My perspective is a little like that of C3PO in Star Wars, a minor character throwing his hands up in dismay at calamity and providing others with an interesting viewpoint on the great events of the last forty years.
Like any space opera, the story of information technology is a very simple one. It is played out in a myriad of different ways by a revolving cast of characters, but it always has its loveable heroes, its predictably nefarious villains, innocent civilians to be saved, and bumbling bureaucrats that arent inherently evil, but begin every story aiding the forces of darkness out of a misplaced belief they are preserving law and order in their corner of the galaxy.
In it, he encourages us the rebels to resist the collective empire of the MPAA, RIAA, Intellectual Ventures and those who would impose things like SOPA and PIPA and stifle technological progress in the name of preserving outdated business models. Its a good read go there now!
Shopifys going to SxSWi the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas! It runs from Friday, March 9th through Tuesday, March 13th and if youre going to be there, wed like to catch up with you! Among the Shopifolks wholl be there will be:
Grasshopper, Mailchimp, Wufoo, Shopify, and Batchbook all joined forces in 2011 to create and execute the Barcamp Tour. We journeyed across the country together to work with 10 different entrepreneurial cities and help them put on a barcamp that would inspire / energize their communities. We shared our passions, listened to other peoples, and took in the unique character of each city we visited. Boy did we learn a lot. We would love to share those observations & experiences with you in hopes that you might take that passion back to your own community. We also wanted to explain why our 5 brands so strongly believe in free beer and hugs versus banner ads and trade shows. These word of mouth branding tactics have been a major part of all 5 of our companys growth, and we are ready to share our secrets!
The session takes place on Sunday, March 11th. Usually, the Sunday slot is the kiss of death, but our talk takes place in the hangover-friendly timeslot: 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.. Well be presenting at the Omni Downtown Hotel (700 San Jacinto, at 8th Street) in the Lone Star room.
The Shopify Fund is a one million dollar pool of money that were using to encourage the development of apps built on Shopifys ecommerce platform. Weve funded the first four apps, which Ive summarized in this article, and were on the lookout for more! The video above (4 minutes, 11 seconds) explains both Shopify apps and the Shopify Fund.
If youve already applied for the Shopify Fund but arent one of the first four to get funded, keep working on your app idea and submit it to the Shopify App Store! The fund isnt just about getting new apps built, but also enabling developers to work on improvements to their apps. Submit your app, go to the Shopify Fund page and tell us about it! We might fund that development.
This fact was discovered by Denso developer Arun Thampi when he decided that hed build a Mac OS X client for Path at his companys hackathon. To do this, he decided to observe the API calls that Path made to its servers only to discover that the data for his Contacts app names, email addresses, phone numbers was getting HTTP POSTed to https://api.path.com/contacts/add. To see the the full story, be sure to read Aruns blog entry on the matter.
Path CEO Dave Morin sent a reply to Arun, explaining that the data is used only to help users connect to their friends and family and nothing more. He also said that they proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on their Android client a few weeks ago and will include the same opt-in feature on the next version of the iOS client. For anyone who has the current version on their iPhone, that feature came a little too late. This is bad, and the fact that Path has recently been working on proactive fixes suggests that they know it.
I have Path on my phone because its a gorgeous app and a number of my friends and coworkers were on the network and encouraging me to take it for a spin. That means that my contact info resides on Paths servers. A good chunk of my life is public by my own choice, so I can live with Path having my own address and phone number, but nobody else on my contacts list signed up for that. Furthermore, inclusion in my contacts list doesnt necessarily imply that theyre someone I want in my social network graph. But Path cant discern between my friends and family and others like my ex-wife, my local cab company or that client in Australia who just had a couple of questions. Youd think that Path wouldve learned the lessons of f**k You Google, in which a woman wrote about how Gmail overshared her info with her abusive ex-husband.
Its an even bigger problem in the case of celebrities, who presumably have other celebs’ numbers in their on-phone Rolodexes. Take a look at this tweet from Alyssa Milano:
. @Path .. Is there an OPT OUT of you having my ENTIRE iphone address book on your server ?bit.ly/zKsLky /via @heykim
And did it also upload my notes about people? (Yes, Im one of those people who actually uses the Notes field in Contacts. For business contacts, its all part of the schmooze; for friends and family, its so I remember things like their likes, dislikes, birthdays, anniversaries and other little things.)
In the comments to Aruns article, iOS developer Matt Gemmell suggests the following to Dave Morin:
Why are you uploading the actual address book data, rather than (say) generating hashes of the user’s email addresses locally, then uploading just those hashes? You’d be able to do friend-finding that way, and similarly if you uploaded hashes of all email addresses in the user’s address book, you’d be able to do your notifications of when a friend joins. At no point would your servers ever need to see the actual email addresses or phone numbers from our contacts.
He also points out that sending the entire Contacts database to their servers may be a violation of the App Stores terms and conditions. In fact, section 17.1 of that T&C states:
17.1: Apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the users prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used.
Dave Morins been firefighting ever since the news about Path got out. Hes stayed on message with the were not trying to be evil here line, but with the faith in Googles Dont be evil mantra pretty much gone, its not very reassuring. On the bright side, he has made it clear that if you want your address book and even your Path account deleted from their servers, you have but to send an email to service@path.com.
Update (February 8, 2012): Mike Arrington has put online what I’d been thinking (but didn’t think Path would ever do without a lot of pressure): they should simply delete all the address book data they pulled. It would be an excellent goodwill gesture; let’s see if they take up his suggestion.
(Little hint, Dave: if you keep overusing proactive and proactively the way you have in your responses and tweets, it becomes a filler word, like um and uh. Especially when such proactivity seems limited to stating that youre not doing anything wrong.)
Theres been some freaking out over Path in the comments for Aruns blog entry as well as in other venues online, but its time to let cooler heads prevail. Lets see what Path does in the next 48 hours as Arun himself puts it, I hope we can keep calm and continue to discuss this sensibly.
If youre developing software that makes use of peoples personal info, let this be a lesson!
Update: Newsy have put together a piece summarizing the tech news’ reaction to the Samsung Galaxy Note ad. It’s at the end of this article – check it out!
Even if you missed the big game, you can still catch the Superbowl ad for the Samsung Galaxy Note. Directed by Bobby Farrelly (one of the Farrelly Brothers, creators of high-larious films like Dumb and Dumber, Theres Something About Mary, and unfortunately, the upcoming Three Stooges Movie), its a continuation of the series of ads that poke fun at Apple fandom. It opens with a scenes from lineups outside Apple stores. The bored Apple fanatics are tethered to their white earbuds and awaiting their next gift from the gods when one of them sees a passer-by with a Samsung Galaxy Note.
Whoa, whoa, whoa what is that? he asks.
Here, says the passer-by, walking towards soon-to-be-ex-Apple-worshipper. Its the new Samsung Galaxy Note.
Then comes the kicker: Its got a pen? Thats right: its bringing back the stylus, the very thing that iOS devices put out of style.
After that, the Apple fans break free of their self-imposed imprisonment in line a line that Samsung probably wishes they had and partying, powered by The Darkness hit I Believe in a Thing Called Love ensues.
Its a little hard to tell from the ad, but the Galaxy Note is bigger than your standard phone; in fact, its bigger than even the biggest of the notoriously oversized Samsung phones. Size-wise, its in Newton territory: smaller than a tablet, a tad too big to fit into most pockets. Perhaps theyre also trying to bring cargo pants back:
Me interviewing Jeff at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference in October 2008.
