Now, in 2011, though some of the hype and hysteria about privacy has slightly cooled, the core issues surrounding the protection of our information are still crucial and fluid. That’s why we’re so psyched to see what will come from pii2011. (Admittedly, we’re also excited because some of LunaWeb’s photos from pii2010 are used for this year’s site!)

Registration is now open for the event on May 19 and 20 in Silicon Valley, and will feature speakers from Google, CBS News, Stanford Law, Microsoft, Wired – the gambit, basically. Check out the full list of speakers here.

A pre-conference reception and dinner salon will be held May 18 that pii2011 is co-hosting with the team from Techdirt at www.techdirt.com. A separate ticket is required, but well worth it!.

If you stick around another day, there’s a PrivacyCamp on the 21st, and the cost is included in your ticket to the conference! You may just see us there – LunaWeb has been invited to cover the event again this year! Visit pii2011.com for full details.

WindAlert Flying a kite is a favorite activity for a windy Spring day. Be the wind aficionado for your kiting party with this app. It’s way more sophisticated than licking your finger and sticking it in the air. (Free)

MLB.com At Bat Lite If the smell of peanuts and Crackerjacks heralds your favorite time of year, this app is for you. Customize the home screen to show the stats and colors for your team, then explore the latest breaking news, stats, schedules, line-ups, and even player data from Spring Training! For a whopping $15 you can upgrade to At Bat 11, which includes video archives, radio broadcast from Spring Training, and even live streaming of the games starting on Opening Day! (Free)

Rain Alarm Sure, you checked the weather before you left, but – as we all know – those weather guys are not exactly infallible. With this app, you’ll get a little notice that the heavens are about to open up and a chance to retreat indoors. (Free)

Garden Snob Get growing with this app full of tips, tricks, and ideas for starting and maintaining your own garden. The very thought of freshly picked tomatoes will make your mouth water, and just think of the satisfaction you’ll get from growing them yourself! (Free)

Grill-It Because everyone knows, breaking out the grill is the best part of Spring. Break out your “Kiss the Chef” apron and use this quick and simple guide to perfect your cook times, learn new recipes, and wow your hungry guests. ($0.99)

U.S. Army Survival Guide We sincerely hope you won’t have to use it, but if you do get lost out on a camping or hiking expedition, you’ll be glad you downloaded this. Building a fire, treating injuries and bites, constructing a shelter, finding edible forage – it’s all in here. Once you’ve installed the entire guide on your SD card, you can access it even if you’re not getting any reception. You can survive – at least as long as your battery does, too. (Free / $1.99 No Ads)

Spring Sunflowers Live Wallpaper Cause who doesn’t like happy flowers? (Free)

Happy (almost) Spring everyone!

It turns-out (only being slightly snarky here) that if the tornado sirens are blaring, and you have your family taking shelter somewhere in your house, it’s probably without the television or some other normally valid source of information about the storm rolling overhead.

For savvy Twitter users, they could keep up with the storm updates from weather authorities AND regular everyday people.  The reporting from “people on the ground” is invaluable and a huge sense of comfort.  You can get a good sense of the significance from Amy Howell’s post here. Within that you’ll see the origins of the Twitter hashtag “#memstorm” by Aaron Prather, CEO of @stiQRd, at IgniteMemphis and some cool quotes from our very own, Rachel Smith (who, yes, also happens to be the stiQRd COO).

Three days later, with the threat of another monster storm, Dave latched-on to a tweet by Aaron about taking a smartphone when seeking shelter. At that moment it was a very valid point, if you were using Twitter. But what if you weren’t on Twitter…  and thus idea for the mobile page MemStorm.com (for the Twitter-nots).

What’s the Point?
The point is that through a great deal of community participation and inspiration, we’ve created a tool that will not only serve some utility for a period of time, but also inspire other, even better things. Inspiration is what it’s about.
This is the “social” mindset in action that we often allude to at the Social Expedition, and it’s very exciting.

Who to thank? Lots:
Jonathan Chan, Phillip Black, Rachel Smith, Aaron Prather, LaunchMemphis,  Beth Sanders, Jason Miles, Justin Willingham, Seth Agranov, MemphisWeather.net, Amy Howell, Andy Glover, Alys Drake, Wings of Wolfchase, Memphis Light Gas & Water, and the Girl Scout cookies that fueled Dave Barger through most of this.

