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As the Web becomes more social, privacy becomes harder and harder to come by. People are over-sharing on Facebook and Twitter, broadcasting their whereabouts every ten steps on Foursquare and Gowalla, and uploading photos and videos of their most private moments to the Web for all to see. It’s easy to say that privacy is dead, we all live in public now, and just deal with it.

But things are a bit more complicated. It used to be that we lived in private and chose to make parts of our lives public. Now that is being turned on its head. We live in public, like the movie says (except via micro-signals not 24-7 video self-surveillance), and choose what parts of our lives to keep private. Public is the new default.

Stowe Boyd, along with others before him, calls this new state of exposure “publicy” (as opposed to privacy or secrecy). He writes:

The idea of publicy is no more than this: rather than concealing things, and limiting access to those explicitly invited, tools based on publicy default to things being open and with open access.

I don’t particularly care for the neologism, but the idea behind it is spot on. This change represents a major shift in the social fabric, and it is only now just getting started. If you thought there was a lot of hair-pulling over privacy in 2009, just wait until 2010. Facebook’s new privacy policies which favor more public sharing, will be a big driver of this shift, as will the continued adoption of Twitter, which by its very design makes personal utterances public. Then there are startups like Blippy that go even further by turning every single purchase into a public statement.

It takes some getting used to the idea of living in public. As I discussed several hours ago with Andrew Keen, in public on Twitter, instead of making the private public, we will make the public private.” When public is the default, you deliberately select what to keep private instead of the other way around.

It’s not that privacy disappears. But it becomes more a matter of emphasis and a conscious decision. Boyd points out:

Some people are the web equivalent of nudists: they live very open lives on the web, revealing the intimate details of their relationships, what they think of friends and co-workers, their interactions with family and authorities. But . . . even these apparently wide open web denizens may keep some things private, or secret.

Privacy and secrecy are two different things. Secrets can be shared, and thus become “social objects that link those sharing the secrets together, and excluding others,” writes Boyd. Making it easy for people to move from the public to the private, and in between, will become increasingly important for Web companies.

Getting back to the original question, privacy will still live on, but will be so transformed as to become almost unrecognizable. No doubt, many people will mistake it for dead and keep pulling out their hair.  The rest of us will go on with our public lives.

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Foursquare, the geo-location based check-in game, just announced its first venue that is combining badges and promotions. On Foursquare you get badges for checking into places. The person who checks into a place the most becomes the “Mayor.” You also get promotions from restaurants and bars nearby based on your location. Now those two elements are being tied together. For instance, Blynk Organic a restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina is the first venue to offer this promotion:

Mayor eats for free! Just show us your phone after checking in to validate. 25% off egg sandwiches for all Gym Rats (Foursquare badge required)

A promotion like this is clever since it is also tied to something other than checkins and mayorships. The idea is that it will not only give other customers an incentive to compete and become the mayor, but also motivate customers to complete interesting tasks before redemption.

In the past, Foursquare has done check-in and mayorship promotions, but in a more ad-hoc manor. Now the promos are presented as actual ads in the app. I spoke with Foursquare’s Director of Business Development Tristan Walker, who also spoke at our RealTime CrunchUp in November, and he mentioned that there are close to 400 businesses to this date that are running regular geo-triggered promos with Foursquare.

It is not clear how Foursquare will get paid for these badge promotions. Walker says, “Right now we’re just focused on getting as many venues running promos on the platform as possible before we think about monetizing. We’d like to understand a bit more about how venue owners would like to leverage our platform in interesting ways first.”

Foursquare has been one of the main startups in the geo-location market along with recently funded Gowalla.

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Anyone who follows John Mayer on Twitter knows that he’s a smart guy. A bit kooky at times, sure. But he’s definitely not just shooting his mouth off with self-promotional drivel. He’s built up quite a following on the service too, with over 2.8 million Twitter followers. So when he invites all of his fans to give up Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks for a week, you know there are a lot of people paying attention.

Tonight, Mayer has announced a One Week Digital Cleanse. The purpose? To ring in the new year with a slightly less chaotic mental state. In his post announcing the Cleanse, Mayer likens our increasingly scattered lifestyles to fragmented hard drives. It’s an apt comparison — between sites like Twitter, Facebook, and multiple Email boxes, most of us have data and friendships scattered across a dozen different places. Mayer thinks giving some of these up for a while might be a good way to “defragment” our minds. He’s not quitting these services the way Trent Reznor and Miley Cyrus did, he’s just taking a week long break, and he wants his fans to join him.

Unlike some similar campaigns I’ve heard of, which asked you to quit just about everything with a digital display, Mayer’s drive is probably doable for a lot of people. It doesn’t ask you to give up Email, and you can still use your cell phone for some things. Here are the guidelines :

Begins on January 1 at 9AM and runs until January 8 at 9AM
*email only from laptop or desktop computers
*cell phones can only be used to make calls, and no text messages or e-mails are allowed – if you receive a text, you must reply in voice over the phone. E-mails must be returned from a laptop or desktop computer.
*no use of Twitter or any other social networking site – this includes reading as well as posting.
*no visiting of any entertainment or gossip sites. (No need to detail which ones – you know what they are.)

