Shark Tales

I sleep well, too

2010-07-27T20:29:00Z

If you've been around tech media for any length of time longer than, say, eight minutes, you become jaded about the word "leader." Every vendor, in every press release, is the "leading" something. It's like the farmer who's out standing in his field. (I'm getting to a social media point in a roundabout way, but first let me say to all the bumfkins out there: Everybody isn't a leader. Usually, the ones who are don't call themselves that. They don't have to.)

What was my point? Right. So it amused the cynic in me when the other day, I was editing a wire article regarding allegations of a "blue screen of death" on the Deepwater Horizon, the doomed offshore oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, releasing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. I was confirming the full company name of the owner of the rig leased by BP Plc -- Transocean Ltd. -- through a Web search. One of the search results contained a snippet from press release boilerplate refering to Transocean as "the leading provider of drilling management services worldwide."

I shared this with my Twitter followers, as many have the same anti-"leadership" stance as me. Moments later -- I doubt it was more than two minutes -- a retweet appeared from Transocean's PR department, prefaced with the words, "We sleep well."

It's an interesting object study in social media. First, there was the immediacy of the response. I hadn't considered Transocean would be watching me; I'm not relevant to them. But any mention of Transocean *might* be relevant. (All I can say: Whatever your monitoring software is, it's fast.)

The there's the ambiguity of the message. I assumed the posture of the message was defensive, arrogant even, given the context. But I'm the only one who had that context. Could it not be that a PR type at Transocean found it flattering? (I doubt it, but still.) Ambiguity is dangerous; if a message could be read two ways, it will be.

Transocean obviously felt it couldn't leave a void for negative nellies like me to jump in. But cooler heads must have prevailed; by morning, the RT was gone from my mentions column in TweetDeck. I guess it was been deleted overnight.

I'll add to my resume that I "helped with the development of social media policy for the leading provider of drilling management services worldwide." I'll sleep well tonight.

People who just don't get it

2010-05-05T15:07:00Z

Geekosystem reports this nugget about the news coverage of the recent attempted bombing in Times Square, New York.CNN anchor Don Lemon, speaking to former assistant director of the FBI Tom Fuentes, called up a Google Earth image of the area, which was blurred. This exchange followed:

Lemon: My question to Mr. Fuentes would be: What does that mean? What should we garner from this when this area is even blurred out on Google Earth because of this security alert?

Fuentes: I think they don't want you to see exactly what kind of work they're doing, and also they're searching other parts of the area just to be safe.

When of course we all know the correct answer is: The image isn't intentionally blurred, your Web page is loading slowly. Google Earth images aren't real-time, you yutzes.

More on privacy and schools

2010-05-05T14:51:00Z

The Badger Herald, campus newspaper of the University of Wisconsiin at Madison, reports that an Arizona university is chipping its students to monitor classroom attendance.

Classrooms at Northern Arizona University will be equipped with detectors that will pick up students' university ID cards, recording when they're actually at class.

Students are calling it an invasion of privacy. Administrators say they're just taking attendance.

Adam Kissel, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, told the Badger Herald if the school is using it only to take attendance, there's probably no harm. But with enough detectors, he said, administrators could monitor where students are at all times.

"One thing that we find here at FIRE is that if the rule is there or the technology is there, the university will probably use it," he told the BH.

Funding for the project, BTW, comes from the U.S. stimulus spending program.

What is it with Arizona and civil liberties these days?

School didn't mean to spy on students, says report from ... school

2010-05-05T14:40:00Z

A school board in Pennsylvania that started a privacy firestorm by activating the Webcams on its students' school-issued laptops has been cleared of wrongdoing in a report conducted by lawyers hired by ... the school board.

According to ZDNet, the report says administrators of the Lower Merion School District meant no harm when they took 30,000 Webcam pics of students and family, unbeknownst to them. Administrators were simply "careless."

The collection of the images resulted from "failure to implement policies, procedures and record-keeping requirements and the overzealous and questionable use of technology by IS personnel." Sure, blame the techies.

BTW, it'd be nice if, when I broke the law, I got to hire the jury that decides whether I'm culpable.

