The honeymoon is over. Much of the hype and noise surrounding social media and its meteoric rise (especially in the USA) has abated. Perhaps owing to the global economic crisis, arguably due to the apparent lack of sustainable business models and possibly as a result of some semblance of reasonable thinking, we’re no longer reading about $1.6 billion investments in YouTube and $15 billion Facebook valuations.

At the same time social media or Web 2.0 or new media or whatever the heck you choose to call it certainly hasn’t disappeared either. On the one (marketing) hand we’re seeing significantly higher budget percentages being pushed at below-the-line, experiential and digital (for the purposes of this conversation including online and mobile) channels - a sure sign that business takes the effect that the social media evolution has had on their customers pretty seriously. Agencies are feeling this - a fact that keeps my company and me very busy.

A while ago I wrote a two part series of posts for the Times in a past life as a blogumist. The first post was titled “Social Media is Dead” and the objective of that post was to point out that the hype behind this New Big Thing “Social Media” had overextended its stay and it was time to see social media for what it is has become: part of the fabric of the Web itself and not some new widget. Instead the Web we came to know as a largely unresponsive mix of media types has evolved somewhat to become more social, interactive and meaningful.

Just like in the late 90s there has been a fair amount of hype surrounding social media and what it represents to the world. To a large extent I think the hype has eclipsed the reality (and a measure of practicality) and we have seen a number of the same types of services springing up in an effort to garner some of that VC funding that seemed to be flowing like water until the financial crisis/panic hit recently. In the space of a couple years we have seen social networks like Facebook explode and the rise of things called microblogging platforms like Jaiku, Twitter, Pownce, Identi.ca … (the list goes on). In some cases we have seen services pop up we couldn’t have anticipated previously and that has been great. Often it is the unexpected new thing that has more of an impact than the planned stuff.

With the amount of available VC funding diminishing it is even more important to start focussing on taking established and tested social media tools and putting them to work. Mike has a few good suggestions on how to do that in his post and I think it is fair to say that Mike has a good grasp of the state of the local market. From my perspective it is increasingly important to start paying attention to some of the more mundane and perhaps even unpleasant aspects of social media implementations too. Here I am referring to the legal issues that accompany this sort of work: things like content licensing, privacy, regulating user conduct on your Web spaces and so on.

These issues aren’t just being taken care of and when the warm fuzzy feelings associated with all this sharing and socialising wear off businesses may well find themselves staring down the barrel of a couple nasty lawsuits for copyright infringement or privacy violations. Not a happy thought at all but entirely something manageable. It makes a lot of sense to lay the groundwork for this stuff and incorporate it into your usual risk management policies and processes early on and avoid any unpleasant surprises later.

Technorati Tags:
legal, mike stopforth, new media, social media, legal issues, planning

Technorati Tags:
roy blumenthal, richard mulholland, missing link

When it comes to price the cost of a MacBook has jumped quite a bit. The top of the line black MacBook used to cost around R15 000 (at least that is what I paid for my MacBook a few months ago). The price for the top of the line MacBook is now closer to R20 000. Bear in mind that Apple typically keeps the prices for new models pretty much the same as the models they replace so a price jump of around R5 000 is pretty significant.

I had to take my wife’s MacBook in to have its hard drive replaced (again). I took it to C3 (I won’t take it anywhere else) who frequently find themselves facing long lead times from their suppliers (if there is a drive in stock it will take 3 to 4 days, if not you could be looking at a week or two). This time around they processed warranty claims (my MacBook’s drive was also failing so we ordered a replacement for that too although I could continue working with it) and hit a snag when Apple’s warranty claim processing system crashed and this necessitated a further delay. If this has been my MacBook and I didn’t have an alternative I would have been about a week and a half to 2 weeks without a computer and the ability to do the bulk of my work. That is a serious setback for a small practice like mine.