Work commitments keep me from engaging in the Cleanse myself, but you may want to give it a try, if only for a day or two. If nothing else, consider just how attached you’ve become to these online services. Last June, when I took a weeklong vacation to the Caribbean, I found myself suffering some pretty serious withdrawals when I couldn’t compulsively check my Email or the latest tech news. It took about two full days of perfect weather and endless beaches to kick the sense of impending doom. That’s a little weird. Technology is amazing, but getting some perspective is a good thing.

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It's almost January 1st, 2010 and we've been mulling over our favorites of 2009 - and the previous decade. Here we present another installment in our "Of the Decade" lists. The aughts were a great time for gamers. The decade began auspiciously with the launch of the PlayStation2, and is ending quite nicely with a Nintendo victory that would have been thought impossible a few years ago. More people than ever are gaming, and the business has grown to enormous size. We've chosen the following games as the best representatives of this decade of gaming.

Newsflash: Tomorrow is the last day of 2009. That means we’re moving into the first new decade of the 2000s. And we have a decision to make.

Say “2009″ outloud. Chances are you’re saying “two thousand and nine.” But if you think about it, that’s weird. Say “1909″ outloud. Chances are you’re saying “nineteen-oh-nine.” It makes some sense, since we weren’t going to pronounce “2000″ as “twenty hundred,” but for whatever reason, going forward, we never moved to something like “twenty-oh-one” for “2001″ and so forth. A new website is urging us to do just that for the next decade.

TwentyNot2000.com has one purpose: To break your habit of saying “two-thousand-and-SO-AND-SO” before the new decade begins tomorrow at midnight. Why do they care? Because it takes more time to say “two thousand and ten” rather than just “twenty ten.” Also considered wrong by the site are “two thousand ten” (no “and”) and “two oh ten.” In the site’s own words:

Say the year “1810″ out loud. Now say the year “1999″ out loud. See a pattern? It’s been easier, faster, and shorter to say years this way for every decade (except for the one that just ended) instead of saying the number the long way. However, many people are carrying the way they said years from last decade over to this decade as a bad habit. If we don’t fix this now, we’ll be stuck saying years the long way for the next 99 years. Don’t let that happen!

The site also has a Facebook Group and Fan Page, just to drive the point home. The fan page actually has over 17,000 fans.

So choose now, but in the words of the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, “choose wisely” or we could be stuck wasting words for the next 89 years (their math is a little off, but don’t let that distract you).

Happy New Year.

[thanks Chan]

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Back in November, I wrote up a review of the new Magic Mouse, noting that it was “Apple’s best mouse ever, but…” Essentially, the problem is a software one. Apple gave its new mouse multi-touch capabilities, but only takes advantage of a fraction of what it can do. (And yes, it’s fully multi-touch capable.) A new third-party program called MagicPrefs, enables all the multi-touch capabilities you could ever want for the device — and even some you likely don’t.

MagicPrefs, which is made by developer Vlad Alexa, is a free piece of software that runs in the background once you start it up. It gives you a boatload of new multi-touch options for your Magic Mouse, broken into three main categories: Clicks & Taps, Swipes, and Drag, Pinch, etc. Clicks & Taps are the ones that are likely to be most useful to you, as they’re the ones that are the easiest to use, and get use to. MagicPrefs has options that allow you to set actions for two-finger clicks, three-finger clicks, four-finger clicks, and one-finger middle axis clicks. There are also all of those options and then some for “taps” which is essentially touching the top of the Magic Mouse without clicking on it. Clicking on the checkbox to enable any of these also shows you a picture of exactly how the function works on the Magic Mouse.

Similar options also exist for swipes (wiping you fingers across the top of the Magic Mouse, and pinching (pushing two fingers together on the top of the device or pushing them apart). Interestingly, there are also options for the Apple logo near the bottom of the Magic Mouse. Two options allow you to drag your finger from the logo left or right to enable some action. Another allows you to tap logo to enable something.

It’s important to note that a number of actions in both the Swipes and Drag,Pinch, etc areas are labeled with a “*,” meaning they are “potentially hard to use.” There are also some of the Clicks & Taps functions that have this warning. In my experience with the program, it’s a pretty good idea to follow these recommendations and stay away from the harder to use ones. Even an obvious action like two-finger click is hard to use because most people will have two fingers resting on the mouse at all times, and when they do a left or right click, the multi-touch top senses the other finger’s presence and will think you’re doing a two-finger click.

Still, after playing around with all the actions and finding the ones that I like and am comfortable using, MagicPrefs is extremely powerful. I now have easy access to things such as Expose, Dashboard, and Spaces right from the Mighty Mouse. It’s so natural, and makes so much sense, that I’m even more dumbfounded as to why Apple wouldn’t just build some of these gestures into the device’s software (and I suspect they will in the future via updates).

And there’s actually more. A number of users have complained that the tracking speed on the Magic Mouse is too slow, even at the fastest setting. This is especially a problem for users with the new 27″ iMacs (which come with the Magic Mouse) and/or two monitors (that’s a lot of screen real estate to cover). With MagicPrefs, you also get the ability to improve the Mighty Mouse tracking speed by up to 200%. It’s brilliant. There is also a setting to increase or decrease the touch sensitivity of the device.

