LIVEdigitally

You remember that feeling when you’ve done something kinda wrong, and you kinda get caught doing it, and everyone yells at you for doing it, and instead of just shrugging your shoulders, admitting you goofed, and moving on, you back yourself into a corner and fight tooth and nail for it?  As far as I can tell, this is Facebook’s situation with not removing Holocaust Denial groups.  Before I dive in, I want to thank Michael Arrington for keeping this topic alive and his ardent support of the issue.

Here are the key issues as I see them:

First, regarding Holocaust Denial.  Here’s the results of the Google search for “is holocaust denial the same as anti semitism?” The answer is a resounding YES.  Fundamentally, while there are many anti-Semites who do not deny the Holocaust, there are no Holocaust Deniers who are not anti-Semites.

Second, regarding Censorship/Freedom of Speech.  Freedom of speech is a government issue, not a private company issue.  Private companies may censor away, and they may do so legally.  Facebook can choose to do whatever they want.  Further, even free speech advocate Alan Dershowitz agrees.

Third, regarding precedent. Facebook doesn’t allow the Ku Klux Klan to have a group.  Breastfeeding women pictures are banned.  In other words, Facebook can identify hate groups and content they don’t like and has already taken it down.  This is a crucial issue to me.  Had Facebook never taken any proactive content cleansing actions in the past, I think they could sit safely on the sidelines.  Instead, they are basically taking the position that the KKK is bad, but a Holocaust Denial group is not.

Fourth, regarding actions. I’ve seen numerous commentators (on TC) ask the equivalent of “are we supposed to monitor every conversation for anti-Semitic content and delete those too? Nope. This isn’t about one-to-one discussions, nor even private groups.  This is about public groups, which rapidly turn into breeding grounds for hate crimes (which is why FB turned off the KKK’s groups).

Fifth, regarding public vs private discourse. Another issue I’ve noticed is the claim to the effect of “why bother taking down the group, this kind of hate happens anyway, and it’s better to be out in the public.”  The argument here, of course, implies that if we can see the discussions these people are having, we can keep an eye on them for potential actions they might take.  This is one of the silliest positions I can imagine taking, as if those who are about to commit hate crimes are just so unbelievably stupid they would do so in public. Utter rubbish.

I’ve been trying to rack my brain as to why Facebook would continue to maintain their position on this one.  It certainly seems odd to me that the decision-makers here really believe leaving the groups up is the right thing to do.  As I’ve looked back on other actions FB’s taken in the past, I’ve noticed one trend that seems to make the most sense in this craziness: FB doesn’t like being told what to do by anyone.  They do a (crappy) site redesign, get told by the media and users alike, and stand proud.  They take down pictures of nursing moms, get vilified by the press and women’s groups, and stand proud.  And here we are again, doing a wrong, getting caught, getting called out on it, and again, standing proud.

On one more tangent here: personally I don’t get how anyone can be proud that they are standing up for some of the worst people on Earth.  I wish they wouldn’t.  There’s enough places for hateful people to rally together and commit atrocities.  Facebook could decide they stand for the right thing, not the wrong.

I think they either need to do the right thing and take down these groups, or stop taking down the KKK groups and nursing moms pictures.  As was eloquently said, you can’t get a woman half-pregnant.

I’m coming up on 2 years into my MacBook/OSX life, and while I’m not quite a drooling fanboy, I am most certainly drinking some of the Apple flavored Kool-Aid.  Why? Because everything just works, almost all of the time.  Seriously.  I do have the occasional frozen application, and have been forced to reboot against my will periodically, but it’s a rarety.  And I still miss Windows keyboard shortcuts, iMovie is horrendously bad next to Windows Movie Maker, and Mail/Calendar could use some help too.  But for the most part, I heart my MacBook and recommend them to everyone who asks.

Yesterday, however, I had one of those “What The What?” moments with an Apple application.  One of those “I’ll bet Steve never saw this user flow” before thoughts.  Here’s the rough sequence of events…

1. Inside iTunes, I went to the Store.  Easy.
2. Looked for TV Shows.  Easy.
3. Found Kids category. Easy.
4. Found Thomas the Train.  Easy.
5. Bought an episode.  Easy.
   While my wife and I *rarely* entertain our son with TV programming, we had a long day in front of us and wanted to have a lot of backup ready, just in case.  Thomas the Train, muted, was our selection, mainly because we didn’t have the ability to buy old Montreal Canadiens hockey games.  Which, of course, are perfect for children of all ages (as long as you remain in the years prior to 1994).
6. Paid for the episode. Easy.
7. Watched the episode download to my hard drive. Easy.
8. Closed the lid. Really easy.

   several hours later (yup, after about 7 hours the moment struck - we were exhausted, kids missed nap time and we were just out of steam to keep anything interesting)…

9. Opened the lid. Easiest step so far.
10. In iTunes, clicked Library, then TV Shows. Easy.
11. Found Thomas the Train, double-clicked on the episode. Uh oh.

