Senators Tell Facebook To Quit Sharing Users’ Info

Seems normal users aren’t the only ones concerned with Facebook’s new privacy rules and practices. The Senate is getting in on the action urging the FTC to investigate the sharing of information among Facebook’s “Partner” websites. A submission on technology site Slashdot goes into more detail.

Hugh Pickens notes a USA Today story reporting that two US senators have joined Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in telling Facebook to quit sharing more of its users’ data than they signed up for. Politico.com ups USA Today’s ante, saying that it was three more senators, not two more, who joined Schumer’s call: Michael Bennet (D-CO), Mark Begich (D-AK), and Al Franken (D-MN). The senators are asking the FTC to look at Facebook’s controversial new information-sharing policies, arguing that the massively popular social network overstepped its bounds when it began sharing user data with other websites. Sen. Schumer said he learned about the new rules from his daughter, who is in law school, but added that he’s noticed no difference on his own Facebook page, which, he assured reporters, “is very boring.” “I can attest to that,” deadpanned Franken, who made his living as a comedian before entering the Senate, and whose Facebook followers outnumber Schumer’s by ten to one.

Facebook and Privacy

I remember when Facebook was a small startup targeted to students on college campuses. It was called The Facebook then, making reference to the freshmen facebook that many universities put out. It was a great and useful tool to keep in touch with your classmates, share lecture notes, and plan study groups. Then it began to grow and the creators saw opportunity. Next they opened it up to high school kids. Everyone knows once something is in the hands of high school kids it is forever ruined (slightly kidding). Then they opened it up to everyone. Not only that, they opened it up to businesses and application developers and that began the era of myspace-ification; making Facebook ugly and annoying. That hasn’t stopped their growth though. No, in fact, they are still growing by leaps and bounds and doing so they have made some really questionable decisions regarding your privacy. The latest round of decisions sold out the average user to big companies in order to make a quick buck. Not only that, but they’ve decided that once private information is now public.

Say you’re like me and have been a Facebook member for a long time. There were certain parts of your profile that you could keep private. It seems that the company no longer thinks those things should remain private, even though they explicitly said they would in the past.

“In yet another backtrack from their privacy policy, Facebook has decided to retroactively move more information into the public, indexable part of profiles. The new profile parts made public are: a list of things users have become ‘fans’ of (now renamed to ‘likes’), their education and work histories, and what they list under ‘interests.’ Apparently there is neither any opt-out nor even notice to users, despite the fact that some of this information was entered by users at a time when Facebook’s privacy policy explicitly promised that it wouldn’t be part of the public profile.” Source

That’s pretty troubling if you ask me, especially the part about them not even notifying users. How would you like to do a Google search of yourself and find information that was only available to your friends be made public without any sort of notification? I wouldn’t like it, that’s for sure. Not only is some information public now, but applications can now access your personal information. Read on…

The Funeral

Well, the wake and funeral for my grandpa was Thursday and Friday of last week. It was definitely a sad time, but also a good time to reflect on how great a person my grandfather was with the whole family. All throughout the wake I could feel the tears gathering in my eyes, but for some reason I couldn’t just let go. When I played the slideshow and saw my family tear up at their favorite parts, I wanted to join in with them, but couldn’t. When my cousin Beth and my uncle Jim gave excellent eulogies at the funeral mass the next morning. I wanted to cry then, but couldn’t. In fact, it wasn’t until we reached the cemetery and watched the Marines give him a military burial that I finally started to cry. Gunshots rang out, taps played in the distance, and the slow salute, delivered with the utmost precision, got to me. When a Marine got down on one knee and thanked my uncle Stan on behalf of the President for my grandfather’s service, I cried even more. It was a very emotional day, to say the least.

Things did not go off without a hitch though. On the way to the cemetery, my sister was hit by a car that did not yield to the funeral procession. Thankfully, everyone was alright. At the same time my sister was calling us to tell us about the accident, my grandma’s care facility called to tell us that she was in bad shape and they wanted to transfer to the hospital or a hospice. We’re still dealing with that situation and aren’t sure what’s going on as we’re waiting for test results.

