Canuckflack

I once had an employee who hated my habit of picking up a red pen immediately after being given a document to review.

You know, habits are borne from practice. Hours and hours of practice.

Where Katie Chatfield “wished she could distribute them widely,” I have pasted a page from the Design Police’s Visual Enforcement Kit on my door.

And I’m the Director.

I’m a big enough nerd about this stuff that I think this 5 page package would make a really good tshirt.

Or maybe I can order up a brace of white shirts, each with a different tag on the pocket.

Short sleeved shirts, of course.

A lot like a tradeworker’s uniform, but definitely a subversive statement in a traditional office environment.

I can just imagine the conversation now: “Are you sure ‘kern’ isn’t a dirty word?”

Technorati Tags: design, editing, editor, poor penmanship, creativity

I think I’ve found my blogging doppelganger, Jen Mattern.

…but The City Desk, a blog about a fictional urban centre, is pure genius.

A piece from last year reeled me right in, with a mix of nearly believable retail history, technological confusion and urban conspiracy: The Permanence of Gillard’s Electric Typewriter Service

“…All large cities feature that staple of stand-up comedy, the retail storefront which seems to change hands every few weeks, and our own is no exception. The left-center unit of the Pioneer Square strip mall, currently S.E. Huang’s Kenpo-Karaterie, was a Spanish-language tax preparation service catering to the South Street area’s large Ecuadorian population as recently as last November- and, in the summer of 2006, it was a boutique specializing in salsa-related merchandise. Lot 47 in the Galleria at Woldman Heights is particularly infamous in this regard; in the last three years alone, it has been a Wittman’s, a Sunglass Hut, a Gap for Seniors, a Dobbins Farm Dairy outlet store, and a shop where one could commission tailor-made potato chip varieties….

Then the suggestion that actor William Atherton, who I remember most as the EPA inspector from Ghostbusters (”It’s true. This man has no dick”), was in the running for mayor.

The City Desk is magic. It is the paper of record for every neighbourhood you have ever lived in. It’s so familiar, so accurate, it makes you realize how foolish urban life and obsessions can be.

Technorati Tags: urban life, city paper, neighbourhood journalism

Another datapoint to add to the discussion about how youth treat their online identity. Remember when the Smoking Gun was a revolutionary resource, opening up celebrity mugshots and notable court cases for public scrutiny? Do you remember when it was an embarrassment to be arrested and booked?

“…Finally, through the state police barracks, where Sergeant Hodsden had more than two dozen young people photographed, fingerprinted and cited for unlawful trespass, with a few also cited for unlawful mischief. He cannot shake the indifference of one youth in particular, who asked whether he could use his mug shot on his Facebook page.”

That’s from a NY Times report on a party held by Middlebury, Vermont high school students at a secluded farmhouse last owned by the poet Robert Frost. They almost trashed the place - but the mugshot is still seen as a badge of honour to be shared.

Technorati Tags: headshot, mugshot, Facebook, identity

Say no to strangers people, and remember that the policeman is your friend. A voyage back to 1965 provides a glimpse into the idealized life of a boy and girl in middle school - and how they navigate the multiple threats of dark back alleys, policemen that burst out of Spanish-themed bars at mid-day (7:24 in), old men in tweed proffering free puppies, and suburban moms in station wagons volunteering a free ride to the school.

Because I’m chronic that way, I noticed that the young boy had been dressed in a Fred Perry tennis shirt. Feel free to mock (me, not them. I used to drive 350 km to buy those shirts).

Remarkably absent? Any form of electronic device at all. No television, no radio, certainly no computer, PSP or wireless device. All those kids had was a playground and each other. Pathetic!

As I made the transition into grown-up, collecting a full-time job, a marriage and a suburban home along the way, part of my youth remained sealed away - in a box of carefully collected and reluctantly ignored vinyl.

Limited editions, special imports, extremely overpriced rarities: they’re all there down in the basement. The cheap turntable of my teen years broke down long ago, to be abandoned for the trash pickers on Bathurst Street. The mix tapes lasted a little longer, but were eventually crushed under the weight of feet, coolers and seats on numerous road trips.

The result? Bands like the Merton Parkas, the Lambrettas, Selecter, and Makin’ Time receded in time, and in my memory.

