Would you want your employer seeing this? (Click for larger.)

Do you smoke weed? Does God exist? How do you feel about fat people?

And most importantly, how do you feel about your family members, potential employers and the entire world, for that matter, having access to your answers to these questions?

Last month, the planet’s largest social-networking site launched “Facebook Questions,” a tool that allows users to post questions and answers as easily as a status message. The feature is advertised to users as a way to “get answers from the people [they] trust.” Notably, access to this data gives companies an incentive to advertise via the site, which in turn is fiscally beneficial to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and crew.

The problem is that unlike every other feature Facebook has rolled out, this one comes with no privacy settings. And why would it? Your answers mean nothing to companies if you won’t share them.

According to the FAQ:

As with other Facebook applications like Photos and Events, there is no way to turn off Questions. … You should only ask and answer questions that you are comfortable sharing with everyone on Facebook as the questions you have participated in are visible to everyone.

So, that’s it. Your cousin asks you, “What do you think about those gosh-darn hippie vegans?” and you jokingly respond with an answer that, if acted out, would land you in prison. Soon, the world will know what a jerk you are. There goes that amazing job you applied for—and that second date with the cute girl who thought you were just so sweet and sensitive.

But don’t rush to delete your Facebook account just yet. There is one solution that might not save you from Google Cached for awhile, but it will clean up your profile and make you the presentable Mr. Charming you once were. From the FAQ;

You cannot edit the text of your questions or posts, but you can delete any of your questions or posts as follows:

If you have asked a question:

• To delete your question, go to the question box and click the “Delete” button which is located in the lower right of the box.
• To delete question options that people voted on, go to the question box and click the “Edit options” button which is located in the lower right of the box. Then, you can delete individual options by clicking the X beside them. Please note that deleting a question option will also delete any associated votes for that option.

If you have provided an answer:

• To delete a post you provided as an answer, go to the question box and find your post within the “Posts” section. Then, click the X to the upper right of your post to remove it.
• To remove your vote from a poll, go to the question box and click the “Unvote” button which is located in the lower right of the box. If you voted for multiple options, just uncheck each of your votes to remove them.

The lesson: There is no such thing as privacy on the internet. If you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see it, you’re better off just not posting it.

Ever had a new-media question, but didn’t know who to ask? Ask me, and I’ll answer to the best of my ability via a new service called VYou.

VYou combines the intimacy of one-to-one conversation with the reach of broadcast. It feels like a typical video chat, but the responses are pre-recorded and can be played by anyone, anywhere. Users interested in creating their own accounts can establish a one-[wo]man audiovisual archive of useful information on any topic of their choosing. It just takes you, the viewer, to ask questions.

Here’s my VYou:

First off, what is HDR, anyway? You’ve likely seen the concept all over the Web this year. It’s all the rage now that Adobe and Apple have made this once difficult-to-master photography trick as easy as pointing, shooting and… waiting—the software does everything else for you.

HDR (high dynamic range) imaging allows photographers access to a greater range of light levels between the darkest and lightest areas of an image. If you’ve ever taken a picture of a sunset over the mountains and bodies of water, you might notice that the area where the sun appears is very bright and washed-out, while the mountains and streams are very dark. HDR techniques can fix this and make the rock and water much more visible, while toning down the sun. When done right, and HDR’d image looks a lot more like what you can see with the naked eye.

On Wednesday, Apple released their highly anticipated 4.1 software update for the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4. The upgrade offers various features for all iPhone users, but you must either jailbreak your phone or own the latest iPhone 4 in order to take advantage of the new HDR photography option.

But, never fear. If you’re like me and own a 3G or 3GS, and you want to shoot HDR, there’s an app for that. In fact, there are several.

The one I’ve used for this piece is called “Pro HDR.” It works for iPhone 3GS or newer, and can be purchased for $1.99 via the App Store. It’s not perfect, but for two dollars worth of smartphone software, it does the trick pretty well.

Below are three pictures depicting my MacBook Pro and part of my dining room. The first is overexposed, so that you can see the dining room. The second is underexposed, and while the dining room is very dark, you can easily make out what I have up on my screen. (Click any image for a larger version):

Using Pro HDR, I was able to combine the images and use the best parts of each, all right on my iPhone.

