internet

Responsible reporting (or, sorry for being a doos, ClickThinking)

brad — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:23:27 +0200

Yesterday I posted about how a local web company recently sold the work of a well known, local, independent web professional. What they did broke netiquette, ethics, and definitely copyright law. Much geek froth and outrage occurred, and a tiny storm broke out on the internet. I jumped on the bandwagon with my post because:

I have SIWOTI syndrome
Content climbs higher on google when lots of reputable sources link to what is considered to be definitive text. Whijo is considered to be somewhat of a reputable source by google, and because I use the best CMS on the internet google likes reading what I am writing, so I wanted to contribute to improving Coda's rank on google for this subject
My goal is to improve the quality of the South African web, and improvement/evolution comes when the economy/environment favours better products, and denounces poor product. I denounced poor product

The only problem is that sometimes success quickly exceeds expectation, and in this case, after google crawled whijo.net, my article (then entitled 'Do not use the services of ClickThinking') landed on the first page of results. Coda's much more democratic 'What were you thinking, ClickThinking?' reached higher on the first page of results, as it should have. So, geek-google-penis aside, the weight of what I had done (measured in the internet based ISO standard of LOLCATS, or Lc) struck me. I know it is all a storm in a tea cup, but a post with a title as venomous as that sticks around, and ultimately may take business from them (and I am in no position to decide if their poor form deserves to take business away from them). I had behaved like a Journalist (well, one who didn't do too well in the media and ethics course). I thought up a catchy headline, and published it with a self-congratulatory click. I guess it comes back to thinking before doing, and not being a turd on the internet. So I changed the title, and when the site is re-crawled it will have a new title which is a lot closer to the heart of the matter at hand, and a lot less sensationalist.

Sometimes my powerful Sense For Injustice conspires with my Sense For Bad Web Development, and I peak too soon, type before I think, and end up looking childish, and not accomplishing my goals. I am usually calm and rational, but some things short circuit over that calm, rational, ethical brain. So, in summation, I apologise to ClickThinking for going too far off the handle, but I still deplore what they did.

As an aside, should I really be able to get into the first page of results on google for a company that just won a web analytics award?

Social norms on teh internets

brad — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:12:39 +0200

So, I have been on teh internets for a while, I have been a member of many mailinglists, chatted on irc, etc. etc. So maybe I have a more attuned sense of the social norms of the internet. Years ago a bunch of script kiddies had a mailing list called KiDDiESoc, KiDDiESoc was great, at it's peak it had traffic in the region of 100 messages per day. Between maybe 15 people. Many of these messages were what can only be called spam. Spam and baggy pantsing. We had arguments about top, bottom, and inline posting. We argued, we joked, but mostly, (in my opinion) it was a space to share ideas, and explore the social norms of electronically mediated discussion and socialisation. There were other good things, but for me, we all definitely learned how to be better internet citizens for it. Lessons like:

Be as clear as possible in what you write (especially when arguing) because a lot of subtlety is lost when reading characters on a blinking terminal
Be respectful of people's boundaries, because it is a lot easier to overstep the mark
Try to remain calm and don't vent against someone personally if you are annoyed at their argument
Try at all times to keep the signal to noise ratio as high as possible

There are many more that exist, are unspoken, or are jotted down in RFCs and random pages on the intertubes. What I am getting at is that, like my finely tuned sense of justice, I have a finely tuned sense of the social norms that dictate my interactions on the web.

In a few days time the Digital Citizens Indaba is happening in Grahamstown. Last year I was involved in the indaba, and so my name would have been associated with it (quite possibly on a facebook group or something). So a few weeks ago a guy by the name of With Held* sent me a friend request, with a note saying "Hi there ,I'M looking forward in seeing you at the Digital Citizen Indaba this year.I will be coming with Ramon Thomas.". Now, I am not a fan of Ramon Thomas you are welcome to google him, and look at his website, and even meet him to create your own opinions. Either way, that friend request annoyed me, because it was unsolicited, and, if we deconstruct "friend request" we see that it contains the word "friend". According to that wikipedia link, "'Friendship' is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more beings". I do not claim that every "friend" on my "friend list" is exactly in that box, but both people involved in those transactions have deemed the relationship as mutually beneficial, and justified. I have never met With Held, I probably will never meet With Held, I am not friends with the person he mentions, and I am not attending the event he mentions (and I personally know a few other people who got the same friend request from With Held, who are in exactly the same position as me). So, if we look at it, he is sending unsolicited, unjustified, non-mutually beneficial, "friend requests" to Random people on facebook. In a way, that sounds like something else I am familiar with. SPAM. Gracefully, I ignored his friend request. Then, yesterday, he sent another one. Which pissed me off. I vented, I channeled, and I may have broken some of the rules I mentioned above, when I sent him this message (Amanda said I should have stopped after the second sentence or so, but I needed to get my point across):

Hi,

I am not going to the DCI, and, while Ramon Thomas may think it is a good idea to "network" with facebook, you are using tactics that are commonly used by spammers. I am not your friend, I have not ever met you, and I probably won't ever meet you. You are breaking social norms, and if everyone on the internet broke accepted social norms, then no one would want to use the internet. It is quite ironic that you are attending the digital citizens indaba, and yet you clearly have no idea what social norms exist in the digital medium.

