Minarets Nein Danke

Monday, November 30, 2009

So the Swiss citizenry has voted quite decisively to outlaw the building of minarets in their country. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the underlying issue are (for the record, I don’t find minarets any more offensive than church towers) what is interesting is the outrage from politicos around the world, especially those that habitually bang on about democracy.

What we have hear is pure, unadulterated democracy in action. Democracy actual implies that the will of the majority (with, possibly, some degree of weighting) carries the day. This isn’t at all what the common perception is. When people say something is “undemocratic”, they usually mean “it’s NOT FAIR!” or it is “contrary to the policies of the US of America”. Now they have a clear illustration that democracy doesn’t necessarily produce the result they believe should have happened, or they want. Another example is the fair, democratic election of Hamas in the Palestinian State.

So, yes, it probably isn’t fair to deny Muslims in Switzerland the outward expression of their faith. But it is democratic. Very democratic.

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” - Winston Churchill.

iContact show us how not to do it

Monday, October 26, 2009

No further comment really necessary. This sort of thing is simply unacceptable in 2009. Especially from a company that purports to promote responsible, permission-based email marketing.

“I am trying to cancel my account, as we no longer need it for this specific purpose. However, since discovering that I cannot in fact cancel online, I must inform you that I will never use your service again, nor will I recommend it to anybody else.

This is fundamentally unethical: if I can sign up online, there is no reason why I should not be able to cancel online.

This is not the hallmark of a trustworthy online business, or one I would wish to do business with.”

I’m on Facebook

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Yes, I’m on Facebook.

No, I don’t usually accept friends requests. And I’ve actually turned off almost all visibilty settings now.

I’m on Facebook because I need to be purely from a professional point of view, as my job includes specifying how our application interfaces with sites and services like Facebook. However this doesn’t mean that I like Facebook. In fact I find it a trivial, trite and ultimately very depressing way of wasting time.

To be brutally frank (and with some exceptions), if I didn’t stay in touch with somebody, it is because I (or they) had no further interest in doing so. If I didn’t have much to do with you 27 million years ago at University, or if we we just casually connected, why would I want to catch up with you now ? I don’t, and probably you don’t, really, either. So let’s just get on with our real world lives and let the past be the past.

Facebook is in any case just a noise generating mess. I mean really, do I look like I care if you’ve just eaten a virtual cake or ploughed an imaginary field (from somebody else’s imagination, at that). Well i’m sorry, but I don’t.

If anybody wants to get in touch with me, then Google will find me here easily enough. If I’m not worth the effort a few lines of email, then don’t bother. But if I am, then I’ll be happy to answer.

The only social networks I actively participate in are Linked In, for what it’s worth, and Flickr. Oh, and the real world. Which includes email.

140 characters in 312 pages!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Due to necessity I’m back on Twitter. I still don’t like it, but I need to talk about it with some degree of confidence so I’d better get back up to speed on it.

Checking out some shortcuts, I came across this:

Now, it may or may not be any good. And it least it hasn’t got Tim O’Reilly written on the front. But really: 312 pages to talk about a service which lets you send 140 character messages ?  As Sven remarked, it must use a really big font.

(Note: I see the author has anticipated this sort of smartass comment. Well ok, I’ll read it. And if I like it I’ll write a nice review)

Meanwhile, on the ‘B’ Ark

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I’ve been tasked with “doing something with Twitter” on the project I’m working on just now, which is still under wraps. Well, I’ve “done stuff with Twitter” before, and I’ve been on Twitter. And I found it creepy and really, but really disturbingly superficial.

But anyway, I’m supposed to be being paid to do what I’m told, so I though a quick refresher might help, and I’m reading The Twitter Book by Web 2.0 Cult High Priest Tim O’Reilly (who I also find creepy and superficial) and Sarah Milstein (who she?).

The book design follows a sort of playschool format, with big letters and big pictures on small pages, which I guess is the designer’s wonderfully subtle way of referring to Twitter itself. Whether or not that is a good thing is somewhat open to question.

By page 120 of 240-ish my eyelids feel like steel shutters and my body is invaded by narcolepsy. It is so, so, so dull. It really doesn’t help that it parades the same old Web 2.0 names in cutesy referential ways, or that all of the examples have a very strong gee-whiz San Francisco air about them.

Above all, it is so remarkably self-glorifying, self-referential and vapid. Which, actually, is well matched to the subject, I guess.  “Be interesting to other people”, preach the authors. They could start by taking their own advice to heart.  Well, I’ve got a message to all you Twitterers: the ‘A’ Ark is coming real soon now.