NPR on Twitter networks and their basis in real life connections. "Inskeep: Suggesting what? That Twitter connections are following the connections that we already have in the real world? Vedantum: Exactly. So that the real world powerfully predicts what kind of connections we have in the virtual world. So if you are living in New York, you're much more likely to have followers in London than you are likely to have followers in a small town in the United States." The lede posits much more of a binary nature (as if you can't mainly follow friends with an additional layer of interest-based connections on top) which annoyed me, but there's still stuff of interest here.

"Based on a large sample of publicly available Twitter data, our study shows that a substantial share of ties lies within the same metropolitan region, and that between regional clusters, distance, national borders and language differences all predict Twitter ties. We find that the frequency of airline flights between the two parties is the best predictor of Twitter ties. This highlights the importance of looking at pre-existing ties between places and people."

"Dr. Nielsen and other advocates for “open science” say science can accomplish much more, much faster, in an environment of friction-free collaboration over the Internet. And despite a host of obstacles, including the skepticism of many established scientists, their ideas are gaining traction." Interesting stuff on Arxiv et al.

"The key to intimacy is just knowledge. Path pulls that off by allowing you to see who looks at your posts." There's some good thoughts in here about why and how Path is carving out a niche.

I probably should have made this a proper project rather than just a gist, but: a Python command line script that goes through and subscribes to people with the same username as those in your Delicious network. Almost certainly not perfect, but hopefully usable.

"Grafitter is a personal informatics tool for collecting and exploring information about your habits and patterns." While it recommends using a funky hashtag format for recording feelings and food, it works without that too; it's fairly interesting, too. It'd be even nicer if it supported more things.

"In the comic books, it took Stark 40 years to make this move. For Superman or Spiderman or Batman or virtually any other superhero from the prior century (save some like the X-Men) their secret identities were their most sacred possessions, the keys to their undoings, and they fought as hard to protect them as to save humanity itself. But in the 21st century, Tony Stark’s approach to privacy reflects how Millennials now think of the concept."

The actual Ofcom report referenced in the Guardian story, for further digging into figures. For example, the Guardian didn't think this was worthy of note: "Children are likely to have a TV in their bedroom, with this being the case for half of 5-7s (49%), two-thirds of 8-11s (67%) and three-quarters of 12-15s (77%)."

'"Almost every teen we've talked to feels that they know everything about issues like online privacy, identity and security," explains Adrian Hon, co-founder and chief creative officer at the British company that created Smokescreen, Six to Start, "and the fact that most adults they've heard from insist on scaremongering about paedophiles means they're no longer interested in what adults have to say."'

"Twitter RSS Links allows you to generate a (RSS|ATOM|JSON|XML) feed from your friend's tweets that contains HTTP links." Does what it says, with OAuth (so it works for private folks). I really should do a delicious-network style un-shortening UI on top of the JSON, mind you.

The Press Complaints Commission upholds a complaint on the Express story that used Facebook details and photos of Dunblane survivors, stating that the use of information on social networks is only justified if the people are already public figures, and that "circumventing privacy settings to obtain information will require a public interest justification". It concludes "the breach of the Code was so serious that no apology could remedy it".