All I wanted was a sturdy bag for my new laptop that wasn’t boring or ugly or corporate or outrageously priced. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I wanted one that was all that plus sexy and a little girly. Something with personality. I am a lipstick geek, after all. I specifically needed something that would protect my laptop when I travel to California, which I’m doing in less than two weeks.

My 17″ Dell started to die last fall. I’d had the motherboard replaced twice in its four years. And then there was the incessantly blowing fan problem that Dell “tech support” couldn’t fix with all their bios updates and fan replacements. So I googled around and then had the courtesy to tell them that all you need to do is hit Fn + z to reset the thermostat on that model and instantly stop the fans from screaming. They didn’t thank me.

But I digress.

I’ve been working on Vincent’s little 13″ Macbook for months, and I finally replaced my Dell last week with a 15″ Macbook. Unfortunately, my old, beloved laptop case doesn’t fit it:

This is the “Brain Cell” by Tom Bihn, a little independent manufacturer in Seattle. But mine is “wasabi” colored.

Vincent thinks it’s ugly. But there are three reasons why I loved it in addition to the color (Hello! Black is so boooring.). One, the cleaning instructions included the text below (Bush was still in office when I bought it). I’d heard about this “scandal” before I ever had a laptop and decided to support the publishers of this subversive (and francophile) laundry label as soon as I had the chance:

“NOUS SOMMES DESOLEES QUE NOTRE PRESIDENT SOIT UN IDIOT. NOUS N’AVONS PAS VOTE POUR LUI”

(Translation and backstory.)

I also loved its minimalism. I don’t need 8 million pockets. I’m a girl. I buy my purses with chargers and gadgets and power supplies in mind.

Another thing I loved was that it was hefty, hefty, hefty. Just look at this construction: hard sides, and the laptop doesn’t even touch the bottom of the bag. It’s suspended in a cozy hammock. This bag is downright uterine:

I won’t even go into the patented elasticized shoulder strap that makes the laptop seem half as heavy as it is, essential when you’re lugging around a 17″ Dell.

I shopped all over online, but you can’t tell if something is hefty or wimpy that way. And I need hefty. I’ll get to that momentarily. Saw some bags that were on the cute, hip, girly side, but ultimately resisted temptation due to the hefty/wimpy issue.

So I headed out to the FNAC Digital (one of those tech + music + video stores) and it was Welcome to Mr. Traveling Businessman Central. Gag. And none of them were nearly as hefty as my Brain Cell. There was one not black or gray or butch and fairly sturdy bag that they only had for a 13″, so like a good geekette, I took a picture of the tag with my iPhone and looked it up online when I got home. It doesn’t get any bigger than 13″.

I went to the Apple site and saw some bags with potential, as I knew I would, since Apple is all about style. So I went to the Apple Store in the Louvre to meet them in person. Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. Not a hard-sided bag among them. And the bags “for women” all looked like a handbag your grandmother would have carried in 1968 or something Ms. Lady Lawyer would use, like this one:

This particular bag, however, could dress up or down, and be funky or serious, depending on what you wear with it. I could have pulled it off. But this bag is about as sturdy as a lingerie pouch, too expensive, and doesn’t have a decent shoulder strap. In fact, an alarming percentage of “women’s” bags don’t seem to have shoulder straps at all… Instead they tend to have little detachable pouchy thingies for your keys or cosmetics.

So I extrapolated from all of this that laptop bag makers are generally operating under the following assumptions:

1. There aren’t enough girls with laptops to bother creating pretty/sexy/dainty/whatever bags.

2. Girls don’t need sturdy laptop bags.

3. Girls don’t get big laptops.

4. Girls don’t need shoulder straps.

Final answer: Women computer users are not serious. This whole experience has disgusted me. Wake up people.

Why didn’t I just order another Brain Cell for a 15″ you ask? Because I was afraid it wouldn’t get here before I had to leave and would cost too much to ship (which wouldn’t be very green either, for that matter).