Here’s the first dialog I saw:

I was being asked to authorize this computer.  Now, as an interesting point, I’d never, ever, purchased anything from the iTunes store before. Here’s the problem - I was offline by now.  And I was pretty sure what would happen next, but I clicked through anyway.  As a result, here’s the next screen I saw:

And huge whopping frustrating FAIL.

So my note to team iTunes: when a user makes their first purchase from your store, you should probably get the authorization thingamajigger to happen at the same time.  If not, warn them, in a big honking font, media will not play until you authorize your computer (and you will need an Internet connection for this). Don’t worry, I’m still BFFs with OS X and everything, but this is an easy thing to fix. And even if it only happens to a tiny fraction of a percent of your customers, it’s too easy not to do it better.

Want a quick way to confuse a customer?  Throw a new version of something on the market.

In the software world this is accepted, and typically expected, though nobody really likes it.  New versions cause support and communication breakdowns between customers and vendors, and create extra work for software teams to test and maintain.  But again, with software, it’s just the way things go.  You can choose not to upgrade something and keep using the old version, or be on the cutting edge and try the pre-release “beta” version of something.  Again, software is easy when it comes to versioning.

Hardware, on the other hand, is a little trickier.  When my MacBook has a firmware upgrade, not only is a reboot in order, it takes complete control of my system for a while.  The same is true for my cell phone, my Slingbox, and other gadgetry I own.  Upgrading a device usually requires a dedicated application/program to do the work for you.

But how do you upgrade a cable?  Well, it turns out you don’t.  You buy a new cable. And you clearly tell consumers the difference.  Unless you are HDMI, in which case you upgrade the standard from 1.3 to 1.4 and require a new cable, despite not renaming it. This, my friends, sucks.  Here’s a little vision of the future for you:

Random customer in Best Buy: “Hi, can you help me find an HDMI cable for my plasma?”

Best Buy employee: “Sure, do you need a 1.3 or 1.4 cable?”

RC: “What is that, metric?  How about 6 feet?”

BB: “Hah, no, I meant what version HDMI cable?”

RC: “One that works with my plasma.”

BB: “Here, I’ll show you the two cables, see how the ends are different?  Which one looks like the one on your plasma.”

RC: “Gee, I don’t know, why on earth would I remember that?  I sure remember when they were red/yellow/white, or red/blue/green, or S-video.  Now I have a plasma, and my son said I should get HDMI.”

BB: “Yes, well you need to know if it’s the 1.3 standard or 1.4 standard.”

RC: “What’s the difference?”

BB: “1.4 is faster!  It can send Internet content too!”

RC: “I’m going home now.”

and… scene.

To be clear - I think the new technology is cool.  But why couldn’t they just call it something completely different?  A “point upgrade” for a cable?  Really?  Bad idea.  According to a graph I saw on VentureBeat there are over a billion HDMI cables already on the market.

As a technologist, I “get” the upgrade as a concept.  But as a consumer I dread the support calls I’ll inevitably get from friends and family members with incompatible devices, equipment, and cables. I certainly don’t want to have a call like (I’ll let you find the source to the following, as it’s one of my favs)…

Okay. Did you use the Intensifier Disc?
Yes.
Turn the controls 18 degrees to the left?
Did that.
Are you in Europe? Do you need an adapter?

I hope when HDMI 1.4 comes to market it has a completely new name, like HDMI-PRO, or S-HDMI, or something other than a number. Ditto to the USB 3.0 people, by the way.  There’s a certain point where the numbers have to go bye-bye, and mass-understandable concepts must take over.  This is one of them.

I bought my first digital camera in the late 90s, it was a 1-megapixel Kodak that weighed about 14 pounds.  I took terrible pictures onto my spacious 16MB compact flash card, which I copied onto my Toshiba Tecra (running Windows 98).  The ~500K files had fun names like DCP0001.JPG, and I created folders named “Family” and “Vacations” and even created subfolders like “1997″ and “1998″.  Every now and then I’d email a picture or two to a friend or family member, who would look at it in email, and promptly delete it.  Printing a picture was generally a nuisance, and my best guess ratio of pictures taken to pictures printed was around 500:1.

Fast forward to 2009.  My Canon SD850is takes 8MP pictures onto a 2GB SD card (small by current standards), each of which is ~4MB large.  iPhoto automatically sync’s the pictures, which have fun names like IMG_0001.JPG, and stores them in folders named “Apr 5, 2009″ and similar.  Every now and then I email a picture (a manual, tedious process since I don’t use MacMail) to someone, who looks at it and promptly deletes it.  Printing a picture is generally a nuisance, and my best guess ratio of pictures taken to pictures printed is around 500:1, though might actually be as low as 1000:1.

