Alex Barnett blog : mydata

Me 2.0 (and how I got there)

alexbarnett — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:05:00 GMT

A few days ago, I celebrated my birthday and was pinged on Facebook by friends and family congratulating me on being another year older (!).

Along with those good wishes, I also got a few virtual pats on the back, commenting on how healthy I was looking in some recent photos and asked for details on how I achieved the progress I had made. Of course, it's awesome for people to take notice of the hard work you've put in and confess to blushing a little at the complements. This post is my response, sharing some of the things that have worked for me in the last 14 months or so in my journey to make a better me.

Before I start, I want to stress: the following worked (and is working) for me. It's not meant as a prescription or a recipe for you. It is a bunch of things - given my psyche, environment and genetics - that worked for me. If you're looking to go on a similar journey (or already on your journey and looking for new ideas), feel free to take a little of "this", and a bit of "that", and plenty of none of "this"! So let's go to it...

It's about making a decision and sticking to it.

A few weeks ago I was at Boston Logan airport checking in when the the lady processing my boarding pass did a double take when she looked at my Mass driver's ID. She commented that I looked a lot different to the photo on the card. She asked how I lost all that weight. I told her that I made a decision a while ago and had stuck with it. She congratulated me warmly and gave me back my ID.

(12 months - before and after not my actual ID pics!)

In July of last year I made that decision. I was unhappy (and felt guilty) about my general level of fitness, I didn't like what I saw in the mirror and was feeling increasingly physically uncomfortable. And no surprise...at that time I weighed 204 lbs (I'm 6ft), with an estimated body fat: of ~24%. I was doing no regular exercise and was on course to add another 5-10 lbs over the next year. Not good, at all.

So I decided to change that. My goal (I'll come back to this later) was high-level. Maybe a little too high-level. It was to "Lose weight!". I didn't specify how much or in what time period, all I knew is that I wanted to reverse the trend, and given where I was I felt that was good enough. All the progress and achievements stem from that decision and deciding to stick with it.

It has to be sustainable.

I started slow. I thought about my goal in terms of two dimensions - 1. how much + what I was eating and 2. how much + the kind of exercise I was doing.

On the food side, I stopped eating junk and started eating more "whole foods": unprocessed foods like salads, meats that hadn't been gunked with preservatives and crap, fruit not candy, etc. I wasn't measuring calories but I stopped snacking.

On the exercise side, I wanted to actually do some but not over-do it too quickly. My body was badly out of condition and I did not want to injure myself and go two steps backward. So I started doing long walks and bought a cycling machine - 30 mins of walks + 20 mins of gentle cycling to start. Every day. Nothing dramatic.

I did that for about a month and was already feeling the benefits. I probably lost about 5 lbs in that time. As I progressed, my resolve hardened. But I also realized that I wanted the good things in life too - to drink when I like and not give up delicious food. The trick was to find the right balance between the input (caloric intake) and the output (energy consumed) and to achieve a daily caloric deficit. Depriving myself of the things I enjoy (good food and drink) wasn't going to be a sustainable path to success.

Psychologically, this sustainable path for the long term has been a core component to my being able to stick with the decision I made. For me, it was all about finding that right balance and since I made that decision, I've been able to eat delicious food that fills me and drink what I want when I want. But that has also meant doing the exercise required to balance it out.

"If you don't measure it, you can't manage it".

(My Withings charts - shows body weight in lbs in top half, body fat % lower half)

By that point I got more specific with my goals. I researched the question of how much I should weigh in order to get out of the "overweight" zone and into the good zone. The answer came back - with my natural physique, I needed to get to around 175lbs, and lose a further ~20 lbs to be at my ideal weight. I also started learning more about body fat % (BF). I didn't know what my number was (I could estimate it roughly using some online calculators) and realized that my BF%, along with my weight, was something I wanted to measure and track.

I ordered a Withings scale from Amazon - a pretty cool wi-fi enabled device that comes along with a web service and iPhone app where you can track graph the numbers, including BF%. Since then, It has acted as an invaluable tool on my journey: being able to track and review my weight and BF history and overall progress has helped the psychological re-enforcement that comes from having the "proof" and details of my progress. It helps to remind me about how far I've come, where I want to get to and how much I really don't want to go back to where I was. It remains a concrete expression of the output of my decision.

Don't go it alone.

Throughout my journey I tried to learn as much as I could about being effective in my efforts. There's a ton of websites and resources out there that I came across - lots of good advice and tons of bad ideas. One resource that help me a lot was the Reddit.com fitness subreddit - I was (and still am) mainly a lurker there, occasionally asking questions and generally getting sound advice from a community of smart people who know their stuff. As long as you've already looked through the FAQ, it is a safe place to ask "dumb" questions as well as discussing more advanced topics.