One record prompted an unusual absence - The Truth’s Playground (on their MySpace) - despite its relative lack of sophistication. It was one of three cassettes I brought with me on an 18 hour trip between Toronto and New Delhi, and was played over and over in my Sony Walkman (the silver one, barely larger than the cassette itself. Don’t you remember? Sony was the Apple of the early 80s, with a new and cooler version of the Walkman every season!) as I sat on the tarmac at Heathrow during an interminable flight delay. I guess the album was burned into my sub-conscious.

Which is why I was surprised - and pleased - to find a glut of Truth-based material online in the past few months. YouTube videos. Mp3s. A concert recorded in 1983 (that doesn’t sound like it’s a dub of a dub)

It’s like the second-generation mods took ten years to jump onto the web revolution and start to use media sharing apps.

Which is understandable, since we’ve long been programmed to take our obsessions slowly: when I was a teenager, a new single from a British band could mean sending off a letter and a postal order to a shop across the Atlantic. From purchasing decision to delivery, it could take three to five weeks!

If I wanted to “build a conversation” with my favourite band, I either joined the fan club and wrote to the quarterly newsletter, or wrote off to the record label and hoped the snot nosed school leaver in the mail room felt inclined to pass my scrawlings along.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

Four words. On a thin roadside sign. Alongside Highway 401 just outside Brockville, Ontario.

Cast and Blast Outdoors

The forecast is in, and the men’s fashions for winter 2008 have strolled down the runways of Milan.

I love reading fashion reporting because the beat offers good writers the chance to take their adverbs, allegories and analogies for a wild ride. Throw in some strong personalities and a hint of industry desperation, and you have an entertaining mix.

Still, I thought the following passage strove a little too far to connect the world of fabric, buttons and pegged pants to real-time economic disruption:

“…DESPITE an occasional obligatory reference to the failure of the subprime mortgage market, there was little about the shows here to suggest that anyone was suffering the financial jitters. Yet perhaps the sobriety of the Armani show, whose keyword was “regal,” was a cue.

Design surprises were few in an Armani collection built on caution and control. Those are values that made the designer one of Italy’s wealthiest citizens and his brand among the most recognizable in the world. Those are his creative defaults. Thus his show read as the sartorial equivalent of a stop-loss order. The message was risk-averse…” (New York Times)

What is a “creative default”? Is that the same as “phoning it in”? Would contrasting plaids, an over sized logo and baggy fit be Tommy Hilfiger’s default?

It’s unsettling, sort of like a time warp. “Stop the Presses: the transition from paper to pixel will bring good news” is in the latest issue of This Magazine - but it reads like it was written in 2005:

“…The transition from print to digital content will not happen overnight, and it won’t be without its difficulties. There will be those writers who will whinge about the new challenges posed by online journalism, be it the increased interactivity with readers, the possibility of periodic competition with the dreaded “blogosphere” or merely the hardship of maintaining an email address.

Editors and publishers will, one hopes, eventually have to address the fact that the online content that increasingly drives their bottom lines isn’t rewarded financially at the same rate as “traditional” contributions.

Some readers—older ones, mostly—will complain about the move from paper to pixels. But for the overwhelming majority of us, these changes are all to the good. There was a time when many people thought that the arrival of the internet would mean the death of the newspaper as we know it. Instead, it looks as though it could lead to its reincarnation.”

All this because the New York Times removed their subscriber wall?

Yesterday, I broke with habit, I abandoned a now-established tradition. I called a 1-800 number to make a reservation.

And the customer service representative tried to game me - and the system - twice!

One on the price, and a second time on the after-service quality survey.

Since I have such low standards for call centre CSRs, I expected to be bluffed with a higher room rate, even as I quoted from the website.

Once we had finished the call, though, she asked if I would mind taking a few minutes to answer an automated survey on the quality of her service.

Then she lays this on me:

“…If you thought my service was acceptable, you can just answer 5 to every question…”

Talk about skewing the results!

Ever the contrarian, I followed her instructions - but pressed 5 even before the automated voice had finished the question. My goal? to make sure the system knew something was wonky with their survey.

It worked. At the end of the “few minutes,” another automated voice noted that my answers had seemed unusual, and offered me the opportunity to leave a voice comment about my experience.

Have you noticed how A&E is no longer all about frilly dresses, powdered wigs and hoity toity accents? That’s called channel drift - the gradual shift in identity that signals a channel’s concentration on a new demographic (or, more frequently, grasping onto a fleeting viewer trend).