So what’s changed?  Well, I can use Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, Kodak Gallery, or one of many other sites to host and store my shared photos. The most recent version of iPhoto also has built-in tools to share with Flickr or Facebook, which has certainly improved the process a lot. Of course, I believe in maintaining a certain amount of privacy to familly photos (which represent >95% of my pictures), so only my “Flickr Friends” can actually see most of the pictures I take.  Which means I have to manually generate “shared links” and manually email these to my family, since the bulk of them are not on Flickr.  Further, most of these family members need occasional assistance in either saving local copies or printing photos (and before you go making comments, these are college-educated people who speak multiple languages and have many other fine skills).

In other words, photo sharing still sucks.

The whole concept around requiring membership to sites is stupid, though in an industry where metrics are “registered users”, it’s clear why these companies want it.  Terrible user interfaces dominate these products and services (go sit with a regular person and watch them navigate Flickr for a while - you’ll be stunned at how confusing it is).  Printing photos is easier, yet still a royal pain because most photo collections are unmanaged.  Managing photos is near-impossible due to the change in usage patterns from film cameras (instead of being film-conscious and taking a minimum number of pix, we now opt to take as many as possible, since we know the storage is effectively unlimited).

None of the services seem to recognize the concept that we might, on occasion, want to use a removable drive instead of the one in our computers.  Photo backup, the single most important feature for digital pictures, is effectively a non-existent feature.  I actually know people (again, smart people) who opt to purchase new memory cards when they fill up, rather than synching to computer hard drives.  Facial recognition is finally making the rounds to facilitate “Tagging” - another feature that makes the techies happy yet utterly alienates everyone else.  Other confusing terminology has resulted in me receiving dozens of unprintable photos, yet the sendor being completely unaware that they aren’t sharing full resolution pictures to someone else.

As the kids today say, epic fail.

Here’s what I’m *still* waiting for:

• Automatic Backup: Okay, if nothing else, build more backup features.  Ask anyone who’s ever lost photos how upsetting it is.  Heck, Geoff Barrall pretty much started Data Robotics (the Drobo company) because of losing photos! Nobody should ever lose a digital photo, ever.  Ever!
• Group Albums: I have a BBQ, and create an album on Flickr called “JT’s MegaAwesome BBQ”, and give a link to all the attendees.  Anyone with a matching email address can, wait for it, upload the photos they took.  They don’t need to “register” or “create an account”.  They don’t need to download special software.  They don’t need to “synch” something.
• Standardized Tagging: Oh look, there I go calling it Tagging again. Call it categories or keywords or tags or whatever you want, but here’s the thing - standardize it.  Make my iPhoto tags automatically transport to my Flickr tags and have them easily usable when I want to print on SnapFish.  Also, auto-suggesting tags as people type (based on popular tags) would sure help create a consistency around terms (rather than seeing photos tagged with “Paris, France”, “Paris”, “Paris 2009″, “Paris Vacation” etc)
• Improve the Sharing/Printing: Every photo program or web service should have BIG buttons that say “email to someone” or “share”.  Pushing these buttons should make it really obvious as to whether or not they are sending the Original/Printable version, or just the quick one to view on their screen.  Further, when the recipient receives pictures, make it really obvious to them as to whether or not they have received a printable version, and if not, an obvious way to get it.
• Work with more address books: Don’t make me “friend” everyone on a proprietary system.  Just talk to my local or gmail address book (or Facebook friends, or Plaxo contacts, or whatever), let me save groups/names, and easily update those I want, when I want.  Even *evite* has this part figured out!
• Support numerous, flexible storage systems: If I have some pictures on my local drive, others on my wife’s computer, more on my USB drive, some online, and others on my NAS or Pogoplug, so be it.  Somebody needs a photo sharing system that is able to understand the concepts that (1) photos are unique, (2) multiple copies of the same photo will exist, (3) photos will be stored in numerous places, (4) some of the storage locations will not be available at all times (ex: backup drives), (5) all photo metadata should always exist with the photo, regardless of location, (6) facilitating moving these photos around is a good thing.  Got it?

I’m sure there’s a lot more to be done to improve the overall sharing experience.  Better search across photo networks.  Better systems for favoriting across multiple sites and services.  Smarter album/set creation and management.  The list goes on.  What’s amazing is how far we came for a few years (until about ~2005ish), and how little we’ve progressed since.  I believe there remain tons of opportunities for existing players, and if none of them make any smart moves, then maybe some new little players will emerge to take them on.

eStarling makes several WiFi connected digital photo frames, and I’ve been playing with their Impact V for a bit.  I’m impressed.