The other big help was having a friend who is also on their own journey. I don't think it really matter what level they happen to be at - the main thing is that you're able to share your own progress, goals, tips, tricks etc and learn from each other. It also helped my motivation. I've had one since the beginning and I know this helped lot.

(Runkeeper global meetup - Boston, July 2011)

Define a destination. Set and reset goals.

Generally speaking, I think anyone who aims to acheive anything needs to figure out 2 things: 1. define the destination (the end-goal or objective) and 2. plot the waypoints to that destination (the mini-goals and a strategy to get there).

My goals evolved over time. When I set out on my journey, I had a general, non-specific goal. That was fine to start off with, but as I progressed and started measuring progress I began to get more specific. I went from "Lose weight!" (very high-level) to my current goal with several in between. You could even say that my current end-goal definition (or destination) is really a mission:

to be fitter today than when I was 20 years old.

For me, that's a durable mission and one that motivates me to keep on right track over the long-haul.

Then there's the question on how I get there. I started getting more specific with my mini-goals: to lose x lbs (but not timeframed), achieve x BF%, cover Y distance on the bike in y minutes, run x miles in Y minutes, lift X weight for Y reps for Z sets. I happen to be very goals-driven, it's how I'm wired. I need that sense driving toward a destination and the satisfaction of achieving my goals. And back to the measuring bit, I used tools like Runkeeper, the Withings scale, Fitocracy and MyFitnessPal to track (and in some cases share) progress across my activities as well as (more recently) tracking food intake.

My regime

Now, on to the details of my "regime". Please remember - the following isn't meant as a prescription or recipe: I'm sharing this because a number of friends have asked for the specifics, so I'm sharing what has worked (is working) for me.

The main principles behind my regime design are:

Get strong. Apart from the aesthetic benefits of having muscle and lower body fat %, the fact is the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn through - and not just while actually doing the exercise. So the muscle I'm building and the exercise I'm doing to build that muscle (and the subsequent metabolic effect the lifting has on the central nervous system) allows me to eat well (back to the "sustainable lifestyle" point above). When I set out on this journey I never thought I'd find myself going to a gym and "lifting weights". But that's the essential part of what I've been doing for a over a year now.
- Resource tip: I picked up an awesome book and program called Starting Strength. It's a beginner's guide on how to correctly and safely lift weights (the 5: squat, press, bench press, deadlift, and power clean) and does a great job of explaining the "why" and benefits of strength training using these lifts as the core exercises of any fitness program.
Keep getting stronger. As per the Starting Strength program, I'm always aiming to lift more (adding weight) and harder. Apart from the psychological benefits provided by the sense of progression, there are also physiological benefits to stressing (but not over-stressing) the body each session. In other words, I'm not going to the gym to have a "walk in the park". Keep making the body adapt.
Run without dying - this is referring to my overall cardiovascular fitness. So I run regularly or do other exercise that keeps my heart rate up for more than 20 mins at a time.
Keep it interesting - variety is the spice of life as they say. Getting bored doing the same exercises over and over can threaten the enjoyment of the journey. So I mix it up (the "Ancillary" work that helps with constant adaption), different runs with different goals, basketball not jogging, but I always stick with my "core" work: squat, deadlifts, benches, chins, pullups and dips.
Eat well, but smart - on the food side, I want to be able to eat and drink what I want, when I want - within reason. I've completely cut out junk food (except for very rare occasions), and drink spirits or wine but not beer. In the early days I was particularly careful around carbs (I wasn't doing weight training then), but have since learned not to be fearful of them (in fact, I've come to realize that "carbs" - especially starchy carbs - are essential to muscle development and body recovery. I've recently been experimenting with the Leangains system, following the early morning training protocol with very positive results. This may be a program I'll cycle in and out of weeks at a time (2 weeks on, 4 weeks off or something)...we'll see.
Respect the rest - I rarely do heavy lifting excercise 2 days on a row. I alternate workout and rest days (one day on, next day off). Without proper recovery you're wasting the time you put into the workouts. I have a week off every 5-7 weeks and generally speaking try to get more sleep than I used to.

So, with that rather extended preamble(!), here are the specifics of what a typical week might look like:

***Pull Day (Monday)***

-- Core

Squats - warm ups: 10 reps no bar, 10 reps just the bar, 5 reps at 50% RM, 5 reps at 70%

Squats - workout sets: 3 sets of 5 reps at 85% RM

Deadlifts - warm ups: 10 reps just the bar, 5 reps at 50% RM, 3 reps at 70%

Deadlifts - workout set: 5 reps at 90% RM

Weighted Chins: 3 sets of 6-8 reps

Weighted Pull-ups: 3 sets of 6-8 reps

-- Ancillary

Ab work: e.g. weighted incline bench: 3 sets of 8-10 reps

Rows work: - e.g. seated rows or weighted inverted rows: 3 sets of 8-10 reps

Leg curls: 3 sets of 6-8 reps

Eat +20% of calorie maintenance

***Rest Day (Tuesday)***

Eat -20% of calorie maintenance

***Push Day (Wednesday)***

-- Core

Squats - warm ups: 10 reps no bar, 10 reps just the bar, 5 reps at 50% RM, 5 reps at 70%

Squats - workout sets: 3 sets of 5 reps at 85% RM

Bench press - warm ups: 10 reps just the bar, 8 reps at 50% RM, 5 reps at 70%

Bench press - workout sets: 3 sets of 5 reps at 85% RM

Weighted dips: 3 sets of 6-8 reps

-- Ancillary

Dumbbell work

Tricep work

Leg extensions: 3 sets of 6-8 reps

***Rest Day or Cardio Day (Thursday)***

20 - 45 min run, or a CrossFit type work out without heavy lifting (i.e. a cardio-centric workout for 15 to 20 mins).

***Pull Day (Friday) - as above***

***Rest Day or Cardio Day (Saturday) - as above***

***Pull Day (Sunday) - as above***

A few definitions:

Rep = a single repetition

Set = a set of reps

RM = Repetition Maximum (the maximum you can lift something once) - see Predicting One Rep Max.-

Tools and resources

Runkeeper (track runs, activities + awesome iPhone app)
Withings scale (wifi-enables weight scale)
Fitocracy (fitness gamification)
MyFitnessPal (track food and calories)
Starting Strength. (beginners guide and program for weightlifting)
Predicting One Rep Max
Estimate calorie requirements
Leangains system (lose body fat, not strength)
CrossFit (kick-ass workouts)
Reddit fitness subreddit (great community-based resource)

So there you have it. Let me know if you have any questions or even tips that have worked for you!

Chris Anderson: Charlie Rose interview discussing FREE

alexbarnett — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:51:00 GMT

I spent some time this morning watching the Charlie Rose interview with Wired's editor, Chris Anderson, discussing FREE.

The interview covers the economics and ideas driving the Internet's current (and future) state: the Gift Economy; the Attention Economy; and the Reputation Economy. Rose leads the conversation into topics such as covering the Freemium business model and consumer perceptions about the value of privacy (or lack of thereof).

The interview also moves to the topic of the Yahoo! and Microsoft merger. Rose asks: "Why is it that Yahoo! can't recruit the people at Google - through some extraordinary salary offers - that would let Yahoo! replicate what Google has?"

Anderson's answer (paraphrased): "There is a basic philosophical difference between Google and Yahoo! Google is a Machine company. Google believes that data, machines and the Algorithms will drive the company's growth. Yahoo! is a people company - it believes content created by people and the conections made between them with its drive growth."

"And what about Microsoft?", Rose asks. Anderson responds (again, paraphrasing) - "Microsoft is a pre-web software company that philosophically wants to be somewhere in between Google and Yahoo!" An oversimplified analysis, surely (hey, it's a TV interview answer), but I think the Anderson's conclusion is pretty accurate at its heart.

Among the dynamos, My Data and advice for startups.

alexbarnett — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:41:00 GMT

SaaS / DaaS / WaaS (Whatever As a Service) and Mashups

Nick Carr quotes Henry Adams in Among the dynamos

“One lingered long among the dynamos,” he wrote, “for they were new, and they gave to history a new phase.

Pointing to SaaS Platforms trends, Clive Keyte write about "SaaS Management Platforms"

"Force.com is not on it’s own offering ‘cloud development facilities for SaaS applications though, there are a plethora of smaller companies entering into the fray including Bungee Connect"

Among the dynamos indeed...

And SaaS by the numbers: Salesforce.com: 24 Billion API Calls So Far

"This statistic along with others like 130 million transactions daily, 61,200 custom applications, and 750 AppExchange apps"

Bray Forrest informs us even Your Car Gets An API

"At the end of the month the Dash will get a RESTful API. At the user's initiative lat/long coordinates can be sent to a server. The Dash will consume a GeoRSS feed. This is just the first release. In the future they may add HTML pages, search and even the ability to poll. The device I saw did not have any API-driven apps loaded, but I can imagine great ones (update my location and finding out who from my YASN contacts are nearby)."

So what will we do with all these APIs? Mashups of course! What is a MashUp?

