By If not all, most of us have gotten some sort of embarrassing photo somewhere out on the web. Come on, it’s almost natural nowadays if you’re a serious web user.
On the other hand, there are those who say that web embarrassment should be done away with. If that’s not possible, at least some form of restraint should be stuck on the web.
Now, before you all get panic attacks about the precious web and its freedom you should know this isn’t what it’s about. Imagine the web as the world (I’m sure it is to many) and imagine web embarrassment as pollution. In this case, we know it’s not possible to completely stop it, but we have to at least work towards diminishing it.
The same thing applies to things that make you feel uncomfortable every time somebody mentions seeing pictures from your frat parties on the web. It’s this sort of board meeting blushing that should be taken off the web.
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While I’m not completely in tune with the idea, German researchers certainly are. Also unlike me, the Germans came up with a way to prevent the future web from being covered in embarrassing photos.
Their idea is based upon a simple piece of software called X-Pire. X-Pire is supposed to be hinting at its web purpose within its name.
X-Pire software will basically be used to stamp an expiration date on photos you upload to the web. Imagine that you’re a light user of social networks. There’s a good chance you joined those sites because of friends bugging you.
When you joined, you uploaded a number of pictures and info and from then on you just leave it there. Now, at this point, to you, the pictures are no longer important.
Apparently the German researchers reckon you need X-Pire at this point. X-Pire is a browser addon (for the moment only available with Firefox) which sets expiration dates to your photos.
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Basically, if you go on this passive Facebook page after a few months the pictures off it will have disappeared. The X-Pire idea is marketed as something meant to save the web.
What I see with the X-Pire is almost nothing worth while. I reckon that no matter how not active of a web user you are, you will know how to recover accounts and delete photos.
If you don’t know how to do that you probably won’t be able to find and understand X-Pire. Therefore, no matter what you do you can’t make the web user proof.
