Allow me to recommend Markdown

John Gruber and Aaron Swartz's Markdown is a plain and open tool for making blogging and other webby things easy and fun. It lets you represent the most common HTML tags that would be used in day-to-day web writing as intuitive punctuation. For example, instead of linking to Markdown by writing

<a href="http://daringfireball.net/
         projects/markdown/">Markdown</a>

I write

[Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/
           projects/markdown/)

I think the simplest way to use it on a Mac is to copy Markdown text to the clipboard, then run the following script:

#!/bin/bash
pbpaste|~/handyscripts/Markdown.pl|pbcopy

A marked-down copy of your text will then be on the clipboard. I pop up Launchbar to call the script in a jiffy, and using a clipboard with history helps manage the whole mess.

Use RSS

I first used the Internet when I was 10 or so. I made a webpage when I was 12; it was 1997 and I was using the Maryland library system's free text-only Internet service through a terminal emulator. It was a big deal when we found out about NetZero. When I was 14, I made a blog-before-there-were-blogs. Somehow, my friends kept up with what I was doing, and I kept up with what they were doing, without clicking a Friend button. We emailed a lot. Rather than writing notes to everyone, we emailed each other, having long, detailed conversations about spirituality, video games, politics, books, and magic.

Since I started using the Internet in 1995, a lot of things have changed, sure, but the biggest change in how I use the Internet is RSS. It used to be that websites were like textbooks: they were solid, you'd put them on a shelf, you'd refer to them when you wanted information. When a friend sent you a link to his website, you'd poke around on it for a while finding what he's made that you find interesting, and then you'd let it sit. Like textbooks, webpages got updated sporadically, and it wasn't clear what was new, or when you should go back and check a webpage. I would email my friends when I'd updated my webpage.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) changed this. RSS made the Internet feel, to me, more like a newspaper delivery than a textbook. For example, I'm currently kind of obsessed with Daring Fireball (thoughtful Mac journalism). Rather than going to DF several times a day, like I would have back in the 90's, I see new articles pop up in my RSS feed when they're written. I also read webcomics this way, blogs, some Twitter feeds, The Onion, and scientific journals.

Rather than explain how RSS works or how to use it, I would recommend trying Google Reader; it's pretty self-explanatory. There are oodles of other good RSS readers that are worth checking out, too, some are web services, like Bloglines, some are programs you run on your machine. I've had good experiences with NewsFire for the Mac. I think that Facebook is ubiquitous and Twitter is popular because most people don't use RSS readers. Twitter equals a blog limited to 140 characters plus the Follow feature, which is like subscribing to an RSS feed, except easier. Facebook's news feed is sort of RSSey, but also easier to use, but with much less control for the user. Facebook messages are to email as the Facebook news feed is to RSS. A Gmail user can email a Hotmail user who can email someone with an email address that they got from their job. It's impossible to send a Facebook message to someone without a Facebook account.

I use a custom Yahoo pipe to combine all of my feeds for my blogs into one feed, making it easier to keep up with all the stuff I do (see my website. FriendFeed and Buzz also allow you to export an aggregated RSS feed.

I like seeing what my friends are doing on the Internet. I also like Facebook for what it's good at: conversations about imported stuff, sharing contact information, handling guest lists for parties.

The harder it is for people to keep up with their friends without Facebook, the more Facebook is going to treat its users poorly. It's a little work to learn to use RSS, but it was a little bit of work to learn to use email in the 90's. I believe that we would see fewer cases of Facebook misusing personal information if everyone used open alternatives to as many bits of Facebook as possible.

A bit on photos

My screed against Facebook wasn't about privacy, but I have thoughts on that, too. Sure, Facebook, the company, has a bad track record, but most of the breaches are things like releasing information about who you're a Friend with. I think that we're sensitive to stories about breaches in privacy on Facebook because using Facebook feels eerie just to start with.

