George Starcher

A couple of days ago Dr. Johannes Ullrich did a real interesting post on scraping gps data from twitpic posted photos from twitter users.  You can read the original post with graphs over at the Internet Storm Center blog. He wrote a couple of perl scripts for use with the exiftags tool.

So I was inspired to do a similar trick without the perl script and using my favorite, Exiftool by Phil Harvey.  So here comes yet another one of my automators for OSX.  You can download it in the zip below.  Just copy the imagecsv.txt to the root of your user home folder.   Then run the automator app.  You can of course edit the app in Automator to see how it works.  It will prompt you for the twitter user name of your target.  Then it goes to twitpic, scrapes their rss feed of all full sized images and runs exiftool on them.  It makes all the output in a folder on your desktop using the twitter user name.  You may alter what fields the exiftool puts to the exifdump.txt file by editing the imagecsv.txt.  It is just a print format file under the rules of exiftool setup to be tab delimited.

Just make sure you have exiftool installed or you wont get the tag dump.  You will end up just getting all the pictures scraped from the user’s rss feed.

Download:
OSX Automator – TwitPic – ExifScrape

I love using my google voice number as a public filter. I have it all tuned up and ready for my trip to Vegas next week for the Blogworld and New Media Expo. It saves having folks know your real home or cell number while still letting you route calls through based on whom is calling.

http://www.google.com/voice/
http://www.blogworldexpo.com/

I spotted an article today on a new service for anonymizing your phone number. It lets people you call you while to keeping your number private.  The article is “Anonymize your phone number with LetsCall.Me” over at CNet by Josh Lowensohn  The service lets you hand out a web link and folks can input their number on that page.  The service then connects them to you without them ever knowing your number.  So I have to wonder, where is the hook?  How do they intend to make money?  Every web service is about eventually making money, even indirectly.  It has to be or what is the point?

I actually read the terms of use from LetsCall.Me and find this section curious.

You also grant to LetsCall.Me the right to use your name in connection with the submitted materials and other information as well as in connection with all advertising, marketing and promotional material related thereto. You agree that you shall have no recourse against LetsCall.Me for any alleged or actual infringement or misappropriation of any proprietary right in your communications to LetsCall.Me.

Could this mean your name, number etc are eligible to be sold on a marketing list?  Keep in mind I am NOT saying they ARE doing or WILL do this.  Just that the language makes me think they COULD. I also will say I am not a lawyer.  So best ask yours if in doubt.

The trade off might suit your needs.  I know I am a Google GrandCentral user.  But that service is not open to new subscribers so maybe what LetsCall.Me offers would work for you.  Just consider the implications of any terms of use for any service when handing out information you are intending to protect.

Today I spent a bit playing with Yahoo’s new Fire Eagle location service. It has some pretty decent privacy controls and it is taking off fast as a junction point for location aware applications. If you sign up for Fire Eagle you can get an automatic invite to Bright Kite which has good sms and email mechanisms for updating your location. It also has decent privacy controls. Such as only close friends see your exact location and everyone else gets the city.

So I tied them together and then tied Brightkite to my twitter location. While I was doing this I was surprised to see how many of my twitter followers have their exact longitude and latitude coordinates updating from their iPhone. I would wager a lot of them did not give a real thought to the privacy concerns. Or that it tells a lot of people when you are definitely not home. Worse, imagine your kids with iPhones and twitter. Raises cyber bullying to a whole new level if the bully can go straight to where they really are.

I would recommend disabling location updates and wipe the current location. Or use something like Fire Eagle/Brightkite to mask your location to a city level where it has value to you.