If you’re known as the family geek, chances are you’ll be asked for a Facebook tutorial. If not, it can break awkward family silence at the dinner table. So, we’ve put together a list for you (think of it as your Christmas present) of what we think are some important guidelines for those just joining Facebook.

Top 5 Facebook tips to share with Grandma:

Too Many Requests!

1. Know the difference between Facebook messages and wall posts – and use it.
2. Don’t friend people you don’t know.
3. Don’t overload with invites to groups, games, or events. (Simply because it’s annoying).
4. Know your privacy settings. Who sees your information?*
5. If privacy settings disappeared and everything on Facebook were suddenly public to the world, make sure none of that content would ruin your life.

Facebook Privacy

*You can also assign each friend to a list you create. Make a list for family, colleagues, friends, etc. to ensure that what you share is received by the appropriate people. You might end up quite embarrassed if you are not careful. See the following photo for an example:

Make a list!

For a comical collection of disasters, refer to Facebook Fails. We recommend setting up a projector screen and searching through this as opposed to watching Home Alone. Happy Holidays, everyone.

Amazingly, the last three months where we’ve had a Social Expedition breakfast, Facebook has also released big news. Today is no exception and boils down to three main points:

• Single Sign-on for mobile
• Location API’s
• Deals

Here are the key takeaways:

Single Sign-on for Mobile

Think Facebook Connect, but for mobile. Here’s how it works (on your phone): login to Facebook, and then access Foursquare (or other participating app) without having to type a unique username and password for Foursquare. This same functionality has existed on the desktop for a while, but hasn’t existed with mobile apps until now. This saves a huge amount of login frustration.

Location API’s

Big news here is that you’ll be able to see where your friends have checked-in near your current location. Example: You’re standing outside of LunaWeb wondering where to go for lunch. You’ll be able to see that lots of your friends have previously checked in at Memphis Pizza Cafe…

Deals

For anybody following Proximity Marketing over the past few years, here’s a major step forward. Merchants can create deals and make them available to you based on your location (the deals are proximate). So using the above example of standing outside LunaWeb, in looking at Deals you’ll see that Asian Bistro up the street is offering a free appetizer with the purchase of two lunch specials. (Prediction: this will soon evolve into you being able to specify the types of deals you’re interested in and if you’d like them pushed to you, which is one of the original promises of proximity marketing… steps away.)

Also, Facebook is giving Android devices more attention than previously (this comes on the heels of news that Android is less than 10% away from iOS (iPhone) adoption and closing). In fact, the brand new Facebook for Android app is released today.

facebook-privacy

Last week’s announcement that four NYU students were developing  a Facebook alternative suggests that they want its global dominance to shift: in the name of freedom. The students have more than raised their needed-for-development goal of $10,000 in 27 fewer days than scheduled.

But before the project, Diaspora*, is launched, we’ve found some articles that can be used in the meantime:

1) A timely article entitled “Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative” which discusses the viral, yet ambiguous, nature of its privacy laws, or lack thereof.

2) ReclaimPrivacy’s tool that allows users to scan their profiles for privacy intrusion.

3) Consumer Report’s Facebook rule of thumb: “7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook”

4) SaveFace: A tool that allows users to reset most user settings back to “Friends Only.”

We aren’t against Facebook; we just want our privacy back.

In his email to us, he wrote that “CARE has an entire area of its website dedicated to Climate Change and how it’s affecting the world’s poorest people.” It’s worth a visit – it drives home the point Simon makes in his very first paragraph, and it drives home the importance of climate change, the subject of this year’s Blog Action Day.

"India - climate change canvas" by Oxfam International on Flickr

Climate change is not only about melting ice caps and polar bears. Climate change is about people.

Swinging weather patterns are creating disasters on a scale that human civilization has never before witnessed. For the world’s poorest people – the ones least equipped to deal with its effects – climate change is devastating their crops, livelihoods and communities.

“Climate change is worsening the plight of those hundreds of millions of men, women and children who already live in extreme poverty – and it threatens to push hundreds of millions more people into similar destitution,” says CARE International’s Secretary General Robert Glasser. “A concerted international response to this unprecedented challenge is required if we are to avoid catastrophic human suffering.”

