Michael Specht

What’s with this Twitter thing?

I know many people just don’t get Twitter, even when it is explained to them, however given the growth of the tool there must be “Something about Twitter?”

(From http://cogdogblog.com/2007/04/26/splj-20/)

But what is it?

Over the last week I have seen a few blog posts once again trying to sort out what it is and a couple knocking it down again. Let us explore.

One of the better overviews of what is Twitter was done by my Twitter mate Laurel Papworth who gives us her 3 uses of Twitter which fits about 80% of how I use Twitter, they are:

1. Testimonials and Status Updates (people)
One, Twitter is good for getting a brief update on the status of the people in my social network.

2. Filter, Discoverability, Social Search (and share)
Second, Twitter is excellent at linking me to other sites. Not people but sites.

3. Conversation and Discussion
Twitter is also acting as an (almost) instant chat channel for all my friends.

The only piece I see Laurel missed was the “flash-gathering” aspect, while it could be part of point 1, I see it as important enough to have its own bullet point. What do I mean? Yesterday on the way to Sydney I twittered:

(For those not in Australia Gungagai is between Melbourne and Sydney and has a famous dog sitting on a tucker box.) Within 20 minutes I had an invite to a meetup on Sunday. This is not the first time, quiet often my social engagements are impromptu gatherings based on other people’s tweets. I have caught up with people for lunch, coffee, drinks, dinner, been invited to movie nights, games of ping pong all sorts of social interactions. (This also could be that my social life is lacking as well.)

I would also like to see point 2 expanded for specifically news, many people within my Twitter network get breaking news via Twitter. Lots of news seems to break first on Twitter before it hits the mainstream news organisations, other times people receive news on Twitter without having to visit mainstream news organisations.

Now back to 2 posts that stirred me into action.

First Simon Chen from EightBlack say he still doesn’t get Twitter and that maybe he is too old at 41. Simon shame on you for even thinking it is cause you are too old, I know 20’somethings who don’t get it, getting Twitter has nothing to do with age. As with any tool it comes down to how you use it, and how you integrate it into your life. But one downfall/detractor of Twitter to remember is without friends it is very boring and there is nothing to get. Which is why several people have proposed that we need Twitter guides to help new users getting started. This has started to happen where regular users have started to “promote” new users/friends to help them connect with others to begin their Twitter journey. Oh, yes Simon being one of your Twitter friends means I probably do need to get a life :-).

Second up is James Farmer, who also doesn’t get Twitter which is cool. I am not sure I agree or disagree with James that Twitter is not micro-blogging, we would need to first agree on what is blogging. But it is publishing if we assume that publishing is “the activity of making information available for public view“, just not everyone is interested in consuming the information that is put other there, I feel the same way about Readers Digest.

A final thought if you are in Sydney on Sunday come join me and a bunch of Twitterers for drinks from 2pm at Glenmore Hotel.

Off to Sydney

Over the next couple of weeks I will be up in Sydney to catch up with friends and family. Leaving Melbourne on Christmas Day I will be spending a few days getting to Sydney and will arrive around 27th Dec and staying until 4th Jan.

If you want to catch up drop me a line on one of the numerous ways to find me.

Meraki’s are in the house

A while back I blogged about these cool mesh network devices called Meraki’s. Well last week I finally got my act together and purchased a few, unfortunately I had to keep the value under $1000 to vale on import duty so there will be another order.

These cool little devices arrived yesterday afternoon!

So first thing I did was take pictures to make everyone jealous :-).

Next I finished work as quickly as possible and raced home to set them up. First mistake, golden rule with toys if you race then it wont work.

I unpacked a Meraki Mini (they are very cute) and plugged into the power & my router, second mistake. Router decided it did not like the new device so it crashed, yes crashed. I unplugged the mini, rebooted the router and read the manual. To be honest the manual is not very good.

Here are a list of tip and hints, also covering things I did not find in the manual or knowledge base. Well they might of been I was just too rushed to find them.

Yes Meraki’s have DCHP, but only within their subnet 10.x, initially I though my router was borking cause it had 2 DCHP servers, not the case.
Once you book the Meraki it takes about 2 – 3 minutes for it to sort itself out, during which time the SID will change from meraki-scanning, to meraki. Log onto the first and you will be disconnected very quickly.
You don’t need to disable the existing Wireless on your router, instead you can use the Wireless as an Uplink service to the internet.
Having your network within the same subnet as the Meraki’s is not a good idea, go for 192.x.
You need to connect to each Meraki via an Ethernet cable to ensure it gets added to your network, just adding the device via the Meraki dashboard is not enough!
Have patience with your network, IP can take a few minutes to reconfigure itself, don’t rush
Don’t, and I mean don’t forget to turn off MAC address filtering on your existing Wireless network if you want to use the Wireless uplink service. This cost me at least 45 minutes of complete confusion!
Try not to have to set these up on a corporate PC that does not allow you to have wired & wireless networks running at the same time, just makes things difficult!
Once you are up and running make sure you setup your dashboard properly & limit the bandwidth your neighbours can suck otherwise you might run out of usage allowances before the end of your billing cycle.
Provide a nice welcoming message on your splash screen to encourage people to use your service.
Finally if you are in Australia, make sure you add yourself to I Can Haz Meraki to advertise your network. (More about the service here).

So now if you are in Elwood on Ormond Rd, look for a SID of free-the-net and you might be have some free Wireless love. Next step is to work on getting some more in the area.

RIP – Marc Orchant

Earlier today I got told that Marc Orchant has passed away. Marc suffered a massive heart attack last week and never recovered.

