Canuckflack

In case you didn’t know, Gmail has some problems. And that means problems for you, the Gmail user. The service doesn’t recognize “dots” in an email address - unlike every other email application in the world. This means “cmckay” and “c.mckay” and “catherine.mckay” may all be treated the same.
I own the c.mckay email addy. Gmail let me create it, what, two years ago? At the time, there was no mention that following the DOT convention might cause problems.
Well, it has - but not for me.

For Catherine McKay of London, whose confirmation email for a pre-Christmas peformance at the National Theatre landed in my inbox. (Compelete with home address and partial credit card information. I tried to email this person, but Gmail returned the email to my inbox. I deleted the message)
For an undetermined “C.McKay” whose USC Trojan alumni newsletters are misdirected.

For another C McKay who apparently filed their income tax return electronically today. I know they did, because the Santa Barbara Bank and Trust sent me confirmation that their refund would be deposited in their account (login addy and confirmation number provided) by February 9.

I know that last one isn’t spam, because I also received the confirmation from Intuit’s Turbo Tax confirming that the income tax return had been accepted.

I guess I’m joining the chorus asking if Google actually plans to take any of their products out of beta - or is that a strategy to avoid dealing with the repurcussions of their mistakes?

Technorati Tags: Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, National Theatre, Gmail, Google

More than a decade ago, archivists and historians fretted about what would happen to the tell-tale details of everyday life - the scribblings in the margins of books, doodles in journals, folded and unfolded personal telegrams - that help social scientists reconstruct how our parents, grandparents and forebears led their lives.

It was already obvious that handwritten notes had been abandoned in favour of the temporary record produced by e-mail. Even worse, successive generations of software and computing technology meant that electronic records were being lost to planned mechanical obsolescence, not� good old mould, water rot or poor filing.

Today, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way thanks to cheap plentiful memory. A gig of memory (and rising!) in Gmail means you don’t delete your messages as quickly. Online sharing sites, like Flickr and YouTube, mean more data is being added to the public library every day (whether that data is valuable or not is subjective).

Terence Dick, writing in This Magazine, notes that YouTube may have some historical value (providing they don’t figure out a way to monetize the site and get bought out) :

” … The site’s success lies in how easy it is to make the most minor of experiences and events available to all. That convenience, however, threatens to change You Tube from an idealistic adventure in media democracy (“Broadcast yourself” is its current motto) to something much more utilitarian. … You Tube has become a message board for its users, home to in-jokes, personal letters and individual exchanges. Instead of minor masterpieces, videos are reduced to the level of Post-it notes.

… And while this might not make for compelling television, it makes for incredible anthropology. Nowhere else could you access such intimate moments in the everyday lives of strangers. Instead of their current catchphrase, the powers-that-be at You Tube might consider changing their motto to “Excavate yourself” and encourage their users to share something more authentic (and original) than their lip-synching tributes to pop stars.”�

Still - YouTube the anthropological reference should learn from the experience of� the movie Galaxy Quest: if your culture indiscriminately beams out thousands of hours of programming into the ether, you better hope someone out there has a really good TV Guide.

As agencies and consultants rush to establish their online bona fides and publicize their new social media practices, some cautionary words about the behaviour that undermined previous management fads - and the consultancies that tried to capitalize upon them. A study of the 1990s hype behind TQM reveals that inexperienced and bombastic consultants drove experimentation and implementation in the field, but eventually abandoned the specialty, to be replaced by the technical and management experts that had originally championed the idea.

Fifteen years ago, these management fad “fashion surfers” wore power suits, sometimes had a preference for tasselled loafers, carried a Filofax and had never heard of flavoured vodka. They can’t be as easily identified nowadays. Maybe t-shirts from Threadless under the Banana Republic shirts? Suits from H&M? Two MacBooks (white and black) in their carry-on?

What’s certain is that a basic knowledge of design, information management and CSS has never before been leveraged as quickly and as widely. And with as much targeted online promotional copy. In 1995, the competence of your team was demonstrated by the sales of your business book. Today, by the size of your download. (A hint: the more pictures and graphs, the better)

Coverage today in the WSJ, but more details are available from the Academy of Management news release.

” … As a new management approach gains in popularity, large numbers of generalist consultants, expert at recognizing burgeoning opportunities, jump in to advise firms on implementing the new method, even though these generalists may have little knowledge of its intricacies.

This influx of “fashion surfers,” as one scholar called them, produces many program failures, and the practice that not long before was widely viewed as a virtual panacea gets a bad name. This in turn results in diminished demand, and consultation about the practice becomes mainly the province of experts and specialists, much as it was before the boom set in.

In the words of the study’s authors, Robert J. David of McGill University and David Strang of Cornell University, “These supply-side dynamics…help explain why fashion booms are so fragile.” They also “suggest that fashionable practices can return to their technical roots once the hype is over.” (AOM news release)

There’s the rub for actual bloggers, podcasters and online innovators: if you continue to build expertise in the field, your practice will likely survive.

Original pointer from Business Innovation Insider.

Technorati: hype fad

The biggest challenge for blog authors is creating a unique “voice”: what is the identity you wish to portray? The values you want to embody? The personality traits your writing will personify (albeit in shallow two-dimensional form)? As the blog format morphs from a personal and interactive medium to a corporate communications vehicle, it will prove increasingly difficult to maintain a common “voice” across a stable of authors contributing to a corporate blog.

A “voice” is especially difficult for an amalgam blog to maintain. By amalgam I mean a blog fed by multiple authors, all trying to work through one common identity. Like Strumpette.* In one particularly testy exchange over the last thirty six hours, Strumpette’s “Amanda Chapel” character has posted comments ranging in tone from vitriolic to apologetic to dismissive.

Strumpette is a unique character, created in part to shake, rattle and roil the insular “PR blogging” community.

Corporate blogs, on the other hand, need to be better managed. Not in great detail, and not to the point of censorship. Rather, an effective corporate blog needs to identify its vision at the outset, and explain how the community of authors assigned to the blog will be working towards that vision.

Acknowledge that different voices will be expressing themselves, and identify how those voices will contribute to the discussion. What is their individual background? What are their professional and personal preoccupations? (To a point - who needs to know about the VP’s fondness for vacations in Thailand?) Why should we listen to them? Believe them? Trust them?

With careful blog design, category identification and tag selection, a conversation can be maintained across a number of authors - to the benefit of the reader as well as the mother ship paying the bills.

* - “Also, for the record, as has been written variously, “Amanda” is comprised of a group of people, friends and colleagues, the majority of which are women. ” Strumpette

Technorati: strumpette

Just like the porn industry can be counted upon as early adopters of new e-commerce technology, so can fraudsters. This week the FTC busted a coffee display rack franchise scam. These guys were using VOIP phones to make it seem that they were operating out of New Mexico - not their real base, Costa Rica.

Coffee display rack? Where exactly would you put that, beside the “smells like CK One” cologne and watermelon-flavoured condom rack in truck stop johns? Or maybe a little standalone sachet dispenser to be set up outside mall-based muffin shops? Maybe locate them just outside airport security screening areas? What about an elevator installation, undercutting the mom and pop coffee shop in your highrise’s basement?

A lot of debate going on about what Web 2.0 means for the ordinary consumer. Signals vs. Noise had some comments about what 2.0 isn’t, and one commenter noted:

I know exactly what web 2.0 is:

* pretentious
* oversized fonts
* pastel colors
* buzzwords
* featureless �user experiences�
* overly friendly and self-important copy
* acronyms

Basically it�s 1998 with less money and more metrosexuals.