Mike Schorah

Well, it's been great to have a few days vacation time, getting away from the daily pressures and gaining some perspective. We made sure that the holiday rental had WiFi because I had some conference calls scheduled in the away-time and I can't quite bring myself to drop out of touch completely. The recent BBC article on "worlidays" (a combination of work on holidays) struck a chord. However, it was great to unplug from the fire-hose barrage of info through Twitter and the other channels for a few days, even though it was tempting to reach for the nearest electronic device in the down-time. Initially it was an effort of will to choose not to check for updates; it became easier as the days of August wore on. Now, though, I'm back to the constant flitting from channel to channel, afraid to miss the next vital update. Sure, it was great today in London when an afternoon meeting fell through to turn to Twitter and text and the other tools on my iPhone - and I was glad...

One of the great benefits of bringing a product to Market as soon as possible is that you can begin to get reactions and feedback. I'm so grateful for comments and questions that indicate where extra training support will be required; and for feature requests - with some indication of priorities ... It's all about putting Drucker's maxim into practice: marketing is about listening, then responding.

"Information wants to be free" is the rather lazy call from those who focus on the costs of distribution without factoring in the costs of production. It's certainly near-free to distribute an electronic newspaper, but the journalists who fill its pages still have food, housing and other bills that need to be paid somehow. One of the challenges of the Internet economy is that users have become conditioned to paying zero, in purely monetary terms, for the services they consume. Mostly they currently accept advertising based on an increasingly intrusive data-gathering model that harvests their personal profile details so that ads can be targeted more precisely. But in the smartphone 'apps' world, users have become conditioned to paying small amounts for applications. I'm intrigued, though, by the experience of Hungry Shark publisher Future Games of London who switched from a paid-for app with 1,000 daily downloads at $1 to 250,000 daily active users of th...

The riots in London last week have stirred controversy about the role of social media and modern network communication tools. Earlier this year we heard the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, preaching on the value of social media to empower those revolting in the 'Arab Spring.' Now, in Britain, there is debate about whether to continue to allow social media/network communications because they provide such a valuable intelligence monitoring asset; or whether to restrict or disable access at times, as the BART did in San Francisco last week. Or as the former USSR members are doing: evgenymorozov   Evgeny Morozov   No more "Twitter Revolutions": Collective Security Treaty Org. to create a "unified preventive strategy for cyberspace"  goo.gl/I77xA What do you think? Are the tools we use like a knife that can be used to prepare a meal or stab a victim? In other words, are the tools morally neutral? Or do we say that only responsible adults (or...

Maybe you missed the special edition of the Wall Street Journal  entitled 'What they know' - Here's the link They highlighted one of the fastest growing internet businesses, tracking consumer actions online They showed that Dictionary.com typically stores more than 200 tracking files when you visit Debate: Why tracking isn't bad - consumers get as much as they give Debate: Dangerous web tracking threatens the very notion of privacy And too much else crammed on to this one page to highlight here. Browse around this great resource acting as a mini-portal to one of the most contentious subjects to dominate current affairs. Get more like this

A great Tweet from @SheldonW this morning prompted today's blog post: SheldonW   Sheldon Witney     by MikeSchorah So much anxiety over the information companies hold about us these days. Do people really analyse WHY this makes them nervous? He said, SheldonW   Sheldon Witney   No one complained about the phone directory, which afaik gave tel, address, name, etc. Do people just assume it's bad? and SheldonW   Sheldon Witney   I think there are some real reasons, like changing people's behaviour, which isn't always good. But interested to know other peoples reasons Chris Byrne responded CRByrne   Chris Byrne   @   @ SheldonW  I believe the press in this country plays a significant part. They love to scaremonger. A stereotype is easier to prove. I think Chris is  right that there's some scare mongering going on, a drive to sell papers. And I completely agree with Sheldon's reminder about phone books. They still publish n...

Yesterday, The Guardian   reported that Germany has demanded that Facebook cease the automatic tagging of users in photos uploaded to the site or face a fine of €300,000. (That's hardly a sum that will register on Facebook's balance sheet, but that's a separate point.) The German concern relates to the automatic calculation of biometric facial profiles and Facebook's technology means that they can still calculate and store those profiles, even for users who choose to opt out of public display of this feature that's currently automatic. Why the concern? Simply because this week researchers at Carnegie Mellon university have reported their ability to combine image scanning, cloud computing and public profiles from social network sites to identify individuals in the offline world. And to link profiles of people at online dating sites with their real name information. They simply used off-the-shelf facial recognition technology (similar to that purchased by Google ...

"Companies and government agencies are getting raped and pillaged every day. They are losing economic advantage and national secrets to unscrupulous competitors" More than 72 organizations, including governments and the United Nations, are known to have suffered long-term cyber attacks . Some for more than five years. And this week it's emerged that personal information belonging to people entering newspaper competitions at The Sun  have been hacked . "What is happening to all this data ... is still largely an open question. However, if even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a competitor at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team's playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat." There are obvious costs and risks at a geo-political or large company level; but for an individual consumer or small business the impact can be just as devastating. Several people I know have had their Twitter account h...

Gosh, does LinkedIn's CEO really not think people would question his motives in claiming that no one has time to add Google+ to their social network use? Does he really imagine that the triumvirate of Twitter, Facebook and - unsurprisingly - LinkedIn can't be toppled? Does he not remember Visicalc supplanted by Lotus 1-2-3? Or the way in which 1-2-3 and WordPerfect were blasted into oblivion by Excel and Word? Or the death of MySpace? Isn't it just a bit obvious that LinkedIn is threatened by Google+? Anecdotally, I'm seeing a few of the people I follow on Twitter declaring that they are abandoning Facebook for Google+; and I overhead a couple of excited conversations by people who noticed that they could create a Google+ "circle" with just one member, giving them the equivalent of a Twitter Direct Message. It's entirely possible that Google+ will supplant some of the more currently established networks, and I don't think LinkedIn is entirely safe,...

This weekend's light reading was Cory Doctorow's Little Brother . You can download it free of charge. It's an interesting book which Doctorow summarizes: Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems. But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days. When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves...