|
Posts filed under 'transparency'
 |
|
October 2nd, 2008, 09:24am
|
I’m back studying at Queen’s University, and last weekend was Homecoming. In recent years, Queen’s Homecoming has become an annual pilgrimage for Southern Ontario’s Net Gen. Thousands of them, from Ottawa to Windsor, descend on Kingston for a 24-hour party that begins with 9 AM pancake keggers and culminates with a booze-fuelled riot that sees hundreds arrested, dozens injured, and three years ago, a car flipped over and lit on fire.
A group of Kingston residents, fed up with students’ intolerable behavior and the inability of police and university administrators to stop it, have turned to transparency as a weapon. On Homecoming, and for the past month, members of SaveOurNeighborhood.ca have been patrolling Kingston’s student neighborhood to take pictures of young people committing debauchery and posting them online for the world to see.
Read More »
 |
|
September 16th, 2008, 07:58am
|
I am currently enjoying a holiday on Canada’s beautiful (and stereotypically conscientious) West Coast and after witnessing a debate that I would likely never have heard back home in Toronto, I’ve been turned on to a new site (www.goodguide.com) that’s shed some interesting, and troubling, light on many of the products that I use at home while going about my day to day routine.
The debate took place in the Whole Body aisle at Whole Foods and it was centred around which toothpaste was best - Tom’s of Maine or Burt’s Bees. The winner was ultimately declared to be Tom’s, and the trump card that was triumphantly played to seal the victory was “It’s definitely Tom’s - just check their enviro rating on GoodGuide.” Being the inquisitive person that I am, and also feelng a little embarassed to have been seeking the $2 toothpaste among other $6 - $10 alternatives, I had to ask what this “GoodGuide” was.
As it turns out, it’s a site that in its own words “provides the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home.” Read More »
 |
|
August 27th, 2008, 01:51pm
|
The combination of Ning and WidgetLaboratory (WL) was a story that had wikinomics written all over it. The former is a platform that enables anyone to create their own social networks focused on anything they want, and they actively encouraged individuals and companies to innovate on top of the platform and make it even better. WL did just that, and in a big way - they sold a number of widgets (for around $30 / month) tied to the Ning platform, supporting somewhere in the range of 2,000 networks and 1,000,000 individuals. WL was the most popular widget creator on the platform.
If I was writing this post a week ago, it probably would have been a feel good story about wikinomics, but the wheels have recently fallen off the proverbial bus. This is a development equally worthy of exploring in relation to the challenges that come with embracing wikinomics principles - and particularly those that emerge when you only embrace a few of them. Of greatest interest to me - if more stories keep popping up like this, it could be a dramatic blow to more open, collaborative innovation processes. That would be a shame.
TechCrunch picked up the story on August 22nd, when Ning suddenly removed all of the WL widgets, without warning to anyone, from their network. This decision which clearly angered the company, as well as the thousands of customers who had spent time and money with WL in order to optimize their offerings. Based on the emails that WL has published on the web, this is the gist of Ning’s complaint:
Over the past few months, WidgetLaboratory’s applications have caused multiple and significant technical degradations to the Ning Platform. In point of fact, your code has broken numerous times and has negatively affected a large number of Networks in addition to the Ning Platform.
Read More »
 |
|
July 14th, 2008, 12:31am
|
Whether you’re a regular reader, or just pop in occasionally, it’s not always easy to keep up with our Wikinomics blog content. With this in mind, we have created the Wikinomics Roundup: Week in Review, to try and capture in brief, some of the thoughts, discoveries, and discussions that graced the blog from the past week.
Read More »
|
|
July 10th, 2008, 01:28pm
|
Check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
July 9th, 2008, 09:38am
|
Sadly, I don’t think I can compete with the sweater for the dead squirrel today - check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
 |
|
July 7th, 2008, 04:12pm
|
What did people say about us this week?
- Andrew Jones of the Tall Skinny Kiwi talks about how the Wikinomics ideas of transparency, generosity, and trust relates to the Bible and Christian ideals.
- As mentioned in the comments of last week, a relatively new website, Swirrl, has posted a review of Wikinomics.“Swirrl is like a wiki, but better.”