(Not to be confused with channel creep, where your once favourite channels creep up the “dial” - with PBS suddenly finding itself at channel 64. We’re back to the 1970s, where you had to dial high into the UHF band to find some of the less popular  television channels. “No, you have to tweak the knob, or else you can’t lock in the horizontal hold. The station’s antenna isn’t that tall. Is it raining between here and Massena?”)

TV Squad has a lengthy, but funny, discussion of what has happened to that first generation of cable channels - A&E, Bravo, TMC, AMC and the like. Here’s one comment:

“…It is worse in Canada. In one week our Western channel (Lonestar) had The Matrix movies, Demolition Man, and Tango and Cash as its evening movies…

CollegeHumor has weighed in with its own interpretations of cable network logos - with predictable results.

If you were challenged to describe the spirit and atmosphere of your home town, could you single out a palette of colours that would immediately seem familiar and evocative?

Todd Falkowsky has distilled the colours of each and every provincial and territorial capital - including Ottawa. That’s his Pantone colour palette for the city, which I’ve illustrated with pictures

If anything, the colours he’s singled out for St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, seem too muted. Check for yourself.

Technorati Tags: Pantone, Ottawa, Falkowsky, Walrus

Indulge me here. When I was a kid, everyone smoked. Everywhere. Which meant that lighters and ashtrays were an everyday fact of life.

So common, in fact, that they were considered accessories to your home decor. There were ashtrays that looked remarkably like appetizer plates, or maybe highball glasses. Popular in  my house were ceramic ashtrays from Mediterranean countries like Spain, Greece and Italy. As for lighters, they resembled hookahs, and others looked like cubist party favours.

In fact, lighters could be divided into the personal (whether a small Bic, a showoff Zippo, or a swanky Davidoff) and the communal - a larger piece that suggested careful design and a shared experience (like a big hunk of silver or brass sitting on the coffee table)

Sort of like the Braun lighters to the right. I found these in a Gizmodo post on the similarities between Apple’s design and the work of Dieter Rams for Braun - in the 60s.

Technorati Tags: cigarettes, lighters, ashtrays, home decor

Let me introduce you to the Sex Patels, a punk/alt band from the Leeds and Bradford area. (MySpace) They play a mix of 80s punk with a distinctively bhangra influence (yes, a sitar and drums are involved). You should really listen to their rendition of “once in a lifetime” - the old Talking Heads classic. I think the heavy regional accent really adds something.

How did I get here?* The Sex Patels were a last minute mention in the Guardian’s Northerner newsletter. You see, they’re playing a gig at the Trades Club at Hebden Bridge later this week.

Looking through the venue’s list of upcoming acts, it struck me that, for all our talk of online communities and interwoven social networks, we overlook the influence and value of local artists and entertainment.

A comment on the Sex Patels’ MySpace page is telling:

“…Top gig on Saturday. The highlight for me was Bry’s foot on the monitor and shouting ‘Hello Howarth Community Centre’. It was genius…

Granted, their MySpace page has had less than 15,000 hits, but the buzz seems to be building. 3,000 miles away, I can’t quite make out the band’s connection to Chumbawumba - except to note that Chumba is playing the Trades Club TWICE in March.

*aaaahhhhh - see that? I threw in a reference to “once in a lifetime“! Clever little Colin!

Technorati Tags: Northern England, Chumbawumba, Sex Patel, union hall, local music

Starbucks is dropping organic milk from its list of options available to caffeine addicts. Apparently, the regular milk is now free of growth hormones, which eliminates the need for organic. (Oh, and drinks with the milk accounted for less than 1% of total drinks sold.)

Which seems a little strange. After all, even your local corner store is carrying organic products. It’s a trend sweeping the nation! Why drop the pretension, even if the benefits are now available in regular milk?

But Starbucks is focusing its product line, and that means cutting some things out. And some afficionados, naturally, are seeing the move as something of a betrayal, even if their organic milk tasted bad and wasn’t well promoted.

“…Goodbye, Starbucks organic milk. You sucked, but at least you offered hope… (Sustainable Scoop)

via Grist, via WSJ

Technorati Tags: organic, consumer choice, Starbucks

As you know, I love a good quote. I admire an executive that can turn a good phrase. That’s why I was impressed by Seth Heine’s quotes in a recent feature on the recycling of cell phones in the New York Times magazine.