If I wanted to, I could also use Pro HDR to further edit the end result by manually adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation and other image elements.

All in all, I would recommend Pro HDR to casual users who want to improve the look for their “mobile uploads” folders on Facebook. If you’re looking to take particularly stunning photos, I’d suggest investing in a real camera that can’t make phone calls.

Last night, my husband and I had the pleasure of seeing one of our favorite comedians, Michael Ian Black (“The State,” “Reno 911!“), at a local club. Just before the show, I Tweeted from my iPhone:

Front row again at Zanies! I hope @michaelianblack talks to us during the show like Tracy Morgan did.

When we saw Tracy Morgan (“Saturday Night Live,” “30 Rock“) last month, he spent several minutes throughout his set flirting with the women at our table and making fun of the men. At the end of the night, he shook our hands and thanked us for coming to see him. It was great! The fan-celebrity interaction added immensely to our enjoyment of Morgan’s already phenomenal performance.

And so when Black came out last night, smart phone in hand, and read my Tweet to the audience, my heart began to race. He asked me to raise my hand so that he could find me, and when I did, he laid down on the stage and looked deeply into my eyes. Resting his chin on one hand, he spoke sweetly into the mic: “So whacha wanna talk about, hmm?”

I was both exhilarated and mortified.

My throat went dry, but I managed to reply, “I–I don’t know. I’m sorry!”

Black leaped up and exclaimed to the audience, “Oh, so she gets on Twitter and asks me to talk to her like Tracy Morgan did [emphasis his], but when I do she has nothing to say!”

The crowd swelled with laughter. It wasn’t so much what Black said that was funny, but more the idea that he’d broken down the fourth wall to bring a lowly fan up to his level as the show’s star.

The hilarity didn’t end there. Black called me up on stage twice during his performance, and at one point he actually left me there by myself while he went off to get me a bottled water.

So, I did what anyone in my position would do: I called the Bob Ross-looking guy at the table next to mine up to take my place.

When Black returned, he scowled at the bearded man and said, with a surprised whimper, “You’re not Rima. [Pause] You’re the ‘Joy of Painting‘ guy.” He then turned to me with mock disgust: “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Amid more laughs from the audience, Black transitioned seamlessly into some incredibly funny prepared material for his final 20 minutes on stage. And at the end of the night, people seemed to want to talk to me almost as much as they wanted to talk to him.

What a rush.

Old Spice Goes Viral

Michael Ian Black isn’t the only celebrity taking advantage of social networking.

Last month, Isaiah Mustafa, better known as the “Old Spice Guy,” surprised fans by producing more than 150 short YouTube videos in under 24 hours. Each clip beautifully mimicked Mustafa’s popular Old Spice ads, with their lofty metaphors and hilariously grandiose monologues about power, strength and abdominal perfection.

Mustafa and a team of writers, marketing gurus and tech geeks selected their favorite fan questions via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites. They then quickly put together scripts and props for Mustafa’s responses and somehow managed to produce and publish quality videos almost as quickly as fans could watch them.

The Old Spice crew even helped a fan propose to his girlfriend, as you can see in the video at right. (She said yes.)

Bridging the Gap Between Celebrities and Their Fans

I spoke to blogging pioneer and author of Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business, Steve Garfield, earlier today about how social networking has brought celebrities and their fans closer together. Garfield, a jack of all trades when it comes to new-media tools, is by all accounts a regular guy who doesn’t regularly hobnob with A-list celebrities. But he is resourceful and, as his book title implies, he knows how to “Get Seen.” Garfield has gotten the attention of a lot of famous people, and at present keeps in regular contact with the likes of Saturday Night Live alumnus and late-night host Jimmy Fallon.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation.

Q: How have sites like Twitter and Facebook influenced the ways celebrities and their fans interact?

A: Social networking has really made it easier for celebrities to communicate with their fans. In the past, celebs had to get a Web guru to create a stand-alone site and set up bulletin board systems, and things like that. It was a struggle. But now, third-party sites like Twitter allow fans to share ideas with and talk to these celebrities. And the celebrities have the opportunity to talk back without having to know the first thing about creating a Web site.

