Stuffola

March 21, 2006

Disturbing Amazon Reviewers

It's been a very exciting time here at Casa Pain Management. First, I found out that my computer-related injuries, charmingly called "mouse arm" here in Sweden, may be carpal tunnel syndrome and may require surgery. (Kids, don't ignore those twitches.) Then my lower back turned on me. It was something like the scene in Alien in which everything appears to be fine, until one of the crew members starts screaming in agony and an ugly critter bursts out of his abdomen. No alien actually clawed its way out of my back, but it sure as hell felt like one was trying.

After several days of bed rest and effective if boring drugs, I'm back, temporarily at least, at the computer armed with three things: a headset, a voice-recognition program and a substitute-swear-word regimen created by my daughter (my pain-provoked outbursts didn't impress her much). I'm allowed to say ship, kit or cheddar but shit is officially off-limits. As it should be, since it's not included in the vocabulary of my program. (I'm going to try to teach it, but don't tell her.)

Anyway, late last night I stumbled upon the dark spawn of Jeff Bezos' community-building tactics: disturbing Amazon reviewers. These are reviewers who appear to be twisted, cranky or worse. I know tons of people have spent practically their entire lives analyzing Amazon and its citizen reviewers but not me. So I was unprepared for the amount of raw weirdness masquerading as chirpy reviews.

Today's featured reviewer uses her real name on Amazon, but it would be mean to include it here. Read the excerpts below and then judge for yourself: Is Reviewer X scary, sad or refreshingly feisty?

From review of Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science by M.G. Lord:

"This little book tells all about the unlikely beginnings of the JPL, going from science fiction to science fact. My son is a patsy for NASA and takes large groups of young people on tours at this Lab and they stay for days on end. He too will feel what it is to die young when they think he knows too much.

"Like Ms. Lord's grandfather whose door would not open, but two others escaped, before the train demolished the car and dragged him a long way down the track. Her father was only 46 when he died but he looks like an old man. That's what leaks from nuclear and atomic production will do for you. Maybe Jeff will last one more year. He's already having false heart attack symptoms."

Poor Jeff. His life can't be easy. From a review of An Unfinished Marriage by Joan Anderson:

"She feels that 'true learning comes from our own impulses' -- please! When will this person grow up? This book is her sequel. 'Every beginning is always a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.' If her marriage was so bad that she had to go to sea for a year, I wonder what Robin did while she was gone. He'd be a fool to languish in his new job, wondering where he had gone wrong; could be she was the person responsible for all the mess. She was like a peregrine falcon who scavenges off others or perhaps a green-winged teal, called a wigeon. She was not a normal woman, not forgiving and understanding. A man goes where his job is. Christine refused to follow Jeff to his job until she got pregnant. Joan was too old for that ploy."

From a review of the audio CD of High Plains Tango: A Novel by Robert James Waller:

"The Indian Flute Player, like son Jeff, charms the desert animals around the ceremonial fires. Carlisle fights city hall (if there be such in the western small towns) and this one is forever changed by one man. There is a triangle with a waitress in addition to the woman he calls a witch, which makes it decidely uneven. Carlisle, after all, is college educated, but like all men like to indulge in the lower-class women on occasion."

Last but not least from a review of Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss:

"My pet peeve is the noisy popcorn eater at the movie theaters. Since it would be counterproductive to complain to the manager, as the theaters get big bucks for those supersize containers of popcorn, I've had to just get up and leave. No one can enjoy a movie when the person sitting behind him continues to chomp on their popcorn without regard to the other moviegoers after a certain time. If I have a small popcorn which I can't consume during the loud previews, I save the rest to eat later in private. Not many people would be that thoughtful; they paid for it and they will eat it as they please. Manners has nothing to do with it -- it is their right."

Gentle reviewer, I beg you: just once, finish your popcorn. It might help.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

Cybersquabbles in Sweden

Many things about Sweden remain a mystery to me. Here's one example. Earlier in the week a freelance journalist named Mustafa Can revealed the existence of a “secret” listserv that included journalists, psychologists, business leaders, politicians and literary celebs among its members. Can wrote the article with all the subtlety of the prose found in the latest bodice-ripper. The story in Dagens Nyheter was titled "Uber bullying on the net" and began like this (my translation): “Do you think hate is a fantastic feeling? Do you want to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else?”

You can tell that the article was written outside of the United States, because the answer to the second question would be self evident: Why yes, I would like to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else. The United States is a hotbed of private little cliques, it’s blanketed with country clubs and other private organizations that are all about feeling superior whatever more noble objective their rules and regulations proclaim.

But such is not the Swedish way. Swedes may discriminate against people born in other countries or who bear foreign-sounding names but they do not, and cannot, think of themselves as any better than anyone else. At least, not publicly. That all Swedes are equal, or are supposed to be, is deeply embedded in this culture. That's fine by me. That's one of the many things I like about this country. But I can't be shocked, or scandalized, or even especially horrified by the discovery that a composer and writer named Alexander Bard has maintained a private listserv called the Elite list for the past 15 years that supposedly devotes itself to sex-and-drugs gossip and welcomes new members with an e-mail that claims “the lowest common denominator for the members of the Elite list is their physical and mental perfection, … self-confidence, and interest in leading electronic discussions with other beautiful and interesting people with a large and healthy self-confidence.”

(Are we surprised that the guy who launched a list celebrating beautiful people is bald? Maybe Elite was meant to be a confidence-booster.)

Can wonders how well-known journalists can participate in an e-mail list with people they may cover as part of their work, a perfectly reasonable question. Since this story was published on Wednesday, one journalist has lost a job over her membership and Can got a nasty, nasty anonymous SMS threatening to make his life hell forever (I'm thinking that Bard guy and/or his minions must have no sense of humor whatsoever.) Meanwhile, most of the actual Swedish cultural and business elite--the bosses anyway--have yawned collectively and claimed a private e-mail list is not exactly a threat to democracy.

No, the electronic threat to democracy is not the Elite list. According to some, that dubious honor belongs to the anonymous mud-slinging e-mails trashing the head of Sweden's Moderate Party, Fredrik Reinfeldt. It doesn't really matter what the messages claim, except that they claim he's doing something illegal and were sent to journalists, among others.

Reinfeldt has told reporters the e-mail campaign is an attempt to influence national elections. Turns out he's right. The party in power, the Social Democrats, ‘fessed up that an unnamed official is behind the campaign, which is against party rules, and a really bad thing, yadda yadda yadda. The Local website is dubbing it "Sweden's Watergate." According to Dagens Nyheter, this is the first time electronic mud-slinging has surfaced in a Swedish political campaign.

Bet it won’t be the last. So-called whisper campaigns have become a well-entrenched, if disturbing, part of political campaigns the world over. Today's lesson: You can run but you can't hide. The least endearing aspects of human nature will find you wherever you go.

(Yup, I'm on an extended cliché tear. Holler if I 've missed any.)

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

Google, China + Business as Usual

Google's under fire for its decision to follow Chinese law and censor some search results. This isn't news to any technology fan with a pulse. But I've been a little taken aback at the volume of the outcry over Google's new service in China. But then, perhaps it's anything but surprising that the blabosphere gets its knickers in a knot over the intellectual insult of restricted search results and not, say, the broken bodies of the people in China, Mexico, and elsewhere who churn out a big chunk of the goods we buy.

People I respect are among those critical of Google's move, but I don't get it. The company is simply practicing business as usual and, unlike Microsoft or Yahoo, without directly harming any individual Chinese citizen thus far (although, lord knows, that could change in the future).

Google isn't Enron. It's not Halliburton or even Hill & Knowlton. So why the enormous outcry? I think it's so fierce partly because it feels so personal. Journalists and bloggers can't imagine what it's like to sit inside a sweatshop sewing name-brand jeans with bleeding fingers. But we use Google services every day of the week.

And so we gnash our teeth, wax indignant and cite Google's infamous "do no evil" creed in support of our case. But it's beyond naive for an adult to take that language at face value and believe that anyone or anything outside of Google might be allowed to define its meaning. Some people are shocked, shocked that Google is participating in legal commerce. But that's the idea, after all.

On Friday Google's senior policy counsel, Andrew McLaughlin, claimed the company debated the issue for years and ultimately decided that "filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population, however, does so far more severely."

That spin wildly overstates the case. As McLaughlin himself pointed out, Google.com is a bad experience for users in the Republic of China because the service is slow, incomplete and unavailable to users there about 10 percent of the time. Sucky service does not equal "failing to offer Google search at all," however, no matter how far you stretch it. But unlike the new service, Google.com wasn't optimized for Chinese users. Google's China baby will be fast, available and, yes, incomplete. The company decided it was a fair tradeoff.

Critics don't agree and they don't have to, but the company's reasoning makes sense to me. Whether Google can escape additional complicity with a horrific regime remains to be seen. The slippery slope is, after all, damn slippery. In the meantime, there's ample opportunity to be outraged over additional legal business dealings in China and elsewhere, and Google bashers should get a grip. The idea of censored search results will hardly be a surprise to Chinese Web surfers, although it seems as though the company could do a much better job of flagging it.

Google *is* a scary company but not because of its China policy. I don't use Google mail, for example, because I think it's creepy and potentially dangerous for any entity--animal, vegetable or mineral, government or corporation--to have access to all my e-mail, all my contacts, plus details on practically every step I take in cyberspace via cookies that track my IP address during all my Google searches.

