Skype conversation from this afternoon

[4:36:22 PM] In Search of Sunrise says: i went to see’s candy yesterday and told the clerk that “do you know your boss is warren buffert?”  the clerk said.. who is warren buffett?

I chuckled.

Press 1 to skip this message.

Hi you’ve reached John’s cell phone. I’m not here right now, but if you leave your name and your number I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks!

Thanks John, I completely forgot how to leave a voice mail, I’ve only called you 30 times but it always helps to be reminded.

*NOT*

This is a public service announcement to everyone. Please, at beginning of your voice mail message, tell your callers what number to push to skip over your introduction (it’s different for different carriers AND services areas). Believe it or not most of us have left a voice mail before and know who we are calling. We don’t need to be instructed how to do it every time we call you.  Those of us who leave many messages a week will appreciate the 10 minutes a month we save by not having to hear the same thing repeated to us every time.

Thanks!

It’s probably the inner academic in me but I love white papers. Adrian Chan, an award-winning web developer located in San Francisco, California, specializing in  social interaction design has put together an interesting white paper examining principles of social interaction design through examples of social software sites such as Flickr, Tribe, Friendster, MySpace, and others.

Its 76 pages long, reads more like a blog/essay than an industry white paper but is populated with good insight.  I’ve posted some tasty quotes and observations below:

On Social Media’s ‘voice’:
Because it is supplied directly by participants, social media talk is less produced than that of the mass media, and relations are generally more authentic and real (closer to the street, and real life, paradoxically).

On Myspace
MySpace has a proactive “always on” posture towards virtual presence. While members don’t have to meet in real-time as they do, for example, in online games, lines are always open and the dial tone is constant. And MySpace occupies a strange zone between public and private—as the online world is a public space not in the present tense, but in the archived tense. Similarly, one’s presence online is not real in the physical present, but becomes real and valid as it attracts attention and participation. If there is such a thing as social capital, then it is earned and spent as social currency at MySpace, and one’s presence has the value that accrues to those who can demonstrate social competence (read: flirtation).

On User Generated Content:
There are two dimensions to user-generated content: the contributor and his or her contribution. I’d put this in plain English as people and content but I’d run afoul of the slogan, popular in social software circles, that “people are the content.”  Social software sites vary in their emphasis on contributors and contributions depending on what kind of system the are, and the kind of participation the site encourages. They can make people more interesting, or content. And though people lead to content and vice versa, the distinction is significant. It influences site architecture, navigation, layout, and use of sound, video, and images.

Check out the whole paper on Adrian Chan’s website Gravity7
http://www.gravity7.com/articles_G7_SxD_Social_Content-12-21-06.html

The Critical Path - Words, Thoughts and Musings of Nii A. Ahene winning the search rankings for the term ‘Nii’. It’s vain I know and I have a lot of competition from organizations like  National Institute of Immunology in India, but I think I can get onto the first SERP (Currently on the the 5th) it by this time next year.

We shall see.

-Nii

I really don’t want subjugate you to this kind of neglect but I’ve been really busy lately. Between work, consulting, and fleshing out new ideas, I haven’t had much time to write good, quality entries.

I’ll try to update once a week, with if nothing else some links to news stories or articles that I’ve found interesting.

-Nii

I’m going to save my saliva on this one. If you haven’t heard YOU are Time’s person of the year because UGC has done so much to change the world this year (Iraq? Lebanon? Palestine? China? India? Definitely nothing going on there). Dominic Knight of the Radar sums it up best:

This strikes me as another one of those lamo attempts by an old-media publication to show that it’s oh-so hip to the Digital Revolution. Mmm, yeah, YouTube and MySpace. Incredible. Facebook, Flickr, Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, Friendster, Second Life, blogging, yada yada yada. There hasn’t been this much hype around the internet since the bubble burst five years ago. And most of that hype isn’t user-generated. It’s magazines like TIME flailing to pretend that they’re staying abreast of changes that their own hype says will threaten their very existence.

Check out his whole article here

I would link you to the full TIME article, but I don’t think they deserve my Page Rank vote, let alone my massive traffic. Google Person of the Year and if a Time Warner link pops up under paid search ads, make sure you click those instead of the natural search listings for good measure. Good attempt at link bait though, I hope the entire blogosphere NOFOLLOW’s your incoming links for the next decade.

That would be pretty funny.

I’m a casual writer, frequent reader of the heel press, here are my thoughts on the changes:
While the old writing base may be alienated by the changes to the format, the fact remains that the old format was not stickiest… The new model lowers barriers to entry. Not everyone can be a writer, but almost anyone can take a camera, point and shoot. Heel 2.0 is a shift to a multi-format content base opens the door to all sorts of a content submissions. What’s more, writing attracts a certain type of user… you’re likely to cast a wider net by appealing to a larger cacophony of senses. Additionally the multi-format nature of the heel 2.0 opens the door to ultimately providing support for both music and video submissions.

At the end of the day I see heel 2.0 as a clearinghouse for the college creativa, a place where artists of different disciplines can share their work with one another across the nation. In order to succeed in this regard the heel needs to take an active roll marketing and attracting the attention of creative college aged individuals by leveraging their existing audience as a selling point as why they should publish their work on the heel.

Nii Ahene (2:28:41 PM): well they were founded during the first .com boom
Nii Ahene (2:28:49 PM): so i see how they were able to pull that off
Rick (2:28:54 PM): yeah
Rick (2:29:02 PM): that helped them to blow up
Nii Ahene (2:29:05 PM): though things are feeling boomish again now
Rick (2:29:13 PM): a little bit
Rick (2:29:19 PM): except this time
Rick (2:29:22 PM): with actual value
Rick (2:29:28 PM): not perceived value
Nii Ahene (2:30:02 PM): =) that’s what we all keep telling ourselves

From the UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business On-line Application essay prompt.

“As reported by the New York Times in the June 11, 2006 article, For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Resume, some recruiters are looking up applicants on social networking sites like Facebook.com, where college students often post risqué photographs and provocative comments in what some mistakenly believe is relative privacy. Should employers not access this information using their personal alumni accounts?

Or, should students not post photographs or text that may be inappropriate to show to their potential employers? What ethical, privacy, and/or technological issues should be considered and why? What solution do you propose?”

Ridiculously long tailed, Bruinpied seeded New York Times article rears its head again. So apparently Haas is using an issue I brought to the forefront of public consciousness (Yes, the article’s Tien Nguyen IS BRUINPI) to weed out business school candidates this year after rejecting from that very school 2 years ago.

Just too bad Alan Finder’s editor stripped out the link to bruinpied.com. This article has turned up not only at my university but my high school… one could imagine the traffic this seemingly ever green article would have sent to BP.com =/.
Maybe I should offer consulting advice to prospective Haas candidates. Lets throw up some facebook ads and see what sticks.

Music sales

Oct 26th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Not surprisingly, America is the world’s biggest music market, with retail sales of $4.9 billion in the first half of the year. However, Britain, Japan and Norway, which is only the 19th-biggest market, buy more music per person. Rich does not necessarily mean big: Brazil, with sales of $163m, Mexico, with $162m, and South Africa, with $98m, all make the top 20 by absolute size.

Just wanted to share this, but I don’t feel too compelled to write out and publish my thoughts concisely.