Archive for what do you think?

Pleaserobme.com: a great way to make a point about social media

Feb 18 | by Sam Deeks | critical approach to online media, what do you think?
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www.pleaserobme.com demonstrates just how uncritical many social media users really are

Just came across this story on BBC website about a Dutch youngster who built a site that uses Twitter information about peoples’ locations to pintpoint empty homes.

The site’s makers say that they did it to make the point that anyone with half a brain can misuse the kind of personal information that people readily give for free every time they create content or sign up for a new ‘app’ in a social networking site. Continue Reading…

Non-existent Ecademy profile gets #1 Google spot

Feb 7 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, networking, what do you think?
2 Comments

And what the hell is ‘unwired-ecademy’?

I deleted my Ecademy account about two months ago since I wasn’t using it and didn’t really like the way Ecademy was developing.

First thing I noticed when I came to close it down was… that I couldn’t.  No instructions anywhere.  I emailed a couple of times to Ecademy tech support, but got no answer.

I blogged a couple of times; nobody picked it up.

Finally, I found a link (via an angry ex-Ecademist’s blog) to an option that seemed to offer the possibility of deleting my account.

Amusing, then to see this strange Ecademy listing (above) appear at #1 in Google for a search on my own name just now.  It leads to this page.

Firstly what the hell is ‘unwired-Ecademy’??  Secondly, why is it connected with my name?  And why does my name keep turning up in Ecademy’s foreign databases?  Seems to me that they’re holding on to my information.  What else am I supposed to think? Surely the Spiders From Google would have updated the indexes by now if I had successfully deleted my details from their system?

Worse, I just discovered something else. I’ve created an Ecademy account for a client and have just noticed that I can’t log out from my client’s account.  For some reason, Firefox (or Ecademy) just won’t let me.

What is going on here? And what exactly is ‘unwired-ecademy’?

Alexa toolbar terms and conditions: are they mad or am I?

Feb 7 | by Sam Deeks | WARNING!!, critical approach to online media, what do you think?
2 Comments

Would YOU sign up for these terms and conditions?

“Alexa’s toolbar service collects and stores information about the web pages you view, the data you enter in online forms and search fields, and, with versions 5.0 and higher, the products you purchase online while using the toolbar service.”

Actually, I haven’t quoted exactly.  The original is ALL IN UPPER CASE WHICH, WHILE MAKING IT MORE IMPORTANT, MAKES IT HARDER TO READ AND DIGEST (since we don’t usually read capital letters).

The T&Cs also go on to say that the information collected is personally identifiable.

Unless I am completely mistaken, if you click ‘Agree’ you are giving Alexa permission to record and use any information you put in any form online and permission to build a record of your online searching and buying decisions.

On this website we’ve already seen plenty of scams exploiting the willingness of ordinary people to sign forms on which the small print committing them to several years of absurdly expensive scam ’services’ is plainly visible.   God alone knows what we agree to on a daily basis in the ever-present ‘Terms and Conditions’ boxes we click without reading or so much as a second thought.

Is it that we are so greedy for the ‘pay-off’ that we have lost our critical faculties?  Is it that the way in which the data we give up in these transactions is used so subtly that we never make the connection between the privacy we signed away and the cold calls, the spam and the junk mail coming into our homes?

I suspect that one day a lot of us are going to really, really regret clicking all those ‘I Agree’ checkboxes.

Google and China. Stop and think about it

Jan 31 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, what do you think?
2 Comments

I have to confess I haven’t really stopped to give this any thought – until now

Clare and I were discussing the relationship between Google, Twitter and Facebook when the conversation turned to China.  It occurred to me I didn’t really know what the situation was with Google and China and decided to dedicate at least half an hour to find out.

I knew that Google had cut some kind of deal in which it colluded with the Chinese government to provide a part-censored search engine and it made me feel uneasy – particularly with Google’s ‘do no evil’ corporate slogan ringing in my ears.

“I guarantee this will be far dirtier and more complex than it looks” I said to Clare and sat down to shed some light on my ignorance.

The first thing I learned was that Google and other US companies have recently been attacked by Chinese hackers. Second, that these attacks were aimed at the accounts of Chinese human rights activists.  Third, that the Google accounts of a number of non-Chinese critics of China’s human rights record have also been hacked.

