them to screw you over at any time for any reason.

9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior

 I honestly don't find this a very solid reason. As far as my limited research concludes, this is simply a rumor supported only by Facebook's willingness pay people off rather than fight to prove them wrong. But don't let one out of many reasons discourage you from staying out of this lame-fest.

8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy

 Building on my previous discussion about privacy. Facebook wants it less private. Yeah, that's right. They're against the average user.

7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch

Yeah, their practices aren't always the most trustworthy. Meaning, one day you might wake up to find they have screwed you over. We shouldn't need a lawyer to feel safe using a website, Facebook.

6. Facebook is a bully

 Y'know there was once a guy that tried to raise awareness of the bait-and-switch practices? Yeah... he got sued. Internet censorship being enforced. I'm sure everyone wants to deal with that. The proceeding sentence was blunt, obvious sarcasm.

5. Even your private data is shared with applications

 Yeah... Apps essentially have the ability to take any data they want, and the only way to protect yourself is not to install them.

4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted

 I honestly think the original article leaves me without anything to say, so I'll just quote it here.

Even if we weren't talking about ethical issues here, I can't trust Facebook's technical competence to make sure my data isn't hijacked. For example, their recent introduction of their "Like" button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to my feed and spam my social network. Or how about this gem for harvesting profile data? These are just the latest of a series of Keystone Kops mistakes, such as accidentally making users' profiles completely public, or the cross-site scripting hole that took them over two weeks to fix. They either don't care too much about your privacy or don't really have very good engineers, or perhaps both.

3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account

 Yeah... This is hilariously horrible. This has got to be the most painful, ridiculously time consuming and painfully prone to error way to delete a social networking account I have ever heard of. This would make me rage, even if I did it exactly right. If anything this is incentive not to 'quit' Facebook, but to just get up and LEAVE!  Let the profile rot, rather than go through that.

2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web

See: Facebook is not private, Facebook is not safe, Facebook only cares about itself.

1. The Facebook application itself sucks

 Judging by the fact some people actually need to be told, I'm assuming telling them this isn't going to sway them much. If you were to ask me, Omegle is more of a "Social Network" than Facebook. Who uses Facebook to be social?! If you're one of those people who doesn't add someone they don't know, you are one of the stereotypes of the anti-social network, Facebook.

SSL coming to Hotmail

Following in the footsteps of Google's Gmail, Hotmail Wave 4 will offer full-session SSL. Presently, logging in to Hotmail uses HTTPS to protect user credentials from attack, but e-mail itself is delivered over unsecured HTTP. Gmail switched to using HTTPS for the entire session—both logging in and reading/sending mail—by default in January (previously, it was an opt-in feature).
In Wave 4, Hotmail is following suit, offering HTTPS encryption for mail access as well as authentication. With the most valuable part of a mailbox often being the mail itself, not the credentials used to access it, this is a welcome change.
The other big news is Hotmail will offer ActiveSync support. ActiveSync is used by Exchange to provide push mail and other facilities to smartphones. By adding ActiveSync to Hotmail, Microsoft is extending these features to 300 million smartphones, giving Hotmail-using consumers the full seamless sync experience on their phones.

I personally love Hotmail. Gmail's nice and all but Hotmail is on a superior level in my view. There is one, simple reason for this. Hotmail can be configured to use any email address as your Microsoft Passport, which is what you use to sign into microsoft sites and MSN messenger. Want to be different? Get your own 'special' email address suffix at a different provider and submit it to be your Microsoft Passport. My one and only recommendation for cool suffixs (See, Name@suffix.x) is http://www.mail.com.

What we're looking at are nice new features for hotmail, and more security. If you're an active user of hotmail these new features will probably seamlessly integrate into your daily tasks and use of the service. I'm pretty sure this upgrade is one sided in terms of who will like it. It's pretty straightforward that this is a good thing.

(Woah. I'm not ranting. Spooky.)