Category: Communication

Wifi as meme

Have you ever been somewhere, like an airport or public spot, and turned on your wifi only to discover a computer-to-computer network called “Free Public Wifi”?

It almost never gives you internet. Because it’s a phantom network (basically) created by a quirk of Windows XP.

“When a computer running an older version of XP can’t find any of its “favorite” wireless networks, it will automatically create an ad hoc network with the same name as the last one it connected to -– in this case, “Free Public WiFi.” Other computers within range of that new ad hoc network can see it, luring other users to connect. And who can resist the word “free?””

Windows, when it looks for networks, goes through the following steps:

1. It looks for preferred networks to connect to from the networks available.
2. If that fails, Wireless Auto Configuration attempts to connect to the preferred networks that do not appear in the list of available networks.
3. Failing that, if there is an ad hoc network in the list of preferred networks that is available, Wireless Auto Configuration tries to connect to it.
4. If that fails, and there is an ad-hoc network in the list of preferred networks that is not available, Wireless Auto Configuration configures the wireless network adapter to act as the first node in the ad hoc network.

So here’s what happened:

“At one time or another somewhere out there someone connected to a real ad-hoc WiFi network that had the SSID “Free Public WiFi”. They added this network to their preferred network list. They then traveled to a location where this WiFi SSID didn’t exist (airport, airplane, and/or hotel). They powered on their laptop with the wireless card on and Wireless Auto Configuration took over and starting searching for WiFi networks. After trying steps 1 through 3 above, Windows gave up and configured WiFi card to ad hoc mode with the SSID “Free Public WiFi” (since it was a preferred network).”

And a meme/harmless virus was born:

“A second person in close proximity to the user above also has a wireless enabled laptop and is looking to connect to a WiFi network. They scan to see what is available and notice an SSID called “Free Public WiFi”….they connect to it not knowing that it is an ad hoc network. After a few seconds of wondering why they can’t surf the web they disconnect from the SSID, shrug their shoulders and move on with life. Now they have the viral SSID in their preferred list too. The next time they power on their laptop it starts to look for the “Free Public WiFi” SSID. This process is repeated in many locations across the US and world again and again. Soon this SSID is in preferred wireless networks lists everywhere spreads like a virus.”

October 21, 2010

How to run two columns with different categories using a second WordPress Loop

Regular readers can ignore this post. This is for google. And in case I want to go back to running two separate columns of content on any other sites. I’ve decided to fold my curiosities category back into the regular run of the mill posts.

Pulling a category out of the main loop is pretty easy. It just takes a query posts loop with a nice and easy “exclude” command, excluding categories by their numerical ID (which you find by going to your categories page and clicking on the category and looking at the number in the URL).

Here’s the code for the loop for the main column.

<?php if (is_home()){$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
query_posts("cat=-655,-4811&paged=$paged");}?>
<?php if (is_page()) {$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
query_posts("cat=-655,-4811&paged=$paged");}?>

The loop for the sidebar looks a little something like this. It should produce results that give you a different output based on the page you’re looking at (so you won’t get the same ten sidebar posts on every page).

<?php if (is_home()){$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; $myPosts = new WP_Query();
$myPosts->query('showposts=10&cat=11'.'&paged='.$paged);} ?>
<?php if (is_page()){$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; $myPosts = new WP_Query();
$myPosts->query('showposts=10&cat=11'.'&paged='.$paged);} ?>
<?php while ($myPosts->have_posts()) : $myPosts->the_post(); ?>

<div>
<h2><a href=”<?php the_permalink();?>” title=”<?php the_title();?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<div>
<em>Posted by</em> <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?> </div>

<?php the_content();?>

October 19, 2010

Putting Social Media in its place

I love Facebook. I love blogs. I understand Twitter. And for years I grappled with how to use them professionally. I read through a bunch of posts on Facebook’s blog the other day and I’m blown away by how powerful the platform is, and how much potential it has to connect people.

But it can never. ever. replace proper face-to-face relationships. And if the extent of your “online marketing” strategy is “be on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube” (and I’m sick of seeing those logos crop up on ads for obscure things as though I’m more likely to buy a car if it’s got its own Twitter account) then your strategy is dumb. It’s part of your brand. And it’s good to be contactable, and to be getting exposure, but if there’s one thing the stupid breast cancer awareness campaigns of this week, and earlier this year, show – it’s that for many people – Facebook “activism” and “marketing” have supplanted the real thing.

