The slippery slopa

Ever try to catch something slimy only to have it slip away from your best attempts to grasp it? That’s how the intellectual world feels towards SOPA and the various laws that follow in it’s slimy footsteps.

Public protests erupt as Poland signs ACTA

Yesterday Poland went ahead and signed onto the ACTA agreement joining the nations already signed on and enraging it’s public in the process. The internet is cheering on activists who took to the street in mass protests of the signing.

“Over 9000 protesters meet in the streets of Kraków to have their voices heard!”

Hopefully this strong public reaction will be a very clear message to other political powers debating on how bad the public backlash will be over signing such ‘internet endangering’ agreements.

As if ACTA wasn’t bad enough?

Over in Ireland they are showing respect for the people by slipping in a bit of legislation called the “S.I. No. of 2011 European Communities (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2011″, which will pass via ministerial order which does not involve a public vote.

Is it the sort of addendum that doesn’t merit input from the public?

Well Irish legal expert Tim McIntyre had the following comment on the new regulations:

“At a minimum this will probably allow courts to require ISPs to block access to alleged infringing sites (such as the Pirate Bay). Over and above that it becomes impossible to say — the language is so vague it might, for example, allow a court to require an ISP to introduce a three strikes system or to block certain ports. However, once copyright plaintiffs get hold of this power you can expect it to be pushed to its absolute limit.”

There’s still time!?

While the USA, Canada, and Mexico are already signed onto ACTA, there’s no reason why the public can’t organize an opposition to the decision and work to either get the agreement amended or have support withdrawn one country at a time. The only roadblock is getting folks to agree on a meaningful reaction that everyone can rally behind. So far the most centralized effort I’ve come across is the SOPA subreddit which has plenty of discussions on ACTA and PIPA as well.

Google’s New (lack of) Privacy Policy

Google announced Tuesday that it will be combining more than 70 current privacy policies to make a blanket privacy canon that will allow Google to access and use a user’s information over any of the company’s platforms such as Gmail, Google+ and YouTube. Google users will not have the option of opting out of this new privacy policy.

Google’s director of privacy, product, and engineering, Alma Whitten blogged to clarify the changes that will become effective March 1:

What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

This is also part of an ongoing struggle between various search engines and social media sites that are directly competing with Google to collect user data. This information is like gold for advertising companies that target advertisements based upon consumer internet habits, trends and searches. Free speech advocates and analysts see this as a step towards users losing their anonymity.

Focus on the profit

In the first minute of the offical ‘hard hitting’ video called ‘Focus on the user’ they stab at the heart of the Google+ social search issue:
They do a search for ‘cooking‘
Then they click on the ‘most relevant cooking result within Google+‘
Afterwards they compare that with a search for ‘Jamie Oliver‘ and complain:

‘cooking‘ isn’t very relevant to the latest info from ‘Jamie Oliver‘

Don’t believe me that they did this? Go watch it again, they actually want us to feel outrage that ‘cooking’ doesn’t link us to the most relevant info for ‘Jamie Oliver’.

The authors of the plugin fully admit that they are getting the results info from Google itself, and just don’t want to say the words “Google is simple showcasing it’s services” instead they want to make it out to be a matter of ‘evil’ and ‘holding back’. If they didn’t at multiple times in the video slip up and show how you can still get the top results without using their plugin I’d say they had a case.

As much as there is to roll my eyes at, from an SEO standpoint, everything about focusontehuser.org is brilliant. The back-links must be pouring in, and I saw a very clever ‘click here to get your results to show’ link in the video that could be a real profit mill for them (their marklet’s broken right now or I’d investigate).

Don’t get me wrong, I know this scripting project was backed by Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace (it’s still going), so it already had some deep pockets, but in my opinion, it looks like the devs had some deeper ‘evil’ ideas?

While we are still on the ‘Google+ Social is Evil’ topic, the changes to support nicknames, pseudonyms, and maiden names is apparently done and now you can socialize however you wish on Google+. A more ‘evil’ company would have stuck to the original, and far more profitable design which requires valid names and serious privacy commitment.

