Flash vs Substance

I like to keep up on currents and trends in tech. I want to read up on where Information Technology is going, not going, selling, developing, and so on. But I want substance in that information. And, lately, I'm not getting it. What am I getting?

Slideshows. 5 important technologies, 15 books to read, I can't go a full business day without another email with a link to another slideshow. Another Flash slideshow. Not flashy, although I'm sure that the Web developers think otherwise. Flash. See, it appears that some genius in some editorial back room decided that, since a picture is worth 1,000 words, what do 10 pictures do for us?

As it turns out, not much at all. Using Flash to tie together some grouping of uninformative pictures with two or three sentences off to one side, that's not reporting, or journalism. It's a way to squeeze 10,000 useless words into some vapid, ADHD-induced puppet show that says nothing, informs no one, and leaves the reader with time they will never get back, and that accomplished nothing.

Ziff-Davis, CNET, and all the magazines you Borg'd into your respective organizations, what exactly is the business you're in? If it's to simply toss content out into the Internet and see what people will click on, keep on keeping on. You're there. If, instead, you're looking to be a relevant source of Information Technology insight and relevant information, someone needs to be fired in your editorial department.

I said above that I can't go one day without another vapid link to another vapid slideshow built in Flash. Actually, I lied. I've just gone a week without an email like that.

I unsubscribed to everything ZD, CNET, et al, put out. I haven't had to sit through a slide show in more than a week.

-O/Siris-

Let the Jihad Continue

I’m a Windows guy, I must admit.  I realize that Microsoft is a flawed company, and in some very big ways in certain criteria.  Likewise, Windows has some serious flaws.  But Without Microsoft, and Windows, the personal computer industry, if it survived at all, would be a two-player game, IBM and Apple.  Where would open source be now if that had held true?

Now, having said that, there’s some good reasoning behind the Crusade of Open vs Closed source.  Some of it even shows up in this editorial at Ziff-Davis.  Like when Dana Blankenhorn states:

In many open source companies, especially early stage open source companies, programmers have enormous power. Getting a project committer onto your team is a real coup for an open source company trying to monetize that project with support contracts.

Some of the best open source companies out there are led by project leaders. And some programmers do drink Jolt Cola.

But just because salesmen wear alligator shoes and some programmers wear Crocs does not mean that open source is being run by hippies. Mario Batali likes Crocs and he’s as serious a businessman as you’ll find.

OK, fair ‘nuff.  There’s some stereotyping in play among the analyst press.  But, wait, are we really going to complain about straw men when this very same editorial tries to tell us:

It costs nothing to try open source, so instead of selling you’re converting users into buyers of service.

Open source is also a big enemy of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD), which often defined success in the 1980s. It’s hard to talk about what you might offer when everyone can see what you do offer and add to it if they want.

It costs nothing?  Wrong.  It takes time, effort, learning, training, and sometimes, as with the Vyatta open source router I’m trying to implement, it takes searching through informal user forums and waiting 24+ hours for email responses to make progress.

There’s a cost, alright.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but don’t tell me it doesn’t exist.  And try not to complain about straw men while positioning a few of your own.

And so the Jihad continues.

-O/Siris-

Relying on Tech to Save a Life

A story out of Iowa recounts the experience of a woman who lost her husband to a heart attack.  A sad outcome, a sad story.  I feel for her.  But…

[The woman] claims instead of going to the Cerro Gordo County Dispatch Center, the call was routed to a 911 call center in Cedar Rapids.

The lawsuit claims valuable time was lost getting Rick Poole to Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa due to the rerouting of the 911 call.

Minutes *do* matter in times like this.  Seconds, even.  So I can appreciate this woman’s situation, and her feelings.  As I understand Iowa, Cedar Rapids is about 150 miles from where her husband had his heart attack.  I don’t think this counts as a frivolous lawsuit, though I equally an unsure she deserves to win, just based on the merits of her argument.

See, I think we forget sometimes just how huge the United States really is.  We pick up this tiny piece of electronics, press a few buttons, and we are speaking with someone who may more than a thousand miles away.  And we’re used to that.

But the technology that goes into making that happen is very complex, and it’s not all a technical issue, either.  Decisions have to be made in a way that everyone agrees is a proper method for splitting this entire country up into appropriate routing zones (CSA’s and MSA’s).  Most of us now never grew up in a system where the distance over which your call was sent played a role in the cost of that call.

And in this case, another part of the problem is that it’s not just up to cell phone carriers to get this right.  The 911 centers are run by state and local authorities that have to make the necessary upgrades to participate in this kind of technology.  Was the “Cerro Gordo County Dispatch Center” configured with the necessary systems?  This might all come out as this proceeds.  IF it proceeds.  US Cellular just might choose to settle rather than fight it out in court.  And maybe that’s not unreasonable.

But maybe it *is* unreasonable that we take that kind of technology for granted like that.

