• Backbone Magazine – A new dark age
  problems of long term storage, interesting solution at Sandford
  (tags: data technology future storage)
• bic pen review
  bloody marvellous! (via Doc)
  (tags: humour review amazon funny)

• VRM, Customer Data and Competitive Advantage | CustomerThink
  "It is time that VRM was clearly and unambiguously defined and discussed out in the open. And that average Joe customers were asked whether it makes sense to them. Most of the VRM discussions seem to have been largely devoid of customer input so far." Huh? Where did this guy come from? VRM is open to anyone and last time I checked we are all customers! seems like crude attempt at attracting attention and VRM buzz around himself. we must be doing something right then.
  (tags: VRM CRM customers projectvrm buzz)
• The ‘i’ economy: Web 2.0 for business in 2008 and beyond – 05 Dec 2008
  good article about social web and VRM for non-web savvy business people
  (tags: business web2.0 customer socialmedia)

• BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Untouched East Germany flat found
  (tags: history Germany interesting communism)

• The Unforeseen Consequences of the Social Web – ReadWriteWeb
  well, not that unforeseen if you have ever googled yourself or looked up info about somebody else. Of course, it's possible to put together good picture of oneself from online comms. Wonderful stuff. the only issue I have with it is that I want to be able to have that data at my disposal before anyone else does. Not yet possible
  (tags: Mine! privacy web2.0 socialmedia readwriteweb trends ethics)
• In Cloud We Trust? – ReadWriteWeb
  a good post about cloud buzz. I am interested in turning the individual into a node or a platform of his own, and then see what happens to his data. storing data aggregated around the individual and by the individual is a very different proposition to just simply connecting, porting and syncing data from one platform/service to another. That's why I am building Mine!
  (tags: trust cloud ownership security online readwriteweb internet data privacy Mine!)
• Paul Buchheit: Communicating with code
  i kinda likes this. it's part of the reason I have been holding back writing too much about Mine! as I am waiting for the code/apps to speak for itself. eventually.
  (tags: google development software gmail communication innovation)
• Air Travel Won't Suck in 2093 | Autopia from Wired.com
  sounds wonderful. but for now could we just have flights on time and without being treated like cattle? Thnx!
  (tags: travel innovation future airlines)
• Virgin: the world's best passenger complaint letter? – Telegraph
  hilarious! spot the vapid and corporate response from Virgin at the end of the article. What BS.
  (tags: funny travel food customer virgin airline complaint)
• James.Random() : Live Sync, Live Mesh, SkyDrive and why patience is a virtue
  written by someone at MS, bookmarking for clear summary of functionality between the three apps
  (tags: microsoft synchronisation applications storage data)
• Coding Horror: Open Source Software, Self Service Software
  brilliant. blogged.
  (tags: opensource software FOSS shopping)
• Coding Horror: Don't Go Dark
  learning, taking it all in for Mine! project.
  (tags: opensource Mine! software management community collaboration coding development)

Many supermarket have self-service checkouts these day. Jeff Atwood has an interesting perspective:

What fascinates me about self-service checkout devices is that the store is making you do work they would normally pay their employees to do. Think about this for a minute. You’re playing the role of the paying customer and the cashier employee.

He also makes a point that I am the most motivated person to complete the process as fast as possible, so it is a win-win to ‘outsource’ that function to me. All well and good. It is when we come to the user-interface, user-friendliness of the self-service checkout machines things start looking a bit hairy.

And this, dear reader, touches on the essence of my distinction between user-centric and user-driven:

There are certain rituals to using the self-service checkout machines. And we know that. We programmers fundamentally grok the hoops that the self-service checkout machines make customers jump through. They are, after all, devices designed by our fellow programmers. Every item has to be scanned, then carefully and individually placed in the bagging area which doubles as a scale to verify the item was moved there. One at time. In strict sequence. Repeated exactly the same every time. We live this system every day; it’s completely natural for a programmer. But it isn’t natural for average people. I’ve seen plenty of customers in front of me struggle with self-service checkout machines, puzzled by the workings of this mysterious device that seems so painfully obvious to a programmer. I get frustrated to the point that I almost want to rush over and help them myself. Which would defeat the purpose of a.. self-service device.