I know multiple people you have tried to friend, and your behaviour verges on harassment. When I IGNORED your friend request, please RESPECT ME, and back THE FUCK OFF.

So, I feel like the last sentence probably was a little harsh, but, hands up who is tired of spammers and people who think the internet has vastly different rules that govern it?

* Names changed to protect the identity of the person

Successful web applications

brad — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:36:08 +0200

I have a little theory I have been working on, it is probably dead obvious to some people, but it only crystalised in my head relatively recently. I have had a few ideas in my time (so far none have made it to the real world), and in mentally stepping through these ideas I have started to refine my methods of evaluating an idea. One of the mental tests I have been using recently is:

Does this idea:

Help some business/cross section of people do what they do, more efficiently/economically?
Would the technology associated to my idea help me act more efficiently in an environment of competition?
Or, does this idea earn me income by facilitating other people earning income

So, Point 1 and point 3 interact in an interesting way, since helping people operate more efficiently/economically in their business, I am effectively providing a service which facilitates other people earning income. There is a subtle difference, but I guess point 1 could be considered a further classification of point 3.

Basically, for me, the pencil test of an idea, deciding on its value and functionality, is "Does this make other people money", and that is the difference that social applications have brought to the table. Generally the oft touted value in a web app is "create eyeballs, and sell advertising", and it is valid, but it is not the only golden egg. Facebook has pretty much gotten the lion-share of eyeballs in recent time, and they have a powerful and subtle distinction over other eyeball generators: targeted advertising. If you look over the questions you answer on your profile it reads just like (but, is disguised well enough not to seem like) the kind of thing you see on marketing surveys. They offer a fantastic platform to advertisers: you can choose your segment _exactly_, pay per advert, etc. etc. Either way, facebook is successful on two fronts, it helps people be more efficient in their social networking (i.e. something they do normally), and provides a platform for companies to advertise efficiently (lets not get into effectiveness). So, they win on point 1, and they win on point 3. They also perform well on point 2, because they used technology well to achieve better efficiency in a competitive market.

But I didn't come here to praise just the facebook, I was only trying to illustrate my point. So, how well do the ideas floating round your head fit into my picture? If you hypothetically test your idea, does it honestly do well against those criteria? And, if it doesn't could you modify your idea to fit into that framework?

I think too many web applications are hyped up (the hype curve, duh), and brush over these things. There are lots of apps floating around which I know I will try out, say "neat" and never use again, because they don't help me be more efficient or help me make money (not to say that said app may not be good for other people).

The other further classification is "does this make it harder, or easier for someone to do said task" and that must take into account factors like bandwidth, computer availability etc. Good ideas meld into our lifestyles. A good example is 3D, interactive displays, they are a cute concept, and wow the audience on the bourne identity, but they are unrealistic until certain things happen that make them _easier_ to use than our current interactions with the tech around us. Its for that reason that people bleat about the iPhone not having a keyboard, because, well, the keyboard is a banging idea (still), and quite hard to beat.

A recent example of this was the new South African foray into cellphone based money transactions called "wiWallet". Their site claims it is "payment simplified". They are trying to crack the nut that people have been trying to crack for ages...turning your cellphone into a "wallet". But IMHO they have fared poorly. I personally have moved from using cash to using my credit card for everything, so I could get away with sticky taping my CC onto the back of my phone, and have a better opportunity of being able to pay almost anywhere. The idea of coding your CC onto your phone removes that physical token, but doesn't seem to add much value beyond the romantic idea of not having to carry a CC around. So your target market is now: People who have credit cards, and are willing to pay more money per month, for the chance that they will be able to pay for something without carrying their wallet (if their vendor has a machine which can do it). If they removed the need for having a credit card (like taking the money out of your airtime, etc.) then they would be moving into an interesting territory. Since I have to carry my driver's license (because I drive most of the places I am going to shop), carrying my credit card does not cost me anything extra. wiWallet does not make it more efficient for me to make a payment, it does facilitate making people money, but it doesn't improve on the model the credit card already provides. To me it feels like a hi-tech solution for a low-tech problem. Just my 2c.

Also, for real, genuine success, in the words of J.D. Hitchcock "Make your (website|application) awesome".

On internet history meme

brad — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:17:12 +0200

I saw this on B-List and I am not one to stop the marching hoardes of an internet meme about geeky stuff.

$ history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s\n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head
  103   ls
   67   cd
   62   vim
   48   svn
   23   sudo
   21   ssh
   18   mysql
   16   date
   13   xrandr
   11   mv

Miguel Ghobangieno is an idiot

brad — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 15:05:42 +0200

I have never wanted to really start a meme, or a blogmob, but this guy is a real tonsil. I initially heard about him when Mandy forwarded an email he sent to the linuxchix mailinglist. Basically he feels that womens rights, feminism, etc. are all things which should disappear. You can see some pearler work by him on the debian-woman mailing list, here (there are a few posts by him, just look for his name). Clearly he is trolling under a pseudonym, or he is just a dick. I just wonder who the hell he thinks he is that he feels he can speak for a debian community, or linux, or free software community, when in fact he has little or no Internet presence, I bet he barely even knows how to use a computer, let alone decide who should and should not be able be valueable members to a community.

Personally i think he has had some nasty experience with women before, or he is just a teenager being a tonsil. Miguel, if you are listening, realise that gender oppression is a very real thing, and stop being a dick.