facebook's desperate measures

for such a big company that boasts of gazillion-dollar value, facebook's latest barrage of feature impositions really come off as desperate.

there was facebook mail - which just turns itself on if you try to go to your messages (as in site messages, not facebook mail). what's up with that?  they introduced a feature that they know no one will like so they have to make it default?  there's also automatically the "archived" folder. excuse me, but i don't remember archiving my old messages. i deleted them. yes i did. and now they show up in the archive folder. WTF???  is this the privacy that facebook has promised? that if you delete content it's gone?  i deleted my old messages long time ago and now they're in my archived folder???  they were supposed to be gone, why were they holding on to these personal messages?  oh yeah and from the archive folders it takes 3 not-so-obvious steps to delete them again.  that is, if they really actually delete them.

then there was the chat thing.  i turned it off last year.  it was supposed to remember that it's off.  suddenly yesterday it was on again.  automatically. so i say no thank you and turned it off again.  then i thought i'd change the setting just to be sure.  turns out when you click on the chat status (where you access your setting) you automatically turn your availability on again.  whatever happened to announcing in the log-in page that they now have these "cool" features?  my guess is that either they know that these features aren't cool enough for account members to actively turn them on, or that they really are, indeed, desperate for member activities. (new york time's "tech talk" podcasted that millions of north american members are no longer active users)

it may not be just deleted messages that facebook "archives" for future use.  i once deleted an old account - email addresses, friends associated with that account, etc. and created a new one with a different email address.  after about a year i created yet another account, using the email address of the account i've deleted, to anchor a (professional) profile page to.  i still have my usual networking profile, so this one was an extra. i didn't "friend" anyone with this,  i made the privacy setting so that no one can send me friend request, nor find this account thru search.  so tell me -  how come facebook had been suggesting me to "friend" all these people that were associated with this email before?

XXX

anti-social (network) behavior

i never really saw how it's different from all its predecessors - friendster (r.i.p.), myspace (r.i.p.) etc.  it's gotten easier to publish, and there's a lot more users, of course - but surely these are brought about by tech advances in general and growing number of internet users, not groundbreaking innovations from facebook? unless of course including mindless games (farmville froze my brain at one point) counts as innovation.   anyway, as with friendster and myspace - facebook's now so full of junk it's unbelievable - and useless.  ok, not entirely useless as i can still link my website and blog posts there while waiting for the next big thing.

XXX

To the devil, you say!

"Spring in Upper East Side, Manhattan"
© Joselito Briones

You notice that new logo on the upper right corner of this page? That's what's new. I've taken so many photos and I've decided to offer some of them for sale for commercial purposes. I'm trying out iStockphoto. It's a slow process, it takes their staff about a week to review a photograph and approve it for inclusion in the portfolio. It's a good thing, probably, at least they're screening carefully.

Now about your photos. Don't worry, I'm not including personal photos. Although am not really sure what non-personal photos are, I'm sure I know which ones are personal. Pictures of friends are definitely personal, I'm not including them even though I have a signed model release that says I can. Well, unless you're an attention ho' like me and you write to me saying you don't mind if your photo is plastered everywhere. Once I put it out there though, there's very little I can do as to control how people use it. Your photo may end up in an advertisement showing the wonders of life, or it may be used to endorse laxatives. Hey!

Anyway, if you just want to have a print of your photo, I'll look for website I can upload high-resolution versions of "friendly" photos, so you can order directly from them.


XXX

Kastanienallee

© Joselito Briones

This is a waiting bench in Kastanienallee, the heart of the "happening" scene in Mitte, in Berlin. I've got an overflow of photos now, so you'll be seeing a lot more of less-than current images. I'll be going to the US pretty soon, so it'll really stack up even more.

I'm trying a new way of putting up the pictures, using automated scripts, because it's getting difficult to update my photo website due to the sheer number of photo. I got a freebie gallery template from the internet and used it for testing: click here for a compilation of all the photos I've uploaded so far. What do you think, go this way or stay with simple html?


XXX

Keb

© Joselito Briones

Today's Keb's birthday, one of my nephews in the Yay! Area in California. He's the one on the right (on the left is Omar), and this photo was taken a long time ago. It's particularly noticeable in this photo the compression artefacts that I mentioned to you before (especially around the eyes and on the skin area in general), the thing that is introduced whenever I upload a file to Picasa. I guess they've gotten cheapo and want to save some space, hence the compression.


XXX

An Old Portrait

© Joselito Briones

This one was taken in Hong Kong, about 10 years ago, and worth showing you only because of the fact that this was my first ever portrait commission work.

Blogger.com, the medium with which I've been communicating with you, has decided a couple of months back to move all the photos I've been showing you to Picasa. It's an online photo storage system not very much different from Flickr. It's rather convenient that it's integrated with Blogger, you can clean up your files by visiting your Picasa account. The BIG problem is, I noticed, starting today (or maybe I just noticed today), that they decided to compress uploaded jpeg-format photos. The image quality has noticeably deteriorated, and any photo I upload looks very much different from the original. So if you're looking for a place to upload and share your photos, look somewhere else. (The photo above was uploaded before I noticed the compression artefacts on uploaded files)


XXX

Wil's Press Release

© Joselito Briones

I am, of course, being coerced to relay this launch. OK! Wonderful. So here it goes.

It's supposed to announce to the world (I think) his current available status. Available for what, you might ask. The website, a I'm-such-a-worldly-guy-I've-travelled-the-whole-world-I'll-make-such-a-great-boyfriend declaration masked as a photography website, is supposed to show the prospect (read: victim) how wonderful his sensitivities are.

If you ask me honestly though, it's all rubbish. He doesn't need such a site. He's a great guy and that's all there is to it.


XXX

Reformat

© Joselito Briones

So... blogger.com, the medium with which I'm sending you these letters, decided to upgrade their system. What it means for me is that all my customized modifications are screwed up. I had to tweak my module back to what it was, although it's not all done yet. I also took the chance, since I was gonna do a lot of modifications anyway, escpecially in adding keywords to all the previous entries, to enlarge some of the photos. So if you're using an RSS reader to view these, you might notice old letters getting reposted.


XXX

Roll Call

© Joselito Briones

I found out today that most of my 12 nephews and 5 nieces are now online, so I've put a link to their homepages... I looked at their profiles and my jaws just dropped. I haven't seen them for sometime, and the last time I saw them, they all pretty much spend all their time playing video games. Now in their profile - "status: taken". "10 Golden Rules in Drinking" Huh? I guess no matter how old they are, they'll always be these small kids in this picture to me. The boys: Don Don, Kevin K., Mac(second from right), Gio, Kevin B.(second from left), Louie, Neil, Chris, Gil, JC (right), Cez, Omar(left). The girls: JL (the eldest, married, with two babies of her own, Yuri and Sey), Joie, Jaja, Janelle, and Krisi.

XXX