This whole thing got me thinking about what I would do if I couldn’t have a Mac. If my MacBook explodes in a puff of coloured smoke, my insurers will pay out its value when I bought it and that would put a true replacement out of reach (unless I shell out the extra few grand). Would it be worth my while to source even more cash to cover that extra cost? What else could I rely on?

I suppose one option is to go back to a Windows machine but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. The last time I tried to work with a Windows machine it didn’t go well and I wound up reformatting the machine and loading Ubuntu. From that point the machine served me pretty well. I didn’t have all the software I had become accustomed to on my Mac (and there weren’t many comparable apps available for Ubuntu either) but the laptop I was using worked well for me. Although I was grateful to return to a Mac (in the form of my current MacBook), I left the Ubuntu laptop with a distinct sense that in a world without Mac, I would be an Ubuntu user.

I recently updated to the latest Ubuntu release on my home PC (which presently exists to run my Windows based accounting software). I have partitioned the hard drive and dual boot into Windows and Ubuntu. The latest release seems to be even better than the last and although there are still usability issues (for me at least) compared to my Mac, I can’t think of a better platform for people who don’t have particularly intricate requirements of their PC, certainly not home users and most business users. Big advantages for Ubuntu users include a free and robust operating system and the capability to support older hardware with seemingly better performance than modern hardware running the latest operating systems. In addition, most of the software you would need comes with the install and there are truckloads of more free software available through a greatly simplified software installation system that is part of the OS.

That being said there are a couple reasons I am not exactly rushing to install Ubuntu on my Mac and turn my back on Apple. The big barrier to entry for me is the paucity of Mac class (or available for Linux) software like the OmniGroup’s products, Circus Ponies’ Notebook (which I have returned to in a big way), Adobe Acrobat (the full version), Transmit and so on. The cost, in terms of money and time, of developing an alternate set of workflows could be just as high as coughing up the extra few grand to buy a new and more expensive Mac so at this point it is not an easy thought experiment to process and resolve.

Although derivatives like Ubuntu do make it a lot easier for an average user to use a Linux system, the Linux development community may want to put more effort into dropping the barrier to entry by focussing on things like UI, ease of use and developing a comparable range of software to that found on current Windows and Mac systems. My (limited) sense of the Linux development community is that it has probably spent a little too much time on the fringes and not enough time developing for the mainstream. If that is the case then it is pretty short sighted. Just looking at what Canonical is doing with Ubuntu and specific projects like the Mobile Internet Device edition I can see a time when the Linux platform is in widespread use simply because of its widespread applicability and how it can manifest on a variety of devices while maintaining a high level of interactivity and functionality. Think an Ubuntu laptop working in tandem with an Ubuntu MID rather than the far more limited MacBook/iPod Touch/iPhone pairing. Linux implementations can (and are) bringing powerful functionality to modest hardware today and the potential for more is tremendous but it needs to be a no brainer for us simple people trained on Windows and Mac OS.

Technorati Tags:
mac, mac os, mac osx, macbook, migration, productivity, ubuntu, linux

One thing for sure is that WordPress has really come a long way since its early days. I vaguely remember a lot of serif fontwork and limited options when WordPress first came out and how flaky it seemed alongside TypePad (which I started blogging on).

Oh, if you have the bandwidth for it, switch the video to HD view and maximise the video to full screen.

(Source: Blog for Profit)

Technorati Tags:
video, wordpress, wordpress 2.7, dashboard, ui

The only issue is that Nokia seems to think I should be punished for using a Mac (or anything other than Windows because if I couldn’t use a Mac for some reason, I would be running Ubuntu). Why, oh why, has Nokia not produced a version of its software updater for the Mac???!! Does Microsoft have something on Nokia? Some skeleton in the closet? Preview images of a hideous handheld Nokia can’t afford to have released into the marketplace?

Why does Nokia hate me (and every other non-Windows user)?

