Ari Herzog

You're an Ambassador of Social Networking. You Just Don't Know It.

2008-07-24T15:18:00.002-04:00

A hearty welcome to the dozens of new subscribers to my blog and new followers of my Twitter micro-blog, thanks in part to both Darren Rowse and his ProBlogger Social Media Love-In and Liz Strauss and her pending Blog-to-Show.

To existing readers, hi again and thanks for engaging with me about life and politics, and my passions and pursuits on society and culture.

Referencing recent posts of mine about the brave new world of blogging, companies that fear the web, and Barack Obama's and John McCain's technology roadmaps; I am focusing this piece on the relevance of social networking and why you are already involved even if you think you are not.

I'd like to start the dialogue with a question.

Do you own a cell phone?

How long have you owned a cell phone? Why did you initially buy one? Have your goals changed over the amount of time you've used it?

[Photo credit: JonJon2kd]

Despite several friends of mine who have not joined the cellular bandwagon, I'm willing to hazard a guess that if you have a cell phone it's because you used to be accessible via a traditional "land line" phone but wanted to reach out and call someone when you were out of your house. Or maybe you wanted your mother or friend or boss to reach you wherever you were.

Am I close?

You don't answer the phone every time it rings, do you? You use voice mail for that, not unlike a land line's answering machine.

How many times do you disembark from an airplane, walk from the tarmac or gate into the airport terminal and immediately turn on your phone to check for any messages? How often do you notice seemingly everyone else doing the same thing?

Maybe talking to a person is not enough but you also send text messages to people, short bursts of characters (not unlike Twitter messages, for that matter) to people you care about and want to communicate with on the fly while you're sitting at some lecture and your friend is in class.

Maybe you don't text, but you know about it, right?

Is your cell phone capable of taking pictures with a built-in camera which you then send as a data message to a friend, upload to a website, or set as "wall paper" which you show to everyone?

As an attorney, banker, software engineer, or other working professional, are you attached to the hip with a BlackBerry, an iPhone, or a PalmPilot with GPS technology that you take everywhere even when on vacation and at family barbecues?

Forget the technology for a moment and think about what it all means. You're connecting to other people. You're being social and networking with peers, colleagues, and friends. You're a de facto ambassador and evangelist of social networking.

Raise your hand if you never heard of eBay.

I'm not asking if you use it. My grandmother never used eBay but she knows of its power and purpose. She read stories about its corporate success and marketability. What about you?

[Photo credit: Ryan Fanshaw Photography]

eBay was launched September 3, 1995 as an online auction website, enabling anyone in the world to sign up for a free account, list items for sale and watch people bid on them. A virtual auction house, if you will.

My eBay profile indicates I opened an account on January 15, 1999 around the time I built a home computer and bought most of the components from global users. eBay has in place a rating system, whereby buyers and sellers can "grade" each other based upon external elements such as ease of transaction, promptness of shipping, quality of packaging, etc.

You probably know some of this already, right?

Maybe you don't have an account on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, or Bebo, but you probably heard of some, if not all, of these corporate names and have an idea what the websites are all about.

Maybe you've never rated products or written reviews on Amazon, bought or sold items off eBay, or found jobs or apartments or casual encounters on Craigslist, but you probably read of these corporate names in the mainstream media or heard about them from friends or family and also have an idea as to their purpose and success.

Stop me if I'm going too fast.

Have you heard of Ray Matthews?

Until a few hours ago, I never heard of the guy either. After reading the following, you may wish you also found him earlier.

Ray is a government information coordinator for the Utah State Library. As a librarian, he understands the power of peer-to-peer networks, instant messaging, social networks, syndication tools, and work environments that support collaboration and productivity.

I bring him up in relation to a November 2004 blog post he wrote about social networks in his then-capacity as editor of RSS in Government.

Ray writes about Jesus which does nothing for me but he brings up a valuable lesson everyone should take heart to: social networking is framed by the church's community of believers and the U.S. Constitution's embrace of We the people.

He writes about the importance of social networking through talking and acting. He discusses the importance of social networking in a way not unlike some use it to transform social action and others use it to rebuild New Orleans.

Ray challenges you to change the world:

Social networking facilitates real-world and online conversations. Each of these technologies helps us bridge the six degrees of separation in finding others with similar goals and interests. We just need to apply this knowledge to loftier purposes. It's high time we used what we know for a higher purpose than dating, deal making, and job hunting. How about world peace? Maybe that generation of Miss America contestants had it right after all.

I'll call this repurposing of social networking the "Good News Network." The Good News Network needs no place, no domain, no trademark, no sponsors. It needs only open access and to be built on standards -- standards to converse one language with another and standards to programmatically exchange information. It consists of you and I, our friends, friends of friends, and those yet to be brought into our circle of friendship.

The Good News Network has two functions: to promote conversation and action. We converse by sharing the good news, our faith, and our belief in the goodness of humanity. And we act. We act in small ways, in big ways, but always in individual and personal ways, to share the good news of universality and peace and to promote well-being.

We speak multitudes of languages, we live in diverse regions of the globe, and we comprise all races and nationalities. In this day and age that is unique in history, we can all converse, we can join a global conversation, and we can meet in the virtual living room or the virtual temple of our choice.

So back to the age old question, how do you change the world?

Start by entering the conversation. In your blogs, in your chat rooms, in your networks, in your music, in your poems, in your art, in your families, and in your communities -- tell your story. Let your voice be heard. Sign on in whatever way makes sense to you in order to make a difference. As the marketers say, create a buzz. In the sense of paying it forward, start something in your own way and in your own voice. Start a conversation that will spread, that will continue, that will penetrate the hearts and minds of the power brokers. Those in high places will join us. They will, as Saul of old, see the vision and join the conversation. Perhaps in fulfillment of ancient prophecy, those with ears to hear will find each other, and they who are confused will recognize the voice.