Malcolm Gladwell took a stab at this idea in a recent piece for the New Yorker. Some interesting quotes:

Where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools. Facebook warriors go online to push for change.

This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information.

The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

Some of this grandiosity is to be expected. Innovators tend to be solipsists. They often want to cram every stray fact and experience into their new model. As the historian Robert Darnton has written, “The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the Internet.” But there is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is.

Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection,” she wrote. “Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.”

He makes this point about social media “activism” and where it works, citing an example of a webtrepreneur, Sameer Bhatia, who found out he had leukemia but knew nobody with the same bone marrow type.

Bhatia needed a bone-marrow transplant, but he could not find a match among his relatives and friends. The odds were best with a donor of his ethnicity, and there were few South Asians in the national bone-marrow database. So Bhatia’s business partner sent out an e-mail explaining Bhatia’s plight to more than four hundred of their acquaintances, who forwarded the e-mail to their personal contacts; Facebook pages and YouTube videos were devoted to the Help Sameer campaign. Eventually, nearly twenty-five thousand new people were registered in the bone-marrow database, and Bhatia found a match.

But how did the campaign get so many people to sign up? By not asking too much of them. That’s the only way you can get someone you don’t really know to do something on your behalf. You can get thousands of people to sign up for a donor registry, because doing so is pretty easy. You have to send in a cheek swab and—in the highly unlikely event that your bone marrow is a good match for someone in need—spend a few hours at the hospital. Donating bone marrow isn’t a trivial matter. But it doesn’t involve financial or personal risk; it doesn’t mean spending a summer being chased by armed men in pickup trucks. It doesn’t require that you confront socially entrenched norms and practices. In fact, it’s the kind of commitment that will bring only social acknowledgment and praise.

The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.

Facebook is all about people salving their consciences by appearing to care – it sets a really low bar for participation – like posting “where you like it”…

“Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires. The Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members, who have donated an average of nine cents apiece.”

And “Social Media Evangelist” Anil Dash agrees with him. With some reservations. One of them is that there are some things, when it comes to communicating a message and bringing about change, that the virtual world just can’t supplant.

Who are the “they”? It’s not really clear. But even as someone who’s had an “evangelist” title in the past, I don’t come to refute Gladwell’s strawman argument. His point is that today’s social networks are fundamentally unable to drive the sort of social change that fueled upheavals like the civil rights movement. I agree; As I said last year, Facebook often enables politics of the sort that convinces college kids that changing their middle name on a website is a form of activism. And the idea that the uprisings in Iran were driven by Twitter or any other social media is clearly refuted by realities such as Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan, the father of the Iranian blogosphere, being sentenced to nineteen years in prison. The traditional method sit-in and picket-in-the-streets form of protest is clearly a failure online.

There’s also a world of difference between using social media platforms to coordinate action, and using them to stage action or report on action. Facebook is terrific for organising events – social and political – and it is a wonderful way to disseminate information – but it is not a place to stage a protest or to bring about real change. Participating in “awareness raising” on Facebook can not be the only string in the activism or communication bow. It just won’t work. It doesn’t bring about change in the world – it aids the process.

That is all.

October 12, 2010

Mad Skillz Round Two

Getting other people to write content for one’s blog is an awesome strategy for blogging regularly, and before Ben’s book review Wednesday there was Mad Skillz week.

I’d urge you to contribute a book review for Ben’s sake (I haven’t told him yet, but I’m going to review something really exciting).

But I’m also wanting to tap into your repository of awesome, but possibly as yet undiscovered, skills that can be of benefit to others. Have a read of some of the old posts – examples included how to take low light photos, how to play roller hockey for Australia, how to argue with me, how to survive in regional ministry, how to write Christian parody songs, how to be poetic, how to supply teach, how to do graphic design, how to appreciate opera, and how to make an animation story board.

So if you’ve got a niche skill, or just something that’s generally awesome, that you’d like to share with a very small segment of the world, and google, and you’d like to write a guest post, just hit me up by email at nm dot campbell at gmail.com.

October 12, 2010

Calling all blogs

Are you in my blogroll (it’s down the bottom of the page). If you’re not, you should be. And now’s your chance. If you are, then this post is for you too.

I’d like to be more Web 2.0 (which means more “social”) with this little corner of the web. And I’d like to include a little one or two sentence bio/description of your site in my list of links. But I’d like you to write them for me and leave them in the comments on this post.

