Author: Clickford, Steven M.

Facebook Pages – Are You Being Screwed?

Clickford, Steven M.

On January 15th, Facebook did a major change that was announced last year to deemphasize Facebook pages and more content from your friends and family on your News Feed. For anyone who operates Facebook “pages” (the ones where you have to “Like” and/or “Follow”) had been screwed over. Especially when Facebook didn’t give Page Admins directions on getting their content to be top priority.

While Facebook Pages may mean little to some, it may be worth to others.

“Facebook pages” ofter are blurred between the lines of a fully public profile or a page where it’s not for “friends” and is used for business (meaning you can use the metrics and convoluted metering system for hits, likes, reax, etc.) For the purposes of the article, “profiles” are not “Pages” and the former is a befriend system while the latter is a “Like” and “Follow” system.

Nearly nine years ago, this was introduced for celebrities, ranging from A to C-list, to small businesses to “brands” and enterprises. Prior to there was no real way for a business to be on Facebook. In fact smaller towns and communities who lived on business on a seven-digit telephone number, that never got a website, and some refused to go on the email way, would jump into the 21st Century using Facebook pages.

If you are a page administrator to a business or a brand or use Pages for your own branding, you got screwed on January 15th.

Controversy on Facebook’s News Feed goes as far back as when Facebook became open for non university users. The reason why Facebook deemphasized Facebook pages on the News Feed may had something to do with a potential conflict in the 2016 Election, or just simply experimenting on their users. To me this is highly unethical.

And I do not want to blame the user, while some snooty Computer Scientist would probably do. Sure the writing was on the wall (no pun) and it was announced during Facebook’s developers conference last year, but small business owners and content creators ranging from old tech vlogs to cosplay models have no time to be reading on the corporate blog or page admin relations and stuff like that to be educated. For them this is a slap on the face.

For me I think out of the last eleven years I’ve been on and off Facebook, I’ve spent many as a page admin for various things. Part of it I felt at one point in my life I didn’t have a face for Facebook and I still struggle with a weak social network in real life.

I do not think this will hurt Facebook’s bottom line, the stock may not hit a bump for a few more quarters if revenues from the pages business starts to crumble. While Facebook has admitted that their fears came true of a unruly society wether it’s in the “real world” or packet-based world, I would say “guns don’t kill, people with guns do”, or fatty foods don’t kill you, the person whose eating them do. Facebook users make Facebook unattractive for many. The people on social media who are exploiting the negativity should be blamed. Where is the computer scientists when you need them to pass the buck?

I do wonder if FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) are going to be the next Railroads of the New Millennium. The Railroad industry peaked in the early 1900s or a number of reasons, disruptions in technology and plain ol stupidity. The Tech Crash of 2000 was no less than people wanting to get rich quick, and Facebook can be more valuable, if they respect our privacy if people are willing to pay for value added services to ensure your privacy because storing stuff on the Internet doesn’t come free and it isn’t created like water.

These companies are large in power and market cap so therefore, they can do whatever the hell they want. Digital companies do not play by the traditional norms of industrial companies. That’s another discussion for another day, however I would be very careful of putting capital in FAANG only because stupidity is their true disruptor.

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7 Years Ago This Holiday – Steve Jobs’ Attempt for a Holiday News Dump

Clickford, Steven M.

For politicians, if you don’t want to be on the news, you dump unpopular stories on a Friday in the summer. If you want to expose a story, you do it on a Monday or Tuesday morning.

If you don’t want to freak out investors, disclose your story on a bank holiday. In the U.S. Martin Luther King Day occurs on the 3rd Monday every January. Steve Jobs who was getting very ill, thought his PR folks at Apple dump the story that morning, and no one will notice since most Wall Streeters are not in the trading floor – even for a holiday.

Most of the cable business channels, CNBC and Bloomberg do not have staff who come in, except for European closes when there is major events that break. But in recent years, they just run whatever is set on the playout servers.

Fox Business Network, whether they had that year or did since the start, would be on every bank holiday. Even a holy day like Good Friday. FBN was on a regular scheduled Business Day programming with a ticker with Friday’s quotes and live bugs that were of the futures. The story was  Steve Jobs’ leave of absence, and if memory serves, he resigned from Apple in August and passed in October of that year.