- The State Sunshine and Open Records blog criticizes “Show us a Better Way”, a new website sponsored by the British Government, but reconsiders the statement after hearing this site is the brainchild of the U.K.’s Minister for the Cabinet Office. The website invites users/citizens to post ideas for new government services.
- Wikinomics and how mass collaboration will fundamentally change learning was one of the topics at the recent NECC 2008 conference.
- Brendan Dunphy’s Innovation Blog debates the Wikinomics Report Card on General Motors. He argues that closed innovation is better when the current market solution is not sufficient.
- Paula Thornton of the Fast Forward Blog talks about Don Tapscott’s economic tsunami in reference to the User Revolution and the Age of Aquarius.
 |
|
July 4th, 2008, 03:43pm
|
For those of you already worrying about $200 barrels of oil, you may want to stop reading now. The New Scientist recently released an interactive graphic of the world’s oil flows and chokepoints that highlights just how vulnerable the world’s oil supply is to conflict, terrorism, natural disasters, and other factors beyond our control.
In a related article in the NYTimes, Clifford Krauss focuses on the effects of high gasoline prices on rural areas in the U.S., where people are reeling under the triple strike of low incomes, fuel-inefficient vehicles, and long commutes to work. Here are a few highlights:
People are giving up meat so they can buy fuel. Gasoline theft is rising. And drivers are running out of gas more often, leaving their cars by the side of the road until they can scrape together gas money. . .
The extra dollars spent at the pump mean electric bills are going unpaid and macaroni is replacing meat at supper. Donations to church are being put off, and video rentals are now unaffordable. . .
Local fried chicken restaurants are closing because people are eating out less. At the hardware store here, sales have plummeted to $30 a day from $250 a day a month ago.
Local governments are leaving grass high along the roads and doing fewer road repairs to save on fuel costs. . . Politicians are even considering replacing sanitation workers with prison inmates on some shifts to conserve money for fuel
This article also comes with it’s own graphics — this one illustrating the varying effects of gasoline prices across the country.
July 4th, 2008, 11:47am
Last week, The New York Times covered a new project by Google: having targeted, text-based advertisements that are influenced by past user search history. With this new program, a user who makes separate searches for “golf” and “shoes” is more likely to see ads for golf shoes during subsequent searches - reminiscent of how Amazon recommends products based on past searches and purchases.
Google, already owning two-thirds of the search market, has an advertising relationship with many businesses. These businesses only pay Google when their ads get clicked. So far the system has been beneficial and lucrative for both Google and their advertisers. By integrating past search data with current contextual advertisements, Google is greatly
expanding the context within which they can display ads. Google can therefore improve the relevance of ads, increasing the chance that users will click them.
If this model is successful, users become more than one-time search results; they could develop robust profiles of interests to allow very specific, tailored selection of advertisements. But does such a collection of user-interest data pose privacy concerns?
The argument in favor of new advertising approaches like this is that this data can be used to display advertisements that, far from being annoying or distracting, actually offer useful solutions and products to consumers at exactly the right time in exactly the right place. Personally, I don’t even notice a lot of ads on websites that I view just because I’m so used to seeing ads for products that don’t interest me at all. I’ve grown immune to ads but if they are going to be tailored to my interests, I may actually start noticing and clicking these ads now.
Is Google the right company to implement this? Already, people seem very quick to trust Google, but it seems to me that there should be limits on how much information any one company can have about their users, and those limits should be set by the users themselves. I get the feeling that many users just don’t comprehend or realize how much information of theirs can be tracked via programs like these.
What level of transparency are you prepared to offer up to Google?
|
|
July 3rd, 2008, 11:43am
|
Things being thrown at heads seems to be an emerging theme here… you can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
July 2nd, 2008, 10:23am
|
Reminds me of the most innocent sounding insult I ever remember hearing - when asked about the performance of a one-time collaborator, a particular gentleman stared straight ahead for a few seconds and then deadpanned “he met my expectations precisely.” As always, you can check out the original (and all the other mash ups) at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
June 28th, 2008, 02:01pm
|
Can Wikinomics Keep the 77 Year Streak Alive?
