DataPortability gathers existing open standards into a blueprint for a social, open, remixable web where your online identity, media, contacts and content can follow you wherever you go.
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Add comment January 30th, 2008
A lot of people argue that services like Twitter, Jaiku and more recently Pownce, are mere services aimed to boost our egos, services born to increase our already ego-flooded world, it might or not be truth, it’s a fact that a lot of their users simple use it to broadcast short status messages with few or no interest at all! It’s my belief that these particular services are the beginning of something unique simply because their particularly different from previous messaging services, and departing from this idea I’ll explain why I believe that we need a nationwide Twitter!
Twitter is much more than a messaging system, it’s a unique multi-platform broadcasting system. Like we’ve witnessed in the past with radio, which was used to helped distribute messages from different services across, simply and quickly, so is Twitter doing it somehow! Two different features in Twitter seem to me the groundbreaking, first it’s a internet based broadcasting network: my message is sent across a multitude of people and mediums originating from the internet, second it’s bridge for inter-connecteness with other systems: by using it’s Twitter public API we’re able to connected to it any system that outputs messages. In the end the process is simple: a message sent from the web, reaches people on their instant messengers, mobiles, or on their contacts page on the service website. The other-way around also applies.
The idea of a nationwide Twitter just pleases me because I tend to be more comfortable the more informed I am: I (unfortunately) have this deeper sense that in the event of something important I’d be the last to know!!
Cellphones don’t handle crises situations nicely! In case of a network breakdown, they’re dead in the sea, so we have to create something more reliable and universal. In the past, pretty much everyone had a radio, so trusting the radio was the obvious choice. Today, due to many factors no technology seems to be such common place, we have to consider that in the advent of something people will have different means depending on where they are at the moment, it could be a computers, a radios, or a simple cellphone, so we really need to have that in mind.
I would wish we could have a multi-plaform nationwide alert system, something that everyone interested, national citizen or not, could subscribe and register with different ids for different alert channels. When some relevant thing happens on the channels I’ve subscribed the system would broadcast an alert on all the mediums I’ve registered for being notified. This would assure that, when needed, the information would reach me somehow.
Everyday I see the more and more services using Twitter massive broadcasting platform for delivery updates on their interests. In Portugal we have Público, that through twittering is in fact delivering alerts for every breaking news they publish on their site.
So it’s probably just a matter of time before we actually see it being used for as multi-channel alert system, at least the “media” is doing it already! 
The only reason I think Twitter wouldn’t make it, it’s related to the fact that I think this system should be managed by some Official Emergency Department to avoid and prevents it’s abuse or deviation and therefore ruin it’s success as emergency broadcast system.
Any comments on this?
3 comments September 12th, 2007
I just finished reading Tamara Littleton (eModeration) whitepaper presenting six important techniques for building safer User Generated Content, or UGC for short. The document ended up being a nice overview on how to actively try to get control against negative participation and submissions on a user generated content site, which from experience we all know can ruin everyone experience from a particular Service, Site or Application.
The Balance between User freedom and the Production of Rich Content it’s nothing but simple, on one side we want Users to feel in complete control over their content, certain of their self-expression rights, and on the other, we have a company with a brand to take care off and a site which they hope can grow from the community. The problem arises when some of the site users cross “the line”, how can we prevent that from happening, and when it happens (since it’s pretty much inevitable!), how do you deal with it?
Consider the current moderation tools in the Communities you’re part of? The one that pops in your mind it’s probably going to be the ‘Flag this
So I’ve just sumarized her whitepaper and and added a few personal notes about her Six Techniques, but you can always read the entire whitepaper online at eModeration site.
1. Craft Nicer Guidelines
We all came across ‘terms and conditions’ in our digital life, they’re pretty much present in every registration form for every online website or application, the problem is that many of those are ‘legal copywriting’ terms, filled with legal jargon that many of your endusers won’t understand or simply won’t dare to read. Solution? Simplify! Craft some short and simple guidelines for your users, something that don’t require much time to read, and simple enough to express your main rules and guidelines of participation.
Example? Consider the 3,848 words of Hi5Terms of use versus the short (only 828 words!) Flickr Community Guidelines for user participation, which one do you think will have better impact on user behavior?
