Two years ago awareness about the issue was drawn to the forefront after the much-publicized death threats received by Kathy Sierra. Last month social media scholar dahah boyd was the target of harassment at Web 2.0 Expo. And this week the escalating battle between a mommy blog site and her anonymous critics – who have gone to great lengths to point out the meanspiritedness of some information on the mommy site by being meanspirited themselves – continues. Unfortunately there is no shortage of incidences.

(These three examples don’t even start to address the issue of cyberbullying experienced by minors, which carries additional ethical and legal complexities.)

I’m no stranger to online hostility. Like many people, I’ve been on the receiving end of my share of attacks, and in speaking out about the need for cybercivility, I’ve even, ironically, received a thinly veiled physical threat.

I wonder… when did it become an apparently accepted online norm to try to silence people by insulting, intimidating and attacking them through aggressive online behavior? When did such actions against individuals too frequently become the reaction of choice instead of engaging in spirited debate and passionate dissent? And when exactly did the rest of us agree to stand by, often turning a blind eye, and allow this to happen, instead of speaking out in vehement protest and demanding a cultural change?

Fortunately there are serious efforts underway by advocates, attorneys and concerned individuals to halt the progression of online hostility via public education about the problem, anti-cyberbullying/harassment programs and legal restraints. I proudly count myself among them.

In the coming weeks and months I’ll be speaking out more about this, as I’ve already done on my Twitter account. Stay tuned.

Childhood obesity isn’t an issue that strikes only when adolescents explore their independence and start making their own food and lifestyle choices, it unfortunately also strikes children at a much younger age. According to the recent study “Prevalence of Obesity Among US Preschool Children in Different Racial and Ethic Groups” (Arch Pediatr Adolesc Me 2009; 163(4):344-348), the obesity prevalence of 4-year old children in the United States is a disturbing 18.4% (95% confidence interval [CI], 17.1%-19.8%), with the ethic/racial breakdowns as follows:

American Indian/Native Alaskan, 31.2% (95% CI, 24.6%-37.8%); Hispanic, 22.0% (95% CI, 19.5%-24.5%); non-Hispanic black, 20.8% (95% CI, 17.8%-23.7%); non-Hispanic white, 15.9% (95% CI, 14.3%-17.5%); and Asian, 12.8% (95% CI, 10.0%-15.6%)

Childhood obesity can lead to a myriad of physical and psychological health problems, among them diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, low self esteem, harassment and discrimination.

Ideally parents should lead the charge in reversing this disturbing trend of obesity in children, but sometimes themselves contribute to the problem due to ignorance or their own poor health practices. Fortunately there are number of concerted efforts being made to combat childhood obesity. A select list of programs/organizations includes:

Alliance for a Healthier Generation

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation is a partnership between the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation.

It seeks to make a positive impact on children’s health via its four core initiatives — Healthy Schools Program, Industry Program (encouraging restaurants and snack companies to create healthier meals, snacks and drinks for children), Kids’ Movement, and Healthcare Program.

NUTRITION DETECTIVES® “Teaching Kids to Make Healthy Choices”

Nutrition Detectives in a nutrition education program for elementary school children where youngsters learn how to read food labels, how to identify healthy foods, and how to make wise nutritional choices.

It includes a manual/curriculum guide for teachers and a pre- and post food label quiz to measure students’ increased nutritional comprehension.

Food Dudes

The Food Dudes Healthy Eating Programme, which originated in the UK and is available in six languages, is geared towards children 2-11.

It claims a high success rate in getting participating children to eat more fruits and vegetables, with equal effectiveness for boys and girls and children of all socioeconomic backgrounds. The site provides a step-by-step guide to starting a Food Dudes program.

"More Kiwi" from Matt Linehan

“I have long believed that prevention and wellness are the keys to solving our health-care crisis. We must recreate America as a “wellness society” focused on fitness, good nutrition and disease prevention—ultimately, keeping people out of the hospital in the first place. You paved the way for a lot of people, and this is something I have been laboring on for a long time.  We don’t have a health-care system in America; we have a “sick care” system. The problem is that this current system is all about patching things up after the fact.” – recent statement by Sen. Tom Harkin

Fortunately, the importance of preventive health care is gaining traction among the medical community, government and business leaders, and the public at large. Increasingly more people are educating themselves about how to lead healthy lives, and are doing so at a time when there is an immense amount of legitimate and free information about health and illness prevention available online.