This week’s edition of the Wikinomics Report Card will focus on General Motors Corporation (GM). In case you missed my first report card about Major League Baseball, you can find it here. Like last week, I will be evaluating GM on the Wikinomics principles of being open, peering, sharing, and acting globally.
Company Background: GM was founded in 1908 and is the world’s largest automaker and leader in global sales for the last 77 calendar years. It manufactures cars and trucks in 35 different countries under the brands Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac, and many more. Under the strength of Alfred Sloan’s revolutionary corporate structure and leadership, GM was once one of the world’s most profitable companies peaking in the early 80’s with a U.S. market share of 45%. However, the legacy costs and complex accounting systems associated with the Sloan era have hindered GM’s efforts to create a more lean manufacturing process. Stiff foreign competition from companies like Toyota and poor strategic decisions like focusing on SUVs and light trucks in a rising fuel market has led GM to one of its weakest points in its history. Yesterday, its stock reached a 53-year low after Goldman Sachs changed it status to “sell”. GM is hoping that it can weather this storm long enough to introduce its new line of alternative energy vehicles like the Chevy Volt and reclaim some of its former glory.
Read More »
 |
|
June 27th, 2008, 04:52pm
|
Not since the 1999 hit American Pie have I heard the word “sex” and “apple pie” in the same sentence. That is, until the New York Times ran What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer on Tuesday.
According to defense attorney Lawrence Walter’s evidence presented in a deposition in pornographic Web site case, more people in Pensacola, Fla. Google “orgy” than “apple pie.” Why is Walters comparing porn to apple pie? Because apple pie is wholesome, nostalgic, and All-American. For Walters, apple pie represents traditional values in America and this data proves that more people are interested in sex than pie. Read More »
 |
|
June 26th, 2008, 10:46am
|
Wikipedia spends a lot of time paring down business articles because they read more like advertisements than encyclopedic articles. That’s fair — so why not have a wiki for businesses and consumers to work on together, blending what businesses think of themselves with the opinions of consumers? Such a wiki does exist, though it’s still very small: WikiCommerce.
Some of the articles are fairly good, others, not so much. Read More »
|
|
June 18th, 2008, 03:46pm
|
Today’s New York Times features an article about the most serious social networking site, LinkedIn. The article describes what could be a dramatic shift for social networking sites as a whole: the professional networking site will expand its current product offerings by launching new fee-based services geared toward companies to generate revenue. This departure from the industry standard revenue generator, advertising, may lead other sites to copy its strategy.
LinkedIn already offers several fee-based services, like premium accounts and a talent acquisition tool. What is different, however, about many of their new products, is that they may change the community’s identity and betray its members who may not want their company to have access to every nook and cranny of their professional life. LinkedIn seems to be walking a fine line between abusing its users’ privacy and being able to make money off of peoples’ information. Read More »
|
|
June 17th, 2008, 09:45am
|
You can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
 |
|
June 12th, 2008, 06:17pm
|
A very interesting report was just released by the Princeton Centre for Information Technology Policy advocating for the increased release of government data for public consumption, and for letting independent providers, rather than government websites, dissect and present that data. We’re very big fans of both, and have spent considerable time researching the potential offered by the democratization of government-held data. In fact, as part of our Government 2.0 project we have a couple of projects in progress on this topic. Included amongst them is a short report by nGenera collaborator David Stephenson on the potential of data visualisation platforms such as Swivel, ManyEyes and Google Motion Chart. You can view one of David’s recent presentations on the topic here.
As for the Princeton report, Government and the Invisible Hand, it provides added support to the belief that the data that resides within agency firewalls could lead to significant public value if made freely (and easily) available to the rest of us.
The report notes:
Read More »
|
|
June 11th, 2008, 08:19am
|
Too bad, because in time the clown could be revealed as well intentioned, yet misunderstood - always a winning storyline! You can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
June 10th, 2008, 08:57am
|
Check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
June 9th, 2008, 11:42am
|
As always, you can check out the original (and all the other mash ups) at www.dilbert.com.
« Previous Entries
|
|
|
