Thursday, December 27, 2007

Selectively Share Google Reader Feeds [How To]



 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via LH -mac -news -roundup -sponsors by Kevin Purdy on 12/27/07

greader_tab.jpg
Google Reader has been opening up more sharing features recently, giving users the ability to publicly share feeds and see Google Talk friends' feeds. Blogger Steve Rubel points out a not-so-obvious way to share only selected feeds with only a choice group of people. His solution:

  • Add a unique tag to feeds you want to share (like "friendshare")
  • Select "Settings" from Reader's upper-right menus, then the "Tags" tab
  • Click the RSS icon on the tag you want to share. Share the "View public page" link only with those you want to see it
Now you've got a much more productive (and private) means of sharing select information with a project team or contacts. Neat!



 
 

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Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Shopdropping: The Anti-Shoplifting [Retail]



 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via Consumerist by Carey Greenberg-Berger on 12/26/07

Which%20One%20Of%20These%20Things.jpgHave you heard about shopdropping? It's the big new fad among burgeoning anarchists who, instead of stealing, spread havoc by smuggling unwelcome items into stores. Think Che shirts in Target's clothing department, or unwanted bunnies roaming the pet store after Easter. It's all very badass and has several stores in a tizzy.

At Powell's Books in Portland, Ore., religious groups have been hitting the magazines in the science section with fliers featuring Christian cartoons, while their adversaries have been moving Bibles from the religion section to the fantasy/science-fiction section.

This week an arts group in Oakland, the Center for Tactical Magic, began shopdropping neatly folded stacks of homemade T-shirts into Wal-Mart and Target stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. The shirts feature radical images and slogans like one with the faces of Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian anarchist. It says, "Peace on Earth. After we overthrow capitalism."

"Our point is to put a message, not a price tag, on them," said Aaron Gach, 33, a spokesman for the group.

Mr. Jennings's anarchist action figure met with a befuddled reaction from a Target store manager on Wednesday in El Cerrito, Calif.

"I don't think this is a product that we sell," the manager said as Mr. Jennings pretended to be a customer trying to buy it. "It's definitely antifamily, which is not what Target is about."What is Target about? Corporate mouthpiece Bethany Zucco explains:

Our goal at all times is to provide comfortable and distraction-free shopping.
Shopping takes focus, people! Shopdropping is a dangerous distraction, a threat that could make us stop and think about our purchases.

Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage [NYT]
(Photo: Kike Arnal/The New York Times)



 
 

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Chase Resets Marketing Preferences, Asks You To Opt-Out Again [Opting Out]

let's keep an eye out for this...

 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via Consumerist by Carey Greenberg-Berger on 12/23/07

Chase%20Blur.jpgChase will reset everyone's marketing preferences under the guise of providing "more options to specify which mail offers you do not want." Remember when you originally opted-out? They didn't quite understand. What about their Value Added Products And Services and Used Vehicle Financing? Unless you opt-out again by January 24, Chase will acknowledge your implied change of heart. Read their notice after the jump.

http://consumerist.com/assets/resources/2007/12/Deceptive%20Opt-Out-thumb.jpeg
Has anyone else received these notices? Let us know in the comments. (Photo: Maulleigh)


 
 

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Google Raises Privacy Concerns With Ill-Conceived Sharing Feature [Privacy]

google has dropped the ball with this one. i just deleted all of my shared items because I don't want anyone who i've ever emailed (and has a google account) to see everything i've ever shared.

 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via Consumerist by Meg Marco on 12/24/07

googlereader.jpgThe other day we woke up to find that a story we'd accidentally "shared" on Google Reader was now being automatically broadcast to a wide swath of strangers who were listed in our Gmail contacts and had been "auto- added" to Google Talk . It was startling, but no big deal because we didn't use the "share" feature on Google Reader and therefore had only to delete the single "United Airlines does something boring that no one actually cares about" AP story that we'd accidentally clicked sometime last year.

For those that had been using Google Reader's shared feature with the expectation of privacy, the realization that they'd either have to delete every single item they'd ever shared, or delete everyone who they didn't want to see their shared items from their contact list was less fun. To make matters worse, the feature had been implemented without warning, so for some users it was too late to delete "shared" items that they didn't want to send to Mom or Aunt Betty.