Personally I never met Marc but but I was lucky enough to hear him speak about productivity (GTD specifically) on several occasions. He was one of my Twitter friends and to my surprise even replied to my tweets a couple of times, providing me productivity tips and hints.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Follow up on always on communication

Over the last 6 months I have written a few times about always on communication and the impact on workplaces, work life balance and productivity. Today is a follow up.

By the end of next week I will have had the Palm Treo 750 for 2 months. Verdict?

You take my Treo away I will hunt you down! Basically I am addicted to it.

My key uses of the Treo are in no particular order:

Phone
SMS client
Calendar
To Do list
Contact manager
Work email device
Personal email device
IM client
Mobile web browser
Twitter client
Facebook client
Camera
Notepad
Shopping list
Alarm clock

Why have I become so connected to my Treo? Several reasons but the 2 key ones are speed and portability. On the speed front I have an HSDPA data plan which averages 600kbps to 1.5Mbps which is about the same as my ADSL connection. (For readers outside of Australia just accept that fact that our broadband is poor.) As for portability the Treo goes everywhere with me.

These two factors mean I can be productive anywhere and at anytime.

The downside of all this is I have significantly increased my continuous partial attention issue in my life. I have also started to do develop some very poor social habits, for example I can read email and twitter while I am in bed at any time of the day. If you follow my Twitter stream you will have seen some of my 4am tweets when I wake up :-).

I am now a very Bursty person.

More on privacy, the workplace & social network software

Unless you have been living under a rock you will have heard about the sites called Facebook, or MySpace, and their professional cousin LinkedIn, you might even remember their predecessors Friendster. These sites are basically social network software/service (SNS) where you connect with other people and share information.

Today I read a great article by Cory Doctorow in Information Week about how the growth of Facebook within the workplace will eventually kill Facebook. Why?

It’s socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list — but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites (of course, chances are at least one of those invites will go to someone who’ll groan and wonder why we’re dumb enough to think that we’re pals).

Basically we will all run from these services as our workplace joins in so this example does not happen:

Here’s one of boyd’s examples, a true story: a young woman, an elementary school teacher, joins Friendster after some of her Burning Man buddies send her an invite. All is well until her students sign up and notice that all the friends in her profile are sunburnt, drug-addled techno-pagans whose own profiles are adorned with digital photos of their painted genitals flapping over the Playa. The teacher inveigles her friends to clean up their profiles, and all is well again until her boss, the school principal, signs up to the service and demands to be added to her friends list. The fact that she doesn’t like her boss doesn’t really matter: in the social world of Friendster and its progeny, it’s perfectly valid to demand to be “friended” in an explicit fashion that most of us left behind in the fourth grade. Now that her boss is on her friends list, our teacher-friend’s buddies naturally assume that she is one of the tribe and begin to send her lascivious Friendster-grams, inviting her to all sorts of dirty funtimes.

In the article Cory links to several really good pieces. Such as a Times article on how Facebook is using all of the data it collects about us to help targeted advertising. One part in particular scared me a bit:

He suggested that internet-users could no longer expect to remain anonymous online, but could control only the amount of information about them that is available on the web.

Cory also references Danah Boyd article (her stuff is truly amazing if you have not read any of it do so) on Facebook and Privacy. Her conclusion has some great advice, emphasis mine.

Yes, people reveal personal stuff to a website. They know that they revealed that information but they still have an assumption about how it is to be presented and the ways that make them comfortable and the things that make them go ick. This is really about context, context, context. As i’ve said before, there’s no way that people can comfortably negotiate all contexts at all time. They could retreat and go into hyper private mode but what kind of life is that? People choose to make risks based on what they assume the architectural affordances and norms of a space to be. I think that asking people to retreat into paranoia is completely unreasonable. Instead, i think we need to find ways of providing reasonable levels of protection and comfort, recognizing that there are always risks when you are still breathing.

Danah also lists her reason why she feels people “friend” each other on SNS:-

1. Because they are actual friends
2. To be nice to people that you barely know (like the folks in your class)
3. To keep face with people that they know but don’t care for
4. As a way of acknowledging someone you think is interesting
5. To look cool because that link has status
6. (MySpace) To keep up with someone’s blog posts, bulletins or other such bits
7. (MySpace) To circumnavigate the “private” problem that you were forced to use cuz of your parents
8. As a substitute for bookmarking or favoriting
9. Cuz it’s easier to say yes than no if you’re not sure

Some final thoughts.

First I really hope Facebook, and the other services, don’t “misplace” all of our data like the little event in the UK.

Lastly I can see a whole “HR” mess brewing to resolve a SNS disagreement between workers!

Privacy of personal data

I haven’t written about data privacy in a while but I could not help it. The “little” issue in the UK in the last couple of days has brought the topic back up. The UK Taxman has “misplaced” 2 CDs full of personal and banking details of about 25 million people. To make matters worse the data includes almost every child in the country.

Names, addresses, dates of birth, employment and bank details all went missing when two CDs containing the information were mislaid.

Alistair Darling told the House of Commons that the discs containing the highly sensitive information failed to arrive after they were sent in the ordinary internal mail between government departments.

But what there is more!

The Chancellor admitted that HMRC had made the same mistake on several occasions in the past six months.

Given most HR/Payroll systems have the same sort of data, it might be a good time to check a few things.

Who stores the backup tapes
Are the contents of the backup tapes encrypted
How are the backup tapes transported between your site and where they are stored
How secure is storage at both of these locations
Who in the IT department has access to the HR/Payroll system and do they really need to

Last thing you want is for all of your employee data to fall into the wrong hands.