Ok. Pause. Think.

Over to Google’s blog. According to Google, these attacks have led Google to review the “feasibility of our business operations in China”. In a post, revealingly titled “A new approach to China”, Google justifies its collusion with the Chinese government so far like this:

“We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

So – we can only capitalise this market if we collude with the Chinese government to censor what its citizens can access. But that’s ok, because some information for the people is better than none, right?  Now, with the Chinese hacks, the ‘do no evil’ mega Corp is lining up to throw away that whole market in a noble stand in defense of human rights, right?  Well, that’s how Google wants it to appear, certainly.

But hold on.

Closer inspection reveals that Google’s market share of web search is far lower in China than it is in India – with whose government it also colludes to censor the content that its citizens can access.  Whoa-aa.

Let that sink in.  No longer one, but two,  major boom economies where Google colludes to censor in return for access to the market.  ‘Do no evil’ starts to wear thin.

Add to this the astonishing claim in the last week that these hacks were achieved via an architecture specifically designed by Google to enable the US Governments (among others?) a means to monitor its own dissidents… and the story begins to smell of hypocrisy.

So let’s review the story so far.  Google agrees to help the Chinese government censor its citizens’ access to information in return for a share of the market. Google defends this by arguing that some information is better than none and by the deception that this has a role in opening up freedom of information in China.  Meantime, Google does the same in India with more profitable and less controversial results since the Indian government isn’t under the microscope for human rights violations in the same way China is.

Then Google gets embarrassed as Chinese hackers access the accounts of Chinese human rights activists, doing so by means of an architecture created by Google to allow the US to do the same to its own dissidents.

Response?  Make a big show of taking a stand against ‘evil’.  This from and excellent piece in the online Asia Times:

“Google took an important and inflammatory step of escalating its conflict with China by using the e-mail hack against democracy advocates to wrap itself in a human-rights flag. As a result, its threat to stop censoring its Google.cn search engine in retaliation for the hacks has become a cause celebre for free speech and Internet-rights activists.

This cause has been taken up by the US government”

It’s a win-win for Google: if they ‘win’, the Chinese market is fully open for their exploitation.  If they ‘lose’ and withdraw from China in protest, they lose that market but win a priceless ‘moral’ victory which will may help people overlook the idea that censorship only really matters to Google when it limits the scale of the opportunity open to it.

One thing’s for certain – I know more than I did an hour ago :-)

ADE651 Dowsing Bomb Detector – unbe-f****g-lievable

Jan 22 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, scam, what do you think?
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How can it be possible that Governments spend millions on the ADE651 – an empty plastic toy that doesn’t work?

I’ve just watched the Newsnight report exposing the ADE651 ‘bomb detector’ which has earned a British man £50m  in sales to the Iraqi Government. Experts took apart the device and revealed it as a ludicrous scam; an empty case with nothing in it that could possibly detect anything – let alone explosives.

It is unbelievable that this device has been sold in some 20 countries - making the ‘inventor’ something like £80 million.

Scams are everywhere and they seem to be on the increase.  But it almost beggars belief that the ADE651 could be developed, marketed, sold and exported without someone pointing out the bleedin’ obvious: that it’s nothing more than a toy gun that wouldn’t look out of place on a Scientology table in your local market.

Unbe-f****g-lievable.

How to give great customer service – not :-)

Jan 14 | by Sam Deeks | feedback, what do you think?
No Comments

Enjoy this real-life customer service interaction that I had yesterday

Background

I signed up with a UK-based online graphic email marketing company a couple of days ago to help promote a friends’ short charity campaign. We had 4 days and counting to get 2000 emails out. It’s a ‘vote for my YouTube’ campaign – cut off point Friday, so time (clearly) was of the essence.

Having used this particular company before (doh!) I went straight to their site and tried to sign up. Ah, no buy button. Anywhere. Bizarre. I know what I want… I just can’t buy it.

I phoned them and asked how I could buy the product I knew I needed. I was told rudely that I had to sign up for a free account. Uh? ‘Then you convert it to a paid one’. I offered him the feedback that nowhere did it tell me that information. He couldn’t care less.

