Not dead yet
Fri, Jan 20th 2012 3:43p Karen Hobert Yesterday's Register article, "SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?" is a sobering - and in my opinion accurate - summary on the need for intelligent Internet piracy discussion between the Tech industry and our government: Former Mozilla CEO John Lilly captured this best, arguing, "What’s extremely discouraging to me right now is that I don’t really see how we [the tech world and the US Congress] can have a nuanced, technically-informed, respectful discussion/debate/conversation/working rel [read] Keywords: administration
blogger
The Economist's lean-back vs. Lean-froward journalism experience
Wed, Nov 30th 2011 12:23p Karen Hobert Great interview with Andrew Rashbass, CEO at the Economist group, on the key to successful branding of journalism. What I like is the bit about learning the difference between print and on-line, interactive journalism: ...they came to realise that there was a distinction between what he calls the "lean-back, immersive, ritual pleasure" of reading the Economist in print compared to the "lean-forward, interactive" way people used the site. All I know is that I enjoy both the print and on-line [read] Keywords: blogger
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More or Less
Wed, Nov 23rd 2011 11:42a Karen Hobert For another tangent that I've always had interest in...designing user experiences. This is a great post on the dangers of complexity in your application designs. The thing to beware of, don't mistake simple design with brain dead design. I see this happening more and more, especially with internet apps and the crutch of "we can release it ad-hoc as new features are completed." Consider the moaning that gets posted in Facebook status messages when they make seemingly random UX changes. Even [read] Keywords: application
blogger
development
enterprise
facebook
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Digital peeping
Thu, Oct 13th 2011 12:22p Karen Hobert A timely article from the Atlantic Wire on government and corporate surveillance of social media. The later half of the article addresses how the Government and our outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act, circa 1986, opens doors to government entities who want to look at e-mail content, and how service providers comply most of the time: In the second half of 2010 alone, the government sent 4,601 such requests to Google, who complied 94 percent of the time. Your Social Media Will be Mo [read] Keywords: atlantic
blogger
google
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Ethics people!
Fri, Sep 2nd 2011 1:05p Karen Hobert Apple employees may have trouble keeping corporate secrets in their pockets, but the folks who find obviously confidential stuff seem to face a moral dilemma figuring out what to do with the things they find. A recent Gizmodo post, "Man Get Hard Drive Full of Secret Apple Documents", details how one Apple Store inadvertently gave a customer the store's back-up hard drive rather than a broken hard disk that the store replaced for the customer. Ok, ok, simple or complicated mix-up that can be b [read] Keywords: apple
blogger
mac
Social Business #Fail?
Thu, Aug 25th 2011 1:02p Karen Hobert Some very sober points on how Social Business could possibly avoid the fate of Knowledge Management. The thing that struck me while reading this post is the fact that we seem to be backing into developing tools that really meet the requirements of their users. As my colleague Ann tweeted regarding this article: "natural collab experience" = support my work-dont just push "social" Although culture and change management in the enterprise play a factor in the success of collaboration within [read] Keywords: collaboration
notes
blogger
development
enterprise
social software
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Your new job: maintaining your digital social reputation
Wed, Jun 29th 2011 12:05p Karen Hobert It was only a matter of time that a service would pop up to help employers do background checks on your digital social life. According to a recent Forbes article: The FTC determined that Social Intelligence Corp. was in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This means a search of what you’ve said or posted to Facebook/Twitter/Flickr/blogs and the Internet in general may become a standard part of background checks when you apply for a job. The firm, Social Intelligence, keeps reports [read] Keywords: blogger
facebook
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It's not always about being first
Mon, May 16th 2011 5:42p Karen Hobert NPR interview with Malcolm Gladwell on innovation. Debunking personal computing myths and how complex innovation is not always realized by the developers. In other words, sometimes it's good to make a good idea better. BTW if you have a New Yorker subscription you can read the related article "Creation Myth:Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation." [read] Keywords: apple
blogger
Adult Supervision
Wed, Mar 30th 2011 11:02a Karen Hobert Although it should be common sense to most technology firms, especially ones as smart as Google, apparently some adults need to step in and enforce ground rules for privacy. In a fist-time enforcement of the US-EU Safe Harbor Act by the FTC, Google has opted to settle and "put this behind' itself. The FTC wrote in a statement, "The proposed settlement bars the company from future privacy misrepresentations, requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, indep [read] Keywords: blogger
google
10
Dee Hock’s 1996 Quote…via Linda Stone
Sun, Feb 13th 2011 2:02p Karen Hobert Succinct food for thought from Linda Stone... Today, we are Knowledge Workers evolving into Understanding Workers. Understanding Workers use technology to anticipate, judge and act. [read] Keywords: blogger
9
Enabling Participation: More Art Than Science (Collaborative Thinking)
