My Social Networking Expirience of 2008 (intro)

Last years it has been all about people connecting over the internet, people from all over the world socializing. A social networking fucking revolution it is. Just think about it. I have an almost day-to-day interaction with people from nearby and far-away countries, like Croatia, Serbia, Germany and Australia. No phone, just Facebook and Twitter. I talk to my relatives in Germany using Skype, not paying for the phone costs, only my internet monthly fee. And I don’t get only audio, I get to see them while talking through video chat. Without video chat I still wouldn’t know how my cousins 6 months old daughter looks like. If I were a woman, I’d drop a tear now, writing about this.

60 years ago people in my country barely knew people from nearby villages. About world matters they only new what they’ve heard on radio. It was another world back then. Then they got phones and TV and a whole new world opened to them. Before the end of last century people got their hands on mobile phones, world wide web, e-forums and e-mail. It was an revolution. Unthinkable. Suddenly you were reachable all the time thanks to your mobile phone, you could use e-mail to get your mail delivered (bye bye paper) in a matter of minutes and you could participate in e-forum debates with people from all over the world. And today? How many Facebooks, MySpaces and Twitters have we seen arise in last years, with user numbers growing straight into the sky? You don’t use Facebook? You’ve never heard about Twitter? What? You don’t even know what RSS is? Well, guess what. Your e-mail is just a plain old fax machine. Jesus, are you living in a bubble? I barely go to toilet today without people all over the world knowing about it. Okay, thats an bad example. Here’s a better one. Two weeks ago with Mumbai events going on (you’ve heard about Mumbai terrorist attacks, right?), you were waiting for the evening news to find out more on what was going on there. Okay, maybe you’ve heard something on the radio and read something on news web pages. To me it was old news already, I was getting my updates from services like Twitter, more or less learning about situation as it was developing. You may think it’s too much information to handle. I say it’s better to have information available then to not have them. It’s only a matter of how you manage it. Surely, if you will want to know everything about everything, today you will drown in this ocean of information.

That’s why I’ve set out to write three posts focusing on which (and why) social networking tools and services I’ve started to use in last few years, how they improved my social networking revolution experience and how it helped me to not to drown in this flood of information. So stay tuned in to learn about which social networking services I use and how I use them on my Windows PCand on my Mac.

— Regards, Milan

The Forgotten Man, by Robert Crais

The Forgotten Man is a crime novel by Robert Crais, 10th in a row featuring “the worlds greatest detective” Elvis Cole and his charismatic partner Joe Pike, an ex-marine. In this thrilling novel story unfolds around Elvis Cole’s unsolved secret from his past — his father whom he searched all his childhood and was never able to find.

After the events in The Last Detective, Cole is still “hiding” in his home, trying to endure media climax and grief inflicted on him after his last case. One night he receives a call from LAPD, informing him that they’ve found an injured man who — before he died due to inflicted wounds —, stated that Elvis Cole is his son and he’s come to LA to look for him.
When Cole sees dead man face he doesn’t buy the “father” story, but not being sure what to believe he sets off to investigate the case together with his partner Joe Pike and LAPD detective Carol Starkey (who already featured main role in Roberts Crais Demolition Angel novel). As Cole digs deeper and deeper into dead man’s history, trying to discover his real identity and trace his killer, he triggers an avalanche of events, too late realizing the truth about this case.

The Forgotten Man is once again an excellent crime novel by Robert Crais. It’s spectacular and thrilling climax will make this book hard to put down and an pleasure to read for any crime novel fan.

— Regards, Milan J.

The Missing Books

This almost turned out to be a very bad day for me. I say “almost”, because at 13.00 postman brought me a nice surprise. He delivered two Arkady Renko novels, Polar Star and Havana Bay, I ordered at Amazon on 25th of November.

I already wrote an article on MC Smith’s Arkady Renko Wolves Eat Dogs novel a while ago, where I said it was one of my all-time favourite books. Expectations are therefore high for this two novels, so make sure you stay tuned in for the next couple of days because I’ll surely post a review of this two pieces too.

Sorry for the crappy photo. It was done with mobile phone plus my hands are kind of shaky today (I caught a virosis which is why my day was so bad, until the postman rang on my doors).

After I’m done with this two novels, Red Square will be the only one left that I haven’t read. And since they got it back in stock at Amazon, my Arkady Renko journey will soon be over. Come to think about it, today sucks again.

— Regards, Milan

P.S.: After Arkady, I will probably start reading Robert Crais Elvis Cole detective novels. I already got my hands on The Forgotten Man novel and liked the way it smells.

Thoughts on Web Anonymity

Yesterday I had an interesting experience. It got me thinking about Web anonymity and how it actually isn’t that simple to stay anonymous in this Global Digital Village of ours, as some people might think it is.

I was reading an anonymous blog which I read regularly, because I find it very interesting and amusing ((I won’t link to it here, cuz’ I have no intention of exposing his anonymity.)). I read it as I would be reading a book of interesting stories and I can actually understand the need for anonymity in this case. At the same time I was over at a social web service I use, looking into a group associated with this blog. Suddenly it hit me, in a more or less lucky coincidence I was able to draw two or three small parallels between a group member (with a real name) and this anonymous blog. It had nothing to do with names, IP’s or some other server traces ((Hey, I’m not an admin.)). It simply has to do with his lifestyle that got reflected on his blog — things that we usually wouldn’t notice or focus on it, but when we get to see them all in one moment, it simply occurs to us. I’ve sent a message to this user, to check if my suspicions held up and he confirmed it – he was the author.
It got me thinking. This user was careful trying to stay anonymous and my discovery came as a surprise to him. But there is simply so much information on the Web, available to all of us, that it is very very hard ((Unless we are The masters of anonymity.)) to stay anonymous if we live a “double life” on the Web, having real and anonymous profiles. Even if we have them on different Web social services. Hard detective work can expose you even when you take precautions — and you know what they say: you can never be careful enough.

I’m not writing this to say people shouldn’t be anonymous on the Web. People use anonymity because of different reasons. Yes, many use it with bad and dishonorable intentions and are therefore forced into hiding, but some use it with good intentions or — if I put it differently — because they have good reasons to do so. What I’m simply trying to say is that users should be very careful when using anonymity, because it ain’t that simple. If you use it for dishonorable intentions, don’t do it – because you can get (and you eventually probably will get) exposed. If you use it for good reasons, don’t be just careful — be very very careful.

— Regards, Milan