The most ironic thing was CNBC and Bloomberg did not touch the story on cable. Their sites had the story, but not one reporter could do a live phoner with a still graphic or have someone come in and do a live shot or what. Since technology and business do go hand and hand, this was a major breaking news story in this realm. The established cable business news channels were MIA. No person did not want to be bothered at CNBC to go into Englewood Cliffs and do a five minute breakin, or Bloomberg for that matter. Bloomberg West I believe came on the air just before or after that time, though did some live program out west I believe by 6:00 Eastern. CNBC by late afternoon ET did ran a crawl of this earth shattering headline in the business world but had limited information prior to. Meanwhile FBN owned this story throughout the day and into the evening, and repeated that story every hour. I remember my mother was ether sick or got snowed in and we learned the news when Don Imus’ then show was on that network since FBN in those days had better news coverage in business.

You wouldn’t think that after a significant member of technology and business made news and a scrappy network on 1211 6th Ave would own the story, that they would have plans in the future. FBN was still a ratings challenged network for the time, but they made major improvements as time went on.

I would bet this story made them look really decent because of their continued business news despite a holiday. And today the tag had the annual “While CNBC is on reruns, we’re open for business!”

Steve Jobs was the winner for choosing to be low key, however he was naive that FBN was the domestic news agency that would ran with the story – the same day – making him not run away of burying a material news story, while the established CNBC was the looser.

Steve Jobs was a man who did transform the world’s technology and Apple was always a popular news story amongst the technical and business press, and on cable news. While I don’t think what he did was wrong, what was wrong was how the competing cable channels just was unable respond – on a holiday mostly for financial workers, and schools and government.

The egg was on CNBC’s face for sure!

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“NBC 10” Comes to Boston…

Clickford, Steven M.

Branding aside, I strongly am an proponent of “legacy branding”,  I am an avid watcher of NBC Boston despite not watching SuperStore (although that looks funny) or Chicago Fire or whatever. I do watch TV still, on “traditional” means if X1 is considered to be “traditional”. It looks like a streaming platform to me. I watch CBS and ABC shows too. When the local news comes, I will change the dial to whatever applies to me. Because of the NBC’s license and stick, they actually have covered New Hampshire more often than the competition and since WBIN has gone off the air.

 

Welcome NBC 10, or Channel 10 with a CBS O&O looking typeface from 1980?

On January 1st, exactly a year after the switch from the NBC affiliation on WHDH-TV from the Sunbeam company, to an owned and operated signal owned by the network; NBC finally has added a channel number. 10.

In a very heavily cable market, NBC decided that the SD feed would be on most cable systems on Channel 10 and the HD on x10, where the x would be the one hundred ranges of the digital cable system. In most of the northern Comcast systems, the ones that predate Adelphia is on 710, and the legacy ones (like the ones that go back to TCI and Continental Cable) are on 810.

Also this past year, the TV spectrum in Boston has shank like crazy. Because more people are using the Internet to stream (and log up the bandwidth at the same time), that channel positions aren’t really the problem, it’s finding a strong signal.

The problem when NBC assumed it’s affiliation of it’s own network was the stick in Goffstown, NH was not even close to be strong signal to seen right in Somerville/Boston city lines. This goes back to the WGOT days, when the channel once aired a programming service that claimed to be the “Boston affiliate”  NBC bought I believe the old WMFP that used to be the Shop at Home station, and another low powered signal to extend the signal to Boston and points south. With the magic of PSIP, you can spoof the channel from that old rabbit ear spectrum to a channel number that could be viewer friendly.

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My Thoughts for Living Digitally at “Home”

Clickford, Steven M.
My home folder, I didn’t want to share how big it is. It’s local because I don’t currently have a remote file share that can sync my MacBook’s files. But I should though in case of failures…

You may have heard the phrase “home directories” in some capacity in enterprise tech.  I have strongly felt your home for your files should live somewhere else not just your computer.

