Disruptive Conversations

How well do you know your neighbors? How often do you see them? Do you know what's going on in your neighborhood?

The reality today is that our lives seem to be getting increasingly busier and we very often don't know our neighbors all that well. Even when we do know our neighbors, we may not see them all that often as our schedules may not overlap. Plus, there are often times of the year when we stay indoors as much as we can (winter in the north, summer in the south) and may see our neighbors only in passing. (Unless, of course, you have a dog, in which case you may see your neighbors a great deal if you walk said dog.)

Here in Burlington, Vermont, we've had an ongoing experiment for the past couple of years in using the global Internet to connect people in their local neighborhood. It's a service called Front Porch Forum (FPF) that started here in Burlington, has expanded to cover the entire county here in Vermont and is now looking to expand into other parts of the country/world.

One of the interesting aspects is that FPF uses that very decidedly unsexy and un-Web2.0 medium of...

email!

Yes, indeed, the killer app for connecting people in their local neighborhood turns out to be... email mailing lists that are restricted, moderated and digested. You have to live in the neighborhood to join. All messages to the mailing list are moderated. And only one message is sent out every day or so (depending upon volume) containing all the other messages. Think of it as almost a community "newsletter" sent to all members.

I have to say that... it works! You know (or come to know) the people in your community There's no spam. It doesn't flood your inbox. There's no special website you have to go to... you just get the message in your inbox wherever you read your email.

Simple. Easy.

And that is perhaps the key. These days it's extremely easy to get set up with an email account, and that's all you need. You can read it whenever you can... so you don't have to be right there.

Here in Burlington where, according to the Front Porch Forum folks, some 30% of all households are subscribers to their neighborhood forum, it's been an incredibly useful service. I've learned of upcoming events (and posted some). Volunteers have been found for local events. Community associations use it to put out info about their activities. The city of Burlington has taken to sending out notices. Local politicians have posted notices. We've had some debates/arguments about certain aspects of our neighborhood (like "should we put a lock on the gate to the beach area?") Advocates for various causes have posted notes about their views. All sorts of notices, requests, questions, debates... (you can read some testimonials online).

Having been active in our local neighborhood (and on the community association board for a year), I've certainly seen the value. People will say "Oh, yeah, I saw that on the forum." I've had neighbors, some of whom I didn't know, contact me specifically because of notes I've posted. Sometimes by email, sometimes by phone and also in person. It has connected our local community together more - and it's been an interesting experiment to watch.

Now is there any real difference from FPF and just a plain, old, mailing list for a neighborhood using something like Google Groups? On one level, no, not really. It's just a mailing list after all. The difference really is that with your own mailing list, someone has to administer it. Someone has to deal with spam, either by approving memberships or moderating messages. And the list has to be publicized. The FPF crew takes on the sysadmin issues and moderation tasks. They also make it easy for people to find your local community mailing list because all you need to do is enter your street address.

To get a sense of the project, here's a video that was recently produced about Front Porch Forum:

Front Porch Forum is also up for a Case Foundation award along with some other great projects and is looking for votes. :-)

Sadly, when we move to Keene, NH, in a few months I'll have to leave the FPF behind (at least until they expand into that area). I'll leave, though, having seen an example of a really old electronic media (email) playing a really neat role in connecting neighbors to neighbors.

Do you have anything similar in your neighborhood? (BTW, you can sign up at Front Porch Forum even if you're not in Vermont and the FPF folks will contact you if/when they expand into your area.)

Technorati Tags: neighbors, neighborhood, front porch forum, local, community

When is the last time that you wrote in "cursive" handwriting? (a.k.a. "longhand")

Was it recently? Did you scribble a note to yourself or to a friend? Did you write something down in a notebook you carry? Did you need to write notes (or a prescription) as part of your work? Did you... (gasp!)... actually write a letter to someone?

I thought of all this last night as I was working through one of my various "boxes" in preparation for our impending move. Perhaps you are more or less "clutter-free" like my wife, but I'm not... and I have several boxes of various accumulated things that I'm committed to work through before we make the move, saving critical things and recycling the rest. Anyway, last night's box was full of... letters. Letters from friends... letters from my parents... letters from grandparents... from friends of the family... a few from old girlfriends... a few from acquaintances I now only vaguely remember... and a huge number of letters and cards from my wife.

