Northside Festival & Next Expo Start Today

Northside Festival kicks off today so there will be shows all over Williamsburg and Greenpoint the next few days. I'm more interested in the Next Expo element of the festival though. It's a series of tech start-up panels and networking events. I managed to win myself a free badge so I'm heading over there in an hour or so.

I'll be taking a breather from the tech stuff for a while this evening and stopping by Spike Hill for the Paper Garden showcase which has Wild Yaks on at 7pm. Then I'm off to Villain for the Jameson Black party with So So Glos performing. You have to RSVP for the Jameson event, just head to the So So Glos Twitter page for that info.

Spokeo: You're All Getting Suckered, Suckers.

For the past several years there have been a bunch sites which aggregate people's public information. Some of the better known sites are Pipl, 123People, PeekYou and Spock. Recently, there's been all types of press and online buzz about Spokeo. They're essentially no different from the other sites I listed except in one simple facet - they're pretty good at social media.

The news of Spokeo sharing your "private" personal info caught on like wildfire on Facebook. You probably saw a few posts about it from one of your friends, you might have even posted it yourself. All of the posts were nearly identical, people were clearly copying and pasting. From there, actual news outlets started picking up on this. Every time I see another article or segment on the news I smash my head against the wall.

Let me ask you something - where do you think the original message came from? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Spokeo started this shit up. Information aggregation is not new, your information being public is not new (and it is your fault, by the way), these sites are not new. Below is a variation of the message being sent around. How do people not see this is viral marketing 101?

There's a site called spokeo.com, a new online USA phone book with your personal info: everything from pics on FB or web, your credit score, home value, income, age, children, etc. Remove yourself by searching for your name, copy the URL of your page, use this new link http://www.spokeo.com/privacy fill in the information. Check your email for the confirmation and follow those instructions.

So why is this news? Because anything you plaster all over Facebook becomes a story. If your business offers a service which is a bit scandalous, make it sound more scandalous! Then take to Facebook and plant a message about how everyone's info is public and they're totally fucked. Now YOU better tell your stupid friends because they're in danger too.

Meanwhile, Spokeo is sitting back watching their traffic skyrocket. Sure, a few people come by and remove themselves from the listings but not many. A small price to pay for making the 10 o'clock news (who are morons). The lesson here is think about what you're copying and pasting before you do it. You might be part of a not-so-elaborate marketing scheme. Don't let shitty aggregator sites work your ass and end up front page news.

Oh, and if you really want to hurt these types of sites how about changing your privacy settings on Facebook and deleting old profiles (Friendster & LiveJournal can go dude)? I tend to think that blocking their source feed makes a lot more sense then sending all of your friends to check out their site. Don't be dumb.

AOL Twitter Request Radio Station

AOL Radio will be launching a Twitter based radio station tomorrow. Starting today you can send a tweet tagged #aolradiorequest along with the song name and then hear it on the station. Apparently they're going to have celebrity Twitter-ers (?) sending in requests. They mention @BarackObama and @Oprah, amongst others - we'll see how that goes.

Want to contribute to AOL Radio's first all-Twitter-request radio station?! AOL Radio is creating a radio station programmed entirely by Twitter users, and we invite all Twitter users to participate!

Today (Wed. June 10th) from 12 pm ET until midnight ET, announce your request by tweeting the artist/band name, song title and hashtagging it with #aolradiorequest

An all request station programmed by snarky Twitter kids? Expect a ton of power ballads and 80's pop - the more ironic the better.

While it's unlikely I would listen to this channel, people have shit taste in music, I think it's a rather interesting use of Twitter.

While we're on the topic, if the Twitter channel isn't your thing you should check out the AOL Radio Classic Punk station. I've been listening to that station for years now and it's pretty much the only radio station I bother with. The song selections are top notch - Ramones, Stranglers, Sham 69, Dead Boys, The Damned, New York Dolls, etc.

Nerd Alert: Wolfram Alpha

I've been hearing about the latest search engine Wolfram for a few weeks now. Today I finally went ahead and checked it out. It's rather fucking awesome!

If you want to find out who Jessica Alba is dating it's worthless but if you want to know the distance from NYC to Budapest then it's amazing. That search will also include the time difference, population, elevation, flight time, etc. You can also do cool shit like look up your birth date which will tell you the day of the week you were born plus the position of the moon that night and other nifty tidbits.

Sure there's a rather small portion of the population that would use something like this but I find it fascinating. It's very powerful from a computational stand point. So to all my nerd brethren, jump on this!

Link:
Wolfram Alpha

Find MP3s With Fizy

Yet another way to dig up MP3s on the internet.

Link:
Lifehacker

Rolling Stone Launching Social Network

According to TechCrunch Rolling Stone magazine will be launching a social network site. Somebody get these boys a late pass.

Link:
RS Social Network

Shift Happens: The Future Is Here

Watch this and tremble with fear...or be happy you're already on top of this shit.

via CrunchNotes