At a recent event featuring a great many people smarter than me (the Transparency and Accountability Initiative’s wonderful #TAbridge workshop), I asked for recommendations on amazing books to read in the upcoming winter. This is what I got back, based on the following prompts:

Recommended on “networks, sharing, democracy”

• The Leviathan and the Penguin: The Promise of Cooperation, Yochai Benkler
• Weath of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yochai Benkler
  
• Africa, Richard Dowden
• The Corruption Notebooks: Volume 7, ed. Hazel Feigenblatt and Global Integrity
• Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency, Archon Fung, Mary Graham and David Weil – @arfung
• The Myth of Digital Democracy, Matthew Hindman
• “The Quiet Coup”, The Atlantic, Simon Johnson
• The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Evgeny Morezov
• Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become, Peter Morville
• Thrivability, Jean Russell, editor
• Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C. Scott
  
• The Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky
• Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky
• Republic.com, Cass Sunstein
• The Revolution Will Not Be Televised : Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything, Joe Trippi

Recommended on “innovation” and “work”

Hi folks –

We’re doing Practice Thanksgiving again this year, after a year off last year for the baby-having. You’re invited!

The Practice Thanksgiving concept is pretty simple: Thanksgiving is awesome. Double Thanksgiving is twice as awesome. It’s math. So, per the secret rules of a tradition which has been simmering along in the hardcore Thanksgiving sub-culture for a decade now, we do a Practice Thanksgiving with our friends. That’s you.

We’ll do a fresh local bird, lovingly brined and stuffed full of sage and parsley and goodness. You lot will pitch in with the full flower of your creativity on the sides, drinks and desserts. Portion to share with friends; experimentation is encouraged and failure is lovingly heckled. (For the record, you can put bacon in pie, but in hindsight, it should probably be cooked beforehand).

Your friends and kids are welcome to join us.

Schedule: Next Sunday, 11/13/11! Gather at 4pm or later to cook and hang with kids. Dinner served at 6pm.
RSVP: leave a comment on this post. Please note any food restrictions, or send an email if you prefer.

With thanks for many good things,

Jonathan, Kate, Vivian

HEADCOUNT: ~ 17 talls, 3 toddlers.

The menu:

Bringing food is optional but encouraged. Volunteer to bring something specific by leaving a comment below this post, and I’ll update the list — we do it this way so you can see what’s claimed and we don’t get 12 yam recipes. Some recommendations are in italics, but feel free to improvize. If you can make something vegetarian, please do so.

Main course!
Sage-brined turkey with garlic and parsley, with gravy. By Jonathan E-W.
A vegetarian main

Sides! 
Mashed Potatoes, by Kyle
Sweet potato casserole, by Esta

Bread, by Ariel. 
A bread or bread-like product. 

Green beans with friend onions, by Kelty & Duane
Napa Cabbage salad by Heidi

A meaty stuffing.
A vegetarian stuffing, by Heidi

Cranberries.

Deserts! 
Apple pie, by Kate E-W.
Pumpkin Bacon Pie, by Ariel.
Moar pie! more! more!
Possible berry cobbler, by Esta

Drinks!
Seasonal beverages of an alcoholic nature.
Spiced cider by Kunal.
Wine.
Fancy ginger ale, by Jonathan E-W
Pabst Blue Ribbon, by Jonathan E-W

Last week, crafting marketplace Etsy.com published the real name and purchasing history of their buyers to the Web. These purchases include sex toys, gay literature, drug pipes and other presumably private transactions.

Or in the words of an online poster at the Penny Arcade forums discussing the privacy breech: “Found an XXL glass dildo with veins and swirled gold coloring (beautiful piece really) and checked to see if anyone favorited it. Someone did. She also favorited some cosplay cat ear hats and a bell collar/necklace thing. Then I found her on Facebook.”

No notification has been given to members of this change in policy beyond an Etsy help forum thread announcing, “We’re starting to roll out a new People Search. Let us know what you think!” Etsy sellers did — unhappily — for 120 pages of comments, until an Etsy moderator closed the thread.

Because Etsy.com has high credibility with search engines, searching for a person’s name frequently shows the Etsy purchase history in the first page of results for less-common names. In my case, an Etsy profile created by a single purchase at the site in 2009 was, at press time, the 5th result on a Google search for my last name.

In reverse, an Etsy.com visitor can search for a sex toy shop, and follow that store’s recent purchases to a list of shoppers complete in some cases with real name, location and photo. No login is required for either search. Etsy has also published users’ “favorites”, which had appeared to users to be a way of privately tagging items.

The changes are retroactive to all prior Etsy users. My 2009 purchase — my only activity on the site — popped up in a Google Alert for my name. I’ve since closed my account.

Forum posters at Etsy and Penny Arcade have noted this seems to put Etsy at odds with tougher UK and Canadian privacy laws, as well as EU rules. Etsy has not commented on this. In rolling out previous features, an Etsy moderator noted “Etsy’s privacy practices are regularly verified and vetted by TRUSTe, an independent, non-profit organization which helps make sure Etsy is in compliance with privacy laws around the world.” The TRUSTe press office did not return an email asking if the current practices met their certification.

Etsy management has gone silent, other than to note that real names and purchase history can be removed on a settings panel. However, since Etsy isn’t notifying buyers, it’s not clear how anyone would know to do this. Forum posters report a delay of several days before a name change is reflected on the site. “My name request change is taking forever, what is with that? Even after the name change (if/when it happens), I’m cursed with cached Google searches.” writes Etsy user littlesistahstudio.

