At OpenTech last week, one of the panels I missed was abuot a UK Digital rights Organisation. Out of it came a pledge to set up a UK group, similar to the US based EFF. Suw Charman and Danny O’Brien both write about it today, and the Pledgebank pledge, to donate £5 a month to such an organisation if there are 1000 fellow pledgees. A donation of this size should cover 2 people and an office to ensure that both sides of the story are heard. Only 545 people to go.
In Waterstone’s at lunch there’s a display advertising self-published books, with a £50 off voucher plus the opportunity to have your book displayed in Waterstone’s on Oxford Street. Looking at the publishing company’s site, authorhouse, there’s no mention of it at all, despite the voucher pointing you at the site for details . What’s even more frustrating is a complete lack of costing info; there’s no way to work out if the deal is good or not. Is it £50 off a few hundred or a few thousand?
Whilst the Big Adcontinues to go global, from a seed of around 20 people to over half a million views in a week, Burger King tries to emulate the success of Subservient Chicken with a new campaign from Crispin Porter + Bogusky about Coq Roq, (www.coqroq.com) a band ‘inspired’ by the Chicken. I love the animation on the gallery, with a hand shuffling all the Poloroid shots, but that is it. (I’d link the page, but being all in flash you can’t – one of the many reasons I hate all in one flash sites). the rest of the site, not nearly as much fun as the Chicken.
Last year, Kryptonite were accused of not listening to their customers or responding in an appropriate way after a story broke about how easy it was to pick one of their locks with a biro. The company have now expanded on what happened from theri side over on Naked Conversations. It drives home again how subjective reporting is, whether on a personal blog, a ‘news’ blog or in main stream media. Very few people can report nothing but the facts without fitering through their own world view.
In this case, Kryptonite were seen as unresponsive, not with it, ignoring the customer. As Donna Tocci explains, what they were doing was making sure they had something worth telling, a full response to resolve the issue, not a piecemeal reaction which may have ended up with themselves in a worse position. In response to some of the comments here’s Donna’s answer
“As you mentioned in your chapter, yes, there were lots of meetings and lots of planning before we announced our full plan. Countless. However, please give this a thought – if we didn’t have all of our ducks in a row, announced the plan and then couldn’t follow through with that plan for whatever reason (manufacturing, shipping, software) what would have been good about that? Don’t you think that would have made the issue even worse? We absolutely did.
So they made sure they had a good, solid plan in place before announcing it – and they have follwed through with it – but this isn’t ‘news’ so the coverage they have got is less.
A point where I’d agree with you in your chapter is that there wasn’t as much detailed coverage about the lock exchange program in the media or on blogs as there was of the ‘crisis’. Why? Again, with your collective experience, you understand that controversy ‘sells’.
As a consequence of the situation they found themselves in, Kyrptonite has changed the way they keep an eye on the world and also their plans for dealing with such things again.
What one person, or a small company, can do it research, before a crisis hits, which is always a time challenge, isn’t it? But now more important than ever! In that research, identify a list of folks to keep informed should a crisis hit – traditional media as well as recognized, credible bloggers. At least that is what we’ve done. Might still not be ‘right’, but we are getting there.
The process of putting the book together has been very open, allowing companies and individuals to comment and correct where needed, shaping the flow of the story and ensuring that, where possible, alternative views nad perceptions are put forward.
Whilst Donna takes time to answer such comments, Kyptonite continues its programme of delighting customers:
We stopped selling all tubular cylinder products immediately, including ones that were not effected. We have replaced hundreds of thousands of locks worldwide, much to the delight of the majority of our customers. Imagine having a 15-20
year old lock, that you have used regularly, being replaced with a brand new one at no cost to you.
Tuesday, I had comfortably set a new record for policemen seen in any one place for me. I counted 22 in my walk across the concourse of Waterloo station and down into the Tube system. Today, that number pales into insignificance. I started off the day with a first – 5 police at the Train Station; it appeared to be 2 pairs and their boss. The boss had the posher hat. Most stops along the way had their own police guarding the platforms. Then at the end of the journey, there were 38 police wondering round in groups, loitering in corners, making their presence felt. Two more were found down on the Tube platform – these were obviously the special ones; not only had they been allowed past the ticket barriers but they were dressed in black (no unfashionable yellow day-glo jackets) and carrying very, very big guns.
All these man-made troubles at home, but nature continues to out do us all. In India, the current toll is 430 dead from monsoons that managed to dump over 37 inches of water onto an area yesterday. That’s more rain in a day than the UK normally gets in a year.
I love the weird cartoons from Savage Chickens. A little laughter in the morning.
I added a Tag Cloud to this blog on Sunday; for some reason I’m only seeing it today. After trying to get it to work for me, I just left the code inthe template, in the vague hope that it would just start working – and it did. Some weird caching effect somewhere I guess. However, I inputted over 300 feeds – what I think I need to do is break it down into a couple of categories, which will probably get it to make more sense.
Mary Hodder is currently in the middle of a series of pieces exploring the differences in Blog Search Tools. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2. It looks like it’s going to be a 6 part series. A great collection of information about how the various options work (focusing on ,a href=”http://bloglines.com”>Bloglines, Blogpulse, Feedster, Pubsub and Technorati. On keyword search, here’s a summary:
But the point is, blog search results are similar to web search results, with some additional information presented. The order of the results is different, though, in an attempt to meet most users’ expectations and goals with the information, and more closely match the results with what is interesting about blog information. Google serves what they believe is the most relevant information, based on page rank. Blog search companies give what they see as most relevant, which are results are in reverse chronological order, based upon the idea that the results that will satisfy the most people’s expectations are based on recency.
