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One of the largest newspapers in the mid-Atlantic, Washington Post (WaPo), will be making an important decision with regard to their commenting infrastructure and essentially their online community. More »
Tags: community, debate, discussion, internet, NewsDespite that really powerful title, I want to share a tidbit from this weekend. I was traveling home from midtown Phoenix back on over to my posh center of the East Valley in Phoenix; but I had to take the 101. Yes, the same 101 with that 8-mile stretch of photo enforced speed limits through Scottsdale. The same topic I viciously criticized earlier this month.
Tags: arizona, Automotive, discussion, laws, police, scottsdale
Customer service is a term frequently used among service providers which is often delivered in the form of call centers. It’s important to understand that customer service applies to many different horizontal and vertical business applications and is crucial to achieve success no matter what market you’re serving. More »
Is it me, or is it becoming a chore to do maintain your presence on social networks?
I regularly use MySpace, Facebook, AIM Profiles, Twitter, LinkedIn, Friendster, Emurse among a few others. Why can’t all these networks get along and share my status with all my connections?
Tags: discussion, internet, OpEd, Social Networking
Continuing my mini-series on social media frustrations, this entry is focused solely on the crowd that disrupts online communities, stalks innocent users, and always seem to never seem run out of vitriol or other vile spew to spray all over online communities. I break them up into three categories: Trolls, Psychos and Haters.
Tags: community, discussion, forums, social media
Continuing my mini-series on social media frustrations, I’d like to talk a bit about spam that’s found on social networks. It’s a problem that has perplexed MySpace (which has been a tug o’ war for AOL, too); since they want to make it easy for users and promote engagement. I have a little insight, since at AOL I whacked thousands of spammers at a time and enjoy every bit of it.
Tags: Blogging, discussion, social media, Social Networking, spam
Anyone who manages their own blog can relate to my frustration with spam in the blogosphere. This is the first topic I’d like to share my thoughts on as a part of my small series on Social Media Frustrations. More »
Tags: Blogging, discussion, social media, spam
Street fights are nothing new — I know from my time in middle and high school, fights attract massive crowds due to the drama, the realism and the unpredictability. Now more attention is focused on the videos of these fights, since they are uploaded to popular video sharing Web sites and spread like wildfire, often syndicated, duplicated and reposted without the victim’s permission.
Even then, Bum Fighting became popular but it failed to garner the media coverage as it has now. (I suspect the studio that produced BumFights suppressed negative media attention by paying the “actors”.) This evening, on my local news, a local street fight was video taped and is likely to be uploaded YouTube along with the homogeneous spin went with it to scare parents. It didn’t surprise me, but I couldn’t help but notice in the report, law enforcement still isn’t fully equipped to handle this type of abuse on the Internet.
I’d like to think that YouTube cooperates with law enforcement and would be more than willing to remove the video and provide the uploader’s IP address, and an access log of the video. After reading YouTube’s Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines, they don’t explicitly state that information is provided to law enforcement — but they don’t deny it either. I suppose they do… but if they fail to do so, they can’t be sued for it. (Psst! YouTube Employees, feel free to anonymously confirm this.)
I don’t think that further legislation is necessary, since if content is illegal and a Web site is failing to disclose it, it’s Obstruction of Justice. Yeah, yeah, I know CDA 230, but criminal activity is criminal activity. The way to solve the problems relating to assaults being posted on YouTube is to educate law enforcement to better understand how those Web sites work as well as understand IP addresses. Additionally, they must be willing to enact rapid-fire subpoenas to the uploaders and recent participants. (What does one do when doing something juvenile — they show their friends.)
On Craigslist, the popular free online classifieds Web site, a woman posted an advertisement for a hitman in the “freelancers” section to murder the wife of a man she engaged into an affair with:
“Linscott is accused of asking people who responded to her ad to “eradicate a female living in Oroville, California,” and she provided additional information on the intended victim, including her physical description, age and employment address. On two separate occasions following the November ad posting, she offered payment of $5,000 upon completion of “the eradication task,” according to court documents.”
[...]
“[Jim] Buckmaster said the arrest demonstrated the vigilance of Craigslist users, who are urged to report fraud and scams on the site to keep it clean.”
Craigslist credits the removal of content within their community thanks to the wisdom of crowds. A majority of their users are highly engaged and keep the site clean of any illegal, unethical, or otherwise “junk” content. Users can flag content accordingly, and if content is flagged enough, it is removed. At least in this case, it appears that the FBI and Craigslist cooperated to identify the poster and bring justice.
