twitter, too many turds in that pool

london 7.18am 2.5C sunny (glorious day , opened the window and breathed in the air, so crisp, and not really that cold as the temperature would lead u to think). tuesday 2016

stephen fry (i did not know he has a blog as well) eloquently summed up twitter , (his is too many people pissing in it)and left.

my title is not his. it is just what my impression of twitter. though i have to confess i am not a member of twitter, so my views are from hearsay. but since people get attracted to something from what impression they get from others, it bodes ill for twitter if my impression is what others get too. 

twitter does not expand its product to include voice, or offer other services , like maybe group calls, or group twitter… and  instagram has stolen its thunder by  sending each other photos… so what is there left for twitter to do? not much except criticise, and troll, and bully each other. 

i think it explains why facebook is so careful to slap down people who dont obey its rules. if u let people get away with it, u end up alienating everyone else and they will leave. 

added. i just checked the weather website for yesterday’s low. it is only 1C, so the forecast -2C did not  happen in london. 

facebook and no nudity

london 2.39pm 7.8C cloudy sunday 2016

the french court says facebook can be judged under french law, and can be sued for cancelling a french person’s facebook page, because it posted a woman’s private part which turned out to be a famous painting. well, ok it may have set a precedent that facebook can be sued under french law. but french law must accept an organisation can impose rules on its members, which should be applied indiscrimately to everyone of them. 

facebook should argue that when u join u agree to its terms and conditions, and it specifically said no pictures of private parts allowed, in fact no nudity. so u want to join and be a member, u follow the rules. that seems to be the way isn’t it? any organisation can impose whatever  rules it likes and when u sign up to join u agree to its rules. so it would be discriminatory if facebook allows this person to post a nude picture, whether it is a famous painting or his wife’s, it does not matter. he still cannot do it when everyone else can not do it. 

i am neutral as to whether facebook is good or not, but  i should have thought there is no case to answer in this instance.

facebook messenger allows

london 8.04am 6C sunny friday 2016

this article says messenger, in facebook, is making it possible to bring all your text messages ( presumably all your whatsapp messages i take it) into messenger, and allow many users to access messenger from one phone. it seems facebook had got message sending and receiving in messenger in 2013 but discontinued it because there was no demand. it was ahead of its time. facebook at that time was tied to laptops and computers. and it is difficult to do the messaging in a laptop. or rather there are so many web surfing u can do in a laptop, the messaging is a distraction. but with mobiles, web surfing is not that nice to do, such a small screen… so ‘chatting’ to friends is more the thing. from what i see on the picture accompanying the article, u can see the person calling or texting you. is that so? or is it just showing the photo of that person. seeing a person in real time is not that crucial actually. and how are u going to see that person calling u if u are holding the phone to your ear? that person would only see your ear too. haha.

 then whatsapp came along and in mobile phones, and the time was ripe for free text sending and receiving via mobile.  now facebook had integrated its function with the mobile smartphones,( most probably using whatsapp technology) rather than just laptops, and so it is now trying to establish messenger as the go to place for text messages. i hope they will extend it further and bring in voice … now that would be a killer app, in more ways than one, both literally and figuratively, in that it will kill off all those mobile companies selling calling plans. when voice is free as well, no one will bother to pay for those calling plans.

its interesting that skype never took off, i wonder why? yahoo owned skype, they could have make it the go to app and hugely popular. yahoo missed that opportunity. 

added.8.50am, i read here about how whatsapp is big in india, but in the side note below it, it seems in america whatsapp is small. so it looks like facebookmessenger’s new functions which it is rolling out in america, may be targetted at americans. 

 

 

 

tor app

london 7.55am 11.7C sunny monday 2016

saw this today. saying facebook can be accessed via tor app, which  hides your location so that your internet provider do not block it.  so for people in china, iran, which blocks facebook, u can access facebook. does it mean u can use tor app to access google, which is also banned in china?

i thought it might be useful even for those of us in uk, as it hides your location so stores wont be able to find you. but when i looked into the tor application, i think it does not do that. it is specifically to prevent your internet provider blocking you. though by  hiding your location it might also prevent any others from finding you… on the other hand, u might want stores to find you so that they can give u special offers as u pass them. haha

i read here in a guardian article that stores can find out if u revisited them, even what u see. i think we all know that. we know that if we pass a store, it can send adverts to us or tell us of special offers. this applies for people with smartphones.  it might sound scary to some, but maybe a lot of users will welcome it… say u are passing a macdonalds and u get a notification of half price big mac when u pass it… or 2 for 1 offer. u might be tempted to go there.

