Listen, Facebook, we have to talk.

We have a lot of fun together. We go through photos, play scrabble, chat with friends, its great. But lately I’ve started to see a side to you that I’m finding rather aggressive. I am speaking specifically about your new “People You May Know” area on the main aggregate screen that provides a short list of people that you think I have simply overlooked.

Sorry, Facebook, it’s more complicated than that. While they are friends of my friends, I do not know them. Don’t get me wrong, I am aware they exist, the names are familiar to me, but I have yet to be properly introduced and conversed to the point where it wouldn’t be weird to ask them to consider me as their friend. So, I would appreciate easing off the pressure, I will meet them on my own, at some point, in real life.

And while we’re putting it all out there, Facebook. You leave me in an awkward place when you add ex-girlfriends from back in collegeto that list. I’m not sure whether we left things as friends, so asking them to add me as a friend is a pretty loaded request.

So, please Facebook, trust me that as soon as I see a familiar face, I will add them as a friend, but until then, stop telling me who I should be friends with.

It’s a special day for sports fans, the day you remember that ESPN has private content that it won’t show you

Any other day, or rather, for any other sports topics the footprint of ESPN’s private articles is very small, hardly noticeable, but they seem to keep the majority of their NFL Draft content restricted

This doesn’t make sense to me. 

The prime motivator for paying money to ESPN Insider should be a return on investment, which would primarily be relevant for gamblers or fantasy sports players.  But to the best of my knowledge there is no betting line, pool or fantasy league for the NFL Draft. So, what value is there in knowing Mel Kiper’s predictions.  Is there any reason beyond just to satisfy a mild curiosity?

I had a couple realizations this morning while adding my social network feeds into Friendfeed.com. The first was that I have the good fortune of getting “robleto” as my handle a lot. I suppose that comes with being on the cutting edge.

The second was that I ‘m not sure what to do with Friendfeed. If it is the information overload I expect it is, I don’t want it in my RSS Reader. I’m one of those people who get satisfaction that I have scanned through all the feeds in my reader. For that reason I had to drop BoingBoing, they just never stopped, I couldn’t get that feeling of completion. I think adding the FriendFeed feed will be very similar.

That leaves forcing the new habit of going to the Friendfeed site routinely, which is doable, except that the short-changed interface and visual design make reading on FriendFeed a bit more complicated that reading in my RSS reader.

So, I don’t know how I’m going to use FriendFeed yet, but I am in the system. If you want to find and friend me: http://friendfeed.com/robleto

 

Have you been rickroll’d? Wikipedia describes it as:

A prank where a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the video of the 1987 Rick Astley song Never Gonna Give You Up.

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No, not like that, it’s CSS Naked Day, the day to dive under the hood of your website, rip out the stylesheet and see if your content is still accessible. If you have a W3C valid site, then chances are really good you’ve designed the site well enough that it could live without the branding and styles, at least for a day. The new styling of Robleto.com will be back tomorrow, but until then have a happy naked day (more…)

Actors are not too different from bloggers. They have a talent of expression that they want to share with an audience. Their traditional avenues, on stage and on film, are equally costly and sparse. Unfortunately, a great many actors are convinced those are the only avenues and will give up their passion when they find themselves unable to make it to the elite level. (more…)

It’s April Fool’s Day. In the first few hours of the day alone:

• the Motley Fool has announced they are done with dishing out financial advice,
• Techcruch is suing their crush Facebook,
• YouTube is hijacking some content and redirecting you to a Rick Astley video (Rickrolled, it’s being called), and the one I enjoyed uncovering the most
• Google Docs has a new item under the File menu, after New Document, it now has New Airplane and opens a page with an outline that when printed and followed will make a paper airplane. Ha!

In the end does taking the time to pull a prank on your website move the needle? Well, perhaps. They certainly can start a one-day movement that will drive the curious traffic to their sites and get their names spreading across the internet in a “did they really do that?!?” viral style. But more lasting, it reinforces the idea that these companies are fun places to work with a good sense of humor, and I am sure their HR departments are happy to see that message being sent to the masses.