Ray didn't know it at the time (or maybe he did) but he was writing about Web 2.0. He was evangelizing the power of eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, and Facebook — online communities for different purposes but with the common element of talking and acting with each other, no different than you or me, rating products and writing reviews, engaging in transactional commerce or conversation, and sharing knowledge.

It doesn't matter if you don't understand the technology as long as you know of it, no different than knowing of eBay even if you don't use it.

What do you think?

If I resonated any emotions or thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

You can click the relevant link below to post a comment; or, alternatively, you may wish to share this with your peers, colleagues, or friends by clicking the below "Bookmark" icon to connect to your favorite social media tool.

18 Examples of Female Geek Chic

2008-07-23T15:00:00.005-04:00

Did you see the June 16, 2008 issue of Newsweek with its cultural expose on the Nerd Girls, a posse of Tufts University students who symbolize sex, solar cars, and soldering irons in a single stare?

In "Revenge of the Nerdette," Jessica Bennett and Jennie Yabroff write:

Today's girl geeks are members of the first generation to have been truly reared on technology. They grew up on gender-neutral movies like "Hackers" and "The Matrix," and saw the transformation of Willow on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" from awkward geek to smart and sassy sex symbol. They've watched the geeky pursuits of technology and comic books transform from fringe subculture to pop mainstream, and they've capitalized on that geek-chic mentality to elbow their way into it.

The irony of this block of text is it could just as easily reference males than females by changing a choice word or two. This got me thinking of female pop culture icons (both real and imaginary) who exemplify geek chic.

Fortune 500 Women CEOs including Xerox Chairwoman and CEO Anne Mulcahy and Alcatel-Lucent CEO Patricia Russo, who are not just women but leaders of ginormous multinational technology corporations. Former corporate bigwigs Meg Whitman of eBay and Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard should be included here.
The first female captain in the Star Trek universe, Kathryn Janeway, of the USS Voyager
Barbarella, who, through both comic strips but mostly the 1968 film, helped introduce science fiction and sex to young women
Wonder Woman for holding her own next to Superman and Spiderman
Tank Girl for being an independent, gun-wielding, kick-butt chick
Angelina Jolie for wielding guns, riding motorcycles, and cracking computer codes as Lara Croft
Lisa Simpson for standing up to her TV parents but moreover showcasing an independence not seen from a female animated TV character since Judy Jetson
Velma from Scooby Doo for her trademark eyeglasses and geeky smarts
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and her female heroine, Hermione Granger, who both enabled more girls to read and be fascinated about magic
She-Ra who proved to TV audiences that she can compete with He-Man to master, err, mistress, the universe
Xena for combating warlords and gods as an equal to Hercules
Rock musician Ani DiFranco for her music and owning a record label called Righteous Babe
NPR commentator Sarah Vowell for proving women can not only speak about their lives on air, but also write successful essay books and be the voice-over for geeky cartoon characters as she did in "The Incredibles"
"La Femme Nikita," a short-run TV series, earns mention for highlighting the skills and savvy of a very feminine girl who doubles as a covert spy
Anna Kournikova who helped catapult the chic sport of tennis into Vogue for young girls to emulate
The marketing gurus behind the official blog of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen who clearly opened up the notion of blogging to millions of emulating fans
Negin Farsad who directed nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot in Nerdcore Rising
Jennifer Ringley, creator of the defunct JenniCam website that allowed people to watch her life unfold, live and uncut, in a Truman Show-like soap opera. It's fair to surmise her sex-ridden exploits led to female podcasters taking the stage today, ranging from Sarah Austin to Cali Lewis.

This list is by no means complete, nor does it reference website resources for young girls who want to be geeky.

If you have any cultural icons to add and/or would like to add your thoughts on nerds, nerd girls, or geek chic, please post a comment below.

ICANN Can But Should It?

2008-07-23T08:00:00.006-04:00

Last month, ICANN voted to relax domain name rules, allowing any institution willing to pay premium rates (speculated at $50,000 to $100,000 and up) for their own top-level domain name.

This means Smith Group would no longer be restricted to competing with 153 million domain names worldwide and branding itself to smithgroup.com, smithgroup.net, etc., but a unique and proprietary .smithgroup.

It makes sense but is it right?

In the beginning, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and the notion of a top-level domain (TLD) was born.

The first seven TLDs in the 1980s were .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org. Anyone could register (and still can) a .com, .net, or .org, with the remaining four reserved for educational, governmental, military, and international organizations.

In time, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was formed in 1998 to regulate the .com, .net, and .org TLDs, as well as country-code TLDs, such as .us, .uk, .fr, .ru, .it, .fm, .nu, .me and countless others.

Two years later, as the Web expanded and exploded with tremendous growth, ICANN claimed contractual ownership of 14 TLDs via various registrars: .aero, .biz, .cat, .com, .coop, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .museum, .name, .net, .org, .pro, and .travel.

Today, as visually represented in the above map by Zooknic, there are 246 country-specific TLDs and 20 global TLDs.

Judging from ICANN's vote, the number of TLDs has the potential for exploding into a number nobody can predict.

Imagining unique TLDs

Millions of organizations currently competing for pop culture branding and technological bandwidth on existing TLDs would be able to spend big money for their own top-level domains. Subdomains could be utilized for organizational departments, e.g. instead of www.smithgroup.com/info.html or www.smithgroup.com/training, it could create www.info.smithgroup or www.training.smithgroup. And so forth.