MagicPrefs is perfect example of software making hardware better. And the developer promises that it will always be available for free (though he does accept PayPal donations on his site). He also promises that it uses less than 1% of system resources running in the background all the time. My usage of the software confirms this.

Recent reports indicate that the Mighty Mouse is selling better than any mouse in Apple’s history. This is hardly surprising given that the other ones were awful, and this one is good. But MagicPrefs makes it much better. If you have a Magic Mouse, you need this.

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It’s been a big year for Hulu, the video streaming site that lets you watch a large variety of premium content free of charge. The site has grown from a destination for the tech-savvy to a mainstream hit in the two years since its launch, and much of that growth came in the last 10 months or so. Hulu has just written a blog post about the last year, and it boasts some pretty big numbers.

CEO Jason Kilar writes that Hulu is now up to 43 million unique visitors — a 95% increase over the same time period last year. That’s impressive, but it’s also not much more than the 41.5 million it had back in April. In fact, in terms of unique visitors, Hulu’s growth seems to be fairly stagnant, which could indicate that the market is getting saturated. On the other hand, the number of videos each user is watching is still growing. In April, Hulu streamed 380 million videos. This month, they’re up to a whopping 924 million streams. The chart below from VideoNuze does a good job showing the trend (blue bars are views, the red line represents unique visitors).

The catalyst for the site’s growth spurt this year was likely its Superbowl Ad starring Alec Baldwin, who unveiled the site’s alien plot to take over our brains. That ad was later nominated for an Emmy award, and was followed up by a handful of other star-studded ads that further raised awareness.

Aside from the ads, much of the growth can be attributed to the site’s growing catalog of content: Kilar writes that they’ve grown from 5,600 hours of premium content available up to 14,000 hours. And they’ve gone from 130 content partners to 200, including Disney and ABC. The site has doubled from 166 to 408 advertisers, and its embeds have grown by 237%, up to 6.4 million embedded Hulu players on external sites.

Other notable events for Hulu this year include the launch of Hulu Labs which introduced a new native Desktop application that lets you sit back and watch Hulu with a remote. And, of course, the site engaged in a lengthy battle with Boxee: Hulu cut off Boxee support, and Boxee repeatedly would hack together ways to fix it.

The next year will be a very interesting one for Hulu. It is beginning to develop its own programming. And there have been reports of internal conflict between the site and the content owners who run it, as well as rumors that it may begin to offer a paid model. Whatever winds up happening, it’s becoming increasingly clear that an on-demand model like Hulu’s is the future of premium video content. If Hulu’s owners can’t get it right, someone else, like Apple, will.

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Amazon has just released its "Best of 2009" lists, showing the top-selling devices, books, DVDs, and such from this, the final year of the aughts. And although 2009 has not brought us hovercycles or Lunar colonies, it has brought us love-stricken vampires and a great number of replacements for paper-based book products, both of which sold extremely well. Do you like drawing conclusions from lists? Then buddy, this one's for you.

The third (and likely final) batch of 150 tickets to attend the Crunchies Awards are on sale now, courtesy of Eventbrite. Balcony seats are $45 (orchestra is sold out.)

If you’re dead set on an orchestra seat, please contact Jeanne Logozzo for sponsorship options. We have creative packages available in all shapes and sizes, such as champagne cocktails, card-game tables, demo tables, photo booths or walls, product giveaways and more.

Remember that voting is open through midnight PST, Wednesday, January 6. Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote daily for their favorite people, products and companies of the year.

The Crunchies Awards celebrate the best tech accomplishments of 2009 and will be held at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco on Friday, January 8, 2010 at 7:30 pm PST. Along with our co-hosts, GigaOm and VentureBeat, we will announce the winners from 18 different award categories live on stage from over 125 finalists.

Orchestra and balcony tickets include access to the after party hosted across the street in City Hall’s Grand Rotunda through midnight. There will be a sponsor-hosted bar, savory nibbles and desserts, music and a game room, featuring a mix of traditional and online games to play. Check out more party photos from 2008 and 2007.

Standing ovation to our Crunchies sponsors: after-party co-host Microsoft BizSpark, award benefactor Founders Fund, ustream.tv, specialty cocktail host Grey Goose Vodka, embargo-free beer host Lewis PR, SGN, Zong, DesignAboutTown, Future-Works, Eventbrite, Tap11, Outcast Communications, and Kosmix.

Hope to see you there.

FINALISTS: If you haven’t already, please contact us asap so we can get you set up with your two complimentary passes to attend.

UPDATE: The third batch of tickets have sold out. If any last seats open up, we’ll release them next week. Stay tuned.

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When Swype was nice enough to give us the world’s first hands-on with their ultra-nifty alternative keyboard on the Android platform, I wasn’t about to leak the installation files. It’s just not my style. Now that someone else has gone and leaked them, though, I’m more or less obligated to show you how to get it up and running. I tell you, folks — this blogging thing is one endless inner conflict.

Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >>

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