It's not much fun to be seen as Darth Vader in the public imagination. But Google execs had best get used to it. Their vast ambitions, coupled with the nearly inevitable arrogance that so often builds within enormously successful companies, virtually guarantee that a Google backlash will continue to build.

It's how the world works. And maybe that's just as well.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 29, 2006

Glenn Fleishman Stalks Corporate Spin

I've long admired Glenn Fleishman for lots of reasons. He's really nice, he's really smart, he writes well (not as common as you might expect, even among professional writers) and he's alarmingly prolific. The freelance journalist, book author and blogger behind seven blogs is soft launching his eighth, about radio and the future of AM and FM right here.

Over at Wi-Fi Net News, Glenn has been covering the struggle to create municipal wireless networks for ages. He recently weighed in on plans (hopes?) to build a 1500-square-mile wireless network across Silicon Valley and highlights the gap between reality and the highly polished talking points parroted by corporate critics of municipal wireless.

“ 'Andrew Johnson, a Comcast Bay Area spokesman,…said companies that have spent billions of dollars to build wired networks shouldn’t be undermined by taxpayer funds focused toward a rival.' "

As Glenn notes, "Interestingly, virtually no municipal RFPs now involve taxpayer funds, but incumbents continue to play from that script. This RFP will involve roughy $40,000 from a few dozen cities."

” ‘The free market should be allowed to play out,’ he said. ‘A municipal subsidy, or a provision of a municipal WiFi network would not be the best use of taxpayer funds.’

"In other words, regardless of the fact that broadband firms have been spreading the notion that high-speed access is critical to individual businesses and entire communities, those communities have no right to ensure that they have what they want if they’re paying for it directly despite massive public subsidies paid to incumbents, which are never mentioned in the same breath as the 'billions' spent."

Exactly. Because if it's good for Comcast, it's good for the nation. Just keep saying it, no matter how bogus. Much of the time, spin wins.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2006

What Big Ears You Have, Mr. Disney

According to the Wall Street Journal (sub required), "Walt Disney Co. is in serious discussions to buy Pixar Animation Studios after months in which the two animation giants have been exploring ways to continue their lucrative partnership, according to people familiar with the matter.

"In the deal under discussion, Disney would pay a nominal premium to Pixar's current market value of $6.7 billion in a stock transaction that would make Pixar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs the largest individual shareholder in Disney."

So here's my question: If Jobs becomes, in essence, Mr. Disney, will the Mickey Mouse TV be tweaked to transmit program selection info back to the mother ship? I ask only because Apple was happy to do the same with the latest version of iTunes, at least until privacy fans got their knickers in a knot and the company backtracked. Which was only appropriate.

In any case, I prefer Target's 13-inch Hello Kitty TV/DVD player combo to the Mickey Mouse TV or the Disney Princess model. Even though all three of them are deeply twisted products. They're designed for 6 to 10 year olds. Because little kids need, deserve, and want to own personal TVs in the sick world we live in today, and their parents let them.

And that, dear reader, is even more depressing than Apple's slimy, utimately successful strategy for marketing stuff to us by monitoring the songs we click in iTunes.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

Wiki Author Apologizes, Would the Tabloids?

The guy who posted "false and scandalous entries" about a journalist on Wikkipedia as a joke has not only apologized for his unfortunate behavior but also resigned from his job. This is part of the scandalous entry, now excised from Wikkipedia: "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven."

There's more, all of it nonsense, about the journalist's move to the Soviet Union, starting a PR firm (no, that wasn't the scandalous part), and other phony tidbits. Seigenthaler was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant and one of the pallbearers at Kennedy's funeral so the 78-year-old was angry and horrified to discover that the lies in Wikkipedia had spread to Answers.com and Reference.com. It didn't make him any happier to discover that it might be impossible, without a lawsuit, to discover the hoaxster's identity.

The responsible party came clean without any prodding by a lawsuit and appears to be a stand-up guy in several ways. "Brian Chase, 38, a manager at a small delivery service in Nashville, presented a letter of apology Friday explaining his role to the journalist, John Seigenthaler, a former editor of Nashville's Tennessean and a founder of the First Amendment Center there," notes the piece in USA Today. "Seigenthaler urged Chase's boss, James White, not to accept his resignation."

Here's the baffling part: Brian Chase voluntarily identified himself as the author, apologized in writing, then resigned from his job over this incident, which appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with his employment. Zip. Nada. Noll. Meanwhile, media professionals (let's not call them journalists) over at the National Enquirer made hay on Friday over the alledged overdose and collapse of Michael Jackson, everybody's favorite future dead celeb. I know about this only because my kid voraciously reads the lurid front pages of the Swedish tabloids every chance she gets. On Saturday, as we stood in line to pay for our groceries at a local market, she kept darting away to read a little more from the Expressen's front page, which featured a huge pic of Jackson and a screaming headline: "Michael Jackson Found Lifeless After Overdose." (Here's the web version.)

Because I only saw the headline, I thought Jackson was a goner. Later, when I read the piece online, it claimed that the guy was basically in the hospital fighting for his life, "according to several American media" (my translation) but not, as it happens, Wikkipedia. I kept reading, and discovered that "several" apparently meant two: the National Enquirer and the Drudge Report. Now anybody who pays attention knows that Matt Drudge mostly links to celebrity news and does not usually constitute a source in his own right. (Sometimes he breaks a story but rarely and he's not regarded in the industry as the most reliable source.) In this case it's very clear that Drudge linked to the National Enquirer's report, which promptly got yanked. Traces of the story remain but I can't locate even a Google cache of the original. It wasn't hard to find a story disputing the claim.

Jackson is one sad, scary, messed-up guy. I wouldn't want him in my house or near my neighborhood. But his character is not the issue when it comes to accurate reporting. Jackson's spokesperson has denied the overdose report. That hardly resolves the issue. No offense intended to Jackson's mouthpiece but it's not unknown for press handlers to misspeak on occasion. If the National Enquirer's report turned out to be bogus, I wonder what would happen. Would the upstanding media professionals at the Enquirer and Expressen demonstrate as much honor as Brian Chase, media amateur, by apologizing and then resigning?

I think we both know the answer. Not a chance.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:18 PM | Comments (0)

Web Notes: PDF Files

Please stop assaulting me with unidentified PDF files. Hell, with PDF files generally. Not you, gentle reader, those other folks out there. Those web wieners who've decided that PDF files are so darn swell there's no need to identify links that lead to them. Which means that innocent visitors looking for more info click hopefully on what appears to be a normal html link and then blam, there's yet another unwanted PDF file on the ground. That, my friend, is crappy marketing and the result of anal-retentive management.

Here's the thing: I want to know that there's a PDF file on the other end of the link *before* I click on it because PDF files require both time and space, items that are often in short supply here at Casa Branscum. It is true that web wieners are not committing rape, robbery or arson in this case, merely thoughtlessness, but it's annoying nonetheless.

Speaking of annoying, why is so much perfectly innocent information, especially info provided for the press, in PDF format anyway? Why must I download a PDF file to get background info on an executive instead of quickly checking an html page with that info? In Adobe's case, it's because the company developed Acrobat and the format. But a supposed global leader in Internet media and market research doesn't have that excuse--and by the way, Nielsen/NetRatings, time to start labeling those Latest Breaking Press Releases as PDF files, doncha think?

There are many fine uses for the PDF format. But it is not the universal web solvent and not an appropriate format for press releases. I'm not the only critic of this practice. It's just dumb, so stop already.

In unrelated news, I'm happy to report that grillz is now a more popular search term for enticing people to Stuffola than amputee. What a relief that Stuffola is finally attracting a less disturbed group of visitors (not that Stuffola has a problem with being disturbed). Welcome!

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2005

Snow Falling on Tech Dreams & Harried Parents

"What is a startup without bleary-eyed, junk-food-fueled, balls-to-the-wall days and sleepless, caffeine-fueled, relationship-stressing nights? Answer?: A lot more enjoyable place to work." Be balanced is the tenth rule of Evan Williams' rules for executives of Web startups. Finding balance, or at least trying to allow employees to find it, is excellent advice for all Silicon Valley companies, web-related or not. Over many years the Valley work ethic and the cell/pager mentality of constant access has dramatically transformed home life for many residents and not for the better.

"As information technology allows households and communities to become places of production, it also changes the way such social institutions think of themselves. Families and communities, like upgraded software can be 'refreshed' or 'reinvented.' Families can then become a kind of product. Finally, the pivotal assumption that work is done at a workplace and family life is lived at home is much too simplistic. Many forces, not the least of which is the technical ability to work from home, have blurred the domains. If time at the workplace does not really reflect the time spent working, how does that effect family leaves or the length of a work week?"

That's a rhetorical question from one of the anthropologists at the Silicon Valley Cultures Project. Dr. J.A. English-Lueck knows exactly what that does to the length of a work week and offers examples:

"John is a middle-aged product development manager at a high tech company in Silicon Valley. ... He tries very hard not to take too much work home with him, preferring to work late on site, but the international nature of his work means he is on the phone at midnight and at dawn. He is grateful for E-mail and voicemail since they can fit his schedule. Realistically, he thinks about work problems constantly, in his garden, and in his car. He talks about his work all the time with his wife and volunteers to install network servers at his daughter’s school on NetDay.

