Blogging and digital cocktail parties..?.


What do you think? I really think this analogy is a bit of an over exaggeration, digital cocktail parties indeed, can someone or something digital throw a piña colada in my direction please… 😉

“Yesterday the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) presented a number of recommendations on how to improve data privacy at Social Networking Sites (SNS) at the eChallenges conference in The Hague. These networks were like digital cocktail parties, at which one met many people, partook of copious amounts of alcohol and after which one was liable to wake up with a terrible hangover the next day, ENISA writes in its first detailed position paper (PDF file).” Read more…

Software Universe Barcelona

I’m going to be presenting at HP’s Software Universe in Barcelona end of November. I will be talking about HP’s ISSM framework for Information Security Management. (ISSM stands for Information Security Systems Management.) This is a new concept developed of which I am part of the team in formalizing -just as we did with ITIL using ITSM- the process of information security management. So see you there, if are planning to come. Should be fun!

Does your online history matter?

Do you agree with this?

“I just celebrated my ten-year blogging anniversary. I started blogging when I was 19, and before that, I regularly posted to public mailing lists, message boards, and Usenet. I grew up with this technology, and I’m part of the generation that should be embarrassed by what we posted. But I’m not—those posts are part of my past, part of who I am…..”

Read more of this posting from danah boyd. It is another and extremely interesting viewpoint on the issue of how our reputation could be influenced by our online activities, particularly when it refers to today’s teenagers and what they want to achieve tomorrow. Reading this I wonder if it is us, are we -my generation and older- just too inhibited by society norms… and the online social networking space is just throwing these to the wind! Maybe it’s a good thing?

Class distinctions online

Does anyone really believe this?

Facebook users tend to be more affluent, with its users skewing towards households earning over $60,000 per year, while MySpace users skew toward lower income levels, with 12% more of its users earning under $60,000 per year. Using the psychographic system Mosaic to track U.S. Internet users, it’s clear that there’s a class distinction between users of the two social networks. Facebook’s most predominant group of visitors in Mosaic is “affluent suburbia,” a group that Mosaic describes as “the wealthiest households in the U.S., living in exclusive suburban neighborhoods enjoying the best that life has to offer.” The predominant group for MySpace, on the other hand, is “struggling societies,” or households that are primarily single parent, single income, raising families on lower incomes and tight budgets. Read more…

Let’s chip our kids!

This article just made me feel a little bit irritated, maybe a classic British understatement. I try not to voice my opinions too loudly but here I can’t resist saying something.

They’ve started chipping kids the same way they chip criminals in the UK! Although there are only 10 chipped at the writing of this article in a pilot -I guess those are the kids who regularly truant- they are planning to place the RFID chips in all school uniforms in the future.

Darnbro state that their product can “trace a pupil’s every step during the school day” and that the system can be set up to limit access to doors for certain people at certain times, including shutting the main doors of a school to pupils during classtime. And the headteacher says that the pilot was “not intrusive to the pupil in the slightest.” Sure pull the other one it has bells on!

I agree with what David Clouter, founder of anti-fingerprinting group “Leave them kids alone”, said: “To put this in a school badge is complete and utter surveillance of the children. Tagging is what we do to criminals we let out of prison early.”

Apparently the parents think this is a good idea…. wake up! Maybe it’s because one added benefit of chipping the kids uniform is that it is easy to identify them if they become lost. I wonder why so many people cannot see any further ahead than the end of their noses? If chipping the kids today becomes socially acceptable, what will come tomorrow?