using Facebook for the Lord - usurping Facebook! (1 picture + 1 experience with the Lord) 30-day challenge

Yes, you have heard it right, I am speaking about Facebook, the website which some people love and spend a lot of time on (I wonder why and I wonder who...) and which other people hate and speak against! There are so many nasty and not-so-nice things going on on facebook, starting from poking and stalking people to the pictures of the parties and terrible things which you sometimes wish have never heard of / read / seen anywhere... But there is a way, and we all are learning how to do this, to USURP Facebook, that is, Use Facebook For The Lord! Before then though, here's,

1 Picture for Today - The Highgate School

This is Highgate School in North London, in an area called Highgate :) You can visit their website via, Highgate School. Apparently this school is for children / pupils ages 3-18, so it is quite a wide range of ages that are schooled there... This school, just like many other schools in the UK, have a "traditional style" building, with the tall metal fence, the red-brick wall, the old-style construction... - quite a stylish building. Sometimes if you see it at night it gives you the chills, so somber and dark... [Harry Potter style building...] Anyways, apparently this school is less than 20mins walk from where I live, and I discovered it once :)

1 Experience with the Lord today - Using Facebook for the Lord (even Usurping Facebook!)

I'm pretty sure all my readers are on facebook - actually, the way you found out about this article is on facebook! :) People spend hours every day there - it used to be that the young people would hang out in the park or in a young-people-style restaurant, but now everyone is on facebook! You put pictures online, play games, poke people, add friends or remove friends, comment on anything going on(from games to statuses and pictures), post statuses, say happy birthday, etc. For some people internet is just Facebook. [by the way, we can be friends on facebook :) - Stefan Misaras]

Some people condemn Facebook to the uttermost, and speak against it + try to convince others it's bad. And they are right in many ways - besides being a waste of time, Facebook can also accelerate the degradation of humanity if used "not with a vision". There's almost nothing useful one can do on facebook, they say, and the most common status is, I'm bored! Girls are being sought after and poked / friended / commented / etc by the boys, and vice-versa... It's a whole new world...

But can you use facebook with the Lord? Can you use facebook and be on facebook For The Lord? This is the question each Christian needs to ask himself - Lord, how can I be a Christian on facebook? Not just a human being seeking to connect with old friends or keep in touch with friends and family, but to have a proper testimony for the Lord! Not an extremist / radical for Christ, but how can we be proper human beings + proper students / young people / young adults / parents + at the same time having the Lord's testimony there? Well, I have some suggestions, which most of us know / practice...

Disclaimer: Facebook is becoming more and more a very personal, very delicate, and very private thing - no one can give others advice on how to do things on facebook, no one can tell others to take off a picture or re-arrange stuff, no one wants to be tagged in certain places, and many get offended if they are being either mentioned by others / tagged by others / not mentioned or tagged by others. It's strange how people "own their facebook profile" with such a passion... [tip: just wait, these days they are rolling out the New Facebook Profile, with Timeline... - so cool! You will definitely LOVE your profile... O, Lord!]

Being a Christian on Facebook

• Whenever I get on facebook to do anything, I turn my heart to the Lord(2 Cor. 3:16)! This is the first thing and the best thing we can do! Just turn to Him, call on Him, and ask Him about things! Tell Him to protect your eyes and your heart... - Lord, browse facebook with me!
• associate yourself with the right crowd of people! Yes, everyone loves their friends, at school or at home, etc - but the best friends we have are the saints in the church life! We take a stand for the Lord by associating ourselves (in pictures, statuses, events, facebook pages and groups, etc) with the saints!
• Be a fan of Christian Students facebook pages! Find the other Christian Students on the campus and associate yourself with them! In the UK there's Christians at Uni, Christians in Kingston, Christians in Central London, etc...
• Be a fan of other Christian content fan pages on facebook! Since you enjoy it every day, why not be a fan of the Holy Word for Morning Revival Page! And if you're in the Central Line of the Bible / Crystallization-Study of Psalms / other morning revival, find it on facebook!
• Share something about the Lord on your WALL every day! It's not much, and if you spend 2-3hrs on facebook, why not share what you REALLY enjoy with your friends? Believe it or not, but your friends are being entrusted to you by the Lord that you may minister Christ to them!
• Happy Birthday! + add a little prayer / a portion of enjoyment from the Word of God - on the wall of the birthday people... It is so encouraging to not just say "Have a good one" but also impart something of Christ...
• Join some Christian groups - like "The Universal Body of Christ", "Genuine Lovers of Christ", "Morning Revival", "Christian life is a life of living Christ", etc. Of course, you can create your own group with your companions to pursue the Lord together...
• Events - when you have some student welcome dinners, students meetings, young people events, home meetings, etc - create an event and invite the saints and your friends to these!

