Time to shake up the look here! The previous theme was a Drupal staple at the 6.x level, "Marinelli." This is "Impact." It's a "responsive" theme, meaning it does better with mobile device support.
It's a standard tactic used by high school debate teams and trial attorneys for generations. After making a point, a speaker will say "Now, my opponent/the prosecution will say X, Y, and Z, but..." and they'll go into a defense against an attack that has yet to be presented." The idea is to set the tone for the debate. If the other side takes the bait, they're playing on your pitch.
Bloggers employ a variant of this tactic that's become known as "troll repellant." Internet "trolls" are a legitimate concern in the comments sections of blogs, as well as various forums. To reduce the impact of "trolls," a blogger will answer the objections of trolls in the original text. Some bloggers will use this tactic to stifle all criticism of their point by implying that anyone who disagrees with them is a troll.
Then there's the "hate" version of "troll repellant." It's not enough for some writers to call those who disagree with them "trolls." They carry it a step further, declaring that those who disagree write "hate comments."This tactic is itself hate speech. It goes beyond argument, introducing a powerful, emotional accusation into the discussion. "Hate" is such a strong word. Yes, "hate speech" exists, and it's important to shut it down when someone engages in it. A comment in a political discussion that disagrees with your position is not "hate speech" simply because the writer disagrees with you.
If this sort of thing happens on a blog, forum website, or Facebook page that you moderate, I encourage you to shut it down immediately, lest others interpret your inaction as support of those delivering hate speech.
Having our smartphones with us at all times is a blessing and a curse. We're always in touch, we're always wired. We can respond to whatever comes our way immediately.
But is that really necessary?
Of course not. The elegance of SMS messages, Twitter, and stuff on your facebook wall is you can do something else in between reading those messages. It's why so many people just let voice calls roll to voicemail--they don't want to commit 100% of their attention on one thing.
I was signing my new book at Maple Street Book Shop on Saturday, and naturally my Nexus 4 phone came with me. When I first got there, the phone was my friend, enabling me to check-in on Foursquare, answer messages that had accumulated, that sort of thing. But as people started looking at the book and talking to me, the phone was more of a problem than a tool. I kept wanting to check it! There are times when giving someone your full attention is not only good for business, it's just plain polite.
To combat the check-the-phone temptation, I've resurrected something from the early 00's: a PDA case. I used this one for my old PalmPilot, all the way to my Palm Treo phone. For the Nexus 4, it's going to do a number of things for me:
There are times when we're hanging with other social media geeks, and everyone's heads are buried in their phones. That's OK. Not everyone does this, however, and eye contact in a conversation is important. Resist reaching for the phone!
Here's the link to the PPT file for my presentation to the NLC today:
Social Media for Campaigns
It's a fair question, given that Ms. Long asked on Wednesday, "Is Randi Zuckerberg A Twitter Bully?"
In case you haven't been following the earth-shattering story of how Sister of Zuckerdood (and Zuckerdood in her own right, until 2011), Randi Zuckerberg, went off on a friend of a friend who tweeted a photo that Ms. Zuckerberg thought was set with tighter privacy restrictions. The photo ended up being passed around the Internet, much to Ms. Zuckerberg's anger and chagrin.
Naturally mediabistro picked up on the incident, and the intrepid Ms. Long explains why she commented on it:People are saying it isn’t news (though it so obviously is)
or they’re having fun focusing on the hilarious irony of the slip-up
and her reaction to it – but what about the poor woman who
unintentionally shared this “private moment?”
What's news about a rich woman with a weak professional resume getting upset about her personal stuff ending up all over Teh Internetz? It's not even as if the photo was really all that interesting or salacious in the first place.
No, the irony is the story, since Zuckerdood himself was also caught with his pants down by changes in the site's Byzantine privacy policies back in 2009.
The incident reinforces the notion that there are fundamental flaws in Zuckerbook's infrastructure. Given the amount of money invested in the now-publicly-traded company, this should give the Zuckerdoods pause. It should be something discussed by the likes of Ms. Long and her colleagues.
But no, how Randi Zuckerberg reacts to a friend-of-a-friend is the real story here. According to mediabistro, this is a case of cyberbullying. Ms. Long doubles-down on news value of the story with the thesis of her article. Ms. Long thinks Ms. Zuckerberg should have been smart enough to realize that asking the original poster to delete the original tweet would be closing the barn door after the horse was let out. After all, lots of people no doubt have screen-shot the original tweet and saved the original photo, so there's not much point in taking said tweet out of Da Twittah, is there?
I'm trying to find the threat in Zuckerberg's request to delete the tweet that transforms this from a request to bullying. There's no "do this or else" involved here, either explict or implied. She's actually quite polite here, and it's natural for someone caught out in public like this to want to stop the bleeding.
Still, Ms. Long sees this as bullying.
Looks more like phoning in your column from here.
