January 2012
4 posts
6 tags
White House Action Summit: Machine-Readable...
Yesterday I attended the White House Hispanic Community Action Summit to discuss engagement and social media. Executive Director for the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence Jose Rico and Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement Julie Rodriquez set the stage by outlining their goal of increasing the number of Latino students in schools by 4.5 million in the next 10 years....
7 tags
Freedom of Speech: Anonymity and Privacy 3/3
After highlighting what you can do to protect the momentum of a message against site bans and service outages, now I want to talk about how you can protect yourself online.
Just a year after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg insinuated that privacy was irrelevant, several Mexican bloggers posting anonymous tips on Narco drug activity were found decapitated after their identities were revealed....
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Freedom of Speech: Service Outages 2/3
In my last post I talked about how organizers often see their efforts countered by site bans. Now I want to discuss service outages.
During Egypt’s election and subsequent protests, the government banned access to Twitter, Facebook and few select blogs. Still, messages spread as platforms, sites and forums rose up to carry the load. The reason why was because the movement was branded...
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Freedom of Speech in the CES World PART 1/3
I am amazed at the difference a decade at CES can make. More than a third of the world’s population currently has access to the internet and we’ve seen both the good and bad of this - and I’m not just talking about bandwidth issues. 2011 began with the Arab Spring and ended with Occupy Everything.
Through connected tablets, ultrabooks, laptops and phones people took to the web...
December 2011
1 post
Jimmy Wales, Justin Bieber and the Fight Against...
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is brainstorming with his community in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) - an act that will be voted on later this week by the Senate’s House Judiciary Committee. Also known as H.R. 3261, SOPA would allow the US Department of Justice and copyright owners to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright...
November 2011
2 posts
6 tags
I'd Tag That: SocialSnapTag Gets Glamour 50K...
I’ll admit it. I like pushing buttons both physically and metaphorically. I have been known to disappoint children by forcing them to wait while I boggart the interactive exhibits at the Exploratorium and I’m visibly giddy by the internet of things. That being said, I’m not so easily amused as to push the same button continuously unless I’m incentivized by a fake Mayoral...
10 tags
Google Offers: Leading Daily Deals By Default?
Yesterday afternoon I moderated the “Daily Deals Suck” panel at the GeoLoco Conference featuring Lilia Martinez-Coburn of BluLabel, Lawrence Marks of Choozon, Chris Silva of Altimeter Group and Jeremy Geiger of Retailigence. Even before our discussion, we knew the reasons Daily Deals already have a dubious reputation — from over-saturation on recommendations, to lack of merchant...
September 2011
1 post
5 tags
On Narco Murders: If Online Privacy is Dead, How...
Whoa. I just read an article where 5 severed heads were found in front of a primary school in Acapulco. The killings are said to be drug-related and immediately I remembered a YouTube meme I came across about four years ago where scenes of killings were set to grupero narcorrido (drug cartel) country-style ballads. Back then North Eastern Mexicans connected to Gulf cartels were uploading gruesome...
August 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Egads! Fake User Reviews: Repelling the Grift
On Friday afternoon I came across a great NYTimes article on the now common practice of paying Mechanical Turks to post positive reviews for hotels, venues and restaurants. The article goes on to cite a new Cornell study that roots out “deceptive opinion spam” at 90 percent accuracy simply by using computational linguistic analysis. While this would help with fictitious opinions, it...
1 tag
Reverse PR: I'm Pitching For 200+ Tech Publishers
What the heck is reverse PR? Well, if regular PR/media relations is where a company pitches hundreds of journalists then I’m doing the opposite. I’m pitching 200+ technology bloggers and publishers in the IT, mobile and consumer electronics hardware space to companies. Late last week I wrote an article about it for my NetShelter company blog letting publishers know what I’m...
July 2011
3 posts
7 tags
Knowing the Metrics: How Media and PR Can Get...
I’m speaking at the PR Summit today about messaging media and consumers on emerging technology and devices. Naturally, my outrageously professional moderator Cassie Philipps asked each speaker for a few questions. The one I asked was less about messaging and more about looking at the root of some of the problem. How are PR and media measured differently and how can a good story help both? ...
5 tags
Need New Signals: The Media Awards, Oct 26
The Webby Awards definitely feature a number of awesome sites, but indy blogs like Laughing Squid are far from the majority here. The reality is that no matter how cool Google’s new corporate subsite is, it probably doesn’t make for good reading. And I’m starved for new reading material.
If media consumption and personal growth function along the “garbage in, garbage...
5 tags
Why Justin.TV & Wearable Broadcasting Would Make...
In Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash the author writes of the “Gargoyle” - a broadcaster laden with recording gadgets and acting as a human surveillance device. Writes Stephenson, “The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time.”
That was 1992 and lifestreaming is no longer repugnant to the average netizen. In fact, according...
June 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Did Recession Breed the New Blogger?
In December 2007, the US economy was at its worst as unemployment was at an all time high, the federal debt crisis became shockingly real, and home foreclosures were an epidemic across the nation. While the recession supposedly ended in 2009, the effects on content production remain to this day.
After all, what did bloggers do when their advertising CPMs dropped to less than 75 percent of their...
5 tags
Mystery Corner: The Case of the Hidden Passage
Normal kids had tree houses made of rotten planks, rickety furniture and a mismatch of nails. My father is an aerospace engineer and would never stand for shoddy workmanship. When I was 7-years-old he built us a playhouse complete with double pane windows, fiberglass insulation, electricity, and a full-sized door. It was a 5X5 home complete with old furniture and lacking in cobwebs. If we’d...
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Computex Reflections: Is Will.i.am an Americanized...
I’m in Taipei at this year’s Computex and while I’m enjoying my time with publishers from sites like JKKMobile, Netbook News, Akihabara News and Tweaktown, I’m honestly a little weirded out by prevalence of the booth babes.
Sex has always been used to sell products and I know that booth babes exist at other US tradeshows and in US overseas efforts like Yahoo’s Hack...
May 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Facebook Privacy for Professionals 101: Quarantine...
There are good and bad things about Facebook for professionals. For one thing you can tag, friend and interact with prospects, customers, advocates and clients on a regular and very human basis. But the reality is that we’ve got different friends for different contexts and not all of those contexts mesh well with each other.
While many of us have professional friends who share links to...
6 tags
Mother's Day Flower Caper: How Google Ranks Paid...
The New York Times recently posted an article about how major floral distributors are suspected of purchasing links with the text phrase “Mother’s Day Flowers” to increase their PageRank in Google search queries. Mother’s Day remains one of the best business days of the year for sites like 1-800 Flowers and it seems the companies looked for any advantages they could take in...
6 tags
Google Business Photos: Can Too Much Data Hurt...
At this year’s Social Loco Conference Google’s VP Marissa Mayer took to the stage to talk about the hottest topics in the geo-social tech landscape. Best known for her work on the search products’ team, Mayer moved to a new role overseeing location services in mid October. Since then she’s offered plans for expansion at March’s SXSW including merging Google Latitude...
April 2011
4 posts
7 tags
Girl Talk Dance Star Goes Bollywood
I recently came across this video entitled “Bachna Ae Haseeno” on Vimeo’s staff picks and loved it. After the second play, I also knew there was something familiar about the female lead.
It turns out dancer Anne Marsen is also the lead character featured in the Kickstarter Project “Girl Walk//All Day”. The project is a crowd-funded video where one woman dances...
8 tags
Empire Avenue: The Social Stock Ticker
A friend sent a note to a couple folks about Empire Avenue a few days ago and I decided to revisit it.
Firstly, I know nothing about trading regular stock so the idea of trading friends based on the value of their social capital to me is nuts. But I’m going to try it mostly because of the sick curiosity of wondering what I myself might trade at.
Apropos to a conversation I recently had...
5 tags
On Berlin: The Sites, The Spree, The Shakes
Last week I was in Berlin for the Re:Publica Conference to help with a blogger party dubbed “NetShelterHaus” and came back with a great respect for that city. Here are some of my thoughts. BERLIN - Imagine a city full of political graffiti, modern architecture and the Spree River running right through the middle of it. It’s the absolute opposite of the American stereotypes of...
11 tags
For My Moms: Twitter 101 for Teachers
Three out of the six women in my family are Canadian educators and it wouldn’t surprise me if my sister-in-law decided to become a French teacher. I started writing some tips on Twitter after my mom-in-law Carol published the book A Salmon’s Sky View and started her own Twitter account (@salmonskyview). But then I realized that these tips might be broad enough to be useful for other...
March 2011
3 posts
8 tags
AdAge Versus BoingBoing: The Pay Wall Word Battle
AdAge writer Simon Dumenco recently wrote a critical piece entitled, “Let’s Pray for the Safe Release of the BoingBoing Bloggers” lamenting Cory Doctorow’s critique of the New York Times’ pay wall. Dumenco sets the article tone by: Devaluing BoingBoing’s tech lifestyle blog by comparing it to investigative international conflict coverage; Negatively depicting...
3 tags
SXSW, Walled Gardens and Japan's Crisis
In the last 2 days I’ve emailed, Facebook messaged, Twitter direct messaged and texted friends to check on them in Japan and make sure they’re either off the coast or leaving the radiation zones of Tokyo. Everyone’s okay.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m currently reading Gary Shteyngart’s post-apocalypse novel “Super Sad True Love Story” or the guilt...
