The Hypocrisy Weblog

cnet’s web 2.0 blog, “Webware” has announced it’s Webware 100 winners-list. The question is now; how is this list relevant to anyone in the Internet-business? Each and every category, 10 of them, has 10 winners each – and each and every site on the top 100-list anyone who’s involved in working with the Internet (in any way) have heard of.

The categories are; Browsing, Communications, Community, Data, Entertainment, Media, Mobile, Productivity and Commerce, Publishing, Reference.

Surely, it is a good ego boost for the people behind the services to get recognition, but does it serve any journalistic purpose? I am not so sure about that; Rafe Needleman and the Webware crew are preaching for the already saved. There is no internal ranking of the sites in the individual categories – so how do I as a visitor know which site got more votes than the other? (Yes, alright – they do have a list of the over-all top 10 and the sites that got over 1000 votes, though it doesn’t show the internal ranking in between the sites within each category. Perhaps the over-all statistic material wasn’t enough?! I don’t know…)

From my own perspective I am glad that the swizz army-knife-like site Netvibes, which deserves more media coverage – as it is a really nice service to keep track on all your communication needs ranging from rss-feeds (sites, forums, email, blogs etc), to email, to skype, to.. yeah – you get the idea.

Google was the company with most services in the top 100-list, yet this is not surprising as they are the biggest site on the Internet.

To the Webware authors; Please make the list more detailed the next time and get a broader statistic foundation (aka get more people to vote on the list), then we’re talking about a relevant list.

The Swedish edition of IDG writes about PhD in search engine marketing Elias Kai in the town Kalmar of southern Sweden who named his son “Oliver Christian Google Kai”.

The father, Elias Kai, says that his wife had no problem with naming her son after the search engine, and Elias also got the question if he’ll name his next baby “Yahoo!”if it’s a boy or “Altavista” if it’s a girl, but as a self-proclaimed fan of Google, Elias says “no way” and that he’ll considerate names such as “Giggol, Gaggol eller Boogol” instead.

So, what does Google have to say about this? Well, Google’s European vice president Nikesh Arora held a presentation during London Ad Tech in September, and Elias Kai got to speak at the podium and tell the audience that he’ll name his son “Google”. The audience laughed and no-one thought that Elias actually was serious in naming his son Google, though he was.

Perhaps Elias Kai should’ve taken the 200 people strong audience’ reaction more serious and not name his son after a search engine?! I think so… Maybe his father thinks it’s cool to name his son after his favourite cult-object, but I doubt that the father considered the problems that his son will get in the future with such a name, everything from bullying in school to problems at misc. tasks of life – such as applying for a job, applying for a job etc.

I don’t want to paint it all black, but come on…

Google Kai has his own site at http://www.google-kai.com and of course his own blog at http://googlekai.blogspot.com

Though, regardless of anything else, no-one can deny that Google Kai is a cute baby boy, and I am sure that everyone who reads this post will wish him and his family all the luck in the world in his life!!!

Slashdot writes:

“Steve Soderberg’s latest film will be released in a manner that directly challenges the traditional Hollywood distribution chain. Soderberg’s been influenced by Mark Cuban, the dot-com billionaire who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and Todd Wagner, another dot-commer whose ideas about the movie business are radical departures. Wagner’s financing this one. The movie, Bubble, is the first of six that Soderberg will film in HD video; all will be released simultaneously in theaters, as HDNet movies, and on DVDs.” From the article: “As independents, Soderbergh and Wagner are willing to talk openly about subjects that are being hotly debated behind closed doors elsewhere in Hollywood. When Disney chief Robert Iger recently brought up the concept of shortening the window between theatrical release and DVD, he was fiercely criticised by the National Association of Theatre Owners.”

Steve Soderberg is doing what should’ve been done a long time ago: release a film in multiple distribution-chains at once and see how these compare with each other. This is especially wise of a director such as Steve Soderberg who makes movies that are slightly different from those of Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott (i.e. is films that don’t have a mastodont budget and are aimed at a mass-audience). I doubt that this experiment or even the discussion will be repeated again by any of the above filmmakers, but it’s most certainly healthy that it has been done by such a big fish as Soderberg.

Well done.

Erik Stattin writes (with irony at his fingertips(?) ):

Google just becomes more evil by the second “To Google Inc.“: “Please help us encourage Google to stop undermining education through their policy of displaying ads that encourage plagiarism and academic fraud through the sale of pre-written and made to order term papers and essays especially when these ads are displayed on web sites that promote education.”

Google aren’t saints… they want to make money, just look at their business in China. Everyone does it, why shouldn’t Google?!!

Here’s an IT-related post about Katrina:

DirectNIC, a datacenter company in New Orleans rode out hurricane Katrina. Brave employees at this Internet Service Provider is keeping power on, repairing the uplinks to the Internet etc.