A 21yo girl complains about the shutdown of her town because of a religious funeral in Mumbai. Not all that much different from all of us who complain whenver any President flies into New Orleans and I-10 is blocked off, right?
Not so fast:
The duo were booked under Section 295 (a) of the IPC (for hurting religious sentiments ) and Section 64 (a) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Though the girl withdrew her comment and apologized, a mob of some 2,000 Shiv Sena workers attacked and ransacked her uncle's orthopaedic clinic at Palghar, north of Mumbai.
A couple of take-aways on this:
1. just because the Zuckerdoods make their site available in countries outside of North America/Europe doesn't mean you should _use it_ like you're in North America and Europe.
2. Was this gal engaging in "free speech" or "yelling fire in a crowded theater?" look at the reaction to her post. My guess is she's a 21yo spoiled princess who didn't like being inconvenienced, and now her family, particularly her uncle, are paying a heavy price as religious fanatics take out their anger on them.
What you do on social media doesn't necessarily always stay there. While I don't expect 2000 people to ransack family businesses if you complain about things in the US, it's important to remember that social media actions have consequences.
Flash-based websites are popular with restaurants and bars, but they are brand-damaging disasters that ignore mobile device users.
Attiki Bar and Grill looks like a good place to go for a kebab and/or some hummus in the French Quarter. It's got an 85% approval rating on Urbanspoon and 3.5 stars (with several raving 5-star reviews) on Yelp. They've got good beer specials, too. Love the belly-dancer avatar!
But their website is a hot mess.
This is what you see from a desktop PC with a flash-enabled browser. See how the overwhelming majority of the screen is empty? That's because the site is designed to present a "flash block." It puts up graphics based on Adobe's Flash product. Flash developers have a lot of creative flexibility, so long as they work within the dimensions of the fixed block of space they've allocated for their work. On a low-resolution screen, it doesn't look so bad, but on a monitor that supports a higher resolution, you can see the extent to which the developer short-changes the customer. Look at the dead space out there! Imagine if a restaurant went to a radio production company to have a 60-second radio spot made, and 15 seconds were dead air. So much could be done with all that unused space.
Then there's the issue of aesthetics. Flash-based sites may appeal to the developer and the client, but if they don't appeal to the prospective diner, the restaurant's wasted their money. This is a typical comment one finds when soliciting opinions about this sort of site.
Negative feedback is only the half of it. You have to be able to see the website to criticize it. On Apple's mobile platforms (iOS/iPhone/iPad), Flash is not supported, so you see an empty or black screen. On Android-based phones and tablets (the major competitor to iOS), the situation is the same. Adobe originally planned to support Android (particularly since the late Steve Jobs point-blank refused to pick up Flash for iOS), but the development was dropped by Adobe almost two years ago. With 40% or so of those clicking through to a restaurant website from Twitter or Facebook doing so from mobile platforms, this is what they see. Attiki's website detects that these users are coming in on a mobile device and the server wants to re-direct them to m.attikineworleans.com, but there's nothing there, so the default domain/site is presented. Since iOS doesn't support flash, empty screen.
If you haven't ever asked a friend or colleague to check your website out from an iPhone/iPad/Android device, do it soon!
Here's another example of China's social media platforms communicating internal issues to the outside world. It's not unusual for cities in any country to sweep their undesirables off the streets so tourists see only the positive. One city in China went to an extreme, however, and social media busted them:
So, more than 100 beggars from the town of Xishan, in China’s southern Jiangxi province, were placed in a 165-foot-long iron cage during the fair on Sept. 15.
But when pictures of the beggars in the cage were posted on Sina Weibo, China’s most-popular version of Twitter, there was an outpouring of criticism online. Most netizens were furious.
Click through to NBC for the photo. This is the kind of thing we would never have heard of from China, even ten years ago.
Officials and law enforcement in China are in for a rude shock when it comes to the twitter/twitpic combination of social platforms.
(x-posted to YatMedia and YatBazaar)
Forget being deep and philosophical this morning...just be...
Get this t-shirt at Shultzilla!
Interesting observation by Slate on the only real issue/debate at the Democratic National Convention, the "God and Israel" argument:
This is what I mean: We live in the age of trolling. Any comment made online, if it’s given the right forum, is as relevant as any comment made by some media gatekeeper."
Words for those providing web content and monitoring social media to keep in mind. It's difficult to keep trolls under control, because they make it so easy for "journalists" to phone-it-in. The "reporter" just has to say "members of the (insert web community here) website say..." and run with it. Forget that it's a troll. observation by Slate
Not quite sure what the defense for this is. If a top-level reporter/writer does it, they can be mocked, but staff writers? Even if you get rid of one, the technique will be employed by the next one.
This is a political example, but troll exist in every community on the Internet. Foodies find them on Yelp and even cooking websites. Tech communities have the Apple-versus-Android trolls,, and it goes on and on. Be on guard!