Sponsored Stories lets advertisers take word-of-mouth recommendations and promote them, Facebook employees said in a video demonstration.

If a friend checks into Starbucks, for example, that check-in will show up on a news feed, but depending on how many friends you have, it could quickly get buried beneath other status updates, photo postings, or FarmVille stats. With Sponsored Stories, Starbucks could pick up that posting and feature it in the sponsored section on the right-hand side of your homepage. It will only appear to friends; your check-in will not show up for complete strangers.

I've been hating on Facebook for a while now. I lurk there, but rarely post so much as a comment on a friend's photo. I also removed all of my "Likes" and my Profile Info ages ago. But I continue to lurk and refuse to delete my account, because I find the base functionality of Facebook to be quite useful and valuable. But they keep setting their creepiness bar higher and higher, to the point that I refuse to participate on the site.

The other day I saw one of these "Sponsored Stories" and it was just too creepy. I know my friend doesn't sponsor the company that was promoted - I know they don't "get" anything out of hitting that "Like" button. So Facebook is in essence extorting this friend for their trustworthiness amongst their friends, so that they (Facebook) can make a smooth buck off the advertising (aka "promoting") of artificial endorsements.

Personally, I don't trust Facebook to keep this already-dubious behaviour to specific user actions such as hitting a "Like" button or checking in to a location. If they don't already, I suspect that it won't be long before Facebook starts scanning the text of your posts to see what else they can force your implied endorsement of.

When it comes to my privacy and Facebook's creepiness, I'm not convinced that cross-posting from Posterous to Facebook has any real advantage over posting in Facebook directly. However it certainly feels like I have more control, and like I'm providing an alternative. You can even receive my Posterous updates via email.

I'll give Facebook the benefit of the doubt (for now) with regard to scanning what I write. I'll continue to lurk there, and I might even start commenting on the odd photo. As for "Promoted Stories," if you want to avoid becoming an unwilling Starbucks mascot just by walking into the store, ask yourself whether checkins and the Like button are actually doing anything for you, and think twice before using them.

People often express their growing concerns about putting data into Google for privacy reasons. But I now have a problem putting data into Yahoo out of the concern that it could just disappear one day. That’s really terrifying.

Uh, that's the whole damn problem with cloud, no matter the provider. I actually started a post about this back in mid-2009, but never finished it. FORTUNATELY, my blog provider is still in business, and my draft post is still saved. But man, I'm not going to commit my entire photo collection to the cloud and only the cloud, because the fate of that residence is not up to me!

I think I need to resurrect that post...

Dropbox vs. Windows Live Sync Beta 2011 : Feature-by-Feature Showdown

Earlier, I gave a rather ebullient guided tour of Windows Live Sync Beta 2011 (which will be known as Windows Live Mesh when it is officially released), touting its groovy potential as a backup tool and cloud storage solution. But since that brief honeymoon phase, I’ve had a chance to move in some of my stuff and I’ll have to admit that I’m having trouble getting comfortable. It seems that much of the pampering I’ve received from old faithful Dropbox has given me some pretty high expectations when it comes to cloud-based syncing and in spite of my optimistic review, I think I’m going to have to stick with Dropbox—for now. Here’s why:

Note: Before we begin, a quick explanation about the name—Windows Live Mesh and Windows Live Sync used to be two separate products. although they did essentially the same thing.  Windows Live Sync Beta 2011—which became available as part of the Windows Live Essentials Beta 2011 package in June 2010—was a combination of the two earlier products. Now, Microsoft has decided to rename what is now available as Windows Live Sync Beta 2011 and call it Windows Live Mesh 2011 once it hits the official release along with Windows Live Essentials 2011, thereby eliminating both previous products. For the purposes of this article, we’ll refer to it as its current name: Windows Live Sync Beta.