The ICANN, in its regulatory capacity, must approve any TLD proposal but that isn't stopping activists in New York City argue for a .nyc domain, as briefed in the May 2008 issue of Governing.

"The unique TLD can create a shared identify for governments, businesses and nonprofits and improve the search-engine positioning for city services and businesses," writes Elizabeth Daigneau. "A local TLD such as .nyc also means that domain name revenue remains in the city."

Internet advertising executives are split over the benefits of TLD registrations, with some seeing it as market dilution and others as a creative opportunity.

TLD registration is not a panacea for everyone, as MediaWizard Samit Madan explains:

Domains are like real estate. Only the biggest players even bother owning their own. Restaurants lease the space because they make more money from selling food. The landlord rents it out because he makes more from multiple properties. Microsoft has its own facilities because it needs it due to the thousands of local employees who will permanently be located there.

The simile here is that while some people will launch their own TLDs as a viable business, an end user would always prefer a good domain in a known extension. He wants to make money from his venture, his primary motive will never be to popularise the TLD itself.

Personally, I don't foresee or expect to purchase a TLD to merely brand my name. More to the point, should someone buy .ariherzog, I can always contest them and I'd probably win. I'm guessing other individuals, aside from the John Smiths and Jane Adamses of the world, are in the same boat as me.

But what about organizations that have the clout and capital for such an expenditure? Should they rush out to buy one? Should cities like New York, Paris, and Berlin have their TLDs too? What are the pros and cons of speculation and ownership of such a mechanism?

I see that moving.com and moving.net, for instance, are comparable websites about the moving industry, whereas moving.org belongs to the American Moving and Storage Association. Suppose the AMSA doesn't have the funds to purchase a .moving TLD and someone else does. More to the point, suppose every TLD, present and future, for a given keyword is owned by a different corporation. Talk about confusion!

Four years ago, Berners-Lee indicated his staunch opposition to the ICANN creation of new TLDs.

Don't get me wrong. There are some reasons for which I'd like to open new domain names. It would be great to open new domains but only where a social system or technical system was very different. If you want to open a domain where you are numbering things like telephones, that may be useful. If you make a commitment to the integrity of that piece of the Web, then that would be interesting

He claimed TLDs made sense when the fragmentation was for content, not devices. I agree with this sentiment.

This is why .com worked for some time before everyone and their cousins bought .com domains. Not anyone can buy a .info or .museum domain, not that they are ineligible but because an ariherzog.info domain would be more apropos than ariherzog.museum.

I'm happy visiting www.ebay.com to visit the online auction house; I don't need the existence of a www.ebay to know where to go. To me, that's overkill.

Just because ICANN can approve new TLDs doesn't mean it should.

Thoughts?

Obama Needs Money, USPS Shows

2008-07-22T17:02:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama is asking me for money.

In two separate letters mailed to me this week (featuring his emboldened name on the otherwise empty header), he pleads with me to send a campaign contribution.

Looking closer, one letter hails from the Chicago-based Obama for America campaign and the other is from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington. Both letters meet direct mail marketing trends for nondescript envelope design, paper stock, and envelope size.

I don't know why, or how, my name was attributed to either list as I am an unenrolled voter. I also wonder if both letters would still have arrived if Obama didn't reject public financing.

With Obama signing both letters, wouldn't it be cost-effective (not to mention an easier PR sell) to use one letter and not confuse Americans?

Recycle, Don't Store, Nuke Waste

2008-07-22T14:25:00.005-04:00

Say what you will about nuclear power plant proliferation but keep in mind that the risk of repeat meltdowns like Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 are passe.

There are 441 nuclear power reactors operating in 31 countries, according to the nuclear energy office of the U.S. Department of Energy, accounting for 17% of the worldwide electricity generation grid.

With a world population of approximately 6.7 billion, nuclear power delivers electricity to 1 billion.

That's a lot of nuke juice.

Say what you will about the reasons for such a large nuclear energy portfolio, but consider German sociologist Ulrich Beck who cautions in today's Guardian that emotional reactions to climate change and rising oil prices are propelling a global push for nuke construction.

In the wake of a recent U.S. Congress initiative to develop a warning system for Earth inhabitants in 10,000 years about soon-to-be locations for nuclear waste disposal sites such as Yucca Mountain, Beck probes into the sociopolitical line of conflict between G8 desires to support nuclear energy and greener alternative forms of energy production.

Many decisions over large-scale risks are not a matter of choosing between safe and risky alternatives, but between different risky alternatives, and often between alternatives whose risks are too qualitatively different to easily compare. Existing forms of scientific and public discourse are no match for such considerations. Here governments adopt the strategy of deliberate simplification. They present each specific decision as one between safe and risky alternatives, while playing down the uncertainties of nuclear energy and focusing attention on the oil crisis and climate change.

After reading his commentary and the Slashdot opinions that led me to the article, I recall an April 2008 article in Slate about nuclear storage and R&D pipeline ideas involving proton beams, isotope-trapping microbes, and metal sulfide remedies, not to mention what-if scenarios about building fusion or antimatter plants.

Why is nobody seriously looking into reusing or recycling the waste?

Surely, depositing the used fuel rods in Nevada's Yucca Mountain by 2017 is not the only solution that the best and brightest in the United States government and scientific community can devise.

Granted, President Jimmy Carter passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1979 that banned nuclear fuel recycling in the United States, but keep in mind that President Ronald Reagan reversed the ban in 1981.