Q: Tell me about Jimmy Fallon. At first, you were just a fan of his, commenting online like other fans. Now you talk all the time, and Fallon is even a prominent interviewee in your book, Get Seen. How did that happen?

A: Jimmy Fallon is the perfect example of a celebrity who has embraced social networking. He started a video blog and I commented on it. Then he mentioned me in another video blog post. Jimmy asked for videos, and so I made a video. And then he mentioned it, and so forth. So, we got little relationship going and I met him at the Consumer Electronics Show. I got to interview him there, and the next thing you know, I had VIP tickets to see his TV show. He even invited me backstage. Now we regularly communicate back and forth over Twitter. It’s so easy to communicate this way, and I think celebrities find (or should find) these communications valuable.

In the book, I interview Jimmy Fallon and we talk about interacting with the fans. He wants to set up “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” so that he can do just that. I also interviewed Gavin Purcell, Fallon’s producer, who talks about how they are working to make the audience experience more interactive.

Q: That’s fascinating. Have you found other celebrities who are open to interacting with fans online?

A: Definitely. I was just in the Bahamas and I saw the band Tears for Fears. They put on a great show. I shot some video of them, but I was really at a loss as to where to put it because of all these recent take-down notices from record companies asking fans to not put copyrighted materials on the Web.

So, I found the lead singer Curt Smith online and I Tweeted to him asking if I could put clips of his Bahamas show on YouTube. Within minutes he tweeted back at me sure, “the more the merrier“!

That would never happen without social media.

Q: So what advice do you have to fans who want to get in touch with their favorite stars, or who want to use the power?

A: The Internet and all these new-media and social-networking tools like Twitter have leveled the playing field and made celebrities more accessible. With celebrities having millions of followers or fans, it sets the expectation that a famous person might not see your comments, but there’s also the possibility that they will. Jimmy Fallon asks for responses and reads them. Recently he asked Late Night viewers to use a specific phrase in their Tweets, and then he shared his favorite responses on the air. That kind of interaction is fun.

People who want to get their favorite celebrity to notice them really only need to reach out. Celebs are just people like the rest of us, and they often check search results for their names on Google and Twitter, just to see what people are saying. If you have something interesting to say to them or ask them, do it because they might just respond back.

Steve Garfield’s video of Tears for Fears, live at the Oracle Club Excellence at the Atlantis (Bahamas) on July 30, 2010.	Curt Smith, lead singer of Tears for Fears, was pleased with the video and elected to share it with fans via Twitter.

Tell me, readers: Have you ever met or spoken with anyone famous thanks to the Internet? Share your stories below!

Newsflash!

According to rock star Prince: “The internet’s completely over.”

I guess it’s time for us Web journalists to pack up our netbooks, shut down our blogs, and go back to dead-tree news, just as God intended.

The 52-year-old rocker sat down this week with the Daily Mirror‘s Peter Willis for a rather bizarre, though not un-Prince-like interview, during which he proclaimed to the reporter:

The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.

Let me write that down. Numbers…are…bad. Got it.

Still, I shouldn’t make too much fun of Prince.

All general weirdness aside, I learned a long time ago that even if someone is misguided in his opinions (understatement of the year here), he usually has a decent reason or two for feeling the way he does.

It should come as no surprise that Prince, like many artists who struck it famous before the Napster Age, is a big opponent of internet file-sharing. Although he regularly gives away innumerable free copies of his own CDs, the artist takes an ethical stance on blatant piracy. Basically, he’d rather give his fans a gift than have them pry it from his hands. That’s an opinion I can respect.

Most recently, Prince gave the Daily Mirror copies of his forthcoming CD, “20TEN,” to insert into the paper this Thursday as a free gift to subscribers. Obviously, “20TEN” will be released in CD-format only, and will not be licensed to iTunes, Amazon MP3, or any other internet-media stores.

Unfortunately for Prince, however, just because he says the internet is a dead medium, that doesn’t make it in any way true.

He’s free to avoid iTunes–more power to him–but he must understand that as long as he produces listenable music, people will distribute it online.

Even the iTunes Store stopped using digital-rights protection technology in 2009, partly because Apple executives finally realized that DRM is virtually useless–there’s always a workaround.