Client Support – Advantage: Dropbox

Windows Live Sync Beta made an impressive stride towards coexistence between operating systems by including an OS X client, but Dropbox takes the cake by supporting Linux, Windows and Macintosh. Not only that, Dropbox’s desktop client makes it to each of these operating systems with its features fully intact. The same can’t be said for the Macintosh version of Windows Live Sync Beta, which doesn’t support remote connections.  (Granted, Dropbox doesn’t handle remote connections at all, so maybe it’s not fair to count that against Windows Live Sync Beta.)

Sharing and Public Folders – Advantage: Dropbox

Windows Live Sync Beta’s public folder and file sharing capability is really just handled by Skydrive. And when it comes to sharing files with Skydrive, the experience is clunky to say the least. It’s all done via email invitations, and if the recipient doesn’t have a Windows Live account, they are out of luck. You can share folders publicly via Windows Live Spaces, but again, it’s another step, another sign up process and another layer of “stuff” to navigate.

Dropbox, on the other hand, is very intuitive—in fact, it’s so friendly, it’s downright social. You can right-click and get a shareable link right from Windows Explorer or the mobile app and anyone can view it. Dropbox even has its own URL shortening service, making it highly Twitter and Facebook friendly. No sign-ups or registrations required.

Remote Connections – Advantage: Windows Live Sync Beta

There’s no contest here—Windows Live Sync Beta has it, Dropbox doesn’t. It’s a small victory, however. In spite of Windows Live Sync Beta offering one of the most user-friendly remote desktop experiences I’ve seen, I can’t say that its something I personally look for in a cloud sharing/syncing application.  Normally if your geeky enough to need to connect into a remote system, you will have 4 other ways to remote into your home/work box anyway.  Still, point Windows Live Sync Beta.

Mobile Support – Advantage: Dropbox

Same story here, but in reverse: Dropbox has it, Windows Live Sync Beta 2011 doesn’t. Dropbox has a stellar iPhone, iPad and Android app that goes above and beyond in terms of functionality. You can pull up files from your Dropbox folder from wherever you are and you can even upload videos and photos directly. I’m also a pretty big fan of the Favorites feature—it lets me take my daily checklist that I usually keep in my Quick Launch bar with me wherever I go. For the more ambitious, you could even include multimedia files for on-the-go accessibility. You can also grab shareable links and put them in an email or copy them to your clipboard in a snap.

With all that being said, the previous version of Windows Live Mesh did have some mobile support—you could upload images via m.mesh.com. Not quite an app, but it could mean that Mesh 2011 might carry over some of its mobile functionality into its official release.

Web Features – Advantage: Dropbox

This one was a bit closer—Skydrive has the distinct advantage of being hardwired with Office Live Workspace, which gives you a sort of best of both worlds between Google Docs and Dropbox. Skydrive and Office  Live Workspaces makes complete sense for handling Word files, spreadsheets and other collaborative documents.

Windows Live Sync Beta may have won this one—that is if Dropbox’s web-enabled features weren’t so excellent.  Namely, I’m talking about the Undelete and Previous Versions features. Dropbox’s ability to recover old versions of files has saved my skin (and hours of work) more than once. And while saving me from the consequences of being a clumsy oaf who occasionally overwrites or deletes a critical file may not be to my long-term benefit, I’m extremely thankful that for now, I won’t have to learn any hard lessons about backing up files. Speaking of backups…

Backup Features – Results Pending

The ability to perform unlimited syncing between machines with Windows Live Sync Beta really had me excited. The problem: it doesn’t work yet. At least not for me. I had this master plan where I would sync my iTunes folder across all of my machines—40 gigs in all—so that when I made changes to my main machine, the songs would automatically get sent to my other computers without an additionally importing. However, I never made it past the initial syncing phase because about 1 percent of the way through, the WiFi in my entire house went dead. I’m not saying that it couldn’t have been Comcast’s fault or my router’s fault—but I will say that as soon as I closed Windows Live Sync Beta, my WiFi started working again shortly after. And this happened each time I tried to “back up” my music to another machine. I even tried it with a smaller folder—about a gig worth of music—and it happened again. Hopefully, this bug will be fixed with the official release of Windows Live Mesh, and at that time, I’d have to say that Mesh could be the winner in this category, since Dropbox doesn’t have an equivalent “unlimited” PC-to-PC syncing feature.  But until then, I can’t give out any kudos for an application that breaks my wireless Internet…