On another note entirely. The shoulder straps available for laptop bags are too long. Most bag manufacturers have not taken into account the female anatomy:

What happens when girls walk? Boombadaboombadaboom… What happens when girls walk with a laptop hanging off their shoulders to their hips? The laptop bounces right along in time. Thus the need for hard sides, or shorter shoulder straps, despite the fact that I’m built more like the Pink Panther than Betty Boop.

On the way back from the Apple store I popped into the BHV, a big department store, just to see what they had. More of the same with the exception of one bag that was adequately hefty and had straps that kept the laptop from bouncing off my ass when I walked. Italian, designed for women:

There was only one other color in the store, a burgundy red (yuck). It has a lot more pouches and pockets than I need. It’s not sexy (although it looks better IRL than in this picture). But I got it.

When I got home, I went to the site of Tucano, the manufacturer. Lots of bags for women, many that are very cool, stylish and feminine, and most with straps of the right length. If you’re in the market, I suggest you start there.

Leave it to the Italians to realize women have hips and appreciate style. Grazie mille!

All I wanted was a sturdy bag for my new laptop that wasn't boring or ugly or corporate or outrageously priced. Actually, that's not entirely true. I wanted one that was all that plus sexy and a little girly. Something with personality. I am a lipstick geek, after all. I specifically needed something that would protect my laptop when I travel to California, which I'm doing in less than two weeks. My 17" Dell started to die last fall. I'd had the motherboard replaced twice in its four years. And then there was the incessantly blowing fan problem that Dell "tech support" couldn't fix with all their bios updates and fan replacements. So I googled around and then had the courtesy to tell them that all you need to do is hit Fn + z to reset the thermostat on that model and instantly stop the fans from screaming. They didn't thank me. But I digress. I've been working on Vincent's little 13" Macbook for months, and I finally replaced my Dell last week with a 15" Macbook. Unfortunately, my old, beloved laptop

I’m quite fond of the word decorum. Unfortunately, it’s not widely used. You know this because you never hear anybody say it in line at the grocery store and because it’s one of those words you see on the GRE. On all of Google’s indexed anglophone Internet (or at least the part it deigned to show me yesterday), it appears only 3,780,000 times. About once for every 100 Americans. It would be nice if one out of a hundred exhibited a little decorum online.

(Tits, on the other hand, appears 62,900,000 times.)

Last year, somebody I know (a professional contact) announced to whoever might be listening on Facebook that she was “sad” because her friend [first name] had died suddenly. She went on to give enough details about the guy that I realized I knew him (met him once in a professional context, connected on Facebook). I put two and two together because he had posted an update on Facebook a couple of days earlier saying he had a 105° fever and was waiting for the doctor to arrive (they do urgent-care house calls in France). I was appalled to learn of his death from this source. This was simply not her information to share. And on fucking Facebook? Indecorous.

Twitter, couple days ago. Chick I follow because she followed me (professional contact, don’t know her IRL, never exchanged a word with her) announces that she just talked to her brother, and her grandmother’s not long for this world. I’m paraphrasing, she was not flippant, although she did end the update with the sad emoticon :-( the ultimate in eloquent expression of profound grief and totally appropriate, don’t you agree? Seriously. One, keep it to yourself; this is not the place. Two, the mundane babble on Twitter is bad enough as it is; how many people want to hear this kind of shit? We have problems of our own. Indecorous.

(Facebook’s disingenuous argument for doing such a crap job of protecting user privacy is that people don’t really care that much about their privacy. They’re confusing lack of decorum with lack of concern for privacy. A fallacious conclusion, in my opinion.)

The death of decorum irks me to no end, let me tell you. Whatever happened to not airing dirty laundry? Social media platforms sometimes seem like big ol’ piles of other people’s dirt. Who could crave such an environment? Vincent has the right idea. He only follows people on Twitter whose updates have substance. He doesn’t get dying relative announcements from total strangers. Or maybe it’s just that they’re mostly French people, who still do decorum.