I’ll also do nice things for you if you’re in it – like posting links to you from time to time and visiting your site. I’ll even comment there.

Apparently (in an article I read today) the one sentence bio (or 140 character bio) was the foundation on which such Web 2.0 luminaries like Facebook and Twitter were built on. So it is an exercise in webness for all of you.

As an incentive – if you don’t participate I’ll probably relegate you to some impossible to find corner of the site (I won’t remove you, because if you’re there already I like what you have to contribute).

October 12, 2010

Mapping the Internet

This XKCD map of the internet is cool. Click it to make it bigger.

October 11, 2010

Contains “adult content” (according to Facebook)

I like Facebook. I’m not one of those bandwagon jumping player-haters. I don’t get antsy about privacy issues because my philosophy is that if you don’t want people knowing you do something you probably shouldn’t be doing it. But today, Facebook went too far. They sent me this, and removed two of my photos.

“You uploaded a photo that violates our Terms of Use and this photo has been removed. Facebook does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence or other violations of the Terms of Use. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children who use the site.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page at http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=wphotos.”

These two photos.

So I sent them a complaint letter. This is what I said:

Dear Facebook Staff and Mr Mark Zuckerberg,

I love Facebook. I have been an enthusiast at both a professional and private level – defending you to my peers and potential advertisers (I worked for a membership based community service group that helped small businesses promote themselves). I think your platform is incredible. I even read your Facebook blog, and despite thinking that all night coding sessions that produce exciting new products sound a little bit nerdy I don’t tease you for it, even on the inside. Even in the face of your continued redefinition of the concept of privacy I’ve defended you and decried the decisions of my friends who have turned in their Facebook badges and ridden off into the sunset.

You were helpful when my account was once hijacked by a hacker. Which was great. So I have faith that this letter will be passed to the appropriate people and acknowledged by something other than a form letter.

But Facebook, overnight (my time, Australian time), you removed two of my photos and issued a warning. Now, I’m sympathetic to the cause of keeping nudity and smut off your servers. I think other parts of the internet could learn from you at that point. I’m an evangelical Christian currently attending seminary. If anyone is going to be in your corner, wanting to keep your service “family friendly” it’s me.

Let me explain what it is you deleted and why I think that decision was wrong.

I recently took part in a study tour in the historically significant archeological sites of Corinth and Ephesus – cities that are significant not only because they contain remnants of the Roman empire, but because they feature in the Bible (there are even books named after letters sent to the churches in the cities). The archeological sites are of interest to Christians and to Roman history buffs. Categories many of my friends fall into.

The photos removed were from a museum in Corinth. They were deemed significant enough to be placed on display at a museum run under the authority of a team of academics and archeologists from the United States and Britain – not for their merit with regards to Christianity (they don’t have much to say about the death of Jesus in the place of sinners for their free forgiveness, and his resurrection and lordship of all things). The subjects of the photos, various casts and sculptures of parts of the human anatomy, were from a temple in Corinth where sick or sad Corinthians would place sculptures representing the physical malady they were praying for. First century Graeco-Roman culture was quite sexually driven, so their prayers were often along those lines. Obviously. Based on the sculptures. So the photos were in no way titillating, and they were clearly from a museum exhibit. I’m wondering how it was that they were considered “nudity” when they were clearly made of stone and not part of a body?

Yours Faithfully,

Nathan Campbell (username nm.campbell).

Now, some of you might think there’s an inconsistency between me suggesting that innuendo laced status updates shouldn’t be put on Facebook by Christians lest they cause their brothers to stumble, which was one of my arguments against the breast cancer awareness campaign (though not the thrust of that post). If you can’t tell the difference between appropriately talking about sex, and turning sex into cheap laughs and lewd talk then we can talk about that offline, over a boxing match, in which we participate.

October 10, 2010

Rules for Email from the Oatmeal

I think the guy from the Oatmeal lives inside my head, or at least that his head is in a pretty similar place to mine. Here’s a list of emails not to send, and elements of email to stop using. I fought long and hard to have email signatures kept to a minimum and spam free in my workplace. You should too. Nobody ever reads a footer and thinks “oh, ok then, I’ll go to your expensive event”…

October 10, 2010

This is a post about a joke article about articles about science

This is a sentence that introduces the piece with a witty tangent or hook (this is a typical, one might say trademark, aside, of multiple clauses, in parenthesis).

