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The Temporary Web and Digital Histories

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Technology | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)
November 12, 2009 – 11:47 am

Jeff Jarvis recently voiced some concerns about the temporary web:

Twitter is temporary. Streams are fleeting. If the future of the web after the page and the site and SEO is streams – and I believe at least part of it will be – then we risk losing information, ideas, and the permanent points – the permalinks – around which we used to coalesce. In this regard, Twitter is to web pages what web pages are to old media. Our experience of information is once again about to become fragmented and dispersed.

My own worry is that I’m twittering more and blogging less. Twitter satisfies my desire to share. That’s mostly why I blog – and that’s what makes the best blog posts, I’ve learned. I also want to store information like nuts underground; once it’s on the blog, I can find it. But when I share links on Twitter, they’ll soon disappear. I also use my blog to think through ideas and get reaction; Twitter’s flawed at that – well, I guess Einstein could have tweeted his theory of relativity but many ideas and discussions are too big for the form – yet I now use Twitter to do that now more than this blog.

I don’t relate very much to the idea that the temporary web destroys the ability to read and write in longer form. Maybe it’s because I started blogging only shortly before I started microblogging, but I can still be pretty long-winded. Jarvis notes that Twitter conversations have the “half-life of a gnat,” and that they “go up in smoke.” Sure, that’s a limitation, but it’s also a lot like regular in-person conversation. I think it has just as much to do with the nature of informal conversation as it does with the fact that Twitter lends itself towards that type of communication, yet we don’t worry about day to day conversations going up in smoke. That’s why we have other types of communication. I get Jarvis’ point, and it’s important and useful to be aware of the nature of the medium, but it doesn’t bother me too much.

What does bother me about “streams” is memory. I’m a digital pack-rat. I have important MSN conversations saved from the past 8 years (which is nearly forever for someone who hit the age of reason 10 years ago). I have tons of long emails with close friends filed away (and backed up) for safekeeping. I don’t take the ease of record-keeping with digital communication for granted. Memories of important and meaningful phone conversations fade, but I take advantage of the fact that I can revisit a conversation that happens online.

Except, Twitter is lousy at that. Ever try digging for a message you posted a year ago? Facebook has become the same way since it adopted a stream-like interface. I get the focus on real-time, but it drives me nuts that results disappear from Twitter’s search engine after only a few months. Real-time can be the default, but what about offering a sort of search that taps into the history of conversation, rather than solely what’s trending?

I welcome the move to a more stream-like web, but what about taking advantage of our ability to store and access our history? Real-time is cool, but sometimes I’d like to search the past.

Student On Probation For Expressing A Negative Opinion About An Instructor On Facebook

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Law, Technology | Also tagged , , , , , , | Post a Comment
March 17, 2009 – 12:57 am

This post originally appeared on Techdirt.

A student at the University of Calgary was put on academic probation for making the following post on a group titled, “I no longer fear Hell, I took a course with [instructor's name]:”

[Instructor's name] IS NO LONGER TEACHING ANY COURSES AT THE U OF C!!!!! Remember when she told us she was a long-term prof? Well actually she was only sessional and picked up our class at the last moment because another prof wasn’t able to do it .. lucky us. Well anyways I think we should all congratulate ourselves for leaving a [instructor's name]-free legacy for future [law and society] students.

It’s pretty hard to see how this isn’t just an expression of opinion, but the university thinks it qualifies as non-academic misconduct. The problem is, it’s not at all clear how. The only part of the definition that doesn’t involve injury, damage or theft is “conduct which seriously disrupts the lawful educational and related activities of other students and/or University staff.” It’s hard to see how a Facebook post of this nature “seriously disrupts” much of anything (until someone gets put on probation and the Streisand Effect kicks in). But there’s a nice little “includes but is not limited to” that makes the definition non-exhaustive, which is likely what university officials are relying on. You’d think that other instances of misconduct would be similar (hurting people, breaking stuff, stealing, “serious disruptions”), but apparently “expressions of opinion that we don’t like” can qualify…

A computer science professor interviewed said the posts “can be compared to putting up notices all over the university campus” (quoting the article, not the prof). But this is more like putting up a notice off campus (albeit in public). It may not have been nice, but it’s pretty troubling that a student’s right to express an opinion (free speech much?) on a third-party site is overridden without a clear policy violation.