Etsy has not officially acknowledged that privacy is a problem with “People Search”. Etsy demoted a thread discussing privacy concerns to the less visible “Ideas” section of the user forum.

Why did this happen? Why publish buyer profiles in what the Etsy forums show to be a crafty community of sellers with an ecommerce site bolted on? Here’s a thought: social network companies are valued by the number of members. Since buyers might outnumber sellers by 100 to one, under current bubble logic, that puts Etsy at 100x in market value if their previous buyers are included — by default and secretly, if need be — in a public “social commerce” experience.

UPDATE

After many days of silence Etsy announced that past purchases would be hidden by removing item descriptions from user feedback. The change of policy came within hours of the following exchange I had with the 30-year-old Etsy CEO Rob Kalin.

 

From the Ars Technica comment section:

Yes, there is. It’s the seller feedback. Sellers always give feedback in the hopes that you reciprocate. When you make that list and include a link to the item description, that is the list of all your purchases. Here’s yours:

Vintage Industrial Cooper’s Table
Gull-Wing Bench with drawer
Make My Wishes Come True – Clipboard
Uncomplicated – a simple modern box clock
Unfurled with Green Interior

I can go on but your purchases are boring. Sex shops, less so. Gay bookstores? Hmm. Drug items? Getting more damaging…

Simple fix: hide the items. Keep the feedback. Also, quit defending something indefensible. You exposed my purchases without my knowledge or consent.

 

The policy change I suggested — removing item descriptions from feedback — was implemented a few hours later. “We want to apologize… As of right now, all your purchases on Etsy are private,” wrote Kalin in a post entitled “Rethinking Feedback”. Sellers are understandably upset this incomplete fix leaves real names exposed by default while damaging the utility of the feedback system.

There remains plenty of damaging information visible to the Web, like this list of people, complete with usernames that can be matched to email addresses and the occasional real name.

Full credit to the Penny Arcade forums for noticing, investigating, understanding and exposing this privacy violation.

 

Jonathan Eyler-Werve’s privacy policy will never give you up. About the author.

Take a moment to envision an advertising agency. I bet you came up with a bunch of cooler than thou hipsters who drink and womanize in sleek, minimalist offices, right? I used to work in an advertising office so I am here to tell you that you are absolutely right! But here’s the interesting part: when it comes to trying to convince people to take action on climate change, those expensive square glasses and ironic t-shirts clothe the soul of Helen Lovejoy on the Simpsons…

Read the rest of Kate’s post at Chicago Green Jobs

Merry Christmas, folks. And while we’re at it, cheers to Eid, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, winter solstice, and any other solar festival you care to celebrate.

It’s been an uncommonly good year for the Eyler-Werve enclave. The headline, of course, is the arrival of Vivian this February, but there’s good news on all fronts.

Vivian is growing like an El Nino brushfire, and really is a delightful baby. She will reliably smile and wave at newcomers, gasp with joy when handed a banana, squint when concentrating on new challenges, and sob with the fire of a thousand suns if she can see a banana that she is not allowed to eat. After face planting down a single step at her grandparent’s house, she now approaches any change in flooring while slinking on her belly. She’s clever.

Kate and I are very grateful to family and friends, old and new, that are helping to raise our little sprout.

In other news, we are staying busy. I’m still at Global Integrity, and shifting from managing a nonprofit to building tools for the nonprofit sector. In the last year, my crew has taken the Indaba fieldwork platform from a few sketches to an online publishing system currently in use in 34 countries. Public Radio International and others are signed up to use it next year. Referrals to orgs that need better tools for publishing are welcome. I’ve got a new office in downtown Chicago, and am enjoying our little Windy City community of tech-for-social change hackers.

Kate’s been busy too. She’s consulting with U.S. Equities to add a higher level of employee engagement to their thriving sustainability practice. Their first project together dug up a quarter million dollars in cost reductions for North Central College, which makes me think she’ll be staying busy next year. She’s also got a hearty stew of side projects going (including her blog on sustainability in Chicago), so feel free to call her if you need a collaborator.
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Don’t be a stranger, folks. We’re always happy to see you.
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Much love,
Jonathan, Kate, Vivian
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Bonus Video!

Vivian kind of maybe likes this “solid food” thing. Sweet potatoes!

I scored an invitation to the launch of the Field Museum’s brand new exhibit: Climate Change. A panel of CSR VPs, organic wine, a sneak peak of the exhibit AND a chance to see Sue? Sold!

After the VP panel (which was brilliantly moderated by Suzanne Malec-McKenna, Chicago’s Commissioner of the Environment), we were released into the main hall for drinks, dinner and a tour through the exhibit. Here’s my quick take on the Good, the Bad and the Corporate of the Climate Change exhibit.

Full post at CHICAGO GREEN JOBS.

One of my favorite events in Chicago: an entire conference devoted to training nonprofiteers on the subtle arts of communications. And the speakers are pretty great folks. Photos below are mine.

http://communitymediaworkshop.org/mmc2010/

– Jonathan

Things Vivi likes in order of deliciousness:

1. Her hands
2. Jonathan’s sandwich
3. Easter eggs

At three months, Vivi has also delighted us all by:
1. Imitating Mr. Burns (Excellent, Smithers!)
2. Wearing her mom’s hip shirts from the late 70′s
3. Growing like a weed

Hi folks!

We’re transfering our @eylerwerve.com email addresses to a new server so our email will be bouncing for about a day until our DNS server refreshes the MX records. Point being, you might have to call us or something.

– Jonathan