"Potatoes + beans + a little bit of beef + pork, and then you pour Smithwicks over the top of it."

Ah...Microsoft Research project alert: Rotunda: Profiling the Cloud

"the goal of the project is to be able to profile the performance of a Web application from the time a user clicks on a link and triggers an event in the browser—which triggers a database lookup—through each point of the resolution of the transaction."

Sounds a lot like Bungee Connect instrumentation designed to measure every transactions from user's browser interactions and server-side roundtrips, through to the app's service calls, triggers, events, response times, etc...You see, our business model demands we and our developers know this...we have this today :-)

My Data

The UK gets some relief from the ID Card madness, for a while anyway...turns out National ID cards scheme will delayed until 2012:

"The Government’s national identity card scheme was “in the intensive care ward” after leaked documents showed plans to issue UK citizens with the cards have been delayed until after the next election."

Phew! Seeing stories like this seems to be knocking sense to those who are living in cloud-cuckoo land...

On the other end of the "my data" equation: cries of "we want our data, when we want it and where we want it" are getting heard...

Here's video intro to DataPortability.org initiative: DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix.

"DataPortability gathers existing open standards into a blueprint for a social, open, remixable web where your online identity, media, contacts and content can follow you wherever you go."

Niall Kennedy's take on Data Portability, Authentication, and Authorization.

"Data authorization is the first step in data portability."

Enter OpenID and OAuth.

How will DataPortability.org keep from being hijacked by Microsoft? Now Microsoft has joined the fray, so does the inevitable questioning begin:

"So is the nascent DataPortability.org group at such risk from Redmond? Not according to a source inside the group."

News of Last.fm's on demand since CBS's acquisition hit the mainstream tech media yesterday. But what next? CBS Will Try To Convert Last.FM Acquisition To Video Value

“One of the reasons we liked the idea of buying it is, if we can develop a great social networking site around this music content, why couldn’t this extend in to entertainment, in to news sports, all businesses that we’re in"

Kaching!

Martin Plaehn's Quick Hits: Do's and Dont's of Entrepreneurship. 16 pieces of advice for start-ups.

"6. Do always accumulate choice; two by definition, three of four is better; then make decisions and have a back-up"

More Investments Into Open Source

News that Alfresco Gets Another $9M for Open Source Content Management

"Alfresco Software, an open source content management alternative to software created for large companies, has received an additional $9 million in a third round of financing, led by SAP Ventures and existing investors Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund"

However, not all the shareholders are happy with the Alfresco deal...Matt Asay wrote in New open source venture funding and the importance of SAP Ventures and Intel Capital

"But since we didn't need the money (not even remotely) and I didn't want the dilution, it's not my favorite news of the day."

Amen to that.

Uh Oh...

Mobile phone radiation wrecks your sleep

"Radiation from mobile phones delays and reduces sleep, and causes headaches and confusion, according to a new study, reports The Independent"

What I'm reading...

alexbarnett — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:06:00 GMT

There are a whole bunch of interesting posts / stuff I find on the net that I bookmark on del.icio.us (at least, I think they are interesting). Over the years I've been experimenting with different ways of sharing these with you. My most recent solution has been to include my del.icio.us links within my feed as seperate items. The problem with this approach is I haven't had a permalinked way of publishing these to my blog with a way to easily edit prior to publishing...also, having the daily summaries del.icio.us format in a feed is lame.

So I going to try something new. Instead of having the daily del.icio.us link summaries published as RSS items within my Feedburner feed, I'm going to publish these as blog posts. It should make things more economical from the consumption point of view (I don't think the "Links for 2008-01-20 [del.icio.us]" blah blah feed item titles are pretty). To do this, I have:

disabled the del.icio.us feed syndication from Feedburner (the Link Splicer)
have installed Josh Leggard's Insert Feed Content plugin for Windows Live Writer - this lets me populate a draft blog post with the latest items from any feed (my del.icio.us feed in this case - I'll still use the service for bookmarking) that I can then include / edit / add more commentary before I post to my blog - along with a custom post title.

Better me thinks. I like Harry Pierson's and Assaf's Labnotes style of providing links with commentary...over time I hope to emulate these.

So here goes - this first effort will be larger than future posts like this...shorter in the future.