I’ve had direct experience with this sort of thing. A couple years ago, friends of mine at another university were sent ominous emails and hauled into their department head’s office over some comments about a professor on Facebook (jokes, e.g. “crazy drunk [instructor A] is better than boring stoned [instructor B]!”). The department heads argued that the comments were “visible to the community” (similar to the “notices on campus” argument), but they clearly didn’t understand the context (wall post or message? profile or group?) or privacy settings, and they couldn’t even locate the comments on the site (someone had copied and pasted them into an email). They, too, failed to specify how any policies were actually violated (or even which ones), yet they’d gone ahead and notified the professor of the students’ comments and identities (while there was still grading to be done). We convinced them to back down and apologize, but it took a solid week, mid-semester, to deal with the mess.

Universities should understand and develop policies about social networking sites before they take action against students. If they can’t be clear about what qualifies as misconduct, how can students expect to know? What’s the difference between a Facebook group and study group? An email and a Facebook message? What difference do privacy settings make (hopefully some…)? How was this post on a Facebook group different from a review on RateMyProfessors.com? What’s the difference between off-campus speech and speech on non-school websites? Before policing student speech off-site (problematic in and of itself), universities should at least ask these questions and develop policies first. It doesn’t seem like many of them have. It’s pretty ridiculous to just throw social networking under the ambiguous “but not limited to” umbrella.

Read the comments on Techdirt.

UK Online Protest Finds Success In Just 48 Hours

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Technology | Also tagged , , , , | Post a Comment
January 29, 2009 – 5:23 am

This post originally appeared on Techdirt.

Using social networking tools to organize political protests is nothing new or surprising, but online protests have been growing increasingly efficient, especially on Facebook. In Canada, for example, a group protesting copyright legislation caught the attention of federal parliament last summer, and another opposing strict restrictions on young drivers had the Ontario Premier considering Facebook consultations in the fall.

The latest story comes from the UK where, in a mere 48 hours, a campaign run through Facebook and TheyWorkForYou.com by mysociety.org helped stop legislation that would have exempted MPs’ expenses from the Freedom of Information Act (via the Search Engine). Thousands of emails were sent in the two day period, reaching 90% of MPs, before the opposition parties turned and the government backed down. It’s not so much the scale that’s worth noting, but the sheer speed at which the campaign was successful. The legislation was scrapped before most snail mail would have had time to arrive. Now, the online protest likely wasn’t the only factor, but it played an important role in spreading the message. It seems to be getting a lot harder to sneak stuff through the legislature (though that doesn’t stop people from trying) when it only takes a couple days to build an opposition.

Read the comments on Techdirt.

Hired via Facebook? Fired via Facebook

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Technology | Also tagged , , , , , | Post a Comment
January 9, 2009 – 1:14 am

This article originally appeared on Techdirt.

We’ve seen stories of people being fired over email and even text message before, but now there’s a story of a Canadian spa worker fired via Facebook (via Michael Geist). The woman still got dressed and went to into work that day because she thought it was a joke. Using Facebook seems rather harsh, though she admits to being hired over Facebook and the firing was done via private message (as opposed to a wall post…), but it’s no real surprise that a common method of communication eventually gets used this way. That doesn’t mean it’s not cruel, but I wouldn’t expect it to be an isolated case (we’ve already seen legal papers served via Facebook). It’s got to make you wonder what’s next though, fired via Twitter? “@unfortunatesoul btw you’re #fired sry”

Read the comments on Techdirt.

Facebook Artist Pages Still Have A Long Way To Go

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Music, Technology | Also tagged , , , | Comments (1)
January 4, 2009 – 4:03 am

When Facebook first launched music pages back in November 2007, I predicted a shift away from MySpace. A couple months later, I created a MySpace profile for myself, ending a self-imposed boycott. It was stupid of me to ignore the community (MySpace is simply where musicians are, unfortunately), but beyond that, Facebook Musician Pages are still really awkward.