A question of priorities

2010-04-16T15:16:00Z

Mobile telephony is critical in the developing world. The infrastructure is cheaper and easier to deploy. It can connect far-flung rural areas with urban seats of government and services.

Occasionally, though, one wonders if we're puting the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse.

Case in point: U.K. tech Website The Register reports a United Nations University study tells us that while almost half of India's 1.2 million population has a mobile phone, more than two-thirds do not have a toilet.

Part of the reason may be that while a toilet costs about $300 to build, cell phones are practically free because of subsidization by the wireless companies.

Can the same rationale not be used to bring down the cost of plumbing? "We'll give you a bog for free; just sign this contract to use our pipes for three years." Isn't that exactly what the phone companies are doing?

Goin' straight

2010-03-12T15:19:00Z

We all have that friend who shares too much. When social interaction was mostly by phone or face-to-face, that was merely an annoyance. But now that friends connected to the social networking universe.

First of all, that firend is more likely than your other friends to be, shall we say, promiscuous, in a social networking fashion. He or she's more likely to connect with people he or she doesn't know, with whom he or she has no common personal or professional interest, to befriend strangers. And that friend is also like to continue the habitual oversharing, just now with the entire Internet instead of just you on the phone at two o'clock in the morning when you just want to get some sleep for godsake.

That friend is the educational target of PleaseRobMe.com. See, all this Twitter and Foursquare and Facebook info tells people a lot of stuff. If you're the Foursquare mayor of the Starbucks at the Eaton Centre, you're telling people a dangerous piece of information: YOU'RE NOT HOME.

"The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.," write the people behind ForTheHack, creators of the Web site, on their,um, Website. "Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information."

PleaseRobMe has received all the right sort of attention from media types, and the site is going straight. "We want to offer this website to a professional foundation, agency or company that focuses on raising awareness, helping people understand and provide answers to online privacy related issues," the creators write. "If you're such a foundation, agency or company, contact us."

Bank freezes account over 'objectionable' blog

2010-02-25T16:08:00Z

Disturbing news from from Seattle entrepreneur Mark Maunder, CEO of Feedjit.com and founder of WorkZoo (bought by Jobster in 2005). Maunder's friend and fellow West Coast entrepreneur Jason Goldberg (since relocated to NYC) has hadthe bank account of his new business, Fabulis.com, frozen by Citibank Corp. over what it called objectionable content on the company blog, according to, um, the company blog.

Goldberg is no neophyte courting controversy for publicity. According to Maunder, he worked in the Clinton-era White House, then for T-Mobile, got an MBA from Stanford and raised $50 million for the aforementioned Jobster, among other things. His new venture is "still finding (its) niche," Maunder notes on his blog, but appears to be positioning itself as a travel portal for gay men.

"Their blog has had a ton of hilarious videos of guys describing why they’re 'Fabulis,' writes Maunder. "Zero porn, nothing even mildly suggestive or risque."

"Just to be completely clear, we’re not talking about refusing a line of credit here. This is a cash account belonging to a funded company that was blocked."

Why would a bank do this? Maunder has a couple of theories. One is that it is a form of "redlining," a practice in which service companies deny or increase the cost of services to a targeted demographic. Maunder says it's a "very dangerous precedent" if a bank can deny a depositor access to its funds based on the bank's moral judment.

The latest update on the Fabulis blog says Citi has asked to terminate the account because the content is "not in compliance with Citibank's standard policies." Hmm. Would they freeze Ashley Madison's account? Lavalife's? Who gets to draw the red line?

As Maunder notes, Citi received a $45-billion government bailout in 2008. One would think that a company spending public money would be required to adhere to some standard of responsibility to the public, wouldn't you? The U.S. Department of the Treasury, which administers the Troubled Asset Relief Program, might have a word or two to say, should a few e-mail messages of complaint come its way. The department can be reached at www.ustreas.gov.

Seuss-a-phone?

2010-02-24T15:29:00Z

A Kindle is fine

if you're older than me

but what of you're only

a child of three?

Just text on a background

will never amuse

a demographic raised

on Dr. Seuss!

Bright colours and pictures

and nonsensical talk

are what tots are after --

Oh! How that would rock!

