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I Miss You, Blogs! And a Few Thanks.

And I really do. A few minutes ago, I took some time to check all my favourite blogs that I hadn’t been able to in the last two weeks. Loads of new and interesting posts to read … and I still can’t stop envying Michael for his new Carniola, which is very pleasant for the eyes and entertaining for the mind. I hope some day I find time to give my Con Brio some of Carniola looks;).

Otherwise, I am really happy at the moment. My experiment turned out to be as planned, we did follow the timetable (more or less) and conduct exactly 100 qualitative interviews plus three times five web surveys. Now, the big part is yet to come, but so far so really happy.

My researchers/students who had helped me working on it, were really good at their job and all I can say is a big Thank you! to all of them. Without them, my experiment wouldn’t have worked out just quite as it did. So, Andreja, Andreja, Janja, Ursa, Mojca, Eva, Teja, Jure, Miha and Andraz - I am most happy to have worked with you (well, probably they wouldn’t have said the same, cos I was really hardly bearable on times). But I hope it was an enjoyable experience for all of us in the end.

And I must not forget my supervisor Vasja Vehovar, who also supported me with his ideas at the right moments and gave me useful advises and tips just when I needed them.

And then there are some key people, who also made everything possible for me: Matthai (Matej), Gandalfar (Jure), Skrat (Gasper), Sergio (Sergej), Racer_D (Dusan) and Primoz. They offered me much of technical and mental (!) support.

And last but not least, a big Thank you! to all Slo-Tech users, who did participate in qualitative and quantitative part of the research. They all were extraordinary collaborative and I was amazed at their willingness to participate.

So, this was just a beginning of a long journey, but precisely for this very pleasant start I know it will be a nice one.

By Nana | April 27, 2005 | Topics: Blogging | No Comments »

When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?

(Warning: LONG POST, for all those who can’t logon to The New York Times)
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
The New York Times

There are about 10 million blogs out there, give or take, including one belonging to Niall Kennedy, an employee at Technorati, a small San Francisco-based company that, yes, tracks blogs.

Like many employees at many companies, Mr. Kennedy has opinions, even when he is not working. One evening last month, he channeled one of those off-duty opinions into a satiric bit of artwork - an appropriation of a “loose lips sink ships” World War II-era propaganda poster altered to provide a harsh comment on the growing fears among corporations over the blogging activities of their employees. He then posted it on his personal Web log.

But in a paradoxical turn, Mr. Kennedy’s employer, having received some complaints about the artwork, stepped in and asked him to reconsider the posting and Mr. Kennedy complied, taking the image down.

“The past day has been a huge wake-up call,” Mr. Kennedy wrote soon afterward. “I see now that the voice of a company is not limited to top-level executives, vice presidents and public relations officers.”

As the practice of blogging has spread, employees like Mr. Kennedy are coming to the realization that corporations, which spend millions of dollars protecting their brands, are under no particular obligation to tolerate threats, real or perceived, from the activities of people who become identified with those brands, even if it is on their personal Web sites.

They are also learning that the law offers no special protections for blogging - certainly no more than for any other off-duty activity.

As Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group in Washington, put it, “What we found is there really is quite a bit of diversity in how employers are responding to blogging.”

A rising tide of employees have recently been reprimanded or let go for running afoul of their employers’ taste or temperament on personal blogs, including a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines who learned the hard way that the carrier frowns on cheeky photos while in uniform and a Google employee who mused on the company’s financial condition and was fired.

Some interpreted these actions as meaning that even in their living rooms, even in their private basement computer caves, employees are required to be at least a little bit worried about losing their jobs if they write or post the wrong thing on their personal Web logs.

“I would have expected that some of the louder, more strident voices on the Internet would have risen up in a frenzy over this,” said Stowe Boyd, the president of Corante, a daily online news digest on the technology sector. “But that didn’t happen.”