If UK Daily Mirror readers get their hands on “20TEN” on July 8th, you have my word that someone, somewhere, will start distributing it by the 7th.

It’s the internet. On this playing field, smart, pimple-faced, pro-free-information teens have the advantage.

In honor of Independence Day, NOVA will air “Missing in MiG Alley,” an hour-long documentary about the American and Russian soldiers who fought in history’s first “jet war,” the Korean War. The program examines the new piloting techniques and innovative jet technologies that would change combat forever.

Below, you’ll find an interactive comparison of the dueling Russian MiG-15bis and the American F-86 Sabre, which I created for the show’s companion site on NOVA Online.

The MiG and the Sabre pushed aviation technology to its limits during the Korean War. When they met in dogfights over the Yalu River, in an area nicknamed MiG Alley, both fighters overshadowed their predecessors through sharp climbs, steep dives, tight turns, and nearly supersonic speeds. They were closely matched in myriad ways, but the planes’ designers made different structural and aerodynamic trade-offs while developing their rival jets. Along with pilot skill and luck, these technological differences helped determine which side prevailed in any given dogfight. Take a close look at these two pioneering planes and see how they differed. (Just click on the image below and the interactive anatomy will pop out into a new window.)

Click above to compare the MiG-15bis and F-86 Sabre

NOVA’s “Missing in MiG Alley” will air on PBS this Tuesday, July 6 at 8 p.m., EST. You can check your local listings for additional air dates and times.

Facebook product manager Sam Odio announced this week that his team is testing face-detection technology on photographs uploaded to the site. It’s not as Big-Brother as it sounds–at least not yet. The feature is simply designed to streamline the photo-tagging process, which allows users to link images of friends and family to their own Facebook accounts.

If you own a newer digital camera, you’ve probably noticed that it displays a little square over your subject on the view screen as the lens brings the subject into focus. If there are people in your shot, the camera will try to find their faces so that you can get a clear image of your friends rather than, say, the table in front of them.

Image courtesy Facebook

The technology works similarly on Facebook, except it’s designed to help you label photos you’ve already taken. It cuts out a lot of tedious and time-consuming clicking on the users’ part by determining for them if an object in a given photo is a human face. It then pops up a little box where the user can simply type an auto-detected person’s name. If you don’t yet have access to the new functionality, here’s what it looks like (at right).

It’s only a matter of time before developers refine the facial-recognition algorithms to detect and tag friends’ faces for you. And from there, who knows what this could mean for the continuing battle between privacy advocates and those in favor of information sharing on the internet?

I’m not a big proponent for either side of the debate. Sure, I want my privacy, and I want owners of the sites I use to be honest and forthright about what they plan to do with my information, but I also don’t have a whole lot to hide. I obey the law, I don’t go to wild parties, and my life, in general, is kind of boring. Additionally, I’m a realist: If I don’t want people outside of the Web to know my deepest, most personal thoughts, then I won’t share them online either.

Even still, I have to admit it’s all kind of creepy. I mean, why did Facebook have to advertise wedding-related products and services when I was engaged and then, as soon as I changed my relationship status to “married,” why’d they have to start advertising baby stuff?

I felt pressure from Facebook to start having kids before my own mother even started on about it!

But, I digress.

We all know that Facebook already advertises products to us based on our interests, age, gender, relationship status, and so forth. Yet one wonders what else they’ll do with it, particularly now that developers are slaloming down the slippery slope of tagging us with information we might not want to share, potentially by recognizing who we really are versus whom we might claim to be.

Facial-recognition technology already exists and has a number of applications. The FBI has used it to find bad guys, and now American police officers are doing the same. According to various recent reports including this one from The Daily Mail, any officer with a smartphone could feasibly fight crime through photography:

Police in the US are using an iPhone app to take photos of suspects and instantly compares them with a criminal database.

The app employs biometric information such as facial recognition software to help police identify suspects within seconds.

Known as MORIS (Mobile Offender Recognition and Identification System), the system lets police officers take a photo of a suspect, upload it into a secure network where it is then analysed.

