Invasions of privacy

This was the view from my bedroom window last night. I tried taking a photo with my new smart phone too. It didn’t turn out quite so spectacular. It’s a Samsung Galaxy phone running an operating system developed by Google.

Learning how my new phone works.

The new phone is quite complicated and so takes some getting used to. So after I had finished photographing my neighbours bid to join the space race; I fiddled with my phone trying to figure out how it worked. I lay in bed, running apps and swiping screens. The TV was boring, because they had taken Casualty off and the battery was low on my laptop. I was able to check out Facebook and Twitter, but couldn’t quite work out how to delete photos. In fact photos were coming up that I had taken years ago. It seemed to be accessing photos from the internet that I had taken some time ago. I managed to figure out that some photos that I take, it tries to upload to Facebook. I don’t want it doing that,  unless it’s a good photo, do I? While I was doing all this I took a photo of my bedside lamp, just to see where it would be saved.

Google plus

You can imagine my horror this morning when I received an email from Google Plus that featured my photo of my bedside lamp! I found that all the photos I had taken with my new phone were being uploaded to Google. Not only that, but many photos I had used years ago on Blogspot were there too and some I had on Microsoft Skydrive. I know people who use their phones to take quite naughty photos in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Do they automatically get uploaded to Google? It could have been worse, I could have used the camera that was pointing at me.

A billion quid

The government thinks nothing of spending a billion pounds and although they are cutting a few billion from the welfare budgets they are still spending billions on other things. Now imagine they were going to spend a billion quid on a few building. Where would be the best place to put it? What should go in the building? Should it be another art gallery? A new talking shop for politicians? A new library? A new university or school? They say the City of London and it’s financial institutions generate huge amounts of wealth. How about a new Stock Exchange? That would make loads of money and think how good a billion pound stock exchange would be. Where? London already has one. How about Birmingham? They could put it somewhere between Handsworth and the Balti belt. That would show they aren’t racists behind closed doors. A Birmingham stock exchange would create a few jobs and generate investment for the West Midlands and then we could export even more to China. Where would the money come from? How about a billion from the HS2 scheme? That will be no longer needed with everyone wanting to come to Birmingham instead of London…

Blogging

A lot of local writers, write blog posts and publish on a Sunday and most of them write about topical issues, either local or national. Some bloggers write about themselves, I think that can be a little narcissistic, unless you live a very interesting life and write about your travels or something.  Bloggers who write about their recovery from alcoholism or tragedy tend to be a bit boring. You should however be brave and write what you want to write. It’s really cold in England today, but sunny. I’ll be warming my car up and taking off out to take more Autumn photographs after lunch. What do you do on a Sunday? Some people watch television, but not bloggers, we live much more interesting lives. You only get one life. Why waste it?

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments box. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Related articles

• Google reads all emails, Microsoft warns (telegraph.co.uk)
• Attorneys general fear Google’s new privacy policy is an “invasion of privacy” (venturebeat.com)
• Social Media, Teenagers and Privacy (business2community.com)
• There’s No Escape from the Facebook Invasion (digitalsurgeons.com)
• Out with Privacy, In with Publicity (digitalsurgeons.com)
• Max Mosley wins landmark privacy case against Google over S&M pictures (irishtimes.com)

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