It was fun... fascinating... sometimes incredibly emotional (like when I found the letters from my now-deceased grandparents on my mother's side)... humorous... inspiring (a friend writing from his Peace Corps work in Central America)... touching... romantic (my wife and I began our relationship before the era of heavy email usage ;-)... and many more emotions.

The various writing styles were intriguing as well. Some were in small, tight compact script. Others were larger and looser. Some were in block print. Most were in cursive. Some were a mixture. Some were obviously written quickly while others at least appeared to have been written with more care. (Or the writers just have great penmanship.) Some were extremely legible and easy to read while others were... um... "challenging". All of them showed the unique, individual style of the writer. As I worked through the box, it was incredibly easy to say "Oh, here's another one from _______". The writer's style... their identity... was easy to see.

Not for the first time I found myself wondering...

have we lost something fine as we have moved to electronic text?

Oh, certainly we can send email messages or IMs that are as equally fun, touching, humorous, inspiring, romantic, etc. In the 23-ish years that I've been using email (starting around 1985), I've certainly sent and received all sorts of email comparable to letters. And certainly there is a "writing style" that comes through in email/IM messages that is distinctive to individuals. (Although one wonders how much distinction there will continue to be as we move to ever-shorter messages.)

But what is missing is the physical uniqueness of handwriting. Sure, you can use different fonts in email to make your message "different" from others, but: a) half the time those fonts don't make it through to the recipient; and b) you are still choosing from among a certain set of fonts included in your system, i.e. the font is not unique to you.

With handwriting, everyone has their own unique font/typeface.

No one else in the world has handwriting exactly like mine. There are two many variables involved in the creation of the individual letters. The way you hold the pen. The pressure you exert against the paper. The way you connect the letters together (or not). The style of your descenders. The shape of your loops. The way you make punctuation. There is a unique identity associated with... you. Hence why we have used handwritten signatures to assert our identity in signing forms. (And hence why generations of criminals have worked at forging those signatures and handwriting.)

And yet are we losing this uniqueness?

A few weeks back I stumbled upon some other letters that included one written by a former neighbor in Ottawa who was, I recall, in her 80's when we left there in 2005. Her handwriting was beautiful. (Snippet in the image to the left.) There was a style and a grace that I've actually seen often in writing from people of that era. To a certain degree I wanted to write back to her just to get another letter in return in that beautiful script.

Yet how often do we actually write by hand these days? As you might infer from above, I wrote tons of letters in earlier years. Today, I almost never write letters by hand. When was the last time you received a hand-written letter? My mother, bless her heart, still sends them from time to time and while I admittedly don't reply back in writing, I do value them. (Please don't stop, Mom!) A friend from long ago also sends me one very rarely with his news. But that's about it.

Outside of letters, it probably comes as no surprise that I have written in journals for decades. I have many, many journals in various forms with the pages covered in my handwriting. Yet since I started blogging in May 2000, I hardly ever write in my paper journal anymore. (I "write" in my "journal", but it's all online.) A paper journal that I might previously have filled in a few months now may last for years at my current pace of writing in it.

We have left handwriting behind.

Even more so, I have had a sense in reading some various articles (that I need to find again) that we are leaving cursive handwriting behind. That we are increasingly printing our letters and not connecting them in a cursive script. I notice this even in my own notes for work. In the notebook where I jot notes from various meetings, events, etc., a great amount of my notes are written in a "block print" style. Using upper and lower case... but not connected in a cursive style. Actually, my notes are somewhat of a mishmash that mixes cursive writing and printing... sometimes even on the same line.

(What do your work notes look like? Cursive? Printed? A mixture? Or do you not even write any notes and keep them all on your computer?)

I wonder, too, about the generation coming up through the schools now. In an era when there is so much focus on the electronic world... when kids are texting and IM'ing... when they are doing all their reports on the computer... when they are using computers in their classrooms... how much hand writing do they actually do? Do they even teach cursive handwriting like they did when I grew up?

On a certain level, is it even relevant to the digital world in which these kids are growing up?

I don't know... perhaps cursive handwriting is destined to go the way of manual typewriters, fountain pens and so many other anachronisms from another time. Perhaps it will live on only in those of a certain age and those who have an interest in preserving dying arts. I don't see any real way for it to return... as I noted earlier, even a fan of handwriting like me has moved increasingly online.

But as cursive handwriting fades, are we as a culture losing something fine with its passing?

