In the past months I spent quite a lot time on building up my web profiles, always keeping them up-to-date, opening groups, searching for new people. Today something happened. Something big. Just like with hanging out in online chatrooms in the late 90s I decided to get my real life back and to quit most of the platforms. It turned out that sometimes to make the decision is easier than the final execution of it.

My experience so far:

• MySpace: Perfect. They have a fully automated process of deleting the account permanently. After verifying the wish for deletion via email myspace says it will take up to 48 hours until my account is gone.
• Facebook: Seem pretty straight forward too. The automated process says that my account is in deactivated state for another 14 days. If I do not login in the meantime it will be removed permanently automatically.
• Xing: I guess the deletion process would be quite easy for non-premium-members. In my case I had to contact the support team. My premium account still lasts until the end of april. But I want my life back now. Let’s see when I get feedback.
• LinkedIn: I always hated the clumsy interface and I even hate the process of account deletion even more. The only way to delete the account is to send an email to the support team. Funny thing is that I got an error when sending the support form. I tried a second time and the system said there was already a message from my email address within the process queue. So I guess my first request got delivered although there was an error message. We’ll see.

To find the “delete account” option on the platforms I mostly used google to get hints faster on how to do it. For every platform there are good pages online giving the right directions.

Before deleting your account be sure to remove all your personal information. On some platforms it seems as if not all your information gets automatically purged. Especially LinkedIn seems to be kind of funny. I don’t know if it is true but it is rumoured that they remove your login but keep your data publicly. So please remove everything personal and change what is not removable to something different.

Especially on LinkedIn again there were several things I was not able to remove. Maybe you can remove everything somehow but with my constant struggle with the interface I decided to overwrite some entries. Luckily removing the connections to other people is pretty easy. On Xing for e.g. you have to remove all your connections manually. Removing about 150 links eventually takes up to 3 minutes.

I am still keeping my twitter account. I really like the concept of the global shoutbox and I am using it’s content on some mashups. Also all my instant messaging accounts are still valid. I expect to gain an additional one to two hours per day which I will redistribute to my own online projects and my real life.

Today Lanzelot stumbled upon a new site. MyMinicity.com seems to grow very fast and the SimCity players among us no doubt know why.

I love the concept. Oh… did I mention to visit worufu.myminicity.com?

After having thought about it for months I finally had some time to setup the Pulpmedia code vault. The primary goal of the platform is to give me and other pulpmedia programmers the chance to give the open source community something back. We are using open source tools and codes for several years now and especially in web development you can drive your whole business on open source products. Besides our usual commitment we are going to publish one or another web dev library from time to time. It may still look a bit rough (hey… I am a programer) but there are many features planned for the future.

“Goodbye privacy” is the motto of this year’s Ars Electronica Festival. The festival is held by the Ars Electronica Center which is the most famous technology institute in Austria with many young programmers and artists who collaborate with programmers and artists from all around the world. The main goal seems to be to explore new ways of how to use modern technologies and often artistic usage.
This year the size of the festival is incredible. There is a street where all the empty buildings are occupied with special exhibitions. The main theme seems to be second life as you can see many connections to the virtual world. For me “Goodbye privacy” affects me somehow twice as hard as other visitors as the whole Pfarrplatz (the big place in front of our flat) is rebuilt within Second Life and re-connected to the real life. If you have a conversation in second life you can hear it from speakers within the real world. On the other hand you can watch the virtual world on several screens around the Pfarrplatz beach area.
Today I’ve quickly walked through “Marienstraße” and I will be back tomorrow to see all the cool exhibitions. It really is worth seeing. The festival will end on Sept. 11th. So there is still some time left. I’ve also been to both Pfarrplätze (in the virtual and the real world) and here are the images. Maybe we’ll meet in the next days…