Heine runs Collective Good, one of several companies that recycle cell phones, phones discarded for a variety of reasons, from the barely out of fashion to the brick-sized.

Heine has obviously had some experience in describing his business, managing to wedge references to a 70s television show and popular Japanese game parlour games in the same interview:

“…A store in Beverly Hills had been sending boxes of gold-plated, limited-edition Dolce & Gabbana Motorola Razr phones, turned in when customers traded up for something even newer. “That phone can’t be more than six months old,” Heine said at one point. Later, he handed an employee a Nokia with a note rubber-banded around it. It was something a friend gave him at dinner; that happens all the time, he said, “when you’re the Fred Sanford of phones.”

“…Heine’s business succeeds or fails based on how well it can assess and then realize the value of each phone. “I refer to that as the pachinko machine,” he told me. “You dump in a phone and it rattles around. It’s got to come out somewhere at the bottom.” The question is, where?

Phones beyond repair, or with little value, are dispatched … for their gold. …. The most valuable handsets find their way to a room across the hall from the storeroom, where two employees sell them on eBay. Most, however, are sold via private auction to a stable of about 20 different resellers.” (NY Times Magazine)

I think this reinforces one of the keys to building corporate value from a corporate social responsibility program: the ability to sell the intent and benefits of your business, and to do it in a familiar and evocative way. Much like what Yvon Chouinard has done at Patagonia.

Technorati Tags: Sanford & Son, CSR, corporate social responsibility, cell phones, mobiles

Last week, three separate publications asked me for a headshot (because I’m a spokeshead, not because I’m a popular blogger with an extremely photogenic mug). I have several options available, and I found myself flipping between the professional and the amateurish: a headshot prepared by a professional photographer, and a handful of profile pictures snapped with a number of camera phones.

You see, I’ve been in public relations long enough to remember when professional photo shoots were required for all your spokespeople. You always had to have a ready selection of half grinning/mildly worried looks on hand, just in case.

As I was sorting through my options, though, I realized that the bar had moved. The public no longer expects a formal upright, slightly angled shouldered look to their authority figures. In fact, I had to screw around with my headshot in Photoshop before sending it off to one publications.

A co-worker of Jason Oke has noticed that the younger generations do not have a problem finding a headshot - in fact, there seems to be

“… an age-related gap on social networking sites like Facebook in personal photo quality - anyone under 25 looks really good in all of their pictures, while the rest of us look pudgy and a bit stunned.

His theory is that it’s because those of us of a certain age grew up with pictures being taken mostly on special occasions like birthdays and holidays, and usually with some warning of “say cheese.”

We never really learned how to have our picture properly taken. But with ubiquitous casual digital photography, the young ‘uns grew up being used to taking and seeing many more photos of themselves, and have learned to quickly throw a pose in any situation. They are photo-literate.”

Me? I can’t quite pull of the casual concentration look. I don’t really like Starbucks, so I’m never at ease enough to pull off the “working in casual luxury while sitting on a loveseat” look. And every time I try the “you caught me in mid-action” pose, I look like an out-take from a Sears catalogue.

Technorati Tags: photography, headshot, publicity still, corporate look, spokesperson

I’ve got two comments about this pairing: can you imagine being locked in a caravan with Bjork for a two week holiday, and Billy Bragg has never claimed to have the most artistic videos.

Technorati Tags: Billy Bragg, Bjork, sexuality, sensuality, 90s

It’s a graphic identity designed for Movable Type. Just look at tonyblairoffice.org. There’s the Serifa headline. The gray, olive and off green stripes that provide the only colour on the page. The tab-based navigation.

Wallpaper magazine gave Lucienne Roberts* the award for best stationery for her design, and some have criticized the simplicity of her work.

“…Good letterheads are a challenge to the designer because the means are very limited, but the effect here is disproportionately grand. The typeface chosen is probably a weird period piece - vaguely Festival of Britain - known as slab-serif. Its effect is dated, looking to my eye rather what a prosperous and socially ambitious provincial garage proprietor might have chosen circa 1974…” (Steven Bayley, Guardian)

While I may lack the professional design training - and the aesthetic sensibility - to really judge this work, Tony Blair’s new corporate identity works well for a statesman trying to shape a quiet but influential role after fundamentally shifting the course of politics in Great Britain.

