I am of course referring to the biggest information network that has, in the recent years, been gathering data in the form of blogs, social networks, messaging systems that have been slowly introduced into our daily life. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for the improvements of communication flow, even if it is not always for the best. But there are some hidden aspects of this electronic distribution that I would like to share with you. I will try to split them is sections that I thought were appropriate.

Friends & Family Network

I’m personally using my mobile phone, sms, emails, skype, msn, yahoo messenger, my blog and of course Facebook to keep in touch with my friends and family. I still get the odd complains by some that I am not reachable enough. Truth be told, I could communicate more but I sometimes don’t see the point or am basically not in the mood. There is an assumption that because you can be online you should be online. It is as if they should know why you are not there.
There has been a slow development of passive aggressive relation with my close surrounding. Whether I want it or not they are present, active and sometimes giving me more info than I want. The obvious status change on Twitter or facebook is the most obvious, but it is olso valid about the amount of mail that some feel compelled to send to you. All that would be fine around a beer in a bar or as conversation at a dinner table but it becomes a lot at the end of the day.
Bu this brings another aspect, over time you are building a source of historical information on your friends that are not only vague memories from the corner of your mind, but concrete written and stored information on birthdays, weddings, holidays, private confidence and hundreds of pictures. On the other hand they will know who you are in contact with, and your details as well, if you decide to share this information.
To illustrate, I’ll take the obvious example of just adding a female friend on your list. It might just grants you the wrath of your girlfriend or wife even if it was someone you already know for a long time. Or when there is a fall out between two of you friends and one doesn’t understand why you are still in touch with the other by being invited to a party and sharing pictures, or why he/she is still listed as a friend. There are also pictures that you/they took but would rather not see being displayed to all (embarrassing or compromising).
All this information and data is available to all of us already and more is coming. With tagging systems and content flow of digital information exchanged between mobile devices, your friends will soon be able to tell where you are/were at any point of the day.

Professional Queries

This is the field that has caused countless issues for some people. Especially in the US where paranoia seems to be a national sport and spying on your colleagues, employees or contractors seems to be done on a regular basis.
Take the case of twitter where there have been stories about employees being sacked or blamed after a comment they made e.g. “calling sick today, hangover after last night party” or the typical “I hate my job”, “my boss is an idiot” or more of “been called by a headhunter, interesting offer I think I will take it”.
Those are all posted for every one to see, and most of us were under the opinion that these comments where the equivalent of stating something around the coffee corner to a few trusted colleagues and that it would remain “private”. Except that it doesn’t.
More and more company recruitment process is to first type your name in generic search engine such as goolge.com or dedicated ones such as 123people.com. Whatever comes up can be a profile, flickr pictures, a blog article, your Amazon wish list… this can be good or bad bits and pieces that will be taken into account in during the selection process, even making you failing a degree because you are just drinking.
It even gets stressful when you already have a job. Suspicions on why you cleaned up your “linked In” online curriculum, the fact your name appears on monster.com recruitment database, questions about names of people working for competitors appearing in your contact list, or pictures of you at a party chatting with some “undesirable” people (ex-employees, competitors,…)
All these pieces of information can land on your manager’s desk or head of human resource department just before your annual review, the decision to sack you or if you deserve a promotion.

Complete Strangers

I am very happy that it is not my case (and hopefully it’ll remain that way) but some of us have been stalked or pursued by strangers cherishing some weird fantasy or just plainly too curious. The easy way out of these situations, if you were aware of it in the first place, used to be either ignoring them and go home or confronting them to cease this activity by threatening them. Anything more would have to be handled by the police but these are extreme cases. This longing for watching other people has been proven by the success of all those reality shows and is still growing. It even lead to an opening of the CCTV police network to the mass so that anyone can spot a crime.
Today’s level of personal information available is a global issue; finding your phone number is a mere click away, and so is your email, home address, social status, job description, what you may be interested in… Soon enough people will not even have to know your name since a simple snapshot taken on a cell phone could be used to look you up and start the search from there. I know that I am pushing the envelope on paranoia but it is a likely scenario.
As an example, just type your full name in Google surrounded by quotes, e.g. “John Smith” with a bit of luck your favorite social network page will be listed (MySpace, Facebook, …) and switching to the picture tab, you might even find a picture of you.
First time my girlfriend tried, it was a bit strange but she was expecting the results. However, when she tried her last name and a picture of her dad was listed on the first page of the result she felt a cold shiver through her spine because he does not use social networks or post picture online.