"Meanwhile, his administrative assistant, Sharon, complains that her work load is overwhelming, even to the point where she is expected to move furniture and take out trash. She is expected to learn new programs and upgrades on her own time. Both John and Sharon now take work and worry home. Sharon checks her E-mail and voicemail in the predawn hours before her children wake to prepare for any tasks that may need to be addressed immediately. She carries a pager and a cell phone so that she can stay in contact with her teenaged children after they come home from school."

The modern work grind is no news to most people but that doesn't make the challenge of balancing work and family life any less real or important. I haven't read Po Bronson's new book, Why Do I Love These People, but I'm always interested in the drama of families: what brings them together and what pulls them apart. When it comes to family life, is balance even possible?

I don't know the answer to that question, and I'm not sure I ever will. I can say that Sweden seems like a more promising venue to create a more balanced family life. Which does not mean the three members of my family hew to a party line on, well, anything. The snow has returned. My kid, ever gracious, muttered "I hate snow" and rolled back into the bedcovers when I delivered the news this morning. But I was happy then and I'm happy now. The grim winter lanscape has become a paradise of white and black line art punctuated by occasional flashes of color.

There may be something more beautiful than tree branches laced with fresh snow but, offhand, I can't think of what it might be.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2005

The Internet Metaphor Battle: Place vs. Plumbing

As mentioned earlier, Bruce Schneier has reported on what he calls the real story behind Sony's rootkit misadventure: "the collusion between big media companies who try to control what we do on our computers and computer-security companies who are supposed to be protecting us." ZDNet's David Berlind agrees that's noteworthy but says the overall digital rights managment situation is the larger issue.

"Sony's rootkit, as bad as it was, isn't the real story. The way the entertainment cartel is applying DRM as a whole is the real story. They're applying DRM in a way that the Sony fiasco was inevitable. This wasn't the first time lack of DRM interoperability manifested itself in the end-user experience in an ugly way, and it won't be the last. ... Unbeknownst to most people, what started with music (let's just say audio) already applies to video and it's not going to stop there."

Where will it stop? With total corporate control if we're not careful, and we're not just talking audio, video and text. That's not how Berlind put it but it's a fair description of the bleak future painted by Doc Searls in the passionate plea for activism pointed to by Berlind. Doc is in rare form and no wonder: he's a modern Paul Revere trying to spur his beloved community to action before it's too late.

"Are you ready to see the Net privatized from the bottom to the top? Are you ready to see the Net's free and open marketplace sucked into a pit of pipes built and fitted by the phone and cable companies and run according to rules lobbied by the carrier and content industries?

"Do you believe a free and open market should be 'Your choice of walled garden' or 'Your choice of silo'? That's what the big carrier and content companies believe. That's why they're getting ready to fence off the frontiers.

"And we're not stopping it."

Doc's scary links document the threat to the Internet as we know it and explains why the words we use are so important.

"In this debate the radicals are the carriers. We need to fight them, just as Larry and crew need to fight the copyright extremists: by re-framing the subject. To start we acknowledge the necessity of the transport metaphor; but also its insufficiency. Of course, at its base level the Net is a system of pipes and packets. But it's not only packets, or 'content' or anything for that matter). Understanding the Net only in transport terms is like understanding civilization in terms of electrical service or human beings only in terms of atoms and molecules. We miss the larger context."

Read Doc's essay, then read his blog for responses and contributions from other folks. I'm no visionary but I worry that Doc is right. After all, corporations do whatever necessary to make a profit. If telcos and cable companies need to gate every little stretch of the Internet to thrive, they'll do it--if we let them. (For a historic perspective on how corporations exercise power, don't miss Ted Nace's book "Gangs of America" for educational and entertaining reading.)

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:43 PM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2005

Sony: Weirder and Weirder

Before the move to Sweden, I envisioned my kid embracing age-old Swedish traditions. I saw her in the woods, picking berries or mushrooms. In summer I imaged her splashing in the Baltic Sea while, in winter months, she'd skate across frozen lakes. Yeah, right.

The global sway of American pop culture had completely escaped my notice before the move. These days I get frequent reminders of it. The one this morning arrived in the form of earnest 11-year-olds swaying on stage while mumbling the lyrics to "Wake Me Up When September Ends" under the considerably more energetic direction of the spiky-haired music teacher at our elementary school. (You haven't lived until you've heard class 5A sing "twenty years has gone so fast.") I like Green Day too but jeez, whatever happened to "Du Gamla, Du Fria"?

Luckily Sweden isn't so Americanized yet that corporate execs here could secretly collect information from customer computers without expecting a jail sentence. Sony's probably big enough to survive this debacle (including lawsuits and more nasty PR) but what about First4Internet, the British company that provided both the flawed copy-protection software and the flawed uninstaller? To the glee of many, it appears that some of the free code used by First4Internet in the digital-rights management software it developed for Sony was used in a way that violated the terms of its copyright. As The Register put it, "The irony of a company using code from someone who circumvented DRM to develop an even nastier form of DRM - without even saying 'Thanks!' - will surely feature in geek trivia quizzes for years to come."

Confused yet? I have been so Andrew Kantor's column in USA Today is a gift of clarity about the degree of evil Sony has wrought. I understood that Sony's DRM format caused a security problem. But not the all-important fact that Sony's patch for "removing" the original software also created a security problem--among other failings. As Kantor explains:

"In order to get the patch, you have to provide your name, e-mail address, and other personal information to Sony. When you finally download the thing, it does the patch thing, and then it installs all sorts of new stuff that Sony doesn't tell you about. And it continues to send your listening habits to Sony and its partners, but now it has a bunch of your personal information too. But wait. Incredibly, there's more. The patch itself, it turns out, opens another big security hole."

Talk about criminal cluelessness. Sony first produced CDs that 1. secretly installed software on your computer, 2. secretly sent Sony information about the songs you listened to, 3. created a security hole in your PC and finally, 4. damaged the operating system if anyone tried to remove it. Sony's considered response to the outrage provoked by this news was first to deny there was a problem, then to demand lots of personal information before giving you a software fix that 1. secretly installed software on your computer that secretly sent Sony information about the songs you listened to and 2. created another, larger security hole in your PC.

No wonder I couldn't keep the story straight. It's pure Hollywood. And while it may be Sony's biggest screwup, it's not the company only screwup. "Sony's general incompetence when it comes to digital music boggles the mind," notes David Pogue. "First there was its 'iPod killer' music players, which were initially released without the ability to play a little file format called MP3. Then there was its disastrous Connect music store, whose design was so wasteful of screen space it was almost unuseable. And now the astonishing move to copy-protect all of its music CD's--ironically, in some cases, over the strident objections of the actual bands--with software that behaves like spyware."

As David points out, angry consumers aired their complaints in public forums like Amazon reviews, where they vowed not to buy affected CDs. Information Week went to town with this headline: Bloggers Break Sony. "There's a whole new set of rules that people have to live by," Factiva CMO Alan Scott told Information Week (Factiva just happens to make text-mining software to help execs track the gossip about their companies). "Whether it's blogs or user groups or NGOs, it's all about honesty and authenticity. This is just the latest painful example of a major company finding that the old tools and the old actions don't work."

Those old tools and old actions, also known as lies and lying, do work often enough. Just not this time. And as much as we'd all like to see these go away, I'm confident that in certain circles dissembling will always be in style. Even now I bet there's a bunch of executives nationwide using Sony's situation as a case study in crisis PR when it should be a case study in ethics. Sony's actions were wrong before they became public knowledge and they're wrong now. Too bad the company hasn't figured that out.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)

November 17, 2005

The Real Story Behind Sony's Rogue Rootkit

Bruce Schneier delivers the goods in a terrific Wired News article that ticks through several entertaining aspects of Sony's use of a secret software tool, a rootkit, to protect its CDs and its bungled attempt to help people remove it. There are so many twists that it's hard to see the big picture. Sony's hubris, he notes, is plenty large.

"Sony BMG's president of global digital business demonstrated the company's disdain for its customers when he said, 'Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?' in an NPR interview."

That attitude, while breathtaking in its miscalculation, is not the real story, according to Schneier.

"The story to pay attention to here is the collusion between big media companies who try to control what we do on our computers and computer-security companies who are supposed to be protecting us," Schneier writes. "What do you think of your antivirus company, the one that didn't notice Sony's rootkit as it infected half a million computers? ... This is exactly the kind of thing we're paying those companies to detect -- especially because the rootkit was phoning home.

"But much worse than not detecting it before Russinovich's discovery was the deafening silence that followed. When a new piece of malware is found, security companies fall over themselves to clean our computers and inoculate our networks. Not in this case."

Read Schneier report's for names, dates and details. Schneier, a security wiz and cofounder of a corporate IT security firm, is asking questions that need to be answered. "What happens when the creators of malware collude with the very companies we hire to protect us from that malware? ... Who are the security companies really working for? What will they do the next time some multinational company decides that owning your computers is a good idea?"

My guess? Roll over and play dead for as long as they can. Just as many of them did this time around.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gay Scat, Nylons & Sony: The Evil of Stealth Software

As you probably know, Sony is busy backpeddling from a boneheaded decision to use a secret form of digital rights management software on its CDs. As the London Free Press explains, "This anti-copying software would automatically install on a user's computer when the music CD was inserted in a computer disk drive. ...The application was designed to install at a 'root' or system level and be disguised so it could not be found by normal means. Also, the computer user would need to read the entire user agreement and understand the wording in order to have any awareness of the application and how it would operate.