It drives home to me the need to understand the tool that are available and then use the right one for the job.
Hugh McLeod has gone and created a collaborative space for bloggers to put up, well, just about anything. As he says “This is either a totally great idea or a totally insane idea. Maybe a bit of both etc.”. A brilliant experiment – I’m going to be watching closely to see where it ends up. So go see The HughPage Wiki,
Google released a new verison of their personalised home page. It was expected (they had feeds before, but not many) but now you can add your own, as well as choosing from their recommeded ones. Nice to see they provide Yahoo and Microsoft feeds as options. For me, still not as flexible page as it may be (you can only add the content to certain positions, but a great add to the service.
I missed Tom Reynold’s talk on Saturday about Blogging and Keeping your Job; today I see that someone else has lost their job after their online activities got noticed. Nadine Haobsh had an anonymous blog ‘Jolie in NYC’, that gossiped about her job as associate beauty editor at Ladies’ Home Journal. Her first post appears to be July 1, shew was unmasked and fired by July 22. That’s pretty good going by anyone’s standards. Reading her entries, there’s nothing that jumps out as being a trigger for a sacking, but as she says:
To all you would-be bloggers out there: even if you truly are “just being funny” or “don’t really mean it”, think before you write. And definitely don’t write about your industry: things will absolutely be taken out of context or interpreted incorrectly, and that’s just not fun for anybody.
In my case, I don’t hide who I am, nor do I hide the blog from colleagues at work. But I read the guidelines very carefully before I started (in a couple of cases made sure that blogs were mentioned for future policies) and tend to avoid work if possible.
In today’s paper version of the Metro, there are 2 letters from readers that suggest alternative tactics to avoid raising suspicion. The first is a fairly easy one – a girl wearing a huge backpack had put a sign on the reverse – ‘I am going camping’ But that won’t be foolproof, so there is a more radical suggestion – naked commuting; suggested as clothing and bags have beenused to hide things.
I’m really not sure that will catch on.
A few weeks ago, Sam, a Chinese Crested dog, won a competition to find the world’s ugliest dog for the third time (does he get to keep the trophy in perpetuity). In line with today’s online meida world, the dog has a blog. And in an experiment (for meme epidemiology I guess) Doc Searls is asking for links. SO here you go. I still think the dog just got photographed in a bad light.
Spent yesterday at OpenTech 2005. A mixed day, some pretty good stuff, other stuff that was not so much fun. Things I found interesting:
Microsoft appear to be launching their new mapping application on Monday, but it looks like Virtual Earth is accessible, although performance is likely to be patchy until the official launch. There was initially speculation from Niall that it would be an RSS Search that was going to be launched – maybe that is coming as well?
FOr me, there was an interesting behavioural change from the start – I immediately went to grab the map to move it around. No more will I look for the little arrows to move the view – it’s grabbing only. Being English, I immediately wanted to move the map to the UK. Now, with Microsoft being a US company, I can understand why they would focus on geting the US mapping data in first, with only minimal coverage of the rest of the world. That’s what Google did, and MS are following behind here. But I would have hoped they would have something slightly better than this:
I know a there’s a sterotypical American who knows nothing outside of their own borders, but missing off London is a lttle worrying.
Once zoomed in enought to see London, it still seems to live in a vacuum.
Does Microsoft know something I should know?
Update: I see it’s hidden again until the official beta launch.
At a Pre-OpenTech Dinner last night, I was listening in to a conversation between Jeremy and Peter about RSS/feed applications. And I realised what I’m missing in my aggregator – the ability to mark posts of interest so that I get updated on the comments. This needs to be accompnaied by a clean-up process, which lets me look at specific feed types such a those with comments and unsubscribe easily when the comments stop.
Probably the best ad in the world…and it’s not for Carlsberg. Take a look at this fantastic, tongue-in-cheek add for Carlton Draught Beer.
THere’s a website that is run locally, for local news. It has a forum section for quesitons and debate. One of the latest questions:
“What exactly does one do on the Tube when one spots a nervous-looking fellow passenger of Middle Eastern or Pakistani appearance with a rucksack?”
And then suggest a few course of actions such as leaving or pulling the comms cord. One further suggestion is to politely ask them if they mind being asked what’s in their rucksack.
The perils of modern manners.
1. Call a clothing line TwattyGirl. At least if you you want anything but hassle in the UK. The Press Release just gives us gem after PR gem, the crowning glory being ‘twattyisms’. Only in the US would this be done srriously; here, we’d add a lot more irony. Via PSFK
2. Yell out the main spoiler from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to a bunch of kids queuing in line to buy the book and hour after it has been released. But over here, someone does just that. Don’t watch if you don’t want spoilers. But if you know the end, watch it. It is funny…Via Observer Blog.
From the Flickr Blog, one of the reasons they get such a following (apart from being a wonderful product). An apology for services not rendered and a call for feedback, to help drive the next stages. Being prepared to listen and answer to customers, to be aware of when things go wrong and then recognise them, recognise the customers who are feeling the pain is what so many companies are missing. Formal research works – in certain situations; continously listening and responding to the people who use your product is far better. And having the conversation openly is far better than only providing ‘customer care’ in the form of helplines or email contacts.