At this point, most people have Googled themselves. Unfortunately, if you Google yourself, it's entirely possible (and dare I say likely?) that there's going to be at least on thing on the results you're not happy about. Now, most people either ignore the results or, if it really matters, start checking out all the blogs and websites dedicated to managing your online reputation and some go as far as to hire a company to fix their online reputation. If you haven't looked into this yet, online reputation management is pretty simple: If you don't like the Google results for your name, do things that will cause more favorable results to be ranked higher. Start a Twitter. Set up a Google profile. Blog.
Easy enough, right?
Well, not for Beverly Stayart. When she entered her name in Yahoo (and quite a few people would say that using Yahoo was mistake one), she didn't like the results. Apparently, her name was associated with, among other things, erectile dysfunction drugs. I'm still not entirely clear as to why this happened, since, according to the write-up in Lowering the Bar, her internet preference focused on "humanitarian efforts on behalf of baby seals, wolves, and wild horses; what she describes as 'scholarly posts' on a website; two poems that appear on a Danish website; and genealogy research." But, that's not important to the story. What's important to the story is that she decided that her best recourse was to sue Yahoo and Google. The court didn't find in her favor (at least in the Yahoo), so she was right back to where she started...except a little worse. Well, a lot worse.
Now, if you Google "Beverly Stayart," a lot of the results involve Stayart v. Yahoo! In fact, the top result is a Techdirt entry that documents another lawsuit she's filed against Yahoo. Turns out that Yahoo now autosuggests "bev stayart levitra" after entering "bev stayart." After a little digging a bit, Techdirt discovered the reason for this. In the dismissal, the judge wrote "Stayart alleges that Yahoo! and Overture knowingly connected and continues to connect her name (Bev Stayart) with sexual dysfunction drugs Cialis, Viagra and Levitra on its search engine results for her."
I'm still struggling to understand the logic behind this suit. Even if Stayart had succeeded, this is the sort of case that would get a lot of attention. Assuming that the judge had ordered Yahoo and Google to get rid original results, the new results would still feature some pretty unflattering stories about Stayart, in addition to describing the original results that led to the suit. To use a high school example, it would be like having a handful of students passing around an unflattering story about one of their classmates, Student A, and A demanding that the principal call an assembly and announce that the original unflattering story wasn't true to the entire student body. If that happened, not only would everyone (including people who would had never even heard of A) know the original rumor, but they would also know A as the person who overreacted and demanded that the principal drag them all to the gym for the assembly. As far as damage control goes, it pretty much misses the entire point.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The Computer Is Always Right
I love computers. I really do. I think that they're a valuable tool that makes everyone's life easier, even the people who wouldn't go within ten feet of a computer voluntarily. (Actually, do those people exist anymore?) The problem occurs when actual intelligence is subservient to artificial intelligence. What I'm referring to is a situation where clearly the computer is wrong and the solution is simple and obvious, but somehow no one is able to step in and override it.
My experience at Best Buy today is a great example of this.
My roommate and I needed a new all-in-one printer. The Brother I bought years ago that grudgingly worked with Windows has declared outright war on Macs, specifically my roommate's Mac. It refuses to work with her computer at all, which is a pretty big headache since she needs to use the scanner fairly regularly for art. We've debated getting a replacement for a few months, but never got around to it.
We decided that yesterday was the day. I had a $15 rewards certificate from Best Buy that was set to expire that day, plus the printer we wanted had a great price. We hit one minor snag, though. Actually, multiple minor snags in the form of holiday shoppers forming the longest line I had ever seen in a Best Buy before. It occurred to me that we could order the printer online with in-store pickup. I could use the certificate and we could just pick up the printer with minimal hassle.
Or not.
Despite the fact that there were about ten printers in the store fifteen minutes before closing, I still received an email this morning saying that the store couldn't fulfill the order because the item wasn't available. Naturally, we were both a bit skeptical and decided to check it out for ourselves. We found the display and there were eight printers left.
Now, common sense says that I wanted a printer and they wanted to sell a printer, so I could easily get this problem ironed out and there would be a nice shiny new printer at home tonight. Unfortunately, I forgot I was dealing with computers and customer service.