Technorati Tags:
e71, nokia, rant, software update

I was chatting to a friend who works in the local music industry recently about the possible digital music download models we may see in South Africa in the near future and he passed a comment about the music industry’s reluctance to publish and distribute music under Creative Commons license because it can’t exactly give the music away for free! After all, this is a “for profit” industry, not some charity (he didn’t express this sentiment, I read between the sheet music). While the comment he made wasn’t exactly unexpected, it did bother me somewhat because his comment typifies a perception of Creative Commons that is both inaccurate and hampers adoption of Creative Commons licenses in in the commercial world.

I’ll pause for a moment and explain what I just wrote because you may not be too familiar with some of the terminology I just threw at you.

For starters, there is an organisation called Creative Commons which formulated a set of content licenses referred to as Creative Commons licenses. There are six core Creative Commons licenses. It isn’t necessary to discuss the distinctions between these licenses for the purposes of this article but I am happy to take you through if you would like me to (give me a shout, we’ll do coffee). What is important to know is that these licenses operate ion the context of copyright law so they are not alternatives to copyright itself but rather tools that rely on copyright for their efficacy. The reason why this is important to know lies in the nature of copyright.

Copyright is a form of protection that was formulated to encourage innovation and creativity by protecting creators’ rights to the works they created (in legalese the creators are known as “Authors” and the stuff they create is known as “Works”) and which ensures that their works may only be used in an authorised manner by people authorised by the creator to do so. Copyright protects forms of expression that may include written works (copyright vests in this article as well as in the doodles on your note pad), sound recordings, sheet music and videos, to name just a few types of works.

To put it another way, copyright is a bundle of rights in works which vest in the authors of the works and which are intended to protected works by limiting who can exploit those rights to the works. These rights include the right to make copies, create adaptations of the original works, sell the works and publish those works.

Essentially, once you reduce your ideas to a tangible form you generally enjoy protection through copyright. As a creator you are more likely to create more stuff if your ability to exploit your creations is protected and you are able to guard against any form of unauthorised use of your creations, certainly uses that run contrary to your intended use of your creations.

While it may have been conceived to stimulate creativity, the use of copyright has changed over time to effectively become a bar to creativity and innovation because copyright holders have elected to rather use copyright to lock down their works, preventing the exploitation of those works except in terms of licenses they grant. These licenses permit other people to make use of the works by granting them limited rights to the works concerned. Take a music CD as an example. Many people labour under the misapprehension that when they buy a CD from a music store they become the “owner” of that CD and can do with it what they wish. If you take a look at the tiny print at the back of the CD on your shelf you will notice that when you bought the CD you actually licensed the CD from the nebulous “music company” and you have very limited rights to the music which do not include the right to make copies of the music (whether onto another CD or by ripping the CD to your computer) or pass the music around. You can pretty much listen to the CD and appreciate the fine album art in the company of your personal CD playing devices. You can’t play the music in public or make a remix of your favourite tune and share it online. If you do anything outside the very limited parameters of the license granted to you when you handed over your hard earned cash to the cashier, you are committing copyright infringement. That is what licenses do, they set the parameters of your use of the content they are created for and any use outside the parameters of the license is unauthorised and constitutes copyright infringement.

So the solution may be to just approach the authors of the works concerned for a license that would permit you to do what you want to do with the content. This is a perfectly legitimate approach and what those authors want you to do. Typically this would involve briefing a lawyer to prepare the license (or using a license a lawyer has already prepared) which would regulate the use of the content.

There are, however, some minor difficulties with this approach which include potentially hefty legal fees; having to negotiate the terms of the license each time you want to license something and possibly not being able to really understand the terms of the license. This isn’t an issue if you are Acme (Proprietary) Limited with lawyers on the payroll to explain the intricacies of the voluminous licenses under consideration. It is a problem if you don’t have the legal expertise or resources to navigate what are often labyrinthine terms and provisions encrypted using 256 bit Legalese (which only a few remarkable lawyers can decrypt completely).

