inCommunicado - eric eggertson

The obvious quality control problem of maintaining a community-edited site like Wikipedia is getting some attention.  Andrew Orlowski claims the well-respected online encyclopedia is hopelessly in need of rethinking and reworking. And Jim Horton laments the inevitability of uneven quality within a structure that refuses to establish hierarchical editors.
I’ve certainly seen some definitions […]

[Read more →]

Note to self. Check out these links from Trevor Cook’s Del.icio.us list of links worth clicking:
Google My Way - How to search Google efficientlyPassive-aggressive OrganizationsLong-serving Employees Don’t Trust Management CommunicationsCareers in Corporate Social ResponsibilityThe Public Choice Economics of Crisis Management
Not everything Trevor notes on his list catches my eye, but there’s always something I want […]

[Read more →]

Ruby Beach Originally uploaded by Lee LeFever.
Regular readers have seen me post to Lee Lefever’s Common Craft blog from time to time. Lee is a consultant helping organizations use social networking tools to accomplish things in a virtual environment that normally would only be possible in person.
Lee recently announced he and wife Sachi […]

[Read more →]

I’ve been blissfully unaware of Newsmap, a web-based tool that presents Google News in a visual way, similar to a tag cloud.
Given that Google is purposefully very text-based and very black-text-on-white-background, the map is an interesting tool.

It assigns greater visual size for news items that are popular in the past day.
Marcos Weskamp, a designer in […]

[Read more →]

A clothes retailer opposing a trademark application for a brand with a similar name may find itself on the losing end of a trademark fight.
F.I.T., a clothing brand by the Fashion Institute of Technology community college, opposed a trademark application for NyFit, a line of nylon fitness clothing (hence the name).
By arguing that a brand […]

[Read more →]

In a podcast interview with John Furrier, Forrester Research’s Charlene Li explains that the comparatively low numbers of people reading blogs, listening to podcasts and subscribing to RSS feeds is only a precursor to their coming wider acceptance.
As their use becomes more seamless to the audience, I think this is true. The fact that your […]

[Read more →]

Lee Lefever writes about online communities.
"In the best situations," he says in a posting this week, "businesses are able to create an online home
for their customers to feel connected to one another and the company.
Often, this might include product support discussions, user-to-user
discussion, polls, etc. These communities can and do yield significant
value. But, there is […]

[Read more →]

Slashdot is reporting a rumour that Google will refuse to do interviews with CNet for a year as punishment for an article by Elinor Mills that pries into the private affairs of Google CEO Eric Scmidt. The story has been confirmed by CNet in a CNN story.
The tool used to intrude on Schmidt’s privacy? Google, […]

[Read more →]

You have to love the enthusiasm with which geeks tackle a problem. In this case, trackback spam aimed at Threadwatch.org — a news and message forum cum blog used by search engine marketers to share ideas, post news and rumours and slag Internet behemoths of all kinds.
The challenge: how to make life miserable for Arsewipe […]

[Read more →]

Josh Hallett describes a chat/brain-picking session the Orlando Sentinel had with him this week. The description of what the Sentinel has done and is planning to do reveals the dilemma many media outlets face: you can’t change one part of your operation without affecting another part.
The Sentinel’s use of specific RSS feeds for various categories, […]

[Read more →]

The Internet, digital rights management and other techno-economic factors are influenced by private companies, nations, cultures, key people and communities that rely on them. The fact that some of those influences at times seem irresistible and inevitable should not lead you to believe they will necessarily prevail.
But damn, it’s hard to push against the flow […]

[Read more →]