Do you still get form letters in Christmas cards? I used to look forward to them all year. Joe’s cataracts, grampa’s kidney stones and, by the way, Merry Christmas. Cracked me up every time. At least it was only once a year and there weren’t that many. Then there was the guy who would wax poetic about moonbeams and go into rants about the stickers on pears. Weird, but a welcome relief from the hip replacements. I used to send form letters in Christmas cards too, but only with good news. The people who knew me well already knew about any hard stuff I was dealing with. That was as it should be, and more than enough.

But clearly it’s not enough for a lot of people. Were the concern and attentions of the sick guy’s wife so inadequate that he had to tell hundreds of strangers about his fever? What compelled him to do a Facebook update in the state he was in? Was it to get additional sympathy or attention from people who may not have mattered that much to him in the first place? Have these platforms done nothing more than free our inner three-year-olds to demand that someone, anyone pay attention to us at all times? My advice: give the inner brat a time out.

Our default state is alone: in a crowd, in a relationship, there is always a significant chunk of us that remains utterly alone. Too hard for people to accept, I guess, so they use social media to fool themselves into feeling not alone.

I may have been what some might consider indecorous myself a time or two on this blog. I may have been off-color. But if I was, it was because it felt appropriate in the context. A big part of the problem is the lack of context around these impulsive updates. Lack of forethought. Lack of consideration. Lack of actual friends who actually care? Lack of self-esteem? In addition to the lack of decorum. A whole lot of lacking going on.

Yet this form of expression is supposedly bringing about the death of the blog. But I doubt I’ll quit blogging till I stop having a big mouth, which will be when I’m dead or near dead or severely damaged, which you will probably hear about on Facebook or Twitter from somebody you never met who needs a lesson in decorum.

I'm quite fond of the word decorum. Unfortunately, it's not widely used. You know this because you never hear anybody say it in line at the grocery store and because it's one of those words you see on the GRE. On all of Google's indexed anglophone Internet (or at least the part it deigned to show me yesterday), it appears only 3,780,000 times. About once for every 100 Americans. It would be nice if one out of a hundred exhibited a little decorum online. (Tits, on the other hand, appears 62,900,000 times.) Last year, somebody I know (a professional contact) announced to whoever might be listening on Facebook that she was "sad" because her friend [first name] had died suddenly. She went on to give enough details about the guy that I realized I knew him (met him once in a professional context, connected on Facebook). I put two and two together because he had posted an update on Facebook a couple of days earlier saying he had a 105° fever and was waiting for the doctor to arrive (they do urgent-care house

Not so very long ago, MySpace ruled the social roost. It has ended up being the trailer park of social networking, although the music thing has saved it from oblivion and even lends it a shred of dignity despite its hideous appearance (think The Elephant Man). The problem with MySpace was that it didn’t evolve enough to meet the needs of increasingly demanding users, so people moved on to Facebook when it came along. But I’m thinking the property values at Facebook will be plunging pretty soon too…

That’s because the “nice” people are leaving the neighborhood. Or at least the smart ones are. The ones who actually know there’s an Internet outside of Facebook… In fact, they seem to be fleeing like somebody yelled Ebola:

Exhibit A: “delete Facebook account” was the #9 Google keyword search on May 14th, 2010.

Exhibit B: “diaspora,” the current great white hope for an ethical Facebook alternative, was #13.

I killed my Facebook account yesterday. It felt great. I never wanted one in the first place. Their latest sleight of hand act sounded the death knell for my account, but it clung to life for a couple more weeks cuz my kid was still there, although he hardly ever posted updates. I told him I was leaving and sent him an article on Facebook’s questionable morality, and he said “I’m out too,” and was gone before I could reply.

So why did I have a Facebook account in the first place, you ask? Because when I made my début on the Paris startup scene and US tech blog scene a few years ago, people I met IRL and online all wanted to connect on Facebook. LinkedIn was not the first choice for this crowd of young and young-at-heart webby people because it’s stodgy and boring and has limited interactivity options. So first and foremost, I used Facebook for professional contact management. I didn’t have to remember or make note of people’s e-mail addresses or projects/companies. Accepting or sending a friend request took care of all that, and usually included a picture. It not only gave me easy access to the people, but also easy access to the buzz in my areas of professional interest.

