Facebook chat is currently unavailable as Facebook works to patch this bug.

Coming on the heels of Facebook’s “instant personalization” program, this incident only further confirms the fragility of one’s privacy on the internet. Any personal information that one posts on Facebook might be private, but it should definitely not be sensitive. Facebook is all about sharing, not necessarily about caring, so tread carefully.

Update: Facebook chat was functional again on the same day.

Where the new Instant Personalization setting pops up (under Privacy Settings, click to enlarge)

Unfortunately, the new option is an opt-out function which means that users may have to be vigilant about unchecking the option.

Moreover, just unchecking the option may not be enough. Information about someone can still be transmitted to various other applications through that person’s friends. Applications can gather information that is available publicly on one’s profile (usually things like name, profile picture, networks, etc) simply through one’s friends.

To block all information from disseminating via this option involves blocking three applications as well: Yelp, Microsoft’s Office, and Pandora.

Facebook’s inclusion of a new opt-out privacy option is unsettling; assuming that users want their personal information disseminated to other parties apart from Facebook is hardly comforting, especially when that information can be disseminated through a user’s friends even if the user does opt-out.

The opt-out option (click to enlarge)

Luckily the information that is gathered is not likely to be very private. Nonetheless, it drives home a very important point: the best advice when it comes to posting information online is that no information on Facebook is truly private. Imagine all the information that is on Facebook to be like personal decorations in a workspace.

You still need to block applications to prevent friends from giving out information

Although the information on there may be personal, it should not be assumed to be private.

This actually may be good news for Palm; with HP’s financial backing, Palm may be able to stage a bit of a turnaround and push out additional models. Otherwise, Palm would have been in a death spiral, without enough money to create a killer product to generate enough revenue for Palm to come out of the spiral.

It looks like investors too are looking forward to a Palm invigorated with cash flow from HP. In after hours trading, Palm’s stocks rose by $1.26, over a 25% increase.

As for me I’ll definitely be looking forward to a stronger Palm for more competition, if only so that I’ll be able to actually afford a decent smartphone one of these days.

On another note, I am still attempting to get some more time to get up some posts about computer fixes on the cheap. Tests are looming now at the end of the year, which is draining much of my time, but I do hope to be able to get them up.

Google recently published a list of the number of government entities’ requests for user-related data and for the removal of data from Google’s various services directed at Google from July 1, 2009 to December 1, 2009 (here). Google, stating,  “Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets,” did not disclose information on China.

As Google points out in its descriptions and FAQs accompanying the map showing the various statistics for each country, the number of requests may not be an accurate reflection of the amount of content that is requested by a government or the amount of content that a government asks to be removed.

The United States has the second-most number of government requests for information from Google, with 3580 requests. The country that has the dubious honor of first place is Brazil, with 3663 requests. Britain is in a distant third, with 1166 requests.

When it comes to the number of government requests to take down information, the U.S. is in fourth place with 123 requests (99 of which were approved by Google). The country with the most requests to remove information was Brazil with 291 requests (240 of which were approved by Google).

At first glance, not all that much information is being shared here. However, it reveals information about the nature of the countries themselves.

For the U.S. the majority of the requets for information takedown are directed at YouTube videos. This is unsurprising given the huge popularity of YouTube in the U.S. as well as the general potential of any video to depict in graphic detail any inflammatory event or idea. The majority of Brazil’s requests, on the other hand, were aimed at orkut, Google’s social networking site, which is likewise extremely popular in Brazil.

An interesting side note to this story is, as the Christian Science Monitor pointed out, this follows on the heels of a letter signed by government officials with privacy-related offices from ten countries (Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and the U.K.), which criticized Google for its own privacy practices, especially concerningGoogle Buzz.

The Google data also raises questions about our own expectations of access to information. It has become a fact of life that the biggest repositories of information in the modern age are corporations such as Google, Facebook, etc.

