Be careful with social networking

The world is changing. Just the other day, I watched the movie of how Facebook started. Facebook, Twitter and many other social networking sites are easy distractions both at home and on the job. In the last few years, employees in many industries have been fired for communication errors.

We all need to be cognizant of what can get us in a heap of trouble. Here are a few examples of employees who have been fired for expressing themselves on these sites:

» A teenager on her first day of work posted, “First day at work. Oh my God. So dull. All I do is shred and scan paper.” Her boss friended her, saw what she posted and she no longer had a job. Why keep someone who is so unhappy with the job?

The teen should have kept her negative thoughts to herself.

» An employee called in sick and posted “sick day” on her page. She was on the computer all day. Her boss, who felt she was well enough to sit in front of her work computer if she could sit in front of her home computer, fired her. Personally, I think that’s unfair.

» A nursing home employee loved the patients she worked with. She took photos with them and posted them on her Facebook page, which violated the nursing home’s privacy policy and HIPAA.

She was fired. In this case, she just wasn’t thinking. If the nursing home had known, and if each patient or their family member had signed a consent form, then perhaps she would have been OK.

» A professor at a college in Pennsylvania asked, “Does anyone know where I can find a hit man? It’s been that kind of day.”

She was just kidding; however, the college felt it was inappropriate after the various school shootings.

Just one little wrong statement will get you fired.

» A person who worked at two jobs posted something like, “Ugh, here I go to this (expletive) place. Wish I could go home.” They weren’t fired, but reprimanded.

» I know three people who posted photos of them drinking at an Ocean City bar and dancing with people in a suggestive manner.

They posted a comment that said, “We play hooky tomorrow!” The next day the three hooky players were contacted by their boss and asked to play hooky forever.

The list goes on and on. The bottom line is that we all need to watch what we say.

In this world, where everything is recorded online, don’t be seen as a gossip or troublemaker. And keep your opinions to yourself.

Bonnie Burke is a co-owner of Shore Staffing Inc., a temporary and permanent staffing firm on Delmarva. Send questions to bburke@shorestaffing.com, reach her at 410-957-2800 or visit www.shorestaffing.com.

Share and Enjoy

Users uncover Facebook for iPad hidden in iPhone app

It was right under their noses all along.

Users of Apple Inc.’s popular iPad tablet computers need not look far for an app that allows them to access social networking site Facebook—it turns out, the app is hidden right beneath them, if they care long enough to look.

Tech site TechCrunch reported on Monday that the code for the much-awaited Facebook iPad app is “hidden” in the Facebook app for Apple’s iPhone.

According to the site, much of the app is written in HTML5, a new Web code also used by Facebook in its Web application.

TechCrunch said this was made possible due to a seemingly tiny update Facebook pushed to its iPhone app—version 3.4.4—which initially carried minor cosmetic and bug fixes.

But TechCrunch said it turns out that the app “is carrying a payload of much greater importance than some bug fixes.”

It said the navigation system is “great” as it uses a left-side menu system that can be accessed by the touch of a button or the flick of the iPad screen.

TechCrunch said the app also makes great use of the pop-overs (overlay menus) found in other iPad apps.

“When you flip the iPad horizontally, the list of your online friends appears and you can chat with them as you do other things on Facebook. The photo-viewer aspect looks great — similar to the iPad’s own native Photos app. Places exists with a nice big map to show you all your friends around you. Etc,” it said.

TechCrunch also reported that a source who had previously seen the Facebook iPad app confirmed that it is indeed the app the social networking giant is planning to launch soon.

But to be able to access the code that runs the iPad application, TechCrunch said users would have to do “some things you’re technically not supposed to do to your iPad,” referring to jailbreaking the device, or “cracking” the iPad in order to run unauthorized 3rd-party applications.

News site Computerworld, however, reported that as early as 1 PM in the US (or late evening in Manila), access to the hidden application has already been blocked by Facebook.

“It appears that Facebook has disabled logins through the ‘iPad’ version,” tweeted Marvin Bernal, a Canada-based computer engineering student who discovered how to unlock the hidden application. — JMT/RSJ, GMA News

Share and Enjoy