Feelin' Funcky

Been on the wrong side of right for the last few days. I've gotta shake this funky feeling. Maybe some retail therapy will help.

24: New York Gets Jacked

Sunday night. January 17th. 9PM. Think you've seen "24" before? You don't know Jack.

24: More Backup On the Way

When FOX's "24" kicks off season 8 on January 17th, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) will get some extra backup at CTU's new headquarters from Battlestar Galactica's Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff).

Season 8's bad guys won't know what the frak hit 'em!

[Via The Watcher...]

Recording Session

I've just finished tweaking GarageBand '09 which is part of Apple's iLife '09 product suite. It took me a while to get my iMic and GarageBand to play nice with each other after having upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard back in September, but I've got it working again.

Now, if I could only dream up a reason to play with GarageBand on a more regular basis...

Be Careful of What You Type: The Internet is Reading

As you know, I have recently joined the Twitter and Facebook social media sites as a means to help promote my smartphone blog, SmartphoneFanatics.com. (This post is just one of many on the subject of blog promotion with Facebook.) Tools like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are great ways for website operators to connect to their readers in ways that resonate with the readership. For example, I had one blog reader tell me that they only get their news from Twitter feeds!

I have also come to learn that social networking sites are much more than a tool for high school and college students to reach out to each other to figure out what to do tonight. These sites have been invaded by adults to reconnect with friends and family in ways that where not possible just years before.

Social networking sites have made a positive impact on the way we live personally and professionally. However; there appears to be a growing, equally negative, impact on people's lives from the use of social networking sites on the Internet.

Facebook, and other popular social media sites, have becoming powerful tools in law enforcement and legal proceeding. The most popular use for social networking appears to be in divorce proceedings. As blogger Perry L. Segal notes on the eDiscoveryCalifornia.com blog post, "Facebook, et al: Evidentiary Gold Mines", what we write on the "Social Internet" can come back and bite us in the rump.

"Tip: If a lawyer loves something, you'd better take note (unless it's you they love; in that case, demand a pre-nup...).

Let's put it this way. Yes, Twitter may change the way we live, but not necessarily the way you expect."

Time Magazine also ran an article on how divorce lawyers have been able to use sites life Facebook, as evidence in court proceedings. Consider this passage from Belinda Luscombe's "Facebook and Divorce: Airing the Dirty Laundry" from Time.com:

"Lawyers, however, love these sites, which can be evidentiary gold mines. Did your husband's new girlfriend Twitter about getting a piece of jewelry? The court might regard that as marital assets being disbursed to a third party. Did your wife tell the court she's incapable of getting a job? Then your lawyer should ask why she's pursuing job interviews through LinkedIn.

Opposing lawyers will press any advantage they have, and personal information on sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn is like decoded bulletins from enemy territory. "It's now just routine for us to go over with clients whether they have an active presence on the Web and if they Twitter or have a MySpace page," says Joseph Cordell of Cordell & Cordell, a domestic-relations law firm with offices in 10 states."

And you may want to think twice about posting photos to your social network of choice. Each of those photos carries with it a date and timestamp of when it was uploaded. It is also not outside of the realm of possibility that there could easily be embedded information in those photos containing other incriminating such as the date and time the photo was taken, what type of camera took the photo, and even the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken.

Law enforcement is also turning to social networking sites. Assistant Professor of Law at the John Marshall Law School (Chicago), Colin Miller, writes on his blog that a Facebook wall post exonerated a robbery suspect.

Mr. Miller writes:

"A case out of New York, however, gives me my first opportunity to address the admissibility of evidence from a Facebook page. And indeed, it appears to be the first case in which a Facebook update has been used as alibi evidence.

According to Bradford, he was updating his Facebook page from a computer in his father's apartment in Harlem at the time of the robbery. Bradford's claim led the district attorney to subpoena Facebook for documentation that Bradford had updated his Facebook page from his father's apartment at the relevant time. The subpoena was successful as it uncovered that Bradford posted the message, "ON THE PHONE WITH THIS [...] CHICK [...]" at 11:49 a.m. on October 17th from his father's computer."

