Trust me. It’s awesome!

When you log-in your password is safe and protected with SSL:

However, let’s say that you view your list of contacts on the LinkedIn iPhone app:

You’re basically giving away your contacts to the hacker at the cafe who is taking advantage of the fact that you’re using WiFi.

Here’s the scoop on the iPhone Apps.

Your data is not secure with these apps:

Flickr: Password Secure, Data not
Facebook: Password Secure, Data not
Linkedin: Password Secure, Data not

All your data is secure with these apps:

Gmail: Password Secure, Data Secure
Hushmail: Password Secure, Data Secure

Hushmail even has an option to turn off security, but why would you?

• OMFG, landed! (Ya, you and 12,000 other people.)
• OMFG, I’m @crowdedplace hanging out with my new BFFs @socialmediadouche1 and @socialmediadouche2.
• I’m sick of folks tweeting who they’ll be hanging out with. I don’t care. Turning the twitter fire hose off.
• OMFG, I’m just telling people who I’m hanging out with because my boss needs to know.
• My hotel room is #69. Just bring yourself.
• OMFG, That DM you sent?!!! That actually went public.
• Big line in front of @crowdedplace.
• No line @emptyplace.

I think SxSW Interactive is an awesome event. It’s one of those few tech conferences where if you make a friend there they stay your IRL friend for quite a long time.

Also it’s a great place for making complex deals in a really easy way. Think of the pieces that it takes to launch a major Internet app with mobile, web and video pieces. You can get those stake holders in one place at SxSW, and hammer out a huge deal with 2 days of face time.

Today was a pretty awesome day in tweeting.

Here are tweets I liked:

• @andrew_chen put up notes from his customer acquisition talk at the First Round Capital CEO summit. This is great stuff that you can use now.
• @Rsqaured tweeted about the Douchebag badge controversy caused by Foursqaure, a geo-location IRL gaming and social networking site.
• @davemcclure has a rough draft on subscriptions as the new black. I’ll come back to this in a later post
• Major kudos to @marcusnelson for introducing us to Uses This, because it really helps with improving team productivity when folks can see what highly successful folks use techwise.
• And did you know that the world’s first 3D football game got televised? (via @techcatalyst)

I got to visit the office on Thursday and it felt like a beehive where the queen bee has left and only hangers on are busy milling about.

How did I survive? (Just to disclose: I am no longer part of the Ad Agency and have found work at a Creative Technology Agency.)

I was the last hire at the SF office in December 2008. It wasn’t until an ex-MySpace executive got hired in November 2009 that the hiring freeze ended. However, there were still additional cuts. I was invited to a lunch where I was told that we were the last folks remaining in December and that there would be no more cuts.

Here’s what got me through that rough year:

by James Heaphey

This is a pretty awesome book that gives a realistic look into how normal people act when they get into organizations of a certain size. This is the kind of book that will wake you up to the aggressive and covert competition that your office mates engage in to get ahead. I didn’t read this book to get ahead though. Historical forces demanded something more basic: survival.

Here are some helpful hints the book gives:

• find a mentor right away to help you get things done in your organization
• avoid routine work because routines can be automated and don’t show growth
• increase the organization’s dependence on your talents
• gain a reputation for being tough but fair

I think one of my biggest challenges is the last item and its the sort of thing you learn through a mentor.

On the off chance things went really bad and I found myself on the street, I got this book:

This is a no non-sense guide to do exactly what you need to do to survive. I’ve found greens and picked berries in the woods, and also made a lean-to. The book has a waterproof cover and the pages can survive a rain and dry out without getting brittle.

Achieving true market prediction means having the capacity to create and predict the behavior of an artificial intelligence.

Here are the reasons why:
1. The description of AI from Caprica suggests consciousness can be built given a sufficient amount of recorded on-line activity.
2. If you know how the parts of a market works, you can know how the whole works.
3. A person is a part of the market.
4. How a person interacts on-line is part of a market, e.g. people build and use a system for products use.
5. An AI can imitate on-line market behavior such that it’s indistinguishable from a person.
6. If the program allows for predictive behavior, then you can predict a part of market behavior.
7. Since you can predict the part, you can predict the whole.
8. Therefore, in order to predict how the market will work, you need an AI.

This implies that the more AI-like or better your modeling, the more you can predict how the market will behave.

If AI proves to be un-predictive behavior, then perfect market prediction is impossible. (It might just be quantum in nature.)

If AI proves to be impossible, then perfect market prediction is impossible. (See the Chinese Room Argument.)

This year I’ve been telecommuting and co-working. I’ve made a few friends, but we don’t hang out much. I’ve actually been blown off by a few people to, but you know what? You’re hardly worth the thought.

This rant is addressed to those of you I haven’t met or haven’t hung out with this year, but I truly feel you can do something awesome for the tech scene that’s more than just about your career. Actually if we do this shit that I’ll mention later, you’ll see that it’ll enhance our careers.

I’ve seen you folks in cafes: the guy with the latest Apple laptop tailing server logs with an ev-do card, or the woman compiling drizzle on some beater Lenovo laptop converted to Linux. I’ve seen the creepy and utterly lame pick-up that you engineer dudes do at co-working places. Life’s more than eating where you shit.

Next year, let’s do something awesome. Let’s fucking hang out in meatspace and build something awesome. Let’s have awesome discussions and turn a particular cafe as the place to talk tech.

Let’s meet on some night during the week and actually build and learn shit, and actually help each other. San Francisco has about 17,000 people per square mile in some places. Why aren’t these folks hanging out and making there lives more awesome. Insert Matrix Quote Here.

I know some of you hackers are one pay check away from disaster (if you’re not already there), or some of you are doing okay. Let’s all combine forces and create an awesome network and see if we can actually build something.

You’re the kind of person who knows there’s gotta be better than Facebook or Google. Technology wasn’t meant to pigeonhole and objectify people as consumers but in some weird way liberate their human potential. Ya, it’s pretty hard to buy this BS given what a rough year it was, but if you are reading this here’s my proposal to you:

We meet each week at some common space and work on technology together.

This might sound too simple, but ask yourself this question: What community do you belong to?

Having a hard time answering? Working on a tech project? Then the community I’m proposing might be the one for you.

Maybe there’s already a group out there. If you’re out there, I’d like to talk to you. We have to stop isolating ourselves and unite in a really powerful way.

More info here: WPGeo.com