Chris Peterson

In “Losing Face” I mention the technology of “privacy mirrors”, a concept which has been developed in the HCI literature over the last decade or so. Briefly put, a “privacy mirror” works just like a real mirror – by reflecting how your profile/data/etc appear to others.

There are two great privacy mirrors now available for Facebook users.

The first is Facebook’s ViewAs functionality, which has been available for some time but has been refined recently. It allows you to assume the “mask” of any Friend and see how they see your profile.

The second, by Berkeley student Ka-Ping Yee, doesn’t have a name, but it does the same thing for your open graph. Type in your username and this tool will show you all of the data that are available to everyone on the web with the new change. Most people will want to look closely at their Likes, Status Updates, and Photos, since they tend to get pretty squirrely.

Good luck!

From the “How Did I Survive Without This” Dept: PadMapper.com.

Simple enough. PadMapper extracts Craiglists/etc listings, allows you to filter down by parameters (e.g. minimum bedrooms, bathrooms, wood floors, granite countertops, etc), and places them on a map, so you can easily visualize location as well.

Great way for me to make sure my next place is sufficiently close to the Charles River Bike Trail. Now if they’d only overlay it with a map of the MBTA…