Maureen Boyle of The Enterprise newspaper in Brockton, MA, produced the following video about the iPhone app for the paper’s YouTube page:

Back to social networking: If you’re a criminal and you’re dumb enough to put pictures of yourself on Facebook, you deserve to get caught. But what about those of us who are innocent? Should the authorities be able to comb through our information just because they can? Intellectually, I’m inclined to say “yes” because I’ve got nothing to hide, and I’m all for chasing bad guys. But part of me wonders how this is any different from illegal wiretapping or spying. Something just doesn’t feel right.

What do you think?

We interrupt the not-so-regularly scheduled blog postings to bring you a site update:

It’s been a pretty terrible technology month for me. My beloved first-generation iPhone died while I was at a conference in Las Vegas two weeks ago. Then last week, my server at TopClassHost suffered a major hardware failure, essentially killing News-Geek.com. The long and the short of it is that a drive containing all of my site information died and, while downloading all the data, the backup drive died, too.

I can’t say that this site is my life. My husband is my life. My family and friends are my life. Nonetheless, this site contains a huge chunk of my existence. It illustrates my skills and accomplishments, and it serves as a living archive of what I’ve done and an indicator of what I am capable of. It is not melodramatic to say that News-Geek.com is truly a part of who I am.

Last Thursday started off nicely. I posted a pretty fun piece on GEEKWARE, which my friends and readers seemed to enjoy.

I noticed the outage a couple of hours later, but only began to worry that evening. Down time is nothing new; every site experiences it sometimes. But my site had never disappeared for more than an hour at a time since I launched it five years ago.

That night, I sent out a couple of concerned e-mails and received confirmation that my data was gone. I felt like I’d gotten the wind knocked out of me. Fortunately for me, however, I’m not a moper. In fact, I feel like I went through the five stages of grief in two hours and one night’s sleep. As they say, “A house pulled down is half rebuilt.” By Friday morning, I was ready to rebuild this house of my works. And that’s what I’m doing now.

As you can see, I’ve restored my posts, pages, widgets, and layout. There are a few files that I’m still trying to track down, but the site is mostly back to it’s old self.

“A house pulled down is half rebuilt.”

She’s never owned a cell phone, and Clinton was still president when her computer rolled off the assembly line. Yet Nicola Harper spends her days creating some of the coolest geek accessories I’ve ever seen.

GEEKWARE creator Nicola Harper turns obsolete electronic waste into popular fashion accessories (image courtesy of GEEKWARE)

A former waste-management engineer in Edmonton, Canada, Harper collects old electronics from landfills and recycling centers, cleans them, dissects them, and then reassembles them into “GEEKWARE,” her popular line of home/office products, gadgets, and jewelry. (Fellow tech nerds might recognize Harper’s circuit-board necklaces from the ThinkGeek superstore. They’ve ordered about 500 of them from her already.)

GEEKWARE is a one-woman endeavor and Harper’s day job. She left waste management in 2004 to focus on her products. She still works with trash all day (actually, let’s call it “e-waste”) but now she’s able to sell it back to the very people who might have thrown it away in the first place. How’s that for recycling?

I can’t wait for iPhones and all the current technologies to become ‘old’ so that I can take them apart and craft with them. – Nicola Harper

I had the pleasure of interviewing Harper earlier this week. Here’s an excerpt from our chat, followed by a slide-show featuring some of her products.

Q: You’ve spent your entire career working with waste in one way or another. I have to ask: What gets a girl excited about digging around in garbage?
A: I’ve always been curious about where our garbage goes to and what happens to it after it gets there. Whilst taking my undergrad degree in civil engineering [at Nottingham University in England], I realized I could actually be part of the solution and decided to study waste-management engineering in Canada.

It was a super exciting job! You get to design landfills and recycling plants to ensure that waste is disposed of efficiently and with the least damage to our environment.

Q: How did this lead to GEEKWARE?
A: I used to visit so many landfills in my old job and get really frustrated by the amount of waste piling up. I really wanted to do more–to get my hands on all of that waste and actually make something out of it rather than watch it get crushed for recycling.

I now run GEEKWARE full-time as a one-gal operation. I started out doing small local craft fairs, selling a few recycled artwork pieces made from wine corks and diskettes. Now I have a full line of products that I make out of my home-based studio and sell world-wide through the Web site. I’ve gone from selling a few items at a Christmas show 6 years ago, to making and packing up to 100 orders a month.

