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.

To help the community in this endeavor, we have created a SCVNGR trek with 12 locations within two hours of Memphis that shaped the fight for civil rights. To access the trek, you must download the SCVNGR app (available for iPhone and Android), then on the app dashboard, simply select “Treks.” If you are in the Memphis area, the Mid-South Civil Rights trek will be one of your options.

We hope to expand this trek into a complete mobile website. For now, though, download this mini-guide for a little more information on each location. We hope others may be inspired to create treks to be interactive guides through our history. We’d be happy to help if you’re interested in using a location-based service, just call (901) 888-5862 or email us.

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.

This weekend, a few folks from the LunaWeb team embarked on the four hour journey through the foothills of Alabama to attend the third annual WordCamp Birmingham conference.

Mitch Canter of StudioNashvegas led an introductory course that served as a crash course in all things WordPress. Those who attended the class were able to learn the difference in WordPress.com and WordPress.org, as well as the difference between posts vs. pages and plugins vs. widgets. Those with little to no WordPress background were provided with a plethora of knowledge on the platform that has become so much more than a blogging platform. Canter provided links for future use that included: Woothemes.com, WordPress.tv, Vaultpress.com, and WPBeginners.com. See Mitch’s handiwork at StudioNashvegas here.

Another favorite was the Web Typography session with Sara Cannon, who pointed out some great resources beyond TypeKit (which we love), such as CUFON and FLIR.  She showed off some examples of advanced web typography, including some beautiful designs at Lost World’s Fairs. Since the sites are using text instead of graphics, they’re getting a lot more keywords hits on a page! Find Sara’s whole slide show here!

Speaking of keywords, Rebecca Morrow let us know just how important they really are (the answer is VERY). Rebecca clued us in on some tools to pinpoint great keywords, like the Google Keyword Tool and SEOBook. Rebecca has also put her presentation up here at SlideShare.

Of course, this only covers a few of the great presentations at WordCamp Birmingham 2010, but here is a full list of the presentations. And here are some links for the presentations that we could find on SlideShare!

• Mitch Canter – WordPress 101: The Power of the Press
• Tammy Hart – Custom Post Types and Taxonomies
• Syed Balkhi – Speed Up WordPress and Boost Performance
• Sara Cannon – Beyond the System Font: Advanced Web Typography
• Rebecca Morrow – How To Let Everyone Know How Awesome You Are With SEO
• Dougal Campbell – The Pitfalls of a Popular Project

If you know where to find any of the other presentations online, please be sure to comment with a link!

If we could have wished for anything, it would be that the wireless had been a little easier to connect to (it was a 3 or 4 step process), but we had a great time and hope they’ll bring the event back next year!

On the business side, it’s great to set up a check-in spot for your headquarters on Foursquare and Gowalla. There is little risk involved, and trends indicate that being present on these location-based services (LBS) will be beneficial to companies as proximity marketing gains momentum. (Proximity marketing: marketing that targets an audience based on their GPS location. Specifically in this case, through your mobile phone. We think this will be big.)

As a personal user, it can be fun to collect badges or prizes, to compete for mayorships, and just see where your friends have checked-in. There are risks, though. The tips below are helpful hints for minimizing risk on Foursquare and Gowalla, but they are by no means guarantees. The very nature of these platforms is to let people know precisely where you are, and there’s no absolute promise that only your friends will ever see that information.

If you accept those risks though, the tips below can help keep your information under your control.