CARE is working toward a world where poor people can create opportunity out of crises like climate change. But the current reality is that climate change makes poor people even more vulnerable.

For instance, agricultural production will likely decline in the poorest countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Less reliable rainfall will likely affect planting seasons, crop growth and livestock health – and lead to increased malnutrition. In other parts of the developing world, flooding will likely further diminish the quality of already-marginal soil and could cause outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery.

Climate change also is hurling many poor families into “Catch-22” situations. For example, they may select crops that are less sensitive to rainfall variation, but also less profitable. As incomes decline and people are not able to eke out a living, children are forced to leave school, assets are sold off to afford essentials, malnutrition rates increase and large-scale migration ensues. The end result? Deepening poverty for tens of millions of people around the world.

What Must Be Done?

At the international level, negotiations to develop a new treaty to guide global efforts to address climate change will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark in just a couple weeks. The United States must help lead those efforts, and forge a strong agreement that caps emissions, stops global warming and responds to the effects already in motion. We must do this for the sake of all of humanity.

What can I do to help?

First, you can make a tax-deductible donation to CARE to help poor families access the tools and education they need to adapt to the effects of climate change, make efficient use of their existing resources and overcome poverty for good.

Second, if you live in the Unites States, you can write your senators and urge them to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a critical step toward U.S. leadership in tackling climate change. U.S. leadership is critical to making the Copenhagen negotiations a success.

Third, you can join the CARE mailing list to be kept up to date on CARE’s activities and other ways you can take action in the days counting down to Copenhagen.

To donate, take action and join our e-mail list, please visit www.care.org/climate.

No doubt one of the great benefits of the Web is how malleable it can be; if you mess up, there’s still time to fix it. But often by the time an error is corrected it’s already been seen, and depending on your site traffic that could mean 10 people or it could mean 10,000. So, sure. The option to edit is nice — but why not get it right the first time?

Whether you manage a Web site for your business with thousands of unique views daily or a small personal blog with just a few thousand a month, consistency plays an important factor in establishing credibility. Style can be your greatest unsung hero or your worst glaring nightmare: if it remains consistent, it’s never noticed. But as soon as it’s inconsistent, it becomes like a bad nursery rhyme — caps lock here, no caps lock there, hyphens, dashes, everywhere.

Because we’re part of the media — whether you consider yourself part of the social media or an online publication like a webzine — we like to swear by the journalist’s bible: the AP StyleBook. Having a hard and fast reference point like the AP StyleBook allows for no gray area. If you’ve got a question on whether to capitalize or not, how to list something or where that comma belongs, the answers are here. We recommend ponying up for the $25 online subscription to the StyleBook because it’s easy to search and often faster than flipping through the printed version.

In the meantime, we’ve pulled some notable Web-related entries from the StyleBook for you to peruse here.

dot-com An informal description of companies that do business mainly on the Internet.

e-mail Acceptable in all references for electronic mail. Many e-mail or Internet addresses use symbols such as the at symbol (@), or the tilde (~) that cannot be transmitted correctly by some computers. When needed, spell them out and provide an explanatory editor’s note.(Also e-book, e-commerce, e-business.)

Web Short form of World Wide Web, it is a service, or set of standards, that enables the publishing of multimedia documents on the Internet. The Web is not the same as the Internet, but is a subset; other applications, such as e-mail, exist on the Internet. It is generally credited as the concept of researcher Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the first practical system in 1989.
Also, Web site (an exception to Webster’s New World College Dictionary first listing), and Web page.
But webcam, webcast, webmaster.

software titles Capitalize but do not use quotation marks around such titles as WordPerfect or Windows, but use quotation marks for computer games: ”Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?“

composition titles Apply the guidelines listed here to book titles, computer game titles, movie titles, opera titles, play titles, poem titles, album and song titles, radio and television program titles, and the titles of lectures, speeches and works of art.

–Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters.
–Capitalize an article – the, a, an – or words of fewer than four letters if it is the first or last word in a title.
–Put quotation marks around the names of all such works except the Bible and books that are primarily catalogs of reference material. In addition to catalogs, this category includes almanacs, directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, gazetteers, handbooks and similar publications. Do not use quotation marks around such software titles as WordPerfect or Windows.

home page Two words. The “front” page of a particular Web site.