Google’s release of information does not include removal of information unrelated to government requests. Although the total amount of information removed by Google is understandably large (e.g. there are no doubt quite a few YouTube videos which violate various copyrights, are obscene, or otherwise violate the Terms of Use set forth by Google) I am curious as to those web search entries which have been taken down by Google. Hopefully Google will reveal any search entries which it has taken down since to remove a site from Google drastically reduces the chances of any online reader stumbling across the site and thus is an extremely powerful restriction against any site.

Transparency itself remains a rather hard goal. The information released by Google must be intentionally vague and nonspecific because to reveal specifics of the information that was requested to be taken down would reveal the information itself. Nonetheless, it would be helpful to see the general reason for the takedown, if not the topic of what was taken down.

Although the release of information is a welcome step towards greater citizen awareness of government practices, it is also a sobering reminder of the amount of power wielded by the technology companies of today. Google’s search engine, along with other search engines like it, serves as a gatekeeper to most of the internet. Citizens and other watchdog organizations must remain vigilant to ensure that Google will initiate similar actions in the future.

So the next couple of posts will be written in the name of frugality. And there are a surprising number of things that can be done quite cheaply. Improving the airflow of one’s case (something I hope to write in the next post) and overclocking or underclocking one’s computer are some topics I hope to touch on.

And hopefully, there will not be a month-or-so-long drought that seems that to have wreaked havoc on this blog since it’s been started.

So just a little update on what’s coming up, for the one or two people who read this little corner of the internet.

Perhaps a summary is required for those who have not been keeping up with the latest developments in the graphics cards realm. AMD released its 5870 and 5850 GPUs in September of last year.

Yet, apart from those basic points, is there anything that Fermi could do to make for that huge time gap between its release and the release of AMD’s 5xxx series lineup?

1. nVidia could incorporate its Optimus technology in a desktop setting. nVidia developed Optimus, in short a system which allows for a laptop to switch seamlessly between its integrated and discrete GPUs. Apart from the energy savings that such a system could realize on a desktop (which for many users would admittedly be only a relatively small, but not necessarily insignificant, monetary benefit, probably much less than $100 a year), such a system could allow for quieter systems. A passively cooled integrated processor could take the burden of less graphics-intensive tasks. When a user actually initiates a graphics-intensive task, the task itself may require enough of the user’s attention that he or she does not notice the additional noise of the actively cooled discrete graphics processor (e.g. a computer game). Of course this may not hold for tasks such as GPGPU computations, but at least a significant number of situations could be made quieter.

2. nVidia could increase support for GPGPU (General Purpose GPU) tasks., i.e. using the GPU to go beyond simply graphics processing to running other programs. Right now nVidia has the lead in GPGPU programs over AMD. If nVidia and its partners bundled useful GPGPU programs with their graphics cards, it could lead to an uptick in consumer interest in GPGPU computing, a boon for a company already ahead of its competitor in this respect.

3. Focus on value rather than power. This was the strategy AMD took to beat nVidia with the 4xxx series of Radeon HD cards. The 4870 wasn’t the fastest card on the market when it came out, but it had an unbeatable value. Although it is definitely way too late for nVidia to do this now, there’s still hope that nVidia will be coming out with lower-binned cards that provide more bang for the buck than their 5xxx Radeon counterparts currently out there.

nVidia better get its act together with Fermi. A duopoly in the discrete graphics market already limits the competition. Hopefully, that duopoly won’t shrink into an AMD monopoly some time in the forseeable future.

The My Child ID is a new device from AmberAlert.com, a private company which works with law enforcement, but is not a part of law enforcement, to help with searches for missing children. Especially since time is of the essence when trying to find missing children and worried parents may not be apt to act in the most timely and rational way, AmberAlert.com bills the My Child ID as a device capable of delivering the information needed by law enforcement efficiently and quickly if such a need would ever arise.