i think it is rather interesting, to be tracked by a store and given special offers tailored to what u like. but maybe other people might think it creepy.

whatsapp is now free for all

london 10.42am, 3.2C sunny tuesday 2016

before, it was $1 a year , after the first year, if u have the whatsapp in your smartphone. but it has been announced that it will be free to all. and no adverts either. how will it pay for itself?  the answer, it will make money from businesses contacting individuals. how is that,i wonder? i dont quite see how that is done.

 facebook bought it for £13.2billion in 2014. it found that the imposition of a $1 fee(small as it is) harmed its growth in developing countries, as it seems ‘many there dont have debit or credit cards so are afraid that after the first year’s free usage , they will lose contact with friends or family’. (or so that was how the whatsapp blog says it, but i think the reality  means that after the first year free, they all discontinued the app , perhaps because they dont have credit or debit cards, who knows! and so cannot continue even if they want to;  and facebook loses them).

it seems to me that facebook is willing to forego the revenue from whatsapp, rather than have people leave as it wont be able to mine them for data information of their usage of the web.

and maybe it can persuade businesses to pay to get access to their customers or anyone contacting them for queries or whatever. though what company want to get involved? it means they have to hire a person or persons solely to answer text queries? a waste of time really. unless it all boils down to they buy the phone numbers and so can text those people with adverts pretending to be friendly messages. 

but whatever the reason, the end user now have a free whatsapp to play with . and if they bring in voice as well as text, it will threaten the mobile companies with their call plan and , it will threaten skype too, which is used for international calls (skype is owned by yahoo i think).

i have a call plan with talktalk mobile, it is free to me, for a year. and i find it difficult to use up the 250text i allowed free each month. but i daresay i shall get into the habit of texting people so i have a feeling that come the end of this free offer, even i will be tempted to get a smartphone and download whatsapp. 

 

free internet suspended in egypt

london 8.35am 8.9C sunny thursday 2015 new year eve.

mark zurkerberg’s facebook’s limited internet with free data for smartphone users has been cancelled in egypt. so that is another country stopping him and poor people from getting a free internet. india stopped him too.

seems to me egypt is afraid of a lot of dissenters getting online if this free internet is available. a lot of countries will be afraid of it happening.

as it is, the arab spring has been catapulted into effective action by a lot of people  able to communicate with each other via facebook or twitter. it was mainly the middle classes as they can afford the data plans. in egypt the middle classes  thought they can get rid of a dictator, mubarak, and replace him with democracy… but to their surprise they found an even more extreme party , the muslim brotherhood got into power.  and the middle classes found they have jumped out of the pan and got themselves into the fire.

if u give free internet access to the poor, than it wont only be the middle classes that can get organised, the poor can too… and that frightens governments. just imagine what the poor can get into once they can use the internet to mobilise their numbers… it goes to show how important zurkerbergs free internet is, and for that reason the govts will oppose it. they will never allow the poor a say at all… 

Facebook’s ‘real names’ policy is legal, but it’s also problematic for free speech | Jillian C York | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Facebook’s ‘real names’ policy is legal, but it’s also problematic for free speech | Jillian C York | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

here is someone argueing that facebook policy about using real names only is preventing free speech. it is a strange thing that what started as  quite an admirable policy of facebook to insist that people use their real names , so that there are no false profiles who can abuse others whilst remaining anonymous is now a bad thing.

we know that if u allow people to use false names a person can have many profiles and it can lead to abuse .

now this comment says it is ethically wrong to insist that people use their own names. she says activists would feel unsafe to give their real names …

facebook is not for those who want to hide their identity… since the whole idea of facebook is to interact with others … and no one wants to interact with someone who hides his or her identity. so those who are afraid of prosecution for revealing their real names should not be in facebook in the first place. if they want to be, we can all have good reason to suspect their motives. they will cook up a lot of false profiles and make comments and posts that supports their cause and make everyone believe there are lots of people who support that cause, when it all originates from one person.