Despite that experience, I signed up for two reasons: 1) I’d used the software before and although it was cranky, at least I knew it worked in the end and 2) my friend was running out of time. She paid her money and I then spent a full 4 hours (yes, 4) fighting with the visual editor to create the newsletter email.

I triumphantly pressed ’send to mailing list’ – and got a message saying ‘cannot send until your account is verified’.

Nothing in the help made sense of that message and there was no online help (as it was 8pm in the evening by that time).

So we lost 14 hours or so – until I had the chance to get onto them via a live support chat widget the next day. Here’s what happened.

Sam: Hi – signed up yesterday, been trying to send to mailing list since yest PM but says ‘account not verified’ – verified account yesterday afternoon.  Can you pls look into that for me

Joe: Hi Sam

Sam: Hello – did you see my question?

Joe: yes

Joe: let me check your account

Sam: thanks

Joe: your account is now verified Sam

Sam: Thanks, any explanation what happened?  Lost us quite a bit of time out of a 4 day campaign.

Joe: all accounts need to be verified before they can send anything other than test sends. You need to request verification when you are ready to send out to a list.

Sam: We clicked the verification email link yesterday.  Is that what you mean?  If not, where does it tell me we need *another* kind of verification?

Joe: no, problem – you’re verified now and can use the account to send straight away

Sam: Joe, would appreciate an answer to my question

Joe: there is no < verification link >

Joe: maybe you mean the < activation link >

Sam: Ok.  So I clicked < activation link > in email.  Where does it tell me I need to < verify > my account before I can send?

Joe: when you try to send an email, the pop-up will tell you that you need to contact support to have the account verified

Sam: Nope.  It just pops up and tells me ‘Can’t send because your account isn’t verified’  it doesn’t tell me to contact support.

Joe: what point are you trying to make Sam ?

Joe: the account is now verified

Sam: The point I’m making is that your system a) uses ‘verify’ in a way that a customer won’t understand is different from ‘activate’ b) it then fails to send but doesn’t tell me clearly why c) it doesn’t say contact support

Sam: Result is I couldn’t get this send out last night, costing my friend 14 hrs out of her campaign

Joe: would you prefer us to cancel the account and refund your money

Sam: Did I ask for that?

Joe: you state that this caused ” your friend ” – is this YOUR account Sam ?

Sam: Listen, Joe – before you start trying to be confrontational, please be aware that I work in online reputation management – I will be blogging this experience

Sam: This account is for a friend who is running a campaign

Sam: a charity campaign

Joe: actually – if you are a charity

Sam: She signed up for the account, I created the newsletter

Sam: She isn’t a registered charity yet

Joe: we do offer a free account to not-for-profit

Sam: thank you but she is not a charity yet

Joe: ok

Sam: Ok, before I go

Sam: I called Aacme Graphic Email Marketing yesterday to offer you some feedback about how hard it was to buy your product

Sam: – I got a rude reception

Sam: I eventually signed up and haven’t had a satisfactory experience with information definately missing

Sam: with the result I couldn’t send, have lost time and don’t feel very good about Aacme Graphic Email Marketing

Sam: I contact you for support and you’re reluctant to either accept my feedback (which could possibly save you a lot of lost sales) or give me a satisfactory account of why the site doesn’t offer the right information

Sam: so…

Sam: it’s not great.

Sam: Thank you for ‘validating’ – I have sent the emails

Joe: the reason for the verification process is to limit our exposure to spammers. Every account needs to be manually verified

Joe: this gives our clients a better experience once they have been validated

Joe: as there is less chance of our systems and network being corrupted by spammers

Joe: we are sorry if this has caused you any inconvenience

Sam: Joe, that’s fine – but if you p*ss them off before they even get ‘validated’ (by not telling them that’s what needs to happen) then you won’t get to give them a better experience

Joe: This is not usually the case

Sam: Seriously how would you know?