After all, let’s remember that some politicians have made some foolish alliances as they left office. Just ask Henry Kissinger if he enjoyed watching Conrad Black’s empire collapse.

If we’re to believe Blair’s advisors, he has been selective about the work he has taken on, and has dedicated a lot of his time to his role as a special envoy.

Especially if he wants to become the first President of the European Union Council of Ministers.

That’s right. Pick a nice letterhead, with a touch of colour but no ideological baggage.

*here’s an interview with Roberts, found on the British Council site. (.doc file)

h/t to Creative Review and The Serif

Technorati Tags: graphic design, corporate identity, stationery, business card

I don’t think any moment of anguish over a missed deadline - whether for brochureware, radio copy, or a strategy - can compare to the agony of standing in front of a room that wants you gone or dead.

Which can be a frequent experience for a comic working the road. “I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America’s Top Comics” offers up their stories in their own words.

Hilarious stories. Offensive stories. Stories of challenges overcome, comedy condos fumigated. I laughed, I cried, I was glad I paid for the book.

It certainly didn’t teach me how to be a comedian, but I Killed has given me some solid examples of how others have dealt with outrageous situations and used their skills to overcome opposition.

Now, if you want to pretend to be a comedian, I do have something for you: “The Hack’s Handbook.” Andy Kindler apparently wrote this three page guide for National Lampoon to help people hoping to cash into the late eighties comedy boom fake their way through an appearance.

I’m not saying this an old book, but here’s one of the suggested hack jokes:

“…The Clapper—I didn’t know Barbara Bush could act…”

Thanks to The Sound of Young America for the pointer, and a gentleman called Natan Smart for hosting the file.

And you can never go wrong listening to The Sound of Young America, hosted by Jesse Thorn, “America’s Radio Sweetheart.”

Technorati Tags: creativity, mental block, comedy, road trip, hack comic

I may have mentioned this - my daughter is surfing our wi-fi at home using her new iPod Touch.

I am very jealous, and increasingly convinced that my childhood was a period of despair and deprivation.

Just like anyone who eagerly anticipated the x86 chipset.

Sure, I had a Casio calculator watch. And I had a transistor radio the size of a match book (with a single ear bud, much like an old man’s hearing aid).

A portable music player was never out of reach. That was an advantage we held over our parents’ generation.

But a device is always a reflection of existing technology - and contemporary society’s perception of innovation, utility and coolness.

That perception rapidly changes, to the point where cutting edge seems obsolete and burdensome.

When Grandmaster Flash first whipped out his ghetto blaster and showed it to the neighbourhood in The Message, the sheer size of the device was meant to impress and cower.

Back then, you chose a ghetto blaster based on its cassette replay features (two sided play, anyone?) and its speaker range. No - not the range of the speakers, but the range of sizes of speakers.

Of course you had to have speakers that pretended to mimic woofers and subwoofers. (They were the big speakers, usually at the back)

Key to the device was sharing the music - with everyone in a forty yard range. Music was to be shared, and maybe prompt some breaking.

That’s a big change from today, where portable music players are one more element in our defenses against our immediate neighbours, whether on the bus, at the mall, at the office or in the gym.

The glowing green Miami Vice suit was optional, though.

image from Taschen Books (and Sony as well)

Technorati Tags: stereo, D cell batteries, ghetto blaster, cassette tape

I really feel bad about it. I do. Obviously, a lot of planning went into your meeting. There was an agenda with an allotted time for each item. There were highback chairs and a big heavy conference table. There was even a scent of Roberts’ Rules of Order in how the meeting was being run.

But I still fell asleep. Don’t get me wrong - only for a few seconds - but long enough for my head and shoulders to droop. And I’ll tell you why:

• Nomenclature. Someone started discussing nomenclature and naming conventions.
• There was a perfunctory review of minutes. Just once, I’d like someone to raise a highly personal objection to the minutes.
• A business process analyst was present, and was eager to contribute. I like their logic gate workflow diagrams, but they’re just too serious for any meeting of mine.
• A fundamental lack of windows. Listen. I have the attention span of a hummingbird. Please give me an alternate source of visual stimulation.
• Mood lighting. If there’s more than one dimmer switch in the room, there will either be too little light, or too much. That’s fine if we’re at a billards match or partaking of a slaughtered fattened calf, but not for a collaborative work space.
• Clear sightlines. If the sightlines are clear from one seat to another, how am I supposed to get other work done? Or read the latest New Yorker?