12 tags
Something Smells in Baghdad: US Socks
A few days ago Daily KOS posted an article about sock puppeting and the US Government’s new practice of creating multiple online personas for the purpose of manufacturing what appears to be a crowd. The point here, in the writer’s words, “is to create the illusion of consensus” in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Early-stage social networks do it to create the...
February 2011
4 posts
8 tags
How "Yes Men" Can Screw Over Your Company
After reading the following quote, I thought about the culture of fear in so many mid-sized startup companies:
“The underrehearsed ensemble has neither cohesion nor conviction, exhibiting mismatched styles from affectless through overwrought, and a suggestion of mutual mistrust that I suspect you might find in a prison theater company.”
While the New York Times’ Theatre...
9 tags
TED X Berkeley: Space Music, Flaming Tubas, the...
Between Joie de Vivre founder Chip Conley, Room to Read cofounder Erin Ganju and clinical psychologist Anat Baniel, last week’s TED X Berkeley showcased an eclectic mix of thought leaders, scientists and performers.
My favorite speakers of the day included musician Matt Venuti, animator David Silverman and professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design Walter Hood....
7 tags
How to Sell Wine to Social Media Cougars
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.villagerswithpitchforks.com/post/3227093956/how-to-sell-wine-to-social-media-cougars';Women my age and in my profession love wine. It’s less carby than beer, less hillbilly than cider, and goes well with Neko Case and bubble baths. Given my fast-approaching cougar status and the fact that I’ve spent the last 2 weeks engrossed in a book about the Rise and...
9 tags
Reinventing the Wheel: Quick Road to Startup...
In a recent blog post business guru Steve Blank declared “rewriting the code” a form of startup suicide.
After seeing a complete code overhaul recommended by a friend’s CEO, he asked “Who Wants to Work on the Old Product? Perhaps the most dangerous side-effect of embarking on a code rewrite is that the decision condemns the old code before a viable alternative...
January 2011
4 posts
9 tags
Learning and News Filters: Why Facebook Friends...
At yesterday’s Association of Alternative Weeklies web event, NowPublic founder Len Brody gave insights on the web’s affects on human behavior and the belief that a larger social graph can prove a positive asset.
Says Brody, “Facebook never promised that your online friends would be your wedding invite list.” But the reality is that those with a larger social graph are...
5 tags
Social Media: Getting Paid for Being You?
Allen Ginsberg once asked, “When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?”
I’m asking, “How many ‘influencers’ are going into the supermarket and buying what they need with their reach? And how many brand marketers are going into the supermarket and buying what they need on the backs on the ‘influencers’?
I’m...
3 tags
Resolutions: Be Less of a Blogger
I’ve decided that almost all New Year’s resolutions can be boiled down into 2 categories:
1. Be Hotter
2. Be More Interesting
True to form I’ve got the first one down with my commitments to quit smoking, cook more and exercise (like, ever). The second category commitment is one where I plan on being less of a blogger/recorder and more present.
For the last 2 years...
8 tags
Losing Yourself in Marriage: SEO and the Newlywed...
I just got married and while our love has never been a question, post-marital naming convention caused us to consider several options. My bread and butter is my online presence and I didn’t consider this when a man made a lifelong commitment to marry me. I was just pumped he was cute and proposed in real life.
Then I realized it’s even tough competition for wedding domains. For...
December 2010
2 posts
6 tags
Ig Nobel Laureates: When Science Gets Loony
Lately I’ve been bogged down by administrative work for both my regular job and my new found job of planning my wedding. Still, one of my favorite ways to procrastinate is to read up about the Ig Nobel Laureates - a ragtag crew of PhD’s with inventions like the SARS mask brassiere and studies like homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck population. Nobel Laureates dressed like...
9 tags
New Musical Instrument Interfaces: SF Music Tech...
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.villagerswithpitchforks.com/post/2150577567/music-interfaces-sf-music-tech-summit';The San Fran Music Tech Summit went from being a bunch of audiophiles talking about licensing issues, to a full-fledged conference with artists and major labels clamoring to attend. This past Monday there was an amazing turn out and the event team including Brian Zisk, Shoshana Zisk,...
November 2010
3 posts
16 tags
How to Get Noticed by TechCrunch, RWW or...
After a great panel discussion yesterday for the Wikreate Expansion with digital strategist Susan Barnes and Btrax CEO Brandon Hill, I realized that foreign startups really aren’t that different from American startups. Everyone wants to get on TechCrunch or a similar premium publication’s radar. At NetShelter we’ve got more than 200 tech blogs with more than 136 million uniques...