2. Automated Filters
Independently of your guidelines and terms of use, there will be for sure cases of user malpractice or a forum discussion that will overheat, spammers will want to get their attention, so you’ll have to create right from the start tools that will help moderate your UGC from the very instance you deploy your site:
3. Embrace Technology
Filters and Guidelines are only the starting point of any community. Successful communities always depend on some type of Human moderation, wether it’s from your staff or based on user auto regulation. So making theses persons life easier might depend on the moderation tools that you build to help them do they’re job, build algoritms that help identify potential threats, each site has it’s own logic, but there are some common calculations that might help produce some kind of priorities to a moderation queue:
Once again, plan these systems from early on development, but make them easy changeable to deal with real usage once the system has been deployed.
4. Differentiate Users
As Stowe mentioned on his workshop at LIFT, not everyone is equal, at least not everyone deserves to be treated equal. In general all the users are on the lookout for a good experience (and therefore never forget to take particular care of their User Experience), but some of them are more than willing to give you a hand managing the community. Involving users, not only reduces your moderators work, but also helps Users develop a sense of ownership, which in Online communities is always desirable.
Create different views and tools for different users. Take particular care of your One percenters Users, those that really produce and/or take care of your community and engage them directly: personally email them! One thing to have in mind, is that volunteer work isn’t equal to free labour, so always, and I wont write this enough, always have some kind of rewarding system for your helping Users, if if it isn’t entirely declared upfront, it’s always good to receive something from your hard work when you’re on the User side, isn’t it? We’re not talking solely about financial compensations, the whitepaper states it and I called it Karma, develop a karma system, something that allow the Users to distinguish themselves between the remaining Users from their work and participation efforts.
5. Visible Moderation
Traditionally moderation has been one of those activities that sit behind under the table. If your Users aren’t ware of the Moderation Actions, how do you expect them to be able to know and conform with the guidelines? Plus, if your moderation isn’t visible, it’s like posting a ‘Free Drinks Sign on Bar, on a friday evening!’, people will drink more, meaning more easily there will be users abusing the system.
According to Tamara whitepaper, something things should be taken into consideration regarding the exposure of your community moderations activities:
Make Moderation Usable
Take equal care of your moderation tools, as you do with your service/application in general, bare in mind, that your moderator are Users too, if the moderations tools are easy and Users can access it quickly, they’re more likely to use them in the first place.
Make your moderations tools part of your development cycle, which is to say, that include them on your usability tests, develop having your moderator in mind, and don’t forget to test them against fictional data (that’s way their adaptability is so important!). Don’t you just wait for the system deployment to go out and test your moderation tools.
3 comments March 8th, 2007
Seems the Council of European Union has formally adopted a common position on the Inspire Directive, which stipulates that Geographic Data collected by National Mapping Agencies all over Europe should be owned by such agencies and not by the Public.
This couldn’t be more wrong, state-collected Geographic Data is and should remain public property, if you take a look at the US for instance, there’s a lot of geo data-sets that remain available under a public domain licence. The questions, is a moral and technological one, on one side, is state should provided it’s citizens with the geographic information, since it’s collected with their money, on the other, by closing down the access to the geo datasets, their inhibiting the proliferation of such tools in Europe. The major league companies will still be able to get the information they need, you simply close down it’s use by the public in general.
If you like me, don’t agree with this situation, please subscribe the petition online and make your voice be heard!
1 comment March 24th, 2006
Ever since people started blogging in China that we all heard more or less about the censurship pursuing blog authors. Well, today I just found a program that aims to help chinese bloguers getting their blogs out of China, into a free speech zone:
The idea seems a nice, but there’s one important catch: Not knowing what your hosting (if like me you don’t read or write chinese) how can you tell if you’re not hosting anything really bad?