After the obligatory computer menu and a few minutes of hold music, I finally had a person on the line. I explained the situation. He explained to me that despite the fact that I was holding the item in my hand, the computer said that there were none in stock and so nothing could be done. I might be able to talk to someone who worked in the store to find out what they wanted to do, but it probably wouldn't help since the computer said there were zero in stock. Oh, but it might be possible to have another store send a printer to the store I had ordered it from.
I thought briefly about trying to flag down a store employee, but realized that would be an exercise in futility. There were ten people in line at the customer service desk, so that wasn't a very appealing option either. Finally, I gave up and told the man I was talking to that I would figure out what I wanted to do and call back.
My roommate and I carried the printer that didn't exist back to the seven other printers that weren't really there. After all, the computer is always right, right?
My experience at Best Buy today is a great example of this.
My roommate and I needed a new all-in-one printer. The Brother I bought years ago that grudgingly worked with Windows has declared outright war on Macs, specifically my roommate's Mac. It refuses to work with her computer at all, which is a pretty big headache since she needs to use the scanner fairly regularly for art. We've debated getting a replacement for a few months, but never got around to it.
We decided that yesterday was the day. I had a $15 rewards certificate from Best Buy that was set to expire that day, plus the printer we wanted had a great price. We hit one minor snag, though. Actually, multiple minor snags in the form of holiday shoppers forming the longest line I had ever seen in a Best Buy before. It occurred to me that we could order the printer online with in-store pickup. I could use the certificate and we could just pick up the printer with minimal hassle.
Or not.
Despite the fact that there were about ten printers in the store fifteen minutes before closing, I still received an email this morning saying that the store couldn't fulfill the order because the item wasn't available. Naturally, we were both a bit skeptical and decided to check it out for ourselves. We found the display and there were eight printers left.
Now, common sense says that I wanted a printer and they wanted to sell a printer, so I could easily get this problem ironed out and there would be a nice shiny new printer at home tonight. Unfortunately, I forgot I was dealing with computers and customer service.
After the obligatory computer menu and a few minutes of hold music, I finally had a person on the line. I explained the situation. He explained to me that despite the fact that I was holding the item in my hand, the computer said that there were none in stock and so nothing could be done. I might be able to talk to someone who worked in the store to find out what they wanted to do, but it probably wouldn't help since the computer said there were zero in stock. Oh, but it might be possible to have another store send a printer to the store I had ordered it from.
I thought briefly about trying to flag down a store employee, but realized that would be an exercise in futility. There were ten people in line at the customer service desk, so that wasn't a very appealing option either. Finally, I gave up and told the man I was talking to that I would figure out what I wanted to do and call back.
My roommate and I carried the printer that didn't exist back to the seven other printers that weren't really there. After all, the computer is always right, right?
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Not So Delicious Now
Edit: Turns out Delicious is only being sold, not shut down.
I'm not necessarily an early adopter, but I'm not the person who has to be dragged on the bandwagon, kicking and screaming all the way. In other words, I don't fear change, but I also don't embrace change just for the sake of change. What this generally means is that when a new product or service is released, I'm not going to buy it just for the sake of being current. I generally wait to see if it's something that will benefit me. If so, I'm all for it. If not, I'll let it pass. The plus side to this is that I seldom regret buying a product or signing up for a service. The downside is that I sometimes find myself wishing that I'd thrown caution to the wind and embraced the latest thing, just so that I could say I was there when it started.
I suppose that this was a long way of saying that I recently signed up for Delicious. If you aren't familiar with the service, it started back in 2003 as a social bookmarking service. Users added their links, including tags. The site was useful for two reasons. First, it allowed users to add and tag their bookmarks, meaning that they could access a current and neatly organized list of their bookmarks from any location. If you've ever switched computers and lost links or spent ages trying to figure out exactly where you bookmarked that link that you really need, you'll see why this was a good idea. Second, the site kept track of how many people added a bookmark, so it was a great way to see what was popular on a given day.
I've known about the site for ages, back when it was still del.icio.us. I never signed up, mainly because I didn't see a reason to. The idea of a large, systematic list of my bookmarks on a site like that was beyond me. I rarely bookmark sites and, when I do, I tend to do it in such a way that it's virtually impossible to actually find the site when I need it. I finally broke down and signed up a couple of months ago and I've been slowly building my own library of organized, tagged bookmarks.