To read more about the new Google+ naming policy put out on Monday just hop on over to Bradley Horowitz’s Google+ page.

I know this is the part where I slap up a picture of Chia Bart’s amazing growth and progress.. but someone decided to help him out and drain his water tray so he’s really wilted right now and I’m trying to get some life back into him. Perhaps I’ll do an update after lunch if he perks up?

Bart sprang back a fair bit, had to zoom to see the wilt!

Which Social Sites Should I Use? Part 3: Linking Social Accounts

This is the third installment of my blog series on using social media to promote your brand or business. The first two parts are here:

• Which Social Sites Should I Use? Part 1: An Introduction to Social Media
• Which Social Sites Should I Use? Part 2: Breakdown of the "Big 5"

Now that you know how to setup your social accounts and who the main social players are, it is time to tie all of your accounts together.

TwitterFeed

TwitterFeed is a program that allows you to syndicate several RSS or Atom feeds and sends them directly to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (and a few others) This allows you to produce a steady stream of content to your social sites that will help to increase your level of activity. You will also want to check each social platform you use to see if you can like other social sites you are using.

• Use only high PageRank news feeds from reputable sites. Ensure that the feeds are not coming from your competition as they will invariably contain promotions which may lure your readers away. Stay focused on relevant news topics to keep your readers engaged.
• Include your company’s blog feed into TwitterFeed. This is the best way to not only keep your followers tuned in to current news about your industry, but enables you to send out specific, content designed to convert your followers into customers.

Most social platforms allow you to spread your updates across other networks which can lead to syndication loops. An example would be syndicate your TwitterFeeds to Facebook and Twitter and then inadvertently telling Facebook (or LinkedIn, etc.) to send status updates into Twitter.

Because the RSS feed comes into Facebook as a status update, you get the same RSS going to back to Twitter. This can have the unwanted effect of you being penalized for distributing duplicate content which can severally affect your site’s search engine rankings.

The real secret to success with social media is to stay actively engaged with your audience on a consistent basis. The more you participate, the greater the reward will be. You should consider spending at least a few days per week engaging, responding and generally participating in all of the networks you are connected with. The real "trick" to social media is to be consistently involved with your community by sharing content, Tweeting (and retweeting), commenting on other posts and producing high quality, relevant content for your followers to share.

Klout.com

It is one thing to stay actively engaged across your social networks, but how do you measure success? Indicators for measuring your success may include the number of contacts and followers you have, the increase in conversions, or the number of likes or retweets your posts are getting.

If you are wondering about your progress once you step in to the social world, you can use a web utility like Klout.com to follow your progress. The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from a variety of social networks in order to measure:

• True Reach: How many people you influence.
• Amplification: How much you influence them.
• Network Impact: The influence of your network.

TIPS

• It is important to keep your public and private networks separate and distinct. Do not use your personal Facebook page to promote your business. Create a separate, personal space where you can chat with grandma and put up those pictures from your "crazy weekend."
• Choose a marketing representative or individual from your company that does not mind having a public profile linked to your business account and that you feel will portray your company in the best light.
• Build up your marketing representative’s online persona by following only legitimate, valuable businesses and people. It is of vital importance to aim for quality or quantity.
• Avoid promotional networks on Twitter such as #TeamFollowBack and similar groups that attempt to lure you in to following them in return for gaining followers from them. These may have a short time gain, but if you cannot vouch for the validity of each and every member of this network you may find yourself associated with those that do not share your ethics or personal values. It is also an attempt to game the system which will inevitably lead to several penalties.
• Once you have a solid, well-developed persona, complete social profiles and have gained a some followers, you can create a business page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php ) and Google+ (http://www.google.com/+/business/ ) and consider getting involved in a few secondary social networks.
• Ensure that your website keeps your viewers socially engaged with social media button that readily allow them to share, like and otherwise spread your content.