What’s the lesson here? Well, be mindful of the fact you can be tracked, identified, and arrested if you engage (or publish) illegal activity online just as if you left fingerprints on a murder weapon and a note. However, as social media brings about social problems; it will be a while until we can expect law enforcement to keep up with the demand due to lack of bandwidth.
Tags: discussion, internet, laws, social media, youtube
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of enterprise software? Probably user-friendly isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Robert Scoble ignited the discussion on why bloggers generally don’t write about enterprise software.
I should preface this entry with the fact that I haven’t had a lot of hands-on experience with enterprise software from popular vendors Oracle, Sybase or other applications that falls under this umbrella. Despite this, I have used SAP and other enterprise applications so I have some insight into them.
Typically, enterprise software attempts to solve problems across an organization (hence, enterprise), but also allows flexibility to adapt to the specific needs in the organization like “Accounts Payable.”
From my experience, enterprise software sucks (for end-users). The goal of enterprise software is to address the needs of the enterprise — not the end-user. This is understandable, otherwise why would the organization purchase it?
Scoble’s reasoning on why enterprise software isn’t sexy, is that it was only deployed at the request of the a minority in the organization, not the people who are mandated to use it:
[Regarding SAP] … But I didn’t have any say in that matter. Some CIO somewhere else made that decision and forced us all to use SAP. That doesn’t exactly make us warm and fuzzy about the computer sitting in front of us on the desk.
I understand where he’s coming from, but I find this point flawed. Just because the employee wasn’t a decision maker in the usage of enterprise software, doesn’t automatically make it unattractive. I’d think that the employees don’t mind doing the tasks asked of them; rather, I think the frustration is in the software itself. However, since bloggers thrive on their audience who constantly make choices, I totally agree with Scoble’s statement that “consumer software” unquestionably pays the bills for bloggers.
I think in many cases enterprise software is underrated. The purpose of the software is to be functional for the company, not to be friendly for end-users. On the contrary, I feel the end-user experience (the employee) is generally undervalued in the software industry.
What’s the solution?
We all use computers differently. I think that enterprise software manufacturers should offer open flexible APIs so that a user-friendly front-end could be developed for it. Essentially, as long as you have authentication, replication and programmed access rights/rules for the data, then everyone wins. Using enterprise software shouldn’t be a hassle. Front-ends can still be sold to clients, while allowing them to develop them in-house if they wanted. The only challenge is getting enterprise software vendors to agree on an open format.
There you have it with my sentiments about enterprise software. Perhaps you disagree, share your thoughts in the comments below.
Tags: Blogging, business, discussion, Software, technology, Usability
Another incident (link via Digg) involving more Taser abuse from law enforcement, even if you are physically handicapped and posing no physical threat.
Donnell Williams was at home getting out of his bath only an with only a towel on, turned the corner in his house and was at gun point with police. Williams, who is medically deaf and forgot put his heading aide on, he was terrorized and motioned that he was deaf by pointing to his ear. Police responded by electrocuting him. Police were called to William’s home when searching for a shooter — which was later determined that it was a false call. You can read the full story on the local news affiliate, KWCH-12.
Deputy Chief Robert Lee passively responded to this incident with the following statement:
“This one occurred on the worst of calls, that being a shooting. The first few minutes getting control of the scene are very, very important.”
His statement failed offer any assurance that corrective action would take place, nor did he state that further training on the use of a Taser would take place. This is unacceptable! How do we accept this? More importantly, why do we accept this abuse?
Tasers aren’t meant to be the first tool of choice when handling conflicts with subjects. First, you need to accurately assess a situation. Then you must make a reasonable decision on how to react to it. As I’ve blogged before, Discretion is Important, you need to listen to them. If the situation legitimately warrants the use of compliance devices, then you do that … but never should you skip the elementary fundamentals of a field interview (listening to their verbal and non-verbal body language.)
Despite having the officer apologize for the incident, it does not address the greater problem of trigger-happy law enforcement who lack the ability of protecting and serving.
How many legal risks or minutes/pages of media coverage will it take to address this problem? Unfortunately, I can’t tell you, but one thing is for sure — it will be some time until Taser abuse reaches the level of egregiousness that is felt such as Rodney King.
Tags: debate, discussion, Government, law, News, police, Rants, taser