I mean, if it wasn’t for twitter, I would have been sawing logs like Paul Bunyan.

*Obviously, I am writing about a completely hypothetical meeting. Not the one you’re thinking of.

Technorati Tags: meetings, etiquette, office code, behaviour

Just finished ginning up a new headshot.

Thought I would share it.

Note: there is an iconic Canadian design detail hidden in this photo.

Just like Jackie and Ben tell us, just like Jake emphasizes and Connie practices, a business has to know its community and its market to succeed. Here are a few examples:

On the east end of Long Island, there’s a 1,000 watt radio station that’s extremely local:

“…Mr. Tria’s morning show, “The Dawn Patrol,” delivers a style of local radio that is nearly extinct on Long Island: a neighbor’s lost dog, a birth or death in the community, and news from the schools, the police and Town Hall. It is a slow-drip blend of slow-paced life that seems meant to waft into kitchens and mingle with the smell of bacon. (NYT)

A Ford dealership in a small California town has been bought out, a reaction from hq in Detroit to declining market share and a surplus of dealerships in the region. But not for a lack of trying:

“…All the while, Norwalk and southeast Los Angeles gradually became more Latino — 63% in the most recent Census data. Stutzke says he adapted, becoming among the first car dealers to advertise on Spanish-language television. Families poured into the dealership on Saturdays to watch the making of El Show de Keystone Ford. (USA Today)

Looking for some heartwarming stories of big box chains and international brands failing? Reason magazine tells us that the little guy CAN win - and has an eighty year history of beating the big guy. It’s a good read with a lot of historical context:

“…By understanding local tastes, Newbury Comics, Phoenix Coffee Co., La Flor De Broadway Café, and Kansas City’s Broadway Café demonstrated that localization, customer care, and authenticity are far more effective means of fighting larger rivals than agitating for anti-chain legislation.

Had Broadway Café owner Jon Cates initially looked at historical precedent, rather than petitioning city hall, he perhaps would have understood that David slays Goliath with encouraging frequency in the history of American business.”

Technorati Tags: community, audience, brand, retail, radio promotion

And there I thought pageants had already taken a great leap into modernity with the hiring of Billy Bush.

Last night, Miss America:Reality Check hit the airwaves. I think it may be just the radical revamp this old dame needed. The formula is tired and familiar to us all: a disparate (and maybe desperate) group of girls settles into cramped quarters with too few bathrooms.

They form heartfelt but ultimately shallow and dishonest relationships where they claim friendship and are quick to criticize any demonstration of disloyalty or competitiveness. The show’s producers attempt to create artificial divisions among the pageant queens by separating the teams by age and physical characteristics (only on this show would a 24 year-old be considered a “senior”).

The appeal comes from the incredible contrast between the plastic and highly manufactured contests of the past, and the new hurdles facing the contestants today.

Like a reality check from the tag team of Stacy London and Clinton Kelly. Or the faux cinema verite segment where the contestants appear to discuss whether teens (and Miss American contestants) actually practice abstinence. Some of those young ladies actually appeared grief-stricken at the thought of deviating from their practiced stage patter.

“I favour harsher jail sentences for parole violators … and world peace.”

Finally, I could swear that the “challenges” between teams are held in a converted horse paddock behind the communal house.

All I could imagine was Miss Ellie from Dallas, cheering on Miss Texas.

Technorati Tags: Miss America, reality TV, beauty pageant

I suspect that Angelo Bepp is an everyman, hiding in plain view although ostensibly disguised as a long-term resident of the state detention facility at Attica, New York.

Angelo is a regular comment contributor to the New York Times online edition. And his comments are funny. Consistently funny. I present a selection:

What have you done to make yourself more attractive on the Web?
I post a picture only showing me from the neck up. That way my prison fatigues & number can’t be seen. I thought it was my car, I really did. How many powder blue 1971 Pintos can there be in New York?

January 3rd, 2008 Link

Executive Who Moved ‘Dem Bums’ Out of Brooklyn Is Hall of Famer

Get over it Brooklyn, its been 50 years. When I lost my dog Blinky, I got over it. Man, I loved Blinky.