To be fair, Reagan failed to provide federal subsidies to launch commercial projects so the 1977 status quo remains, but why can't the incumbent George W. Bush or potential successors Barack Obama or John McCain state on the record how they feel about nuclear energy and position the U.S. to be like France, Russia, Japan, India, and the United Kingdom and engage in plutonium reprocessing?

And I don't refer to France's PUREX system either, which extracts plutonium and uranium by bathing the used fuel in nitric acid.

Rather, I refer to the combined knowledge and suggestions of a trio of U.S. physicists, who, in this December 2005 Scientific American report, argue for funding and research of pyrometallurgical recycling of nuclear waste via the positioning of policy away from thermal reactors and toward the development of advanced liquid metal reactors and fast reactors that don't use volatile heavy water and therefore reduce leakage and the cause of nearly all meltdowns.

Through illustrations, the physicists explain that U.S. thermal reactors and European PUREX reactors currently waste 94-95% of nuclear fuel because depleted uranium cannot be burned. But with pyrometallurgical recycling trigenerated with thermal and fast reactors, less than 1 percent is wasted.

"The spent fuel is not waste but rather a valuable energy resource for the future," said Donald Dudziak, a Los Alamos National Laboratory fellow and former professor of nuclear engineering at North Carolina State University in an Albuquerque Journal op-ed.

Isn't that something? Recycling nuclear waste? On the surface, it sounds more economical than the U.S. purchasing plutonium from Russia.

Maybe the DoE's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership will develop a reprocessing schema more improved than pyrometallurgical recycling, given recent proposals on business plans, costs, timelines, governance models, workforces from 2008 through 2100, existing technologies and current constraints, financing through the Nuclear Waste Fund and other mechanisms, and engaging utilities, research universities, and national labs.

Researching data for this article, I quickly got frustrated with groups who claim to be for or against nuclear energy but fail to provide proof. For instance, the Maryland-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service has no online information about what to do with used rods and used fuel, merely stating nuke plant construction shouldn't occur. That's all and well but doesn't help provide perspective.

With recent stories in Discover Magazine, Utne Reader, and Mother Jones arguing both sides of the nuclear storage debate, the consensus is nuke plant proliferation isn't halting and rightly so.

I was 4 when the TMI incident hit the airwaves and 11 for Chernobyl. Much of my nuclear knowledge began in high school.

Respecting those who are older than me and are skeptical about nuke construction, I look at the facts and that thousands of Americans die every year from lung cancer and other diseases (in)directly caused by fossil fuel production plants, and I wonder what I am missing. The industry is much different today than 20 years ago.

If the what-if questions about used waste were solved with known or future technologies, would people like Ulrich Beck still be cautious about building new plants? Or is my logic flawed?

Democracy or Empire, Gorby Asks

2008-07-22T08:00:00.001-04:00

Today marks the 21st anniversary of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's agreement with U.S. President Ronald Reagan to negotiate a ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles, leading to the December 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

With its 700-plus military bases around the world, is the United States committed to building a new world order?

Earlier this month, Gorby released a statement and asked the United States if the Cold War is over.

[The] candidates, and the next president, will have to decide and state clearly whether America wants to be an empire or a democracy, whether it seeks global dominance or international cooperation. They will have to choose, because this is an either-or proposition: The two things don't mix, like oil and water.

Suppose the old man is right. Suppose the U.S. is experiencing puberty between its democratic and empiric ways.

How to answer?

Telemarket This

2008-07-21T09:00:00.004-04:00

Once upon a time, I worked for a telemarketing firm. It was my first winter semester break from college and I needed a job, so found a First Alert alarm reseller looking for reps.

I was provided tearsheets ripped straight out of phone books. I was instructed to cold call every number, one at a time, and schedule free interviews with the salesmen to show off the product. The consumer wasn't required to buy anything; just agree to meet.

For each interview I scheduled, I received $X. If the person bought a unit, I received more. I lasted a week at the company before I was fired for not meeting their sales quota.

It is for this reason I understand the rep, pun not intended, of the telemarketing industry.

Despite the urban legend that your cellphone number could be sold to telemarketers, nothing prevents an advertising company from breaking the law.

The Washington Post decried the war on cellular spam in a cover story in March, blaspheming ad companies who break into secure data and harvest phone numbers for their use. These companies wouldn't call you but they could send you a text message, and if you're like me and frequently text, the charges can rack up.

The Post cited some providers who try to protect consumers:

Last year, Verizon Wireless sued telemarketers it said inundated its networks with more than 12 million unsolicited commercial text messages. In its lawsuit, the wireless carrier said it was able to block all but 4,618. Customers were hit with unwanted charges and the spam slowed legitimate traffic, according to Verizon Wireless.

With the economic downturn, though, some people will do anything for free money.

As a Harris Interactive poll indicates, 80% of adults and 70% of teens are willing to receive mobile ads in exchange for hard cash.

I'd rather receive nothing for nothing. What about you?

1 Reason to Love Burger King in the Heat

2008-07-20T16:18:00.004-04:00

After spending a whirlwind 36 hours helping a friend move her belongings in a 10' Budget rental truck from Brookline, Massachusetts to Brooklyn, New York, all I can say is thank God for Burger King.

I never thought I'd write that sentence.

Seeking air-conditioned shelter from the scorching 90-degree day outside (or is it hotter?), added to the frustration that my Amtrak train will leave Penn Station 40 minutes late, imagine my surprise when I roamed along Fashion Avenue and spotted a BK with a window sign, proclaiming, "INTERNET!"

The internet is not free, but it's not expensive either, at sliding rates of $2 for 10 minutes. I slid my credit card (cash is also accepted) for $5 for 30 minutes. Not a bad way to kill time, check email messages, and post a short message here — from the 2nd floor in front of a window overlooking 463 7th Ave.