Add comment June 21st, 2005
It’s seems that the organization for this year “What the hack!” is in trouble, they just received an inspiring letter from the Mayor of Boxtel (the town that was supposed to receive the event), stating that it will not issue the license for the event with fear that the event will “endanger law and order as well as public safety”. The organization just released a press release, but the here’s a fairly literal translation of the letter they just received:
Dear Sir, Madam, I have received word that you intend to organize an event “What The Hack” from July 28th 2005 through July 31st 2005 on Landgoed Velder in Liempde. In order to organize such an event, you will need to obtain a permit ex art. 2.2.2. of Boxtel local ordinance 2004. In light of the fact that there is grave fear that this event will endanger law and order as well as public safety, I, in my capacity as an authorized official, am herewith informing you that I will not issue such a permit. A copy of this letter will be sent to the owners of the Landgoed Velder estate. I assume that I have sufficiently informed you. Yours truly, MAYOR OF BOXTEL, J.A.M. van Homelen
When I attended to HAL 2001 I was surprised for the excellent organization the event had, and I personally don’t recall that there were any incident there. Well it’s to soon to make anything, but nevertheless it would be a shame if the event didn’t happen because of this. It’s one of those situations where one can shout: “What the HACK!”
Add comment May 24th, 2005
Much have been writen and said about online banking security in Portugal, but some days ago I received an email from one of my banks regarding some recent security failures (if one can call them as so) that affected some of their costumers.
As with most of the client/bank activities, banks tend to hide some if not all of the security information, but as Internet is probably their most important client channel these days, of at least the one with greater growth and potential, and being a insecure media by nature makes them tend to be more clear. I state this because I know by experience that banks do almost anything to hide fraud problems they have, so that most of their clients consider their operations almost secure, and as banal as it might be.
The email stated a peculiar kind of fraud, phishing, one of the older forms of aquiring important third parties information, but in these version of the act meanning when someone copies the login windows of your bank (or any other website where one needs a login/password to enter), change the inner form, so that once a user enters his/her personal information (might not even be logins or passwords) it’s information instead of being sent to the bank their expecting the personal information is sent normally to a machine that’s compromise in a sense that whoever had all this trouble also has some kind of control over that machine so that he/her can recover the stolen info.
Addressing to a recent wave of these types of attacks in Portugal, most of the banks decided to take measures to inform their users about this type of occurrence, and opted from one of several options available today to secure this problem.
I don’t really recall if it was or not regarding to this problem, but sometime ago, one of my current banks had it’s login process changed, the motiv: Security! And I say: Pure bullshit! Yup! No extra security there my friends! Just a stupid process to lead the user in thinking that’s actually more secure, when it’s indeed opening the door, to the most ancient art of stealing passwords: deliberately watching someone introducing their passwords! 
I won’t stat which portuguese bank opted for this process, but I’ll explain the reasons that make me state this fact. Their login process begins with a rather common type of form:
but, as soon as you try to enter your login information, whether by clicking at the text boxes or by using the keyboard a new pop-up window opens (dawm! I hate pop up’s! Thank you Firefox!), and a “virtual keyboard” is loaded:
This means that in theory you couldn’t use your own keyboard to enter the information, rather than that the bank expects you to simply use your mouse to click by click enter your login information! I found this concept particular interesting in a multitude of ways. Starting from the fact that some browsers don’t open the new window at all, and even from those that opens (vast majority! clap! clap!) I have one in particular that still let’s you enter the input directly on the text boxes, so no advantage there!
Other major security point here is the time one can scroll the mouse from key to key, as opposed to the velocity one clicks on multiple keys on the keyboard! Yup, it’s true, hackers love that extra time!
If this isn’t enough to you, I can also state that those hard and secure passwords that you can never spell out, but still can enter them by instinct, won’t work that way on the virtual keyboard, since you have to know them by memory, and they can’t memorize as simple action, but rather in a set of multiple actions (moving the mouse, press button, move again.. etc).
I’ve check the code that builds the page, but couldn’t find anything there that prevented me from programming a brute force attack to the script that receives the users login information, so to me, just one of those extra, fancy, loose time features!
But not all of the banks are trying to re-invent the wheel, one of my other banks uses the system I find more well designed, and from what an user can actually get some kind of security against these problem. They just randomly ask for some of the characters/digits that compose the users password. Across site you’re advised never to release your entire password, they even mentioned it on their mailings and paper documentation.
It’s not the most elegant solution, but at least in theory only the user knows the entire code and he never has to reveal it, which I find the most usable approach!
Just in case mind your back!
1 comment May 20th, 2005
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