Recognising some of the limitations to this system of copyright enforcement and licensing the smart people at Creative Commons, led by Professor Lawrence Lessig formulated the six Creative Commons licenses I mentioned above. These licenses are combinations of four license elements including attribution, non-commercial use, the prohibition on derivative works (also known as adaptations) and the “share alike” element. Used in different combinations the six licenses range from the more restrictive Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives license (which requires that the author be acknowledged and prohibits any commercial use of the work or the creation of adaptations of the work) to the Attribution license which merely requires that the author of the work be properly acknowledged.

Each Creative Commons license has three versions: a human readable version, a legal code version and the machine readable version. The human readable version is the version most people see and it clearly summarises the features of the license. The legal code version is encrypted in necessary Legalese and explains what the licenses permit to lawyers in enough detail to satisfy them that the technical stuff is taken care of. Finally, the machine readable code enables software to pick up on the fact that a work is licensed under Creative Commons and, depending on what you are using on your computer, it may even tell you which license is in use.

Another big benefit of Creative Commons licenses is that they are free to use (so no legal fees unless you want to get into the nitty gritty of the legal code and even there it will be your lawyer charging you, not Creative Commons itself) and shares certain features that include the right to share the work for non-commercial purposes, the requirement that the author be properly acknowledged, the perpetual duration of the license and a pretty easy mechanism for selecting and applying the license of your choosing.

Creative Commons licenses attempt to cross the divide between the important protections afforded by copyright and the desire to facilitate sharing in the Commons, a kind of shared collection of resources for the benefit of all. Creative Commons licenses have become an integral part of the free culture movement because of its emphasis on sharing and the Commons and this has been a contributing factor towards the general perception of all Creative Commons licensed works as being free. Aside from the “feel good” benefits of sharing content in the Commons, anyone who participates in the social Web (aka Web 2.0) appreciates the benefits of sharing on the Web both personally and in business. Facilitating sharing on the Web can enable powerful marketing initiatives that can make the difference between obscurity and runaway success. Creative Commons licenses are powerful tools that help make this type of sharing possible.

While many Creative Commons licensed works are free to use and share, this is not necessarily the rule. Works can be licensed under a Creative Commons license and still be sold for profit. It really comes down to the appropriate choice of the license given what you want to achieve. As a content creator you can license your work under a non-commercial license and have a separate license to govern commercial exploitation of your work (in fact, a new protocol called CC+ enables commercial providers to use a non-commercial Creative Commons license, for example, and provide an easy guide to people who wish to make commercial use of the works under a separate license. There are sound reasons for licensing content under Creative Commons in the commercial world.

Magazine publishers may want to license their magazines under a non-commercial license to enable their readers to make copies of interesting articles and pass around to colleagues and friends without having to field and grant permission to each reader. Instead the magazine will contain details of the license and provided the readers don’t distribute the articles outside the scope of the license they need never approach the publishers who, in turn, have more time to focus on the business of magazine publishing.

When it comes to creating a greater awareness of your content consider the impact of a group of fans passing around a couple songs recorded by a new band’s music to their friends to copy and pass along for personal use as a promotional tool for an upcoming concert or album release. Here is another possibility: imagine being able to buy a CD and being able to legally rip the CD to your computer to play on your iPod? A Creative Commons license enables that and legalises a common practice that, at the moment, is an act of copyright infringement despite fans willingness to buy the CD and not a pirated version online.

The alternative rock band, Nine Inch Nails, is a pioneer in this space. They release their music online under a non-commercial Creative Commons license and provide varying pricing strategies depending on the album release and the album options. Fans can, for example, download high quality songs for free online or they can buy the same high quality songs from the band’s website. The band has also made its music available for free download on BitTorrent and other peer sharing networks. You would be forgiven for thinking that no fan would pay for the music she could simply download for free but this has proven not to be the case where it counts. In fact, this has proved to be a very lucrative model for the band because its fans are determined to support the band by buying the albums even as the band makes albums available for free download online. Nine Inch Nails recently released four instrumental albums called Ghosts I to IV. The band gave fans five options on their website: nine free downloads; $5 for all the albums in high quality audio files; $10 for a two CD set and the downloads; a $75 deluxe edition including the two CDs, a DVD, a Blu-Ray disc and the downloads as well as 2 500 limited edition sets costing $300 each. The $300 sets sold out in a matter of days earning the band $750 000 from that edition alone. What was even more interesting is that the band didn’t do this through a record label, it produced and published its music itself.

