Damien Mulley

Self worth? Slugger, Twenty or Donncha?

Found Hi-Fi popcorn a while back and forgot about it so am going to subsscribe to it now. Love the site and really like the fact that I can access mp3s and videos of those featured. Quite impressed at the amount of artists that are now using MySpace as well.

I was at a loss of late when it came to new music and new bands but thanks to this blog as well as Sinéads and the In, Fact Ah kids I can keep up with some of the newest music. Woot.

The saying goes “the Personal is political” but with the growth of Internet usage mostly via broadband, the personal is becoming available and could be used politically and maliciously.

When you mix mySpace, blogs, Facebook, Faceparty, boards.ie and even Gaydar (as one FF councillor found out) together you are handing your personal life over to anyone that can access Google and it’s begining to freak a lot of people out.

Parents:

MySpace and Beebo are in the news a quite a bit lately and we hear quite a bit of noise from concerned parents that these sites are preying grounds for all sorts of evil people. People on MySpace have been abused, stalked, kidnapped and murdered. Naturally people worry that kids are sharing far too much information with these potential people who circle MySpace like vultures.

Fred Wilson has a very good launching pad post on MySpace which quotes a really good post from hip Mammy Gotham Girl:

Did parents freak when Elvis came on the scene? Did they freak when the Rolling Stones came on the scene? Did they freak when they grew their hair long and rebelled? Answers to all of the above and more is yes, yes yes. Think about what you did growing up that your parents were scared of. They were scared because they didn’t understand the space and weren’t sure how to teach you the tools to navigate the situation.

Fred also points to Chartreuse:

Now because of all the horrible things which can happen to a kid on a bike a huge industry was created. They sell helmets, kneepads, tracking systems, and the like to make bikes safer or parents feel more secure.

Despite all this stuff most parents still just give their kids some rules and let them ride.

MySpace is just the modern bike.

Lots of horrible things can happen to a kid on the internet. And the industry will continue to grow based around protecting children from all that horrible stuff or making parents feel more secure.

But the truth of the matter is that most parents will just give there child some rules and let them ride

So MySpace is the new rock and roll the new Elvis and if parents rebel against it and do their best to not understand it then it becomes more damaging. Two mothers pointing out that understanding MySpace and what your kids do on it is crucial and allows you to lay down ground rules. There are rules but there needs to be some basics learned too so the kids can watch out for the weirdos who are much harder to figure out online.

Do we have a guide in Ireland from the Government or the ISPAI advising parents on the rights and wrongs of the Internet which gets updated for sites like MySpace and Bebo? I would think it is certainly needed. There’s plenty of people warning about the dangers but are they doing anything to educate the parents? You might even see more parents going online if these educational packs contained the basics of going online too. Perhaps this should be done in schools and the parents as well as coming for parent teacher meetings should have to come along for Internet education classes. Seaghan Moriarty might have some views on this.

Governments, Companies and Organisations
Even the CIA has been caught by the ghoulies lately when simple search was able to reveal so much about their agents:

The Tribune story, published on Sunday, outlined its search of a commercial online data service. Through that service, the Tribune found information for internal agency numbers, supposed secret locations, and over 2,600 employees. An undisclosed number of the employees on the list were working covertly.

Gavin Sheridan had some fun with the Irish Government and thanks to their robots.txt file found information they didn’t want us to find. If you actually Google for .pdfs and .docs on many Government sites you’ll find documents you shouldn’t find. I found a map of the eircom FWA locations which ComReg refused to provide on the ComReg site. After I made it public they removed the map. Luckily backups were made. While this information per se wasn’t personal, many of the word documents you find contain the details of who wrote them and the notes and comments they made. There is a large chance that private personal communications can end up online.