"Second, the media player Sony used with the CDs would send the Internet protocol address of the user's computer and their listening habits back to Sony -- without notice to the user. As if that wasn't enough to create a public relations problem, the application could be co-opted by a hacker. Designed to hide a legitimate objective (preventing unauthorized copying) it could also be used to hide other objects, including malicious code taking advantage of the Sony technology. It did not take long for an exploit to appear."

Insert Scream-like expressions of horrified PR execs here.

What's interesting about Sony's stupid move (aside from reminding us of the age-old truism that companies are perfectly happy to mislead their customers when it suits them) is how much it mirrors the common, sleazy tactics of so many Internet bottom feeders. My PC was hijacked recently thanks to an unknown person in Odessa and Integrated Search Technologies, which appears to specialize in software that both forces itself upon consumers and downloads third-party software PC users haven't requested.

The hijack happened because I wondered why this blog (and others) got a slew of trackback spam that promoted mainstream branded products (including autos from Ford and Toyota and phones made by Nokia) along with the usual collection of links to gay scat (who knows?), casino and big boob sites. So I followed a trackback link to a faux Nokia 7280 review at mobile-nokia.info/ nokia-7280-high-fashion-lipstick-phone while recklessly using IE (Foxfire is my usual choice).

Quicker than you can say foolhardy, a security warning appearing on my screen and asked if I wanted to install and run something from Integrated Search Technologies (IST). The answer was no no, a thousand times no but the evil scum who engineered this particular piece of marketing madness didn't care what I wanted. The first gray box was replaced with another: "Click YES to have access now."

The bottom of the IE window said it was “installing components…ysb_regular.cab” so I shut down the PC. When I restarted, a file called download.xxx was sitting on the desktop. After I deleted the program, I used Firefox (under my settings, it should *not* allow a web site to download or install software without my permission, although I did allow Javascript, to go back to the site and saw this:“Applet Installer Applet started." In a panic, I unplugged the PC. Later I turned off Javascript in Firefox and went back to the site. No problemo.

The WHOIS registry lists an Odessa address as the registrant behind the faux Nokia wonderland that hijacked my PC but he or she is not the power behind the sneaky software. According to DOXdesk, that dubious honor belongs to IST, which provides ysb_regular.cab or the ISTbar, “an IE toolbar, homepage- and search-hijacker."

DOXdesk is wildly helpful in explaining how it works: “Installed by ActiveX drive-by download on affiliate sites; typically porn in the case of XXXToolbar, from April 2003. An ‘aggressive’ downloader is usually used: if you refuse the download, a JavaScript alert complains that it won’t take no for an answer and opens the download window again.” In my case it didn't open the download window again, it simply downloaded the program despite my frantic attempts to stop it.

According to DOXdesk, all versions of this corrupt bit of coding "also install other third-party software which includes advertising." This is not the worst part, though. The worst part is this: the software “can download and execute arbitrary unsigned code from its controlling server. This is used both to update the software and to install third-party software.”

IST describes itself as "a leading Internet marketing solutions provider, specializing in effectively targeting valuable customers at the moment they are most interested in a particular product or service. IST targets the customers through several different delivery methods such as highly effective toolbars and plugins available for Internet Explorer." Plenty of folks would disagree with that description, including those who've filed a complaint with the FTC against the company.

Until recently, I would never have compared companies like IST and Sony but now I do. Smooth move, Sony. You gotta wonder why this behavior is legal for Sony, for Integrated Search Technologies or for any other company or individual. Regulators, are you listening?

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005

Journalism 2.0: It's Not the Meat, It's the Motion

A while back I linked to Nicholas Carr, who had some interesting things to say about the rise of Web 2.0. For a guy who appreciates diversity of opinion, Jeff Jarvis seemed quick to dismiss Carr as an elitist curmudgeon after "linkjuice." Plenty of other smart folks have hammered him as well. Carr may be wrong about some things but he's not wrong about the near-religious cult inspired by the Internet and all the delicious, gleaming possibilities that seem to hover just beyond our grasp. Jarvis dismisses that point, perhaps because he hasn't spent as many years as I have interviewing tech execs peddling products that are Going To Change The World For The Better Forever and that, ideally, we're supposed to drop to our knees and worship on the spot.

But no matter--bloggers will blog, vloggers will vlogg and professional media companies will continue to morph if they must. So fuck the amateur vs. professional debate. Fuck the Web 2.0 debate. I want to see a debate about public service and the practice of journalism. What does it mean? What should it mean? Is do-gooder journalism even possible?

Here's the media revolution so far: Individuals, such as myself, get to play pundit from the comfort of our homes, while companies have tumbled to the wisdom of hiring bloggers to promote their brands. That the blogosphere is safe for both gasbag cranks and corporate communications isn't my idea of massive progress. Yes, I'm being cranky. There's tons of great stuff as well. But where's the public service journalism? The press has a duty to keep the public informed in large matters and small. Community listings are a public service, to be sure. But where are the muckrakers? There are a few, very few, practitioners and you gotta wonder if ambitious public service journalism has a future in the United States in any medium. Lord knows it hasn't made much of a splash in the recent past. That's no surprise. There's always been a conflict between profit-driven journalism and public service, and there always will be. As well as disagreement about what constitutes public service.

Here's what I mean by public service: life-saving or life-enhancing journalism on behalf of the public good. Journalism that triggers meaningful change (hectoring Dan Rather or Trent Lott, however satisfying, doesn't qualify). Journalism has never been an especially effective means for improving life for citizens (particularly the less-powerful ones), and it seems even less effective now than it once was.

My first journalism job was as a fact-checker for Mother Jones, which was a bastion of investigative journalism. I was young enough to believe that simply working there constituted a kind of public service. I was wrong. Writing about injustice is not the same as righting injustice. Even if conventional media organizations cared about making the world better, odds are they couldn't. Tell me I'm wrong about this. Show me how journalism--not all of it, just some of it--is actually attacking corruption, eradicating pollution or maybe just making life a little easier for the elderly neighbors next door. Seriously. I'm begging you.

A smart and happy crew of true believers is busy building a better Web. Will we build a better journalism? Dan Gillmor and others are working on it and good luck to them. I hope so-called citizen journalism doesn't stop at online bulletin boards. And that journalism 2.0, once it jells, will be a genuine cause for celebration rather than business as usual in a slightly flashier suit.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:41 PM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2005

I Do Not Hate Microsoft: WSJ Edition

In response to John Dvorak's claim that tech journalists are besotted with Apple because they use Macs rather than PCs, WSJ Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg has this response:

"I can't speak for other writers and reviewers, but I use both platforms daily. And which machine I use has nothing to do with my reviews. I have praised Apple products in reviews written on Windows PCs, and praised Microsoft stuff in reviews written on Macs. The argument is just ludicrous.

"The truth is that Apple is the most innovative computer company, and the only one that largely aims at consumers and very small businesses. All the others are mainly focused on big corporate customers, as is Microsoft. There's nothing wrong with that, but I am focused on consumers, and the consumer space is also where change -- and thus news -- happens fastest.

"I have no problem with Microsoft's p.r. people -- they are smart and professional and I work well with them. But Apple has been on a roll for five years or more, with great products. As I have said publicly, if the products go south, I'll turn on them in a New York minute."

Walt left his response in the comments section of yesterday's posting (thanks!), and I hope other journalists drop by to respond.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)

Scary Technology: Nanobiotechnology Edition

Over at Salon (subscription or day pass or whatever ad thing they have going these days required), Dr. Alan H Goldstein writes about current efforts to create "a soldier of the future who will be protected by an impregnable exoskeleton." I'd be more worried if I hadn't read The Men Who Stare at Goats and gotten a glimpse of how completely weird and unsuccessful some U.S. military projects can be.

"The overt goal of nanobiotechnology is to completely break down the borders between living and nonliving materials. This goal has the most profound implications for every aspect of human endeavor, but in warfare the consequences of integrating our most powerful technologies are almost beyond comprehension. The fusion of nanotechnology and biotechnology will erase any distinction between chemical, biological, and conventional weapons, altering the face of war (and life) forever.

"The key thing to remember is that every military application also has a non-military one: tomorrow's sword will be next week's plowshare (and vice versa). In the nano age, if you aren't very afraid and very excited at the same time, you aren't paying attention." Hmm, sounds like standard-issue tech porn to me.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:12 PM | Comments (2)

October 18, 2005

Do Mac-Lovin' Hacks Hate Microsoft or Love Apple Too Much?

PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak claims that tech journalists love Apple because they're so starry-eyed over the Macs they use. The upshot, he claims, is reporting that's biased against Microsoft.

"As big and as important as Microsoft is, the coverage of the company is quite mediocre. This is particularly true in the mainstream press. The reason for this is that today's newspaper and magazine tech writers know little about computers and are all Mac users. It's a fact. ... The newsroom editors are generally so out of touch that they can't see this bias. Besides, they use Macs too. There are entire newsrooms, such as the one at Forbes, that consist entirely of Macintoshes. Apparently nobody but me finds this weird.

"Even Jack Shafer, who recently wrote about Apple's skewed coverage in Slate fails to point out the connection between the skewed coverage and the existence of this peculiar conflict of interest based on the national writers' use of Macs. I often confront these guys with this assertion, and they, to a man (I've never confronted a female reporter about this), all say that they use a Mac 'because it is better.' Right. And that attitude doesn't affect coverage now, does it?"