From the moment you open the box, eStarling does a pretty good job holding your hand and making use of the frame pretty simple.  You have all the usual options for displaying pictures that past digital frames have lead us to expect, including memory card slots that accommodate a couple different card types (SD, MS, MMC.)  But what’s way more interesting to me is the wireless and social mechanisms for displaying pictures.

When you pull the device out of the box, a greeting card immediately invites you to plug in the frame and connect it to your wifi connection (beware: this frame is much cooler if you have a wifi network.)  Once you’re connected, the frame prompts you to visit their website and activate your account.  Once you do you will get an email address dedicated to your frame, and you (or your friends and family) can email pictures to your frame.  You can also log into your account on their website to upload pictures from your computer to your eStarling account - these will then appear on your frame (it took my pictures about 15 minutes to show up.)  One of the neatest features is the social component - you can link your frame to a variety of social websites and services, including Facebook, Flickr, Phtobucket, Picassa, Twitter (not sure about this one), YouTube and more.   In addition to these services, you can also subscribe to RSS feeds - popular ones like National Geographic or even a user-designated feed.  You can also post small videos to play on your frame if you so choose.

I did have some issues with some of the social services.  For instance, I linked my Flickr account to my eStarling frame.  It was a pretty simple, one-click connection which presumably links up eStarling’s service with Flickrs API.  Two issues presented themselves though:

1. After clicking through the Flickr to link up the accounts, instead of a “Success, awesome job, well done!” screen, I was presented with a page full of gibberish.  There was no message to tell me whether I had successfully linked the account.  I didn’t know for sure until photos started appearing on the frame.

2. When those photos did appear, they weren’t mine.  They were photos of friends mine, people to whom I am linked on Flickr.  But none of my own photos made it into the frame.  Now, I like my friends and all, but I don’t need their photos on my frame.  Whether it’s going to sit in my home, or in my parent’s home, I want my own pictures on my frame.

Ultimately I was forced to use the “custom RSS” feature and take my Flickr account’s own RSS feed and manually link that with my frame.  Even after doing that, only my most recent set (about 20 pictures or so) showed up on the frame.  I don’t really know how to pull specific sets or additional photos from Flickr into the frame.

The frame has an eight inch display (800×600 pixels) and the clarity is pretty darn sharp. (Any blurring in the images in this post is due to the photographer, not the frame.)  It’s a touch screen interface, and there are light-up touch screen buttons along the right side.  You must use the touch screen in order to connect to the wireless network, but almost everything else can be accomplished through eStarling’s web portal.   The touch buttons let you skip through photos, or jump back to menus to select specifc photos, or access settings for the frame.  But I found the touch buttons a little finicky to use - fortunately the included remote also allows you to control action on the frame.

Lastly, there’s packaging.  In the unboxing I discovered very little wasteful or non-recyclable material.  There was one small piece of closed-cell foam for padding, and a foam sleeve for the frame.  Everything else was cardboard, including the majority of the boxe’s padding.  5 gold stars for being conscious of the environment.

Overall I was impressed with the frame.  The picture clarity, the simple setup, and the social components were all fantastic.  I love that it’s wifi, and I dig the fact that I can update the photos remotely, up to and including if the frame is in another state (or country.)  However, I do think the web interface and tools need a little refinement.  They are feature-rich but lacking in the fine points of usability.  Some improvements could include better feedback to user actions (letting you know if you succeeded in linking an account), and better fine-tuning of services (to include / exclude friends’ photos, etc.)  They don’t need more options, they just need to refine and improve the ones they’ve got.

eStarling Wireless Digital Photo Frame on 12seconds.tv

Daniel Lim at Slashgear also wrote a nice review of this frame.  If I were forced to give this frame a numeric rating, something which I am loathe to do, I would give it an 8 out of 10. They did a good job.  I just hope they keep improving the little sucker, especially the web interface and options.

This post is also available on 1TO10REVIEWS.

I visualize technology adoption like a huge wave crashing to shore.  At the tip of that wave’s crest are the newest of new technologies, such as FriendFeed and Plurk.  As the wave advances, they’ll either gain usage amongst a wider audience or dissolve into nothingness.  Below the tip are still new technologies that are trying to “cross the chasm” into the mainstream, such as Twitter - they might make it, or also just fade away.  Next up we have technologies that spreading to the masses, like Facebook and blogging.

From my time here in Silicon Valley, I’ve noticed a tendency that the “higher ups” on the early adoption wave tend to look down upon the rest.  Sometimes the smugness is so thick it’s as if those users who don’t microblog are busy using whiteout on their monitors while wiping a lingering trail of drool off their chin.

