Who to follow?

With so many innovative ideas and interesting people out there, it's sometimes difficult to decide who to follow and then what tweets, status updates, blog posts, etc. to focus on.  Here is my tentative criteria for people to follow, going forward, in order of descending priority:

• People that you know personally and who live in the same city - it's nice to be able to speak to people face-to-face and for extended periods of time
• People that you've met in person before but that live elsewhere - it's better to renew a relationship than to have had none at all
• People that work in your organization but that may work in a different location - easier to start a conversation with someone that is somewhat obligated to respond
• People you haven't met yet but live in the same city - potentially you can meet up with them
• Well-known people - you'd like to meet them but if you did, you probably wouldn't have more than an "elevator conversation" with them

Google disillusionment and smartphone convenience

After hearing about a prominent user's hacked digital life, I turned on Google 2-factor authentication.  I did notice that in order for my smartphone to continue accessing my email without needing to enter a code SMS'd to the phone, I needed to create an "application-specific password" for my smartphone email client.  Momentarily I sensed there was a security weakness here.  But because I had a general positive feeling that Google was very security-conscious, I thought the smart people working there had probably closed all the loopholes in this situation.  Then today I became aware of Google's ASP password issues.  Now I have to re-think if I have any very sensitive data stored in Google Drive.  I also no longer consider Google above and beyond the other online companies out there in a security sense:  Google has sunk to the depths of Dropbox and Sony. 

I believe that one of the big reason that users love their smartphones and tablets is because they don't have to re-enter their passwords.  I use a lot of cloud services like Evernote, various web email services and social networking sites and whereas the web version of these services will prompt me to re-enter the password on a frequent basis, the native smartphone versions NEVER prompt me.  Google had to preserve this convenient experience for users of Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. on smartphones despite implementing 2-factor authentication, and they were screwed because of their poor implementation.  How to get rid of passwords and still have security is the issue plaguing the digital industry.