It's an interesting question. If you're covering Microsoft and you use a Mac exclusively, I can see how that might be a problem. But John's not talking about wet-behind-the-ears newbies. Read the whole column and it's obvious he's including tech veterans like Steven Levy, John Markoff, Walt Mossberg, Katie Hafner and a bunch of other folks who've been around the block a few times. He doesn't name them but they certainly appear to be among his targets (and I hope he'll correct me if I'm wrong).

Jack Slater doesn't name anyone either but all this pro-Apple propaganda is coming from somewhere. If you agree with Dvorak and Slater, send me examples. Let's see if there's anything to this use-a-Mac, slobber-over-Jobs theory of journalism. My bias is that I know Levy, Markoff and Hafner and, because they are friends, can't be trusted to write objectively about the issue. But I can write fairly and accurately about it. But can Dvorak or Slater? What kind of computers do they use? If they use PCs, doesn't that bias them against Apple?

I think reporters slobber over Apple because (as Shafer points out), Apple is much better at spinning compelling narratives than Microsoft and much better at dealing with the press overall. (Nobody working for Apple ever called me to complain because I failed to include an Apple product in a round-up of dubious products that I trashed in print. Believe it or not, someone from Microsoft did.) The fact that various publications praise Apple products that, soon after, fail on the marketplace doesn't necessarily mean that reporters are biased. They could simply be wrong. Reporters, like other folks, are wrong at times. Especially when it involves crystal balls. For a while there was practically a death watch over the company because it was doing so poorly. In those days the press got slammed for bias against Apple.

John may be right but his argument seems a little silly to me. Do you have to drive a Ford to report fairly on Ford Motor Co. or wear Levi-brand jeans to cover Levi-Strauss? What about the gender and race issues? Male reporters can be trusted to cover abortion but give 'em a Mac and they lose all sense of proportion? Maybe, but I'm not convinced. What about you? Details, I want details.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:18 PM | Comments (2)

October 13, 2005

Web 2.0: The Triumph of Amateur Hour?

I have never, ever understood the cult of professionalism adhered to by some journalists (bloggers have no journalism degrees, bloggers bad amateurs, bloggers threaten professionals, so must be crushed). Nor have I been on the bandwagon to eviserate those bastard pros that some "citizen journalists" have been riding for years. This either/or bullshit drives me nuts. It doesn't have to be a contest. But it is, and Nicholas Carr articulates in lucid, deadly prose both the problem with Wikipedia worship (he cites examples) and why, despite its flaws, the Cult of the Amateur will probably triumph.

The promoters of Web 2.0 venerate the amateur and distrust the professional. We see it in their unalloyed praise of Wikipedia. ... Perhaps nowhere, though, is their love of amateurism so apparent as in their promotion of blogging as an alternative to what they call "the mainstream media." Here's O'Reilly: "While mainstream media may see individual blogs as competitors, what is really unnerving is that the competition is with the blogosphere as a whole. This is not just a competition between sites, but a competition between business models. The world of Web 2.0 is also the world of what Dan Gillmor calls 'we, the media,' a world in which 'the former audience,' not a few people in a back room, decides what's important."

But wait, there's more:

I'm all for blogs and blogging. (I'm writing this, ain't I?) But I'm not blind to the limitations and the flaws of the blogosphere - its superficiality, its emphasis on opinion over reporting, its echolalia, its tendency to reinforce rather than challenge ideological extremism and segregation. Now, all the same criticisms can (and should) be hurled at segments of the mainstream media. And yet, at its best, the mainstream media is able to do things that are different from - and, yes, more important than - what bloggers can do. ... The Internet is changing the economics of creative work - or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture - and it's doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices. Wikipedia might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it's created by amateurs rather than professionals, it's free. And free trumps quality all the time.

Thanks to Dave Kearns for the link. More on the amateur-pro grudge match later.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:54 PM | Comments (1)

October 07, 2005

Phone Lust

Don't tell me you're surprised. Yup, the Pocket Film Festival, for mobile-phone auteurs, will be held in Paris this weekend. Such a bummer to miss it, although the site gives a little taste of what's in store. This mobile obession is new to me. The Internet is my life, but phones? Naw. I have an elderly Nokia 3310 that lets me place and accept calls but not much more. Until last week, that wasn't a problem. Let my husband chat on his Treo, I didn't give a fig.

But then my ten-year-old lobbied hard for the priviledge of getting a cell phone (she claims to be one of only three kids in her class without one. The shame! The horror!). After we decided it might be useful for the parents and not just the kid, we established an exacting and prolonged test of worthiness for this pricy gizmo. (I thought she should have to wait until her 40s to get a cell phone, just as I did.) But my kid did not falter and met every requirement with unnerving energy. Seems I forgot to add slaying a dragon to the list. That'll teach me.

So this week we bought her a Samsung. And after weeks of fondling alluring little phones in the name of familial research, my desire to acquire is at a fever pitch. Aside from being annoyed by the overpromise-underdeliver style of marketing initially practiced by Tre here in Sweden, I hadn't been paying much attention. Now that I know there are Swiss-Army phones with calorie counters, thermometers and soon, I imagine, corkscrews, how much longer can I hold out?

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2005

Virtual Sex vs. Hickeys and Hugs

"Nowadays, erotic behaviour in cyberspace is customary. Online dating is a million dollar industry. Within the everyday politics of erotic-romantic relationships, however, males and females still blush in each other's presence, caress tenderly and trade hickeys. Mainstream social science researches cyber-behaviour voluminously, but totally ignores commonplace fleshy phenomena. Our study probes this discrepancy. What does it mean that virtual sex is winning the current war between desire and technology? Why is the 'flesh' becoming increasingly marginalized?" asks the authors of "Flirting on the internet and the hickey: a hermeneutic" in Cyberpsychology & Behavior. (Those wachy Norweigians--who knew they were hickey-obsessed?)

Is there are war between desire and technology? I'm not so sure. But I do know this: hugging your gal is good for her blood pressure, and it's not something you can do in cyberspace.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2005

I Heart Ethan Johnson

I am not a multitasker. I can blog, or I can read other blogs. I can write for pay or I can blog. You can see this is leading to a picture of me holding out a tin can with a message: "For only 25 cents a day, you can support this pathetic linear-tasker and help keep her blogging." But no, I'm headed elsewhere. To Mr. Vision Thing, aka Ethan "Effern" Johnson, and how one of the things I miss, because I can either blog or read other bloggers, is his truly terrific business blog. (He purports to be a manager at a public Fortune 500 company. I purport to be a successful journalist. Believe what you want, this is the Internet. I'm too busy to fact-check.) Mr. Vision, as I like to think of him, has many gems, including a smart observation about blogging (in response to the seeming inclination among some PR practioners to make blogs the answer to every question):

When new developments like blogging or podcasting come about, the natural inclination appears to be to proclaim each development to be the Next Big Thing, determine how it shall be Monetized, and warn non-adherents that they will Lose, or worse, Die. That’s the pre-boil howl coming out of the pot. Eventually, the true benefits of the new development become apparent, and a sort of resonance is achieved, where the benefits of having the thing no longer need to be discussed; they are implicit.

Obvious? One would think, and yet, hear that noise? Yup, plenty of pre-boil howl going on. Wait a minute, I hear a different howl. More like a yowl, really, the sound of an author in agony after his book was gutted.

I simply cannot recommend It’s Not What You Say…It’s What You Do by Laurence Haughton. Sorry Laurence, I don’t know you personally, I felt the earnestness of your work radiating off of every page, and I was actually thrilled to find this at the library and moved it to the front of my burgeoning book backlog. But it’s headed back to the book drop. I made it as far as Chapter 6. By that I mean I made it like that Jet Blue plane stopped on the runway recently. It was a similar picture: Sparks flying, things whizzing by (in this case, text), and the sense of cutting one’s losses after having made it that far.

Gee, so what was the problem, exactly?

Assuming markets are conversations, the conversation went like this:

L Haughton: You need to execute!
Me: Right on!
LH: This book is all about the execution!
Me: Fantastic then!
LH: I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is… more execution!
Me: Rock & roll! W00t!
LH: Do you know who executes? [Company name].
Me: Great!
LH: And you know who else? [Person].
Me: Uh huh…?
LH: I read somewhere that execution was the “missing link” between getting things done and not. [Footnote]
Me: Mmm.
LH: This book is all about execution, and I’m going to show you all of the ways that execution helps people execute.
Me: (Whaa…? Page 76 already?)

Luckily I wasn't drinking a soda when I read the book review this morning or my keyboard would be history. I know I'm lifting far too much from this guy but I'm in thrall to his meaty putdowns, to the manly way he takes a big stick to the author. (My favorite bit of dialog in Notting Hill is when Julia Roberts says to Hugh Grant, "You know what they say about men with big feet." What? "Large shoes.")

The real deal-breaker came when the author talked about how [hospital] went about implementing their quality improvement program. So far, so good. Somehow one of the “key learnings” was to make a Pareto Chart (essentially) by “having a meeting and everyone brainstorming about what the problems are, and then voting on what the top 3 or 4 are.” Spooooooot went my drink. Excuse me, voting on the (perceived) key issues? You’re kidding, yeah? Things really soured out from there and never fully recovered. To clarify, assuming that the implementation was a smash success, it strikes me that they got lucky that the “key issues” were in fact, key.

I am not a Fortune 500 manager. For about 18 months I was a miserable middle manager painfully squeezed between my reports and my boss and barely escaped with my life. But even I, business pipsqueak, understand the stupidity of voting on the key issues.