One that probably scares the shit out of companies more is blogging. Google fired a new employee for what he blogged about them which is slightly ironic since it is Google that is delivering all the dirt on so many. It’s not just Google though. Delta fired an employee as did Friendster. It’s not as if employees ever got fired before for off the cuff remarks but with traditional media you had to be high up in order to get media attention and then make a gaff like Cheney did when he told Patrick Leahy to go fuck himself. One blog post from a lowly employee can generate a lot of attention. For companies I would think that they don’t mind the personal going online more than the professional. Talk about your cat and your yeast infection but please don’t talk about the way we look after you financially. Delta fired that lady for being naughty in some pictures where she wore her uniform.

Political parties on their members “interactions” online.

Malcolm Byrne while apparently out (as in not closeted) was outed as having a Gaydar profile recently, Gaydar being a gay dating website. A national non-issue was made of the issue and Malcolm did very well out of it by actually building up his profile. His poltical profile that is. Many think he was lucky enough to escape this in a positive light but this isn’t 1983 anymore. Does his party or any other party have a policy though for their members advising them how to behave online and what exactly search engines can find? Do they even have an email policy or any kind of electronic communications policy?

Damien Blake (who is scarily the image of someone I used to know very well) and Liz McManus are two of a growing list of politicians who blog. It’s great to see them blogging and I wonder how much oversight their central offices have on their blogs? Do their parties have blogging policies which include what to blog and what to avoid blogging about as well as commenting on other websites? I’m pretty sure that Damien and Liz are well schooled in what to say and what not to say so the gaffs per blog are probably bordering zero but I would think a blogging policy is needed which would actually encourage the idea of blogging at the same time and give tips on how to blog best.

Your employer is watching you.
On the flipside to this are companies looking for information on employees and prospective employees. Michelle Conlin wrote an excellent piece in BusinessWeek online about all our personal details showing up online. She tells us how useful Google is for getting all the lowdowns on us that we ourselves (mostly) have put up:

Google is an end run around discrimination laws, inasmuch as employers can find out all manner of information — some of it for a nominal fee — that is legally off limits in interviews: your age, your martial status, the value of your house (along with an aerial photograph of it), the average net worth of your neighbors, fraternity pranks, stuff you wrote in college, liens, bankruptcies, political affiliations, and the names and ages of your children

Perhaps a little bit should be added to the Labour laws forbidding companies from Googling their employees or prospective employees but sometimes googling someone might turn up the odd axe murderer. Maybe a balance can be found?

So we should have guides for parents being given out by the Governments and ISPs and maybe thought in schools, we should have guides by political parties on how to behave and interact online and we should have guides for the general populace on how your new employer knows way more about you than you think, thanks to the Internet.

For all the stupid, and silly crap we did when we were “web juveniles” should there be some kind of record sealing of web history like they have for juvenile offenders or family law cases? You can have Google remove content from their database *only* if you own the website in question. They may take down other content but that involves getting a lawyer and probably some DMCA issues. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a guide on how to remove silly things you said or how to restrict what search engines could hoover up from your site?

The personal becomes available and uncomfortable

Coming up to the Blog Awards there was a vigorous discussion about personal blogging and anonymity with
Dermod, RedMum, Steven and the not so anonymous That Girl discussing it. I don’t blog too much very personal things, I let tidbits out now and then but when I do write online I generally use my own name and don’t remain anonymous. Even on webforums generally my username is damien or damien.m or dm or my surname backwards. There are lots of people who are allowed to be more creative and more “real” by being anonymous and this too should be catered for. Perhaps the Blogger Academy can create some guides for blogging anonymously and staying that way?

Teach a person to fish/blog/interact…

The greatest thing to understand about your data is that once it is out there it can never be reeled back in. That is the beauty and the horror of the Internet. If we teach those around us and coming online how much of what they say will forever remain on the net and how best to manage their private data and public data then we might have less fear filled statements about the evil Internet and more people and organisations can embrace it fully.

an tImeall celebrates their 100th podcast. Very impressive I have to say. Conn’s speech at the blog awards was great too. I’m a day late for birthday greetings though. Ooops.

A very clever way of getting that domain that a domain reseller currently owns.