... these are just some of the many things one can do on facebook to be both a proper human being (catching up with friends and family) and a proper Christian. Also recommending a new Facebook Fan page - Christian Students in Central London :) [see more such facebook fan pages with Christian students via this list online]

history - some of the stupidest tech company blunders - article reviews

Here is an interesting article by pcworld with The 10 Stupidest Tech Company Blunders - now that these facts were consummated and also exposed, sometimes we ask ourselves: "these smart people, how could they have taken such ~stupid decisions?".

The 10 Stupidest Tech Company Blunders

1. 1. Yahoo Loses Facebook
2. 2. Real Networks Punts on the iPod
3. 3. Sony and Toshiba Agree to Disagree Over HD
4. 4. Digital Research: The Other Microsoft
5. 5. Xerox Goes in an Alto Direction
6. 6. Recording Industry Plays the Same Old Tune
7. 7. Compuserve Blows Its Chance to Dominate the Net
8. 8. Newspapers Fail to Read the Writing on the Wall--Craigslist
9. 9. The Google Before Google
10. 10. Microsoft Saves a Rotting Apple
    

This article is in 2 parts, so read part 1 and part 2 of The 10 Stupidest Tech Company Blunders - facts from history.

be careful of what links you visit and what you download, including on facebook....

With these new applications/softwares to either view or download video clips or music, nothing can be certain anymore. Recently there is a worm that re-surfaced on facebook, and it self-spreads to the friends you have, sending them an email with some inciting text like:
"Hey, weekend soon ....", "Hey, have a good weekend...." and where the "..." are, there is a link, supposedly, to a youtube or other website with videos. When you click on it, the website it opens asks you to download an update(which is a malware, a piece of software that allows the author full control over some vital features of your computer).
"Koobface.az," as Trend Micro pegged the worm, rifles through a compromised PC, sniffs out browser cookies associated with 10 different social networking sites, uses the usernames and passwords within those cookies to log on to each service, searches for the infected user's friends and then sends those people messages that include a link to the worm(something that looks like this: http://flag.eonz.net /img/ weekends_holiday.html? img=324&vKud=4&......).
It looks for cookies connected to bebo.com, Facebook, Friendster, fubar.com, hi5.com, LiveJournal, MySpace, myYearbook, Netlog and Tagged. (via computer world). View a CNN video about it here.
We all really need to be careful, especially when it comes to the situations in which we visit a website where we're asked to "update" either the flash player/java application, etc - Have your computer be protected by the up-to-date anti-virus, and "trust no one", even your closest friends - I mean, the messages they send you, that contains a link - check with them first!
The people today are looking for fun, for obtaining personal data and "cookies" from the internet users, and where can they do this better then on the networking websites!
Therefore:

• protect your computer - the anti-virus has to be on;
• don't listen to all the "updates" necessary for playing the videos! Check out the links/the websites/the flash player original website, and download only for them;
• listen to your anti-virus! Sometimes we think that the messages given out by the antivirus are a joke, but most of the times they are right!
• Don't trust any link sent by the people/friends! Ask them, after u receive either an email or an instant message, if they actually want you to visit this link! - better safe then.... spied on!
• Protect your personal data - either on facebook or on other networking site, be careful what you put online about you.... eventually, by correlating some of these websites and the info you have on them, someone can find TOO much data about you....

Also, I would like to apologise to my friends on facebook for the message that was sent supposedly by me(with the above mentioned problem) - CHECK EVERY LINK, and don't just visit/download anything!

the facebook terms of use change.... and coming back to the old TOS!

