July 1st, 2009
An as-yet-unnamed potential startup company is planning to develop some revolutionary software that relates to how people work together. One of our first steps is to set set up a research community and making some ethnographic observations — in other words, getting an understanding of how people work today. We’re especially trying to get a diverse set of participants: not just techies, not just straight white guys, not just Microsoft-related people.
At the end of the first round of observations, we’ll provide all the participants with a summary of our findings. And as a way of showing our appreciation, we’ll also give them each a free copy of our first product once it’s available.
Interested in being a part of it? We’ll need two to three hours of your time.
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Tags: computer science as a social science, ethnography, newco, observations, startups, ux
Posted in Professional, social computing | No Comments »
June 11th, 2009
Another Shakacon presentation, this one from Deviant Ollam. The short answer: fly with firearms.
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Tags: security, travel, tsa
Posted in social sciences | 3 Comments »
June 11th, 2009
Sarah Blankinship and I are presented Securing with the Enemy: Social strategy and team of rivals at Shakacon today. More about our talk later; this post has notes from the keynote presentation on The Art of Espionage, by Luke McOmie (aka Pyr0) of British Telecom.
Luke’s consulting includes “real world risk assessments”, which sometimes involves breaking into his clients’ companies to test their security. So it’s a great opportunity to hear about the kinds of techniques the real bad guys use. Fascinating stuff!
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Tags: security, security as a social science
Posted in Professional, Tales from the Net, Uncategorized, entertainment, meta | No Comments »
June 7th, 2009
jointheimpact: AT&T Latest Advertiser To Leave KRXQ Confronted By Advertisers, Media and Community … UPDATE: McDonald’s Is 10th Company to Pull KRXQ Advertising http://bit.ly/ki7vc //zomg! Amazing! (via @Andy_Marra)
– from Twitter, June 1-5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
In nerdette’s Don’t get mad, ORGANIZE call to action for the “We can do better” blogathon she discusses how online and offiline organizing are increasingly blurring together. The swift reactions to Playboy’s article about hate-f***ing conservative women and KRXQ radio hosts encouraging violence against transgendered youth are two good examples of this — and both have gotten immediate results.
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June 2nd, 2009
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June 1st, 2009
“Fight for me!”
– a privacy-loving Facebook friend, wishing me luck at the conference
Here’s our opportunity to realize the promise of the Net that was so present in 1990s when CFP started.
– Deborah Pierce on the CFP blog
The program for this year’s Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference is outstanding even by CFP’s high standards. The mix of technology, legal, policy, and activism perspectives is particularly strong this year, and with the new administration and Washington DC location there’s significant involvement by government employees for the first time since the 1990s. As well as CFP regulars like Jennifer Grannick, Jim Harper, Ed Felten, Nicky Ozer, Alessandro Acquisti, Stewart Baker, and Lillie Coney, speakers incude first-timers like Marcy Wheeler, Dori Maynard, Paul Ekman, Shireen Mitchell, Rebecca Mackinnon, Nancy Scola, and Ari Melber. Don’t take my word for it — check out the program and prepare to be impressed.
Best of all, with streaming video, the #cfp09 Twitter backchannel ,* live-blogging, and a community wiki, the conference will be more accessible onine than every before. Kudos to Katy Nelson of the ACLU and Robert Guerra of Freedom House for taking the lead with the video streaming, and to all the volunteers of the online visibility team for all the great work on the blog, Twitter, and Facebook. The online schedule has details, we’ll do our best to keep the web site updated regularly, and the Twitter feed will be best way to keep up what’s going on.
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Tags: activism, cfp, civil liberties, privacy, social networks
Posted in Personal, Tales from the Net, Uncategorized, privacy, social computing | No Comments »
May 24th, 2009
Work in progress. Feedback welcome!
Starbucks’ recent social network ad campaign is a great illustration of the kinds of dynamics I’ve been talking about in the Lessons from Skittles for poets and activists series. In yet another example of Twitter’s buzz-creation power, the ad campaign got coverage in the NY Times and Time even before launching. On the other hand, in Skittles and infowar I concluded that anybody engaging in Twitter-based marketing or activism should expect interference … and that’s just what happens here.
Simon Owens has a good summary on Bloggasm:
Unfortunately for Starbucks, liberal activist and filmmaker Robert Greenwald, founder of Brave New Films, came across that Times article early Tuesday morning. Greenwald, who has directed films for major studios and launched Brave New Films a few years ago, had been working for months on shooting an anti-Starbucks video that debuted on YouTube that very day. The mini-documentary features interviews with several former and current Starbucks employees and makes the argument that the company – despite popular perception that it treats its employees well — has unfair labor practices and has aggressively fought off union organizing.
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Retweet this. If you disagree with Twitter’s decision to hide replies to ppl you don’t follow, start your replies with #fixreplies.
