Free Facebook Back is in Pakistan

Pakistan finally lifted the ban on Facebook today after the site apologized for Draw Muhammad Day. The whole bruhaha began two weeks ago when said day prompted Pakistani courts to order the site blocked. Depicting Muhammad is, of course, blasphemous.

Just a week ago, Facebook stated that the contents of the ‘Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!’ fan page weren’t violating Facebook’s terms and therefore were legit. Apparently, this is no longer relevant. “In response to our protest, Facebook has tendered their apology and informed us that all the sacrilegious material has been removed from the URL,” said Najibullah Malik, secretary of the IT ministry.

In case you’re amazingly out of the loop, the ’sacrilegious material’ in question are images of the prophet Muhammad, drawn by people around the world, to protest the censoring of an episode of South Park by Comedy Central which featured Muhammad, like, dancing around in a bear suit or something. I dunno, I don’t really follow South Park these days. But I do follow Facebook.

Admittedly, it’s hard for me to write this, as I’m an illustrator, and sort of did the opposite of not participate in Draw Muhammad Day – but hey, if this is what it takes to keep Facebook accessible to Pakistan, no harm no foul, I guess. Let’s all kiss and make up, yeah? Water under the bridge. Reportedly, as of a couple hours ago Facebook was in fact still blocked from Pakistan, but ‘Everbody Draw Muhammad Day!’ is indeed kiboshed.

New Facebook features secretly add apps to your profile | Security Central - InfoWorld

Apps, which seem related to Facebook's latest sharing features, are quietly added at sites such as the Gawker network of blogs, TechCrunch, and CNET

Riley shared an experience where he tagged items and others began following along with his tags. An important document was released, and as a result of his colleagues following his tags and posts, they reviewed the document without being asked and provided feedback, even making corrections. He said that never would've happened without the social connection tools. The tools encouraged the interaction, which in turn produced better documentation because the community was working together.

The apps appear to be related to Facebook's latest sharing features and tools. The sites currently leaving this trail all have Facebook integration, and the list includes heavyweights such as the Gawker network of blogs, the Washington Post, TechCrunch, CNET, New York Magazine, and formspring.me.

It isn't entirely clear what information these apps are pulling from user profiles or feeding back to Facebook. They aren't automatically visible to friends viewing your profile page, but if you go to an application's profile page, you can see a list of your friends who also have that app installed, essentially getting a unintentional peek at their browsing habits. On the other side there are sites like the Washington Post's, which has a Facebook Network News box showing a list of your friends who have recently shared a Washington Post article on Facebook.

How to block the apps
Opting out of Instant Personalization does not stop these apps from appearing. Unfortunately, removing these kinds of applications requires more vigilance than just altering a setting.

To see a list of your current Facebook applications, click Account in the top right corner of Facebook, then select Application Settings from the drop-down menu. If you click on the Edit Settings link for one of the new applications, you'll always see one tab called Additional Permissions that has a box that's unchecked by default. Checking it will give that application permission to "Publish recent activity (one line stories) to [your] wall." Sometimes there is a second tab with an option to add a bookmark for that link to your wall. And a few apps also have a Profile tab where you can add a box to your profile for that site and pick a privacy level for it.

Clicking the X to delete an application will temporarily remove it from your applications list, but it will just be re-added as you return to that site. One work-around is to always log out of Facebook before surfing the Web. Another is to block each application after it appears. In order to permanently block an application, you have to click on the Profile link for that application in the Applications Settings window, then click Block Application in the menu on the left side of the app's page.

What Facebook intended
The new features in Facebook's newly rolled-out Open Graph API are supposed to be used, with permission, for things like cross posting comments and reviews on Facebook and external sites. For example, if you are logged in to a site like PC World or Macworld using Facebook Connect and you leave a comment on an article, you'll see a pop-up message asking if you'd like to publish the comment as a story to your wall. If you click Publish, the comment will show up in your friend's news feeds.

It's already been a rough week for Facebook and privacy. Recent issues have given the impression of a disorganized and buggy platform, and raised concerns about Facebook's ability to responsibly store and manage users' private information. Hopefully this latest issue is just another bug and not a new way of operating for the social networking site.

6 Silly Things Facebook Taught Us About Social Networking

As an early adopter of Facebook, I’ve been able to see the ups and downs of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation. Fortunately, through all of it, I’ve learned quite a few things along the way. Some of these insights are more disturbing than others, while others just make no sense whatsoever.
So let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first:

1. Everyone Loves Farms (and Gangsters)

The words “farm” and “gangster” could never appear in the same sentence, until now. For some amazing reason, people like to build farms and waste people — who’d of thought that? Furthermore, who would have thought that so many people would have been interested in it as well? With all that time spent playing these games, surely people must be unproductive.

2. But It's Okay To Be Unproductive

Why work when you can play on Facebook all day instead? That’s what most people are supposedly doing on the job anyways. If they don’t have a job at a desk with a computer hooked up to the Internet, they have a job at a local Barnes & Noble with a smart phone and are always “poking” their Facebook friends while they should be sorting magazines (true story). It’s unbelievable, really.

3. Bashing Employers Online: Not So Smart

If there is something that I can expect to see on Facebook when I check it near the end of the day, it is that there is going to be someone on there complaining about their job or their boss. This has traditionally been done with coworkers or friends while talking (yeah, some people still do that), and it doesn’t leave a trace of evidence. Facebook, on the other hand, leaves a trace of everything you do on the site, and considering Facebook’s constant changes to the privacy policy, those complaints might be broadcasting to the world, or to a friend of your boss, or who knows?

4. Privacy Is Pointless

Speaking of privacy: it pretty much doesn’t exist on Facebook — to assume otherwise would be crazy. Posting pictures of you in bars being wild is probably not too smart. A simple solution is to think of Facebook like Twitter: assume everything is being broadcast to the world. It makes you safer and it makes Facebook feel better because that is exactly what the company wants.

5. User Experience Has No Meaning

Just as MySpace, even to this day, has an interface that I can’t even be bothered to deal with, Facebook has been changing around their interface so much that it makes it nearly impossible to get comfortable. But what is worse is that each change seems to be a step backwards. For example, notice how the notifications bar has moved to the top of the page? If you are scrolled down even the slightest bit, the notifications disappear, and I’ve gone hours not knowing I’ve had a new notification simply because I nudged the page down a bit too far. It’s ridiculous!

6. A Boyfriend/Girlfriend Is A Click Away!

If you happen to see the advertising that appears on Facebook, you just might have noticed the nearly endless supply of “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” wanted advertising that appears in the sidebar. I have seen far too many these advertisements (Facebook knows me far too well), with some of them being borderline nudity. Then again, perhaps Facebook is a great place to start building an intimate relationship from. Well, maybe not.