Rage has got many of the facebook users, and some have already left the giant website, because of the recent change of the Terms of Use; it is not necessarily a change, mainly a clarification of the way things actually work for a while now.... Mark Zuckerberg "clarifies" in the post on his blog entitled "On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information" that basically says:

• once you place a picture/post/message on facebook, or any kind of information that is shared, two copies are made: one in your account and the other in the other person's account. Even if you delete your account, your copy of the information is deleted, but the other person's copy still remains(the content/picture/text still stays on). It actually sounds pretty logical; this system is also used by the emailing websites....
• there is a clash between:
  - I want to share my information with the whole world, yet to fully control it, to turn it off/delete it at any time;
  - At the same time, this shared info should be available to other services, to be used by them...
  These two are not possible YET - why not trying to work on making it possible? It may be a revolutionizing thing to do.... and it will help/benefit so many!

Basically, just like before and just like all the other services that are online: once you place some content online and it is seen/indexed, no matter how much you want to take it off, you can't do it thoroughly! I had a blog, personal blog stefan misaras, and I deleted it a long time ago - it still comes up in the search results! The same with facebook - the only problem is that on facebook people actually put their whole life - pictures, friends, talks, comments, opinions, games - which can provide enough information to anyone about you... and that is scary! The truth about facebook? - a short clip from 2006.
This is actually a very realistic issue of the web2.0 and the development of the "sharing the information, not hiding it" - everyone can have access to your personal details without working for CIA!
Other reactions online about this update of the Facebook TOS:

• Facebook's Terms Of Use Draw Protest - InformationWeek - just stating the facts... no solution...
• Facebook's Terms of Use Go From Bad to Worse - the photo attorney discloses that the facebook tos was not like that before - now everyone using facebook grants full rights to facebook site over all his information!
• Facebook policy changes draw thousands of protests, Chicago Tribune, tells us that on the 4th of february the facebook tos changed, and the consumerist pointed this out - this triggered all to actually take a closer look at the facebook terms of service...
• the standard transmits Mark's message concerning the update, and then... the protests that are still taking place.... people basically implore the guys at Facebook to revise their TOS.... and there is a group called: "People Against the new Terms of Service", to which the guys at Facebook started: "Questions for Facebook".
• Facebook users upset by change in terms of use - the baltimore sun, tells us the story and the implications: though you may wanna leave facebook now, the site still owns your data/pictures/personal info.
• New 'Facebook' Terms of Use Spark Protests - no more total control over your personal data on facebook;
• Facebook is the owner of your personal information now! - and that is so true...
• Facebook updates Terms of Use; Internet freaks out - in IT world, which notices that these TOS were more or less the same, but there are other stipulations that should scare us, like:
  - to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising - this means the Facebook users can be used in their adds, etc...(or worse);
  - the classical "We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change or delete portions of these Terms at any time without further notice. Your continued use of the Facebook Service after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms" - gives the Facebook users no right to comment/say anything about/in the modification of the facebook TOS at any time...
• Facebook's Terms Of Use Draws Protest - osnn; and Facebook, terms of use & privacy - the buzz;
  
• Facebook’s terms-of-service change has users abuzz - Goldman said the language in Facebook’s terms of use “runs directly contrary” to the tacit agreement the site has struck with its members. Users generally trust that their profile photos won’t turn up on a roadside billboard without their permission, or that their blog posts won’t be published in a bound volume and sold for profit.
• Facebook Terms Update Creates Heated Debate - at webmasterworld - I like the conclusion: "In short: Don't post anything, anywhere, unless you plan on losing ownership of it. I've removed my images and anything else which I want to maintain ownership of."
  

Actually, according to this and this, Mark said in one of his last posts something like: the facebook TOS /bill of rights are coming back/being reverted to the previous version - which are similar... - where he specified:

Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms

Good stuff.... yet I still think that we have to be a little more careful as to what we post online, what we share with our friends, even the pictures.... though the intentions of both the ones at google, youtube, msn, yahoo, facebook and myspace are "clean" - "we want to just provide a medium for you to do what you really want, and all information is safe with us" - whether it is about pages online/searches and search trends/history, videos about/with you, blogs and information, or pictures/wall posts/comments - it is not that "clean"....