December 3rd, 2007 Link

What has been your most memorable culinary experience while on vacation?

Best meal I ever had was in Tibet, a yak burger. Tastes a bit like cheetah.

November 21st, 2007 Link

Where is your favorite place to stay in a national park?

Any where that doesn’t have padded cells or bars is fine by me. I didn’t do anything to that mannequin, it fell on me.

December 21st, 2007 Link

What is your favorite easy-to-make holiday starter?

When I was allowed to indulge myself, I always enjoyed a hot dog with Worcestershire sauce & cottage cheese. Then wash it down with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. Man, Angelo was living the life back then, before the legal thing.

December 19th, 2007 Link

Which band would you like to see reunited?

The Archies. Still listen to their albums every night. I’m 54 years old.

December 11th, 2007 Link

Shootings Test Limits of New Self-Defense Law: What do you think of Mr. Horn’s actions?

Over reacted. My house was broken into 2 years ago. I confronted the 2 misguided young men. I told them what they were doing was wrong. They still took everything of value that I owned, but they know they did wrong.

December 13th, Link

Technorati Tags: comment policy, commenter, New York Times

Some of you may know, during the day I work with a great bunch of privacy advocates. So I’ve got some opinions about the Scroble scraping issue of the day.

Just ask yourself: let’s say large consumer product company X had created a fan group in Facebook. This morning, they decided to launch a new promotional campaign aimed at just these fans, but needed the contact information. Finding Plaxo’s cool new tool, they then simply scraped the name, addy and preferences of all their “fans.”

Would that be acceptable? No. Damien Mulley has it right. It could be considered data theft.

And we would all be justifiably outraged about it.

It’s the idea of scale. You move the information of your 20, 50, 100 or 200 close personal and business contacts, you’re only maintaining your records.

You move 1,000 or more - you’re maintaining a mailing list.

The idea of data portability is that users, consumers, geeks have control of their OWN data. In this case, users entered into a relationship with another user (Scoble) where they shared access to their mutual Facebook profiles.

Facebook, for all its weaknesses and commercial impulses, does have a limited level of privacy protection. The embedding of personal email addys in an image is one. If you want to send me an email from outside the walled garden, you have to take the time to copy the addy by hand.

It’s one protection FOR ME to avoid having my addy scraped and sold off.

So when Plaxo tells Jeremiah Owyang that their new tool is all about data portability - they’re full of crap. It’s all about data collection. Here is an excerpt from a quick interview Jeremiah conducted with Plaxo today:

“…What else should we know? In 2008, data portability thrust is where we want to head, we want to turn the model upside down, so instead of widgets going to the social graph, we would like to make the social graph very portable. This is an area where Plaxo as more depth than anyone else.” (Jeremiah)

In the comments that follow, there is a good discussion of the social contract between “friends” when exchanging access rights and personal information.

Part of this contract, in this case, involves the privacy protections and restrictions put in place by Facebook. Facebook is a wide-open app with a lot of publicly available information, but that doesn’t mean that informed users don’t expect a level of considered behaviour on the part of their “friends.”

When you decide Facebook isn’t the most appropriate tool for you, you can’t attempt to migrate your mass of friends by breaking those protections and restrictions.

Sorry that it’s inconvenient, but that’s the playground you chose to play in.

And if you’re a commercial company that develops a tool designed to rip personal information out of proprietary social networks, don’t tell me you’re doing it in the name of the freedom for information to flow freely. There’s a commercial application behind the motivation.

Technorati Tags: data portability, data protection, identity theft, Facebook, Plaxo

As a community, we’re not sitting on the fence, we’re all over the fence, tearing up the garden and throwing fenceposts at people about Facebook’s Social Ads.

The idea that Facebook will strike backroom agreements with corporate partners to associate their consumer data with your Facebook activity seems to strike people the wrong way. Clearly, there needs to be a simple opt-out mechanism to avoid your personal brand being associated with a corporate brand (at least without compensation!)

The great weakness in this scheme, however, is that Facebook and their partners depend on the Facebook Friend having a stellar reputation worth trading on. Or at least have profile pics worth reproducing.

Imagine if Facebook users started using profile pics like those long used on Livejournal? Like that animated .gif to the right?

That would drastically affect the value of the implied endorsement from a social network user.

For example, take this comment from a Wired blog post on the business:

“