Month: November 2007

I’ve been thinking about Facebook’s Beacon a lot lately. And i’ve been playing with some services out there, like Lemonade, that let me share what I’ve purchased.

Facebook Beacon actually has the right vision but it has two main drawbacks:

1. Default behavior is opt-in. It should be opt-out by default. No brainer

2. And Facebook Beacon only works with sites that have a relationship with Facebook.

Dave Winer thinks we should own our own data. He’s right of course but I would also be happy with a site that securely uses my username/password data for all of my favorite web sites.

And then let me share that data with my friends as I see fit. For example, I would by happy to share my Amazon purchases over the years. And I would love to see my friends Amazon history as well. I would also be happy to share all restaurants that I’ve dined at with my credit card history. 

For starters this would provide a superior product review service. Hands down.

But I’m even more excited about all the other things you can do with this data set. It would make my social network richer and it would add a lot more depth to my online experience.

I like those opportunities better than using my data for advertising right now.

What do you think? 

I’ve written in the past about why I enjoy blogging so much.

And today I had another fun reminder.

Out of the blue this morning, I received an email from Jonathan Rothman who plays in the band, the Long Winters. I don’t know him personally but he saw my earlier blog post and reached out. He thanked me for spreading the word. And he wanted to introduce me to someone that he thought I would find interesting.

This would never have happened if I wasn’t blogging or if he wasn’t reading blogs.

It also turns out that Jonathan is also a new blogger as well. Very cool.  

I was reading with my oldest daughter Sophia tonight. She is 8 years old. The lead character in the book is a girl who wants to be president one day.

In the middle of one paragraph, Sophia stopped reading and looked at me. She said, “what’s the name of the first woman president of the United States”

I told her we haven’t had one yet and as I was trying to offer my thoughts on the subject she blurted out “are you kidding? we have never had a woman president?!?”

We talked about it for awhile longer about it.

And Sophia is right. It is crazy that we haven’t had a woman president.