OpenID - Getting Traction

Telegraph to become OpenID provider
"The Telegraph will soon become the first newspaper in the world, and the first British media company, to become an OpenID provider."
Yahoo! Announces Support for OpenID; Users Able to Access Multiple Internet Sites with Their Yahoo! ID
Sweet!
Stories we want to see in 2008
"Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Endorse Support OpenID and OAuth"

Cool UI / Vizualization and Useful Bits

external hard disk treemap
"an external hard disk that shows the content of the hard disk on its outside skin."
Fascinating new way of entering text
"Dasher is a really fascinating interface that allows you to write by browsing through letters using a finger, mouse or some other pointing devise."
How Does FeedDemon Calculate Attention?
Nick Bradbury: "FeedDemon's algorithm for determining a feed's attention rank has changed since I first wrote about it, but it's still very simple."
using delicious on your iphone
Perfect. All I need is an iPhone now.
wmIRC.com - IRC client for Windows Mobile Smartphone and Pocket PC / Phone Edition
"IRC for when you're on the move."

SaaS Stuff

Scalable Media Hosting with Amazon S3
Amazon S3 101.
How to package up the SaaS platform
Phil Wainwright: "Sun’s intervention gives MySQL’s open source database an aura of greater enterprise readiness than it previously had, backed up by fully accountable support offered on a traditional commercial basis."
Updates to URI Syntax in Dec 2007 ADO.NET Data Services CTP
Astoria gets URI syntax updates.
The Idea of Software as a Service Platform
I still don’t see desktop GIS being replaced by web services anytime soon.
600 Web APIs
Programmable Web's 600 web APIs.
Enter the Internet Cloud
"The Internet cloud [is] where the distributed and programmable network of services across the globe will serve all the data, resources and functionality we will ever use." Good quote ;-)
Your Data in the Cloud - URL-based computing, SimpleDB, Astoria, etc.
Michael Cote: "the question for Astoria, SimpleDB, and all these “the non-relational database” databases isn’t so much a question of a good idea or not, but the way the technology is packaged and delivered."
12 predictions for Enterprise Web 2.0 in 2008
Dion Hinchcliffe on the worlds of SOA, SaaS, and Web 2.
Eight reasons SaaS will surge in 2008
Phil Wainwright: "The coming year is going to be a pivotal one for anyone involved in software-as-a-service."
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
New book by Nicholas Carr, author of Does IT Matter? "A hundred years ago, companies stopped producing their own power with steam engines and generators and plugged into the newly built electric grid." Next - everything software.
Is Red Hat's New Development Environment Destined for an Amazon or IBM Cloud?
Dana Gardner: "Tools in the clouds."

Developer Cults and Dataheads

Sriram Krishnan: Amazon SimpleDB - Technical Overview
"I love the data model for SimpleDB."
The Cults of Programming
"In my experience with various programmers over the years, I've realized that most of them fall into one of several cults which describe their behavior." Via Assaf.
Scaling Twitter: Making Twitter 10000 Percent Faster
How many of the 15 Twitter employees are dedicated to managing all this?
Eventual Consistency Is Not That Scary
"Get ahead of the curve and understand for your application what the consistency requirements will be."
Eventually Consistent
"Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the concept of eventual consistency in the context of data replication."
Make Money Fast - Introducing Amazon DevPay
"With DevPay, developers can focus on being creative and innovative while dispatching the less-than-glamorous aspects of dealing with bank accounts, credit cards, and so forth to us."
Facebook Right, Scoble Wrong: Social Network Interoperability and the O'Reilly Social Graph FOO Camp
Dare Obasanjo: "The data portability folks want to make it easy for you to jump from service to service."
ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) Transforms SQL Server into an Atom Store
Wow.
Rails 2.0: It's done!
Er, Rails 2.
Volta Fundamentals
Erik Meijer's latest. In essence Volta is a recompiler.

Uncategorizable But Good.

Lessons from Star Wars
Johnnie Moor's pointer: "Stephen Anderson shares his presentation about what designers can learn from the making of Star Wars."

OAuth Podcast

alexbarnett — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:45:00 GMT

Chris Messina (aka FactoryJoe), Larry Halff (of Ma.gnolia) and Eran Hammer-Lahav accepted our invitation to join Ted and me and discuss OAuth in our latest Bungee Line podcast.

What is OAuth? From OAuth Getting Started - Part 1, here's the jist of it:

"OAuth allows you to share your private resources (photos, videos, contact list, bank accounts) stored on one site with another site without having to hand out your username and password.

...Users don’t care about protocols and standards – they care about better experience with enhanced privacy and security. This is exactly what OAuth sets to achieve. With web services on the rise, people expect their services to work together in order to accomplish something new. Instead of using a single site for all their online needs, users use one site for their photos, another for videos, another for email, and so on. No one site can do everything better. In order to enable this kind of integration, sites need to access the user resources from other sites, and those are many times protected (private family photos, work documents, bank records)."

Adam Kalsey, summarizes it well:

"OAuth aims to standardize the way in which different consumer systems share data. The goal is to allow a person to give an application access to do some things on your accounts at other sites, but not everything. It’s role-based authorization for APIs."