P.S. I did save many of the letters in the box last night. :-)

Technorati Tags: writing, handwriting, cursive, culture, language

Are the Big Internet Companies (AOL, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) really committed to OpenID or are they merely exploiting it for PR purposes? That's the question Mike Arrington asks today over on TechCrunch.

When I last wrote about OpenID back in January, that was pretty much my same question in: "Yahoo supports OpenID... Yaawwwnnn... when can I *login* to Yahoo! services with OpenID?". As I recounted in that post, I have no problem with getting an OpenID identity. In fact, the problem if anything is that I have too many options for OpenID identities! I can use my own site, my LiveJournal account, my Yahoo account, my AOL/AIM account, etc.

But where can I use my OpenID?

That remains the key question. I want to consolidate my various accounts behind one (or a few) OpenID accounts. I want to be able to login to my Google account with the same OpenID that I use to login to my Yahoo account, my AOL/AIM account, my LinkedIn page, other websites (and heck, why not Facebook, too?)

This is Arrington's point, really. The "Big Internet Companies" are issuing news releases about their support for OpenID, but are only going halfway. So his point is... is this really just good PR for these companies? That they can use it to look good, but not actually help move OpenID along.

The challenge, of course, is that the "Big Internet Companies" would all like to be that "one account" that I use. They would like to be your "home" on the Internet. So on one level there is a severe DISincentive for them to start accepting OpenIDs for login. If they start accepting OpenID logins, users might potentially use an OpenID account of one of the other Big Internet Companies that have not yet opened up. So if Google opens up first and lets logins via OpenID, users might all use Yahoo accounts as their OpenID. If Yahoo opens up first, users might use a Google account.... and so on.

It's almost like there needs to be an "OpenID Big Bang Day" when all the big players start accepting OpenID logins. At the agreed-upon time, all the Big Internet Companies start letting people login with an OpenID URL. No one is disadvantaged. Users can just start using whichever account they want. (In fact, maybe the Big Internet Companies might then start offering reasons why they are the better OpenID provider?)

In the meantime, I expect we'll probably continue in the current state.... many Open ID providers... not as many places to use them. (And yes, I do realize there are an increasing number of smaller sites that are accepting OpenID.)

More coverage today:

• David Recordan
• Identity 2.0
• Jason Kolb
• We also talked about it on today's Squawk Box podcast

Technorati Tags: openid, identity

How could you improve on the basic "company profile" if you had access to a ton of information about the employees of companies? LinkedIn this week aims to show what can be done as they rolled out their new "Company Profiles" feature that provides information about companies in LinkedIn's massive database of users.

In the past, when you looked at someone's "full" profile in LinkedIn (here's a pointer to mine, but you need to be logged into LinkedIn and click the button on the bottom of the page to see my "full" profile), the names of each company listed in your "Experience" area were links that, when clicked, did a search of LinkedIn for other users who included that company name in their profile.

Today, clicking on a company's name in someone's profile may instead give you a "Company Profile" page if that company is one of the 160,000 companies profiled thus far (as mentioned in LinkedIn's blog entry). If the company is not one of the 160,000 profiled so far, the link will perform the same kind of search as before. How do you know if a company has a profile? As shown in the image to the right, in my profile there is a "document" icon next to "Voxeo Corporation" but not next to the "Voice Over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA)". The icon provides a visual cue that Voxeo has a company profile while VOIPSA does not.

The company profile begins with the typical kind of information you would see on pretty much any "company profile" on the web. It has a standard description, some stats about where the company is, the number of employees, etc. But then the company profile goes beyond what you might see in other places and makes use of the incredible amount of data that LinkedIn users have entered in to all their profiles. You get a list of employees at the company in your LinkedIn network... and then the "New Hires", listing new people at the company. Also "Popular Profiles" based on who has visited various profiles within LinkedIn.

There is also an interesting section showing where people have come from before joining the company and after leaving the company. The image on the left shows this section for Mitel (which was more interesting than Voxeo's). From looking at a couple of company profiles, I'm guessing that the before and after lists are probably compiled based on the number of LinkedIn users joining and leaving a company. It also brings out some interesting stats - who know that Mitel employees are most connected to Brasil Telecom Internet?

The Company Profile also contains interesting info about job titles, top schools, median age of employees as well as median tenure for employees in the company. (Again, see Mitel's page for an example.) Now, obviously, this is only calculating this info based on employees with a LinkedIn profile so it's not 100% accurate. Still it is indeed interesting data about a company.

