Ideas from Mark Stout

Another election is upon us.  With it comes a barrage of political posts on social media.  In a time many say is the most politically divided we have been since the Civil War, how do we evaluate the truthfulness of the political posts that flood our feeds? Everyone wants to believe that the posts confirming our beliefs are accurate, but are they? I recently tested AI to fact check social media political memes. The beauty of this, is you can do with a number of AI's to see if the evaluation changes. AI is software, it does not have have the inherent biases that humans often have. By checking across multiple AIs you can guard against one being tuned for a political view. For example this meme There is a formatting issue with this post.  See the same text here :

Do you know Pewdiepie? How about Michelle Pham? Your sons and daughters probably do.  Pewdiepie made $7 million in ad revenue from his Youtube videos that show him playing video games. Michelle Pham shows how to apply makeup, and makes more than $3 million a year. There are hosts of musicians making a living on Youtube without the need for a record label. Some comedians are doing OK without ever having been on The Tonight Show. Millennials are not watching TV; They stream videos. The age range that watches the least TV is 12- t17- year-olds;18- to 24-year-olds watch a bit more; and 25- to 34-year-olds watch a bit more. The largest group of viewers is getting older. My adult son gets excellent civics and political lessons from a cheaply made animated Youtube series called “Extra Credit,” covering video games, history, civics and reforming education. His views are shaped by that. I don’t think he’s ever watched “Meet the Press.” The young are comfortable finding their celebrities onl...

The Facebook post was simple. It was a photo of a child on a beach, with the heading “Playing hooky,” posted by Prince William Today and InsideNoVa.com Editor Kari Pugh. The first comment was from her publisher Bruce Potter, “Caught you!” Further down in the thread, I commented, “And that is why you do not friend your boss, ever.” The exchange above was in jest and they both knew it. Kari is almost always working online and knows her boss knows that and would see the post. Some downtime is always OK. Social media is a reality of life. For many, it is how we relate to friends and family when geography and work schedules conspire to keep us apart. It is hard to avoid being on social media; peer pressure is intense if you are not. I’ve mentioned before that I have friends in Australia I’d have lost contact with years ago had it not been for social media. There are many friends from my Pennsylvania, Missouri and California days that I’d have lost touch with too. Social sites are a blessing...

Everyone knows Facebook.  What about other useful social sites? Family Tech for February 22, 2013 has been posted.

Just assume all your Facebook posts & photos are public.  Because they probably are more than not, and might one day be public. This week's Family Tech.

Everyone's Facebook stream in the US is now littered with friend's political posts.  I do not mind original, thoughtful, researched, fair, and coherent political posts even if they are for the party I do not lean towards.  In fact I'd welcome original, thoughtful, researched, fair, and coherent posts about the opposing point-of-view.  How else can I learn, and maybe even shift my position? Instead, what I mostly see are regurgitation from the propaganda machines on each side.  Posts are too often not sourced at all, or sourced from such a highly partisan site as to be utterly worthless. Too many political arguments can be blown out of the water with ten seconds of Googling.  That does not make me feel warm and fuzzy about the merits of that person's views. It saddens me to constantly be reminded to for too many Americans, they regard themselves as Patriots for supporting their party before their country.  And regard those in...

I have to realize that instead of just having only a computer anymore, as I did from 1979 to 2008 when I bought my first smart phone, I now have a computing ecosystem.  I use my phone, tablet and PC together.  Some are better then others for particular tasks, while each can step up and do most of the tasks of the others if need be. My Family Tech column for January 1, 2012 ( Facebook comments about column) is thoughts for the many people who received their first tablets on Christmas Day.  I promised a blog post talking about how you can use your tablet, and phone for that matter, to go beyond the basic tablet functionality of reading, watching videos and surfing the net. The same holds true for phones.  A smart phone is really just a small tablet, connected to the 3g network (while some tablets are too, mine is wifi only). Since April of 2010 I have used an iPad, since November of 2011, a Xoom Android tablet running Honeycomb. By add...

I've never been much of a game player on computers.  There is just too many other interesting things to do.  Lately my extended family has been waging battles via an iPhone/iPod/iPad game called Words with Friends. The concept made me pay attention to some of the other networked games out there for computers and game platforms.  Like many things on the net, they have a dark side to go with the fun, and social aspects.  Predators go where the kids are, and online gaming is one of those places. These all are the topics of this week's Family Tech .

Having grown up with computers and the web, the young generation today has new ideas about work, citizenship, collaboration, sharing, privacy and life in general.   In this week's Family Tech I delve into that, warning if you are parenting, hiring, selling to, trying to influence, or seeking the votes of this generation,  you need to consider how they are different.

Google announced today rich text signatures  for Gmail.  I know some people hate e-mail signatures.  I think small, easily ignored if you desire, and most importantly useful signatures are ok.  Mine has my name, my Google Voice number, and small links to this blog, my public bookmarks , my Twitter account and a list of my Family Tech columns . I've used WiseStamp   for years to do this.  I hate to disable them, but I always look to minimize my Chrome extensions when I can, so I disabled them today and will likely remove them once Google Signatures prove their mettle to me. Wisestamp can still do many things Google signatures cannot, at least as easily.  They have easy links to many popular social networking, and even the ability to have RSS feeds in your signature.  For example, my signature could have the last few items from this blog in it.

Facebook rolled out some new "features" recently and a lot of people thought they were making a huge power grab for control of the internet, assume the right to define our online identities and traffic in the personal data 500 million of us entrusted to them. Facebook did a horrible job of explaining the advantages, disadvantages and over all ramifications of their moves.  This lead tech pundits to question their motives and their competence to keep our data and identities  safe. In my Family Tech column appearing tomorrow , published Sunday May 23, I attempt to alert readers to the changes, the turmoil they created, their need to assess the impact for themselves, and steps users can take if they feel they need to protect themselves.  That was a lot to put into 600 words, so with this blog post, I want to curate some of the many blog posts and articles that have appeared casting  The Changes Facebook's announcement of the changes What...