Mr. Collin reports that the defense attorney was happy that the information recorded by Facebook corroborated that the post came from the computer owned by the suspect's father.

The reality is that all computer network traffic on the Internet is traceable by a unique IP address and the computer's Media Access Control (MAC) serial number. (MAC serial numbers are not just for "Mac" computers made by Apple. MAC serial numbers, referred to as a MAC address, is used by any network connected device.) If law enforcement or legal counsel wants to know where a social networking post or photo came from, they will find out.

And students should think twice about what they post now as it could effect them in ways they did not imagine in the future. Consider an article written by Gabrielle Dunn for Emerson's The Berkeley Beacon news paper. In the September 13, 2007 article, Dunn writes:

"Emerson students should reconsider publicizing their illegal dealings - even those on Facebook.com - while living on campus, Emerson disciplinary officials say. Otherwise, they could end up like the two Northeastern University freshmen who were arrested after an undercover police officer overheard them offering drugs to fellow students from their dormitory window on Sept. 2.

Dean of Students Ronald Ludman said incriminating pictures and comments on Facebook.com can be used as evidence in disciplinary hearings, although the College does not yet use the web site to monitor student behavior. He cautioned students against posting anything they wouldn't on a traditional bulletin board, a hallway door or in the student newspaper.

"I don't recall the exact number, but [Facebook] was employed in at least a couple of student conduct cases last year," Ludman said in an e-mail message to The Beacon."

Being arrested for selling pot might be viewed as a "youthful indiscretion," but you would think that a someone who is going to college has some more common sense to post their illegal dealings on a social Internet site. Duh!

People really need to think twice before they click that "Post" button. Recall all the photos you've see on sites life MySpace or Facebook from wild parties where people are holding large red plastic cups and beer bottles? Those pictures will come back to haunt to you. With more people looking for jobs in a tight job market, perspective employers are enlisting more tools to help find the best candidates for the job. And social media sites are becoming a more important part of the interview background check process.

As MSNBC reports in their online article, "Job candidates getting tripped up by Facebook", people are getting turned down for jobs based on what they posted on Facebook, even if they are otherwise qualified for the job. The theory goes that by looking at social sites, perspective employers are getting a full picture of candidates beyond their resume and in-person job interview.

In the MSNBC story, Wei Du writes:

"Van Allen runs a company that recruits job candidates for hospitals and clinics across the country. With physicians in short supply, he was happy to come across the resume of a well-qualified young female psychiatrist.

As part of his due diligence check, Allen looked her up in Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, and found things that made him think twice.

“Pictures of her taking off her shirt at parties,” he said. “Not just on one occasion, but on another occasion, then another occasion.”

Concerned about those pictures, he called the candidate and asked for an explanation. She didn’t get the job."

The bottom line is that social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are a great boon to communicating with friends, family, fans, and business associates. Just be careful about what the personal information that you fork over, write, and post on your site. It can come back an cause major headaches and embarrassment later on.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everybody! May 2010 be a good one!

What the *&^#)(*

My wife, kids, and sister-in-law called me downstairs. Needless to say, I was a bit shocked by what I saw.

Disney/Pixar Up: Digital Disc

My girls got a copy of Disney/Pixar's UP DVD for Christmas. The cool thing about this DVD, which I still haven't watched yet, is that the "deluxe" version of the single DVD comes with a second disc with a copy of the movie which you can unlock and copy to your Mac or PC for playback in Apple iTunes or Windows Media Player. (Why you would want to use WMP is beyond me, but hey, to each their own.)

We all know that I'm an Apple guy, so I'm planning on watching UP on my MacBook in iTunes, on my iPod touch, and the kids will be able to watch the movie over and over and over again on Apple TV without scratching the heck out of the DVD.

Not bad if I do say so myself. Just like the copy of Star Trek that I purchased recently, I think that these physical and digital packs are a good idea. I'm willing to pay a few dollars more over the single disc without digital download just to stretch my viewing dollar farther. Sure you can rip a DVD to a file that you can watch on your favorite mobile device, but an extra $5.00 vs 2+ hours to rip a DVD is a fair trade in my book.