1. Don’t become Foursquare or Gowalla friends with anyone you do not know. You might receive many requests from acquaintances, local figures, even from the newspaper or a nearby restaurant. You might know the owner of the restaurant, but do you know for a fact they are the ones reading the updates? When we suggest you only friend people you know on Foursquare, we mean a person (not a group) whom you literally do not mind knowing exactly where you are at any given moment. Just stop and think before you hit accept. This may mean you have 3 Foursquare friends, but truly, that’s better than total strangers knowing where you are.
2. Don’t “tell Twitter.” The second you push a check-in to Twitter, it’s public to the entire world. Hesitate even to let your friends on Facebook see that update. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Foursquare still has some pretty solid bricks in its “walled garden,” but the second that information gets to other platforms, it is way more likely to become public.
3. Before you check-in, ask yourself this question, “If all the walled gardens fell and everyone could see everything, would anything really bad happen because of this check-in?” If not (and the cards usually seem to fall that way), go for it!

We hope you will sign up for Foursquare or Gowalla, because they’re wicked fun and they’re catching on. Leave comments with more tips to help people practice safe checking-in!

Now this isn’t the end-all-be-all list of Facebook Post Categories, but after some consideration, we think posts from businesses fall into one of the following ilks:

1. Horn-toots for the company.
2. Horn-toots for an employee or employees.
3. Horn-toots for clients, partners, or causes.
4. Links to information.
5. Requests for response.
6. Idle chatter.

Now, there is a time and place for horn-tooting. And there’s even more time and place for horn-tooting the merits of others, like local business, your clients, or the latest fundraising campaign. But how much is too much? Dominating your customers walls is not the goal, and certainly being absent is not good either. What is the right ratio of types of posts to frequency that will leave you with lots of impressions, but few hiders?

Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing. Even assuming you are putting out a great ratio of self-promotion to outside-promotion and being an engager instead of yacker, it still depends on your audience. The number of times you appear on their wall varies by how much you post, of course, but also how many friends they have, how often they post, and whether or not they are set to “Top News” or “Most Recent.”

Then, of course, there is your content. How much meaty content can you reasonably expect to have in a given period of time? Is it better to only post good content, or post frequently enough to be a presence in the news feed?

Here’s the good news: you can ask. Ask your customers what they think of your content and your frequency. Ask them in person. Ask them on Facebook. Not only is this a great way to engage your clients, but it’s a great way to show that you care about their opinions. The fact of the matter is that everyone is constantly trying to adjust and update their social media presence. By it’s very nature, social media is ever-fluctuating, and so are the expectations. No one will hold it against you or think less of you for asking for advice on your strategy, because they’re probably in the same boat.

We’ll start. What do you think of our social media life?

“They’ve pulled the carpet out from under your feet. They gave you an expectation of privacy. And they have reneged on that deal. They are in for some hot water. They are being viewed as a utility.”

If you Google “define utility,” the first result is a definition from Princeton: “a company that performs a public service; subject to government regulation.”

The Memphis-based Facebook Free Friday movement wasn’t the only backlash Facebook faced this weekend – QuitFacebookDay.com had 34,000 users committed to quit the social media site on Memorial Day, May 31. However, that’s 34,000 of 400 million users, a mere .0085%, and there’s no word yet on how many of them actually went through with it. The QuitFacebookDay fan page still has more than 7,000 members that evidently did not really intend to delete their accounts.

Like water, gas and electricity, people are finding they simply cannot walk away from Facebook. Many have tried to abandon their accounts only to return. Many more don’t even kid themselves by trying. Sure, we can survive without Facebook. We can survive without electricity, too, but do we want to? No. But the costs, distribution and regulations that allow us to enjoy electricity, and now  Facebook too, must be government regulated.

The new Facebook privacy controls are better, but still not totally comprehensive. For instance, the controversial “Pilot Program” is still opt-in, the opt-out check box is still buried in layers of settings, and it’s still unclear to the average user what in the world the Pilot Program even is.

Amid the din of users’ outcries, both Facebook and Google received letters from Representative John Conyers of Michigan demanding an explanation of their recent privacy violations. As the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Conyers is positioned to bring forth a hearing against the two groups and introduce legislation to regulate online privacy. It would appear that Facebook’s reluctance to operate under its members’ expectations will almost certainly result in legislative measures for controlling the utility of social media.