Music Player

It’s obvious that Facebook wasn’t designed with musicians in mind just by taking a simple glance at the music player (take my page for example). I’m a fan of simple, but there’s a difference between elegant and lacking. There isn’t even a way for artists to order the tracks in the playlist, nevermind enable downloads or include lyrics or album art. It was just a few weeks ago that Facebook began providing stats on audio (and video) plays in the Page Manager application, but you can’t even tell which songs people have been listening to. I’m the last person to obsess over meaningless profile stats on MySpace, but a simple play count is fundamental feedback.

Relationship with Fans

On Facebook, you don’t friend a musician, you become their fan. Now, I wouldn’t want everyone who’s interested in my music to become my Facebook friend (that’s one of the annoying things about MySpace), but the alternative Facebook has chosen is very impersonal. You don’t message fans, like you would members of a Facebook group, but you send an “update.” You can’t reply to an update. It’s faceless, one-way. If someone wants to get in touch with you, they can post to your wall or discussion board and hope that you notice.

The relationship of “fan” versus “friend” is technically more accurate, but it gets in the way of forming a real relationship. The artist is a distant and mysterious figure, hiding behind some “wall” (har). Facebook was right to rethink MySpace’s approach, but they need to do much better.

Part of the problem is they’re using the same tool for corporations as they are for artists. It’s okay if a giant brand is faceless because it has a different type of face. Even if Facebook would just add some privacy settings, that could go a long way to allowing different uses, such as letting artists connect to their fans if they want to (e.g. “can fans send you a message in reply to an update?”, “should page admins be visible to fans?”).

Relationship with Other Artists

How about “none.” MySpace wins hands down here. The only thing remotely close that Facebook offers is the ability to “favourite” another artist page. If you want to find or communicate with other artists, you need to do this with your personal Facebook account. Or on MySpace.

Events

This has been poorly thought out. There is no simple way to list upcoming shows! An artist must create a separate “Facebook Event” entity for every single show — that means guest list, photo, address, etc. Again, MySpace’s approach is riddled with problems, but at least you can have a simple upcoming events listing on your profile page without making a big deal of every event.

Plus, there are lots of problems with Facebook events in general that are magnified here. What if multiple artists are playing a show together? Do they each create separate events? How else can an event be listed on each of their pages? What about mutual fans — do they get multiple invites?

I’ve been experimenting with a “shell” event solution lately, creating an event for every show but (a) disabling extra content (posted items, photos, videos), (b) hiding the guest list (so I don’t have to send or monitor invites all the time) and (c) providing the basic details but linking to other Facebook events when relevant (here’s a recent example). I play a lot of shows with other songwriters, so when they setup their own Facebook events, I’ll create one of these “shell” events on my page that carries the core details but links back to their original event, and I’ll use their event to invite my friends.

Third-Party Apps

A lot of these shortcomings offer good opportunities for third-party applications, but it’s not that simple. As far as I know (and I’d be happy to be wrong), third-party applications don’t have access to Facebook Insights (the stats Facebook shows you about your page, which are always about five days behind). Sure, you could use/create another audio player or calendar, but then that application has to maintain its own stats, and all of the sudden you’re looking in three different places every time you want to check on your Facebook page (nevermind MySpace, YouTube or your own website…). For example, I’ve chosen to use a Flickr app instead of uploading my photos to Facebook, and as far as Facebook is concerned, no one has ever looked at a photo on my page. Third-party apps are second-tier when it comes to stats.

I still think Facebook Musician Pages are an important tool for artists and I have hope that the improvements will keep coming (if I wrote this two weeks ago, I’d be railing on them for the lack of any stats on audio plays). But, despite the clumsy and mostly incompetent design behind a MySpace profile, they’ve got the core things right about music. The fact that music is an “oh yeah, that too” on Facebook shows — one size doesn’t fit all.

Are Facebook Groups the New (and Improved) Online Petitions?

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Technology | Also tagged , , , , | Post a Comment
December 19, 2008 – 5:16 am

This post originally appeared on Techdirt.