OAuth is a big idea, but is it a "solution looking for a problem to solve"? I don't think so. The problem for end users today is real, i.e. authorizing one service to access your data by another service for use by the first service, securely and with control. For developers wanting to develop apps and services that create value through the use of customer data stored on other services, there is no standardized means set of protocols to lean on. Instead, developers need to waste time learning a new way for their app to be authorized to do so for each service provider, having to jump through the various specific means and idiosyncrasies of each service.

The current way is broken - too many means to the same end, for end-users, for developers leveraging service APIs and for the service providers themselves wanting to extend their services through web APIs.

OAuth is getting the attention from a number of people and services such as Six Apart and others ("Digg, Jaiku, Flickr, Ma.gnolia, Plaxo, Pownce, Twitter, and hopefully Google, Yahoo, and others soon to follow") have committed to run with it. This is good news, but we need to get the word out there and help make developers' lives easier. So, go listen to first OAuth podcast and evangelize OAuth!

Topics covered:

Background on Chris, Larry, and Eran
What problem is OAuth trying to solve?
What is the current identity landscape - what are the alternatives, and why is OAuth a better way for all?
How does OAuth work, who should use it?
What's the development experience like?
What's the end-user experience like?
What's the relationship between OAuth and OpenID?
Where is OAuth today?
What will it take for OAuth to succeed?
Who's backing OAuth - adopters?

Facebook export - WTF????

alexbarnett — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:55:00 GMT

On hearing the news over at TechCrunch that I'm able to export my social network data out of Facebook as a .CSV file using the FriendCSV app, I did exactly that.

I have 74 contacts on Facebook but I managed to export 144 records. That's 70-odd people's "social data" including education, work experience, current location, hometown, affiliations, date of birth of people I don't know. Like Justin over here, I seem to have more "friends" than I bargained for. And I've now got their data.

This is not good. Facebook - wtf is going on????

Update: Dan Birdwhistell, developer of the FriendsCSV app, commented below soon after I posted to explain the issue I described above was NOT the fault of Facebook but an issue with the FriendsCSV data processing side of things:

"Hey Alex. I just posted this on Techcrunch as well. WTF is right, but this very unfortunate glitch has been fixed. Here's what happened: After valleywag, techmeme, digg, etc. all picked it up, the server got overwhelmed and we had around 25 dumps that were in queue. FB times out after a few minutes, so to speed up with the dump, we added some threading to the libraries, which pushed the exports through in an instant, but also misplaced some of the data in what we now know to be at least four separate csv dumps. When we were alerted to this, we removed the threading and all was right again; however, the error did occur and it was our fault. We'll continue to test the app during the night just to make sure this doesn't happen again. "

Deepest apologies that this happened."

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly Dan. Here's the thing though - you have shown how easily all this data can be extracted - that's a good thing, and well done for bringing our attention to that, but you have also shown how wrong it can go - that's the bad thing. It's small scale in this case but you've highlighted how this can go bad in a more general sense.

I've been very supportive of the "my data" efforts, however my support has been based on the presumption that I'm actually talking about "my data", not somebody elses. This real-world example has opened my eyes to the fact that opening up social networks / social graph will be a complex business and fraught with possible downsides.

At large scale, the ability to extract all my social graph data - as opposed to "my data" which I provide permission to an application - begs the following question: who's data is my social graph data? It is each individual's, or is it mine once Jo Smith has allowed me access to it?

LibraryThing again

alexbarnett — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:27:00 GMT

I ended the day re-visiting my LibraryThing. Glad I did...I had forgotten how damn good it is.

Time to update my catalog with about a year's lot of books. Worth doing since I can get my data out and re-use elsewhere. Otherwise, why would I bother?

My data - let me use as I choose

alexbarnett — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 12:28:00 GMT

I read Chris Messina's post this morning, "A Bill of Righteous Intent" where he discusses the draft manifesto: A Bill of Rights for Users.

I liked what I read.

The manifesto supports the concept of what I've been calling "my data". In short, my data is mine because I generated it. Because I generated it, I should control it and I should be able to use as I choose.

A couple of weeks back I wrote Closed is still the old closed summarizing my latest thinking on this topic. Clearly, I support this direction.

P.S. I have an idea to propose. For a while now I've been tagging posts / content that I've come across with the "my data" tag - you can browse these on my "mydata" tag on del.icio.us as an example. I propose that if you are interested in this topic or writing and/or tagging content that discusses this overall idea then use the "mydata" tag. It makes it easier for those interested to follow the conversation and find useful resources on the topic. Just an idea.