If you want to follow their work, go to “The Interdictor” at LiveJournal. There you can follow their struggle (one man operation?) to keep operations running via text, a webcam live-feed and also get amazed of the fans that this relatively anonymous provider is getting.

For further information and comments, visit Slashdot, read the Wired-article, Netcraft’s coverage (Uptime graph) and browse their photo gallery.

So, Hurricane Katrina has now died down and the aftermath is painfully clear. There are talks about over 10.000 deaths, women and children are getting raped, people are getting murdered, looting is widespread. There are many thoughts that goes through one’s mind when thinking about the events alongside the american gulf-coast.

My very first thought, beside feeling appalled&disgust a quick comparison to both Iraq and Somalia came to mind. Everyone have heard about both Iraqis and Somalians “acting like animals”, but the events in New Orleans clearly show that it’s not a racial nor a religious problem that people do act like animals – it has to do with socio-economic prerequisite. Of course, one can’t “free” an individual from guilt due to that, but this is the root of the evil. I just hope that those that talk about arabs as animals will think again before saying this, as similar actions happened in their own backyard.

I must say that I’m also surprised over the late and inadequate response from the american government. Michael Moore took the opportunity to publish an open letter to his archenemy George W Bush stating:

“I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don’t let people criticize you for this — after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?”

This is really really bad!!! (Do note that I don’t go wild over Michael Moore in general) I’m shocked to see that all focus wasn’t on New Orleans when it was clear that a possible category 5 hurricane was about to hit this city, laying beneath the sea’s waterlevel. Yes, it is not the central governments fault that the infrastructure is bad and not enough to handle a storm even weaker than the one that hit New Orleans – this should have been handled on a local level, but there should be at least some advance planning in case of a possible emergency. It’s a disgrace that a country such as the United States of America can’t handle a crisis like this. It’s a shame that countries that want to send aid to the area are refused due to the “logistics not being in place to handle such aid”.

I heard on the Swedish news that the airplane that was filled with water-cleanining machinery, instant-housing equipment and mobile network-related equipment (yes, Swedish authorities together with Ericsson have an emergency team that can go out and set up temporary mobile networks in distaster areas) was set to “return to hangar” due to no official request coming from the american administration for, well-needed, help. Just imagine that the houses would make a difference for many of those having to live in sports-arenas, packed like sardines in a tinbox – having bullets flying by their heads.

The aura of incompetence shines around George W Bush, and he will not be able to joke this one away like he usually does. I am not a “Bush-hater”, this is written from a neutral stand-point, so all pro-Bush people out there, do not bother to try and dissect and cut down this blogpost, thank you. The effects for the republican party will be vast. People who regularly do not vote, will probably register to vote in order to punish the party that in their eyes did nothing to help them, their relatives, their friends, their class.

If the spindoctors fail, we will all see a democrat majority and a democrat president next time around…

When being online for work, studies and leisure I’ve been hanging on several IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks to both gain knowledge, but also to gain new friends that I’d never meet before etc. IRC is a great way to communicate in a fast and easy way.

Of course, as with any other social interaction, there are hierarchies formed. IRC is divided into networks of servers, which can differ from each other when it comes to what features they have, what they allow etc, and each network have individual “channels”, which for example can be #worldchat. In every channel, there are 3 kinds of users, the regular user (who “only” can chat), the “voiced” user (who has a “+” in front of their nickname, and who can talk when the channel is set to “moderated”) and the operators (which can throw other users out of the channel and even ban them from coming back).

Some networks, such as DALnet allow indidvual users to register both their nicknames and indiviual channels. I’ve registered the nickname “Henrik” (doh) on mentioned DALnet, and I also run the channel #Metal (for those who likes harder kind of music). When being an active chatter on the DALnet IRC-network, I want both mine and other users’ experience to be the best possible. I follow several email-lists connected to DALnet, in order to keep track on current events, and also to put in suggestions on what could get better.

DALnet has been through hell, in late 2002 and early 2003 the network was taken down by severe DDOS–attacks, which Wikpedia writes about as follows;

The network operation was severely disrupted in late 2002 and early 2003 due to distributed denial of service attacks. Added to the DDoS issues was the fact that the owner of tsunami.dal.net (the world’s largest single IRC server, hosting more than 30,000 clients most of the time) delinked his servers (for personal reasons). The other servers on the network could not absorb the extra client load, leading to users’ complete inability to connect to DALnet. The network was first crushed by attacks, and then by its own userbase. About 60% of DALnet’s population moved to other IRC networks due to these extended connectivity issues.

After this ordeal, DALnet came back and launched “The IX Concept”, an anycast-solution, where the users connect to one single server (irc.dal.net), and this server (which really is a pointer) directs the user to the server that is closest to them. This is a good solution, as those who wants to DDOS the network never will be able to pinpoint one single server, and therefor the load is shared and the network remains operational.

