Monthly Archives: July 2008

Qik Goes Public

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“Qik, the video service that streams live feeds from your mobile phone, has finally launched its public beta. The site has also introduced a number of new features to the service, including support for restricted group access to videos, self-service event streams, and a new embeddable player.

“The beta will support a wide variety of phones on AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint, including support for software on the Windows Mobile platform that began testing in June. Qik says that it will be continually adding new phones to the supported list, which you can view here.

“The site has also implemented support for Groups, which allow users to select who can upload and view selected clips. Among the included privacy options are allowance for public groups, which anyone can post to, restricted groups, which allow anyone to view (but only select users to post), and a private view, which restricts viewing and uploading to a specified group of users.” (thanks to Techcrunch)

PS: Hmm, Qik’s certainly fashionable right now.

 

The Friendfeedization Of Facebook

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“As Facebook continues to roll out the full version of its new user profiles, it’s becoming clear that their primary goal isn’t, as they said in May, to simply create a cleaner user experience and allow developers to have more meaningful engagement points with users. It’s more about highlighting new content relevant to the user and fostering conversations about that content. And the result is that the Facebook home page looks an awful lot like the exponentially smaller activity stream aggregation service called Friendfeed.

“The new site will likely launch publicly on Monday. Until then, anyone can log in at www.new.facebook.com to see the new profile. The biggest visual change people will see on the home page – the combination of status updates, wall posts and news feed items into a single content stream. On the profile page status updates and other mini-feed items are also combined, and users are shown a big text box at the top encouraging them to update their status. For more details on the updates, see Inside Facebook and All Facebook.

“This is just the beginning of the news for Facebook this week as they prepare for their second developer conference on Wednesday. The company is clearly looking to fine tune the Facebook experience to spur growth, particularly in the U.S. and other mature markets where they still trail MySpace.” (thanks once again to the great people at Techcrunch for this report)

Hmm, sounds interesting.

Helping me, helping you with tax

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HMRC website fault might result in unnecessary tax worries

18 July 2008

“The ICAEW warns people to take care sending their second payment of tax owed to the HMRC for the 2006/2007 tax year if they have already filed their 2007/2008 self-assessment tax return.”

And from me, on a smaller scale:

1. The employer helpline number times incorrectly states its open to 22:00 when it should be 20:00, on the website within online services, once you’ve logged in, and then sought help.

2. Looking forward to see how HMRC re-calculate my tax/NI seeing as both my P45s were incorrect.

A sceptical view of social networking from some guy at Harvard

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Hmm, takes the wind out of your sails in the morning.

No, I don’t want to be your social-networking friend

Five reasons why I won’t accept your invitation.

By John Lenger

from the July 18, 2008 edition

Cambridge, Mass. – Dear Friend (if I may still call you that),

Recently I received an email inviting me to be your friend on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, or some other professional- or social-networking website.

I receive many such emails, which I pretend I don’t get. But LinkedFaceTickleFreakSpaceFriend, or whatever you call the website, keeps sending messages claiming to be you, so I feel compelled to respond.

I’m sure you mean well, and I’m flattered. But I’m not sure you’ve thought this through. At the risk of sounding unfriendly, this is why I can’t be your friend:

1) Your friends may not be my friends. Your friends may be hyper-aggressive salespeople, spammers, stalkers, random jerks, or just plain nuts. Not that I think your contacts are, but how do you weed out the weirdos online? As you know, I work at a well-respected university with an impressive name. It doesn’t hurt my feelings that my work affiliation is probably why you want to link to me, as opposed to my killer rendition of “Hunka Hunka Burning Love.” My email and voice mail already overflow with demands from would-be friends that I buy their whirligig, hire their nephew, or find a spot for their child in the next freshman class – mostly from people I’ve never met. If I joined you on BooBooFunnyFaceCookBook, or whatever you call it, I would never have another moment’s peace.

2) You’re a friend, not a revenue stream. When you send me photos, I frame them and display them in my home. When you post a photo, or anything else, on Friendster, “you automatically grant … to Friendster an irrevocable, perpetual, nonexclusive, fully-paid, and worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such Content….” What a fun group! It gets better, though. On LinkedIn, you’re not just a professional contact, you’re “rich user profile data,” all the better to sell to advertisers. Facebook encourages advertisers to “pair your targeted ad with related actions from a user’s friends.” So you’re hanging online with friends, and some giant, hungry Facebook spider is tracking your movements and selling that information. Can it get any creepier than that?

3) Well, yes, it can. Once you give companies personal information, they can turn you into something you’re not, as I learned making online purchases. Recently I signed onto eBay and was greeted with the message “John, fuel your passion for Male Nurse Action Figure!” I bought my son a toy because he’s interested in medicine. Now eBay thinks I want to meet guys in surgical scrubs. Amazon.com thinks I need a subscription to “American Girl” magazine. I won’t bore you with the hygienic product offers I get from retailers that have decided I’m not only female, I’m perpetually pregnant. Not only is “personal data” the newest oxymoron, it’s not even personally correct.