Closed is Still the Old Closed.

alexbarnett — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:45:00 GMT

Kim Cameron, Microsoft's Chief Architect and the man behind Windows Cardspace (was infoCard), has shared his perspective the question of whether or not OpenID would make customers' lives better on social networks. There appears to be a general agreement that allowing a Single Sign On (SSO) service across properties (think "social networks", email services, and anything else that requires authentication / authorization) is good for the customer. There's no question that from customer's (or prospective customer's) point of view that idea of not having to create multiple accounts, usernames, passwords, etc has to be an appealing prospect. There doesn't seem to be much controversy here.

The controversial questions are: would the net effect be positive or negative for the online property owner if

a) they supported SSO and,

b) let competing services leverage "their data" - data generated by customers using while using their service.

The old way of thinking is the "walled garden" way of thinking. The logic goes something like this: Why would FaceBook, MySpace, x-socialnetwork or x-service make it easy for other properties or services to extract user profile information (i.e. "my data") from their service? Because openness is great? Yeah…right.

Kim's answer to these two questions are the right answers in my opinion. His view is that the net effect would be positive.

I'll quote myself from my 20 Thoughts on Attention post as to some of the reasons why I agree with Kim's point of view:

People care about the portability and security of their data.

Software and services that allow customers to take their data with them will do better than those that don't.

Letting customers share and take their data with them will be a competitive feature of successful online services.

New entrants into markets are more likely to allow customers to take their data with them than the existing market leaders.

Market leaders want to lock-in their customers by locking in their data.

Customers won't want their data locked-in.

Markets leaders will have to follow the trend of letting their customers take their data with them in order to grow their customer base.

Multiple online identities is the norm, not the exception. Attention data reading will need to account for multiple identities and contexts.

These are assertions, and I could spend ages providing data and examples as to why I believe in these, but the bottom line is this: the whole revolution we're witnessing where "consumer" properties are investing heavily in the provision API services that allow "their" customer's data to be retrieved and leveraged by potentially competing properties is driven by the acceptance of these assertions. Contrary to what Seth might think ("Closed is the New Open"), Closed is NOT the new Open, Closed is Still the Old Closed.

Companies providing these APIs "get" the future and they are benefiting in the here and now. They realize it is a two-way street and that the barriers to new customer acquisition will be lowered if

a) they interoperate with multiple ID systems (via something like OpenID)

b) allow customers to immediately leverage their existing data generated and residing on external properties / services

c) the data created and residing within their own service / property can be leverage elsewhere.

On point c), Facebook's latest "opening up" where the social network is allowing their ~~users~~ customers to extract their Facebook updates is yet another incremental step in this 2-way direction.

Chase.com - is this your idea of transparent marketing?

alexbarnett — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 18:20:00 GMT

This ad popped up on the Chase.com site this morning. Overlayed is what looks like internal codes from their customer segmention model. Either this is shown in error, or, Chase is taking the notion of transparent marketing a little too literally.

The Joker gets an ID Card

alexbarnett — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:05:00 GMT

Ever since I heard of the UK government's plans for an ID card system, I've felt for a number of reasons that it wouldn't work and that there would be 'unintended consequences', including making it easier for cybercriminals to commit large-scale fraud.

My primary concern has been the ability for the government to execute on their plans - let's face it, the UK government's track record in large scale IT projects is comparable to Eddie the Eagle's efforts in the Olympics (a British ski jumper who managed 56th position out of 57 competitors. The 57th was disqualified).

Since the original proposals, it seems that the UK government itself is realising the scale of this project is too ambitious and likely to fail - hence the recent scoping down. This is one of a number of 'risk management' tactics we'll read about as reality hits <the> home <office>. By the time they do eventually roll it out, it will look nothing like the original plan, will cost a load more than 'guessed' and will arrive years later than expected. And then they'll scrap it. And then they'll re-try it. Of course, I won't say I told you so.

One line of argument made by the pro-ID cards faction (er, the UK government) is to point out how well the ID programs are working overseas and how they are ~~reducing benefit fraud~~ increasing the security for all. Hmmm...I wonder what they might make of this Dutch joker:

"A man from Hellevoetsluis has managed to get an official ID card with a photo of himself made up to look like the Joker, from the Batman films. The man managed to get round strict new rules governing photos for ID cards and passports by saying the make-up and hat were part of his religious beliefs. The council gave the go ahead."

A little less conversation a little more action please

alexbarnett — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 14:42:00 GMT

On APML, I tend to agree with what Stowe has said on the topic and John Tropea has some good thoughts too.

To Marjolein - frankly, I'm getting tired of the attention conversation. Not because I believe it is not worthy idea, but because there's been so much talk in this area and not enough action.

