Murdered editor pre-wrote his last editorial

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

The BBC and other major media have not covered it yet, but they soon will.

The editor of the Sunday Leader in Sri Lanka who was murdered last week wrote his last editorial, which was published yesterday.

In it there’s damning evidence and information, but the editorial reveals his calm acceptance that he will be killed, standing up for the truth.

“I want my murderer to know that I am not a coward like he is, hiding behind human shields while condemning thousands of innocents to death. What am I among so many? It has long been written that my life would be taken, and by whom. All that remains to be written is when.”

He ends with the fitting quote from German theologian, Martin Niemöller that Wickrematunge says inspired him during his youth.

“First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Clay Shirky on the power of web collaboration, media

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Experiments in communication take off when they create ‘social capital’ rather than take that “big bang” approach, says Clay Shirky. He discussed this and more in an NPR interview and call-in last week.

Of course Shirky has written extensively on this subject of social capital, especially in Here comes everybody –the the best book on social media, to-date, in my opinion. His analysis of new media is spot on. As in observing how technology needs to become ‘technologically boring‘ before it gains social traction. It has to first lose its geek stigma, then become ‘normal’, then ubiquitous, to finally become pervasive enough to start a revolution.

And for those grappling with how much PR and media presence is necessary I love this quote from the book:

“All business are media businesses, because whatever else they do, all businesses rely on the managing of information for two audiences – employees and the world.”

Which opens a rich debate on the blurring line between internal and external communiction, whether PR should be taught in business schools etc, but that’s grist for the mill for another post.

Great response to spam question

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Someone asked this question at Mahalo Answers about web site promotion using the service.

“What’s the best way to promote a web site on Mahalo without indulging in spam?”

Many chimed in about etiquette, plugs, helpfulness etc, but one at the top was all that someone needs to know:

“How about this: Please don’t.”

In case you haven’t noticed, the ‘Answers’ model is catching fire. Mahalo has fired a shot across the bow of Yahoo Answers. And then there’s the mobile version of this that’s like the flame thrower aimed at both – ChaCha.

Basically ChaCha is a way to text a question (to short code 242242) and have a live person research the answer and send you back the answer via return text. How cool is that?

Let’s just hope spammers and marketers don’t try to pollute that model. Don’t think they would? Consider this: The “Answers’ model is a real-time, human version the one that made Search –and Google — a key part of marketing.

Quotes for the week ending 10 Jan, 2009

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“Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that.”

Daniel Seaman, director of Israel’s Government Press Office, in the New York Times article on media restrictions in reporting from Gaza

“Think of it as real-time show notes created by me, our show hosts, and our community. Let’s call this stream the “river.” This is an experiment..”

Leo Laport, host of the amazing This Week in Tech, on starting to use a live text stream of links, comments, and notes via Twitter, FriendFeed, TwitArmy etc for his show.

“The comparisons to Twitter need to stop, and stop now. FriendFeed is not the same as Twitter.”

Allen Stern, at InformationWeek, commenting on the fact that many internet users don’t have enough services that need to be aggregated on FriendFeed.

“The manure storm is about to hit!”

Steve Hall, at AdRants, predicting the wrath of Mommy Cow Bloggers aimed at  Ray-ban, which has an ad featuring a cow giving birth to a man with sunglasses.

“If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.”

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

“Sri Lanka has lost one of its more talented, courageous and iconoclastic journalists.”

Reporters Without Borders, commenting on the murder of the editor of a newspaper in Sri Lanka, Lasantha Wickramatunge.

“He is a person of integrity.”

Bernie Madoff’s lawyer, after his client, the former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market, was arrested for a giant Ponzi scheme that lost up to $50 billion of investors’ money.

Infectious and fun – qualities marketing and storytelling need

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I saw this quote about Facebook, where Elliot Schrage describes what made it successful. It’s about community building that’s “contagious, infectious and viral.”

I think he inadvertently left out “fun,” which is such a big part in connecting, isn’t it?

Think about the other connections you make offline and online. Some so-called networking meetings Ive been to have been so boring, I wonder why I even agreed to be there. Some applications –like Plaxo– are darn good, but they just don’t have the fun ingredient. Other events, like a simple potluck party turn into major networking events that you promptly tell about five people.

Fun is not just for online networking. Having an infectious and fun element make marketing and telling stories very powerful.

Dear Mr. Obama. In case you haven’t read those ‘open letters’…

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I have seen many open letters, and wondered, how many of these could Barack really read, if he ever gets to that dossier.

To make it easy, Mr. Obama, here’s a selection you could read at leisure.

Launching Decision Theater blog – Lightbulb Moments

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This has been running under the radar for awhile. Lightbulb Moments, the first in a series of social media initiatives I am rolling out at the Decision Theater.

If you are interested in what decision-making involves, what goes on in the “drum’ involving visualization, 3D modeling and collaborative decision-making check us out.

If you need to grab an RSS feed, this is it.

David Pogue’s “imagine” on the mark, breaks the rules

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This video by David Pogue on mobile technology is entertaining and thought provoking. So good it makes Jimmy Kimmel look like a high school skit.

It is a nice complement to that other lame version (for the XO laptop) by none other than the deceased Lennon.

“Imagine there’s no Apple, no products beginning with i…”

You may say it’s a nightmare, with Google, Mac and Dell

You might have real conversations, but the world would be… dull as hell!”

What was fun for me is that he demos Callwave, Google mobile text search, T-mobile, Pandora etc which I am huge fan of. The last bits are scintillating, especially the My Way parody for the iPhone. Pogue has other skits. Like this one on Voice Mail, to the tune of Sound of Silence.

Which makes me think that Pogue occupies a different kind of slot, even though he is nominally a technology critic for the New York Times. He often pokes a sharp stick at the trend or the tool he is reviewing, such as questioning (mostly in jest) the ‘psychosexual terminology of computing,’ and the tech impact on business and jobs. As in suggesting Bill Gate’s sings:

“I just called to say I bought you, I just called to say you’re unemployed,

I just called to say I own you, And to tell you that we’re truly overjoyed. . . . “

And again, his insight (a riff, really on Moore’s Law) with:

Pogue’s Law: any extra speed introduced by faster chips is soon offset by increasingly bloated software.

If only all technology columnists could be as eloquent.

Saving your contacts in the ‘cloud’

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

If you haven’t heard of cloud computing, where have you been?

Seriously, not many people know about this, and those who do are quite confused about it. For good reason that I will get to in a moment.

But there’s a service I came across that seems like a good way to get those business cards thrust at you at a recent conference or event saved on a  remote server to be accessible anywhere. It’s called Cloud Contacts.

Sounds a nifty thing, since you ship them a stack of cards ina  prepaid envelope, they scan it and save it in formats that you can suck into Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook.  Except that it strikes me as a pricey way to go ($29.95 for 100 cards, $69.95 for 300) considering that (a) you could type that information yourself on a plane, say, or pay someone to do it if you’re that lazy (b) You could buy yourself a card reader for the price of getting them to scan 500 business cards.

For all its geekiness, cloud computing at its basic level is nothing flashy or new. If you have a Yahoo or Gmail account, all your saved email, your contacts and folders exist in the cloud, so to speak. If you save your files to an online storage service like Dropboks.com, those files are basically in another cloud. Heck, your Facebook profile exists in a cloud as does your Plaxo contacts. To me it’s another name for what has become the third place where we work — after the PC and the mobile device.

And because it is so many things we know of and didn’t realize –there are many more dimensions to it — it confuses us.

Listen to the leading tech folk describe it here with more gravitas.