“Staff in technology jobs work in the white collar equivalent of a 19th century factory. suffering from isolation, job insecurity and long hours” says a BBC summary of a report in the American Sociological Association‘s Contexts magazine (full text not available).bi-weekly loan amortize a4.99 month 84 loan autoloans ameriquest home24102c000 personal loansafter bankruptcy loans autoloan $1000loans bridge about homeadvance loan cash arizona Map

Frank Boosman makes an excellent point about the need to find a way to set levels of privacy on one’s weblog (because it would be better to do that than to have to create several different weblogs each with mostly the same posts but different levels of security.

livejournal has this feature.

One might also extend this idea to “quality rings” where different levels of depth of your thinking were available to different readers, or eventually “payment rings” (like the Salon Premium model) where people could read your blog at one level for free or pay to be able to see the deeper level (or pay per post read at that level?)

The iSociety alerted me to recent coverage by the BBC and the Guardian Online about EdenFaster. It is a community-led project supplying broadband to a valley in rural England which would otherwise be passed over by telecomms suppliers.

What is interesting about EdenFaster is that while it provides some Internet access it intends to use the speeds it offers – up to 40Mbps – primarily to deliver community-generated content.

I hope they are successful, but I am not sure they will be able to find enough active information providers among a small community of rural farmers to provide a serious amount of deep, well-maintained content. Freenets in the 90s (mostly in the US) sprang up with similar intentions to offer community networking and Internet access to their local areas “on the side”. Unfortunately, people were mostly attracted by the ability to access the Internet and when commercial Internet providers appeared, the Freenets gradually died away.

To my mind community content will succeed when
1) broadband is reasonably ubiquitous in an area (and people know their neighbors will be reading)
2) Tools are available that make providing content and community participation easy for everyone
3) Enthusiastic leadership evangelises use and provides support.

Let’s hope all three elements are in place with the Edenfaster project and that it can be an example of good practice for other such projects.

Gill Sellar was hired as project coordinator for the Albany GateWAy in 1999 – a service designed to act as a community web portal for a rural, dispersed community in SW Australia. Fortunately for us, she was also a PhD student who decided to do her thesis on the subject of her work – particularly whether such a project could be sustainable. I have been hosting a draft of her thesis for a while, and now she has provided the final copy (3Mb – or 1.75 Mb as a Zip file). It’s 315 pages long but well worth a look if you are interested in how virtual community services can be sustainable and help to build social capital in rural areas.

I have asked her if she could provide an “executive summary” and if she does so I will post it here or link to it.

The piece by Ian Frazier in the New Yorker starts, “according to a study just released by scientists at Duke University, life is too hard… Years of tests, experiments, and complex computer simulations now provide solid statistical evidence in support of old folk sayings that described life as “a vale of sorrows,” “a woeful trial,” “a kick in the teeth,” “not worth living,” and so on.”harrington amanda photosakon ringtonefree free 100 metro ringtones pcsmp3 a950 ringtonegospel ringtones alltellbrothers ringtones band allmanamanda harrington toplesscarrington ache james Maprefinancing 4 home loan com equityloan 5 000 with bankruptcy personalpayday york 5 7 loanloan 20,12 8 online payday8 online today payday 12 loan11 payday cheap 8 payday loanloan 9 loan personal paydaydebt loan business a consolidation Map

… and might just tell Big Brother!

I have just finished an essay on the ethics of search engine behaviour and I wish I had finished reading this New York Times article about Google before I did so. Here’s the key bit:

Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw [search behaviour] data because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly – Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can be seem an invasion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.

So, does Google ever get subpoenas for its information?

“Google does not comment on the details of legal matters involving Google,” Mr. Brin [Google’s co-founder] responded.”
(emphasis mine)

What on earth is Google doing keeping users’ IP addresses? I just checked and the fact they do this is in their privacy policy (when you can find it). They say, “Google may use your IP address or browser language to determine which language to use when showing search results or advertisements” but surely there are easier ways to get this information. Asking, for example?

A fascinating exposé in the NYT (requires registration) by Michael “Liar’s Poker” Lewis of a 15-year-old who masqueraded as a legal expert on askme.com. It’s rather lengthy – the “good stuff” starts about a third of the way through.

Here is one of the bizarre exchanges from the article:

“Where do you find books about the law?” I asked.
“I don’t,” he said, tap-tap-tapping away on his keyboard. “Books are boring. I don’t like reading.”
So you go on legal Web sites?”
“No.”
“Well, when you got one of these questions did you research your answer?”
“No, never. I just know it.”

“You just know it.”
“Exactly.”

!!!
And this guy ended up the most popular legal expert on AskMe… even after it was revealed who he was!

Does that say something about people’s tendency to correlate good service with good products? The democratising power of the Internet? Or does it just call into question the value of lawyers?

I have long taken issue with those who claim that the main benefit to broadband for most people is speed. And in fact, a recent report by the iSociety team at the Work Foundation has indicated that speed is pretty irrelevant for what most broadband users. But it also indicated that they don’t get the most out of what I consider the most obvious benefit – the “always on”-ness of the technology. Why? Because people tend leave their computers switched off at home when not in use.

The ever-quotable James Crabtree at iSociety explains “the PC is more scary monster than household pet. It is rarely loved, sometimes feared.”

So how much power does your computer use when switched on but on “suspend mode” (and its monitor is switched off)? According to this only about 20 watts – a quarter of an ordinary lightbulb.

What do people like about broadband, then? Apparently it is the fact that when it is switched on they don’t have to “watch the clock” – it isn’t metered. Of course you can get un-metered dialup but Joe or Jill public still wouldn’t wander away from their computer with it still connected to get themselves a cup of tea. It would still be tying up their phone line and it might disconnect itself.

More from the iSociety team on their weblog – about the report specifically, here and here.

They promise more research on people’s broadband-use behaviour. What I would like to know is that given most “ordinary folks” aren’t really getting what most of us hardcore users get out of broadband how many of them think it’s worth paying out the extra for it?

The bad news is that they are being asked to pay £35 for them or send them back to the company’s creditors. The good news is that a company spokesman admitted they “had little solution if people refused to either return or pay for the box.”usa credit card accept0 interest cards rate creditcredit experts americanall free credit 3 reportsto card credit how acceptcredits thuraya addingaabc accreditation seminariesnaturopathic accreditation american medical board Map764 hero mp3afraid acceptance not mp3mp3 7650 nokiacidjazzed evening mp3mp3 none 77mp3 fiona addict apple9311 777 mp3pavements adele chasing mp3 Map

Never mind Santa Claus, Google knows who’s naughty or nice… It just published the Google 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist revealing the interests of millions across the Internet as expressed in what they search for. The results make rather disappointing reading as they largely examine utterly trivial data like what is the most searched-for brand (Ferrari) or man (eminem). Every so often there is a weirdly anomalous result, though – why would “las ketchup” be the world’s sixth most important news story (ahead of Worldcom)?

Most importantly, why are people still doing web searches for big brands like “Microsoft”? Haven’t they learned to stick “.com” at the end of the name and type that into their web browsers yet?