Ok.. So today I have an opinion.. not yet on where I am headed!

Ok.. So today I have an opinion.. not yet on where I am headed.  Although, I spent most of Saturday forgetting it was Saturday which I take to be a good thing.

My concern today, is about Apple's announcements yesterday, Googles, Microsoft Xone, Facebook where these vendors want to get to know you better.  They really think by following your day to day life they will know so much about you that you will buy more from them or their advertisers. 

Apple is going to improve how you organize your pictures. Not help you organize them better you see, because they already know where you were.  They already think they know what you were doing.  So, why should you take the time to organize them yourself? or click Photostream and now the world can see where you were, who you were with, and if not careful people can add pictures to your stream that could either enhance your world or detract from it.

Facebook, wants you to be front and center and live in Facebook from your phone and beyond.  What I am noticing so far is that Facebook has determined I am gay.  Has tried to figure out what I like to do, and is trying ever so hard to insert advertisements that I would like into my newstream.  I enjoy the connection to people in Facebook, but at some point this intrusion is going to make me want to be an Internet Hermit.  Think about it, just because I post a picture kissing a drag queen doesn't make me a drag queen? (Not that there is anything wrong with drag queens, and frankly they can be the strongest of advocates and performers I have ever met.)

Microsoft, from what I heard on CNET yesterday, with their new gaming system is only going to let you play games while you are connected to the Internet.  So even if you are playing alone at home, you have to be connected to the mother ship so they know what you are playing and can try and promote new things, share your results, and learn more about you.  All under the guise of serving the customer better.  Let's see if my Wii did that.. there would have to be a set of analyst I would suggest over 55, and needing a good nap.  Yes.. Mr. Silverman played tennis on the Wii again for an hour during the day.  Yes Ms. Jetson, think about his, your employee Brian Silverman was discovered playing tennis on the Wii at the same time you had a conference call with him and 300 other employees.  We don't think he was totally focused on the conference call.   (Playing the Wii is better than screaming isn't it?)

Let me be clear, there is some goodness around patterns and understanding what we do day to day.  American Express systems know when a purchase is out of bounds for me and typically will either make me talk to them at the store or will stop an errant purchase (thieves beware) and this is because they know a pattern of behavior that would not be accurate.  This frankly is either cause they love me, or the base liability legally they and ther merchant have for errant purchases.  Years ago, when Sears had a similar closed loop credit system, they realized they had gold in the patterns of purchases but in those days the technology and applications to do the analysis weren't here.

My question is where does this end?  Yes, the NSA is using similar techniques to scan, analyze and report on suspicious behavior by leveraging date from Google and other sources.  Are we surprised?  We can decide this is necessary in this day and age of terrorism and fear.  We can decide that we trust our government not to use it for other purposes including predicting future election results here or elsewhere.  We all have accepted the terms and conditions of these sights.  We must inherently realize as we don't pay for them that advertisement and potential sales of other products and services is at the heart of value here.  But, really at some point when is it going to be enough?

If Blackberry has a secured phone that is more secure than comparable Droid, Windows, or iPhones they should get out and scream to the top of the mountain.  Frankly, they seem to have come out with a good offering with the Z10 and new OS but they have already fallen behind in the news.  Why not got out in the world and talk about these issues frankly, and with genuine concern.  This is not going to lead the list of requirements for the US.  We long ago decided convenience was a greater requirement than privacy.  But, sharing these concerns globally and maybe putting an International view on American advertising might move the needle some.

I like my iPhone5 I have already complained that they have decided which pictures and which songs should live on their cloud and not on my device.  This is not doubt on my usage of the data and I can understand their need to limit data especially at product launches and migrations to new phones.  But, this isn't how I would have chosen to use this device and frankly I was not even asked.  This is a simple example of finding our lives more and more guided by these companies not just implementing these services to help us.  Excuse me Mr. Silverman, did you realize you have passed four Starbucks this morning and we know you have not had a latte today, are you feeling ok?  Mr. Silverman, we saw you bought movie tickets to the Great Gatsby, we will save you time and boredom for $3 we will let you know if you are going to like it before you go in. 

I was listening later in the day to CNET news to see what they had to say about the Apple announcements.  I would suggest the reporters were in their 20's.  They had two colors of hair (not gray as one of them) and each looked like they had the iPhone headsets on because the streaming of the announcement from Apple was overloaded I guess.  Now, how do you become or appear to be unbiased, when you have Apple headsets on and I can see them?  They mentioned the Google announcements were much more radical, innovative, and services oriented for customers and then they went on to discuss the new music app for IOS7.  I mention this because I think the people developing these products and reporting on them don't have a real connection to the average user.  I am not sure I am an average user, but I do have genuine concern now they are going to start to recommend music I should listen to because of what they know I purchased through iTunes.  Frankly, mostly these days because of Pandora! 

Take this in an odd tangent.  I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad Twist.  I generally love it.  It is a great blend of a traditional ThinkPad with a Twist.  I can twist the screen around and watch a NetFlix Movie.  Keep Turning and it basically turns into a large tablet.  So, I truly like it.. I do think Lenovo is an innovator in the laptop and device space that needs to be watched.  But, I am now a Windows 8 user.  Slowly but surely I am getting to know Windows 8 and it isn't all that bad.  There are some quirks.  Learning how to move from app to app that is running is challenging.   The ability to search easily for things is tricky but helpful.  I imaging 8.1 will have fixed some fo the quirks.  But, there are two things that I find challenging.   I went to Amazon to buy a license of office.  I have done this before years back and saved a few dollars.  So, I buy from Amazon.  Guess what instead of them having the software available for download they just link me to Microsoft’s app store I guess.  So, Microsoft is closing the loop not just on who buys their software but where and when as well. 

Secondly, It has taken me at least 3 or 4 times to install Outlook successfully.  Part of it is the house's internet connection is on the slow side.  So, replicating my email in AOL and GMail took way longer than expected.  And 3 of the times, it just would not start and gave me errors.  This is Outlook13 which I assumed would run better on windows8 than anything else.  Last, now it is running fairly well, but I keep getting what are IMAO errors.  What does Microsoft say on their own blog? Site? Got through your email and look for bad symbols in the subject lines.  If that doesn't find errors, then basically copy all of your inbox locally and delete from the server and the errors that were not there with Outlook2010 will go away.  Frankly, I think this sucks that the answer lies in that it isn't their problem, their fault, and is user error when a new version of their product does not work at least as well as the previous.

So, the idea they are learning about us so they can serve us better?  That means they have to learn what the average user wants and not just the geeks living in Redmond and on campuses in the Bay Area.  It also means they need to think before they launch any of this about customer sat, and most importantly privacy.  I don't want Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, or my future dog to know exactly where I am or have been every minute.  Cause frankly, I am not that interesting.   Secondly, I would like recommendations of what I might enjoy not be correlated to my previous activities because I want to have more options not less.  We need to be in a place where our options are growing because of the technology and information not being narrowed down by corporate giants out there.