Have I been living under a rock, or do all U.S. Burger Kings offer this service? I don't eat fast food (other than the rare baked potato or Frosty drink from Wendy's).

Does anyone know? Does your local BK or other fast food nation chain offer internet kiosks?

Weekly Roundup: 7 Culture Blogs Worth Reading

2008-07-19T09:00:00.001-04:00

Last week, I published a list of 10 blogs worth reading.

This week, I continue the weekly roundup with 7 blog articles published this week that forced me to question or smile about some element in society or culture:

Before anyone else, a special shout out to Catherine Lawson, a writer of bold advice for business success, who recognizes the importance of saying thank you. In this case, she thanked 131 bloggers with links to their blogs, including yours truly.
In Your Grandparents Know More Than the Internet, Rick DeCost hits the heart by saying elders in society should be sought for advice and knowledge as much as, if not more than, using an internet search engine.
"Who among us hasn't misquoted Kerry?" asks Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy, in reference to the junior senator from Massachusetts. It's an interesting commentary on local and national journalists interspersed with political speech extracts.
At the Center for Citizen Media, Dan Gillmor delves into the history of citizen journalism and questions whether its usage is still appropriate.
Entrepreneur Jon Morrow writes compelling copy on how to stop being invisible by looking to the class clown and providing value to your readership, which is just as worthy for a blogger as any other journalist.
Out in Omaha, Nebraska, which seems a long way from where I sit, Andy at Blog in Your Face wonders if former vice president and Nobel winner Al Gore is on the money by proposing the United States can distance its energy portfolio from fossil fuels in 10 years.
If you drilled a hole through my floor and kept going until you reached China, then headed south to Australia, you'd find Robin Birch and her blog called Let's Live Forever! I just discovered her and in her latest post (as I type this), she writes about social change and global issues, asking, "Is the world getting better or worse?"

Government Must Embrace Technology, Not Fight It

2008-07-18T19:50:00.002-04:00

How many times have you tried conducting work on your computer, something goes wrong, and you feel like you need to destroy it?

Technology may cause you dangerous motives but it's man-made and ought to be seen as your friend.

It is for this reason I am continually frustrated with government agencies (and businesses, for that matter) that operate in the past.

I think it's sad when my 86-year-old grandmother books airline tickets online from her new computer and drives around in a talking car yet my hometown of Newburyport only started offering residents the ability to pay taxes and parking tickets online in May.

Edwardsville, Illinois, for instance, began an online bill paying service for its 24,000 residents in 2004. I'm sure other communities offered the service earlier. More are destined to follow.

Over 70 local and state government officials attended last month's Pennsylvania Digital Government Summit, sponsored by Government Technology magazine, as reported in Computerworld, and heard proven tools and technologies to leverage the power of Web 2.0 to increase the ways they interact and communicate with residents.

"I'm not here to tell government to just jump in," said James Young, the associate vice president for information services at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. "It takes a while to adopt this stuff, because we don't know what is going to work and what's not going to work."

Welcome to 2008
Fact is, we live, work, and play on the super information highway. If you disagree, wake up and smell your television. It's about time for government to get up to speed.

A tenet of democracy, according to internet strategist Steven Clift, is the geographical interaction of people uniting locally with each other to influence and provide feedback to government. Yet, how often do citizens "jointly solve problems or to get directly involved in efforts to make their communities better?"

In "Rebooting America," an anthology of 44 essays by internet thinkers that hit bookshelves this week, Clift writes:

The typical e-government experience is like walking into a barren room with a small glass window, a singular experience to the exclusion of other community members. There is no human face, just a one-way process of paying your taxes, registering for services, browsing the information that the government chooses to share, or leaving a private complaint that is never publicly aired. You have no ability to speak with a person next to you much less address your fellow citizen browsers as a group... it is ironic that the best government web-sites are those that collect your taxes, while those that give you a say on how your taxes are spent are the worst or simply do not exist.

Maybe you live in a community with an e-government infrastructure that embraces email communication with city officials, provides laptops to elected officials to cut down on printing paper, supports government-resident email communication, advertises events on Facebook, and engages bloggers and news reporters to work together as citizen journalists on a common blog or wiki.

I look to places like Washtenaw County, Michigan; Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; or the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District in California that regularly use social media to engage citizen feedback on a level unlike anything tried before.

Perhaps the best example is Westport, Connecticut, where WestportNow.com is driven by local officials as the town's 24-hour news and information source. It's been up since 2003.

I live in Massachusetts but over the past week, I've exchanged several 40-character messages with Texas Congressman John Culberson; I'm fairly confident (because I checked) that my state congressional delegation don't have Twitter accounts.

"Federal officials ~~who~~ have embraced social media as a way for having a direct discussion with the public," says Brian Giesen on 360° Digital Influence.

As a taxpayer, voter, resident, or anyone else vested into the community, don't you want a reciprocal relationship with your local or state elected leaders? I know I do.

One way to improve communication is via online collaborative tools like wikis.

Ellen Perlman and Melissa Maynard explain in "Working in Wiki: How to Assemble Real Ideas in a Virtual World" in the June 2008 issue of Governing:

A wiki is a collaboratively edited web page that allows users to edit or add content. Within a government agency, it can be used to allow information to bubble from all corners, and from people who might never have been invited to attend a meeting but who might have ideas about how to proceed or where to exercise caution — whether it's on a construction project, the delivery of a service, or a means of raising revenue.

I accept that many people are accustomed to the status quo and don't accept change well. I respect both my peers and Baby Boomer workers who are either afraid, scared, or discomforted by the idea of working with something new.