We already know that prospective employers Google your information on sites such as MySpace. I imagine networking sites could make quite a bundle by selling you back the compromising photos you shared in a moment of insanity, or better yet, charge to remove compromising photos from your profile that aren’t of you.

4) Corporations used to become billion-dollar enterprises by owning stuff: airplanes, oil tankers, rain forests, that sort of thing. AOL bought Bebo in March for $850 million because it has … a list of your favorite 1980s bands and a photo of you doing the chicken dance at your cousin’s wedding? I don’t want to ruin anyone’s economy, but if the whole social networking boom is built on your performance of “Being With You,” then dude, it’s doomed. And then what happens to your personal data? Snapped up in a fire-sale by an ISP in Uzbekistan?

5) Most important, friendships should be real, not conducted through a proxy such as MissingLinkSausageFaceSourPickle, or whatever it’s called. Media hype would have you believe everyone is Facelinking, but a June 13 press release from The Conference Board puts the percentage of social networkers at 25 percent of those online. Seventy-five percent of us still like talking to real people! Alert the media! Or better yet, just give me a call. I’m always happy to hear from you.

• John Lenger, an editor and journalism instructor at Harvard University, has written about Internet privacy issues for a decade.

How to survive a recession social network style

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Had a fascinating meet up with Bob Clarke of Beetlenut yesterday who set up and ran Business TV for BMW at the start of the 1990s. Apparently BMW used this communications tool, with daily broadcast’s to sales executives to help weather that recession, and came out after the downturn ahead of their competitors who didn’t invest in internal comms. As Bob pointed out this time round surviving the recession isn’t just open to those with the cash to throw at it. Social networking tools, many which are lightweight and relatively low cost, can give corporates the kind of internal comms they need to ride it out with their employees on side. Simple idea, nicely presented, thanks Bob.

PS: I mentioned to Shirley the Finance Manager in the evening Bob’s anecdote about a PLC with a manufacturing plant in Mexico, who post the PNL account at the end of the production line every day. Anyone who doesn’t understand what it all means can ask their workmate. Wonder how many PLCs think of that as a strategy, and have then implemented it?

From VC Fred Wilson (who according to Twitter is in sunny Soho right now, lucky man)

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Twitter Acquires Summize

“There aren’t many surprises in web technology given how well the media and the blogs cover the sector. And it’s even more so with our portfolio company Twitter which seems to attract a lot of attention for a host of well known reasons.

“Last month Twitter announced a financing but it was old news by then. Today, Twitter announced that it has acquired the leading Twitter search engine Summize. That was also widely reported last week and so it’s a bit of old news.

“But even though it’s old news, I think it’s big news. Twitter will now allow you to follow not only people but also ideas, concepts, names, thoughts, etc. And they will do that natively and via the API.  Those who follow the microblogging sector closely certainly have seen the potential of this, but now we can see it in action and use it.

“I wrote a short blog post on the Union Square Ventures blog about this transaction. Summize investor John Borthwick of Betaworks has a terrific blog post on the transaction on his blog.  And of course TechCrunch has a post on it as well.”

PS: wonder if the incoming smart engineers from Summize will also help avoid Twitter downtimes?  Should their logo be looking up a whale’s behind? Poll moment.

How easy is it to replicate Silicon Valley’s innovation in Europe?

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“I was in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago speaking to a group of marketing executives at Royal Philips about the forces that drive the Internet revolution in America. “So what is it about Silicon Valley that makes it so innovative,” one Philips executive asked me after my speech. “How easy is it to replicate this innovation in Europe?”

It’s a great question — one that has intrigued me since 1983, when I first arrived in northern California as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. Indeed, it’s such a good question that I instantly Googled it when I got back to America.”

Goes on about paradox of 50′s and 60s culture, company law, etc. Makes good sense to me.

 

Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity

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Posted by Clay Shirky

“Ben Hyde upbraids me for overstating the case about process in my post about Wikis, Grafitti, and Process. Says Ben:

What pisses me off about Clay’s note is that he’s playing to people’s most base instincts. First he’s encouraging people to assume that process is a reaction to other people’s stupidity. That’s kind of thinking is toxic to community; it encourages people to label others rather than strive to find more functional processes.
He’s right. In writing that piece, I overstated the case. Process is an essential part of group work, and without it, groups would suffer paralysis. However, though I overstated the case, I didn’t misstate it, and I stand by the core observation: Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity.”
 
PS: Recent Clay podcast (30mb) at Demos for your download + enjoyment.

Give it a Whrrl?

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“As apple unveils the iPhone 3G, online content and service providers are jostling each other to advertise their compatibility with the new product.  Mobile social networking service Whrrl has joined the fray, announcing that it is available as a free download to both iPhone and iPod touch users.

“Whrrl is one step removed from classic social networking platforms in that it not only provides its members with a medium through which they can interact, but also offers real-time personalised updates that connect its users’ relationships and tastes to their surroundings in order to suggest places, experiences and events they otherwise might not have discovered.”

Sounds interesting.