In Mr. Boyd’s opinion, everything about what Mr. Kennedy did was protected speech. The use of trademarks was fair use in a satirical work, Mr. Boyd said, and it seemed unlikely that the company would be somehow liable for the off-duty actions of an employee, as Technorati executives argued. It was, in Mr. Boyd’s eyes, an indication that corporate interests were eclipsing individual rights.

“I don’t know what else to say,” he declared. “I’m astonished.”

But Ms. Newitz and others have cautioned that employees must be careful not to confuse freedom of speech with a freedom from consequences that might follow from what they say. Indeed, the vast majority of states are considered “at will” states - meaning that employees can quit, and employers can fire them, at will - without evident reason (barring statutory exceptions like race or religion, where discrimination would have to be proved).

“There really are no laws that protect you,” Ms. Newitz said.

Martin H. Malin, a professor of law and director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said there were only a few exceptions.

“It depends on what the blog is,” he said, “what the content is, and whether there’s any contractual protection for the employee.”

Those who work for the United States Postal Service, for instance, or a local sanitation department may have some special blogging privileges. That is because, depending on the circumstances, the online speech of public employees can be considered “of public concern,” and enjoys a measure of protection, Professor Malin explained.

Employees protected under some union contracts may also be shielded from summary dismissal for off-duty activities, at least without some sort of arbitration. “Lifestyle law” trends of the late 1980’s and early 90’s - sometimes driven by tobacco and alcohol lobbies - created state laws that protected employees from being fired for engaging in legal, off-duty activities, though no one is likely to be fired simply for blogging, but rather for violating some policy or practice in a blog.

And bloggers who are neither supervisors nor managers and who can demonstrate that they are communicating with other workers about “wages, hours or working conditions” may warrant some protection under the National Labor Relations Act, Professor Malin said - even in nonunion enterprises.

None of this, of course, answers the question of where the status of employee ends and that of private citizen begins.

Some companies, like Sun Microsystems, have wrapped both arms around blogging. Sun provides space for employees to blog (blogs.sun.com), and while their darker impulses are presumably kept at bay by the arrangement, there are hundreds of freewheeling and largely unmonitored diaries supported by the company.

Microsoft, too, has benefited from the organic growth of online journaling by celebrity geeks now in its employ, like Robert Scoble, whose frank and uncensored musings about the company have developed a loyal following and given Microsoft some street credibility.

But other companies are seeing a need for formalized blogging policies.

Mark Jen, who was fired from Google in January after just two weeks, having made some ill-advised comments about the company on his blog (Google would not comment on Mr. Jen’s dismissal, but confirmed that he no longer works for it), is now busy helping to draft a blogging policy for his new employer, Plaxo, an electronic address book updating service in Mountain View, Calif.

“It was a very quick education for me at Google,” Mr. Jen said. “I learned very quickly the complexities of a corporate environment.”

With Plaxo’s blessing, Mr. Jen is soliciting public comment on the new blogging policy at blog.plaxoed.com.

Most of the points are the kinds of common-sense items that employees would do well to remember, particularly if they plan on identifying themselves as employees in their blogs, or discussing office matters online: don’t post material that is obscene, defamatory, profane or libelous, and make sure that you indicate that the opinions expressed are your own.

The policy also encourages employee bloggers to use their real names, rather than attempting anonymity or writing under a pseudonym.

Bad idea, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Two weeks ago, the group published a tutorial on “how to blog safely,” which included tips on avoiding getting fired. Chief among its recommendations: Blog anonymously.

“Basically, we just want to caution people about how easy it is to find them online,” Ms. Newitz said, “and that they are not just talking to their friends on their blogs. They’re talking to everyone.”

But does that means that Mr. Kennedy, a short-timer, a product manager and by no means an executive at Technorati, carries the burden of representing the company into his personal blog?

Technorati’s vice president for engineering, Adam Hertz, responded: “It would be antithetical to our corporate values to force Niall to do anything in his blog. It’s his blog.”

Yet with the spread of the Internet and of blogging, Mr. Hertz said, it would be foolish for companies to not spend some time discussing the art of public communications with their employees, and even train and prepare lower-level staff for these kinds of public relations situations.