Unfortunately, I found out today that Yahoo is shutting down Delicious. The timing was interesting for me because I had just decided a couple of days ago that it was pointless to save links to two or more sites (I also use Digg and StumbleUpon). I guess I was wrong about that.
I got off fairly easy, though. I only had a handful of sites that I needed to save, most of which I very easily added to Digg and StumbleUpon. However, looking at some of the comments to the stories, some people were apparently pretty upset. A few people mentioned having over a thousand (one person said 4800) links on Delicious with no backup. If that sounds a little excessive, if someone signed up for Delicious back in even 2004 and saved three links a week, that would come out to over a thousand bookmarks.
This raises a few questions on whether a service like Delicious is a good thing or not. As I said earlier, the benefits are fairly obvious. The user has a list of bookmarks that can be accessed from any computer and won't be erased if there's a problem with the user's computer. As anyone who uses multiple computers or who has lost data due to a computer problem and no backup, those are pretty obvious benefits. The drawback is that the user has little or no control over the content once it's posted. As shown with Delicious, the content disappear with little or no warning.
So what to do? Ignore online services and keep the material on your hard drive and under your control? Post and risk it? Post to multiple sites?
I think that the steps taken should depend on the value of the content. For instance, I read webcomics. When I find a strip that's either very amusing or might be relevant to something in the future, I bookmark it. Given that some of the bookmarks are a couple of years old and haven't been used in that time, losing them wouldn't be a huge tragedy, so why bother backing them up? On the other hand, something like pictures or video might be much more valuable. In that case, a little extra effort might be worthwhile, but it has to be within reason.
For my part, I'm not going to write off online services. Having a copy of important files stored remotely is a good thing. I am, however, going to avoid putting my faith in one service. For instance, for links I know I want to keep, I plan to use both Digg and StumbleUpon. I'm also going to work on keeping the bookmark folder in my browser up-to-date and organized, rather than just bookmarking and letting it go. For photos, I plan to make sure they're organized and tagged on my computer, then post to Flickr and a backup site.
It seems like a good number of the articles and blogs I read mention cloud computing. I think it's a wonderful thing and I think it's going to be used more and more. However, even as I use it more and more (and I know I will), I also plan to keep things organized on my hard drive and to be more diligent about backing things up. Hopefully, I'll be able to implement a system that lets me accomplish both.
I'm not necessarily an early adopter, but I'm not the person who has to be dragged on the bandwagon, kicking and screaming all the way. In other words, I don't fear change, but I also don't embrace change just for the sake of change. What this generally means is that when a new product or service is released, I'm not going to buy it just for the sake of being current. I generally wait to see if it's something that will benefit me. If so, I'm all for it. If not, I'll let it pass. The plus side to this is that I seldom regret buying a product or signing up for a service. The downside is that I sometimes find myself wishing that I'd thrown caution to the wind and embraced the latest thing, just so that I could say I was there when it started.
I suppose that this was a long way of saying that I recently signed up for Delicious. If you aren't familiar with the service, it started back in 2003 as a social bookmarking service. Users added their links, including tags. The site was useful for two reasons. First, it allowed users to add and tag their bookmarks, meaning that they could access a current and neatly organized list of their bookmarks from any location. If you've ever switched computers and lost links or spent ages trying to figure out exactly where you bookmarked that link that you really need, you'll see why this was a good idea. Second, the site kept track of how many people added a bookmark, so it was a great way to see what was popular on a given day.
I've known about the site for ages, back when it was still del.icio.us. I never signed up, mainly because I didn't see a reason to. The idea of a large, systematic list of my bookmarks on a site like that was beyond me. I rarely bookmark sites and, when I do, I tend to do it in such a way that it's virtually impossible to actually find the site when I need it. I finally broke down and signed up a couple of months ago and I've been slowly building my own library of organized, tagged bookmarks.
Unfortunately, I found out today that Yahoo is shutting down Delicious. The timing was interesting for me because I had just decided a couple of days ago that it was pointless to save links to two or more sites (I also use Digg and StumbleUpon). I guess I was wrong about that.
I got off fairly easy, though. I only had a handful of sites that I needed to save, most of which I very easily added to Digg and StumbleUpon. However, looking at some of the comments to the stories, some people were apparently pretty upset. A few people mentioned having over a thousand (one person said 4800) links on Delicious with no backup. If that sounds a little excessive, if someone signed up for Delicious back in even 2004 and saved three links a week, that would come out to over a thousand bookmarks.