This is where I comment on the fact that this joke has been used previously about the type of blog post that gets lots of comments. This is where I would link to that post, if I could remember what I called it, or could be bothered. This is where I say that I can’t be bothered. This is where I point out that XKCD actually made this joke in comic strip form, thus being pithier than any other attempts.

This is an extended blockquote from the article. This is the link.

“In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.

If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.

This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like “the scientists say” to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist. “

This is where I forget to attribute this post to wherever I found it, breaching blog etiquette. This is how I sign this post off.

October 9, 2010

Real Time Results

How cool is Google’s real time provision of search results. Are other people getting it too or am I signed on for something experimental?

October 8, 2010

Website Launch Checklist

Launchlist.net is a pretty nifty checklist to run through before sending your new website into the world wide interwebs. Following it will save you hassles after the fact. Which is always nice.

October 8, 2010

Awareness raising is overrated

All publicity might be good publicity. But publicity is not created equal. And if you think telling me where you leave your purse when you get home in some sort of innuendo laced update on a social media platform I’m going to have the following reactions:

a) feel mildly uncomfortable.
b) think “what is going on here”
c) google the repeated phrase.
d) go “oh, that’s stupid.”
e) not think positively about your cause.
f) not donate.

There’s a world of difference between good awareness raising – where the campaign is linked with the cause in the public consciousness (like Jeans for Genes Day and even Movember), and campaigns based on being cryptic and excluding people not in the know.

Awareness as the “ends” of a campaign is ridiculous. Awareness is a means to an ends in PR. Campaigns should push people towards the end, not just stop at people being “aware.” What good is being “aware” of breast cancer? It’s not much good for the sufferers, or for those who are genetically predisposed to suffering.

See Stuff White People Like for a more biting summary of this problem than I am able to produce. Basically raising awareness is the stuff people do when they are not interested in actually doing something.

“An interesting fact about white people is that they firmly believe that all of the world’s problems can be solved through “awareness.” Meaning the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it.

This belief allows them to feel that sweet self-satisfaction without actually having to solve anything or face any difficult challenges. Because, the only challenge of raising awareness is people not being aware. In a worst case scenario, if you fail someone doesn’t know about the problem. End of story.”

This campaign is as dumb as the bra colour one from January. I saw it defended, when a friend dared to question it, as “awareness raising” which is the window dressing of real action.

Newsflash: Everybody is aware of breast cancer, most people have lost a friend or loved one, or know somebody who has. If you have the public profile of breast cancer you can actually just ask people for money. Set a funding target. Go for it. Have a telephon (is that how you spell the fundraising thing done by the telephone?).

Here’s the message that is apparently doing the rounds… tell me how anybody thinks this is a “success”…

“About a year ago, we played the game about what color bra you were wearing at the moment? The purpose was to increase awareness of October Breast Cancer Awareness month. It was a tremendous success and we had men wondering for days what was with the colors and it made it to the news. This year’s game has to do with your handbag/purse, where we put our handbag the moment we get home for example “I like it on the couch”, “kitchen counter”, “the dresser” well u get the idea. Just put your answer as your status with nothing more than that and cut n paste this message and forward to all your FB female friends to their inbox. It doesn’t have to be suggestive. The bra game made it to the news. Let’s see how powerful we women really are!!!”

Let’s see how powerful we women really are? I’m sorry. If the “power of women” is using Facebook to get on the news then somebody tell our Jules, or Hillary Clinton, or any other successful woman. Most of the PR industry are women, if power is about media attention then those women are the gatekeepers. And if anybody in PR thinks this campaign has had a serious effect on the image of breast cancer – other than trivialising it – then I’m yet to meet them.

Furthermore, if women need to resort to sexual innuendo to be powerful then there’s something vastly wrong with society. Seriously. I thought we’d moved past that.

That is all.

UPDATE: Funnily enough, a corollary, a perfect foil, a Facebook awareness campaign that works (in my opinion), is going on at pretty much the same time. The “RU ok” campaign is a perfect example of an awareness raising campaign that actually benefits the purpose it promotes. It encourages people to ask their friends if they’re ok – and it raises curiosity without trading on double entendre or outright crass innuendo.

October 7, 2010

Interactive intro to web typography

This is a nice little resource/essay that outputs typographic css for your web design.

“The mechanics of the em unit offer an excellent way to size child elements in relation to their parents. In fact, if every child element defines its sizing values in em, a chain reaction is set off. Each child becomes proportionally bound to its parent, which in turn is bound to its parent, all the way up to the root element, ancestor of all. In this way, the proportions of the whole document end up being defined in relation to a single, shared value: the font-size of the body.