That said, Mr. Hertz stressed that the company had no interest in formalizing any complicated policies regarding an employee’s activities outside the office.

“I had a high school teacher,” he recalled, “who used to say ‘I have only two rules: Don’t roller-skate in the hallway and don’t be a damn fool.’ We really value a company where people can think for themselves.”

By Nana | April 18, 2005 | Topics: Blogging | No Comments »

How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)

Partial answer to the questions in our debate can be found here.

Thanks, Jure;))

By Nana | April 9, 2005 | Topics: Blogging | No Comments »

Blogging and Keeping Our Jobs

I have been wanting to write this for quite a while now. I always said I would do it later. So now! Recently (and also not that recently) I read quite a few stories about people who lost their jobs for blogging (e.g. a former Google employee Mark Jen, web designer Heather Armstrong). So, First Amendment only restricts governmental control of speech, but companies are free to fire any employee who writes ‘unpleasant’ stuff by their standards. Tho this is only applicable to bloggers who blog under their real name. So, the solution seems pretty simple. If we want to be bitching our employer, we will just write a blog under some silly nick. But truly, it is not that simple at all. It is only a matter of hour, before someone who really wants to find out who the blogger is gets to us. As blogging appears to be spreading around like a virus, companies should consider writing up guidelines for possible blogging by employees. Most companies already have the policy for internet usage so they should include the blogging bit as well. But sure, we alone have to be very conscious of any unpleasant consequences our blogging might have.

So, I am asking myself how my blog can get me in trouble with regard to my job. Hm, so far, I didn’t write anything bad about people from my work. But where are the limits? Would I at all be aware of it, if I did it? What if I wrote just some harmless thoughts and someone would feel offended?

I’d like to hear your opinion. Have you got similar concerns?

By Nana | April 3, 2005 | Topics: Blogging | No Comments »

Pew / Internet Qualitative Research

I was just surfing the Pew / Internet Project website to see what’s new and in the bottom of the site, left corner (wait, I have to check hands, cos I tend to mix up) I find the Your Input call for bloggers.

By Nana | February 26, 2005 | Topics: Blogging, Research | No Comments »

What About Your Privacy, Bloggers??????

Apparently, when blogging, one gives out all sorts of information about oneself. In different formats: text, pictures (hm, that’s about all). Telling the world about one’s private thoughts, wishes, perceptions of the world and people, fears, happy moments, sad moments. Hmmmmmm, what happened to our privacy, bloggers?

In the last few days, an interesting question was posed to me by different persons. Some did it randomly; some knew privacy could be a serious issue for me. So the question was: “What about your privacy, Bojana? People can easily interconnect the data you give out about yourself and other electronic data, gathered about you, and then know all about who you are, what you do, where you are, how you feel. And those people might want to take advantage of those data.” One of them added: “You are so much worried about your privacy and then you go and write a blog under your real name.”

True. True. I can be as paranoid about privacy as to run antispy software every day after surfing the net just to make sure to get rid of any tracking software, deleting all cookies after surfing the net, being constantly worried about the possibility of my computer being hijacked, etc etc. I hate it when I know my mobile phone provider collects data about who I call, when I call, where I was yesterday at 10pm, who sent me that text message at 11am, what was said in it. I hate it when I know my credit card is a tracking device - my bank knows exactly where am doing the payment, when, what I buy, in which country, so they can make a nice profile of consumer called Bojana. I hate it when my ISP provider tracks all my online activities – which sites did I visit yesterday, which sites I go back to, how much time do I spend there. I certainly don’t like knowing that all the emails I write are subject to be read by people who are not the intended receivers. The interception of emails is really an automatic and routine procedure (I used to use PGP key, but then, not many of my friends use them and I can’t force them to start using them). A while ago, there was an online database of all bank account holders (I found myself in it) with quite some data, published on the net by Slovenian Bank. By mistake:)) And I could go on and on and on. The capacity of surveillance possibilities is surly enhanced in Information Age, mostly due to ability of interconnection of gathered data about specific person. And by doing so, and processing that information, I as an individual should be quite scared about the fact, that almost every move I make, it is electronically registered and therefore can be used also for quite threatening purposes.