"Organizations need to extend their security processes to enable safe use of Web 2.0 technologies" said John Pescatore, vice president at Gartner. "Strategies to contain and protect the use of new technologies will always be more effective in the long run than security approaches that rely solely on blocking."

I can relate. When I worked in City Hall, I routinely used Google to look up information crucial to the task at hand. A believer in adapting proven technologies for my own use rather than reinventing the wheel, I frequently received server messages that the website in question was blocked.

Productivity was wasted by emailing the IT director with the specific URL I was trying to access in the hopes his BlackBerry was active and he could edit the server files in quick time. What if he was in another building and couldn't remotely access the server? Or if he was on vacation?

Embrace technology by working with younger people
"They use it every day at college," said Mary Benner, CIO for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry, who spoke at the digital summit about the next generation of IT workers who will replace retiring municipal officials. "That's their way of communicating. If we don't offer those technologies, they will see us as being in the Dark Ages."

By way of example, drive about 50 miles east of London to the British borough of Medway, where the Medway Council recruited students to produce podcasts and teach the councilors about the technology. The kids also used social media sites like Myspace and Facebook (which they, like I and my peers, already knew like the back of their hands) for promotion and advertising of the downloadable podcasts and for community festivals.

Simon Wakeman, marketing director for the Council, summarizes the finer points in a 25-slide presentation at Slideshare about how a simple gesture and desire to learn led to a working and trusting relationship between kids in the community and adults.

"What do they like?" Young, the Pennsylvania professor suggested government leaders ask residents. "What do they want? You can communicate with them and create a buzz."

Start small. Don't do everything at once. Don't middle and high schools offer a computer club? Maybe the kids are part of some web geek club. Invest in them. Give the club some money and in return they can help you with IT solutions.

Perhaps Bill St. Arnaud, a Canadian technologist, says it best in his probe of how e-government can improve citizen engagement. At Internet Evolution, he writes, "We are only limited by our imagination, in optimizing the Internet as a new revolutionary tool to truly personalize democracy."

Last week, I wrote about organizations that must embrace change or become irrelevant. If you're a Newburyport resident, government official, or business owner reading this, would you be interested in learning more how web technologies can help you?

[Photo credits: Tobias Higbie and dbking. Used by permission.]

It's OK to Laugh at Barack and John

2008-07-18T03:13:00.000-04:00

Spreading like wildfire across the Internet (I learned of this through Mike Durrett), brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis released their latest political satire song-and-movie show about the 2008 presidential election.

Starring funny men Barack Obama and John McCain, supporting characters include George Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and so many more!

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

I can't think of a more opportune way to rush in the new look of my blog than by poking fun at Washington.

Thanks to Darren Rowse for planting the idea in my head, and kudos to Amanda Fazani for previously designing this template.

Do you like how it looks?

Anyone with a Blogger account should check out Amanda's tips and resources at Blogger Buster.

I'm not completely moved in to my new "home" yet, but keep coming back for you'll see fresh content on the top, side, and bottom of this page over the coming days.

What did you think of the video? I dare you to tell me you didn't laugh.

Say No to Litter! Say Yes to Glitter!

2008-07-17T15:39:00.005-04:00

Over 5.2 trillion cigarettes will be smoked this year, according to Philip Morris International chief executive André Calantzopoulos, who spoke in January to The Wall Street Journal.

That translates to big money. The firm earned $48.2 billion in 2006.

What a drag!

The unintended consequence of more smokers is cigarette litter. From highways to residential streets, from sidewalks to boardwalks, and from parks to beaches, the butts are everywhere.

Whether due to lack of infrastructure or money, city leaders and business owners either don't know, don't care, or can't afford to enforce (or don't know in the case of police or the health agent) what occurs when a person leaves a bar, shop, or government building, smokes a cigarette, and snuffs it on the ground with his shoe.

Maybe there is no ash receptacle around. Maybe there is only a trash can and the smoker doesn't want the ash to light up and burn any paper in the can. Maybe the smoker, or the business owner, is uneducated about the dangers of cigarette litter.

With support from Philip Morris USA (with revenues of $18.4 billion), the Prevent Cigarette Litter program identifies several facts on smoking that you should know:

22 states and the District of Columbia have passed or approved indoor smoking bans, as of 2007
95% of cigarette filters are manufactured with a non-biodegradable plastic called cellulose acetate
Of 1,000 smokers in a survey this year, 35% toss five or more cigarette butts per pack on the ground
80% of smokers said they would properly dispose of their butts if suitable bins were available
18% of cigarette litter is washed into storm water drains, enter and pollute the watershed, and may be eaten by land and marine animals

I see it everyday. I am guessing you do, too.

So. What do we do about it?

For starters, I turn to the British and their creative juices.

With the marketing slogan of "Bin Your Butts," a partnership of 15 tourist attractions along the British Riviera devised a clever way to keep cigarette butts off the beaches.

Last summer, elementary school children began combing the beach with used 35mm film cartridges and gave the "portable ashtrays" to smokers, asking them to snuff the cigarette litter in the bins rather than in the sand.

"It's a popular initiative in parts of Australia," explained James Hull, the campaign's mastermind. "I have managed to obtain 10,000 old film cartridges from a hotel photographer for the trial run, although it would be amazing to see this becoming a long-term scheme supported by local businesses."

"Keeping a clean bay is vital to our tourism industry," the press release continued. "Similar initiatives in the past have been proven to reduce butts on beaches by 26%, which would be a significant achievement over the coming summer months."

Annual cleanup efforts, like the ones in and around northeast Massachusetts, are great for the environment and instill volunteerism, but they are annual.