There was a time when online petitions were pretty common, but they never were that effective at actually lobbying government, mainly because there’s no easy way to validate signatures. The concept was ported straight from the analog world to the digital, but it’s interesting to see how government lobbying has evolved online. The Ontario government recently backed down from proposed restrictions on young drivers in the face of a significant backlash, which included a Facebook group that gathered over 150,000 members. The Premier, Dalton McGuinty, mused about conducting consultations through Facebook and, though that never materialized, the group was cited as one of the major indications that the government had “stepped in it.” Earlier this year, another Facebook group, Fair Copyright for Canada, had caught the attention of the national parliament in Canada.

What is it that Facebook groups have that online petitions don’t? First of all, 150,000 members in a Facebook group is not the equivalent of 150,000 signatures on a (real) petition. A portion of this group’s members are probably not even from Ontario (though at least Facebook provides some assurance that most members are real individual people). But, in the same way that 150,000 signatures isn’t the same as 150,000 people at a rally outside the legislature, you take the context into account. It’s a pretty significant number for getting a sense of a public reaction — the government definitely hit a nerve here. A Facebook group also contains associated debate and discussion, links to other efforts (websites, YouTube videos, etc.) and a means for members to coordinate further efforts online and offline. It’s more about organizing protest efforts than simply presenting a list of names.

Obviously, there are other relevant services besides Facebook (and there are lots of silly Facebook groups), but the Facebook example serves as an interesting illustration of how this sort of political activism has evolved from the digital attempt at petitions to a more involved hub of activity. In Canada, we see examples of politicians now beginning to pay attention, but to get involved — like McGuinty suggested through consultations and like the Obama team has demonstrated through a campaign — would take things to another level.

Read the comments on Techdirt.

Ontario Government Considers Facebook Consultation

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Technology | Also tagged , , , , , | Post a Comment
December 5, 2008 – 6:26 am

This post originally appeared on Techdirt.

The Ontario Premier says he wants to engage young people in dialogue on Facebook (via Michael Geist) over protests against proposed restrictions on young drivers. The strict, zero-tolerance proposals have caused many young people to speak out on Facebook, and one protest group now has over 140,000 members. The Premier has responded publicly, “I think we need to find a way to get on Facebook… I think we need to find a way to engage in a dialogue in a social network where they are,” noting that most young people won’t come to the traditional legislative meetings. There’s one snag though — government computers currently block Facebook.

This isn’t the first time a Facebook group has caught the attention of Canadian politicians (it’s also not the first time this Ontario government has proposed controversial driving laws). Over the past year, a Facebook group, created by Geist, protesting proposed copyright legislation, was mentioned repeatedly by the opposition in federal parliament. This time, the government itself is bringing an online protest to attention. The idea of Facebook consultations drew some criticism in the comments on Geist’s post — why should the government conduct its business on a proprietary, privately owned silo? But Geist isn’t suggesting that the government rely on Facebook or any one service, just that they could make use of services that people are already using. Facebook is especially relevant for legislation affecting young voters. In an earlier column, Geist notes that it takes more than just an “if you build it, they will come” approach. Governments could broaden their online consultation strategies to include a presence on social networks where active dialogue is already taking place. In this particular case, it’s still a bit too early to tell if this is just talk or if the government is serious about experimenting. A good first step might be to reconsider that Facebook ban.

Read the comments on Techdirt.

Small Business Owners Track Down Dumb Criminals Online

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Law, Technology | Also tagged , , | Post a Comment
December 3, 2008 – 3:23 pm

This post originally appeared on Techdirt

Looks like cops aren’t the only ones looking online for evidence of crime. Just in the past week, we’ve seen two stories of small businesses using the web to do some detective work of their own. Canadian retailers in Cape Breton are hiring loss preventional specialists who are making use of social networking tools to track down shoplifters, finding dumb criminals bragging about items they’ve stolen on YouTube and then using Facebook to help identify the thieves. When a shoplifter has been identified, that information is shared with other members in the retail association who may choose to block that person from their stores. One of the mall owners interviewed also notes in the comments that Facebook is especially useful in checking for potential accomplices (friends who were there at the time of the theft). Despite the effectiveness of using the internet as a crime fighting tool, politicians elsewhere have been trying to get evidence of crime removed from YouTube even though it helps police — and now retailers — to catch dumb criminals.