Tue, Jan 25th 2011 10:46a Karen Hobert Mike's follow-on post to social media adoption in the workplace. He offers some practical approaches to fostering adoption. I've argued the degree to which an employee participates above and beyond what their job entails is a daily decision. There are times when we can direct people to communicate, share, and collaborate. We can basically conscript some level of participation based on an employee's role, nature of their work activities, and their expectation of getting something in return ( [read] Keywords: collaboration
applications
blogger
community
enterprise
network
10
Enabling Participation: More Art Than Science (Collaborative Thinking)
Tue, Jan 25th 2011 10:46a Karen Hobert Mike's follow-on post to social media adoption in the workplace. He offers some practical approaches to fostering adoption. I've argued the degree to which an employee participates above and beyond what their job entails is a daily decision. There are times when we can direct people to communicate, share, and collaborate. We can basically conscript some level of participation based on an employee's role, nature of their work activities, and their expectation of getting something in return ( [read] Keywords: collaboration
applications
blogger
community
enterprise
network
11
Changing IT Mindsets From Deployment To Adoption (Collaborative Thinking)
Mon, Jan 24th 2011 10:42a Karen Hobert Hear, hear! We should not be so enamored by what we think is our current right answer from a technology perspective that we forget the non-technological things we need to enable so that people (and the organization at large) can realize and sustain the value derived from use of the tools. Within many organizations, the plan-build-run philosophy still frames our view of IT – once a system is implemented (i.e., deployed), the project is “over” – resources are reallocated, budgets are cl [read] Keywords: blogger
development
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UPDATE: Improvements to Permissions for Address and Mobile Number - Facebook Developers
Tue, Jan 18th 2011 10:43a Karen Hobert In a later-in-the-night (11:25 PM PT) blog post, Facebook has backed off - for now - on allowing developers to access to users contact information until it makes sure it appeases privacy wonks (like me) and users concerns. Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data. We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so. We’ll be working to launch [read] Keywords: application
blogger
facebook
mobile
web 2.0
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Facebook: Now sharing your home address with developers | Technology | guardian.co.uk
Mon, Jan 17th 2011 1:03p Karen Hobert A pretty ominous perspective of recent Facebook API upgrades allowing developers access to more of your private information. Facebook's future – if it is to meet the increasingly inflated aspirations of its 'incentivised' investors – is to use a combination of its scale and the acres of intimate information it holds about all of us to find the real money in targeted advertising. The strategy is to gradually open our personal data more and more, making open information the norm, desensiti [read] Keywords: blogger
facebook
mobile
14
Why can't we all just get along?
Fri, Jan 14th 2011 12:03p Karen Hobert I shouldn't be surprised by this comment coming from someone who considers communication in a broadcasting framework but I have to react to the comments that e-mail is "not great for communication" bit. It's not great for broadcast communication or even short messaging (like IM), but it is a perfectly wonderful tool for secure communication of rich content (i.e., more than 140 characters) that is more directed to the needs of the recipients. Email, Dorsey explained, '[is] not great for com [read] Keywords: blogger
email
twitter
web 2.0
9
Burning Question: Why Do Emails Contain Legal Warnings? | Magazine
Fri, Jan 14th 2011 12:03p Karen Hobert Ever wonder how binding those legal disclaimers are at the bottom of corporate e-mails? Not very binding but they may demonstrate intention, which is a stickier wicket. So why do companies bother? The sad answer is that the verbiage relieves managers’ anxieties about how easily secrets can slip through the digital firewall, even though it does nothing to stop such leaks. But since everyone’s doing it, everyone will continue doing it. Burning Question: Why Do Emails Contain Legal Warnings? [read] Keywords: blogger
6
IBM Is (Still) the Patent King in the U.S. [Video] | Fast Company
Mon, Jan 10th 2011 2:42p Karen Hobert Kinda of a fluffy piece about patent trends. Of course anyone who's been employed at IBM knows IBM has always made patents serious business. I wish the article went more into trends in patenting especially with the rise of patent trolling. A couple tid-bits: In second place in patent growth was Samsung, with 4,551--up 26% on 2009. And while Apple's patent tally only jumped up by 563 new patents, this represents a growth of 94% over the previous year... IBM's figure last year is 20% higher t [read] Keywords: ibm
apple
archive
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12
Online impersonation banned starting in New Year - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Mon, Jan 3rd 2011 12:42p Karen Hobert An interesting California precedent. Let's see how it ultimately plays out... Falsely sourced e-mails, tweets and Web posts have become ubiquitous online, and it's not uncommon for someone to create a Facebook or MySpace account in someone else's name. If this is done to 'harm, intimidate, threaten or defraud,' according to Senate Bill 1411, it will be a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. Online impersonation banned starting in New Year - Santa Cruz Sentine [read] Keywords: blogger
facebook
myspace
18
iPad media apps: Stealthed hobbits thwart Google's flaming Eye • The Register