-O/Siris-

Copyright Isn’t Just About Filesharing

When I first went online as an AOL newbie, one of the first discussions I got into was about copyright.  It wasn’t a long discussion.  3, maybe 4 posts back and forth with someone.  A person had written something to one of the discussion boards on AOL, and I said I was going to steal it.  I was reminded that AOL Terms of Service at that time reserved copyright to anything posted to their boards.  Only the person who wrote the item had license to use it beyond that board.

That got my attention.  I’m no lawyer, and I couldn’t even begin to start citing all the legal precedents surrounding copyright law.  But that wakeup served as a kind of “shot across the bow” to me, made me realize that this wonderful online world of sharing information was also going to be a hotbed of controversy around the idea of “owning” ideas.

While I think the “battle” between music listeners and the recording industry, and movie watchers and the movie industry both provide clear illustrations of this, I’m much more concerned with the ownership of the written word.  Everyone’s written word.  At issue is what right you have to (potentially or actually) profit from, and retain ownership of, the ideas and opinions that you express.

Some time ago, US Copyright Law was changed such that you didn’t have to actively obtain the registered “license” known as a copyright to have copyright ownership of the materials you produce.  Here’s a link that provides some good explanation of the how’s and why’s of registration.  If copyright infringement comes to a lawsuit, that’s important information.  It affects what you do and don’t get even if you win such a suit.

But, more important, I think, is an associated concept called “Fair Use.”  This is not a clear-cut and easily defined right.  As a layman advocate for Fair Use, I generally use the US Copyright Office, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for guidance.  Fair Use rights give us some limited rights to borrow a bit of someone else’s published work for the purposes of education, discussion, and debate.  But the right has limits.  We cannot use the entire work.  Not even if we provide full reference (ISBN number, URL/Web Link, etc).  And we have to… well… to discuss it, talk about it.  We can’t simply paste it somewhere cite the source, and that’s it.

And this is something we the users, the talkers, have to discuss.  In many ways, Web site operators with user discussion forums, they’re shielded by something called the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).  There’s a “Service Provider Exemption” (my term, not theirs) that protects the forum operator, as long as the operator has a policy and a system in place for dealing with copyright violations.  So the original publisher isn’t going to sue Delphi Forums, or Howardforums, or About.com.  They are going to sue you.  If it gets to that.

Fair Use isn’t a well-defined legal code.  How much of a published work can you use, for example?  From what I understand, the law is all over the place on that.  There isn’t a percent, or number of words standard for it.  Just realize that the more you cite of someone’s work, even if you give them proper credit, the closer you come to violating this.  And Web site operators who ignore this run the risk of losing that DMCA shield I mentioned above.  So it’s worth everyone’s effort to at least be familiar with Fair Use, and gain an understanding of what it clearly does, and does not, permit.

-O/Siris-

Technorati Tags: Fair Use,Copyright,DMCA,RIAA,MPAA,Electronic Frontier Foundation,EFF

When Customers Don’t Matter

We see major media outlets in significant financial troubles these days.  And in political discussions all over the Web, you’ll hear talk of new paradigms, or political bias, or lack of journalistic integrity, or a host of other reasons given for those troubles.  Regardless of the cause(s), it seems to have become pretty clear that news sources of the past have not yet reconciled themselves to the way information flows across the Web.

One of the clear (though far from the largest) Illustrations to me is the guided search site About.com.  This site operates with a staff of designated topic experts, called Guides.  The Guide is responsible for content topical to the subject to which they’ve been designated.  They regularly update their sites, and run blogs, and basically any other on-topic content that About.com decides is consistent with their editorial philosophy.

Where we start to see cracks in the About.com operation, however, is in user interaction.  As a site that has managed to get itself listed as a search engine, users will find very few opportunities to contribute input to the site, unless the Guides themselves take on that initiative themselves.  In fact, About.com actively states that the Guides are the final arbiters of user interaction on their assigned sites and user forums.

Because About.com maintains such a hands-off approach to the activities of its Guides, the site is infested with inconsistency.  For example, the site includes user forums, and a page of Forum Guidelines, which include prohibitions against personal attacks and spam/commercial posts.  And yet, despite this posted set of rules, AND even though it includes in the registration process a step where users must agree to these rules, not everyone running the forums enforces those rules.  One of the most egregious examples is the US Liberal Politics user forum.  In that forum, user after user has pointed out repeated copyright violations, personal insults and attacks, and instead of the Guide there enforcing the published rules, one can look at thread after thread, just like this one, where the regulars who agree with her political persuasion have free reign to bypass the swear, to personally attack and insult others, and to display every vestige of hostility and hate.  Take this challenge: Sign up for a username with About.com, you’ll see an option to Register at the top of the thread page linked above.  Report the activities you see on that thread.  Within 24 hours, you will find yourself unable to access the forum, instead being redirected to the About.com generic homepage.

