How the “my fine is” meme could have gone horribly wrong
How altering the math involved in a popular meme slightly could have tricked you into revealing far more about your most personal details than you thought you were.
Commentary
13 Jan 2010
The "my fine is" meme asks people to calculate the total fine for various personal indiscretions that they've engaged in and post the aggregate result publicly.
Smoking pot, for example, nets you a $10 fine whereas having sex in church sets you back $25. You add up the various fines for all the offenses you committed to reach the value of your final fine and publish it publicly (e.g., on Facebook or your blog).
Google says “no” to China
Google refuses to censor its search results and may pull out of China altogether.
2009 was a year of highs and lows for me. It was a year of wonderfully-received keynote speeches, a year of learning and growing, of launching new projects, and a year marked in its closing with a profound change in my personal life.
I entered 2008 on a mixed high. On the one hand, I'd successfully staged the world's first fully-virtual web conference, <head> and, on the other, it hadn't been a huge financial succcess. If I learned anything in 2008, it was that organizing a conference with 70 speakers by yourself, while also learning Python and Google App Engine (and creating the web site for the conference with these newly-learned technologies) was too much for one person to take on. It meant that I couldn't concentrate as much on marketing the conference and it meant that I was burnt out by the end of it. I was, however, very happy to see that <head> directly inspired at least two new conferences in 2009.
2009 retrospective
So much has happened in my life in 2009 and it has been such a very mixed year.
I was recently asked (by my friend with the coolest name ever, Joke De Nul) to write about 10 things I saw as being important in 2010 for a Flemish publication called Online Trendrapport 2010 by Netlash. I'm rather honored to be the only foreign expert asked to contribute.
10 Trends for 2010
My 10 trends and thoughts for 2010 for the Netlash Online Trendrapport.
I initially wrote this as a comment in my previous post: Why Adobe's mobile strategy is fundamentally flawed as a response to Rachel Luxemburg's comment but it grew somewhat so, in the interest of keeping comments short and succinct, here it is in its own post:
"Frankly, if you’re that convinced that Flash simply isn’t suitable for the mobile space, then you’re right, you’re going to get very frustrated at Adobe for not giving up and going home." (Rachel)
Follow-up: Why Adobe’s mobile strategy is fundamentally flawed
I'm not asking you to give up and go home. I'm asking you to stop playing the wrong game.