Check out the McNair Scholars program, accepting applications until October 29. McNair scholars conduct research in their field (including social sciences and humanities), present at national conferences, and prepare strong graduate school applications. Must be sophomore or above and have at least a 2.7 GPA. Pick up application today in MP room 213.

I always think of things I should have added in the hour after making a post. Sigh. Here goes…

The situation is perhaps not so different from mailing lists, Google groups or any number of similar systems. I can set up one of those and add people to them without their consent — even people who are are not my friends. Even people whom I don’t know and who don’t know me. Such email-oriented lists can also have public membership lists. The only check on this is that most mailing lists frameworks send a notice to people being added informing them of the action. But many frameworks allow the list owner to suppress such notifications.

But still, Facebook seems different, based on the how the rest of it is configured and on how people use it. I believe that a common expectation would be that if you are listed as a member of an open or private group, that you are a willing member.

When you get a notification that you are now a member of the Facebook group Crazy people who smell bad, you can leave the group immediately. llBut we have Facebook friends, many of them in fact, who only check in once a month or even less frequently. Notifications of their being added to a group will probably be missed.

Facebook should fix this by requiring that anyone added to a group confirm that they want to be in the group before they become members. After fixing it, there’s lots more that can be done to make Facebook groups a powerful way for assured information sharing.

You can join a research team or design your own research or creative project, starting now. Learn how at the Undergraduate Research Consultation held on Friday, October 22 at noon in Lecture Hall 3 in the Administration Building. These students found valuable research experiences. You can, too. Now is the time to select your research location for Summer 2011. Find out how to get a great placement.

Facebook has rolled out a new version of groups announced on the Facebook blog.

“Until now, Facebook has made it easy to share with all of your friends or with everyone, but there hasn’t been a simple way to create and maintain a space for sharing with the small communities of people in your life, like your roommates, classmates, co-workers and family.
…
Today we’re announcing a completely overhauled, brand new version of Groups. It’s a simple way to stay up to date with small groups of your friends and to share things with only them in a private space. The default setting is Closed, which means only members see what’s going on in a group.”

There are three kinds of groups: open, closed and secret. Open groups have public membership listings and public content. Private ones have public membership but public but private content. For secret groups, both the membership and content are private.

A key part of the idea is that the group members collectively define who is in the group, spreading the work of setting up and maintaining the group over many people.

But a serious issue with the new Facebook group framework is that a member can unilaterally add any of their friends to a group. No confirmation is required by the person being added. This was raised as an issue by Jason Calacanis.

The constraint that one can only add Facebook friend to a group he belongs to does offer some protection against ending up in unwanted groups (e.g., by spammers). But it could still lead to problems. I could, for example, create a closed group named Crazy people who smell bad and add all of my friends without their consent. Since the group is not secret like this one, anyone can see who is in the group. Worse yet, I could then leave the group. (By the way, let me know if you want to join any of these groups).

While this might just be an annoying prank, it could spin out of control — what might happen if one of your so called friends adds you to the new, closed “Al-Queda lovers” group?

The good news is that this should be easy to fix. After all, Facebook does require confirmation for the friend relation and has a mechanism for recommending that friends like pages or try apps. Either mechanism would work for inviting others to join groups.

We have started working with a new group-centric secure information sharing model being developed by Ravi Sandhu and others as a foundation for better access and privacy contols in social media systems. It seems like a great match.

See update.

Hey all,

I saw this article being circulated through a few of my friends about UMBC Alum Ari Ne’eman. Ari was nominated to the National Council for Disabilities (NCD) back in December 2009, and officially appointed over the summer. According to the article, Ari is “the first openly autistic White House appointee in history — and one of the youngest at age 22″.

The NCD is a group of people who advise the President and Congress on how they can make policies that make life in the United States “more equitable” for people with disabilities.

The article also made the front page of www.fark.com, a website that collects interesting and unique news articles from around the internet.

Congratulations to Ari!!