Storage Space – Advantage: Tie

Your Skydrive gives you a whopping 25 gigs of online storage—but for some reason, only 2 gigs of that is available for us by Windows Live Sync Beta. Beta users complained big time, so Microsoft threw us a bone and promised to up it to 5 gigs ones it comes out of beta. Dropbox gives you 2 gigs for free  and charges you extra if you want more—but  I may know of a groovy way to get 6 gigs of free additional Dropbox space for a total of 8 gigs, which nudges it into the lead.

Still, I’m calling this one a tie. Out of the box, both give you 2 gigs—but Mesh users can (or will) get 5 gigs without jumping through any hoops. Plus, that 25 gigs worth of space on the Skydrive sure looks cozy, and I’m betting that eventually, Microsoft will open it up for use via Mesh. Plus, that space is there for you to use through the web interface, if you really need it—with Dropbox, it’s 2 gigs no matter how you slice it that is unless you want a paid plan.. nahhh

Size – Advantage: Dropbox

In terms of memory usage, the Dropbox  (Dropbox.exe) process uses more than the Windows Live Sync Beta process (WLSync.exe). But Windows Live Sync Beta relies on MOE.exe as well, which is the Mesh Operating Environment. I know this for a fact because earlier, I had trouble with the Mesh Operating Environment crashing (re-install didn’t fix it—ended up reinstalling Windows 7), and when it did, Windows Live Sync Beta didn’t work. I suppose it makes sense—Windows Live Sync Beta as we know it is a combination of Live Sync and Mesh, after all.

The Little Things – Advantage: Dropbox

This is another category that might not be fair to declare a winner for, since Windows Live Sync Beta is a pre-release and Dropbox has been around for years. But I’m doing it anyway, and the winner is Dropbox. Dropbox just feels friendlier and less obtrusive overall. I appreciate the wee little blue logo next to the folder that reminds me which folders are being synced with Dropbox (as if I’d forget—its named “My Dropbox”). I like the system tray or Growl notifications that let me know when a file has been added or deleted. I like the “Recently changed files” menu on Dropbox. I like the ability to pause syncing and limit bandwidth (come to think of it, including such a feature in Live Sync Beta may have fixed my broken WiFi problem). Dropbox also allows proxies and Selective Sync (i.e. choose which folders within your Dropbox folder to sync).

I also like how Dropbox handles conflicted copies a little bit better. Both Dropbox and Window Live Sync Beta will avoid overwriting a file if its conflicted, and instead will give it a date, but Dropbox goes the extra mile and identifies the machine where the conflicted copy originated from. And I feel like the Dropbox system is a little bit more reliable, though it’s hard to get a file to conflict on purpose the same way it would in a real world situation. And if all goes to hell, you always have Undelete and Previous Versions to fall back on.

All those little things add up—and so far, Windows Live Sync Beta feels a bit lacking when it comes to features that make you go, “Oh, that’s kind of nice to have.”  Plus. with Dropbox, there’s a whole host of unofficial tips and tricks that let you do just about anything with the program—including syncing any folder on your PC with Dropbox (not just your Dropbox folder) and linking Dropbox to Microsoft Office.

Again, I really think that Windows Live Sync Beta (or Windows Live Mesh—whatever you want to call it for now) has some real potential. But Dropbox has a serious head start, and for now, I’m trusting my important files with them.

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Sep 1st, 2010 by groovinJackman Posted in review

Tags: dropbox, live mesh, live sync, online storage, windows live

Having used Dropbox and Windows Live Mesh for a while now, I'm moving my sync back to Dropbox for every reason stated in this article, plus a couple more.