Oceanhouse Media

has taken Seuss titles

and apped them for iPhone --

electronic T. Geisel!

A readalong voiceover

and word recognition

are certain to hold

the most flighty attention

There's no Kindle or Spindle

from Amazon that

could hold half a candle

to The Cat in the Hat!

Alas, nothing's perfect

and this has flaws, too;

of all the Seuss titles,

they have only two.

Crowdsourcing history

2010-02-23T17:21:00Z

Since the day Wikipedia was launched (Jan. 15, 2001, according to, ahem, Wikipedia), there's been debate over the merits of the crowdsourced encyclopedia.

On the one hand are those, often dismissed as stick-in-the-mud curmudgeons, who believe that creating an encyclopedia is a professional's job, that history should be left to the historians, lest mistaken common knowledge be given the stamp of veracity (citation needed). On the other are those who argue that crowdsourcing gives a more democratic repository of knowledge, allows more perspectives than simply that of academia, and that individual subject matter experts are best to to define a living history.

Who's right? We'll leave the last word to Martin Brodeur, multiple Stanley Cup winner, legendary NHL goalkeeper, and Canadian Olympian. Sources close to my desk e-mailed me what is allegedly a screen shot of Brodeur's Wikipedia entry, which had this appended after Canada's 5-2 upset loss to the U.S. in Olympic men's hockey:

"On Feb. 21, 2010, Martin Brodeur died of a stroke during the opening 30 seconds of the Canada vs. USA Olympic hockey game. His death was not immediately noticed, and his corpse was allowed to stay in net for the remainder of the game."

Curmudgeons 1, Dilettantes 0.

Google, the fashion house

2010-02-10T10:55:00Z

One commentator has observed that Google is becoming the new Microsoft. Debatable. But it could be becoming the new Hugo Boss.

The search giant teamed up with three finalists from a fashion design competition sponsored by Vogue magazine and the Council of Fashion Designers of America to create Google-inspired clothing and accessories.

Gary Graham's "Peace" T-Shirt ($85) superimposes a stylized Google Maps map-point over search results for the word "peace." Wariz's magnifying glass pendant ($200)features 100 links attached to a numeral "1," symbolizing the googol (a number: one followed by 100 zeroes). Ohne Titel's oversize knitscarf ($300) is decked in Google's signature colours.

If any readers are willing to pay $300 for a scarf, I'll knit you one myself. Two, even.

12 Angry Men With Twitter Accounts

2010-02-09T10:00:00Z

Anyone who has watched a legal drama -- and Lord knows, it's hard not to, since coutrooms and hospitals seem to be the only workplaces there are in The World According to TV -- knows that jurors are admonished not to discuss the case to which they are assigned with family, friends or media, and that they are sometimes sequestered for lengths of time, unable to even watch TV for fear it will compromise their verdict.

Apparently, though, some jurors are unaware that the online world is a form of communication, Wired magazine reports. A Florida drug case ended in a mistrial when jurors admitted they's done research about it online, poisoning the jury. In another case, defence lawyers asked for a mistrial after it was discovered a juror was posting updates to the case on Twitter and Facebook.

How someone who has any command of the online world can claim they didn't realize they were violating jury rules is beyond our ken, but nonetheless, the Judicial Conference of the United States was forced to issue model jury instructions for judges in January: "You may not communicate with anyone about the case on your cellphone, through e-mail, Blackberry, iPhone, text messaging, or on Twitter, through any blog or website, through any internet chat room, or by way of any other social networking websites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube."

Because some jurors' phones are smarter than they are.

Nothing ... unless it's an in-person greeting

2010-02-02T18:21:00Z

A press release in my inbox hails an "innovative Web site" which delivers personlized video greetings from bikini-clad women to smart phone users.

Truly innovative. Who could have dreamed up women in bikinis on the Internet? The imagination staggers.

But I digress.

“Could there be anything better than cutting-edge technology and hot women in bikinis? We certainly don’t think so,” enthuses Christopher Harding, co-founder of BikiniTones.