City Manager Dave Ruller of Kent, Ohio recently wrote about renovating an old Kent State University sidewalk sweeper into a cigarette litter picker-upper. His website has a picture of the contraption. That's an idea other communities can adapt.

Closer to home, the Gloucester Daily Times printed a letter to the editor last month from the League of Women Voters of Cape Ann which seeks volunteers to help with brainstorming ideas, ranging from mandating ashtrays outside restaurants and bars to businesses imprinting their logos on portable ashtrays.

Signage needs to be increased, along with proactive education. In downtown Newburyport, for instance, there is an imprinted sign amid brick stones, "Dump No Waste | Goes to Ocean." But the sign was old and rusted.

I don't know the best solution, but I do know sandy beaches are supposed to be full of glitter, not litter. Streets and parks, too.

What do you think? Do you live in an area that has a useful way of combating cigarette trash?

[Photo credits: Jim Grady (top) and danzden (bottom)]

Linguistic Survey - Schmucks Allowed

2008-07-17T01:34:00.004-04:00

If you are living in the United States, click here because this survey is for you!

Linguist Sarah Bunin and sociologist Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College request all Americans, regardless of racial, cultural, or religious backgrounds, take their survey that asks questions about American Jewish Language:

What is the depth of your knowledge and speech of Hebrew and Yiddish words like "shmooze," "kvetch," "mazel tov," "chutzpah," and "goy?"
Why do you say "temple" when your friends say "synagogue?
Have you ever visited Israel?
Have you or your parents ever lived in New York?
When deciding the name of your child, would you prefer "Christopher," "Tyler," "Alex," "Lev," "Joshua," or "Ari?"

You do not have to be Jewish to take the survey, which will last about 15-20 minutes depending on your computer mouse agility.

Many thanks to wordsmith and copywriter Nancy Friedman (who happens to be Jewish) for alerting me about this educational and very enlightening sociocultural survey.

For more on sociolinguistics, you might like perusing through the 2,600 words and images in the Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon.

[Photo credits: nofrills (top) and ncavillones (bottom)]

John McCain's Technology Roadmap - Waitasec, McCain Has a Roadmap?

2008-07-16T22:12:00.004-04:00

Before I write about Barack Obama's and John McCain's technology roadmaps if elected to the presidency, I first need to vent about the fuss surrounding McCain admitting he's computer illiterate.

The backlash is deafening, from the New York Times to Wired to Fort Wayne Politics. Type the keywords 'McCain' and 'computer illiteracy' into Google and you will see over 6,100 results (so far).

The latest spin includes Newsweek's Andrew Romano who suggests McCain's computer illiteracy reflects a lack of necessity in his congressional role. Whereas most adult Americans learned computers on the job (looking up information on the Internet, sending e-mails, etc.), McCain relies on staffers for that work.

"Internet ability is completely pointless from a policy perspective," Romano writes. "It's inaccurate to say that his computer inexperience would hamper his presidency," no different than his inexperience on farming and immigration issues.

That's all and well, but did not Mike Allen of politico.com interview the 71-year-old senior Senator from Arizona last weekend and learn the man is not illiterate anymore?

Moreover, we know from On the Issues that he spoke at a March 2000 Republican debate in Los Angeles, saying, "When I want to find out what’s on CNN or The New York Times or other communist periodicals, I always go to it."

End of vent.

Let's talk presidential politics, policy, and technology.

As background, I point you to an earlier post of mine on the internet's interminable link to elections and a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project survey that found 46% of Americans use the internet to follow political news, contribute to campaigns, watch debate videos, and other areas surrounding the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Of the 2,251 polled:

40% read political news and views online
19% participate in campaign activities online more than once a week
6% go online daily
23% receive emails to support a campaign or discuss an issue once a week or more
10% use email to contribute to a political debate once a week or more
4% exchange political views by text messaging

"Many voters are now using the internet to move past traditional media gatekeepers to gain their own view of the candidates and the campaign," said Pew research specialist Aaron Smith. "This shows the appetite of engaged citizens to move beyond the sound-bite culture and make their own assessments of the meaning of political developments."

If elected, Barack Obama promises to create a transparent and connected democracy through a website and search engine, blogs, wikis, social networking tools, and other internet resources "to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing to improve government decision-making," adding that citizens would be able "to track online federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts with government officials."

(Some of this is already possible, such as the Federal Funding Accountability and Transaction Act portal, spawned by a bill he (and McCain) co-sponsored in 2006.)

Obama pledges to make "government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities."

Other elements of an Obama Administration, as indicated on his website, include:

Requiring Cabinet officials to hold sporadic "national online town hall meetings."
Requiring agencies to conduct "significant business" in public "so that any citizen can watch a live feed on the Internet as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society."
Enabling citizens "an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days" before he signs any non-emergency legislation.
Appointing a first-ever White House Chief Technology Officer to focus on transparency, open and accessible e-government records, and new technological tools.

The Pew study indicates 65% of Obama supporters already use the internet to watch online videos, participate in social networking sites, and other campaign-related activities. By comparison, only 56% of McCain supporters use the internet in a similar fashion.

And of McCain's technology roadmap?

He doesn't have one.

There's nothing on his website, anyway. According to Mother Jones, there are references to configure a "rapid deployment of 21st century information systems and technology" albeit for "doctors to practice across state lines."

MJ talks to media strategist Brian Reich who says McCain "doesn't see it as an electoral priority to talk about the role technology is going to play in our society going forward, because he's not going to raise any money from Silicon Valley liberals. I think it's both a policy deficiency in his platform and a political deficiency in his strategy."