Fri, Dec 17th 2010 2:01p Karen Hobert Really interesting article about how the nascent tablet media applications market prevents web crawling hoarders from knowing what we are reading.br /br /blockquoteImagine a span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Facebook/span app, a span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"LinkedIn/span app, and a web world of fleeing newspaper sites as they transform into newspaper tablet apps and vanish from the Google radar. Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search sites and n [read] Keywords: applications
blogger
facebook
google
linkedin
6
The Revolution Will Not Be Twitterized
Wed, Nov 10th 2010 5:20p Karen Hobert I may be a really late in piping in about this Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker, a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell"Small Change/a (Oct 12, 2010). I actually started writing this post and then forgot to finish it. I also decided not to say much at the time it was published to avoid the blogisphere kerfuffle about whether or not Mr. Gladwell dissed social networking sacred cows. Now that some time has passed I want to say that I feel the criti [read] Keywords: blogger
community
facebook
network
networking
twitter
10
BBC News - How ID card database will be destroyed
Wed, Nov 10th 2010 12:08p Karen Hobert Meanwhile, back in the States we're handing out our personal information (address, date of birth, credit card info to match our official IDs) to every airline we book a flight on. Who knows how many files, machines, databases that info lands in.br /br /This BBC a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11719764"article/a demonstrates the difference in attitudes toward privacy in the England versus here in the US. When it comes to destroying personal data the government takes personal data [read] Keywords: blogger
database
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Dawn of a New Day « Ray Ozzie
Mon, Oct 25th 2010 10:14p Karen Hobert I finally had some time today to read - with full attention - Ray Ozzie's a href="http://ozzie.net/docs/dawn-of-a-new-day/"Dawn of a New Day /amemo. I'm sure you've seen this floating around today, especially if you hang around the tech world of Lotus and Office. I actually had a few reactions that may be different from the rest of the blogisphere:br /br /olliIts is increasingly clear the commoditization of devices (the PC-less future) is boiling down to the individual and will get harder f [read] Keywords: lotus
ray ozzie
apple
blogger
enterprise
java
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14
Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes - Bloomberg
Fri, Oct 22nd 2010 1:44p Karen Hobert Not surprising from a company that loves to crunch numbers. Heck these are they guys that convinced its investors that providing free lunch saved money by calculating the time lost while people waited in line to pay.br /br /br /blockquoteGoogle’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, accor [read] Keywords: blogger
google
10
One-third of iPad fanbois don't download apps • The Register
Fri, Oct 22nd 2010 1:44p Karen Hobert a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Zmo4Z016Iu8/TMHHnV67dlI/AAAAAAAABrs/PgeLjxG_A1U/s1600/ipad.jpg"img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 241px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Zmo4Z016Iu8/TMHHnV67dlI/AAAAAAAABrs/PgeLjxG_A1U/s320/ipad.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5530921296100816466" border="0" //abr /Some interesting stats, especially for those interested in the [read] Keywords: apple
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Apple deprecates Java
Fri, Oct 22nd 2010 1:13p Karen Hobert In its typical hyperbolic yet truthful manner, The Republic a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/apple_threatens_to_kill_java_on_the_mac/"reports/a this Wednesday's Apple announcement to deprecate Java on the new Mac OS.br /blockquotebr /On Wednesday, as Apple cult leader Steve Jobs unveiled a future Mac OS incarnation dubbed 'Lion' and a new Mac App Store, the company released a Java update for Mac OS X 10.6 — and the release notes revealed that the platform isn't long for Jo [read] Keywords: notes
apple
blogger
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java
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Not really so funny
Thu, Aug 26th 2010 4:44p Karen Hobert Recently I a href="http://khobert.blogspot.com/2010/08/user-formerly-known-as-karen-hobert.html"posted/a my thoughts regarding Eric Schmidt's comments about on-line privacy and his prediction that we'll eventually have to change our identities to get away from on-line indiscretions. In a related a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704901104575423294099527212.html"WSJ article/a Mr. Schmidt explains how Google will be able to predict what we want because Google knows:
br /
[read] Keywords: application
blogger
facebook
google
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15 Facts About Net Neutrality
Tue, Aug 24th 2010 12:44p Karen Hobert Here's a handy infographic from a href="http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/net-neutrality/"Online MBA/a on the current state of Net Neutrality.br /br /a href="http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/net-neutrality"img style="width: 348px; height: 1418px;" src="http://onlinemba.com.s3.amazonaws.com/net-neutrality.jpg" alt="Online MBA Programs" border="0" //abr /Via: a href="http://www.onlinemba.com/"Online MBA Programs/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://b [read] Keywords: blogger
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The user formerly known as Karen Hobert
Wed, Aug 18th 2010 3:13p Karen Hobert The BBC World News Hour presented this a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0092pw4#p009gymx"report/a (Chapter 10) in reaction to Google CEO Eric Schmidt's a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/technology-gadgets/google-boss-eric-schmidts-warning-over-online-privacy-14914768.html"recent comments /aabout personal privacy:br /br /blockquote"I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he to [read] Keywords: blogger
exchange
exchange
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