Blogged on June 20, 2008 at 21:01
We have a saying in Portugal that I’m not sure exists in other languages, but basically and literally says “where there is smoke, there is fire!”. We all heard about all the “Conspiracy Theories” around Facebook, that include CIA, NASA, NSA, ICANHAS [1] and what not… I was never into any of those and I still hold to the opinion that if any of those agencies want your information… they’ll get it, and they don’t really need Facebook. We also all heard how some really interesting and even revolutionary findings have been done by accident… So this is one of those accidental findings!
As I’m checking and cleaning some old bookmarks, I come across one I named “conversation10″… I vaguely remember bookmarking a Facebook conversation a while back for reasons I don’t even remember, but I have since then, deleted that whole thread/conversation from my Facebook messages. To my surprise, when I opened the bookmark, it opened the following screen on Facebook:
(click to open full sized image on Flickr)
Clicking the link, I get that whole conversation with current profile pictures and all. This has only one explanation: Facebook doesn’t really delete anything. Now think of your embarrassing photos that you thought you’ve deleted… They’re still hosted somewhere!!
After finding this, I searched the web to check if this was a known “feature”. Every page I found was of someone asking how they could recover they’re deleted messages, and the answers all said “no”. To be real honest, you can’t really recover them unless you saved the thread ID from the URL. But if you still have that conversation in your browser’s history, you can easily get that and just add “&show_del=1″ to the end of your URL, or even just open the old thread page and click the link like from my screenshot above.
Ok, this is definitely not a revolutionary finding. Nor it’s an extremely useful one. But it just adds up to all the “Facebook Conspiracy Theories” out there [2]… Especially if you check Facebook’s Help:
I accidentally deleted a message. Can I get it back?
There is no way to recover messages that have been deleted. Sorry.
Are they just being “mean” or don’t they want the “world” to know about it? In other news, I’m still using Facebook, and will keep using! If I put something online, I’m perfectly aware I might be “cached” somewhere and be unable to completely remove it from the interwebs… But that’s me…
[1] Yes, I was just making those up… All I heard about was CIA, but don’t they look cool like that?? And you gotta admit the LOLcat in there was really well put, right? 
[2] Anyone got links for posts and videos on those existing theories? They’d be a ncie addition to this post…
Blogged on January 22, 2008 at 10:29
Ok, so Simon Owens started the call, Mashable publicized it, Ariel linked… and I’m here to say I’ll join the “fight”!
Even though I’ve kept my profile up, I’ve completely changed it’s look to make it NOT look like your regular My$pace profile. But its dumb politics of replacing my external URLs with “msplinks” crap bugged me sooo much… And then the notification emails… Yes, the ones that contain no information at all trying to make you login!! I give major kudos to Facebook for sending me a complete email for any wall post or message I get! I don’t need to login and can even reply to sender through my email! In a world of “hits war”, My$pace is ahead but Facebook is sticking to its principles!
And the whole CIA/FB controversy is simply hilarious: don’t you think that if the CIA really wanted to check your info they’d get that info ANYWHERE and ANYWAY?? Why would they need to “partner” with FB or any other social network??? (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, ignore it… Those who do know hear me out!)
But controversy aside, I’m in love with Facebook for it has allowed me to get in touch with some old friends and help establish new friendships from real life by allowing a means of communicating more often!
So, back to the topic, JOIN THE FIGHT! 
On January, 30th 2008, delete your My$pace account…
… think of the kittens!
PS: Now that Pownce is open to the public (since 0:00 today), does anybody else around have an account there? I’d be interested in getting more contacts there! Add me!
Blogged on November 14, 2007 at 00:36
Well, it’s been almost a month since I posted the last time and a lot of things have happened.
The Conference
The last two weeks were hectic. I was involved in a conference with leaders from all over the world, and we had to get some materials ready for it, including a DVD set with 6 sessions that we taped earlier and had to be edited and put on a DVD for release during the conference. The last session was recorded a week prior to the conference, and all the things that needed to get done had just pile up and still had to be done in time! So, like you can imagine, lots of hours of work and… very little sleep.
OS X 10.5 Leopard
During the conference my dad was here. I decided to get him Leopard (and iWork 08, so he can dump MS Office… over the course of (some) time!). I did a “Archive Install” and all went very smooth. His Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz seems snappier than with Tiger and I taught him the goodness of Quick Look and Spaces (although he seemed to enjoy Web Clips a lot more ;)). From my quick experience with it, it felt like there are things that can either be customized or I might need to “hack” them… But I can’t wait to get it… for Quick Look!!!!! 
Twitterific 3.0
Inline ads seem to be one of the few new features. And I say that because I’m not a big enthusiast of direct messages (although I find them useful) and I hate the way the way they get loaded every time I open program. But I’ve been enjoying the ads a lot… They’ve proven very useful and informative! This is the way to go with ads (kudos to the guys of The Deck for the selective approach to advertisement!), although I think they should stay inline… even after a new one comes up! (never thought I’d say this!)
Firefox 3.0b1 (RC3)
I installed Firefox 3.0b1 RC3 yesterday and I love it! I have been using Safari for most of my stuff because Firefox is just taking WAYY too much memory… 
But 3.0 seems lighter and feels snappier.
I sincerely hope Mozilla proves Steve Jobs wrong… (for those not aware, Jobs had a sad moment - the only one in my opinion - when he showed a graph of web browsers with market share split between IE and Firefox, 75% and 24% respectively, and he announced his desire for Safari: take over Firefox’s share… not even touching IE’s share!!! Bad move Steven!)