Speaking of which, have a look at the Big.com search engine. With a site like this I don’t have to wear glasses on my work computer. Simple idea but I think the search engine that’s uses is shite. I was not number one on google for god’s sake! 🙂

The World’s Bravest Man. No, it isn’t Piaras Kelly but maybe they’re related? 16th cousins or something.

This guy is looking for a billion page views. Another MillionDollarHomepage type idea. Best of luck to him. He needs to post pics of naked chicks or something I’d say.

In the same vein. Unusual business ideas that work. All it is really is knowing how people think and working your ass off. I wonder how much of all of this is having the personality to make people notice you in the crowd without looking like a nutjob?

Triple Award winner Twenty is live blogging from Ron Blacks. Go read.

Holks Alternative Irish Blog Awards. Loving this.

Myself and James are having an interesting debate over on Eirepreneur about OPML and feeds. It starts an interesting debate on how to introduce new people to blogs and feeds. I like the idea of the open Irish directory but don’t like the fact that it is so cold and isolationist. I’d like to see each node in the directory having a quick content preview besides having to go off and click some more to then read and site and find you don’t like it.

I started off reading sites like BoingBoing and Slashdot which linked to other sites that supplied them with info and I followed those links, quickly becoming a fan of Metafilter and Memepool and so on. As my daily sites to read went up I found that an aggregator was called for. I started off with about 15 sites and as I found more interesting sites I added them and removed sites I fell out of love with.

If I was to try and get Irish people using an aggregator now I’d prepopulate it. Something like the IrishBlogs aggregator but more based on everything that is in the blogroll of every IrishBlogger(like an Irish Tailrank) and a small best of list created as a result of this.

The idea would be that when someone signs up they are asked for their favourite websites. These would then automatically be put into their aggregator. Then they’d be asked what areas interest them the most and from this some backend wizardry technology would go through everything in the Irish Blog rolls and make recommendations. The initial blogroll should be no more than 15 sites in total (plus the users favs) and the user then should be allowed to add more or remove some as they go along. I would have one feed displaying at most 10 feeds from the IrishBlogs aggregator as this could intrduce the user to something they would not normally look at. Call it the “wildcard” feed. Or maybe have this “wildcard” feed comprised of the most bumped posts from the day before.

The Google generation wants simple and they want results given right here, right now. Clicking these days seems too time consuming.

I’ve tuned into Markham’s blog now and then during his year of the big drought and today is his last dry day. Well done Markham. As he starts on the drink again it seems that it is rememberance day tomorrow. The Irish are Drunks Rememberance day to be exact. Kind of apt that Tiernan posted this link about an automated bar. Dick O’Brien who is much younger than I imagined he was 😉 also brings up the subject of alcohol and the Irish. If you look at the blog posts about the aftermath of the Irish Blog Awards it seemed every second post had someone hungover but at least we didn’t fight or smash a glass in the face of another fellow blogger. Even the feminazis as UI calls em didn’t glass Piaras on the night. We don’t need riots tomorrow for there to be blood on the streets, all we need is the general population getting pissed.

In the comments double award winner 😉 that girl suggests:

After all the hassle last year and the riots a couple of weeks ago I wonder will we need bloggers and cams on the streets of Dublin this weekend?

I used to work in an Accident and Emergency Department when I was in college first time round. There should be a photoblogger there to witness the violence, the stupidity and the difficulty of those that drink. Car crashes, family disputes, para-suicides and alcoholic comas and all down to alcohol. Shouting and singing is the background music with blood and vomit being the carpet of choice.

Markham has a great summary of Irish society and alcohol:

Irish people rely on drink so heavily that it’s pretty difficult to break out of the cycle of getting hammered. Drinking=social life seems to be the assumption. Bucking that trend puts you out of sync with a lot of people; you start having a routine that isn’t defined by closing times or hangovers, but by when you get tired and when the sun comes up, which sounds medieval if you’re not used to it. But it’s a better way to live, I reckon.

Markham will now operate from his new blog called Metropolis Blue. Happy Patrick’s day everyone! Also check out a blog about drink called the Pour.