The above is great, but there are some things that should be done in order to make DALnet a much better network to chat on, and to keep the users safe. The 2 major things are; the user should be able to hide their real hostname, in order to not be subjected to mischief (such as DDOS-attacks and portscans) and have their hostname replaced with a virtual host, such as registered-nickname.dal.net), and the possibility to connect to the network via an encrypted line, called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) so that all data transferred between the chatserver and the user can’t be intercepted by anyone and in order to keep personal information, passwords etc safe. (This is something very important for users on the road and who are using public (often not encrypted) wireless networks) for their connectivity to the Internet.)

When mentioning these 2 things on the general email-list, there was a fast and firm “NO” from the people who run DALnet, who said “it can’t be done” etc. The fact is that several IRC-networks have implemented SSL and the virtual hostname, such as Undernet, so it’s not impossible. It is just a matter of will from the responsible administrators behind DALnet to do so. I am aware that DALnet is not a commercial institution, and that the entire network depends on volunteer-efforts – but I still want to see these 2 features added…

If you want these features added too, send an email to service@dal.net and let them know!!!

Swedish/Finnish telecom company TeliaSonera launched a TV via GPRS earlier this year, where you via your GSM (2G) or UMTS (3G) can see either news from Swedish channel TV4 (for free until the last of August), music videos and interactivity from The Voice or entertainment channel Star!.

I wasn’t really wild over this service at the start, mostly because of the fact that I didn’t appreciate the small screen and hacked up streaming that the news broadcasts from TV4 had to offer, but then something happened in my mind; I started to look at these newsbroadcasts in my Sony Ericsson K700i as radio with images – and I started to appreciate the service. It’s actually very handy when being on the bus, train… or having dead-moments in general.

Though, I don’t think I’ll pay around 1€ per clip or whatever the cost will be when the try-for-free offer is over. I mean, ok – it’s a nice service, but the quality offered isn’t worth the extra cost to get these chopped up sequences for. Then I’d rather listen to the radio for free.

If TeliaSonera creates a fair cost for all of the above, and add more content, well… then I’d be willing to pay an extra fee per month to obtain these services. If they bake in free GPRS-access to this as well, like 3G-operator “3″ has done, then this is something very attractive, which will bring TeliaSonera new customers.

A sidenote; Whoever is doing the branding for TeliaSonera in Sweden really should be fired – the company has NO profile whatsoever.

Many of you readers also active on email-lists on the mesh, err… Internet, can’t have missed the stir which the new design on Yahoo! Groups caused.

Numerous users scream out “I want the old design back”, “my group’s messages gets sorted in the wrong order”, “everything is harder to find”

Though, I can’t seem to understand this. It took a while to grip the new design, after being so used to the old look, but I really don’t have any complaints about this new, blue:ish style of Yahoo! Groups! Maybe I am one of those who should be counted into the “ignorance is bliss”-type of people, but I can actually say that I like the new design!!!

My own reflections on the issues users have on the design-change aside – there is a much more important issue at hand; and this is related to how Yahoo! are handling this onslaught of users wanting to speak their minds of the changes of their beloved website that these individuals use every day. A picture has been growing on me the past couple of days, and this picture says that Yahoo! aren’t dealing and communicating with their disgruntled users as they should, I’d dare to say that Yahoo! aren’t dealing and communicating at all!

Sending out corporate answers (if any) to a user who has specific issues that he / she wants rectified just doesn’t cut it! The product of this behaviour is that many administrators of Yahoo!’s Group-service are thinking about moving to an alternative service, and here Google Groups seem to be their primary choice.

Want I want to say with all of the above is that you can’t drastic changes in your website, and not put away a budget large enough to handle the customer care need that might surface due to this change. What will happen in the long run, is that by showing negligence towards your users, thus saving money in a short term perspective, you will lose money in the long term.

Blogger and SVT employee (swedish television) Per Gudmundson had a blog over at http://gudmundson.blogspot.com , though he got directives from the heads of SVT to stop continue updating his blog, as it was in conflict with the directives of SVT to remain objective.

Now, the tables are turned – as the people of SVT have been watching what BBC have been up to, and as written on http://www.broadbandblog.com/archives/2005/02/24/london-blogging-2/, BBC has deployed a blooming blog, wiki and social network-system (iCan) and now SVT wants to copy BBC.

My comment;

Isn’t public service supposed to be both objective, but also take the pulse of the time and adapt themselves to the current media climate?!

A good thing, for SVT, is that the general public, aka SVT’s customers, don’t know about the misstakes being made behind the scene. Though, the ones of us that blog and is following the swedish blogsphere knows that SVT made a huge blunder. But then again, it is never too late to make penance!!