So often self-service may be performed by myself but it sure as hell ain’t a service.

For completeness, Jeff’s post is not actually about supermarkets, his final point is yet more interesting. It is about open source and I’d argue that it applies to any voluntary collaborative effort.

Indeed, once you destroy the twin intrinsic motivators of self-determination and autonomy on an open source project, I’d argue you’re no better off than you were with traditional closed source software. You’ve created a self-service checkout machine so painful to use, so awkward to operate, that it gives the self-service concept a bad name.

• Zappos Blogs: CEO and COO Blog: Your Culture Is Your Brand
  this is pretty good. it fits with my recent post about branding as identity and behaviour. here it's called culture, which is correct. I didn't use it as I find it too loaded. great example of actually company practising 'branding' through determining its identity and behaving accordingly.
  (tags: zappos business marketing advertising branding strategy hiring brand)
• Zappos Blogs: CEO and COO Blog: How Twitter Can Make You A Better (and Happier) Person
  nice write up about twitter, if a bit self-righteous. Maybe he's like that and my English scepticism kicks in. Describes benefits to twitter but they belong to any social web communication really. Worth a read though.
  (tags: marketing zappos CEO microblogging twitter social business)
• Twitter and VRM «
  aarrrgh! RFPs strike again. Twitter has a role in VRM but I see it as having 'discovery' role, not becoming another 'channel' for vendors – aggregation, automation, matching and stuff, not why and how I am doing this VRM thung…
  (tags: VRM RFP twitter aggregation)
• Intellectual Privilege [on Simon Phipps, SunMink]
  Simon suggests replacing Intellectual Property with Intellectual Priviledge. Brilliant analysis of IP and the terms (ab)use. A must read.
  (tags: intellectual IP copyright opensource patents software)
• John Cleese at the Creativity World Forum, about the importance of creativity
  this is pretty good stuff! much recommended
  (tags: creativity interesting)

• apophenia: Taken Out of Context — my PhD dissertation
  (tags: socialnetwork teenagers danahboyd networks youth sociology)
• Why Google Employees Quit
  (tags: google management interesting culture techcrunch employment)
• Spaghetti and meatball cupcakes on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  wonderful!
  (tags: cooking photo interesting funny)
• Kirk's Rants: Open Source: It's All About The Community
  (tags: opensource community companies control)
• Four Fallacies of Vendor Relationship Management | CustomerThink
  as Doc put it, little understanding goes a short way. total misunderstanding of what VRM is
  (tags: vrm docsearls mistake)
• MyId.is | FAQ
  another identity/authentication 'real estate'. gimme a break
  (tags: identity authentication applications)

• Fanboy.com » Blog Archive » Social Media “Experts” are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped)
  one of the best rants summarising my growing frustration with twitter (and beyond) teeming with social media experts!
  (tags: web2.0 socialmedia funny twitter criticism)
• Twitter / stoppedclocks
  Documenting the UK's stopped public clocks. Why not?
  (tags: clock UK twitter collaboration internet interesting)
• Home – LOCKSS
  (tags: data opensource internet security distributed p2p storage library)

• Information age companies losing out due to industrial age thinking » By Elias Bizannes » article » Liako.Biz
  one of the most important functionalities for Mine! will be scrapers and importers, at least to start with.
  (tags: Mine! mydata scrapers import dataportability data)