Unless, of course, you want to pay me to write about it in which case I think it's a really, really fine idea.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:17 PM | Comments (6)

September 28, 2005

Unnecessary Crap: iPod Edition

Pete Gontier has thoughtfully forwarded this exciting release, courtesy of MacTech.

NWINDOWS introduces a new entertainment content/ecommerce platform based on one of the most popular time-passing activities –flipping through catalogs and magazines.

"San Francisco, CA, September 27, 2005 NWINDOWS, an entertainment/ecommerce content provider for digital home and mobile applications, announced the availability of high quality catalog slideshows for viewing on the iPod and Mac OS X.

"NWINDOWS is the first to provide relaxing, 'low concentration' content in the form of high quality, no/low text catalog slideshows optimized for both 'big screen' (TV/monitor) and 'small screen' (iPod) use.

"Consumers may download and import catalog slideshows into iPhoto (or Quicktime) for viewing on the big screen, and relax while the 'pages' are turned for them as they listen to their own favorite music. Or they may enjoy their favorite catalogs while on the run, anywhere and any time they have a few extra minutes on their hands.

“ 'Clearly, there is strong demand for new, exciting content suitable for the red-hot iPod,' says Deborah Quinlan, President of NWINDOWS. 'Consumers are demanding more interesting content for use on mobile devices beyond another game or ring tone.'

“ 'Our slideshow catalog content is selected and designed specifically to be aesthetically pleasing –something that would be enjoyable to watch whether someone is interested in shopping, or not,' says Quinlan. 'We have initially partnered with Ujena Swimwear, a company that possesses a strong consumer brand image and an appeal to both women and men. We believe this content is something that consumers will enjoy watching and will want to show-off to others on their iPods.' "

The catalog slideshows are available as free downloads. Now I think maybe, just maybe, somebody would look at this stuff if it came preloaded on a device but who in the hell is going to go to the trouble of downloading, say, the Lillian Vernon catalog no matter how cute the personalized totes. But my pal, the award-winning, all-knowing Pete, actually paid attention while reading this announcement and understood it instantly. As he put it so aptly:

1. It's a new mode of acquiring more crap we don't need.

2. This isn't anything any real people really want, but that doesn't matter as long as catalog producers buy in.

3. They're launching it with porn.

Which is a truly popular time-passing activity, waaay more popular than browsing catalogs. But Pete, it's not porn. Not really, even if the body language says take me, I'm yours. Still, it seems clear that when Quinlan claims "this content is something that consumers will enjoy watching and will want to show-off to others on their iPods," what she really means is that men will love showing off babes in bikinis to other guys and adolescent boys will have a high time downloading this stuff to show off at school. (It's a pain in the ass, though. To get it on your iPod, you have to "1. Click on the thumbnails to download the photos. 2. Import them into iPhoto. 3. Select the photos and click 'New Slideshow.' " 4. Download the slideshow to your iPod. Since I'm not a hormonal 14-year-old named Jason, thanks but no thanks.)

Images of naked women have, famously, been the driving force behind many a technological development. It's possible that images of near-naked women might do the trick for NWINDOWS. Possible but unlikely. NWINDOWS appears to be more of a cash-generating scheme for the principals than an actual solution to any consumer problem. Here at Deborah Branscum Inc., which is more of a flawed cash-generating scheme for moi than an actual editorial solution to any specific business communications problem, I have great sympathy for Quinlan's plight.

And very little faith that she'll be hearing lots of ka-ching sounds anytime soon. Am I underestimating the power of scantily clad women? Lord knows, it wouldn't be the first time.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 08:31 AM | Comments (4)

September 22, 2005

Ringtone Marketer Must Turn Down Volume

I'm not a total luddite but I'm just elderly enough that I had no idea that there was such a thing as the Crazy Frog ringtone (based on "the sound of a revving moped"), or that it had a Swedish connection (it was "spawned seven years ago by a Swedish motorcycle enthusiast") or that in the U.K., at least, it was "the first ringtone to enter the pop charts, where it stayed in the No 1 slot for four weeks." So what's the marketing angle? Here's the London Times:

PARENTS claimed a victory over the Crazy Frog after the High Court upheld a ruling that will banish the annoying ringtone advertisements until after the watershed.The company behind the mobile telephone ringtone breached advertising restrictions by appealing to children without making clear the true cost of its products.

Almost 300 people complained that Jamba!, based in Germany, did not make clear that its mobile phone services were offered on a weekly, subscription basis rather than a one-off payment. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found that children had unwittingly run up large phone bills and ruled that the commercials cannot now be shown before 9pm.

The Crazy Frog advertisements were shown on 40,000 occasions during a single month on British television. The post-9pm restriction is intended to place it outside of children’s viewing hours. ... The ASA had previously criticised the commercials for their failure to make clear that the £3 weekly charge was not for one ringtone but a weekly subscription. The watchdog has found that the on-screen warning “16-plus and bill payer’s permission” was insufficient to stop children subscribing to the service via text message.

Not fair, whined the company:

Jamba!, which has sold 11 million Crazy Frog ringtones, argued that its advertisements were not aimed at children and produced evidence that the target purchaser of a Crazy Frog ringtone was aged between 18 and 29.

The company said that a ringtone was “a fun item, of no harm to adults or children, and no more expensive than many small items on which a child may spend pocket money”. But the ASA said that the characters had a “strong appeal” to children and that “peer pressure”, and a No 1 Crazy Frog single, had exacerbated the phenomenon.

Jamba! is appealing the ruling. Meanwhile, says the Times, "the telecoms watchdog Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services ... fined the company that supplies the Crazy Frog ringtone to Jamba! £10,000 for sending out unsolicited text messages for a premium-rate auction."

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2005

When News Roundups Go Bad

There are times when the New York Times-CNET arrangement is less than the sum of its parts. I just innocently clicked on the "Blog roundup" link on the NYT web site under a headline about hurricane damage in the Gulf Coast and landed at a CNN overview of blogs about Hurricane Katrina. Here's the lead: "As Hurricane Katrina tore across the Gulf Coast on Monday, the Web provided some of the most vivid, first-hand accounts of the storm's destructive path in the form of blogs, online photo galleries and discussion forums."

Like me, you may be interested in some of those vivid, first-hand accounts. Here's one of the riveting examples provided by CNET. "John Strain, a social worker in Covington, La., recounted a sleepless night bracing for the storm in his online journal. 'It is 4:45 am now and I suppose I am up for the duration,' he wrote on Monday morning. 'My next task is to couple my coffee pot with a powered outlet and begin a caffeine transfusion. We are hanging in there, but the worst is yet to come.' " True enough but now I'm the one who needs coffee, this stuff is sending me to sleep.

There was more in that vein. Imagine if the piece had been titled "Newspapers Record Katrina Destruction" and wrote about coverage by local newspapers while leaving out any juicy bits. That bloggers blog has been firmly established for a while now. That's not news, it hasn't been for ages and that kind of coverage makes about as much sense as the early movies that were simply plays on film. For heaven's sake, CNET, get a grip. And if the NYT is going to link to CNET stuff from the home page without labeling it as CNET content, then the NYT editors need to put CNET on a shorter leash and demand better stuff.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)

But Do Amputees Want 2-inch Heels?

Look out, Heather Mills McCartney! Female amputees are giving the gorgeous former model a run for her money with a new sexy, shapely leg created by a Wakefield man. Paul Harney has developed the LISA (Lightweight Inconspicuous Shapely Active) leg for amputees who want to wear high heels and don't want unsightly lines on their backsides - often caused by the prosthetic limb's edge. ``What women want is a functional, pretty leg. Women can wear a 2-inch heel with this leg and go barefoot,'' said Harney, owner of the FDR Center for Prosthetics and Orthotics, Inc., in Nashua, N.H.

I'm all for functional, pretty legs. But 2-inch heels? Fergettaboutit! From the Boston Herald.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2005

Craig's List in Stockholm + Apple and Intel = What?

A while back I whined less than attractively to someone at Craig's List. I wanted a Stockholm branch and I wanted it now. Time passed (months? years?) and yesterday I noticed: oh my gawd, we've got it! Only it's sooo disappointing because nobody knows that Stockholm has Craig's List yet. There were all of 13 jobs listed yesterday and most of them aren't even related to Stockholm. But dude, if you are in Stockholm and you can, like, shoot a digital camera and, like, ask questions, you can get $150 and all the hearing damage you want by covering the Sweden Rock Festival this weekend for an LA-based "motorcycles and entertainment lifestyles magazine." Cool or what? If you can't make the festival, no worries: just spread the word about the Stockholm Craig's List, okay?

In other news, several friends had fun speculating on what the spawn of the Apple-Intel partnership should be dubbed. Suggestions include Mactel (Tim Holmes), Apptel or Inpple (Peter Linde), Mintel (Joseph Holmes' son Julian) and Intellimac (Ulf Molin). But no, Steve says it's going to be MacIntel.

Pete Gontier was paying attention as the rumors flew across the web before the partnership news was confirmed. He wrote, at the time, "There is sooooo much misinformation. And by this I don't mean I know what's going to be announced and the press doesn't. I mean the press doesn't even have remotely decent sources to interview." What, you need an example? "The hapless Peter Glaskowsky is my favorite. He works as an analyst for The Envisioneering Group, in Seaford, N.Y. 'It's a bunch of bull,' he's quoted as saying in eWeek, then goes on to detail how uninformed he is before dropping this stinker: '...IBM has no other customers willing to buy large quantities [of the G5].' Yeah, as if Apple is subsidizing IBM! This guy must be somebody's nephew. Within a few hours, the president of Glaskowsky's firm, Richard Doherty, had silenced Glaskowsky and gotten the NYT to quote Doherty about a 'seismic shift' which is 'bound to rock the industry.' Thanks for the specifics, fearless leader!"