Work - Next weeks
I’ll developing the look & feel for a e-portfolio solution we’re developing here. It’s based on uPortal (scary if you ask me!) and I’ve never worked with it!! Apparently it’s all XML/XSLT… which will be all new to me! I’ll keep reporting on this because I bet I’ll learn stuff that can be interesting for most of you!
I’ll also be doing at least one design for a friend of mine that is getting married next year, and wants to have a “blog type” website with directions and info on where the wedding will be and stuff. Great idea, huh? I’m glad to help..
Twitter & Facebook
Not being very active here in the blog doesn’t mean I’ve been offline! NO! I’ve been pretty active on Facebook and Twitter! Interesting how I’ve been ever so active on Facebook after the huge discussion I saw around some blogs on how Facebook is backed by the CIA and is data mining for them… Is that supposed to scare me? I don’t care what the CIA knows about me!
iPhone… 1.1.2
Even though I had my 1.1.1 jailbroken with some third-party apps, I never used them all that much too justify not updating to 1.1.2! I made myself a promise that every time a new official firmware came out, I’d update to it even if it broke my third party apps. An interesting thing is that, when I upgraded my jailbroke 1.0.2 to 1.1.1 I did a “Restore” and not an upgrade (I hate OS upgrades as well!). When I jailbroke 1.1.1 and reinstalled some of the apps I had before, I had all my setting there… even the level I was on on the “Lights Off” game I had installed and the preferences and accounts on Colloquy and Apollo IM! Question: is the backup feature on the iPhone a VERY GOOD and thorough one, or are the third party apps installed somewhere where iTunes doesn’t access when “formatting” for Restore (because on Restore it clears all my songs and videos even… until it syncs again, of course!)??? Interesting huh?
I still need to figure out what REAL features this update gives me. As of now, some little glitches with MobileMail seem to be fixed and the Ringtone classification is a lot better! I hope MobileSafari is more stable………………. :rolleyes:
Funny how I keep jailbreaking my iPhone, and updating the firmware and never had any problem… Lucky me, I guess!
Google Android and the Stock Market
I’ve been following the stock market in some way, mainly because… the iPhone makes it so easy to do so! :p But I had strong beliefs that the high rise of Google’s stocks was a result of the hyped gPhone, which some expected to be an iPhone competitor of sorts…
Google’s stocks rose above $740, close to over $300 in the last 6 months and it felt… “bubblish” IMHO! And when Google Android was announced and investors realized it was not a physical-iPhone-alternative, or a device that could make sense of Google’s interest on the 700Mhz frequency auction, the stocks plunged, with GOOG down by over $120, and even bringing down AAPL (Apple) along the way!! Of course that mini-crash was also influenced by the rise of the oil prices… but I think it was also a result of the bubble effect on the gPhone expectations…
The most interesting fact is that Google’s shares are on the rise again today… They closed at $660.55 (+$28.48) and the AAPL closed at $169.96 (+$16.20). I’m very confused with the market today… REALLY! I think the market is crazy and Google’s stocks are soooo volatile! I give up on thinking I should get money and start investing… although that would have given me at least $300 per share on Google and over $100 on Apple, had I money back when I thought it would have been good to buy them! </rambling>
Coming Next
I urge those who have any kind of interest on my sayings/rambling to get on Twitter and follow me! Twitter as proven to be a great social utility because it can function as both an instant message system, a broadcast and a micro-blogging platform. Long Live Twitter! Or you can get Facebook…
I had some stuff I wanted to blog on some weeks ago… but they’re old now! And since I was “out” for the last 2 weeks, I need to get back on track before I can start writing on a constant pace. Keep checking back folks!
Blogged on August 3, 2007 at 20:41
Ok… This is it: the world is coming to an end! How is it possible to have a kid be fluent in tech stuff, know economics, working IT, managing Sharepoint, manage a company’s computer park AND… be 14 years old??
Robert does it well to show the world a kid who podcasts on Apple stuff, has it’s own blog, uses Facebook and loves Twitter and is still able to keep a logical conversation with some interest over the tech world and it’s economics and dynamics.
The best thing is that he’s a “no budget podcaster”, like he says himself, uses Audacity for the podcast (which is open source) and thinks that what he does is perfectly normal for a kid his age, growing up in techAmerica. And if you think that’s all, it’s not! He even predicts about the future of technology, saying that with Microsoft launching it’s Control Surface, technology will be at it’s peak of user interaction and attractiveness, along with ease-of-use.
The weird part is that, being a Apple Fan is not enough to help him get a new Mac. He’s using PCs because he’s old Mac can’t really do the job anymore… Do you want to donate this kid some bucks and help him get a Macbook??
Blogged on July 31, 2007 at 08:15
Well… it’s getting to me: Facebook!
After a looong time reading about it, I did follow Robert’s suggestion and signed up. To be honest, my facebook was sitting there, with all default info, no personal data whatsoever… until today! I went back there, filled my profile, searched for a few friends, found some supposedly high school mates (ya, even from a Portuguese high school most never heard of… although I never saw those individuals in real life…).
Oh well… I do have a question though: How many of YOU have a Facebook profile??? Let’s unite! Maybe even create a portuguese blogger group (prt.sc hint hint)… eh eh
Hey! I‘m Levi Figueira, an ‘82 portuguese tech enthusiast a.k.a geek! My interests range from design, photography, multimedia, production and music to linux, networking and development! *Personal tastes are subject to change without prior notice* :p Enjoy! =)
