Category: Four pillars

Learning about blogging

I received a comment from 2036AD about my last post, and it was good constructive feedback. I guess I fell into my own trap, and rather than be Thinker or Linker, I wandered into Stinker territory.

The rules for creating value when linking appear simple:

  • 1. Tell people enough about what you are linking to, enough to make them choose to find out further or not, as the case may be.
  • 2. Tell people why you are doing the linking and pointing out, provide some opinion of your own. Is this good? Is this bad? Does this matter? Why?
  • 3. Make sure you explain any jargon or specialist terms within your post.
  • 4. The reader must have enough information (as a result of your post) to understand what is being linked to and to decide whether or not to acquire more information by following the link.

These four criteria make the difference between Linker and Stinker. With my EULALyzer post I went into Stinker territory. Thank you 2036AD for pulling me up.

And so as not to make it worse, here’s what I should have said. Someone has come up with a tool to analyse the terms and conditions in an End User Licence Agreement. This is interesting and useful. But it currently only works on Windows. Which makes it less interesting and useful.

I went on to add that the end-user agreements in the ISP, cableco and telco space are also proving challenging, and that having a tool to analyse them would be useful.

EULAlyzer

LifeHacker  pointed me towards  this while I was travelling. Interesting concept, once it works on multiple platforms.

Now if someone somewhere could come up with the equivalent for analysing the end-user agreements offered by every ISP, cableco or telco, in the run-up to WalledGardenia, we could all benefit.

“You can unleash the players and be confident that you will like the results”

That’s a quote from a wonderful interview of Pierre Omidyar in Release 1.0, March 2006.

In the article, he says that the challenge is to create the right environment where you can “unleash the players and be confident that you will like the results”. In his view, such an environment has three aspects:

  • open access to all
  • open connection (as in ability to communicate and to transact)
  • skin in the game (ownership and accountability)

What he says about markets and environments is as true for institutions. Every firm needs to know how to attract people, retain them, develop them and extend their potential. Omidyar’s rules rule. You should read the whole article.

I’d saved up the March issue to read en route to PC Forum, and to use to annotate the sessions. Unfortunately circumstances were such I could not go. So I got to read it on holiday.

It is probably the single most important print journal I subscribe to, in terms of things that challenge and educate me. Esther Dyson can be relied upon to bring together the people that matter on subjects that matter, and summarise things her unique way. Opensource. Blogs and wikis. Collaboration in general. Tags. Trust. Attention and intention. Identity. Consumerisation. In each case, things I was experimenting with became clearer in my mind as a result of reading the journal.

Sometimes people come up to me and claim that I have A-list-blogger syndrome, that I like having conversations with the bloggerati. And the way it’s said, it’s a bit like being accused of being studious and a teacher’s pet while at school. My reaction is the same as it was when I was at school. What matters to me is that I learn.

Stop, children, what’s that sound?

…. There’s something happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear.
There’s a man with a gun over there,
Telling me I got to beware.
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down

Stephen Stills, For What It’s Worth 

We live in interesting times.

A couple of nonfiction writers (Baigent and Leigh) sue a writer of fiction (Dan Brown), apparently about copyright. Weird that one of the antagonists in the fiction book is called Sir Leigh Teabing (an anagram of Baigent).

Apple Corp and Apple Inc go to court fighting about something to do with their names. And play a Coldplay song to prove some point or the other. I guess I should be glad that they didn’t ask Chris Martin what his daughter’s called, since it could be argued she has some connection with music.

And eBay. And RIM. And Chinese manufacturers suing US ones. And more and more patents being taken out everywhere, just at the point that even legal eagles seem to be agreeing that the system is wrong. Defensive patents. Frivolous patents. Expensive battles.
Everybody look what’s going down.

Unfinished journey

Some books I’m reading right now:

For most of the titles, it’s second time around. I like savouring things. The British Empire “confidential” pamphlet is intriguing, and I will be posting about it later.