Over the weekend, it turns out someone tried to “phish” Twitter users, and achieved enough success to warrant widespread coverage by bloggers and online media. The official Twitter blog stated:

It looks as though this particular scam sent out emails resembling those you might receive from Twitter if you get email notifications of your Direct Messages. The email said, “hey! check out this funny blog about you…” and then provided a link. That link redirected to a site masquerading as the Twitter front page.

If you didn’t look at the URL of this false Twitter page, then you might not have noticed that it was actually just a page on the domain access-logins.com which was also faking Facebook’s front page. We immediately reported the offending domain (and warned our friends at Facebook). The site is now on OpenDNS’ and Google’s reported phishing lists.

So if you’ve ever had someone make fun of you because you aren’t using the beta version of an operating system, don’t lifecast yourself while making potty, or still have to push multiple buttons on your cell phone, this is your time for a Nelson-ish “haa-ha”.  Now I certainly don’t wish success to anyone using malicious activites like this online, it’s truly bad for everyone.

But maybe all the “I’m-so-cool-and-you’re-on-MySpace” attitudes of so many echo chamberites, maybe your horse ain’t so high after all?  Maybe a few of the people who got suckered in can help build better interfaces to their technologies so our less technically savvy friends don’t have to feel stupid when trying to adopt new stuff?  I have three “what I hope we all learn from this” statements:

1. Being an early adopter doesn’t make anyone “better” than anyone else, and clearly not smarter.
2. Product/interface designers need to do better jobs at making their technology more approachable.
3. Internet companies, as a whole (Google - I’m calling you out here - you need to make spammy search results go bye-bye), are failing to protect consumers from those with malicious intent.

The NYT feeds the Android/T-Mobile hype machine with a fairly tepid press-release-dressed-up-as-an-article, but this utterly craptastic piece of “analysis” cannot go unchallenged:

Apple’s iPhone has shaken the cellphone industry, partly because of its design, but mostly because AT&T and Apple have allowed owners to download any number of applications to their phones. That freedom to individualize a phone’s functions has helped increase the popularity of the iPhone.

Ummm, NO! Sure, the iPhone shook the celphone industry despite warnings (like this one from Palm CEO Ed Colligan) that making phones is hard and “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” But the iPhone launched without extensibility or third-party apps.

The iPhone began life as a closed platform. In January of 2007, Steve Jobs said “You don’t want your phone to be an open platform”. There were always plans to open the platform up, but for the majority of the time iPhones have been on this earth, if you wanted to put new programs on your iPhone, you had to jailbreak it. It wasn’t until recently, after a great deal of fear, uncertainty, and drama, that the iPhone platform was opened to outside development.

To say that the iPhone shakes the industry “mostly” because of its extendibility is demonstrably false. It shakes the industry because its a well-designed, well-integrated product in a market sector that’s gotten away with producing staid, nigh-unusable garbage for way too long. Which is why the article in question is so offensive - there’s plenty of opportunity for Google/Android ahead, and tons of other areas to focus on the notion of customer freedom. Why force-fit this story about the iPhone when it just isn’t needed?

Here’s to hoping that Google’s introduction of the Android platform will provide Apple with a worthy competitor—and push the industry to develop 21st century phones.

The “missed connection” was invented by Craigslist as a way for two people who “met” somewhere, but were unable to actually exchange names, phone numbers, or emails. They tend to go a little something like this:

You were the cute Asian girl with a beer standing by the side of the stage. I wish I had introduced myself because think you were there by yourself. You caught me looking at you and smiled. Hopefully you’ll see this because I’d love to take you out for a drink.

I had an interesting moment last week on a flight, and I thought I’d do my own little “missed connection” despite the fact that I made no effort whatsoever to get any contact information from the individual at hand. But that’ll probably make more sense by the time you get to the end of this. I may even cross-post this on Craigslist, just for funsies.

United Flight xx, Seat 8B

You were the middle aged guy who pulled out your iPhone as we were on final descent. I was the guy sitting next to you who politely asked you to put it away while we landed. You may recall looking at me with disgust and putting your phone away while telling me to mind my own business. I did assert that it was “my business” since you were taking an action that put my life in jeopardy (well, maybe, but I’ll get to that later), and proceeded to loudly say “thank you” over and over at me until I raised my voice above you, and with a menacing glare said “you are welcome.” You turned away, probably realizing you weren’t really too sure about the guy a foot taller than you who looked like he had had enough of your childish behavior.

I was really quite surprised by the incident, especially considering I was polite, and asked you to turn it off while smiling. Since you were in business class with me, and sported the iPhone, I was under the assumption that you, like myself, might be a frequent business traveler. I was also surprised by your retort of “it’s in flight mode”, considering every flight you’ve ever flown has similarly had you turn off all electronic devices upon descent.