This raises a few questions on whether a service like Delicious is a good thing or not. As I said earlier, the benefits are fairly obvious. The user has a list of bookmarks that can be accessed from any computer and won't be erased if there's a problem with the user's computer. As anyone who uses multiple computers or who has lost data due to a computer problem and no backup, those are pretty obvious benefits. The drawback is that the user has little or no control over the content once it's posted. As shown with Delicious, the content disappear with little or no warning.
So what to do? Ignore online services and keep the material on your hard drive and under your control? Post and risk it? Post to multiple sites?
I think that the steps taken should depend on the value of the content. For instance, I read webcomics. When I find a strip that's either very amusing or might be relevant to something in the future, I bookmark it. Given that some of the bookmarks are a couple of years old and haven't been used in that time, losing them wouldn't be a huge tragedy, so why bother backing them up? On the other hand, something like pictures or video might be much more valuable. In that case, a little extra effort might be worthwhile, but it has to be within reason.
For my part, I'm not going to write off online services. Having a copy of important files stored remotely is a good thing. I am, however, going to avoid putting my faith in one service. For instance, for links I know I want to keep, I plan to use both Digg and StumbleUpon. I'm also going to work on keeping the bookmark folder in my browser up-to-date and organized, rather than just bookmarking and letting it go. For photos, I plan to make sure they're organized and tagged on my computer, then post to Flickr and a backup site.
It seems like a good number of the articles and blogs I read mention cloud computing. I think it's a wonderful thing and I think it's going to be used more and more. However, even as I use it more and more (and I know I will), I also plan to keep things organized on my hard drive and to be more diligent about backing things up. Hopefully, I'll be able to implement a system that lets me accomplish both.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Never Let Me Go
This is one of those books that I wish I were reading in English class or with a reading group because I just want to discuss it so badly. In fact, I had to make notes about it before I finished because I was so engaged. I picked this up solely because it was on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list, so I wasn't aware of the main plot. I just thought it was a book about adults looking back at their time in an English boarding school. Early on, a few things stand out as not being quite right, ways people behave, comments made, etc. I basically found myself reading eagerly to fill in what I thought were a few minor blanks and discrepancies, only to find they were the most important part of the book. I suppose it's also a testament to Ishiguro's subtlety and how well the book is put together that I didn't realize exactly how significant one point was until the very end (though I did have a few suspicions).
The plot is pretty simple. The narrator is Kathy H., who works as a carer and deals with various donors. She, and the other major characters in the novel attended a boarding school called Hailsham where they were watched over by guardians. The different terms are the first hint that something is off and even that is fairly subtle. As the novel progresses, the character's lives progress as well and the reader follows them through school, into their transition years, and finally into their chosen...vocation. The reader follows their journey of both self-discovery, discovering the truth about their existence, and their eventual decision on whether to accept their fates or fight against them.
I'm not sure what was so engrossing about the novel. The writing style was amazing, but very easy to read. Watching the development of the characters is fascinating, mostly because the characters are amazingly easy to relate to, despite their extraordinary situation. Finally, in addition to everything else, there's the search for answers throughout the book that just keeps the reader absorbed. Even after the book is over, the moral and ethical dilemmas that the novel raises stay with you. Overall, the book is amazing on every front.
The plot is pretty simple. The narrator is Kathy H., who works as a carer and deals with various donors. She, and the other major characters in the novel attended a boarding school called Hailsham where they were watched over by guardians. The different terms are the first hint that something is off and even that is fairly subtle. As the novel progresses, the character's lives progress as well and the reader follows them through school, into their transition years, and finally into their chosen...vocation. The reader follows their journey of both self-discovery, discovering the truth about their existence, and their eventual decision on whether to accept their fates or fight against them.
I'm not sure what was so engrossing about the novel. The writing style was amazing, but very easy to read. Watching the development of the characters is fascinating, mostly because the characters are amazingly easy to relate to, despite their extraordinary situation. Finally, in addition to everything else, there's the search for answers throughout the book that just keeps the reader absorbed. Even after the book is over, the moral and ethical dilemmas that the novel raises stay with you. Overall, the book is amazing on every front.
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