google + at first insists on people using their real names too, but they have back down now because they want more people to join them. i think google + made a mistake to allow people to use false names. even with real names we allready get very dubious posts with people trying to promote their businesses.

i am glad facebook is sticking to its guns and insisting on real names.

i am not a fan of facebook. i find it inane, but at least it is inanity from real people instead of anonymous fakes.

what is whatsapp?

london

update 24.2.14 looks like whatsapp is going to add voice. now that would be a killer app. 

update 23.2.14 i have been puzzled about smart phones, because there are so many different brands. they are all v expensive, that is the one thing they all have in common. anyway i read today in this article that mozilla is introducing a cheap smartphone for $25 for the developing countries. in that article it says ‘feature’ phones are used in developing countries as a cheaper alternative to smart phones. i have never heard of ‘feature’ phones. but this cheap smart phone might be one for me, if it comes to europe. I have noticed that these cheaper versions are not sold in europe, so that we have to go to a developing country to buy it. just  like i have to go to malaysia to buy the cheap nokia that i am using now. cannot find that cheap nokia here in london. 

added. 23.2.14 this link in quartz says zuckerberg of facebook is trying to make data cheaper. getting a cheap smart phone is half the story. getting data is expensive.  this link shows nokia asha 230 new smartphone for £37 . it also contains a video about the phone, but stay on and let it run and u can see them reporting on a lot of other gadgets in the show. 

update 22.2.14 when i read all this about messages, i thought will that make all the mobile phone companies obsolete? i dont think so. none of these apps take over from phone calls. and people will still like talking to each other instead of having to type the messages. txt messaging is a cumbersome way to communicate if u want immediate response. so for now the phone companies can still make money by selling call plans that will include free txt and broadband downloads. 

you could argue that there is skype and voip, (whatever that is, even though i know it stands for voice over IP) IP i presume stands of internet provider. but they are not easy to use or the sound is not clear and plagued by fades out and interference. this happened the last time i used it, but that was years ago, and maybe it has improved. Once that gets improved, it will be the end of phone companies as we know it.  mobile companies will not be able to make money and going bankrupt. when u can talk to people via skype and the internet using VOIP? and it is free via free wifi.

But G3 or G4 will still be needed to transmit the mobile signals, and so i predict that facebook may well buy a mobile company that has a G3 or G4 license. (Added. i think this one wont be necessary. with the spread of wifi available for free everywhere, it should be easy to get onto the internet without a mobile connection, at least in cities.) 

I have been getting emails  from them relaying some users sending me text messages and it has been happening for some time. i dont know how they got my email address. i have always thought they were a mobile phone service, but it seems people can send messages to computers too. As usual, i dont read the messages and  just blocked the message. But now i read that facebook had bought them for $19billion. well that certainly will make everyone sit up and take notice. it did me. Well, next time i get a message from them, i shall take more notice and read it. 

added. i had another look at the messages sent to my email and realise it is not from whatsapp. it is a scam email. so i was right to just block and delete them without opening it. i suppose i would be opening them if i had whatsapp on my mobile. not the first time i am glad i dont subscribe or use these apps or whatever, (paypal is another that i get lots of scam messages from but i have never used paypal so i know not to open them). 

What is whatsapp exactly? one of the links to the article about the purchase by facebook gave a link to their blog. it says it is a app that allows people to send txt messages to each other without having to pay for it. and u just pay $1 a year for the app. no wonder people get it. haha. it says they never send any messages themselves , have no advertising, and is purely a medium to relay other peoples messages. I wonder if it works the other way, that i can send messages via it from my laptop to mobile phones. AT the moment, i can send emails and those people who have mobile phones on broadband can access their emails. but i cannot send my messge directly to their mobiles as a text message. 

I have a feeling i am not the target customer. i use my mobile only for when I am going to a place to meet people. otherwise i switch it off. i got a simcard pay-as-you-go, and the cost for txt is as much as a voice call, so it is really much easier to just call someone if I am late or they are late.

Added. this link shows that whatsapp could be used in non-smart phones too. but the phone must be able to access the internet which i thought is what smart phone means. so what are these non smart phones that can access the internet? i guess i shall have to wait maybe 5 or so years later when everyone is on it by then.