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This is an interesting tidbit.  I was reading about how the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops” grossed $650m in the first five days after its release, a bigger launch than most blockbuster motion picture launches. My curiosity led me to a list of top 50 movies of all time.  However, what I was really curious about is what the top 50 movies of all time are in their era.  That is, what the top-grossing 50 movies of all time are in inflation-adjusted (2010) dollars.

Based on the top 500 list from IMDB and using the CPI data from US Department of Labour (source) to convert box office sales to 2010 dollars, we have the following list:

I’m writing down these table mostly for my own future quick reference.  Feel free to use.

Percentage-to-Fraction look up:

Sigma Rule (Normal):

In Excel use: =2*NORM.DIST(E2,0,1,TRUE)-1

More to come.

Screen shot of my now-deleted Scribd account showing my friend names and images pulled from Facebook

Today, to my dismay I found a portion of my private Facebook social graph in the public search pages on Google under the social profile page of my now-deleted Scribd account (see picture above).

I can tell that the data was pulled from Facebook because of the particular profile image which is only on my Facebook profile (not LinkedIn, not Twitter, and not Google Buzz).

I can understand that Scribd may want to build their own social network for its users (haven’t thought about why they would and don’t care). And I certainly have no issue with Scribd publishing the particular social graph about willing users.  But my numerous issues are mostly related to the way they obtained this information and that they did not ask for my permission before proceeding to share this data with the whole world.

Here are the particulars of my issues with what I saw today:

• I use (or used to use as of now!) Facebook for social fun and keeping in touch with friends online, not as a professional tool, and certainly not as a public publishing platform.  My Facebook profile picture, my friends’ profile pictures, etc are not ones I want the CEO of the next company I work for to see in the first or second page of Google Search results for my name! (the attached picture is exactly what you will see if you Google me and dig around for a bit) So the fact that Scribd did not respect my choice to keep that information private is a serious problem.
• I have no idea how Scribd got this info.  I have not signed in using my Facebook account. Actually, before this morning I used to have a Scribd account and am sure I would not have given Scribd my Facebook login.  This concerns me.
• The data that Scribd published is public (without my choice) and very sticky. So even when I noticed that the whole world can see many private data about me, I cannot remove the pages immediately and am at the mercy of Scribd to pull the data down and then Google to remove the data from their caches.  This is exactly why my profile is private on Facebook.  Mark Zuckerberg might ask: “what do you have to hide?”.  To this I would answer: “nothing, but I don’t choose to publish every detail of my online life on a public forum”.

I didn’t wake up today thinking I would go on a rant about Consumer privacy online, but the surprise of seeing my private data out in the open made me take the time to write about this.  I am surprised that a company with a great service, impressive investors and team (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/scribd), and $12.8m in funding would make such a mistake.

I know we live in an age where privacy is considered a relic in the online world. So be it, I have asked Scribd to pull my personal data down and will pursue this issue until the data is all removed.  In the mean time, to prevent future instances of this and to counter the intrusive nature of Facebook Like button, etc I recommend the following:

• Sign out of Facebook and Twitter after use every time.  Or better, have a separate browser for using Facebook and Twitter and use another browser when you’re just searching the web and doing work.
• Clear your browser’s cookies after each visit to Facebook.  This will ensure no 3rd parties take your private data without your permission (you can still sign in or choose to give your Facebook information to 3rd parties if desired)
• Search yourself on Google, Bing, etc every once in a while to see if you’re involuntarily sharing more than you intend to. Then work with the offending website to pull your data down.
• Disconnect yourself by closing down your Facebook, etc account.  I haven’t done this yet as I find Facebook a valuable service.  But everyone has his own way of doing cost-benefit analysis and his own limit. I’m just getting closer and closer to the last straw on this. If my privacy cannot be managed effectively, I will reluctantly but surely remove my Facebook account.

In the end, I’m thinking some soul-searching is in order to see whether or not it makes sense to have a Facebook account.

The other night my girlfriend and I decided to watch a movie and inline with the spirit of holidays (and the cold weather in Toronto) we decided to give iTunes a try instead of going downstairs to rent a DVD from Rogers (there’s a Rogers Video literally down the stairs).  Here is what’s broken about the whole process from a user’s point of view:

• Price-wise, I have no incentive to go to iTunes even though price is not really an issue for me as a non-frequent movie watcher.
• Download time: maybe it’s my connection (it isn’t because I’ve done better before!) but the movie took 4 hours to download which was a downer because we ended up having to watch it the next night.  That basically ruined the experience.  Apple should really look into better streaming options (local servers or peer-to-peer come to mind).
  • What’s more is that due to bandwidth caps from my ISP, I would think twice before renting a 1.25GB movie which self-destructs in 24-48 hours!
• iTunes cycles through a few pages to “re-establish” my payment info.  Interestingly enough, the pages were pre-filled with my info anyway.  So I’m not sure what the purpose of this exercise was.
• Search and Browsing through titles was not pleasant because of iTune’s slow interface on my PC. (My MacbookPro is as slow, so it’s the networking within iTunes)
• This is more general about watching movies on computers and no specific to just iTunes.  Until everyone has a media centre computer, a Web/Apple/GoogleTV, or some sort of web-smartbox, you cannot complete with the convenient of a DVD player. Here is what I mean
  • Connecting my laptop to TV through HDMI is a pain.
  • No remote control for pausing and fast-forwarding/rewinding. I have to get off the couch, play with the mouse until I see the pointer, move to FF/RWD button, then move mouse (visible on TV screen not the laptop) to Play button and click again.
• Worst of all for iTunes/Netflix, great for Rogers Video/Blockbuster/etc is that putting together the full connection to the TV (HDMI, iTunes, Downloads page, Search, switch to full screen, etc etc etc) is totally non-geek-hostile!  No normal person would want to go through this pain at this point.

All in all, I believe that the process is still not fully baked.  But once TVs become smarter I can see a lot of the issues addressed.  At that point I’ll revisit the trade-off of not leaving the convenience of our living room versus the time and planning effort required to download the rental movie.  For now, I’ll stick to DVDs.