The My Child ID in all its glory (click for full view)

The device has functions that resemble those of online backup storage for personal data. It offers a centralized location to store information about one’s child (such as date of birth, physical characteristics, a photo, etc) in the form of an encrypted child profile which will delete itself after ten failed log-in attempts. The device also offers a year of free online storage for the profiles stored on the My Child ID, which is likewise encrypted and which can only be accessed via the My Child ID and a user-generated password unknown to both outsiders and AmberAlert.com itself.

In the event of a missing child, the information on the My Child ID can be readily sent to law enforcement, either by giving over the physical My Child ID device (and accompanying log-in information), or by using the built-in email function of the device.

In terms of making the setup of the device accessible for a wide population, AmberAlert.com did a very thorough job. Stored on the device itself is a PDF manual containing detailed instructions (in both English and Spanish for those curious) on how to use the My Child device and install the My Child software. Installing the My Child software was very straightforward; a couple of clicks and an additional installation of Adobe AIR were all that was required. Setting up the account was likewise very easy. The built-in Child Profile Wizard provided step-by-step pages to fill in the various data required for a profile, with only a minimum reliance on any technological knowledge on the part of the user. And if there are still any doubts on how to use the device, video tutorials are available at www.amberalert.com/mychildid/help/.

What the My Child ID software looks like after logging in (click for full view)

One part of the setup wizard (click for full view)

The device supports JPEG, PNG, and BMP image formats. The representation of photos on the device is rough around the edges. In order to compensate for images which do not fit the native resolution of the screen, the device adds black bars around the image. However, occasionally these black bars are replaced by a single blue block that is only present along one edge of the photo. The contrast of the screen is also rather poor. Although there an option to increase the contrast, this option seems to simply increase brightness rather than noticeably improve contrast.

The device states that it has a battery life of three hours. After keeping a continuous image on the screen, however, the battery life was actually pegged at a little over an hour and forty minutes. Even the addition of the screen itself feels gimmicky. The small size of the screen, the various small issues surrounding viewing a photo, and the low battery life all make the action of viewing pictures on the device a rather forgettable experience, unlikely to be done more than a few times by parents. Luckily, viewing photos was never a fundamental purpose of the My Child ID.

Initially, the memory capacity of the My Child ID seemed to be a more worrisome problem. With a physical total of 128 MB and only 39 MB of actual storage after taking into account the preloaded software, it seemed to be a very real possibility that the memory of the device may run out if too many profiles were added. Part of this is due to the lack of support for file formats which utilize lossless compression (except bitmap images, but few would store photos in the .bmp format). However, to be honest, JPEG has become such a widely used format by now that, since only one photo is required for a profile, it would not be wholly inappropriate for a device to support only JPEG files.

In the end, 39 MB was found to be more than enough to accommodate the needs of most families. Each profile, even with an accompanying picture only took up at maximum a couple of megabytes, making the limit of possible profiles at least around 15 profiles. Of course, 39 MB makes the My Child ID ill-suited as a photo gallery of high resolution images, but as stated before, its role as a photo gallery is neither a strong point of the device to begin with nor is it an essential component.

The My Child ID was not designed to be a workhorse USB drive. Few people would go out and buy a My Child ID to store professional-quality photographs on it, or really to store anything on it besides basic information about a child’s profile. In fact, files stored on the My Child ID device can only be accessed by the My Child ID program that one has to install (otherwise the host computer will be unable to open the files), probably a side effect of the encryption utilized by the device.

However, it may actually be advantageous for the device to expand its memory capacity and fulfill a role both as a vault for information about a child as well as a general purpose USB drive. Since the My Child ID must be in the physical possession of the parent to be of any use (i.e. the parent will either have to constantly carry the My Child ID or keep it in location that will always be easily accessible), any way that it can integrate into the life of a parent makes the device all the more helpful. If the parent currently had his or her current USB drive on a keychain with all of his or her keys, replacing that USB drive with a My Child ID that could perform a similar function may allow the parent to carry the device everywhere and to keep it constantly in reach in all settings, both work and personal without feeling the My Child ID is just deadweight.