Now I think we are probably in the same boat: it seems so ridiculously unlikely that you and your cute little phone could possibly wreak havoc on an airplane. I mean really, how on Earth could that happen? Seems crazy. But yet, they have this annoying rule, and it’s imposed by the FAA, and well, I guess since I don’t work for the FAA and I don’t know all that much about landing planes myself that I’m going to follow that rule. I’ve even gone looking around the Internet for a “fact” to prove the FAA wrong, and, well, bummer, I couldn’t find one (although there’s a lively discussion a Mythbusters fan site and this article is good too). So until someone changes that rule or disproves the FAA, I’m going to keep following it, because, hey, knock on wood - it’s worked for me so far (100% landing rate, FTW)!

Which brings us around full circle to you - did you have an email you were waiting on that you felt was more important that, say, a safe landing? Again, even against infinitesimal odds it seems like there are very few emails that could be worth it, right? And even so, you’ve made it for almost 6 hours already, what could have happened in that last 4 minutes? Really, we were on the ground a mere 4 minutes later!

So I’ll end my letter to you, fine sir, with the request that you consider the world around you a bit more thoughtfully. I know you are clearly a Very Important Person because, after all, you do own an iPhone and sat in business class. You must be extremely busy with work, because you were willing to endanger us all just to see what emails may have arrived on a Friday night after work hours were done on this continent. I cannot stand on solid ground and assert for a fact that your phone would (or would not) cause any interference with the airplane’s landing systems - but then again, you cannot prove the opposite to be true, and all things considered, I’ll take my safety over your email any day of the week.

In short (too late), just stop being such a grade-A moron, the world already has enough of them.
<end of rant>

I’m going to summarize this entire blog post in 12 seconds for the attention-span-deprived members of my audience:

The Internet is full of tubes, not facts on 12seconds.tv

As is too-often repeated but still ever so appropriate, “with great power comes great responsibility” (it comes from Spiderman). The Internet, but more specifically user-generated content such as blogs, tweets, and vlogs, allows anyone to become a content source. The more one has followers/readers/viewers, the more ‘power’ one has. When I blogged a few months ago that Macbooks would take a 50% share of all laptops, I had a variety of comments show up here (most of which completely missed the point I was trying to make, but that’s a different story). I have a handful of readers, so this didn’t really go anywhere - but had an a-list blogger written the same story, who knows where it’d end up.

Example #1: an earthquake occurred in Los Angeles today. The news spread quickly by both “official channels” and individuals using blogs and twitter. A story went up over at VentureBeat which included a reference to a video posted on 12seconds.tv entitled “5.8 LA Earthquake Recreation 36th Floor.” I added the bolded “recreation” myself for emphasis here because many people took the video as fact. Despite it not looking very “earthquake-ish” and despite it posting 30 minutes after the quake was over. Now the VB article’s been updated, but it has since spawned a post decrying the video as “fake”.

I’m pointing this out because not only did the VB author miss the title of the video (which is understandable), but the follow-up blogger did as well, despite the fact that he was clearly trying to determine whether or not it’s a fake. The power of the original article was so strong that even the title of the video wasn’t enough to make someone researching the topic realize it was baloney.

Example #2: Urban legends. How on earth do these still circulate??? My wife is on a mailing list with thousands of mothers in the Bay Area, they recently got sent an email talking about McDonald’s play pens and hypodermic needles. A simple google search for “McDonald’s Ball Pit” reveals link after link decrying the story as fake. Yet it continues to circulate to and from intelligent people all over the place. Need a better example? How about one tweet to instantly convince 50,000 people that Jared Fogle (Subway Jared) is dead (he’s not). One word here: snopes.

Example #3: Today I saw the following headline on FriendFeed: “20% of Primetime Television Now Watched Online” with a link to this article. Now I don’t read SearchEngineWatch, so I have no idea why they’re covering such a topic, but that’s not quite the topic du jour. The person sharing the article has now propagated the story, and his followers (and the followers of whomever then reshares it) will all be wandering around on- and off-line sharing the fact that 20% of TV is being watched online. Only one problem: it’s not. I did one more google search for the firm quoted in the article (Integrated Media Measurement Inc.) and one click later found this finding: “IMMI finds more than 20 percent of panel members watch some prime time programming online” (again, emphasis for effect). While this is still an important statistics, it is a far cry different from the headline being shared (one which is, in my opinion, quite hard to believe anyway, but that’s another matter). Updated: it’s sad to say, but Reuters now has the “20%” story, and yes, they have it wrong.

I know it’s a lot of fun to be on the cutting edge of information. It’s also fun to learn a new fact and rapidly share it along to your friends and family. But whatever happened to double-checking a source? Let’s face it, the news is more about entertainment and ad revenue than it is about reporting facts and accuracy. Just because it happened online doesn’t make it real. As they say, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Disclaimer: If you think I’m advocating bad driving or increased accidents, then please finish reading the entire post before making your judgment call.

