Whose space?

I have recently been involved in an online incident with some of my younger family members. They are girls and up to all sorts of things, online and not.

What happened was, embarrasing for those involved, apparently, but amusingly educational for myself.

I had two of my nieces visit me. I have, of course, been following their myspace sites for a while. Something they have been absolutely clueless about. After all, it's "their space". Isn't it?

Over dinner one night, I happened to mention that I had been to their sites. They both went right pale and explained to me that it wasn't "their myspace" - it was a friend who did it for them, "they" hardly went online, you see!

This they proclaimed without blinking - oblivious to the fact how often I had encouraged them to go do something else than serial instant messaging with their friends.

It's the same scenario - but years ago you would proclaim that these weren't your cigarettes, you were only keeping them for your troubled friend!

As a result of this, rather amusing, episode - both have now gone on to change their privacy settings - and only "friends" are allowed to see what their are up to online.

I wonder if I should now try and have them add me as a friend? For educational purposes only, of course - after all, that's what semi-middle-aged nieces are here for: being a pain in the..., isn't it?

But is it "their space" or can I, or rather should I, even bother intruding upon "their space" online?

I think not - my work is done for now. It made them think. It seems.

Time, technology, control

Several themes, well three, are emerging in my research. Listening to people, themes of:

• Time (in terms of making use of, being allocated by management or lack of...)
• Technology (in terms of knowledge of, ideas of, use of,...)
• Control (in terms of access and content, policy making...)
  

...keep cropping up.

They may not be surprising themes but they are, of course, interesting.

Thomas and McDonald state that there is definite rift or disconnect between library services and users. A rift that I'm inclined to nod to in terms of how it identifies with my own themes emerging. Directly or indirectly.

Security on the web

The BBC's technology section has an article on wi-fi security today. Apparently hackers can now easily pick up wi-fi users cookies, containing our webmail logins and social networking sites logins and access them to their amusements...or for whatever reasons they find that necessary.

A quote from the newsbit goes: "This gives attackers access to mail messages or the page someone maintains on sites such as MySpace or Facebook."

This was made public at an online security conference, or rather hackers meet-up, in Vegas recently. The author of the hacking tool is a professional hacker/online security expert who will make the tool available for download from his company's site from hereon.

This is interesting. I suppose this is done as a way of trying to prompt and speed up relevant problem fixing at each and every website involved. It makes you wonder though how many other real hacking tools are out there in need of fixing measures by website owners.

Doing my research, the issues of control of content as well as access keep, not surprisingly, cropping up. There are so many issues that libraries feel they need to take into account in order to be able to participate fully on the web - and rather than those issues being resolved, more seem to be adding on.