In modern computing since the beginning of the 21st Century, files are stored in a specific and systematic matter. The directory typically is in a matter of the physical disk, a folder, then a follow up folder such as your name or username or login handle, whatever phase works best

Hard Drive > Users > login handle

In your “home” is the following folders where you keep your digital belongings:

  • Documents
  • Desktop (the clutter on your background can be seen as a folder too)
  • Downloads (most browsers know this is a preset folder and by default will automatically keep downloaded files into this folder
  • Music (for iTunes and other music players)
  • Movies (home video captures, etc.)
  • Pictures (a landing pad for photos exported by any digital camera or smartphone)

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The Sad Macintosh Gallery!

Clickford, Steven M.

Computers are like humans, they no longer are spring chickens.

Today’s subject is on the Mac, and it’s bootup process when it fails. The most ideal failure should result in a black screen, showing Susan Kare’s infamous “Sad Macintosh” icon, (known for it’s frown on it’s right hand side, an extra pixel or two), and an accommodating “Chimes of Death”, if all failure goes as planned per to the startup process on the vintage Macintoshes.  All Macs made before 1998 had the Sad Mac Icon, but any Mac made after 1987 (beginning with the SE and Macintosh II) had the “Chimes” to go along. (The original Macintosh, the Fat Mac, the XL, 512Ke, and the Plus did not have such ability.)

Any modern electronic equipment is vulnerable for failures as they age. While the subject is on the “Sad Macintosh” icon appearing at startup sequence in vintage (“Classic” Macs), failures shall not be limited to Macs, but PCs and even other computers like minis, etc. A PS/2 from the early 1990s could not boot properly only because it’s capacitors are failing as well.

The recommended directions by Apple was to bring your Mac to your Authorized Service Provider. Other than that the documentation wouldn’t say too much. Because I do not have access to historical Apple technical documents (since knowledge bases of this type predates the Web) it’s unsure if capacitors, etc was common. I think it’s safe to say because it’s more of an age than anything else.

(As a sidebar: In the early 1990s, Apple also produced a small number of Macintosh service handheld devices for the use of Authorized Service Providers. In models after 1990, the SCSI port would open up after the Sad Macintosh screen, and send additional information to this device, which would then backup on some flash device, which then was downloaded onto another Mac to figure out additional problems. There was also ROM cards that a serviceman would plug in depending on the type of Macintosh, one flash card was for LC line, one for the II line and another for like the Classic.)

Most of the electronics that are failing are due to blown up capacitors, and sometimes when it blows up, it’s like taking a bottle of Coke and throwing it into the circuit board. This doesn’t mean its totaled, you may need to replace them, (by the use of a soldering iron.)

Sometimes all attempts may not work and you may need to surrender reviving your Mac.

Classic Macs, the hardware sense, the ones with the all in ones like the 128K to Color Classics are most vulnerable because of the capacitors that hold power for the monitor. This part will need some expertise as dealing with display capacitors can be lethal.

The following YouTube videos feature Macs failing the usual failures of the startup process. (and yes I have vetted to ensure that they aren’t manipulated, etc.)

REALLY UNSUAL SAD MAC FAILS

The Macintosh Portable wants to Jam! Now these models had no “Power On Key” so the user would strike a key. But it goes right to the Sad Mac, so therefore something failed immediately.

Typically a Sad Mac should cut right in. Now I can’t tell if there’s an arm on the left of the picture trying to do an Interrupt, but it’s not normal for a screen to wipe down, stay black, then the Sad Mac to appear.

Yeah, things are peachy for this Classic II. Analog board must had been busted.

SINGLEHANDED CASES OF CHIMES OF DEATH WITH A BLACK OR GREY SCREEN

While this may or may not show the Sad Mac, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility you may run into any Vintage Macintosh that may have a grey screen and just hear the Chimes of Death and nothing coming on screen, not even the disk icons, Happy or Sad Macintoshes. This was never documented in any of the end user Macintosh guides, and any of the technical docs I own does not discuss just the singular Chimes of Death situation. Typically this is where you can rule out capacitor issues. This became a subject on the vintage boards on Apple Discussions  a few years ago, starting the awareness of the vulernabilities of aging PCs.