Starting July 1st, all Californian drivers who want to use a mobile phone for talking will be required to use a headset (or here, if you prefer being called dude). This is presumably for our safety, and if there was an impact on our safety, I’d be endorsing it all the way to the DMV. But it seems like this is really just politicians putting laws in place to placate constituents, rather than focus on issues which do impact public safety. This law is just plain off the mark, and here are some reasons why (along with facts from the government to really spice it up):

Issue #1: Calling requires headsets, but texting, email, and other keyboard use is still acceptable. Numerous studies have shown the distraction factor is about the content of the call, not the fact that someone is holding a phone (in fact, NHTSA studies have shown that a CD player causes more distraction than using a cell phone, and we’ve had CD players in cars for many many years - no new laws there for some reason). So just remember, if you get pulled over, insist you were texting or maybe listening to a podcast on your phone, as neither are fineable offenses.

Issue #2: No supporting statistics from existing “trials”. A headset-only law went into effect in NYC back in 2001, giving the state 7 years’ worth of data. Checking through their news and stats pages, the NY State DMV has not issued a single report showing a decrease in accidents or fatalities. I’ll talk more about lacking statistics in just a moment, but considering how quickly NY dropped stats while discussing drowsy drivers (100,000+ crashes a year), one would think there’s something they could share on the “success” of the cell phone law.

Issue #3: A $20 fine?!?! Really? Are they being serious here? The entire purpose of our criminal justice system is to create disincentives to committing a crime. For example, I would rather not be in prison, hence the lack of grand larceny I’m involved in. Pretty logical stuff. The fine for not using a headset is $20. It’s almost like they are saying “yeah, we know this is a silly law, so our method of abdicating ourselves is keeping the fine ridiculously low.” Want to make this one effective? Make it $200 per offense, and start giving out points after the first offense.

Issue #4: No other relevant statistics of any kind. I went scouring the NHTSA web site for some statistics on cell phone usage, driving, and accidents. I found lots of stats on cell phone usage while driving (PDF). I found lots of stats on accidents (PDF). I found NO stats that link the two together. Not one single piece of data which said anything like “with the ever-increasing number of cell phones being used while driving, here is the resulting increase in accidents”. In fact, I couldn’t even find a casual implication where anyone from NHTSA actually stated it just maybe might kinda sorta possibly cause accidents. Amazingly, if I found anything, its that both accident rates and injury/fatality rates are on the decline, year after year.

Here is the only “data point” I could find across the entire Web (aka “what I found by looking through a few pages of Google search results”), from the Public Policy Institute of California:

The findings indicate that mobile phone ownership is associated with higher traffic fatality rates in bad weather, on wet roads, and in rush-hour traffic. California’s new law should lead to some 300 fewer traffic fatalities a year.

I think that is awesome. Except, again, there’s no data to back it up, so it sounds more like “good spin” than anything else. But I could be wrong, and if on July 1, 2009, the state can in any way prove that they saved us lives, I’ll eat my (virtual) words. Of course, since accidents and fatalities are on the decline anyway, I am not exactly sure how they’ll do so, but I promise to keep an open mind.

Now for some hyperbole. It surely seems like every time I almost get sideswiped, or someone rolls through a stop sign while I’m pushing the stroller, the driver has a phone at his/her head. From all appearances, its definitely those idiots on their phones that are causing all the problems. And I, like everyone else, want fewer accidents and safer roads for all. But maybe it’s just the impression of idiocy? On the freeway yesterday I almost merged with a Ford Pickup that was in my blindspot, but I wasn’t on the phone at the time.

The bottom line, in my eyes, is bad drivers are bad drivers, and give a bad driver a distraction, and he/she will find a way to become a worse driver with the distraction. I hate the catch-all blame of technology for society’s woes. We should be requiring car manufacturers to enable voice-controlled stereos, temperature controls, and GPS systems, as all have been causally linked to accidents. The real question here is why isn’t the State (or Country) protecting its citizens by putting the power in the manufacturers’ hands? Hint: the answer is, similar to the copyright laws, its easier to push individual citizens around than it is to get big companies with big lobbyists to make change.

The NHTSA states “the task of driving requires full attention and focus. Cell phone use can distract drivers from this task, risking harm to themselves and others. Therefore, the safest course of action is to refrain from using a cell phone while driving.” This seems to apply to many products beyond a cell phone, but have been in cars for much longer. It’s a shame that this law takes effect tomorrow, as it will, in my best guess, cause more work for police, not help the growing nationwide traffic problems, and fundamentally not save us from the bad drivers who just don’t pay attention regardless of the phone, donut, coffee, Blackberry, iPod, rattle, stapler, or other attention-getter they are holding in their hands. The State of New York (remember, the ones with LOTS of data) has advice, which is labeled with “use common sense“. Shouldn’t that apply to the lawmakers as well?