The second story involves an Australian restaurant owner who tracked down bill dodgers using Facebook. The group of five diners stepped outside for a smoke and never returned after racking up a bill of $340 USD. Restaurant staff recalled that one of the diners had inquired about a former waitress when the group arrived. They contacted the waitress, searched a few names on Facebook and came across a profile belonging to one of the diners, who was pictured with his girlfriend (also in the group). Facebook showed that they worked at a restaurant down the street. They contacted the manager and, within hours, the diner returned to pay the bill (along with a generous tip and an apology). Later, the restaurant was notified that the man and his girlfriend had both been fired. No criminal charges were filed.

Whether it’s dumb criminals who can’t resist bragging or sloppy criminals giving away clues to their identity, the web makes it a lot easier for law enforcement and victims to track them down.

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Kevin Fox is my hero

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Music | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)
September 10, 2008 – 1:43 pm

In March 2006, the Hart House Chamber Strings had their first pops concert (photos). I play bass with the chamber strings, and I’ve since taken over as administrator for the pops concert, but that first concert really left an impression on me.

Especially Kevin Fox.

He closed the night and played a song called “Phone Booth” off his upcoming album, Songs for Cello & Voice. Unreal.

I’ve since run across Kevin many times. He worked as musical director with Shaye for a while, and I met Damhnait Doyle through the Humber Summer Songwriting Workshop, so I saw him perform with them. I swear I saw him in a Jann Arden music video, and I saw him play with Andy Kim at Hugh’s Room. He also played cello on some of Robyn Dell’Unto’s recordings.

As a songwriter and cellist, he’s doing exactly what I’m trying to do with songwriting and violin. Kevin Fox is my hero.

I’ve had Phone Booth stuck in my head for years, and yesterday I finally got to hear it again. After finding his Facebook Musician Page, I came across this YouTube video and found more tracks from his upcoming album on his website.

Definitely worth a listen.

Cleaning up HTML entities in MySpace blog RSS feeds (or how to eliminate squidginess)

By Blaise Alleyne | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada | Posted in Music, Technology | Also tagged , , , , , , | Post a Comment
August 12, 2008 – 3:47 pm

I recently setup a Facebook musician page for Robyn Dell’Unto. We ran into one really annoying problem importing her blog posts from her MySpace blog. As Robyn described it,

my only issue with the notes is that they go all squidgy when there’s punctuation in the title. which, frankly, embarrasses me! I’m really embarrassed by squidgy punctuation!

By “squidgy,” she meant that the HTML entities were not displaying properly. Titles from imported posts displayed like this: “I’m doing stuff I swear.”

Ugh.

First, I thought it was a problem with Facebook Notes, but upon inspecting the MySpace RSS feed, I found that (aside from being woefully invalid — iTunes?) MySpace seems to have no freaking clue how to handle HTML entities properly. It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of MySpace. Why would I expect a valid feed? *sigh*

There were two really annoying things that MySpace was doing (aside from the whole iTunes thing):

  1. They double encode entities. Sure, it’s necessary that they turn each & into & in links, but not in text that they’ve already encoded!! This leads to the ’ “squidgies” in the titles
  2. There are a bunch of unicode characters that they don’t encode. For all the double encoding, other characters which ought to be encoded are missed entirely.

On top of that, I discovered that Facebook won’t display any of the unicode characters (I think?) even when they are represented by the proper HTML entities. They just display the entity code, causing the ’ “squidgies.”

Now, I’m no expert on character encoding and HTML entities, but I can do better than that. I’ve hacked together some PHP code to clean up the feed a bit before importing to Facebook, which has solved all of our problems so far. I realize I’m only addressing a limited subset of unicode character entities, but it’s working for our purposes for now.

View the code.

It’s nowhere near perfect, but it’s a definite improvement and it works so far. Hopefully this can be of assistance to someone else. Suggestions welcome!

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Blaise Alleyne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.