It may feel like we are performing an intimate act when we use our mobile phones and computers to transmit our private and not so private thoughts, business details, and also money! But cleaver eavesdroppers, and sometimes even not so cleaver, can hear it all. We think we are whispering, but actually we are broadcasting!

I think every person should be entitled to a workshop on How To Retain Your Privacy Nowadays! There are things we could do for more protection but we are either too lazy or too busy to learn how. We should learn more how to protect our communication and personal data against intrusion, against stealing and interconnecting the data. We should learn some cryptography in order to keep our electronic privacy.

So, my blog is like a drop into the sea (as we say it in Slovenian). Plus my blog contains no information that I wouldn’t like people to find out about. Whereas there is a lot of data tracked about me, which I don’t want to be tracked. Of course I have to do a little pre-selection of what to publish and what not to. For example, today a great thing has happened to me. I was so happy I wanted to share it with the entire world. But I better not publish it (for those curious about it, drop me an email, I will tell u all about it:))))))). So, I need to do some selection but what I post and people out there read, is what I want them to read. And all the pictures I show, I want them to be seen.

The difference is quite simple: I do the selection. I have a control over the amount of information revealed.

By Nana | January 17, 2005 | Topics: Blogging | 1 Comment »

Blogs Blogs Blogs (Not Spam Spam Spam:))

According to Pew/Internet report on Technology and Media Use, blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Here are some latest contours for the popularity of blogsphare:

• More than 8 million of the U.S. adults who use internet, said they have created a blog or web-based diary;
• by the end of 2004, there were 32 million blog readers in U.S.;
• RSS is gaining an impressive foothold with 5% of internet users aggregate their daily deliverance of blogs and other news with RSS or XML;
• BUT only 38% U.S. internet usesr know what blog is.

According to the survey, men are more likely to be blogging, most of them with broadband at home, most of them being online for more than 6 years. Blog readers seem to be somehow more of a mainstream group than bloggers themselves. Again, they are more likely to be men, young, more educated and with long online experience.

With only 38% (that’s only by my standards:)) of internet users, blogs are still in domain of sort of online geeks. But according to EPIC (for reference see the post on Media History Museum), this all is going to change.LOL. In his recent book, Who Let the Bloggers Out?, Biz Stone ask and answer the question on what blogs are:

Is blogging self expression, personal publishing, a diary, amateur journalism, the biggest disruptive technology since email, an online community, alternative media, curriculum for students, a customer relations strategy, knowledge management, navel gazing, a solution to boredom, a dream job, a style of writing, email to everyone, a fad, the answer to illiteracy, an online persona, social networking, resume fodder, phonecam pictures, or something you hide from your mother? It’s all of these and more.
A blog is a collection of digital content that, when examined over a period of time, exposes the intellectual soul of its author or authors is the act of creating, composing, and publishing this content; and a blogger is the person behind the curtain. Part social software and part web building, blogging is peer-to-peer publishing — the future of our connected lives (pp. 33-34).

I immediately looked at November’s RIS database to see what’s going on in Slovenia. Unfortunately, the questions about blogging were let out. I was rather disappointed. What I like about blogs best is the fact, that I find them very important sources of all sorts of information.

By Nana | January 4, 2005 | Topics: Blogging | No Comments »

Blogs Praised By BBC

… for offering snapshots of information from around the region and providing some useful information for those who want to help in the case of South Asia devastation. Read more …

By Nana | December 30, 2004 | Topics: Blogging | No Comments »

Visit Museum of Media History in 2014 Today

Take a fascinating look into the future of online media and journalism by visiting Museum of Media History in 2014 .
It will take 8 mins of your time but you will be having some fun:)). What happens when people have access to a breadth and depth of information, unimaginable in an earlier age? What happens when everyone contributes in some way, participates? The upcoming mystery of EPIC ….

By Nana | December 19, 2004 | Topics: Blogging | No Comments »

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