From the Netflix blog: “we’ve decided to terminate the profiles feature on September 1.”

The stated rationale: “the motivation is solely driven by keeping our service as simple and as easy to use as possible” and “Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome.”

As per a smart colleague of mine, I try not to second-guess motives when I blog (anymore). It’s not really fair to the “target” as it doesn’t really invite a discussion, it just puts someone/a company on the defense. So if I were to question this issue, I might wonder if they have an ulterior motive, some nefarious business reason to terminate the feature (as others have speculated), but realistically I doubt it. If the feature is costing them money, they could simply charge for it, rather than yank it away (apparently permanently). So I trust that they truly believe this is the right decision for their users.

Which really is weird. You see, to make a decision like this implies several things, which I will address specifically:

1. A large number of users were complaining about the problem.
   I spent the past little while searching Google, their community, their support site, and GetSatisfaction, all looking for documentation regarding multiple account profiles. I found no articles. Not one.
2. This problem is such a user interface challenge that fixing it wasn’t an option.
   Again, per the Netflix blog, the complaint is “members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome, having to consistently log in and out of the website.” If this is truly a daunting task to overcome, how about enlisting some external user interface experts to help out? I for one would volunteer my services free of charge for the hour-or-two it might actually take to create a “multiple profile login system”, a problem even Microsoft has done a good job with.
3. A series of intentional decisions were made to get to this moment.
   Product managers and engineers chose not to fix it, but to eliminate it. This was presented to marketing and business decision makers who supported this decision. This was then signed off by someone at a senior enough level who also felt it was the right decision. The marketing and customer service departments were involved in the messaging plan to communicate the issue to the outside world. And it ended up on the company blog today, with an online assertion that this decision is permanent.

Wow, that’s a lot of time and energy spent on a decision which, to the outside world, appears quite a bad one. It’s been mere hours and we have (at the time of writing):

• Over 1300 Diggs
• Over 1100 e-signatures on this petition
• Over 500 posts on this community discussion thread (plus followups)
• Over 100 entries on GetSatisfaction (a small, yet growing community)
• Many angry bloggers. Many. Many. Many.

I feel bad for the product manager who had to write that blog post on Netflix’ behalf. It’s never a pleasant position to be the bearer of such incomprehensibly dumb bad spin news. I, as many I’ve linked to above, can’t help but question this move at many levels. It doesn’t sound right and it doesn’t feel right. I have historically liked the company (despite the fact they still use pop-under advertising. what is this, 1998?), but can’t help but feel cheated. I urge team Netflix to really read the feedback your customers are giving you, and reconsider this move. I have a hunch it’ll be a lot more “cumbersome” to lose customers than it will to reinstate the feature.

UPDATED: this decision was overturned by team Netflix. Huzzah.

There are so many reasons the battles over copyright law are flawed, most of which, in my opinion, center around the fact that copyright holders spend millions of dollars lobbying and supporting political campaigns (now about to hit Canada too). The “voice of the people” is barely represented, so much so that the few who have tried, such as Lawrence Lessig, have found little success in their efforts. I’m personally not much of a “downloader” and over the past 12 months have found my position on the topic swing from “it’s stealing” to “I have no problem with it.” Also, to be sure I am clear on this point: I do unequivocally believe content producers and owners have the right to profit for their work.

A big problem we have right now is the use of the word “stealing” to describe “downloading pirated content”, as the two are very different actions. When I steal, I take something from someone in such a way that they are deprived from having it themselves. When I download, I am avoiding paying a royalty fee to a rights holder. Both are problems, but they are different problems. That’s an important distinction, and one which should be examined a bit closer.

The laws (such as the terrible PRO/IP act) are designed today to protect rights holders from having their content distributed without a royalty. Sounds fair, right? Here’s the problem: the acts of buying and selling used CDs are legal (as is buying/selling promo CDs, according to a recent ruling). So if I buy a used CD (which is what I personally exclusively do - haven’t bought a new CD in years), I am transferring no royalties back to the rights holder. Let me make that point absurdly clear: if I buy a used Madonna CD, neither Madonna nor her label make any money off that transaction, and… (wait for it…) it’s perfectly legal.

Theft, stealing, piracy, and other illegal acts are all bad for individuals and society at large. But worse than the individual acts themselves is our system. It is based on a cascading series of antiquated laws combined with the self-propagation of “big money” controlling the key decision-makers. I am not trying to sanction or condone the concept of depriving individuals from profiting, but I can no longer tolerate our hypocritical policies which call 61% of teenagers criminals. Nancy? Still listening?

Update: highly recommend reading Don Reisinger’s piece on CNET on a related issue