Dear friend:

Try to rest easy in the knowledge that you are handling this whole thing with a grace that few others could match. That does not make this suck any less, but it does make it easier for you, your children, and your spouse. As you mentioned last night, I’ve got a story for everything. What I’ve learned as I’ve been beaten down by the boxer that is life is that time is the most precious “thing” we have. It seems so obvious (and cliché), but time will relentlessly march on, whether we like it or not. The most important thing you can do for yourself, and your children, is to find a way to genuinely live a happy life.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited for saying “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” To oversimplify, what he is saying is that change is a constant component of what it means to be human. As you and your family pass through this time remember that today is the beginning, not the end. Live for today. Be conscious of tomorrow. Don’t worry about yesterday. Allow yourself to be happy and happiness will return.

Peace my friend. We are here for you when/if you need us.

I don’t know about the rest of you out there in cyberspace, but I, for one, have come to the conclusion that Google’s search results are nowhere near as useful as they used to be. My perspective is very straight forward when it comes to the “quality” of search… Do I find what I’m looking for in the top 5 results on the first try of a search. I’m not a search expert. I don’t know, nor do I have any interest in really “knowing” if Google’s search results are really slipping. What I do know is that for me, it feels like search has become noticably less relevant/useful over the course of the last 18 months.

Today Google released what they call the “Personal Blocklist” as a Chorme Extension (download it from here). This tool allows individuals to block specific sites from showing up in Google search results. It’s unfortunate that Google did not provide a way to input a list of sites to be blocked in bulk, but I’m sure someone will augment the Extension in short order.

In the meantime, here is a handy list of sites that I will be search for and blocking ASAP.

• ehow.com
• experts-exchange.com
• naymz.com
• activehotels.com
• robtex.com
• encyclopedia.com
• fixya.com
• chacha.com
• 123people.com
• download3k.com
• petitionspot.com
• thefreedictionary.com
• networkedblogs.com
• buzzillions.com
• shopwiki.com
• wowxos.com
• answerbag.com
• allexperts.com
• freewebs.com
• copygator.com

Let me know if you find this list useful, and please help me add to the list.

Thanks.

I have been working on a new project I call Electronic Timelines. The ET project is a set of data capture tools designed to structure information streams from news, blogs, and social networks and to correlate/compare them with other less obvious data points. I have been working on the underpinnings of this concept for a while and am finally beginning to see my hypothesis proven correct.

In the process of this work I have become interested in the “discoverability” of data that currently lives within ones social stream/graph. For the sake of this conversation let’s accept the following definition of “discovery”…

Part of the pre-trial litigation process during which each party requests relevant information and documents from the other side in an attempt to “discover” pertinent facts. Generally discovery devices include depositions, interogatories, requests for admissions, document production requests and requests for inspection.

The formal procedures used by parties to a lawsuit to obtain information before a trial is called discovery. Discovery helps a party find out the other side’s version of the facts, what witnesses know, and other evidence. Rules dictating the allowable methods of discovery have been set up by Congress (for federal courts) and by state legislatures (for state courts).

All the conversation around privacy, particularly with respect to Facebook, tends to focus on non-descript fears, a.k.a. FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). However, as I have begun to investigate this matter more deeply, I have concluded the number one reason NOT to allow your social stream/graph to be publicly accessible comes when we consider what happens if you are every involved in a legal matter where a “discovery” demand is placed on you.

Apparently, on 26 May 2010, the US District Court (see See Crispin v. Christian Audigier Inc.) ruled that some content hosted on social networking sites will be precluded from discovery only to the extent that those communications were not available to the general public (see http://goo.gl/ykazG). This is huge news and should be taken VERY SERIOUSLY by anyone that uses Facebook or any other social networking site. This is particulary important now that Facebook is all about your location, etc.

Let me pose the following as an example…

You allow Facebook, Foursquare, Google Latitude, etc. to track your every move because you like letting all of your friends know where to find you. (I would encourage you to reconsider this personal policy, but that is not the point of this posting.) If you do not setup your privacy settings correctly, all of this location information would be “discoverable” in a court of law. I don’t know about you, but this fact alone should make everyone strongly reconsider just what they really want shared publicly.

I am very interested to hear what other people think of the “privacy question” from this perspective.