Here’s a better example

Another example of the Chimes without a Sad Mac

Fast or Slow and/or High or Low Pitched Chimes of Death?

Yup I’ve witnessed it!

That’s all!

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Lack of Social Networking = No Growth Potential

Clickford, Steven M.

From the other site

I’m writing this after a recent encounter on the ride home from the turnpike where I saw some toll taker that is about my age or even younger, cute and attractive. Many people are much older than I am. I’ve seen her before and she’s I believe married.

Living in a suburban area that is borderline rural and not rural just north of a big city is not easy. I’ve grown up in a large suburban town, where for most of my life, I didn’t grow up there, because I spent more time down in Massachusetts. I’ve repeated this story a number of times, for the people that know me well, middle school hell and high school insanity that impacts almost all adolescents.

Obviously I lost contact with almost every one of them. A vast majority of the kids I went to school are living in large urban cities, much further away from where they grew up, even one I know lives down under. I also do not think these kids are ever coming back to where they call home (as many aren’t also even married or having children and they have or are hitting three-zero themselves.) New Hampshire is the state for the hard tight republican types. New Hampshire was nice growing up, but a pain to live as an adult. It’s nice to visit as an adult but it’s much better to live an a “tolerant” urban locale.

This snobbery and arrogance is what isn’t helping my group. We don’t have a choice to pick our bags and travel to any state, especially in some locations institutions still exist, and the same group of people have limited tolerance for people with autistic or other developmental disorders. I’ve been pushed to the bone to find “peers” and be with my “peers” I always thought that those “peers” were normal “people of my own age”. And apparently because I am still longing for this over a decade later, I guess I am doing something wrong.

Now how do I grow my social circle? Go out and make yourself known. Ok, so how can that next step of trying to get people to be in contact? Business cards are just as bad as an attempt to befriend people on Facebook. I’ve been denied by a number of people who I had frequent contact, it’s not like I met a Barista and asked to befriend her on Facebook the day after.

The social world is not what is taught in special education. It’s really a Banana Republic, and quite often, the fast-paced changing world of clueless teenagers as thirty year olds known as the Millenial generation does not help matters.

I’d rather have friends who are objects at this point. Because I am tired of being treated like a dog by my “peers”. I can’t tell you one person outside of my immediate circle that was born after 1980 that has much respect to have a meaningful acquaintance, friendship, and the ability to grow social connections and business opportunities.  And because of this, I’ve been “stuck”, and it has exasperated my ability to grow. 

What I have come to except is that the ability to grow my socialization to the masses will be a lost cause, which in 2016 was the year of accepting that harsh reality.

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Decoding Autism: Stop Coding The Condition!

Clickford, Steven M.

From the other site published in winter

As I have explained a number of times, autism is a condition that impacts people. Not boys, not just kids, but adults too. Some develop later in their childhood years, and some apparently from the routine MMR vaccines and classify that as an “injury”. Or you have some nit wit of a celebrity who uses every semantics similar to a person with a cancerous condition of “beating the odds, my child is cured!”

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Would MLK Be Happy Today?

Clickford, Steven M.

Sidenote: From my old site from winter

The Martin Luther King birthday is a holiday for me. A real holiday from the 364 or 365 days (if it’s a leap year) from tireless advocacy for civil rights for all.

New Hampshire, the state I live in was the last state to observe the holiday as such around year 2000. It was called “Civil Rights Day” because according to the contrary, the state feared if they dedicate one holiday for one person, it would open the pandora’s box excuse for other leaders. MLK has been the only major figure (whose holiday came after his assassination) since the 1960s. To speak bluntly, it’s the asshole conservatives that wanted to keep things low key. Especially anything that is social related.

I’m not a social justice warrior. I don’t believe the SJW movement in the first place. I am a vocal opponent of a growing trend of this state turning blue but the same blue people having red agendas.

Specifically in the “developmental disability” community. We should in fact avoid using said phrase and use every developmental disorder to underscore the difference, the complexities and the diversity of each condition. The officials at The State of New Hampshire may not want to be “disability specific” but that’s exactly the problem.

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