Friday, March 12th, 2010
Lifehacker has a short article about a recent survey they did on business card use. They report that 70 percent of respondents still carry business cards. And 37 percent of those carry them at all times.
This doesn’t surprise me. I still carry business cards. What I would really like to know is what information people put on their cards these days? Mine has only online info; name, email, voicemail, and website. No postal information at all!
What about you? Do you carry a business card? What sort of info do you put on it?
Tags: business card, Lifehacker, Personal
Posted in Communication | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
The questionable “fair use” of Common Craft‘s video, “Twitter in Plain English“, by the mainstream media is an interesting discussion. Common Craft raises some interesting questions in their blog post Our Twitter Video Used in Mainstream Media – Thoughts.
Common Craft is a company that makes educational videos for a living. They offer a number of great videos for free viewing on their website. One of their most popular is “Twitter in Plain English“, to describe why someone might want to try out Twitter.com. Apparently, ABC Nightline, ABC Good Morning America, NPR Unger Report, CNN International, CBS Sunday Morning, and KOMO News all used the video. ABC with permission. The rest without it.
Lee Lefever, one of the owners at Common Craft, takes a very intellectual and mature view of this in his blog post questioning the use. It does seem to be “Fair Use” by the media to me. In most cases, excerpts were used in conjunction with a news story, some used more than others.
Ok, fine, no laws broken. Common Craft doesn’t seem to feel harmed and does not appear to be harmed commercially. All is good.
But wait? Where is the common courtesy? A simple email and follow on phone call to ask permission would have been easy? I understand a clear mention and link in a news show is not always “good television”. But all of these pieces are now online? Why not a link and citation of sources on the web page with the video of the news broadcast? That’s not hard at all, is it?
As a frequent internet user, I often see something on TV or hear on the radio and go to the World Wide Web for more information. I consume more news online than offline. And I consider myself an amateur historian as well. Original sources, citations and attributions are a big deal to me. They allow me to determine if the information is any good. They allow me to get more information and to delve in deeper to an issue or topic. And I have a greater respect for and return more often to sites that provide me with good references and valuable links to more info.
I certainly try to provide enough links when I write on a subject. And I encourage others to cite their sources as well. While this particular case looks like “fair use” was met, common courtesy could have been done better. All these agancies would prefer links from me, I’m sure!
Tags: ABC, CBS, CNN, Common Craft, copyright, creative commons, fair use, law, media, Twitter, video
Posted in Communication | No Comments »
Monday, March 16th, 2009
John C. Dvorak has a nice piece in PC Magazine called “9 Reasons E-Mail Is Dead“. He has composed a list of behaviors or features of e-mail that has all but killed it as an efficient tool of communication. I have sort of written on his first complaint, “The ever-changing address”, previously at Useless Nexus when I wrote about what a terrible idea it is to use your ISPs email address. Over all, I agree with his assessment despite my love of email.
I once wrote a piece on my ideal of a modern communication tool. The idea was basically one drop box that recieves all the messages sent to me from the many places I am. This box would recieve messages from Twitter, e-mail, SMS, comment replies, voicemail, and all the other bacn that websites and communication services generate. This box would have an intelligence that would allow me to route these messages to the locations I want to receive it based upon who sent it, the time of day, or where I am. Then I could reply in the form I choose. But my response would be routed back to the sender and delivered the way they want to recieve it.
Communication message how I want, where I want from whom I want, when I want it!
I think the day that technology will make this possbile is approaching. Google Voice/GrandCentral may be a move in the right direction. If Google integrates Google Voice with Gmail and GTalk and allows for the same management capability and transcription Google Voice then it might be possible.
This doesn’t solve a single porblem of John C. Dvorak‘s list. But it at least gets each individual the power to choose how they want to communicate. The future could be very cool!
Tags: email, Google, John C. Dvorak, list, PC Mag
Posted in Communication | No Comments »