Q: You have quite the interest in geek culture for someone who doesn’t possess too many high-tech devices herself. Why is that?
A: It’s true that I’ve never owned a cell phone and my computer is 10 years old (though it still runs well enough for me to use it for 5 or more hours per day). I don’t wear a watch, either.

But, I’m really fascinated by technology in terms of culture, economics, and, well, waste. I marvel at the speed at which newer models of things come along and how fast the older ones become obsolete when there’s not really anything “wrong” with them. I like seeing how they are made, and taking the technology apart and seeing what’s inside. I also love working out how I can repurpose the pieces into something else, giving them a new usefulness.

I’m not really interested in what the technology itself can do. (That is to say, I don’t care about iPhone apps, etc.) Rather, I’m more fascinated by how the technology is made: How is it held together? What screws did they use to manufacture it? How many different types of plastic did they use? Is it recyclable? These kinds of things interest me.

Q: You make an array of cool products, from vintage film-reel clocks to floppy-disk notebooks. What other products can we expect to see in the future?
A: Look out for more customizable Mac products. I have some ideas in my head for monogrammed Macbook cuff links and earrings. I can’t wait for iPhones and all the current technologies to become “old” so that I can take them apart and craft with them!

I get such a kick out of people liking my creations. I’ve had couples order cufflinks for their entire wedding parties, and it makes me so happy to think of the joy I’m bringing to people’s lives.

Members of the class of 2010 broke into dance at my alma mater’s student union earlier today. These University of Mississippi millennials chose the song “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire for their surprise performance. They even borrowed their moves from the popular 2008 film.

You can see the epic stunt below, in all its Flip video glory.

This video illustrates in 2 minutes and 37 seconds why I spent 14 years (or half my life) transforming into such a huge multimedia geek. How can you not love this stuff?

Plus, if I were to start a “Stuff Indian People Like” blog in the vein of “Stuff White People Like,” I can guarantee that “When non-Indians embrace our culture” would be really high on my list, somewhere between “Ripping off Hollywood” and “Driving a Camry.”

My recent Social Media Blackout experiment left me feeling all pathetic and alone, but it turns out that I’m not (alone, anyway).

Last week, University of Maryland researchers found that college students who swore off social media and texting showed signs of withdrawal similar to what drug addicts experience after quitting cold turkey. Sound familiar? Here are some highlights from their “Day Without Media” experiment:

Students use literal terms of addiction to characterize their dependence on media.
“Although I started the day feeling good, I noticed my mood started to change around noon. I started to feel isolated and lonely. I received several phone calls that I could not answer,” wrote one student. “By 2:00 pm. I began to feel the urgent need to check my email, and even thought of a million ideas of why I had to. I felt like a person on a deserted island…. I noticed physically, that I began to fidget, as if I was addicted to my iPod and other media devices, and maybe I am.”

Students hate going without media. In their world, going without media, means going without their friends and family.
“Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,” wrote one student. “When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.”

And here I thought I was going crazy; that my dependence on social media was a sign of some yet undiagnosed psychological problem. But if I’m nuts, then so are you. And so are America’s youth.

This week, New York’s Riverdale County School ran a two-day experiment similar to the Blackout, prohibiting middle school students from texting, IM-ing, and engaging in any kind of social media. As you might predict, the kids suffered varying levels of anxiety during the study. But they survived, and they were better for it.

Here’s an excerpt from “Encouraging the Text Generation to Rediscover Its Voice,” a New York Times article that references the experiment:

This text-free Sunday, the Riverdale students said, was unusually relaxing. They were shocked at how quickly they finished their homework, undistracted by an always-open video chat, or checking in on Facebook or responding to the hundred messages they typically get in a day. … “I had to look for things to do,” said [student] Zachary, who ended up watching a movie with his mother.

A movie? With his mother? Even for a young teen, this really shouldn’t be a last-resort activity. Family bonding should be commonplace.

When you have down time, your activities might include landscaping the yard. We did just that on Sunday.

