Facebook’s privacy settings and how to Make Your Facebook Account Private

Posted by Celia Walter | 22 Apr, 2010
privacy1

Wired’s How-To-Wiki has a detailed tutorial explaining Facebook’s privacy settings and how to Make Your Facebook Account Private. The article has detailed instructions and screenshots for locking down your profile. I would also suggest creating Friends Lists and using those to limit who sees particular status updates and photo albums.

via iLibrarian blog

Amazon.com Sending Kindles to Africa For Classroom Trials

Posted by Celia Walter | 22 Apr, 2010
...A charity called Worldreader.org, which is attempting to boost literacy rates in the third world using technology, has persuaded Amazon to send a big pile of Kindle e-readers over to Africa.

Ghana’s Ministry of Education is running a trial to find out two things – firstly if the e-readers can pump up the percentage of Ghanian kids who who read, and secondly whether opting for ebooks can reduce some of the spending on textbooks that its schools are forced into. It’s being initially tested among 11-12-year-olds.

Testing will also take place in Rwanda and Kenya.

…early findings suggest that ebook readers would need to be reduced to a price of around $75 for the technology to become truly beneficial in third world classrooms.

Source: Pocket-lint via Resourceshelf

Twitter Archives from the Library of Congress & Google: The Facts As We Know Them By Gary Price

Posted by Celia Walter | 22 Apr, 2010
...the new Twitter archives and, to be more specific, the announcement that the Library of Congress would be getting a copy. A few hours before LC began to get the word out (via a tweet, appropriately), Google announced they were already online with a searchable version of the Twitter archive. As of today, the Google’s Twitter archive only goes back a few months to February 2010 but “eventually” the entire archive back to day one will be available and searchable.

What we would like to do in this post is go over the facts and, where we don’t have the exact info we need, take educated guess at the answers. Keep in mind that things do change and, in some cases, further details need to discussed and decisions need to be made.

We read all of the primary documents (links are available), used the Google service, and were fortunate enough to have a telephone chat with a spokesperson from LC. We also read some “way out” stuff (e.g., the Library of Congress bought Twitter) but most of the time, just a fact or two were either missing or a bit “off”.

So, with all of that out of the way, let’s get to the details.

The Library of Congress Twitter Archive

...Update:  The Library of Congress Twitter archive will not be accessible to and searchable by the general public on the Internet or at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. However, the archive will be accessible to researchers on-site at LC. Details about researcher access will be developed and made public in the next few months, but it’s likely a researcher will have to certify his or her identity by at least signing a form. Again, exact details are forthcoming... [There's a good deal more]

The Google Twitter Archive

Like most things Google, historical searching of tweets has a name. It’s called Google Replay.

+ As of today, you CAN search using Google Replay only back to February 2010, with a minimal delay for new tweets. There is NO embargo/delay of tweets using Google Replay. “Eventually” (that term is not defined), the entire Twitter archive will be accessible and searchable using Google Replay by anyone from any computer that can access Google. BTW, this is what the Twitter home page looked like on September 30, 2006.

+ Google Replay uses the familiar Google timeline interface (as used with Google News for some time) where you can manipulate the timeline to narrow the focus to down to the minute. (Note the bar that sits on the timeline; it moves)

+ If you want to go directly to Google Replay, this link should get you there...

 

Summary

Both services are needed. Will others come into play.

The LC Archive is essential. It’s going to receive cutting edge preservation; it will allow qualified researchers from LC and elsewhere to mine the data; it might even create a new exhibit at LC. However, it’s not a publicly accessible research tool. I do wonder if people will show up wanting to use the database and not be able to. I would imagine the same thing happens regularly with LC users wanting to exit the library with LC materials. Or also — people phoning LC, asking if they have a particular book and whether they can get it sent to them.

Google Replay IS for the public. It IS searchable and it IS easily manipulated to assist in focusing a search query. As we said a moment ago, it IS accessible from any computer connected to the web that can reach Google.

Update: “Tweets: What We Might Learn From Mundane Details” (via AOTUS Blog from Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero. (Hat Tip: ArchivesNext)

From The Resourceshelf

 

Information Privacy Attitudes and Policies, Young Adults vs Older Adults

Posted by Celia Walter | 22 Apr, 2010

Information Privacy Attitudes and Policies, How Different are Young Adults from Older Adults When It Comes to Attitudes and Policies?

By: Chris Jay Hoofnagle
University of California, Berkeley – School of Law, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology

Jennifer King
UC Berkeley School of Information; Berkeley Center for Law & Technology

Su Li
University of California, Berkeley- School of Law, Center for the Study of Law and Society

Joseph Turow
University of Pennsylvania – Annenberg School for Communication

Media reports teem with stories of young people posting salacious photos online, writing about alcohol-fueled misdeeds on social networking sites, and publicizing other ill-considered escapades that may haunt them in the future. These anecdotes are interpreted as representing a generation-wide shift in attitude toward information privacy. Many commentators therefore claim that young people “are less concerned with maintaining privacy than older people are.” Surprisingly, though, few empirical investigations have explored the privacy attitudes of young adults. This report is among the first quantitative studies evaluating young adults’ attitudes. It demonstrates that the picture is more nuanced than portrayed in the popular media.

[Snip]

A gap in privacy knowledge provides one explanation for the apparent license with which the young behave online. 42 percent of young Americans answered all of our five online privacy questions incorrectly. 88 percent answered only two or fewer correctly. The problem is even more pronounced when presented with offline privacy issues – post hoc analysis showed that young Americans were more likely to answer no questions correctly than any other age group.

Download the Complete Report by Clicking the One-Click Downlaod Link at the Top of the Page (20 Pages; PDF)

From Resourceshelf