In the interest of research, and at the cost of great personal hardship, the site was duly checked out. Visitors can choose from a number ofbarely dressed beauties to deliver messages to your pals (or, likely as not, yourself) for $2.99. Some sample greetings: "I Heard Today Was Ur Birthday"; "I Heard About The Break-Up..."; and "Would You Be My Valentine?" (this from the ironically namedCharity Hodges).

That sound you hear is a mournful sigh from decorum.

In other news: Oracle sponsors Tiger Woods

2010-01-26T12:12:00Z

We in the trades often snipe at the gutter press – Who actually cares about Kate and Jon Gosselin, Brangelina’s tribulations, Heidi Montag’s plastic surgery addiction or the cast of Jersey Shore, anyway? – but it’s at least partly out of jealousy. Rarely does a story come along that’s plump and juicy with the seamy underside of human nature that you can sneak by an editor as relevant to our reading audience.

So forgive our Schadenfreude as a Tiger Woodsian drama plays out in the C-suites of Oracle Corp.

Oracle president Charles Phillips is renowned for being cool and unflappable. But even his demeanour must have been shaken some after an eight-and-a-half-year relationship with a woman other than the one to whom he was legally betrothed was revealed on billboards in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta.

According to reports, YaVaughnie Wilkins and Phillips had been paramours since 2001. Wilkins ended the relationship last October, upon discovering that the divorce Phillips claimed freed him from matrimonial obligation in 2003 hadn’t even been filed for until 2008. According to reports. Not our reports. Can’t stress that enough.

The presumable aggrieved Wilkins allegedly took out billboards in the U.S. cities with photos of the pair canoodling and the message, “You are my soulmate forever,” attributed to one C.E.P.

A statement from the firm handling Philips’s personal PR issued a statement (according to reports) admitting the “serious relationship” with Wilkins. “The relationship with Ms. Wilkins has since ended and we both wish each other well,” the statement concludes.

That would explain the billboards – she just wanted to wish him well.

Traffic-stopping billboards

2010-01-15T16:00:00Z

As Toronto city council debates the practicality of a billboard tax -- supposedly to combat visual pollution, but the cash sure would be nice -- let us consider the impact that the march of technology could have on outdoor advertising.

More and more often, billboard space is being taken up by electronic, rather than static, advertising. Witness, for example, the eye-splitting Dundas Square experience in T.O.

These video billboards are, obviously, adminstered and controlled over the network. And, as we know, anything on the network can be hacked. So what kind of damage could online ruffians do to a company's, or a city's, reputation?

Exhibit A: The American Foreign Press reports that hackers accessed electronic billboards on Moscow's Garden Ring Road, replacing ads with an explicit sex video. This, quite naturally, stopped traffic.

The director of company victimw Panno.ru said the attack may have been linked to competition in the advertising biz, or it may have been a simple act of hooliganism. That said, shield your eyes in Dundas Square.

A Bose for the Baby Bump

2010-01-13T17:02:00Z

With the number of mobile applications available from Apple’s App Store having reached, by conservative estimates, about 1 kajillion, you’d think developers would have run out of ideas. Think of the most obscure use for a mobile device, and chances are, there’s an app for that. Trouble reading the green on the golf course? There’s an app for that. Need to know surf conditions in the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia? There’s an app for that. Want to talk to your baby in the womb?

Indeed, there is an app for that. Nuvo Group USA has delivered the Ritmo Advanced Pregnancy Sound System, which "delivers unparalleled quality and safe sound to prenatal listeners," according to a press release. (Okay, technically, it's more a peripheral than an app. Cut us some slack.)

"Reactive listening begins at 17 weeks," according to the developers of this Bose for the Baby Bump, "so choose classical music for the calming Mozart Effect, the classic rock of The Beatles, or the upbeat show tunes of Broadway."

(It would only be responsible on my part to note that there have been no studies of the long-term effects of listening to show tunes from the age of minus-23 weeks on.)

Alternatively, one supposes, one coulld influence fetal development in other ways. Tune in Rush Limbaugh to create a predisposition towards screaming at anything that smells like a civil liberty; listen to Fox News to make the poor creature too scared to come out; or mess with his/her head with old Mitch Hedberg comedy routines ("I love rice. It’s great when you’re hungry and want 2,000 of something.")