1) Dropbox works. Mesh doesn't. In my Music folder when using Mesh, about 600-odd files were simply "waiting to be synced", and remained so to eternity. These files were not locked open by some program or service - I checked. And there was simply no way to identify exactly which files these were (you could see the filenames, but not paths), and no way to determine why they wouldn't sync. Dropbox never had a problem with any file, and as mentioned in the article, a little icon on the file visually indicates the sync status of each file.

2) API. There are many third party applications which can use Dropbox as a filesystem. This is just so stupidly brilliant and yet obvious it's almost criminal that Microsoft doesn't have something similar - or maybe they do, but lack partners who use it.

3) Dropbox is simply well thought out, from beginning to end, from a customer's point of view. When you take a look at all of Microsoft's products, I think this is really where they're falling behind. They really don't understand how people use computers. How people use them, how they figure things out, what they get frustrated by, and what they get pleased by. All foreign concepts to Microsoft.

When mouse movement feels unnatural, the user may subconsciously try to use hand and wrist muscles to compensate. At best, that's uncomfortable. At worst, it can be painful. In my own case, my wrist starts to cramp after only a moment or two. After about 20 minutes, most of my forearm is in extreme pain, and I have to stop using the mouse altogether.

Over time, users with this type of difficulty using the mouse can suffer from the permanent damage known as an RSI (repetitive stress injury). I am one such sufferer. An anonymous user on MacSlash rails about "the RSI-inducing unpredictable madness that is the Mac mouse acceleration curve." And on LifeHacker.com, user "PhotoHobo" complains, "One of my biggest annoyances with OS X is the horrible mouse acceleration. As someone who is constantly battling RSI, I find this intolerable." Web searches find a number of other users voicing similar opinions and having similar difficulties.

After "dealing with it" for so long, I finally decided to see if there was a fix, and lo and behold, it's a known issue. My arm literally aches after using a mouse on a Mac. Or I should say, it used to.

I tried USB Overdrive and SteerMouse - both mentioned in this article. Steermouse seems a bit nicer but is 15-day Trialware. USB Overdrive is nagware/shareware but doesn't support Bluetooth mice yet. I'm not sure which one I'll pay for, but pay for one I shall.

Sometimes I wish I had the time and inclination to spit out stuff like this. I came up with the idea for this device about 3 years ago. Not that it matters - it's only one of about a thousand other things that end up in the same basket. Besides, mine wouldn't have had nearly the attention to detail this one does. Just the projected screen/keyboard.

I love this post. It parallels thoughts I've been having and espousing for a couple of years now about the current state of the web. It's nice to see somebody else finally getting it.

I disagree with the comment, "Twitter, which is open". It's not. It would be open if Twitter released a protocol specification and allowed others to build "twitter daemons" that all communicated in the same way. If they basically allowed anybody to run their own twitter server.

It is, however, pretty damn close. Anybody can create a Twitter client and use the published Twitter API to interact with their service. But then, Facebook kinda does that too. Facebook does however have more stuff that they don't allow third parties to interact with, thereby creating the walled garden.

I think what's changed between the days of AOL and today is that we really start to think of web apps as apps. If AOL was a walled garden - or a walled community, then Facebook is really just a walled web-based app. And the past several decades of computing has taught us that just because you put your data into an app doesn't mean that you can get it out again. So if Facebook is just another app, then maybe we tolerate the walls a little more.

I agree that people will bend towards openness eventually. But it's a problem we've been dealing with for decades. And I expect it's a problem we'll be dealing with for decades to come.

True ubiquitous computing has a long way to go...

Honestly, when he started saying thanks at the end, I thought he was going to finish with, "you've all made it possible for my net worth to be $4bn before many of you had your first real job".

Anyway, none of this addresses my concerns, so I'm not jumping back on the facebook bandwagon just yet...

I could use this, and stay with Facebook; or I can just repeat that Facebook needs to allow users to turn off integration with other sites. Just a little checkbox. "Do not allow". That's all it would take, and I'd be back - not a problem.