Pete's not the only one to blow the whistle on Glaskowsky. As Web Pro News put it: "A decision that was eleven years in the making became official during the opening of the Apple WorldWide Developers Conference. Paul Thurrott and the Wall Street Journal had it right. Peter Glaskowsky and Leander Kahney were dead wrong."

I suspect I have more sympathy for both analysts and journalists than Pete does. And since I know John Markoff I have a hard time believing that Doherty forced a quote into the story. Remember, newspapers run on deadlines and it's often hard to find truly knowledgeable sources on short notice. Still I understand that it's painful to read quotes from people who don't know what they're talking about. Luckily, this doesn't seem to be a problem for Stuffola's hardy audience of 84 readers. For that I'm grateful.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 02, 2005

Happy Birthday Alertbox; Farewell Free Agent Nation

My stroll down memory lane continues today thanks to a couple of items in my inbox that highlight the dot-com era. The first is an Alertbox mailing from Jakob Nielsen announcing the site's tenth birthday. Congrats, Jakob. Influential people tend to attract both fans and critics and Jakob (who spoke at one of my conferences and is a swell guy) is no exception. His work on web useability guidelines inspired lots of things, including a a brief, sarcastic "what would Jakob do?" movement. You don't have to agree with his specific recommendations to agree that the web was a design mess in the beginning. Jakob has done a kick-ass job of encouraging appropriate, user-friendly design. (It's not Jakob's fault when companies ignore his research--such as how to make their sites useful for PR.) May Alertbox live long and prosper.

The second is news that the Free Agent Nation enewsletter is no more. Remember the galvanizing December 1997 cover story ("The Brand Called You") in Fast Company? "There's a new movement in the land. From coast to coast, in communities large and small, citizens are declaring their independence and drafting a new bill of rights. Meet some of the 25 million residents of Free Agent, USA." The stirring call to arms was written by Daniel Pink and dazzled many of the free agents and wannabe free agents of my acquaintence, including a Swedish friend. As the article explained, "Free agents gladly swap the false promise of security for the personal pledge of authenticity. 'In free agency,' says Burish, who now designs training programs, 'people assume their own shape rather than fit the shape of some corporate box.' "

The idea of working on your own terms, work that is "personal, authentic, fun, and rewarding," is a compelling concept and led to Pink's Free Agent Nation book ("The Future of Working for Yourself"), which came out in 2001. Pink's manifesto offered a kind of liberation theology for the cubicle set. It was also representative of a type of utopian thinking common then and common now. According to "The Hidden Work In Virtual Work," a paper prepared in 1999 for the International Conference on Critical Management Studies, Pink's article was just one example "of visions of a world of more flexible, mobile, temporary and technologically mediated work. There are many more: as marketing imagery, as journalistic reports from the world of work, as presumably well-researched case studies and theoretical analyses in journal articles, as popular culture thinking, as lunch talk in business circles, as themes of conference and magazine launches, as explicit goals for organizational restructuring policies and implicit bases of technology designs."

As the paper goes on to explain, these cheery reports share an unwillingness to acknowledge that most of the costs of shifting to a supposedly swell, flexible, impowering, Free Agent Nation are borne by individuals; indeed these bright, shiny articulated visions of a techno-powered future usually are unwilling to acknowledge any real costs at all. (In a similar vein, I remember contributing to a Newsweek piece, around the same time, about the seller's market in tech labor by interviewing a programmer who could insist on twice-a-week tee time as a condition of employment. As he explained, he expected to be at the office practically 24/7 and needed some daylight time for golf. Not exactly my ideal term-setting situation.) For most individuals, there are always real costs: for self-employment (see the paper for pre-bust examples); for full-time gigs; and for unemployment. That how life is--nothing comes free. And during the tech slump, which created massive unemployment, many talented individuals had tons of skills but discovered that setting their own terms of employment was no longer one of them. (I'm sure there are truckloads of thriving, accomplished free agents, like Dan Pink, out there somewhere. I'm just more of a disgruntled rogue.)

Pink is now concentrating on a new book, A Whole New Mind. "The era of 'left brain' dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which 'right brain' qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate. That's the argument at the center of this provocative and original book, which uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times." Given the continued success of bastard bosses, I find the premise a bit rosy but that won't stop me from reading this new book from a terrific writer.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 01, 2005

Dotcom Wayback Machine

Just found out about the database of failed dotcoms thanks to Katherine S. Mangan. "When future historians look back on the dot-com era, they may be surprised to come across records of companies like Tagarama.com, which was dreamed up as a way for passing motorists to connect with one another later by plugging license-plate numbers into a matchmaking Web site. The company, dreamed up by an entrepreneur in Grass Valley, Calif., has disappeared from the Internet, but an assistant professor of management at the University of Maryland at College Park is making sure that it --�and thousands of other little-known dot-com ventures --�are not forgotten.

"David A. Kirsch, an assistant professor who teaches management and organization at Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, has created an online archive that chronicles the rise and fall of Internet-related start-ups in the heady and tumultuous years from 1996 to 2002. ...'I view myself as a biodiversity specialist going into the Amazon,' says Mr. Kirsch, when asked how he decides which dot-coms to list. 'If you see the Amazon is filled with piranhas, you don't need to collect piranhas. But if there are only three of a rare species of bird, I try to save one of those. It's not that I'm not interested in the thriving species, but it's the at-risk species we need to collect now or lose forever.' "

News of the archive, which requires free registration to access (and none of those temp disposable e-mail addresses thank you very much) triggered my nostalgia reflex. So I had to pull out my copy of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's June 1999 Internet Company Handbook, which covered the top 90 Internet companies of the time, many of which survive to this day (RIP eToys, insert your own joke here). I've also been leafing through my copy of Principles of Internet Marketing from 2000. And right there at the end of chapter 9 (Traffic and Brand Building) I find my friend Laurie Flynn, savvy and lovely contributor to the New York Times, cited in Endnote number one ("Alexa Internet: The Search as a Communal Effort.") I don't miss the attitude of the era but I do miss that sense of possibility.

Luckily, blogging and podcasting and videocasting have made tech exciting again and for normal people, not stock speculators or executive-suite swine. (That comes later.) Right here is where I planned to add a snarky comment about how preserving the business plans of loser companies isn't exactly comparable to rescuing endangered flora and fauna. It's not. But the database *is* oddly compelling and now that I've poked around a bit I have a better understanding of why it might be catnip to academics.

The database contains, for example, a PDF of a single page from a PowerPoint presentation by the once-thriving (1800 employees) Scient consultancy. The image shows a close up of an emergency vehicle and emergency tape is stretched across the front of the image. The description explains, "This is a page from a Scient consulting pitch in 2000. The original powerpoint slide has sound effects to increase the visual impact. In the one known instance in which this slide was used, the client hired the Scient team." Doesn't that make you desperate to see the entire thing?

Other juicy bits include video clips (including "La Vida Loca," a Quicktime clip "from what appears to be a Scient karaoke night"), more than 6MB of files on the company culture, and news that PhD student Andrew Russell is working on an open-source history of Scient for those who'd care to collaborate. But there are no files, at least not yet, on Scient failures. Which is exactly how I'd like to be remembered after I'm gone. Professor Kirsch, I salute your smarts. By promising informants confidentiality if they want it and by restricting some documents to bonafide researchers (unlike daytrippers like me), you've created an amazing wayback machine that should only grow in depth and complexity over time. Very cool.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 17, 2005

AdSense for Feeds Now in Beta

UPDATE: The best practices for AdSense for Feeds includes these recommendations: "Don't include more than one ad unit per article" and "Place the ad unit at the end of articles." I thought, based on the conversation below, that Google alone determined ad frequency but apparently not. If you know better, let me know. Also, just noticed that Adam Stiles called for the creation of AdSense for Feeds last November. Looks like he got what he wanted.

***

Right about now word is out at the Syndicate conference (and soon on Google’s blog) that the company’s no-comment trials with news-feed advertising are over, replaced by a public beta called AdSense for Feeds. The ever-patient Shuman Ghosemajumder (business product manager) and way chipper Barry Schnitt (PR pro) briefed me yesterday (a lucky accident of my research) about this bit of news.

Quick facts about AdSense for Feeds:

*The ads are targeted off web articles or postings via their permalinks, not the feed itself, “so we make sure we have the full context to give our technology the most benefits to produce relevent ads.”

*The ads are rendered as images. “We have to conduct a real-time auction so that our advertisers are accurately represented in terms of their budgets and the current state of our advertising network. So rendering the ads as an image allows us to not only serve that function but also gives us the maximum amount of compatibility with feed readers."

*AdSense for Feeds fits into Google’s existing advertising framework so it uses the same technology and the same terms and conditions. “You need to be an approved AdSense publisher in order to use AdSense for Feeds.” In other words, wannabe AdSense publishing partners must check all porno and most profanity at the door. Darn.

*News feed ad frequency is predetermined by Google. And what has Google predetermined, exactly? “We're experimenting with it right now. There are different options that we have, there are many different levers that we have in the way of being able to tweak [and] enhance our targeting.”

