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A lot has been said about the photo that Facebook's Marc Zuckerberg's sister Randi inadvertently sent to the world. Everyone's talking about her rant, Facebook privacy policies, warning people about postings, and frankly, I really couldn't have cared less.

But then I saw the picture.

I am a Yahoo! holdout. I have been using MyYahoo as a source of news feeds (RSS) for years -- over a decade, I believe. It was easy, comfortable, and their news site was (and still is) extremely user friendly. I often preferred Yahoo Sports to ESPN or SI. It was even my home page for a while, before having one home page became obsolete -- now I have multiple home pages, and it's not one of them.

I am so happy that I develop sites with Drupal.

Marketers need Sociologists. Actually, marketers should be Sociologists (or Sociologists should be marketers).

For those of you who followed the SOPA / PIPA saga, know that, at least for now, the Internet has defeated the Congressional Hollywood lobbyists and the "public servants" they have in their deep pockets. It's a good thing and we should all be proud. As a Sociologist I am well aware of the flaws of that statement, but it serves as a good introduction to what I really want to discuss, and that is the Internet Consumer -- both the consumer of what the Internet has to offer, and the traditional consumer who basically uses the tools of the Internet to consume.

That's really all I have to say right now.

Please write your Congressman to stop this draconian bill. SOPA and PIPA are a terribly misguided attempts to stop piracy by people who really don't know much about the Internet and/or possibly personal freedoms.

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I know that people have been writing about passwords, password management, password memory techniques, and password encryption forever, but I'm not done.

Let me start with a few facts:
1) Our memories are limited.
2) Passwords are hard to remember.
3) Long passwords drive most people nuts.
4) Hackers want your password.

When I wrote TranceNational AlienNation, my thesis that researches Trance Music culture in Israel and discusses the moral panic that ensues and targets the global trance community, I was surprised to find how easily people are whipped into a frenzy of panic by seemingly innocent events. Raves, drugs, youth culture in general, have all been targets of moral panics.

A few years back I did something that had serious ramifications for my family. There were unexpected consequences, some serendipitous, others just scary. It started as simple fun, but then became increasingly more intense. There were moments I thought we would totally lose control. But then things plateaued and levelled out. But for a minute there....

What did I do? I opened a Facebook account for my mother.