Nutritional know-how is a vital component of illness and disease prevention, and these days consumers have an unprecedented opportunity to take their nutritional health into their own hands and develop true nutritional intelligence. Learning the basics, let’s call it Nutrition 101, is a good starting point, and that means knowing what carbohydrates, fats and proteins, vitamins and dietary minerals are, and how they impact and interact within the human body. Making wise choices regarding what foods to eat is another important component of nutritional intelligence. But although most consumers know that there are healthier and less healthy foods to chose from, and are becoming literate in reading food labels, comparing one food item against another can seem daunting.

While not a substitute for trying to keep up with the latest studies and findings in the nutrition field, comparing foods will likely become easier with the newly-launched NuVal Nutritional Scoring System. Although there are several other food labeling systems in place (for a good historical overview of American food and nutrition labeling, see Fooducate’s post), NuVal™ gets points for being easy to use – with a scoring system of 1 to 100 (100 being the highest), consumers can now compare items both within and across categories.

The scoring system takes into account more than 30 different nutrients and nutrition factors.  Nutrients with generally favorable effects are placed in the numerator (fiber, folate, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B6, potassium, calcium, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, total bioflavanoids, total carotenoids, magnesium and iron), while nutrients with generally unfavorable effects on health are placed in the denominator (saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, sugar and cholesterol). Another positive aspect of NuVal™ is that, while its goal is to provide a nutritional score for every one of the more than 50,000 products found in the average grocery store, its Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI™) algorithm underlying the scoring system was created independent of manufacturers and other similarly interested parties.

Standing on the 86th Floor Observatory at 1,050 feet, the view of Manhattan and beyond is a breathtaking sight.

Along with Jake McKee, I was one of the official conference bloggers. Being a designated blogger is a very different experience that being a regular attendee or even a speaker, and having now worked in that capacity, I have a much deeper respect for what goes into such a seemingly easy task. Aside from the typical challenges of racing from one session to the next, making sure your computer battery doesn’t run out of juice when there is no available plug, being flexible with program and panelist changes, and writing without the luxury of reviewing and editing what you’ve written, there is the responsibility of trying to record the highlights of the covered sessions in such a way that readers are able to get value from what you’ve posted.

Without questions, for me one of the highlights of the conference were the research and measurement sessions. Not necessarily because they were the most entertaining (I’d put the lunch keynote by Richard Tait, Grand Poo Bah of Cranium Inc., the keynote by Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking or the session “No Fans, No Band” in that category), but because they provided the oh-so-important hard data validating the effectiveness of word of mouth.

Between the Research Symposium and the Summit, there were over twenty sessions on research and measurement. Additionally, attendees received the excellent Measuring Word of Mouth: Current Thinking on Research and Measurement of Word of Mouth Marketing, WOMMA’s third annual research volume (available for purchase as well) that contains over twenty papers covering a wide range of topics with a particular emphasis on the influencer model.

What’s also useful within the research volume is the section on WOMMA terminology, which aims to “provide a unified framework for describing and measuring word of mouth marketing.” It provides definitions of word of mouth (”the act of a consumer creating and/or distributing marketing-relevant information to another consumer”), work of mouth marketing (”en effort by an organization to affect how consumers create and/or distribute marketing-relevant information to other consumers”) and WOM Episode (”a single occurrence of word of mouth communication, which includes Participants, Actions, WOMUnits, Venues, and Outcomes”), among other things. There is also an excellent visual summary of what happens during a WOM Episode, along with the associated qualities thereof — namely a participant taking an action on a WOMUnit in a particular venue that then results in an outcome.

What’s particularly interesting, though, is social media’s broader ability to quickly share and disseminate critical information when things go wrong, wrong as in threatening, dangerous, and frequently life-altering, which we’re seeing right now with the California wildfires. CenterNetworks points to some of the recent coverage of the fires on sites such as Flickr (see the search term “california fires” for recent images), YouTube ( see the 2000+ results for “california fires”) and Wikipedia (see “California Wildfires of October 2007″) among others. CNET reports how microblogging site Twitter is being used by news organizations such as KPBS and L.A. Times and individuals Nate Ritter to give updates. And Ustream.tv is showing live coverage of the fires.

Meanwhile, on-the-ball international organizations such as the American Red Cross are using social media tools to help serve as vital and up-to-date information sources — see the  Online Disaster News Portal, as well as the Red Cross and the Safe and Well Twitter accounts.

My prediction is that within a relatively short time frame, say perhaps three years, the majority of disaster relief organizations, both government and private, will fully implement real-time information dissemination  via text messaging, microblogging and an assortment of additional tools and social networking sites.

“We Must Scrupulously Guard the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of All Citizens…” Franklin Roosevelt Memorial, Washington D.C., United States