I went to Turkey during winter break of last year, and it was one of those figure-out-what-I'm-doing-with-my-life-by-seeing-the-world kind of trips. (I blogged about the trip, and took [pictures][tkpic]). On Pi Day of last year, I had a party at my house. It was kind of an open-house joint, with people coming and going at will. There was kind of a lull in the evening, when a couple of great friends came over; I'd been meaning to show them my pictures and tell them about my trip and what it meant to me. We sat and ate pie and chatted. Then, about a dozen people showed up, and we shared pie and sat around the living room and my friends endured the vacation picture slideshow storytelling. Some of these friends were super-close to me, some were acquaintances, and some I'd just met that day, but the atmosphere was cozy and cheerful. I have two guesses about why sharing pictures on Facebook feels strange. 1. Although I don't mind any one of my 306 Facebook friends seeing my photos, it feels weird to think of all of them seeing them. 2. When someone comes over to your house, they might flip through a photo album if it's sitting on the coffee table. They won't flip through a photo album that's sitting on a bookshelf without asking permission first, though.

Facebook doesn't make it easy for friends to politely ask permission to see pictures. Instead, permissions to see things are managed through lists. The problem is that the list of a dozen people sitting in my living room on Pi Day doesn't match any of my social groupings. It was spontaneous. Privacy settings should be about the content first, rather than what categories Facebook friends fit into. Most of my photo albums are fine for anyone to see, they're pictures of trash cans and fire hydrants and plants. Some of my albums have pictures of my siblings, and I want to protect them. I would like it if anyone could see that I'd made an album of pictures of my siblings unwrapping presents on Christmas, click one button to ask my permission to see the pictures, I would click one button if I wanted to show them, and they'd get a notification of this. Then, I would know who's looking at my pictures and we could have a chat about them.

BAAM-UMBC: So Uhhhh What's the Situation on the French Toast Makin...SItuation?

BAAM-UMBC: So Uhhhh What's the Situation on the French Toast Makin...SItuation?:

"Maybe I'll just sit here and blog about his crazy movements as they happen like that English assignment that everyone gets. You know, the one where you're supposed to sit in a place like a cafe and write down everything that happens around you. Only mine will be the Mike German experience. Here he comes again. His Achilles tendon has been hurting him. He's hobbling around like an old bear man. Here he comes with a sleeping bag, who wants to bet that he's going outside? Oh no... the dining room.... oh! and the surprise by the balcony door decision. I did not see that one coming. He grabs a pillow and an extra blanket and he is outta here."

Again with the phrase, "The Mike German Experience". It's a thing.

More excellent coverage of the Biking Across AMerica adventure, mostly covered by Shelly Kessler, Blogger Extraordinaire, at the BAAM blog

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Good Intentions Are Not Enough is moving. It's such a good blog about misguided aid and social justice work, and how to do better at caring for people.

Facebook is a content abyss

Summary: This is basically an endorsement of FriendFeed and Google Buzz, and an unusual condemnation of Facebook: I'm more bothered by its stinginess with my media than I am by its promiscuity with my data. If you don't want to bother with my griping: 1. Go to FriendFeed and sign up and befriend me, AlexSzatmary. If you already have a Facebook, Google, or Twitter account, it will take you literally two mouse clicks. 2. If you have Gmail, you already have Buzz. Auto-import your blog, Flickr albums, Twitter. Think about what in your feed you want to share publicly. It's super easy to set up. 3. Give friends links to public feeds of your FriendFeed or Buzz. Put it in your email signature. Put it on your Facebook profile. 4. If you feel like it, go to my Buzz feed and subscribe by RSS, or follow me in Gmail. Or you can go to my website, and subscribe by RSS to whatever you please. 5. Use RSS to keep up with things people make. You'll need an RSS reader for this; I like Google Reader, but there are other good options.

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Granted, Facebook has done a terrible job with everyone's personal data:

• Their Privacy Policy is longer than the Constitution
• The maze of menus one needs to maintain their privacy settings would befuddle as gifted a reckoner of hierarchically sorted information as a medieval scholastic.
• One needs to navigate a maze of menus to maintain their privacy settings because Facebook changes all of its rules a couple of times a year.
• Facebook gives away data about you to strangers without your permission.

These are all bad, but, really, I'm not bothered. I have 306 Facebook friends, and I'm strange in that I periodically de-friend any people that I don't have an actual relationship with of some sort; I might have far fewer "friends" than a lot of my friends. Sharing things with 306 friends isn't private.