There you have it. Obama is reaching out to the American electorate, most of whom are internet junkies, and is attempting to bridge the digital divide by improving existing technologies and creating new tools, such as the CTO appointee.

McCain is fairly mum about his ideas.

Echoing what I wrote at the beginning of this post, I don't care if a presidential candidate is illiterate about computers anymore than he may be illiterate about farming (as Romano wrote); that's why he has Cabinet officials and the best and brightest staff.

Net neutrality and REAL ID aside, what are McCain's prospective policies on the very issues that Obama suggests? How will McCain expand broadband access to rural Americana? How does McCain feel about telecommunication innovations and sending NASA missions to Mars?

How will another Republican administration be different in this age of technology?

Don't get me wrong; Obama has his faults, too.

But, as Baby Boomers retire and Generations X and Y will take their place (not to mention the so-called Google Generation who are already tapped into technology more than any other social or demographic class), who will speak to the younger-than-45 voters? Obama seems to be more attuned.

This has nothing to do with Silicon Valley liberals, as Reich wrote above, but sociocultural values.

In any case, for more information, I point you to CNet's 2008 Technology Voters' Guide.

As an aside, I suppose we can be thankful Georgiana Doerschuck is not running for the presidency. Do you remember her? She ran in the 1996 Republican primary in New Hampshire on an anti-computer platform, shown in this interview with Wolf Blitzer.

[Photos used with permission from rutty and kmtucker]

Wrestling with Cultural Heritage Tourism

2008-07-15T13:56:00.008-04:00

Sustainability is on the tip of everyone's tongues:

Installing green energy projects, such as wind turbines and solar panels
Certifying buildings and electronics, such as LEED and Energy Star
Walking and bicycling to reduce carbon emissions and promote exercise and health
Taking advantage of public transportation
Buying local and not filling the coffers of chain stores and multinational corporations
Eating fresh produce from farms and cooperative agriculture shares
Wearing organic clothing made from cotton and hemp
Preserving the past through museums and wildlife refuges
Conserving natural resources such as rivers, lakes, and open land

The list goes on and on...

Social, economic, and environmental issues are at the heart of the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development, and Newburyport, Masachusetts may as well be a UN model community for the hard work and volunteerism of hundreds of residents involved in grassroots community organizations, government task forces, and business resource groups.

Home to the birthplace of the U.S. Coast Guard and the oldest continuously-running courthouse, the 17,000-population Newburyport was once a resting stop for George Washington, Aaron Burr, and the Marquis de Lafayette.

While Washington and his troops stayed at the 1771 Tracy Mansion, now a restored area within the Newburyport Public Library, their descendants today sleep at downtown inns and B&Bs.

History is prevalent here. One only needs to drive on a 1-mile stretch of historic High Street to see Federalist and Victorian style homes, the likes of which are hard to find nationwide.

Tourists come to Newburyport to see the historic homes, enter an 1825 jail, and take whale-watching rides in the Atlantic Ocean from the city's breathtaking boardwalk overlooking the mouth of the mighty Merrimack River.

Did I mention the bald eagles, piping plovers, Canadian geese, terns, doves, loons, ospreys, and egrets that nest in Newburyport either seasonally or year-round? Birdwatching is very popular here and people come from all over to catch a glimpse or take that awe-inspiring photo.

Earlier today, I attended the first meeting of the Greater Newburyport Area Cultural Heritage Assessment project (GNACHA), a local initiative which the Daily News described as a way to take stock of local tourism.

But it's more than just looking at tourism statistics. Much more.

Leading by example, the GNACHA partners are:

Responding to a request to attend the meeting, I gleefully said yes.

I immediately observed that despite some advance press of the meeting, none of the city's media outlets attended nor local bloggers such as Gillian Swart and Tom Salemi.

For their benefit, and for the benefit of the global audience reading this sentence, here is a snapshot of what was discussed and ways that other communities — around the world — can capitalize on building a successful and sustainable cultural heritage tourism program:

Cultural heritage tourism, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, includes historic, cultural, and natural attractions and is defined as "traveling to experience the places and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present."

There are four steps to achieve success and sustainability in cultural heritage tourism:

Today's meeting fell under step 1.

We started today's meeting with the first step, a very good place to start.

The National Trust suggests assessing 11 sites and resources involved in any cultural heritage program. These are identifiable areas that promote tourism in many, but not all, communities:

Scenic drives
Walking or driving tours in the downtown
Historic sites
Cultural sites
Parks and natural resources
Meeting facilities
Hotels, motels, inns, B&Bs
Unique restaurants
Unique retail shops and artisan studios
Gateways or entrances into the community
Visitor information centers

We realized very quickly that everyone had many ideas to contribute, and so we only got through about five of the above points.

Of note, we talked of a need to increase signage for events and to important venues, installing more municipal accessible bathrooms, improving public transit infrastructure and access, increasing PR for the city's rich maritime history, and working with businesses and the city on easier driving directions (Mapquest takes people through a busy industrial park which dead-ends if you don't know where to turn).

The next meeting will continue where we left off, and possibly begin identifying individuals and groups — stakeholders — who will prove fruitful, necessary, and obligatory, such as those in the following 16 areas:

Tourism offices
Nonprofit art groups and their directors
Historic site and museum directors, staff, board
Event organizers
Artists
Historic societies
Preservation organizations
Cultural/civic organizations
Local business owners
"Main Street" individuals
Parks and recreation groups
Government officials
Regional economic development staff
Higher education
Local media
Churches and other faith institutions

The next GNACHA meeting is Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 9 a.m. at the public library. I'll be there; will you?