*Flexibility is limited. Folks who want to buy advertising from Google’s network can do so. If I understood it correctly, you must buy Google search results (natch). Your ads will also run on web sites across Google’s Network, in news feeds, in Gmail (ideally on purpose and not by accident) and, if you choose, on Google’s Content Network, which has a site-targeting option. You don’t have to run ads across the entire network but you can’t choose to advertise in feeds only, for example.

The surprising bit to me was Google’s ostensible reason for the move: to make the web a better place. OK, I’m paraphrasing but how would *you* translate this quote?

“By actually giving a wide set of popular feeds access to Google's advertising network, one of the things that we want to do is encourage them to put more high-quality content in there so that it's not just interesting to those most technologically sophisticated users but also to mainstream users.

“And I think that's one of the things that's been missing for mainstream users, because a lot of their favorite publications don't have a lot of high-quality content in their feeds right now. Just because they haven't been able to be compensated for that. ...They are viewing feeds...as primarily a promotional mechanism, to bring people back to their web site, which is where monetization actually occurs.

“And what we want to do is encourage a shift in that thinking. So that publishers realize that users use RSS feeds and Atom feeds because it's convenient for them. And by making it as positive an experience as possible for those users by putting as much high-quality content in their feeds that publishers are going to attract more users who are interested in consuming their content. ...And they'll have the opportunity for monetization from our advertising.”

So does that mean Google will require full-text feeds from advertisers?

“It's part of our guidelines that we want as much high-quality content in the feed as possible. What we're encouraging publishers to do is have full-text syndication of their articles. But in many cases publishers aren't willing to be that bold immediately. So what we're asking for then is as rich a snippet as possible on the article."

And does Google define that in some way?

“It's something more than a single sentence. We don't specifically bar people because there are different ways of looking at the issue and one of the ways ... is that if someone is just putting out a headline-based feed but users are actually subscribing to it, then even though it contains advertising then maybe that trade-off is working well.”

I asked Ghosemajumder to explain one more time why Google wanted to encourage full-text feeds.

“You’re familiar with Google’s overall mission statement, to organize the world's information, making it universally accessible and useful.”

(Well, no, but I didn’t admit it. Why doesn’t anyone ever ask me about IDG’s ten corporate values? At least I remember the action-oriented, let's try it attitude.)

“One thing which is consistent with that is just being able to make sure that the world’s information is continuing to grow and that we're not being short-sighted when it comes to any of our business opportunities."

What a relief. It’s not just about making the web a better place. It’s also about making the web a better place for Google’s business. Alarmed shareholders, you may now exhale.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Microsoft and MessageCast

I'm researching RSS advertising and hoped to post excerpts from my interview with Royal Farros on the topic but an old war wound (well, an old typing injury) got in the way. To recap, Microsoft bought real-time alert and messaging service MessageCast Wednesday. When I spoke to cofounder Farros the following day, he framed the sale as a tribute, in its way, to Microsoft's innovation. Microsoft?? Yup.

"Microsoft needs to get credit for being the innovators here because they are. It's amazing that even internally they might not recognize it as much but as a third-party, we staked our business on it," he said. "They have this beautiful big network built out. Essentially, what are we adding to it? We're adding a fast on-ramp. ... We looked around and we said, this is what we want to do. We don’t want to build a network. Who’s farthest in front? That’s why we’ve been working with Microsoft for a year and a half. "

When MessageCast was founded, RSS wasn't in the picture. At that time, "we were a broadcast mechanism over an alternative channel. And that, in and of itself, was interesting because it solved some problems. It was better performing. It was completely opt-in and customer controlled. You could detect presence. It was non-spam. Good things. But the interesting twist came when you apply that with what’s exploded: RSS and relevant advertising. RSS becomes a universal data trigger for all of this information. And relevant advertising, hey, that becomes a way to pay for it all."

But exactly how will advertising pay for it all? To find out, you'll have to read the published article in a few months (ah, the world of paper publishing). Stay tuned.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 12, 2005

MSN Buys MessageCast...And All I Got Was This Lousy Post

Update: Since the entry below, I was able to interview Royal Farros as agreed (many thanks to Farros and Renee Deger for keeping their promise). "I really think Microsoft needs to get the credit for innovation here," he told me. Why? Find out tomorrow when I post excerpts from our interview.

I've been trying to interview Royal Farros of MessageCast for ten days to no avail. Finally I find out the source of my bad luck: the company has been snapped up by MSN. So much for partnering with AOL and Yahoo. As I detailed in earlier interviews with Farros, MesageCast created a real-time alert system that MSN has used for a couple of years now. According to eWeek, "Earlier this year, news also began to spread that MessageCast was developing a keyword-based ad network for RSS." Yes it did. Via this blog. (Thanks so very much for the link, she typed bitterly.) So apparently MSN plans to take this whole alert thing seriously. But will anyone at MSN explain it to me? We shall see. (But not before the story I'm writing comes out.)

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 03, 2005

Multitasking Makes Us Stupid (But We Knew That)

This may not be news to you but it's news to me. Not the stupidity part, which I recognize from my own experience. I mean the research part from New Scientist. "Eighty volunteers were asked to carry out problem solving tasks, firstly in a quiet environment and then while being bombarded with new emails and phone calls. Although they were told not to respond to any messages, researchers found that their attention was significantly disturbed. Alarmingly, the average IQ was reduced by 10 points - double the amount seen in studies involving cannabis users. But not everyone was affected by to the same extent - men were twice as distracted as women."

Thanks to Sean Carton for the link.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 28, 2005

Events: Reboot and "Cultures of eBay"

I'm slobbering over two events that I probably can't attend. Please go for me and report back.

The first is Reboot, which is slated for June 7 to 10. (Its search for "practical visionaries" is endearing.) While I would crawl over moderately sharp glass to hang with Doc Searls and Robert Scoble in the flesh once more, I can't spend money I don't have. Not even to meet and/or hear from interesting tech folks who are speaking in a city that's practically in the neighborhood. It's painful that I haven't been able to convince an editor to subsidize a cheap trip to Copenhagen to cover this tech conference, which is run by a guy named Thomas Madsen-Mygdal. He appears to have modern Scandinavian values, and I mean that in a good way. How do I know? Well, Reboot has been around for awhile but wasn't held last year because Madsen-Mygdal was on paternity leave after the birth of his first child. (The very thought makes my feminist heart beat a little faster in joy.)

Not that I have a clue what Reboot actually is. "After more than 10 years of old ways of creation, old values, and old models for communicating and organizing ourselves, new ways are emerging. That is what reboot7 is about." Hmm, only 10 years? I was sure the planet was a tiny bit more elderly than that. In any case, Reboot's "heroes are the mavericks who live the new ways and thereby lead and validate their possibilities—The Sharing Way, The Creation Way, The Web Way, The History Way and The Natural Way." So it's a little confusing to this girl, sign me up for a sponsor, I don't want to miss it.

As a Material Girl (yes, I know there are many of us), I don't want to miss "Cultures of eBay" either, an intellectual slamdance slated for August 24 and 25 at the University of Essex in Britain. "The overall aim of this conference is to bring together academics and practitioner groups from both business and the voluntary sector, to explore and ‘make sense’ of the cultural, social and economic aspects of eBay, the Internet auction site, and consider its social and business implications." Yes, yes, yes but will there be a boot sale?

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 20, 2005

True Willy Wonka Flavors

My daughter and I have watched the video version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory many times (Roald Dahl may have hated it, but not us). A favorite scene is when the annoying Violet Beauregarde snatches a piece of prototype gum from Willy Wonka that contains the flavors of a three-course meal. As she chews, Violet exclaims over the delicious soup and main-course flavors. But when she gets to dessert, blueberry pie, the child turns purple, swells up like an enormous blueberry and has to be taken to the de-juicing room. (Click here to see models of key events crafted by young fans.)

So now it turns out that gum that tastes like a three-course meal may be possible, if these claims are true. "Imagine eating a confection that, as you bite into it, first tastes of strawberries, then lemon, then blackberry in sequence. Well, the concept of sequential flavouring is a reality with the latest controlled-release technology," notes Food Manufacture in an item about TasteTech Ltd. in the products section of its June 2004 issue (discovered in PDF format via a commercial database courtesy of my local library, bless its soul).

"A variety and mixture of flavourings can be applied using the CR technology," explains the British company. "The method works by microencapsulating the individual flavourings within an invisible and taste-free microfilm of vegetable oil. This microfilm can then be controlled to release whenever the manufacturer desires, either during processing, cooking or eating. Due to this control, flavourings that would normally become 'lost' during the baking process actually remain intact. The technology also goes one step further. With TasteTech's sequential™ flavouring, flavourings can be programmed to be released one after the other. So a scone can taste of strawberry one minute followed by cream the next."

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 24, 2005

High School and the Blogosphere: A Consideration

Ages ago Doc Searls, who is justly popular and whom I adore, posted the following: "This isn't high school here. We don't have to suck up to the popular kids, or try to be like them." No, we don't. But honestly, who doesn't want to be one of the cool kids? My rueful feeling about being number 50+ on the Google search for "Deborah" instead of in the top ten reminds me that while the blogosphere isn't high school, it's not always so very different. Remember those compare-and-contrast essays from our school days? Here's my extremely serious, fair and accurate comparison of the two:

1. In high school, girls rule, boys drool. In the blogosphere, boys rule, girls drool.

2. In high school, it's jocks vs. nerds. In