Facebook Privacy: It's Worse Than You Think

I remember once upon a time ago when there was this new little social site. It was kind of cool. It was free and it enabled you to connect with your friends from your past and present life. You would tell them what was going on in your life and maybe throw a snowball or two at them. Somehow, the little social site morphed. It decided it wanted to be your identity and it would decide what little pieces of your identity that it would share. The best part is that every now and then it changes its mind about what part of you it wants to sell. Pissed off at your boss, we will tell the world for a small fee.

It is possible to protect yourself. Try out these sites for yourself.

• http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/ -  does a quick privacy check of your Facebook account. Log in to Facebook and follow the instructions.

• http://youropenbook.org/ - Search for any ole' phrase and see what is public these days.

• http://zesty.ca/facebook/ - See what the world knows about you. Works best if you use it from a browner that is not logged into Facebook .

Here are some things to protect yourself now:

• 7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook - yahoo.com
• Facebook Privacy Setting - you pretty much have to go through every tab. PTA.

 Good luck. If you find out anymore tidbits, let me know.

Send an email message from an Iridium 9555 Sat Phone

In my last post, I talked about how to send twits from the middle of the Atlantic ocean using the twitter email relay client twittermail. But there is still a bit of a problem. Sending emails from a wee boat can be a bit of a pain. Usually you have to pull out the PC and/or fire up the SSB and cross your fingers a bit. If you have tons of cash you might even have a live imersat connection. Well for 69 cents you can sen an email using the text message feature of the new Iridium Sat phones.

Many cell phone companies (as well as Iridium) allow you to start your text message with an email address followed by a space and then your message. The final message can only be 139 characters minus the length of your email message. Not a lot, put plenty of room for a tweet.
Using the Iridium 9555 as an example, you would first create your message, such as:

mytwittermailid@twittermail.com Wow what a great day of sailing! 140nm under sunny skies.

To create the @ symbol you have to press the * key and then select from the symbols. After your message is compiled you hit 'Send'. A new menu comes up and you select the 'New recipient' option. In the number field, enter +*2 and press 'OK'. Now press the 'Send' message and you are good to go. In our example, the text message got relayed to email which got sent to twittermail which relayed it to our twitter account http://www.twitter.com/indigoSV.

Sounds simple. It seems like it took us forever to figure it out.


From Indigo in the BVI … I am outa here!

How do you Twitter from the middle of the Atlantic?

One of the things that I suppose keeps you up in the middle of the night is the burning question: “How do you Twitter when you are in the middle of the Ocean?”  Good question and I’m glad you asked. It turns out the answer is relatively simple, but it took a long time to get to that answer.

Why Twitter From The Ocean?

One thing that is good about Twitter is that it was designed to operate with very short messages. It’s bandwidth requirements are circa 1983. This just happens to be the bandwidth that you can expect out in the middle of the ocean. So it fits right in with our bandwidth availability. Another thing is that you can broadcast to many people at the same time. No pesky email lists. Your friends and fans can just check out your updates. They can even have their updates sent to their cell phone so they can always know what you are up too.

Okay, You’ve Sold me, but how do I do it?

The devil is in the details. The first obvious thing you might think of is using a satellite phone to text message updates directly to twitter. Heck, they have an international number that you can text too, so it should just work … right?  Of course, not. The problem is that twitter changed the way that you register phones with their service. It used to be that you just typed in your number on their web site and you were good to go. Now it requires a complex back and forth handshake between your cell phone and their servers. That’s great if you are in one of their supported countries, but doesn’t even come close to working for everyone else in the world. And what if I’m a cheapskate and only have a SSB connection?The secret is to use your email to post a twitter update. First you need to enable an email relay such as twittermail. Once you sign up they will give you a relay email address (foobar@twittermail.com). To twit you simple send an email message to your relay address. Make sure the message is all text.

And finally

As an added bonus, you can send your location using this message-> L: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=18.426,-64.61. North Latitude is a positive number, South is negative. East Longitude is positive and West Longitude is negative. Click the link, and it will bring up the current location of Indigo.
ciao,
andy

View Larger Map