You can also follow @APStyleBook on Twitter or download the new iPhone app.

Happy editing!

It’s those connections – both the personal, friend-of-a-friend connections, and the you-like-what-I-like connections based on interests – that make networks like Facebook possible in the first place.

Zuckerberg says in this interview that these connections really drive Facebook’s movement towards a decentralized network – one that behaves less like a website and more like a platform.

Facebook’s great opportunity lies in the vastness of information that people are putting out there – “Through tools like Facebook,” Zuckerberg says, “you can control that.” Facebook’s future is about privacy and having a say in what information people can see about you. He also notes that he believes that “the real thing that makes up a person’s identity is the set of people they’re connected with.”

Using tools like Facebook Connect, people can offer up selected information about themselves – and businesses can begin to tailor their products and services for the people who are coming to them, based on the information they’re recieving about the interests and identities of the people who are coming to them. The interconnectedness that this creates allows for real bonds of trust to be created between people, and softens the cold anonymity of a Web 1.0 world.

Facebook’s goals for the future have a lot to do with the concept of a “social graph” that illustrates the whole interconnectedness that Zuckerberg has been interested in. “Being able to map out all those things in one graph is going to be really valuable for understanding what all those people and things are, and what they’re doing.”

Zuckerberg says that Facebook is moving away from the old school model of value being centralized on one site, based on their experience with the application ecosystem – all of that value lies in the long tail – many applications, with small audiences, bring in far more value than one widespread application.

Having Facebook’s capability for helping users build their identities spread out over many sites will help them capitalize on the long tail of the internet. What’s fascinating about this is that Zuckerberg seems to have learned the lessons of Friendster and MySpace: rather than allow a closed ecosystem like this to suffocate and wilt over time, Facebook is looking out toward the long tail.

By making sure that the system’s vitality is not linked to one site – which may well come in and out of fashion faster than Beanie Babies – Facebook is turning its vitality into longevity. And while collecting this kind of information seems, at first glance, a little Orwellian, Zuckerberg places just such a dystopian future on the opposite end of the spectrum from Facebook.

He believes that by allowing people a say in which information they make public, we can avert the loss of control over our own identities. Facebook really just wants to make it easy for people to integrate their internet lives, thereby making themselves a truly powerful platform for brand and personal identity management. But all of that is in the longer-term future, even if the groundwork is currently being rolled out.

The immediate future, of course, is rooted in smartphones. More people are opting to pick up phones like the Palm Pre or the iPhone that function as tiny computers, and smarter, more powerful applications for those platforms will be the immediate future of social networking.

It should be noted here that Zuckerberg stops well short of calling Facebook’s future a utopia. He has a charmingly grounded sense of Facebook’s place in society – when Scoble says offhand that everyone is on Facebook, Zuckerberg corrects him. “Well, 200,000,000 of them anyway,” he says, as if to say ‘well, it’s only something like 3% of the world’s population on Facebook. We’re not that big a deal.’

LunaWeb Home Page

Redesign

We’ve changed from the old design completely to include a much more colorful interface, as well as Flash on the homepage to keep things interesting – but if you’re on an iPhone, don’t worry, we aren’t going to leave you with the sad-looking question mark cube. We’ve slipped a nice, pretty static image in there. We’ve created a cleaner, updated, friendlier overall look.

Social Media

Social Media made a huge impact on our new presence. We took advantage of tools which allow us to make the site more interactive and conversational. We’ve brought in a Twitter feed that not only shows our tweets, but shows what others are saying about us. Videos that we switch out occasionally will be featured prominently. We also have links that give you one-click access to several of our Social Networking presences so you can join us in the conversation.

New Pages

You’ll find a few new pages on the site that we’re especially proud of. Primarily, new content reflecting our Social Presence offering (we have the most experienced and largest department of Social Media in Memphis). You will also find a link straight to our blog (this very one), which we update with some regularity with related information. There is also a portfolio page that will give you a quick peek at some of the websites we’ve created for our clients.

There’s a lot more new to be seen. Thank you for taking a look at our new home. We hope you like the changes.

The post “LunaWeb Launches New Site” by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.