Reader ALP writes:

Google recently, with no advance notice to users of either GoogleTalk or GoogleReader, made a change in the privacy settings of the "shared items" feature in GoogleReader:


Google Reader makes it easy to find and read items that your friends have shared. If any of your friends on Google Talk are using Reader and sharing items, they'll automatically show up in the Google Reader sidebar under Friends' shared items. You can read these items in a combined list, or click the "+" icon to expand the list and see the shared items from each of your friends. Your friends will also be able to see that you're using Reader. If you're sharing items, they'll be able to see those in their Reader sidebars as well.


Previously, I could "share" items with selected friends by sending them the URL of my shared items page. That URL contains a random 20 digit number that gave me privacy by obscurity. Now, my shared items appear automatically on the Reader and iGoogle homepages of any Google users with whom I have ever chatted on Google talk and many people with whom I have emailed in the past, whether I know them well or not. That means that many friends, family, coworkers, and near-strangers now have access to parts of my RSS feeds that I meant to share with only a select group of people. There is no way to remove my shared items from a contact's GoogleReader feed other than by deleting that contact from my GMail contacts list entirely. Contacts can see both new shared items and all of the items I shared prior to the change.

Users are reporting a number of serious privacy-related problems, including work and personal problems, but Google staff are ignoring the problems, (see this thread in the Google forums:
) calling users who care about their privacy "only a small subset of the people using this feature." They say that they may consider making changes to the way contacts are handled after the holidays, but for now, users will have to live with the unexpected violations of their privacy. So much for "don't be evil." One user says the feature has actually ruined Christmas and caused a huge family fight:

This is going to sound like hyperbole, but this new feature has actually RUINED CHRISTMAS for my family! I sent a share a few days ago that I thought would only go to a few politically-like-minded friends. I didn't realize that because I had chatted with him in GChat, it would also go to my brother, who is of a different political persuasion. When he received it, he sent a snide, angry email about it to a large group of our family members. I sent him an email (I'll admit, not the nicest one I've ever sent) asking him not to talk about me behind my back and recommending that he stop reading my feed if the posts were going to make him so angry. He called me a nasty name and told me that if I can't take a little ribbing, maybe we shouldn't talk anymore at all, including at Christmas Eve dinner. My whole family has taken sides over this divisive political issue, and several of them are not speaking. I kid you not, this is threatening to break up my family at Christmas.

Google, you can set up whatever features you want and make whatever rules you want to. But you have to give us fair warning so that we can make decisions about how to use your products. You can't change the rules without telling anyone. People have integrated your products into their everyday lives, so the changes you make have real effects on our lives, including our relationships with the people we contact. You have to keep that in mind when you make these sorts of major decisions

Please, please give me the option to choose who to share with and who not to share with. And tell us in advance before you make changes of this magnitude so that people can alter their behavior before the changes occur. How awful.

Here's Google's response:

All of us on the Reader team are paying attention and are aware of the feedback from this group. However, we do need to balance all these concerns with keeping the feature useful for those who like it and use it. (There aren't many of those on this thread, granted, but this is only a small subset of the people using this feature.) The incremental changes we've been making this week have been aimed at finding the most reasonable compromise.

Let me reiterate: If you're uncomfortable sharing items, you can unshare everything in a single click. With just a few more clicks, you can move all those items to a new tag, to preserve your organization. After unsharing, any privacy concerns you had about sharing your shared items should be taken care of.

We are aware that friends management is still very basic at this stage. Your Google Talk contact list is taken as an approximation of the set of people you're interested in communicating with, but you can remove people from that list as necessary if you don't wish to see their items. The update I mentioned today was intended to help in that, since various folks have expressed confusion about who's who in their lists.

We do intend to keep iterating and improving this feature, though we'll necessarily slow down a bit over the holidays. Thanks for your patience, and we do hope you'll end up enjoying the sharing functionality of Reader.