This leads me to some of my own conclusions:

Since I ended my Blackout more than a week ago, I’ve found myself being more cautious about my social-media postings: links, photos, videos, status updates, private notes, private and public blog entries, etc. I find myself checking Facebook and Twitter a few times per day, but this is nothing compared to my previous almost constant use of these sites. I actually now set aside specific times for goofing off.

I’ve made good on my word to not use my iPhone in the car, except for important calls. (Remember that I’m the passenger, not the driver.) I can tell that this was probably my biggest vice, as I’ve seen more of this town in the past week than I have in an entire year of living here. I’m still ill about the time I wasted just waiting for pages to load.

I no longer feel a constant, nagging compulsion to check my favorite sites “simply because” the opportunity exists. Why pick up my smart phone when I can grab a book, spend more time with my husband or go for another run with the puppy? Why debate politics through my fingers with friends-of-friends when I can have rousing, in-person conversations with people I actually know?

Over the past week, I’ve found myself filled with creative energy. I’ve become even more productive at work, and have ended up with a lot more down time. (That I was so productive before the blackout still baffles me.)

We used some of this down time to landscape the yard this weekend (see image above right). I also try to use the time to read up on corporate policies for renovations, management and modifications, so now I’m not just thinking weeks ahead, but months. I hope that this will translate into greater career success.

Finally, I feel, for lack of a better term, more… alive. Life becomes very two-dimensional and gray when you’ve got your faced shoved into a computer screen all day. Any time away from the technology translates into reconnecting with people, animals, trees, society, and good old-fashioned mortal existence.

I will always be the News-Geek, the multimedia nerd who loves to create, to teach, and to connect through all kinds of new media. But even geeks need moderation. And for once, I’m ok with that.

…Well, sort of. There’s still no official release date for Adobe Creative Suite 5 (see my previous entry), but video/graphics/photography/design geeks such as myself should be able to get their hands on it by late May.

Today, however, is special in its own way: Adobe has finally “officially” announced CS5 and is offering a bevy of information on all sorts of exciting new features. It turns out that I was right about some of the new HDR features that will allow users to simulate high-dynamic-range photography even with a single image file. For more information, check out the Adobe CS5 launch site:

Keep watching the above for further updates!

Edit: I’ve changed the embed URL to a page that doesn’t auto-play sound and video! This should make my blog far less annoying to visit now.

Adobe fans will get to sink their teeth into some powerful new features when the company’s next Creative Suite bundle finally comes out later this year (though the official launch date is still TBD). Until then, Adobe is working hard to generate excitement. This Monday, April 12, users will get a quick introduction to CS5 during an global, online launch event featuring software experts experts Terry White, Greg Rewis, Jason Levine and Julieanne Kost.

These “Adobe evangelists” will show off some cool new tools for art, design, development, photography and video that will be sure to get users very interested in what CS5 will have to offer.

In the meantime, Adobe is actively teasing devoted followers with “hints” of features to come, particularly with Photoshop. Here are some of my favorites:

High Dynamic Range

Speculation: It looks like Adobe Photoshop is going to offer some easy-to-use methods for simulating high dynamic range (HDR). HDR photography allows photographers access to a greater range of light levels between the darkest and lightest areas of an image. If you’ve ever taken a picture of a sunset over the mountains and bodies of water, you might notice that the area where the sun appears is very bright and washed-out, while the mountains and streams are very dark. HDR techniques can fix this and make the rock and water much more visible, while toning down the sun.

I suspect that Photoshop CS5 might have an “Auto HDR” feature that takes images–or even just a single image–like the one above-right and uses algorithms to emulate HDR photography (above-left). My hope, however, is that if such a feature exists, it will offer users the ability to adjust just how bright or dim specific parts of the final image will be.

Content-Aware Fill

The above video tells all. With CS5, Photoshop users will be able to synthesize textures in photographs with just a few mouse clicks. I guess I won’t have to use the clone and smudge tools quite so much anymore! Excuse me while I retrieve my jaw from the floor.

Puppet Warp

Puppet Warp: It’s as cool as it sounds. This new technology will allow users to distort and warp images with astounding accuracy as seen in the video above. Imagine using this in combination with Content-Aware Fill!

There goes my jaw again.