Of course the amount of memory would have to be increased and the inconvenience of encryption (when dealing with non-sensitive information) would have to be dealt with, perhaps through the use of separate partitions, one encrypted and one unencrypted. Though to be honest, 39 MB of actual storage is still pretty anemic for a $40 device without an expansion slot for additional memory. Even if the device does come with its own screen and with additional software features, it bears mentioning that one could buy a personal music player with a color screen and several orders of magnitude of additional storage capacity for about the same price.

There are a few other very minor issues. The placement of the serial number of the device on a strip on the USB head makes actually reading the serial number when entering it into the wizard difficult on some computers, although removing the My Child ID device from the USB port and then plugging it back in after one has typed in the serial number, but before clicking “next” on the wizard does not seem to affect the rest of the setup process. The buttons on the device have a tendency to be a tad bit on the unresponsive side.

The essential functions of the My Child ID could be approximated without too much difficulty with a normal USB drive. A spreadsheet with data columns for each child or even a table in a Microsoft Word document with the relevant information and pictures could probably contain the same amount of information (although careful attention would need to be paid to make sure that no important information was left out, something which would not have to happen with the My Child ID). Moreover, although the My Child ID is integrated into the L.E.A.P. network (an AmberAlert.com service used by law enforcement to disseminate information to various parts of an investigation), the information sent by the device or contained by the device does not receive any preferential treatment from law enforcement, at least in the state of Washington, i.e. an email with the aforementioned spreadsheet could potentially serve law enforcement just as well as the information sent from the My Child ID.

However, the My Child ID derives its strengths from the improvements it makes to the user experience. From utilitarian improvements such as encryption to prevent snooping and online backup to the general cleanliness and thoroughness of the setup wizard, the money spent on a My Child ID is probably best thought of as money paid for the services provided by and bundled with the device rather than the hardware itself.

The auxiliary function of the device as a picture viewer feels like a tacked-on novelty and its price tag of $40 may be a little too high. Nonetheless, especially for a non-technologically savvy parent, the My Child ID performs its main duty as a repository for basic information about one’s child admirably, offering a streamlined, helpful interface for entering information and a simple method for retrieving and sending information about a child in case of an emergency.

Update: It looks like Gear Diary has a review on My Child ID here that looks at the device’s software on Linux which mentions some stability problems when running the software on Linux. I will update this post or add a new post if I get an opportunity to try the device out on a Linux machine. That review also mentions in passing some problems on Vista, but the software seemed to be fine when the software was tested for this review on Windows Vista.

Before next week, I hope to push out a new post about the My Child ID device. It’s a device on which one stores information about one’s children so that the information can be easily disseminated in case a child goes missing or (Heaven forbid) is kidnapped. The device is currently on my desk right now, awaiting review.

For those one or two souls who read this blog, I wish you a very belated Happy New Year’s.

One tip when shopping for electronics is to look for the product’s previous generation. If you’re willing to sacrifice a new name and sticker on your product (which is sometimes about as significant as the difference is), you can get a lot in savings. For example, with computer discrete graphics cards, the Radeon 4xxx series is being phased out in favor of the 5xxx series, something which is only going to accelerate when nVidia comes out with their new 3xx series. This means that stores are dropping prices to clear their old stock (to a certain point, once the supplies of a certain item get too low and the corresponding demand gets too high, prices may go up again). On online retailers such as Newegg and TigerDirect, the Radeon HD 4870 can be found for a cheaper price than the Radeon HD 5770, even though the Radeon HD 4870 performs at the same level as or sometimes even outperforms the Radeon HD 5770 (as seen here at Anandtech and here at Tom’s Hardware). The caveat is that the Radeon HD 4870 consumes an insane amount of power compared to the Radeon HD 5770, which depending on your usage habits, may or may not make the 5770 cost-effective.