How widely used will these profiles be? I don't know, but I could certainly see them being used by candidates evaluating a job with a company (or by people looking to understand the background of someone being considered for a position).

Regardless, I find it an intriguing use of data mining to make use of all the info LinkedIn has by aggregating all the information we are putting into the site. Cool to see. (As my mind thinks of all the other statistics they must be able to glean from their massive database.)

By the way, here's a video the LinkedIn folks put up to describe the feature:

What do you think? How useful do you see these company profiles being?

Technorati Tags: linkedin, socialnetworking

As I would expect (hope?) the VAST majority of you all reading this would be, I was thoroughly appalled when I learned by way of the Bryant Park Project about the horrid "Puppy Toss" video. In this 17-second video, a solider appears to be throwing a puppy off a cliff. The soldier is referred to as "Motari" which has led to the subsequent potential identification of this soldier as a David Motari of Monroe, Washington.

This appalling video has of course spawned a feeding frenzy in the blogosphere and a strong stream of stories in the mainstream media. News reports indicate that Motari's family has been threatened and has had to disconnect their phone while local authorities in Monroe, WA, attempt to deal with the attention. Motari's page on social networking sites has apparently been filled with hateful messages (one assumes on "wall" types of message boards). The US Marine Corps has meanwhile condemned the behavior and indicated that they are investigating the issue.

But with the thousands of hate messages flying around the Internet, the techie in me who knows how easy it is to create this type of thing can't help but wonder:

Is the video real? And is the perpetrator really David Motari of Monroe, WA?

Right now the conclusion of the blogosphere seems to be that it is real and that it is this particular guy. But I would suggest there are at least four potential possibilities:

1. IT IS REAL AND IT IS MOTARI - If it is, in fact, real, than Mr. Motari and his colleagues certainly deserve some form of punishment. Motari also needs to do some serious groveling and apologizing to his family for all the stress he's putting them through!

2. IT IS REAL BUT IT IS *NOT* MOTARI - What if this is a setup? All that people are going on to identify the soldier as David Motari is a brief mention of "That was mean, Motari" by an off-screen voice (possibly the cameraman). What if it was someone else? What if it is a malicious setup? What if someone wanted to get back at this David Motari and set it up so that his name was mentioned? What if someone staged this to tarnish the reputation of the Marines?

3. IT IS A HOAX BUT STILL MOTARI - It could be fake. It could be not a real puppy. There are some analyzing the video saying that it's not real or was exchanged before the throw. If it was, though, David Motari, he certainly has some explaining to do to the USMC and also his own family.

4. IT IS A HOAX BY SOMEONE ELSE - It obviously could be a hoax by someone else. But why the hoax? Is someone trying to hype something? Again, is someone trying to damage the military's reputation?

My point again is this:

In an era of near instanteous access to some information, are we rushing to judgement?

The "cybervigilantism" of posting the guy's address and phone number... of harrassing his parents and family... of barraging his social networking pages... are they deserved?

What if it turns out to NOT be him but rather some other Motari?

Can the phone calls, hateful emails and hateful posts be taken back?

What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

Should we not all just step away from the keybards for a little bit and wait to see if in fact the authorities determine it was him?

What if it were YOU who were mistakenly identified as being in a video like this?

Technorati Tags: pr, military, puppy toss, motari, videos, reputation

How many people do you know who don't "get" Twitter and can't understand why those of us who do use it find value in it?

Well the folks over at Common Craft have done it again with a great short video that explains much of the allure of Twitter in 2.5 minutes:

Definitely worth sharing in my opinion. (Digg users can also give the video a Digg!) I love see great short explanations like this! Kudos yet again to the Common Craft team!

Technorati Tags: twitter, microblogging, commoncraft, common craft

Interesting piece out of Read/Write Web: What Standford Learned Building Facebook Apps. Here's the intro:

Dr. BJ Fogg and Dave McClure taught a class last semester at Stanford on Building Facebook Applications. In 10 weeks, the 80 students had created 50+ applications and in total had over 20 Million installs - with 5 having more than 1 million users.

For the lessons, you need to read the article, but I was more intrigued by what they did in the class. One of the challenges for an instructor is always to "engage" your students and make the class both interesting and relevant. To make the students want to do even more and learn further. To make whatever you are doing "real" so that it applies to the students' lives.