Even though it was a sad couple of days, plenty of laughter was heard at the funeral home and our family’s restaurant after the ceremony. Stories about a great man were told and his corny jokes were repeated over and over, two of my favorite being, “You’re funny, but looks aren’t everything,” and “I remember when I proposed to Sophie. She was so excited she almost fell out of bed.” I also found out why my grandpa joined the Marines. If you knew my grandpa at all you would know that he was always cold. Apparently this wasn’t something that came with old age, he was always that way. He heard stories coming from the Army about how cold it was in Europe. He also heard that the Marines were fighting in the Pacific. He joined the Marines because he would be warmer with them. It was great to share all these stories with the family, especially the ones who traveled from out of town. We don’t see each other often, and while I prefer to see them under better circumstances, it was good to have them there. It was obvious by the amount of friends and family at the service(s) that Jacob Schepker will be missed by many and forgotten by few.

The Slideshow

When my grandpa died I was asked to make a slideshow for his funeral. I thought it would be a great time to test out iPhoto and the slideshow feature. Over the next few days the project grew and it wasn’t going to be just a slideshow. In order to accommodate everyone’s wishes I would have to break out some other software on my iMac that I’ve never used.

First I realized that I would need Garage Band to edit together music to make one continuous song. The reason I needed to do this was because iPhoto (as far as I can tell, it was my first time using it) only allows for one song to play over the course of the slideshow. I also needed to use iMovie (another program that I had never used) to add in a video clip of my grandpa singing to my baby second cousin, Grace. I wasn’t sure on how to do this, but soon figured out I’d need to export the slideshow as a movie and add it to iMovie that way I could edit in the Grace clip.

Here’s where I ran into my first snag that cost me several hours of work. The Grace clip was a WMV and, as such, would not import to iMovie. I tried Handbrake to convert the file but it kept chopping off the top and bottom of the video and distorting it. No matter what I would try, it just wouldn’t work. I tried other conversion software that didn’t work. Finally, I decided to do what I feared the most, boot up my Windows virtual machine. Luckily I found some software that was able to convert the video and output a decent quality version of it. After importing that file to iMovie, I was able to add it to the end of the slideshow movie as a nice way to finish the presentation.

A few days earlier I was told that people were requesting DVD’s of this not-yet-started project so I began thinking about how to do that. Luckily, iMovie (and iPhoto for that matter) has an option to send to iDVD. You can choose the theme for the menu structure, add images or scenes from the movie to the background, and it will create a professional looking DVD for you. I finished up a test DVD last night (after a long night).

The entire process was fairly simple, it was just very time-consuming as the importing, processing, and exporting of video would take several hours, and if I didn’t like the way something looked it would mean starting over (I probably did this at least 5 times). In the end, I think it turned out pretty decent, especially since I had never used any of this software before. The only thing I have left to do is burn copies for the family. I have to say, Apple makes damn fine products and software. Without further ado, here is the final slideshow project (minus the DVD menus). This will be played at the wake on Thursday and at The Bissell Mansion Restaurant after the funeral service on Friday.

Jake Schepker on Vimeo.

Rest in Peace Grandpa Jake

Earlier this morning my grandpa Jake passed away. I have many fond memories of my grandfather, including his jokes that, as kids, we thought were lame. Whenever one of the grandkids were in his chair he’d come over and ask if we knew how to play checkers. Before we could reply he’d tell us it was our move. There was also a joke he would tell whenever one of us took geometry (what did the acorn say when it grew up? Gee, I’m a tree!). His sense of humor definitely lives on in my father. I remember many summers at their house in North St. Louis, meals at our family’s Bissell Mansion Restaurant and Dinner Theatre, and Christmas Eves where we would all pile onto a couch and sing Christmas carols before we could open presents. My grandpa was a marine in World War II and, while he would rarely talk about the war, he proudly wore his WWII Veteran hat everywhere he went. He was a great man and I could only hope to be half the man he was. He will be missed.

Born on January 26, 1922, Jacob Schepker was a former Marine who fought in the Pacific during WWII, Jake was a principal of Schepker Bros. Service Co. in North St. Louis throughout his entire working life. He was active in numerous community activities through his beloved Most Holy Name of Jesus Parish in north St. Louis on Grand Avenue, where he served in leadership roles over several decades in the Holy Name Society, the Knights of Columbus, the Boy Scouts and the CYC Little League. He was also politically active, spearheading several campaigns and eventually serving a term as Democratic Committeeman of the Second Ward. He was a lead organizer in the effort that saved the Bissell Mansion on Randall Place in St. Louis’ Northside, the City’s oldest private residence, from demolition in the early 1960s during the construction of I-70.