Another example of this phenomenon is Polk Audio speakers. A lot of electronics retailers have been selling Polk Audio speakers at steep discounts. Though most of them still don’t quite qualify as cheap, many of these speakers have been selling for half or less of their original prices. These prices are mainly due to new generations of Polk Audio speakers coming out and old ones being taken out of stock.

A couple of benchmark prices are always handy to have something to compare prices to. Most basic netbooks sell for around $250 to $300. Thus, when Fry’s was selling a netbook for about $200 over Black Friday, it was a decent deal, but hardly a blockbuster one.

For laptops, ones sporting Intel Core 2 Duo processors, which may be labeled simply as “Centrino” or “Centrino 2″ processors (Centrino and Centrino 2 refer to Intel’s entire mobel platform, not just the CPU although sometimes it is used to refer to the CPU), usually weigh in anywhere from $500 to $700 for lower end models (usually T5xxx, T6xxx, T7xxx, or sometimes P7xxx processors) to $700 or over for those with P8xxx, P9xxx, or T9xxx processors. Laptops with discrete graphics cards can usually be found for about $700 or more as well. Laptops with AMD processors tend to be cheaper (and tend to offer less performance and less battery life as well) usually hovering around $500 to a bit over $600.

Desktops and separate computer components tend to be a bit harder to pin down. In the case of desktops, there is an opportunity for a greater variety of components that can be put in the desktop, and personally adding components is a lot easier than on a laptop so determining estimates of benchmark prices is a bit hard, especially for low-end computers where proportionally more of the price comes from peripherals rather than one or two components within the computer (e.g. the CPU and graphics card or cards). For desktops, most computers over $1,000 should come with a Core i5 or Core i7 processor. Anything below that, down to about $700 to $800, should have either a Core 2 Quad or a Phenom II. Below that, Core 2 Duo, original Phenoms, and Athlon II’s are usually present. Below about $400 to $500, we begin to see Athlon X2, Sempron, Celeron, and Pentium Dual-Core processors.

Computer components’ prices are still in a fair amount of flux. AMD/ATI’s newest and most powerful 58xx and 5970 graphics cards have seen shortages which caused AMD to bump up their prices. This means prices north of $300 for the 5850, $400 for the 5870, and $600-$700 for the 5970. As the stocks of AMD’s 4xxx series start to run dry, what had been a downward trend in prices is seeing a slight hike as well. 4830’s are now over $100 and 4870’s are now around $140. On the nVidia side of things, the GTX 260 is going for about $200 or over now and the GTX 295 is going for about $500 or more.

Yet amid the inevitable flurry of holiday deals, the most important point to remember isn’t the prices themselves. Keep in mind that price shouldn’t determine why you buy something, but rather where you buy something. “A good deal” does not justify spending money on something you would never use anyway (the only real exception I can think of to this is reselling the item later), but rather allows you to choose the retailer from which to buy something which you already wanted or otherwise already had a need or use for.

The Bellevue Reporter offices have both iMacs (and an eMac that the author gets to use) and PCs running Windows. The Macs survived the flood. The PCs got fried. Why? The reason itself is pretty mundane and has little to do with the build quality of either, except perhaps for the lack of a completely sealed, waterproof PC case (those pesky PC manufacturers, failing to seal their PCs with cases capable of being utterly inundated, how could they fail to foresee such a circumstance?). The iMacs are all-in-one computers with all the hardware components stuffed behind the display. They sit on our desks at all times. However, the hardware components of a PC, apart from the monitor, are stored in a separate tower case. When you have a tower case, to save space on the desk, you usually place it on the floor… Then a flood happens.

Our PCs are still suffering from unfortunate dihydrogen monoxide poisoning. It looks they are all pretty much dead and we’ll have to get new ones. So the next time you’re thinking about floods when you’re buying a PC (who doesn’t associate flooding with computing) make sure to get one with a nice enough case that you wouldn’t mind sticking on top of your desk. Or just get a Mac*.

*Or any other all-in-one computer.