State & Private Organization

Of course you can only imagine what could be known about you if someone working in some state or private organization combines the information mentioned above with the information available on their own system.
I am not referring to the police, or the tax department. Banks can combine it with the content of your accounts, thus knowing your revenues and spending habits by just looking at your statement (shops, rent, restaurant, loans) by extrapolating they know not only where you live but what to expect inside that place. Medical insurance company will know about your every little problem and could even know that your brother has cancer before you do; that your wife might be cheating on you because she’s taking treatment for an STD and you are not.

Conclusion

For me, it only proves that we do not have to fear the possible big brother, we all are big brothers, watching each other and having access to such a level of personal data that it is becoming very easy to know someone or for someone to know you… even if you don’t want them to.

On one hand I always thought that adverts on web site were taking away from the sleek design that the web designer was trying to achieve. But on the other, a few bucks more in your pocket on the odd possibility that some visitors will actually visit those adverts is something that sounds appealing as well. So I looked at the possible option and looked at the least intrusive of all that’s provided by Google. I know I sound like I am a big fan of that company but they are making it so easy for us that I cannot say otherwise.

So here it is, you have now a little banner on the side with some ads that should eventually correspond to the content of the page you are looking at, well at least that’s the theory.

These are all combined and made accessible on a common portal that can be used as a collaboration platform to share document, exchange contact information and organize meetings. The best thing is that you can do all that using your own domain name. So that is what I did, and as of today this site is on Google apps and benefits from all those wonderful tools.

Stepping on Exchange’s turf

Google makes it obvious that they are looking to build an alternative to the current main actors on the market when it comes to this collaboration platform, Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. By providing a central data center that can be used to consult your account on multiple devices, Google is probably hoping to build a first level of consumer that will become accustomed to their services and will either recommend or use it professionally after trying it out.

I have to admit until recently I was using outlook at home to collect all the emails from all the accounts that I have created over the years. It works brilliantly and provides a great way to have all the information in one place available at any time. But, and that is a big one, when it comes to backup solution I have nothing comparable to cloud computing. To retrieving information on my iPhone I already had changed the settings to leave the mails on the server for at least 3 days to be able to consult them when I am on the go.

I had the chance to use exchange in a professional context and I must say it is brilliant to be able to book a meeting on your phone and find it back in whatever calendar application you are using at the time. It prevents you from having to manually sync your device and makes the information available for your co-workers immediately (ever tried to be at two meetings at the same time due to double bookings?)

Stepping up

The free version of Google apps is missing a couple of very interesting features, like the possibility to export all Outlook content on your newly created mailbox or the possibility to benefit from the complete automated synchronisation tools (calendar, contact, mail, notes, …) that is provided by Google.

This premium package also includes 10 gigabytes of mail storage, 99.9% uptime guarantee for email, APIs to integrate with the existing infrastructure of a business (single sign-on, user management, email gateway) and 24/7 phone support.

Clearly directed towards small business the price of 50$ per year is reasonable in a professional context. If you consider that an Exchange server will cost you around 100$ for the license only with no infrastructure or maintenance cost. But for a simple blog, it is clearly not necessary.

Hickups

I hope there would be some and I was right, but some of them surprised me. I will only describe the main ones that I have witnessed myself and maybe add some more if it comes to it at a latter stage.

First, the contact sync and management is a bit poor, as far as I am concerned Google really missed the common user requirements when it comes to this subject. The fields are all present but the synchronisation with other software is not accurate e.g. the date of birth ending up in note area. However the most annoying one is the name field, for the most critical contact information; Google is only providing one unique field for first, middle and last name.

The information in the “Name” field is interpreted by the application according to a very simple rule: 1 First x Middles (optional) 1 Last. So if a contact name is Charles Herry de Clichy en Loire, Google will consider that “Loire” is the last name and that “Charles” is the First while the rest of the name is considered as Middle. Looking at it on your blackberry or iPhone you will see it filed under “L” (assuming you are sorting your contacts by last name) with a very strange structure Loire Herry, de Clichy en…

Even better, if you have by any chance a program such as Outlook that is using the current structure (sort by Last Name) to send the information to Google, the above contact will be send with a coma between the last and first name i.e. de Clichy en Loire, Charles Henry. This will give you a very weird result once it is entered in the Google apps name field and consulted afterwards:

• Last Name: Henry
• First Name: de
• Middle Name: Clichy en Loire, Charles

Google has been saying that they are looking at this issue since the end of last year but nothing seems to be changing and communication is very slim to absent.

Second, the calendar is synchronizing with other application on single events but not recurring ones. However this is only one way when synchronizing from the application to Google. So if you create a recurring appointment in outlook it will not sync with Google, but if you create it directly in Google, then there is no issue.

At the moment I will be mainly using the mail application, due to those hiccups in the contacts and the calendar but once Google fixes them (and I hope for their sake that they will) I will be doing a full transfer and sleep better at night knowing that even if I fry my hard drive I will still be able to work.