To that end, what a great way to use Facebook to teach application development! The students:

1. Can very easily see their end result (their app) in usage;
2. Can compete with each other to see whose app gets more usage (which may drive further development/innovation);
3. Can get real feedback from users outside their regular sphere (i.e. "regular" Facebook users not just Stanford students);
4. Gain excellent experience and job skills for post-college employment;
5. Potentially get job offers now if their app is cool enough;
6. Learn all the other skills outside of just programming, such as metrics, marketing, customer interaction, etc.

Now I don't know how the class actually went... and I imagine that there are other colleges/universities doing this... it just was the first time I have ever thought about the potential of using Facebook in this way. How very cool!

Technorati Tags: application platforms, applications, facebook, facebook platform, standford, teaching, education

I've been experimenting a bit with FriendFeed and so far find it quite intriguing, for reasons I'll write about in another post. (Those of you who are already FriendFeed users can subscribe to my page if you wish.)

However, one little detail that I can't seem to find anywhere on their site is - how do you report bugs? I'm guessing it's the "Everything else" on their contacts page, but since I don't want to email in images, I'll post a blog entry and email the link.

So, friendfeed folks, consider this my bug report! I have added the RSS feeds of 5 different blogs to my own friend feed. When I space out my blog postings over time, the posts correctly appear individually in my friendfeed saying "posted a blog post on (blog name)". All is good.

However, when I have several blog posts across multiple blogs, the algorithm to collect the data for the friendfeed seems to take the name of the first blog in the title. For instance, as shown in the image to the right, it says "posted three blog posts on Voice of VOIPSA" but in fact only the first post was in "Voice of VOIPSA". The other two were on "Speaking of Standards" and "Disruptive Conversations".

Now perhaps the FriendFeed designers weren't thinking that someone might post rapidly across multiple blogs. The reality is that most times I don't. Today was an exception. I'm not entirely sure how the FriendFeed folks should solve this issue. On the one hand, they could simply put in a new "posted a blog post on (blog)" for each blog. Or they could say "posted three new blog posts" and leave off the blog names if the blogs are different.

All I do know is that this current way doesn't work well. I had a momentary gasp when I read the FeedFriend page and thought that I'd posted the piece about Obama Facebook ads to the VOIPSA blog! (After a quick check of my MarsEdit window my heart rate dropped back down to normal. :-) I would suggest the FriendFeed folks fix this somehow.

My second suggestion to the FriendFeed folks would be to somehow more clearly indicate how we are supposed to report bugs. (Or clue me in to something on the site that I missed.)

Technorati Tags: friendfeed, feeds

Ordinarily I would probably not bother to note that someone has a "redesigned web site"... I mean, that happens all the time, right? But seeing Chris Brogan's new redesign is also a good time to mention Chris again. If you are interested in social media and aren't reading Chris' blog, I think you really owe it to yourself to check it out. Chris posts great pieces on all sorts of topics related to social media... and he's a great writer, too, which helps. (He's also become a friend over the last few years, so I'm admittedly biased. :-)

He's also got a great story about how he met the people who helped with his site redesign... through social media, of course!

Technorati Tags: chris brogan, social media

Given that the presidential primary here in Vermont is happening tomorrow[1], we've naturally been subjected to a heavy dosage of advertising in all mass media. I was, though, rather amused to see ads for Sen. Barack Obama appearing on my Facebook page when I was visiting the site today (see image to right). I haven't seen any ads for Sen. Hillary Clinton, but perhaps this is because, according to TechPresident.com, the Clinton campaign is apparently NOT running any web advertisements! Seems a bit odd in this day and age, but given the degree of expertise within the Clinton campaign I would have to think they have their reasons for doing this. (I would also note that TechPresident was trying to reach the Clinton campaign but had not done so before running their article.

In any event, I thought it was great to see a presidential campaign using a site like Facebook to send out messages. Because I've provided demographic data in my Facebook account they can obviously run very targeted campaigns (such as "all residents in Vermont").

By the way, if you haven't checked out TechPresident.com, I've found it a very useful site to stay up with what all of the various campaigns are doing with regard to technology, social networks, etc.

[1] Yes, we in VT are one of the two "other" states (the other one being Rhode Island) who are voting tomorrow in addition to Ohio and Texas. However, due to the tiny number of delegates we have we don't get much mention and in fact neither Clinton nor Obama have visited VT.