Documents sized in this way enjoy a golden property, one that most web pages would do well to provide: proportional scaling. Should the user or designer change the base font-size, all the other elements on the page will resize accordingly, preserving their original proportion to the body. It will look as if the view has just been zoomed in or out. “

October 6, 2010

Colons: the new dash

I tend to liberally pepper my writing with the humble endash (-) or emdash (–) to break up clauses and insert injunctions not worthy of parenthesis or new sentences. But I’m apparently behind the times. It seems the humble colon is the punctuation I need in these situations, it has many functions that I have failed to accommodate:

1. The lister: “The meal requires three ingredients: milk, eggs, and flour.”

2. The talker: “He shouted at the sky: ‘I’m retired!’”

3. The natural extension: “She saw him for what he was: a prodigy.”

4. The juxtaposer: “His face was red: the guests were staring.”

And now:

A new colon is on the march. For now let’s call it the “jumper colon”.

For grammarians, it’s a dependent clause + colon + just about anything, incorporating any and all elements of the other four colons, yet differing crucially in that its pre-colon segment is always a dependent clause.

I love this quote:

“To that end, rules be damned, a new punctuator has been born.

My plan for today:

Totally random thought:

Best meal ever:

That’s the jumper colon. Check out Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace and you’ll find one.

Last night: soooo crazy!

Punctuation can go viral. Syntax is a meme.”

It’s very rare that I ask personal questions here but: how’s your colon use going?

October 6, 2010

Some rules for jokes in speeches

If ever you’re writing a speech and want to include some jokes – here are some handy tips from the political realm that transfer nicely into any public speaking. It’s from an American context – but the rules still apply for making jokes and maintaining dignity.

Rule No. 1: First, the obvious: Be self-deprecating. “Humor is a powerful weapon,” says Jeff Nussbaum, a speechwriter who has worked for Al Gore and Joe Biden. “But to earn the right to wield it against others, you need to turn it against yourself first.”

Rule No. 2: Singe, don’t burn. The best jokes walk right up to the line—but don’t cross it. “You never want get an oooo out of the audience,” says Jeff Shesol, a former deputy speechwriter for Bill Clinton. “I can’t believe you just said that is pretty good, but oooo is different.” Gentle ribbing is good. At last year’s WHCD, Obama welcomed his audience of journalists. “Most of you covered me,” he said. “All of you voted for me.”

Rule No. 3: Use jokes as damage control… The damage control strategy can backfire. Al Gore often joked about his stiffness—”Al Gore is so stiff, racks buy their suits off him;” “Al Gore is so boring, his Secret Service code name is Al Gore”—until his speechwriters realized they were only reinforcing the image.

Rule No. 4: Delivery matters. John Kerry learned this the hard way in 2006, when he botched a joke in front of a group of students. He meant to say that if you don’t study hard, you’ll end up making dumb decisions like President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. Instead, he said that students who don’t perform well would get “stuck in I

If you’re not funny and you need to be, it’s ok to solicit material from a funny friend. Just don’t botch the delivery like Kerry did.

“The best political comedy speeches are a mix of punchlines, extended riffs, and set pieces. Punchlines are relatively easy. White House speechwriters usually solicit ideas from funny people around the West Wing—apparently David Axelrod is a comedic force—as well as TV writers and professional comedians. Clinton and Gore, for example, relied heavily on Al Franken and Jay Leno. Other times they’ll simply pay an outside writer to do it.”

“Writing jokes for politicians is different from writing for a late-night talk show. (Although sometimes the two overlap.) “For a politician, it’s not just about getting laughs,” says Eric Schnure, a speechwriter who has written for both Democrats and Republicans. “It’s about being liked.” Some humor is therefore off limits. No impersonations. No joking about loss of life. No cursing. It’s just not worth offending someone you have to work with the next day.”

This doesn’t necessarily apply across the board, but I think it can be applicable in preaching, though I don’t recommend ever aiming for lame jokes. And you should almost never pause expecting laughter. Wait for laughter, then pause.

“Luckily for speechwriters, the bar isn’t that high. Even the lamest jokes get laughs. “The weird thing about all these jokes is, none of them are funny,” says one Senate speechwriter. It’s more about seeing normally stentorian politicians crack wise. The mere fact of it is entertaining. As Attie puts it: “It’s humor in a suit.””

There are a couple more insights in the original article.

October 5, 2010