A recent article on Mashable caught my attention with a headline about the problem with all the openness in a social media world. However, my attention was soon redirected by the mention at the end of the article about clever car thieves in the Netherlands who reverse engineer luxury car GPS systems by stealing cars at the airport and using the system to lead them back to empty homes.
The GPS scam struck me as a particularly civilized form of robbery, a Thomas Crowne type of an affair involving airports and luxury cars, as compared to the rude reminder of B.C.’s less glamorous car theft problem I received when I was recently visiting Vancouver. As I got on the SkyTrain to head downtown, a huge sign tacked to the wall of the mall overlooking a grey parking lot warned “Bait Cars Are Everywhere.”
The car bait program has been in place since 2002 and has seen a dramatic decrease in car thefts in the Lower Mainland, according to ICBC. The program has a sexy website (in comparison to ICBC or the VPD anyway), which is where I found this gem about how my hometown is managing to buck the province-wide trend of declining car thefts: Bait Cars Tackle Williams Lake Auto Theft Epidemic.
I’ll have to write something nice about my hometown next time. Until then, underscore_mouse and abbenquesnel have some pretty Flickr pictures of the area…
WHY? This was the most compelling demo at SF New Tech’s most recent event (other than the cuddly Pleo). You’re watching a 45 min clip from CNN but you just want the news about Iraq. Pluggd inserts text tags in the video at the points where Iraq is mentioned, as well terms they deem relevant like “Iran”, “war”, “terrorism”.
Diigo: social book marking site, also allows users to annotate websites and share with others
WHY? My laptop was taken from me before its time last month, and besides missing having a laptop period, the things I miss most from my clunky old Dell are, in order, (1) the graduate school dictionary I compiled of all the esoteric terms I was reading, (2) my bookmarks, (3) travel photos.
Diigo is my second try at using a bookmarking site. I used Del.icio.us for a while a couple of years back and abandoned it after a few months of use. The unforeseen laptop tragedy has given me a new appreciation as to why it’s useful to have your bookmarks stored online.
TweetClouds: Tag cloud of all terms you use on Twitter
WHY? You don’t already spend enough time thinking about yourself. Visual summary of what you’ve been writing about.
I’ve been using Twitter for just over a month now, see my TweetCloud here: http://www.tweetclouds.com/user_pages/ldpodcast.html
Someecards: Writers from The Onion write egreeting cards.
WHY? You need a laugh and/or another distraction at work.
Seeqpod: Find exactly the music you want, stream it to your computer, build playlists
WHY? You want what you want when you want it without having to download songs and viruses to your computer.
Social media has evaporated any remaining boundaries between professional and personal life, and you should get use to it – says Gary Vaynerchuk, wine connoisseur and social media extraordinaire.
This assertion seemingly dismisses the concerns about the issue of blurred boundaries and the professionalization of personal (via technology devices) that I highlighted in my thesis about the BlackBerry.
Is the work person and play person really the same thing?
What is the advantage for the ‘personal’ in having your work life integrated seamlessly into your private life?
Does this make us more or less secure in our employment? More or less connected to our work? More or less valuable?
Might the assumption that you are your own brand which is always on — observerable and accessible to all people all the time — be an attitude particular to creative professionals with jobs that more closely reflect their personal interests than say tool and die welding?
While I realized that personal relationships, cultivated on “off-time”, have always driven business relationships, and that social networks simply serve to increase the reach and value of these conversation; I still can’t shake the possibly dated concern that the loss of these walls, the that could hide the bad guys, also means the loss of a wall that provides a shade for the good guys in the glaringly transparent and connected world of social media and networks.
Does online work/life integration result in a more sanitized existence for those aware of the online brand they’re creating, or does it just require a higher degree of vigilance in maintaining an online identity?
Does blandness prevail in the name of SFW identities?
What does it mean to be talking about brand management in our personal life? It’s a business term usually used to refer to a company’s image.
Lots of questions.
One thing that’s for sure, the boundaries between work and private life will continue to become increasingly blurred as constant connectivity moves beyond 24/7 email access to integrated social networks.
Despite not generally considering myself a bad guy, I not entirely sure I’m ready to throw back the shades on all areas of my life to all people. This negotiation has been ongoing for quite some time and will continue for the foreseeable future as expectation of access and transparency shift.
In the meanwhile, I’m balancing the integration of work-related contacts into my previously personal-only social network, and it’s working out famously. Notifications from this integrated network about upcoming local events (for fun and work), connect me more closely to my physical community.
Maybe it all comes down to the old maxim that you get out what you put in.