Then old friends, dads of old friends, cousins I haven’t seen in decades, former students, and so on began showing up, at which point I started getting asked to help find lambs in cornfields and shit.

I never put much personal info up there; what music or books I liked, etc. My updates were fed automatically from my professional blog for the most part. Didn’t say what or where I was eating, or talk about personal problems or sorrows. Not my style.

Are you really OK with being a lemming?

In the US, 25% of the web pages viewed are within Facebook. (That’s just so beyond sad.) This may partially explain why, when I told Facebook people I was leaving the site because I thought it was an unscrupulous and untrustworhy company (and asked them to connect with me on LinkedIn till something better came along), one of them, an educated woman, said “I am not sure what facebook is doing that you are troubled by, but do share!” and another one, who considers herself a web entrepreneur, just asked “Why are you leaving facebook?”

Upon reflection, I was surprised that I was surprised that people had no idea that Facebook has, from Day One, been subject to scrutiny and criticism for its morally questionable actions, blatant fuck-ups and lack of respect for users and their personal information. Of course (lightbulb)! Ordinary people don’t read about the Internet, they just jump right in and use it. And Facebook banks on that kind of lemming-ness.

The old-school media has obviously not done its job when the general public isn’t even aware that it’s being violated and abused (except for the New York Times, but what fraction of Americans has the attention span for that?). They prefer to inform the public about golfers’ wayward penises, I guess. But online media and geeky bloggers have never taken the heat off of Facebook. I wrote about one of the scandals in November 2007, before I even had an account.

So people don’t know these things because nobody tells them. They must be too busy or lazy to inform themselves. Or they’re stupid, which is not their fault. Society has a responsibility to care for people who can’t care for themselves, which is why complaints recently filed by consumer protection groups in the US have led to an FTC investigation of Facebook.

So this is me suggesting you pay a little attention. For your own sake, read the articles I link to in this post, including this one by Danah Boyd [my emphasis]:

The battle that is underway is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It’s a battle over choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being duped, tricked, coerced, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely unfair. It gives users the illusion of choice and hides the details away from them “for their own good.”

The honor code

People who live and work online (like me), and many Internet pioneers, leaders and icons, are saying “enough is enough” and leaving Facebook. And “ordinary” people need to listen when these people talk because they pay attention.

You see, Internet startups consider themselves a breed apart from greedy corporate behemoths, and there is an honor code. Google was the first to put it into words when they included in their philosophy the statement “You can make money without doing evil.”

The founder of Facebook was cutting school that day.

Which is why we are turning against Facebook. We’ve indulged them long enough, given them ample opportunity to learn from their mistakes and mend their ways, but it ain’t happening. Facebook is a recidivist delinquent exhibiting sociopathic behavior. Ordinary methods for bringing about behavioral change won’t work. It’s a shame when there is nothing more you can do, but at a certain point you have to accept and move forward.

“Yes We Can” live without Facebook!

Think about it. You were in touch with all the people you wanted to be in touch with before Facebook came along. OK, maybe you’ve found a few new ones. So exchange e-mails. You had ways to find out what people had been up to if you really wanted to know. You knew how to contact them in an emergency. And I promise you something better will be along soon. Something created by entrepreneurs who were in school on Honor Code day. Something created by entrepreneurs who wouldn’t have the conversation Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had right after launching Facebook:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks.

May 31st is Quit Facebook Day….

Your reading list

This list is not comprehensive! Google around a bit if this isn’t enough for you.

• Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options
• Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative
• Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook
• More Reasons Why You Should Still Quit Facebook
• Protect Your Privacy Opt Out of Facebook’s New Instant Personalization – Yes You Have to Opt Out
• How did Facebook guess my e-mail addresses?
• How to Set Up a Facebook Fan Page for Business
• “Kill Your Facebook Page” Backlash Gains Speed
• How bad is Facebook privacy? There’s now an app to search your status updates.