Happy Holidays to All,
Graham

Google Reader Shared Feature Thread




 
 

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Saturday, December 22, 2007

Get Productive to Groove Salad [Music]

nice to see lifehacker finally catching on...

 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via LH -mac -news -roundup -sponsors by Gina Trapani on 12/6/07

GrooveSaladBox.jpgJust in time for finals week, the HackCollege blog recommends studying to a continuous ambient music stream from SomaFM called Groove Salad. If you can't stand the drop-dead silence of the library but also can't concentrate with lyrics, ambient music's the ticket. Groove Salad, "a nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves," will stream directly to your music player for free. Been tapping keys to it myself as I rewrite the Lifehacker book. Here are more good study music suggestions from readers.



 
 

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Friday, December 21, 2007

The Way of Japan vs Any Way in China

you have to see it to believe it...

 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via KK Lifestream on 11/28/07

James Fallow has been living in China, traveling in Japan. He noticed two different approaches to refueling the same small plane.

In Japan they do it this way. Note the uniform, safety outfits, and cushion to protect the plane's wing.

Img 4476A

In, China, they just do  what has to be done, in any way they can.

Img 0969

As Fallow writes in his Atlantic blog:

With usual caveats against sweeping generalization, what this made me think was: Japan is all about the way of doing things. Practice, ritual, perfectionism, as much fanatical attention to the process as to the result. China is all about finding a way to do things. Improvisation, little interest in rules, putting up with whatever is necessary to attain the result.

(Yeah yeah yeah, there are exceptions: perfectionist operations in China, loosey-goosey ones in Japan. Still.)

At the moment, I am feeling positive toward both approaches. The emphasis on the right way of doing things is re-surprising on each encounter with Japan. And the determination to do things in China, no matter what, commands respect, despite the obvious complications and problems it creates.

 
 

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Friday, December 14, 2007

See the Cost of Your Energy Vampires [Energy Conservation]

time to unwrap that kill-a-watt!

 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via LH -mac -news -roundup -sponsors by Kevin Purdy on 12/14/07

vampire_energy.jpg

Good magazine has an interesting chart in their latest issue that details how much energy your vampire devices use, and how much it costs you to keep them plugged in. The guide differentiates between devices that are in "active" (ready to leap to life) and "passive" (just plugged in) standby modes, and some items are real shockers. A plasma TV, for instance, can cost about $160 per year just to keep plugged in. That Wii you got your hands on? $25 before you even hit one virtual tennis ball. The takeaway for me, at least, is thinking about putting some devices on power strips and turning them off if I know I won't be using them for a day or more.



 
 

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Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Man Chugs Entire Bottle Of Vodka Rather Than Turn It Over To Airport Securit...

a nominee for the darwin award?

 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via Consumerist by Meg Marco on 12/12/07

greygoose.jpgHere's a bad idea:

A 64-year-old man was trying to get past airport security with a liter bottle of vodka, and, rather than surrender the bottle or pay an extra fee to check his carry-on baggage—he chugged the entire thing.

He was soon unable to stand or walk, and had to be taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for alcohol poisoning.

Man chugs liter of vodka in airport security line [MSNBC] (Thanks, Douglas!)
(Photo:Brittany G)



 
 

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Monday, December 10, 2007

Get $25 From The Credit Card Companies [Class Action Lawsuits]

let's get ourselves $25! or maybe $25 each!

 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 

via Consumerist by Ben Popken on 12/10/07

creditcardpwnage.jpgYou may be entitled to a cash prize if you had a Visa, MasterCard, or Diner's Club Cards during any time between February 1 1996 and November 8 2006. A successful class action lawsuit contended that credit card companies overcharged customers for foreign transactions and didn't disclose the fees well enough. You can apply for a straight $25 refund, 1% of estimated foreign transactions, or annual estimation refund of 1-3% of foreign transactions for which you have records . Claim your moneys by filling out forms that were mailed to you, going to ccfsettlement.com, or calling 1-800-945-9890. It is not is necessary to have actually conducted foreign transactions to claim the money.

CCFsettlement [via Snopes] (Thanks to Takkun!)
Credit Card Settlement [NYT]
(Photo: mariachily)



 
 

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