• The science of shopping | The way the brain buys | The Economist
  No shit sherlock! "Despite all the new technology, simply talking to consumers remains one of the most effective ways to improve the “customer experience”." Great article on retail and 'neuromarketing'. There is a ceiling such customer monitoring & analysis hits, then the only way forward is to go 'with' the customer, not 'around' him.
  (tags: shopping trends research advertising marketing psychology behaviour consumer retail brain economist neuromarketing)
• Breaking iTunes DRM – No Hacking Necessary « The_Geek_Whisperer
  (tags: itunes DRM tips tools)
• Cognitive Edge – Hell Explained by A Chemistry Student
  The best application of a scientific method ever!
  (tags: funny humour science philosophy hell religion chemistry)
• Lesson One: What Really Lies Behind the Financial Crisis? – Knowledge@Wharton
  (tags: economics depression banks federal financial finance crisis wharton)
• Flickr: Poster Boy NYC's Photostream
  (tags: advertising art newyork activism graffiti subway)
• CR Blog » Blog Archive » Me, Myself and I
  not sure I get it
  (tags: design statistics information)
• Schneier on Security: Breach Notification Laws
  our data is an externality in transaction. others can either build their business around it, such as CRM or advertising, or we can find a way to 'internalise' it i.e. adding cost or value to the transactions we have with vendors. this would help both privacy and security of our data too.
  (tags: privacy schneier externality data mydata economics CRM VRM)
• Social media agency operating in London and Brighton | @ NixonMcInnes: Social media goodness. Translated. Created. Delivered.
  This is one of those really annoying 'blogs', which also wants to be an overdesigned site. And to think this person is advising business on 'social media'.
  (tags: web2.0 marketing socialmedia agencies webdesign)
• Twitter puts new limits on API calls: Who's affected | Webware – CNET
  (tags: twitter api businessmodel)

I have been thinking, again, about branding and its role in business strategy. I have been known to wear my attitude towards branding on my, er, chest.

However, the word ‘brand’ is being used to describe something that matters to me and needs to be understood. That something is very different from what the term brand currently means. Rather than banish the word entirely, I’ll treat it as a sort of category error and work my way to an alternative meaning of brand.

A person can have various represenations, a photograph or a portrait, which give others an idea of what he or she looks like. It is an image, a projection of likeness. Everyone knows it is not the real person and that often such representations may look rather different or even mislead.

Branding is the art of creating an image of a company. Like a photograph that is carefully staged and edited. As technology progresses, branding gets clever and innovative. Still, the best it can do is a ‘hologram’. Rich media, marketing campaigns, reputation management, PR, advertising and now online and social media ‘engagement’. A vast range of projections enabled by media and technology. And just like with holograms, the more realistic they look, the more shocking it is to discover you can’t talk to them or shake their hands, any ’social’ gestures go right through it. This is because it is a projected image, there is no person made of flesh and blood.

Most branding is about image and its projections. When using the term branding, I prefer to think about it as identity and behaviour. Because identity of a company and its behaviour existed long before branding was invented as part of business. That kind of branding comes from the other side of the reality fence. It is driven by behaviour rather than projection.

John Dodds who writes interestingly on such matters has this to say:

It refers to nothing more and nothing less than reputation, reputation you earn by your behaviour or, more realistically, reputation which other people (customers or not) confer on you because of that. It’s not something you impose on others.

The reason for image branding was the nature of distribution of the brand projections. There were channels, mass media, who mediated what companies wanted to communicate. So identity became an image and behaviour and communication messages.

The web has created, unwittingly for most part, an alternative to building what in industry circles counts for a ‘brand’. It resurrected the ‘old ways’, warts and all, of creating reputation by behaviour. There is one major difference between the old times and the web times – before my identity was determined by others and my behaviour was often judged out of context or in a context that was hostile to the individual.

The brand as identity perspective has two major implications. One has to do with the relationship of company with its employees. The other with business strategy.

First is the Who – the balance (or lack of it) between the corporation as legal entity, its management and employees, its structure and culture. These pulls and pushes within the company will determine its identity and its behaviour. Explicit knowledge of this can help companies understand who they are and why.

Then it is the What – the actions, behaviours, based on the raison d’etre of the business. A common mistake is to talk of strategy when meaning tactics. Strategy is the question of what to do and whether to do it in the first place. Tactics is about how to get to where strategy points.

This is all very well but what is a humble communications or marketing person to do? They can’t start reviewing or changing the company’s strategy. But they can start thinking less about projections and messaging and more about identity and behaviours. A hint: One-way communication is messaging, two-way communication is behaviour.

To sum up, the bad news for the branding folks is that messages and projections are not what they used to be. The good news is that a company can define its identity and behave according to who they want to be. That sounds like a good trade-off to me.

• NAZIS NEEDED | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog
  (tags: politics crime australia islam)
• YouTube – Gary Vaynerchuck: On Demonstrating Social Media ROI
  (tags: socialmedia ROI business)