Not so very long ago, MySpace ruled the social roost. It has ended up being the trailer park of social networking, although the music thing has saved it from oblivion and even lends it a shred of dignity despite its hideous appearance (think The Elephant Man). The problem with MySpace was that it didn't evolve enough to meet the needs of increasingly demanding users, so people moved on to Facebook when it came along. But I'm thinking the property values at Facebook will be plunging pretty soon too... That's because the "nice" people are leaving the neighborhood. Or at least the smart ones are. The ones who actually know there's an Internet outside of Facebook... In fact, they seem to be fleeing like somebody yelled Ebola: Exhibit A: "delete Facebook account" was the #9 Google keyword search on May 14th, 2010. Exhibit B: "diaspora," the current great white hope for an ethical Facebook alternative, was #13. I killed my Facebook account yesterday. It felt great. I never wanted one in the first p

Olivier Billon, recently referred to as “fashion boy” by a certain blogger on a minor tear, is, indeed, a babe. I’ve said it before. And, after all I had to say about the “Women’s Panel,” I ended up — eventually — being glad he was there.

At first the panel members introduced themselves, and Olivier said he figured he was there because he knew how to deal with women. Demerit #1. A little later, he said he thought the women he hired preferred to work for a man, going on to imply that this was because working for women was all Devil Wears Prada. Demerit #2. Not doing too good at this point.

It was clear that the panel was wung, which is not uncommon, but it’s hard for a panel to really click when that’s the case unless you have the perfect storm of passion in the people and the topic. But one of the investors made comments that were pithy and concrete, and I immediately liked her way of seeing, so that kept me from being bored.

When the conversation inevitably turned to the paucity of women startup founders, of course someone mentioned that there weren’t many women in tech, to which shopping site founder girl responded that it wasn’t a job for women. (Did I hear that right??) And then she said it again a few minutes later. Wow. She also said that talking about business and money was not for women. I just have to chalk this up to second-language issues, because this girl does come from the land of Simone de Beauvoir, so it’s simply not possible. She did say she didn’t belong to any women-only tech groups because it wasn’t how things really were. That was lucid, so she doesn’t get any demerits, even though she was doing some superior simpering for a couple of the guys who were on the panel of investors with penises, but I’m just gonna ignore that.

Back to Olivier. When they were talking about “no women startup founders because no women in tech,” he said:

“…the Web is getting less and less tech.”

[Chorus of angels' voices]

Since that was a big part of my article on Read Write Web, I stood up after the panel and asked him to elaborate on that comment. He said that now it’s about finding new ways to use It. That’s right. He went on to say that he had five friends who’d started companies without a tech background. Of course, he (and they) went to one of the most elite Paris universities, and one that happens to have a built-in startup incubator, so he didn’t even have to think “sesame” for doors to open to him. But still. It’s a phase transition. You heard it here first. (I heard it here first, but that was a different phase transition.)

Olivier is the founder of the French startup Ykone. Olivier, I’m sorry I called you fashion boy. You made my Women’s Panel.

Olivier Billon, recently referred to as "fashion boy" by a certain blogger on a minor tear, is, indeed, a babe. I've said it before. And, after all I had to say about the "Women's Panel," I ended up -- eventually -- being glad he was there. At first the panel members introduced themselves, and Olivier said he figured he was there because he knew how to deal with women. Demerit #1. A little later, he said he thought the women he hired preferred to work for a man, going on to imply that this was because working for women was all Devil Wears Prada. Demerit #2. Not doing too good at this point. It was clear that the panel was wung, which is not uncommon, but it's hard for a panel to really click when that's the case unless you have the perfect storm of passion in the people and the topic. But one of the investors made comments that were pithy and concrete, and I immediately liked her way of seeing, so that kept me from being bored. When the conversation inevitably turned to the paucity of women startup f

There’s a huge wave that Internet people are paddling like fools to catch right now. It’s the “women are starting to realize they’re under-represented in tech and startups, so we’d better start to care or at least pretend we do” wave. Some effects of this wave include a rise in women-in-tech organizations and an effort by tech event organizers to give women more visibility.

It’s great to see that tech events are giving women a little limelight of their own. I’m going to an event soon that has given women their very own panel! And they’ve called it “Women’s Panel.” Kind of like Women’s Room. But with the latter, there’s little doubt about who uses it or for what. But what about this mysterious Panel…?