Given my recent trip to Vegas, I'll quote the King to summarize my advice to the workgroup:

"A little less conversation a little more action please"

Privacy Policies should have RSS feeds

admin — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 21:57:00 GMT

James Governor and Kevin Murphy both agree: site Privacy Policies should have RSS feeds.

Absolutely.

Search & Enjoy! (Podcast) The Power of Search and Recommendation

admin — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 20:44:00 GMT

"Speakers from Microsoft, Blinkx and Last.fm discussed issues of content regarding search, recommendation, the semantic web and the ownership of data in the Web 2.o era at Content 2.0 on 6th June 2006."

I was on the panel with Matthew Ogle of LastFM and Surunga Chandratillake of Blinx TV, two UK companies doing some very cool stuff in the area of collaborative filtering as content recommendation systems.

FORUM: Search & Enjoy! The Power of Search and Recommendation
Featuring Suranga Chandratillake of Blinkx, Alex Barnett of Microsoft, and Matthew Ogle of Last fm, chaired by Mike Grehan of Marketsmart Interactive
http://www.archive.org/download/content2pointzero/07-c2pz-007.mp3
Filesize: 36.2 meg
Length: 1.15.17

You can listen to the podcast here and a detailed write up here.

I was invited to discuss Attention and My Data. The word Attention (with a capital 'A') had been mentioned a number of times during the day and I took the opportunity to define the concept as I understood it. The My Data notion combined the Attention Data idea with topic of customer data ownership and its portability. I asked both Matthew and Surunga if they were thinking along these lines and they both confirmed that they absolutely were.

Matthew explained how they are planning how LastFM users will be able to export their playlist and associated metadata away with them (which tracks they listen to, how long, times of day, frequency etc) and plug them into other services if that what users want to do. I loved that.

Surunga said he also support this 'my data' approach in the context of Pico but pointed out some of the privacy issues associated with allowing this level of flexibility.

He also made a great point re: the wishlist analogy I've used as attention data. I had talked through the scenario where a user could take their wishlist from Amazon and plug into another booksite, such as Barnes and Noble online to get pricing on those books and recommendations based on the wishlist. Surunga suggested that we should be able to use that same wishlist in any service that was capable of recommendation - the point being that the books you read would be a great pointer to the kind of video, podcasts, blogs and audio content that my be of interest to you.

I really enjoyed the session, starting off my piece by explaining that I was at the conference under false pretences - I wasn't there to pitch Microsoft products of MSN Search or the new raft of Live services, but that I had been invited to the conference because I had been blogging and talking about Attention and the 'my data' stuff and the organizers liked what I wrote. I later found out from the organizers that Microsoft UK pr team had seemed bemused as too why I had been invited to talk and not one of their senior MSN EMEA VP superstars. The power of blogs indeed...

MSN Search Champs Podcast - Privacy conversation

admin — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:43:00 GMT

I attended the MSN Search Champs today....and what a day. Given the recent news and concerns around the data MSN Search, Yahoo and AOL provided to the government, there was a session set up where the 57 bloggers / online experts at MSN Search Champ were invited to discuss the topic with senior MSN management (Senior VP Yusuf Mehdi and VP Chris Payne).

As Robert Scoble wrote, MSN VP Chris Payne took the opportunity to confirm that no IP address or PII (Personally Identifiable Information) was provided. It became apparent to me at least, that many (maybe the majority) of the MSN Search Champs didn't realize this prior to today's event. I think this misundertanding is one of the reasons there was such a deal and story made front page news in the media and in the blogosphere.

And so conversation started.

And it carried on into the night, even after the event was over - here's a podcast (mp3, 42 mins, 10mb) recorded tonight to discuss what we heard and learnt today. We had five Web 2.0 Workgroup members on the podcast: Fred Oliveira (post), Dion Hinchcliffe (post), Joshua Porter (post), and myself. We also had Chris Pirillo, Thomas Vander Wal of Infocloud the organizer of MSN's Search Champs, Brady Forrest.

Michael Arrington, Richard MacManus and Live Side have some info on their first day at MSN Search Champs.

download the podcast (mp3, 42 mins, 10mb)

Update: Thursday 26 2006: One point of clarification since the podcast was provided to me by Ramez Naam, director of program management at MSN Search: the DOJ did not ask MSN for PII specifically. They asked for MSN Search logs. MSN told them that they would not give them PII and they were fine with that.

The major push-pull between MSN / DOJ was in the amount of data - they asked MSN for a much larger volume of data, and it was scoped down to a relatively small period.

Tags: Microsoft MSN Google Yahoo privacy