Sam: Who ever takes the time to fight through your defensiveness to give you this feedback? Hmm?  Seriously

Joe: via the amount of sign ups we get

Joe: and yes we do get feedback

Sam: Oh, lordy.  How about the ones you DON’T get

Joe: generally via our live support

Sam: Anyway, look, I still hear you don’t want to accept my feedback

Sam: so thanks for sorting this out

Joe: no we do

Sam: and I’m outta here

Joe: and it has been taken on board

Sam: ciao

Joe: have a good day Sam

Sam: you too

“hp computers are racist” – this is very funny and interesting

Dec 25 | by Sam Deeks | smile, what do you think?
1 Comment

HP computer’s webcam ‘prefers’ white people to black people. Does that make it racist?

This is going viral on YouTube – and no surprise. The fact that the software / hardware can’t identify Black Desi but happily tracks and follows White Wanda is quite amazing. In the video, Desi is good humoured (if a little surprised).

In the wider world, however, this of course raises some big questions about the unchallenged assumptions that are what we mean when we say ‘institutionalised racism’. Whether or not it’s the truth, it’s all too easy to imagine a cluster of young, white geeky guys developing this technology. If it is true, then it gives us a glimpse of an unconscious aspect of racism: that if we’re white, we just don’t just think about being black.

In terms of online reputation, how HP handles this from here on in will be telling – and hugely important. All I can say is that I hope they deal with it with the same mixture of lightness, seriousness and openness as Desi and Wanda did.

On first investigation, I can’t find much response from HP.  There is this… and Mashable goes into more detail here….  Mashable seems to just want to write it off as a technological failing.  I disagree. I think it’s more revealing than that.

And is anyone else surprised that HP didn’t respond in the same medium (YouTube) the way that Domino’s did over that infamous YouTube video?

Virgin f1 team boss: green tax will kill airline industry

Dec 17 | by Sam Deeks | what do you think?
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Rest of the world: airline industry, F1 and space tourism will help kill planet

It caught my eye yesterday (via Twitter) that Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson was in Copenhagen bending the ears of the world’s most powerful people on behalf of the airline industry – just a day after announcing the launch of the Virgin F1 team.

Sir Richard’s tweets seemed to me so incongruent I grabbed them on my iPhone.

inccongruentIt’s not that I wouldn’t expect the boss of one of the world’s biggest airlines to be lobbying at Copenhagen.  It’s not even that I don’t believe that he’s probably a decent bloke with some genuine good intentions looking to make a difference in the world; I’m sure he is.

It’s just that I can’t shake the simple incongruence of those things: a desire to help save our planet and a desire to race Formula 1 cars around tracks burning fossil fuels for the benefit of the automotive industry.

I don’t want to be a party pooper, Sir Richard.  Far from it.  I just want (perhaps in the spirit of Joanna Macy) to allow myself to feel the full wrongness of it without rationalising it away.

So there you are.  If you want to help the planet, Sir Richard, why not consider NOT running a F1 team?

Climate Change talks in Copenhagen: row over targets

Dec 16 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, news, what do you think?
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rocketman

This picture is one of an ongoing series called ‘The Elephant Under The Table’ representing the things that people in organisations (and our wider culture) just can’t – or won’t – say.

You can follow the series on Twitter or by visiting Delta7’s website.

You’re welcome to print or re-use any of these images providing you leave the copyright attribution in the image.

If you want to crop or edit that’s fine – but remember to add the copyright notice again please.

Drugs: evidence that Professor Nutt is talking sense

Nov 1 | by Sam Deeks | culture, what do you think?
3 Comments

Evidence that harm-reduction and Government revenue don’t mix

addiction1Photographed round the back of Tavistock Post Office yesterday, this is clearly the staff ’smoking bucket’.  It looks awful to people who have never smoked.  It looks awful to those of us who once smoked but have since given up.

If I remember my days as an addicted smoker, it would have looked awful even while I was still smoking but, insanely, I – like the Post Office people – would have carried right on doing it.

It’s a powerful symbol of a drug that is so clearly destructive that no-one (not even a smoker) would argue otherwise.  More than that, it stands for a form of cultural suicide: death by self-medication.

The same, or worse, situation exists with alcohol.

One day, we’ll look back at these times without the fog of this cultural self-medication intertwined with its mass denial and political revenue generation.

And we’ll see that Professor Nutt was right.   These two drugs are far more damaging than all the illicit drugs put together.  The problem is simply that most people don’t want to look at their relationship to them.  The Government is only to happy to benefit from that.

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