Spreading like wildfire across my and my Indian friends’ social-networking pages is Tunku Varadarajan’s latest commentary in The Daily Beast, which delves into some negative stereotypes we’ve created for our own people. The piece, benignly titled “Why India Loves Facebook,” suggests with all the sensitivity of a rabid dog that we Indians are a bunch of nosy braggarts who believe it’s our gods-given right to examine and judge the actions of everyone we know–and to over-share our own lives’ most inappropriate details.

Varadarajan writes:

[S]hould we think of Facebook as yet another canvas on which the Indian etches himself into an entwined crowd? One can see this art of connection on display on many Indian Facebook pages, where seemingly private conversations are conducted in a wide-open space. “I sacked the maid,” an Indian “friend’s” recent status update said. “Anyone know how I can find another fast?” “Should I wax or thread?” another asked, provoking, like the first questioner, a torrent of responses that other cultures might regard as intrusive or presumptuous.

To be honest, I’m not really keen on the thesis here. I don’t mind the stereotypes (more on that later), but I do think it’s a bit of a stretch to use these stereotypes as an explanation for why any particular demographic enjoys connecting and communicating via the Web. Sure, Indian Facebook users love to tell people what they’re doing and to read about what everyone else is doing! Isn’t that the curry-eatin’, chai-drinkin’ point? It’s social networking; this is what Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut are for. (You remember, Orkut, right? If not, you might be living out the American stereotype of only caring about things that matter to America: Orkut is Google’s answer to Facebook, and while it thrives in places like India, the long-awaited service actually bombed in the States. But, I digress.)

There are about 1.2 billion people in India today. Of those, only 13 million use Orkut, while a scant 4 million use Facebook (Source: ComScore). Even if you count Indians worldwide and include those of us who live in the States, Varadarajan himself estimates that only 8 million of us are on Facebook. To give you some perspective, more than 275 million Indian citizens use mobile phones. Not all of our billion-plus people are Slumdogs hanging out at the Temple of Doom. (Talk about stereotypes!)

But back to why I don’t really mind Indian self-stereotyping: This might be an unpopular stance to take, but I believe that a lot of generalizations–particularly those that groups come up with for themselves–have at least some basis in truth. Why would we make this stuff up if we didn’t see these traits in our friends, our families, and even ourselves? I mean, most of the stereotypes that other groups have created for us have been pretty great: Everyone seems to think we’re all brilliant doctors and engineers who are genetically predisposed to academic success. We’re exotic, our food is fabulous, and above all else, we can dance.

So, I don’t disagree with Varadarajan’s assessment that social networking really jibes with Indians’ disdain for privacy and boundaries because when it comes to generalizations, you have to take the good with the bad. I do, however, disagree with his suggestion that this disdain is somehow unique to us. I seriously doubt Indians’ interest in social networking, which really is somewhat modest given the figures above, has anything more to do with cultural traits than with human ones.

Take a look at the frequently updated social-networking mockery sites, Failbooking and Lamebook. Maintainers of both sites seek out the most inappropriate, foolish, weirdest, creepiest content from the likes of Facebook and Twitter, and compile them for the rest of us to see so that we may join in them in pointing and laughing at the blurred out faces and scratched out names.

Here’s an example:

This mass ridicule is nothing new. Back in the days before social-networking sites, when more internet users socialized via chat rooms, sites like Bash.org sprang up to bring us comic gold like this:

Josh: QUESTION FOR EVERYONE....
SecureXeC: IT'S TO THE LEFT OF YOUR 'A' KEY.

All of these sites are based in The United States, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse nations in the world. All content is user-generated, and despite Failbooking’s halfhearted attempts at concealing names and faces, it’s quite apparent that this content comes from people from myriad walks of life.

The truth is, we’re all just a bunch of voyeurs with exhibitionist tendencies. If we weren’t, social networking would fail and Facebook, once run out of a dorm room, wouldn’t be worth the whopping $11 billion it is today.

Below is a small sampling of my recent photography, which I’ve also added to my portfolio on this site. I use a Canon 50D as well as a variety of lenses. I feel that it is imperative for all multimedia journalists to have a good understanding of photography and of what makes a picture “good” or “interesting.” Feel free to comment or to contact me directly if you would like to see additional samples of my work.

Constructive criticism and suggestions are also welcome!