Facebook’s launch last week of Instant Personalization has caused another backlash from users and most certainly from Canada’s privacy commission along with U.S. Senators. The complaint is that Facebook is forcing people to opt out rather than opt in to share their profile information with partner websites, currently Microsoft Docs.com, Pandora, and Yelp.
Here’s a simple example of what happened when I went to Yelp: Hi Janice. Yelp is using Facebook to personalize your experience. Learn More – No Thanks.
Facebook says its had a great response this week with sites rolling out the new open graph, a.k.a. social plugins. I highly recommend reading Facebook’s detailed description of what this all means to help you weigh the social network benefits vs. privacy. If you decide to opt out here’s how you do it:
Go to - Account - Privacy Settings - Applications and Websites - Instant Personalization Pilot Program - Uncheck “Allow”
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Apple’s Steve Jobs and Adobe are at it again over Flash, the multimedia software used to create much of the animation, online games and to view a large percentage of video on the internet. The fight’s been going on for some time but yesterday Job’s released a 1,700 word letter on the Apple website attacking Flash.
Jobs has been critizing Adobe saying Flash does not work on iphones or the new ipad because it is proprietary software and closed to outside developers of iphone apps. Jobs pointed out that other companies like YouTube developed an iphone specific app which comes loaded on the phone. Adobe says it is Apple that is being over controlling.
As it stands, Flash runs on every mobile phone except the biggest player in the mobile multimedia market – the iphone.