As a woman, when I hear “panel” and “women” together, certain images are evoked. The famous cotton panel that lets things breathe… The modesty panel on a desk that allows you to cross and uncross your legs without pulling a Sharon Stone. And another kind of modesty panel that prevents anyone from peeking into your cleavage. (Cleavage peeking is encouraged in France, so I don’t see much of that here.)

The problem with this particular event is that every other scheduled segment has a title that indicates what’s going to be discussed: “Going international,” “Can you be an entrepreneur without any experience,” “Startups have to be flexible.” There is one other panel without a topic, the “VC/ISF Panel,” but it doesn’t need one. We all know the venture capitalists are going to talk about investing: how to get investors, what investors are looking for in a startup, investment trends — the usual.

But what could the Women’s Panel be about?? Is “Women’s Panel” self-explanatory, like “VC/ISF Panel” is? No. It’s reductive. It’s dismissive. And this is insulting.

I’ve tried to find the common denominator of this panel by examining the panel members. The moderator is a dynamic, young geekette grad student who blogs for the people organizing the event and does other Internetty things. There’s a woman startup founder (a site where you can organize group gift buying), a woman investor, another woman investor, and a young – male – startup founder who launched a fashion-related startup (which I wrote about a year ago).

Of course, the women investors couldn’t be on the VC/ISF Panel because they have vaginas. The two startups are about clothes and shopping. And the geekette, being a blogger for the major tech blog organizing the event and a recent transplant from Silicon Valley, will be received by French entrepreneurs as if she were Moses coming down from the mountain with God’s Terms and Conditions.

But I still don’t know what they’re going to talk about.

Because I know event organizers are trying very hard to make an effort to include women in their events these days, I wrote to the organizer of this event a couple of months ago, asking what the panel topics were going to be, offering to participate, explaining that I’m an anglophone tech blogger living in Paris with a little startup project of my own and familiarity with the local startup scene. I’d met him briefly at last year’s edition of the same event. But he never wrote back. This was before my article You can’t launch the next generation of startups without women* was published by his blog’s biggest competitor, so it couldn’t have been because of that…

So in typical politically correct fashion, this event has given women a nod. And that’s about it. They slapped a few vaginas together and one guy who knows about fashion (because fashion is a priority of all women) and figured they’d done their bit.

Seriously, now. The organizers could have bothered to find out what issues women in tech are concerned with, and given the Women’s Panel a title that gave some indication of the topic(s) to be covered. Even a nebulous title like “Women and startups” would have shown they’d made a modicum of effort. A panel needs a focus, like an essay or a documentary does, and there are plenty of topics that are meaty, relevant, meaningful and interesting to women and men. “Is discrimination an issue in the startup context?” “How to find mentors.” “Women-only incubators: a good idea?” I can think of any number of them off the top of my head. But obviously they didn’t think it was necessary.

I’m sure fashion boy will have much more to contribute to the Women’s Panel than I would have. And I’ll be sure to let you know what they do end up talking about.

*One of the blogs I respect the most published this article but, caught up in the wave I described, they changed my title to make it sound like it was all about women when, in fact, it was mostly about startup founders of any gender who don’t have a technical background.

There's a huge wave that Internet people are paddling like fools to catch right now. It's the "women are starting to realize they're under-represented in tech and startups, so we'd better start to care or at least pretend we do" wave. Some effects of this wave include a rise in women-in-tech organizations and an effort by tech event organizers to give women more visibility. It's great to see that tech events are giving women a little limelight of their own. I'm going to an event soon that has given women their very own panel! And they've called it "Women's Panel." Kind of like Women's Room. But with the latter, there's little doubt about who uses it or for what. But what about this mysterious Panel...? As a woman, when I hear "panel" and "women" together, certain images are evoked. The famous cotton panel that lets things breathe... The modesty panel on a desk that allows you to cross and uncross your legs without pulling a Sharon Stone. And another kind of modesty panel that prevents anyone from peekin