$100 for talk and text + $30(x2) for their data plans = $160 or $80/person. $10. Big Whoop. However, if you bump it up to the next plan for each person, it would be $110 vs $90. $20/month saved. Close to (essentially) a free data plan. If they add one more person to the plan, it would be $170/mo ($10 for the extra line), which divided by 3 is $56.60 per person. Plus, monthly charge savings tend to add up!

Seems like a no brainer at that rate. You will save a good amount of money by playing your cards right with a family plan.*

*note: These numbers are using Verizon Wireless’s plans. Results from other providers may vary.

Will/Do you use it? Why or why not?

The overwhelming answer here was no because they don’t want people to know exactly where they are all the time. Some thought it would be cool just to see who else is around, but overall they did not like that friends are able to tag them at locations, that it’s on by default, and they felt it’s unnecessary.

My thoughts: I used it a couple of times over the weekend and I liked it. I am also a foursquare user and use some discretion with where I check in. I also knew about the service right when it was announced and know how to change the privacy settings.

Do you have privacy concerns? What are they?

Most of the concerns came with my students unknowingly being tagged at locations, even if they don’t want others to know where they are. The consensus seems to be that they are friends with acquaintances that they’d rather not tell where they are (something I can also attest to). A couple of students brought up the interesting point of privacy for younger kids. There are already a lot of predators on the Internet, and Places  makes it much easier to track kids’ whereabouts.  They brought up the point that if they didn’t even know about the new feature/privacy settings, what is the likelihood that someone younger does?

My thoughts: Pretty much the same as my students. Again, I knew about Places from the get go and could amend my privacy settings. For someone who doesn’t know about them, it’s a pretty big breach of security.

Is Facebook over-stepping their boundaries?

There was somewhat of a split on this question. Those who answered, “No they are not,” cited that you could choose to use it if you’d like, and that people will definitely use it. If people don’t want to, they can disable it. Those who answered, “Yes they are,” seldom said they are because it’s an unnecessary feature, but went more to the to fact that Facebook did not do a very good job of notifying all users of the new feature the same way they have with other features or redesigns. The uninformed user is left out in the cold as far as their privacy is concerned.

My thoughts: I don’t think they are- if you want to use it, use it. If you don’t, disable it. However, I can see where the students who said yes are coming from. It hadn’t dawned on me that if you don’t read the Facebook Blog or other tech blogs, you probably didn’t know about Places. Facebook should have added an alert to the top of the page like they have done so many times before telling users about Places, it’s implications, and how to shut it off.

Can you see it being useful? Why/why not?

This one yielded some interesting answers. Some flat out said that it would not be useful, and that it’s unnecessary. However, most students felt that in the right situation, it could be useful. “In case of an emergency where you can’t find someone” seemed to be a popular one, however during the discussion the point was brought up that if you’re updating your status on Facebook, why not just call or text someone. Of-course, if the person’s phone died and you wanted to get their last location, that might be a different story. If you want to meet up with someone you didn’t know was there was also a popular one, and probably the most practical. The most interesting answer was, “Yes- parents can use it to keep tabs on their kids.”

My thoughts: I think here there were some very good answers- I hadn’t thought of parents keeping tabs on their kids- but there was also some narrow-mindedness. I have a good amount of friends, but only a small fraction of phone numbers from those friends (not counting the Facebook Phonebook). Furthermore, I wouldn’t think to call all of them/tell all of them I’ll be out in a particular area. I think finding people nearby is a very cool feature, especially if you at a big ticket event, like a baseball  game or a concert (as some students mentioned). This could also be a very good way to start a conversation about new places. “Hey I saw you were at X yesterday. What did you think?”

All-in-all, Facebook’s heart is in the right place here (of-course, they are probably looking at money from location-aware ads as well). The question is whether their head was when they rolled Places out. I read an article a few weeks ago about how Facebook needs to grow up, and there is some truth to that. They keep making the same mistakes about privacy settings and product roll outs (at-least the privacy settings were here at launch this time). Though while these things will enrage some people, I don’t think they will stop people from using Facebook…for now.

This is a very interesting test! Let me know your results in the comments! (if you plan on doing the test, don’t read the comments yet!)

via YouTube – Silent Star Wars.

Good to Hear from You 2, originally uploaded by jcasabona.

Saw this at the Sheraton Long Island Hotel. I love the color scheme and typography.

Aside from that, a couple of notable news stories:

• 3 Reasons the “Ground Zero Mosque” Debate Makes No Sense: It seriously doesn’t. Remember the 2006 election, when flag burning was a huge but ultimately non-issue? That’s what this is for the 2010 Election. And it’s stupid.
• Facebook Launches Places, Location Check-in, Discovery: Read about the latest Facebook feature that has privacy people up in arms.

Note: You need to be at least a little bit familiar with the WordPress API, and coding themes.

Go into the theme page where your posts are printed (in most themes, this will be at least 2 places: index.php and single.php) and find The Loop. Here you will either find the div that is wrapping each post or write a div to wrap each post.

For the class, call this function: category_classes() (don’t worry, I’ll provide the code in the next steps). You should have something that looks like this:

<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
     <div class="<?=category_classes();?>
          /**You Loop Stuff**/
     </div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Next, we are going to open up our functions.php and add this function:

function category_classes(){

   global $post;

   $cats= "";

   foreach((get_the_category($post->ID)) as $category) {

      $cats.= $category->category_nicename . ' ';

   }

   return trim($cats);

}

This function grabs the categories of the current post, and adds each of their names (or in this case, the slug to make is a CSS friendly class name) to a string. It returns that string, trimming any extra white space from the ends.

Since we printed it in the first step, now all we have to do is add the CSS. For the WordPress nicenames (or slugs), generally the slug will be all lowercase, where spaces are replaced by dashes (-). So if I have a category called “Quick Tips,” I would define the CSS class .quick-tips.

And there you have it! You can now create different styles for any (or all) of your categories! Just keep in mind, this adds all of the category slugs as css classes, so you may have some conflicts (ie if you have a post in Category A and Category B, you will get class="category-a category-b").