Leftover SOPA scum

Congrats to everyone that participated in the SOPA/PIPA Jan 18th blackout, even if all you did was sit on Twitter and complain(some strong language was used), you did something to bring the topic into the foreground.

Yesterday’s on-line unity was a clear message to the political parties backing these bills. Last I checked the opposition to PIPA was only 6 senators away from the required 41 “no” votes needed to keep PIPA stuck in the Senate for good. While I haven’t seen a public list of senator opposition to SOPA, it too needs 41 “no” votes to end the future of the bill.

While this sounds great, it really just means that the entertainment industry, and fans of public censorship, now have to try even harder to keep their efforts out of the public eye. Make no mistake, there are people, wealthy and misguided, that will keep trying to find a way to sneak this sort of law through. Don’t think that’s a fair/optimistic assessment of the situation, well here’s the flip side (Very strong language/opinion warning) from Mr.Maddox.

Just last night I was trying to get some programming done while watching a bunch of movies I’ve been backlogged on. One of the movies in the stack was ‘Kick-Ass‘ and I won’t spoil a decent film for you with too much info, but there’s a scene where they are streaming a web broadcast live on the news. As the live stream becomes ‘too violent’ for television the audience quickly switches to the web to watch the rest of the live stream on-line.

While most folks watching the film were probably totally distracted by the context of the scene, I was immediately thinking about all the conservative types watching this unfold and thinking to themselves:

‘This should never be possible, we should have the ability to censor a live stream that is so disturbing! If it can’t be shown on TV it shouldn’t be viewable on the Internet! Just think of all the things the internet could broadcast un-censored! We need something like this SOPA/PIPA thing we can abuse!’

I’m not sure if the big players in Hollywood actually intended that sort of reaction to the scene, I’m not saying the film is a brain-wash attempt by the industry, but the thought did cross my very ‘open’ mind, so it stands to reason I wouldn’t be the only one.

In fact if you haven’t looked at ACTA, you might want to check it out. This is a more international version of PIPA/SOPA with the same issues surrounding loose definitions and loopholes that could be exploited while doing little to actually stop piracy. ACTA has been bouncing around since 2006 with a bunch of countries already signed on to the current version.

The closure date for signing onto ACTA isn’t until 2013 but it looks like there may be some difficulties getting all signing countries to agree on a final version (yay for diversity!). A notably large issue of ACTA, especially in the eyes of the EFF, is that it has been drafted in secret, hidden from public eyes by participating governments around the world. So if you haven’t poked your nose into it, you really should.

Speaking of closure, I think Chia Bart’s pretty much grown all that he will and I’m cheating now to try and get the top of his head to sprout.

Leaf me alone! The kid is not my sun!

Microsoft delivers developer kit for linking Amazon web services to Windows Phone

Microsoft has released under an open-source license a beta of a toolkit for integrating Amazon Web services with Windows Phone.

Microsoft launches a second Facebook social game

Microsoft Research has fielded its second Facebook game aimed at helping to understand users’ behavior in social-networking situations.

Microsoft Office 15 technical preview kicks off

Microsoft is making available to select testers the technical preview of Office 15 client, server and services as of January 30.

Best Practices in Web Development Instruction

Hot off the presses at WebDesignPress is our latest ebook, Best Practices in Web Development Instruction. This ebook includes helpful tips and information for educators in web design and development. Many of the best practices can be translated for use by web designers when educating their clients.

In this guide you’ll find best practices on how to get started with students, how to engage students and connect with them in ways that enhance their learning (and your enjoyment), plus a whole slew of practical tips to help you deal with the nitty gritty parts of teaching web design.

Special thanks go to the educators and team members who contributed to this ebook: Benjamin Bradley, Cherish Flieder, Christy Sooter, Kathy Gill, Steve Cunningham, Tami Frascht, Kevin Hendricks, Nina East, Kristen Wright, and Brad Ulrich.

Learn more about the iThemes Education Program Beta, as well as our Student Edition of the Web Designer’s ToolKit.

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Multiple Utilizations of Drupal

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