Now, go one step further: try reporting that, to About’s support team.  You’ll find they are nothing of the sort, because if you get any response AT ALL, it will defer to the Guide.  And Deborah White, the US Liberal Politics Guide, does not respond to questions.  Ever.  Despite a Forum Guidelines page that explicitly states:

Flames or rude / insensitive remarks will be removed.

She has NEVER removed an offensive or insulting remark.  Not once, and I’ve been a member of that site since 1999.  Nor has she ever made the least effort to explain her (lack of) actions.

This unwillingness on the part of About.com to hold its staff accountable for the unethical treatment of customers that even violates its own published policies is a clear illustration of the disconnect between the mainstream media (About.com is owned by the NY Times, and there is every reason to believe this disrespect for readers comes from that parent) and the readership it loses with every passing day.  In fact, one can browse the entire News and Issues “channel” at About.com, and you will find a wasteland of unused and inactive forums.  Primarily, in my opinion, because About.com refuses to acknowledge that the Web is not, and has not been for years now, a one-way channel.  About.com is not the least bit interested in hearing from its members.  It has posted a few weak efforts to get a user group for feedback, but it continues to ignore unethical and negligent behavior such as the above.  One former Guide, Kathy Gill, even went so far as to reveal that forum activity isn’t even a measure of a Guide’s performance.

So why bother to be a search site, About.com?  You’re not interested in the user experience, you refuse to address user complaints, and you permit unethical treatment of users by Guides, even when it violates your own published rules?

It’s no wonder that the news media are failing.  They’ve failed to see the Internet for what it is, even among efforts they’ve taken on that supposed to be central to interaction *with* the Internet.

-RØß V-

Sometimes, the Answer Come From The Wrong Question

The September 14th issue of InformationWeek magazine, their 21st annual "InformationWeek500" issue, arrived at my home a couple of days ago, and as I got around to reading it, I came across one of their "Quicktake" news items on Page 15. Entitled "The Web Has Ears," the news article points out that:

Customers are increasingly going to the Web to air gripes and get questions
answered, rather than call a customer support center.

The story, integrated into other items at this page, then talks about offerings from Salesforce.com and from another company, RightNow (using a service from another company it acquired, HighLive). These offerings provide, as the story puts it:

making it easier for companies to track chatter about their products on social networking sites and on their own sites, and offer to help frustrated customers

But I'm finding myself troubled by this story. Don't get me wrong. If companies adopt a more proactive approach to finding and resolving customer issues, that's a good thing.

But...

Well... to be blunt about it don't these products involve asking the WRONG questions? I mean, if customers are being driven away from your existing support model, isn't the *real* problem the support model, not the ability to sort of "chase" your customers around the Web to take in what they're saying? If you have to go "out there" to find these customers, what was it what made the customers go "out there" in the first place?

I'm really worried that businesses that turn to services like this are going to ignore the truly fundamental question that underlies the need for these services: a support system that is running these customers away. If a car is failing, do you think the answer is to enter it into the Daytona 500 auto race? Likewise, if your existing customer support system isn't meeting the needs of customers, the answer is NOT to expand its presence, but to fix the problems that drove your customers away in the first place.

I'm all in favor of companies embracing customer feedback, seeking it out. But only if those same companies actually use what they find to discover the real nature of the problems this brings to light. And I just don't see that happening. While RightNow and Salesforce may convince cellular carriers (for example) to "follow me" out to Howardforums, to CellPhoneForums, or to About.com, they also enable the very problems that send customers to third party sites to find answers and resolutions: the inability of the existing support structure to provide these resolutions.

These may be good services. But they're convincing support managers to ask the wrong questions. Extending bad support to third party sites isn't the answer that will really fix the problems that led to this customer migration in the first place.

-O/Siris-

Bozeman, MT Returns to Reality

Ars Technica earlier this week reported on the city council meeting in Bozeman, Montana.  Normally, a relatively minor city like Bozeman wouldn’t rate an article with such a revered site.  But Bozeman managed recently to make itself quite the laughingstock of The Web when it was discovered that application for employment with the city included a background check waiver that called for login account names *and* passwords to online sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and others.  The story took off across The Web, and Bozeman city officials were inundated by emails condemning the application.  Bureaucracy being what it is, nothing could be done until the next city council meeting, which took place on Monday, June 22.  As Ars Technica reports, they quickly removed this “little item” from the application process, and released a report saying, among other things:

…[I]t had suspended the practice as of Friday, June 19 and that it would update its hiring procedures within 30 days to determine a more appropriate level of screening for employees.

It’s certainly of no concern to me that city HR departments become aware of such accounts.  But they don’t need login access to see employees bad-mouthing their superiors.  Most that would use such public platforms to express their views wouldn’t take the time to make them private.  As far as I’m concerned, if you post something to your public Facebook page, Twitter account, etc, then you might as well grab a soapbox and scream it into your employer’s face.  You can and should be held accountable for public comments like that.

But, hopefully, Bozeman’s city antics in this regard can help other bureaucracies to see the idiocy of policies like this.

O/Siris