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Murray Newlands: How to Make a Blook
I’m sort of fascinated with the idea of the “blook” or blog book. When I first started blogging a friend bought me a copy of “Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers: Best of Blogs”. In it veteran bloggers like actor Wil Wheaton and Dooce’s Heather B. Armstrong had excerpts of their posts included in a large anthology. It was strange to see a web medium...
16 tags
Scrolling: A Web Metric Blindspot?
Engagements (clicks, shares, bookmarks, reposts) are quickly becoming the web metric of influence for publishers and advertisers. As a result I’ve been obsessing about the design of long format news sites. I’ve come to the conclusion that the page scroll is one of the most frequently ignored “engagements” on a page. ARE YOU SCROLL-WORTHY?
In the mid-nineties...
October 2010
6 posts
10 tags
Says O'Reilly, "Innovation Has Infrastructure" and...
At this week’s PayPal Innovate Conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, Tim O’Reilly took the stage as the afternoon keynote to address some of the issues he sees facing the paperless payment economy and how it applies tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.villagerswithpitchforks.com/post/1416411402/oreilly-paypal'; to Web 2.0, cloud technology and mobile technologies. His message...
9 tags
Nov 2: Voter Psychology and What it Means to Us
November 2nd is California’s Statewide General Election and I’ve got some thoughts about managing expectations during the voting process.
As a former government speechwriter our research indicated that 60 percent of all voters cast their ballot based on their loyalty to a party. An additional 20 percent vote based on a tweetmeme_url =...
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UVic Lipdub: My University as Viral Video
Perez Hilton mistakenly congratulated students at my Canadian alma mater for producing a lipsync to Hey Soul Sister. Nevertheless, it was Universitat de Vic students that created the original and garnered over tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.villagerswithpitchforks.com/post/1385536411/uvic-lipdub-my-university-as-viral-video';800,000 YouTube views. In response, the kids at my university created...
14 tags
Blogging 101: Newsworthiness, SEO, Social Media...
The following is a summary and related resources to my recent talk at the SF Blog Club: THIS ISN’T THE FIELD OF FRICKIN’ DREAMS tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.villagerswithpitchforks.com/post/1354174884/bloggingbestpractices';
Tim O’Reilly once said, ‘The problem with writers isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.’ It may be hard to monetize fame, but it is impossible to monetize obscurity.”...
3 tags
Blame Canada...for being Awesome
If it weren’t for Canadians, Americans wouldn’t have the electric cooking range, retractable beer carton handle or Wonderbra. If Canadians had never existed, American Thanksgiving tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.villagerswithpitchforks.com/post/1285855509/blame-canada-for-being-awesome';would just be a bunch of naked and sober goons cooking over an open flame with their boobs swinging...
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Infamy or Immortality: How Web Engagement Defines...
It’s easy to get discovered on the internet. You could be famous for eatting a kitten on YouTube or for being the next Goatse but that probably isn’t what you want to be known for. As a general rule, the web is pretty much eternal, so it’s best to own who you are and present something you’re proud of.
Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me, for I...
September 2010
4 posts
16 tags
Open Leadership...even in an employee shitstorm
This morning was an eye opener for me. For the first time I really stuck it to my boss publicly without losing my job.
After attending the AppNation Conference this week, former editor-in-chief at CNET and my current boss at NetShelter Patrick Houston, made the statement that“everything is an app” and that all publishers are software developers.tweetmeme_url =...
6 tags
In Support of Same-Sex Marriage
I recently gave a speech at my oldest friend Jason’s wedding. I was the only one who roasted him, the only one who wasn’t drop dead gorgeous, and one of the only women in the room. I was really honored to be a part of it.
Apart from the fact that it looked like I was photobombing a GQ cover shoot, it wasn’t that different than other weddings. But in 2002 Jason was worried he...
13 tags
Google Instant: Impressions Don't Impress Anyways
Earlier this morning, in a room flanked by laser projection screens and packed tight with journalists, VP Search Marissa Mayer announced the launch of Google Instant.
Instant increases search efficiency by predicting searches before they’re typed. For example the letter “W” yields 5 likely results including weather, walmart, white pages, wikipedia and W hotels. In addition...
8 tags
August 2010
5 posts
13 tags
Catfish: Conspiracy of Bottom Feeders
Last week I was invited to preview Catfish - a movie about a kid who meets a family on Facebook. Since the premier of the movie people have been talking about it as a fake-umentary but I want it to be something more clever…
What if the movie has been premiered in 5 different cities with a different ending for each city? Seriously…only assholes spoil movie endings. What if only the...