I'm griping because Facebook is a content abyss. Most of the really cool stuff that I see pop up on my feed came from somewhere else, it's a link to a news site or it's a picture someone took or a YouTube video. The only new content that I'm seeing generated on Facebook is notes, which are really blog posts that are locked into Facebook. Facebook isn't where I make stuff, I write stuff on my blogs (see my web site), I put my pictures on Picasa, I put my videos on YouTube, I toot on Twitter, and I post my bookmarks on Delicious. I don't need Facebook as a publisher. Facebook is a hole that I throw things into.

I went to http://www.facebook.com/alexszatmary, logged-out, to see what a stranger would see. I have all of my privacy protection settings cranked low, I only guard my contact information. When a stranger looks at my facebook page, they see this:

All that a stranger can make of this is:

• Alex has sat on a stone bench and made funny faces
• Alex has some Facebook friends
• Alex likes Napoleon Dynamite, Carl Sagan, and soup

What I find most offensive about Facebook is that it won't share any of my content with strangers unless they get a Facebook account. The evil thing, as far as I'm concerned, with Facebook, isn't that it's promiscuous with my personal information, but that it's stingy with my media that I made that I want to share with 306 people plus my mom who isn't on Facebook. Facebook gets more money out of locking people into using Facebook than it does by doing skeezy things with your Likes or 25 Things. My mom doesn't have a Facebook account, so sharing anything, not just pictures, with my mom by way of Facebook is irritating or impossible.

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Facebook got to be really cool when it acquired FriendFeed, that's when everything got comment-on-able. People discussed clever links, we joked over old pictures, and walls became places where people could chat. This is the reason why I have a Facebook tab always open: Facebook is good at making conversations.

FriendFeed still exists on its own. I set up my own feed, where it's easy for anyone to see what I've been up to lately and have a chat about it. I figure that almost anything that I can share with 306 people, I want to be able to share easily with the whole world. FriendFeed lets me do that. It also has privacy settings:

Here's what my public FriendFeed looks like:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

FriendFeed doesn't do much on its own, it just grabs things that I make and puts them in one big pipe. It publishes the stuff I make, link to, like, whatever, and lets people see it. If you want to comment on something on FriendFeed, you need to log in, but it's free to look. You can also follow people individually on FriendFeed.

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Buzz also doesn't make you join to see my stuff. A stranger coming across my profile sees this:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

A stranger looking at my Google profile can see some pictures I took, links to my websites, and my Buzz feed. Facebook makes people join first, then gives them content; FriendFeed and Buzz both let their users open their profiles as much as they like.

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To put stuff on the Internet, I use

• twitter
• Picasa
• YouTube
• Blogger
• and Delicious

They each do a better job of the one thing they do than Facebook does. They each have privacy settings, and they're typically sensible and easy to use. I can quit any one of them at any time and switch to a different service easily. I'm thinking about using Vimeo for the occasional video that I make.

We allow Facebook to be a bully because it has high barriers to exit. Once you put stuff into Facebook, pictures, notes, video, whatever, it's not easy to export it again. Delicious, Picasa, and Blogger have built-in tools that make it easy to export all of your stuff from them. Also, for people to see the stuff I make on Facebook, they have to have Facebook accounts, too.

Facebook is closed in two important ways: 1. If I decide one day that I don't like, say, Delicious, I can check out, pick a new social bookmarking site, and import my old bookmarks; it might not be seamless, but it's something. You can't do anything like that with Facebook. If I quit Facebook, all of the information I've put into it is gone forever. 2. If all of my friends use Friendfeed or Tumblr or Twitter or whatever, and I don't, I can still see their pages or subscribe to their RSS feeds without signing up for an account. It's expensive to quit Facebook, so we let Facebook behave poorly. We can make it cheaper to quit Facebook by diversifying how we put content on the Internet. It's good etiquette to not make your friends use a service just because you do.

If this is allowed in the future

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Ads shown by third party applications
Facebook does not give third party applications or ad networks the right to use your name or picture in ads. If this is allowed in the future, this setting will govern the usage of your information.

Emphasis mine. #facebookisevil