Locally media companies have been using Creative Commons licenses for somewhat more humble projects which are perhaps more meaningful because they are becoming part of our daily lives in a fairly subtle way. When BMW launched its 1-series promotion a little while ago, it built Creative Commons licenses into the rules governing a video competition where fans created their own videos about the 1-series. Rather than adopting the usual approach of forcing fans to hand over their rights to their videos to BMW, BMW instead licensed the videos from the fans using a Creative Commons license.

FNB recently launched its Shine2010 website and is licensing much of its content to visitors to the site using a Creative Commons license in an effort to encourage people to share the content in their social networks and help build a greater awareness of the content on the website.

JoziKids, a wonderful child focussed website, uses Creative Commons licenses to license content created by its advertisers who create listings on the website rather than trying to take ownership of the content in order to provide the listings to visitors to the site. In this way Merle Dietrich strikes a balance between being able to publish rich listings on the site and not interfere unduly in the advertiser’s ability to exploit their content commercially outside the website.

Despite its reputation as the hippie-freebie alternative to restrictive copyright, Creative Commons licenses have a role to play in the commercial world where the ability to apply a license to content virtually on the fly and without the costs usually associated with customised licenses is a valuable one. The one caveat in all this is that Creative Commons licenses are not the answer to all your licensing challenges. While they are well thought out legal constructs, there are circumstances which require a custom drafted license prepared by your lawyer of choice to cater for specific needs. That being said it is certainly worth your while to consider using a Creative Commons license to license your content. These licenses better achieve the objective of stimulating creativity, innovation and content sharing while at the same time protecting creators’ rights and business models.

Technorati Tags:
business case, content licensing, copyright, creative commons, license, nine inch nails, shine 2010, jozikids

Whether you’ve lost signal on the subway or turned your phone’s wireless connection off on an airplane, you no longer have to wait to read and compose your Gmail or Google Apps email on your phone. Today, we’re happy to introduce Gmail for mobile 2.0, designed to be faster and more reliable in low signal areas and to even support basic offline access on phones like the Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson W910i, and BlackBerry Curve. Our latest version of Gmail for mobile also allows you to access multiple Gmail or Google Apps email accounts from the same application.

To find out more about Gmail for mobile 2.0, check out this post on the Google Mobile blog and watch this demo video:

Here is a summary of some of the features from the Google Mobile blog:

• Overall performance improvement: You should experience significant raw speed improvement, smoother scrolling, and no freezing.
• Multiple accounts management: If you have both a Gmail and Google Apps email account, you can easily switch between them quickly. You will no longer have to use two different mobile apps to access personal and work emails.
• Multiple mobile email drafts: You can save multiple email drafts in your mobile phone, so that you can pick and choose what you would like to send later.
• Powerful shortcut keys: If you have a QWERTY phone, you can use shortcut keys. Hit ‘z’ to undo, ‘k’ to go to a newer conversation, and ‘j’ to go to an older conversation. See Menu/Help in the app for more shortcuts.
• Basic offline support: Can’t get a signal? Not a problem. You can compose and read your most recent emails even when there is no signal. Also, any outgoing messages will be saved in the outbox on your phone and sent automatically when you’re back in coverage.

I have had the Gmail mobile and its Google Apps equivalent on my E71 and, before that, the N73 for a while now. For the most part I have been using my E71’s built in mail client and occasionally switching to the Google apps when I feel like a change or want to search my mail (you can do that with the Google mobile apps).

This update is pretty zippy and I like the ability to switch between multiple Google mail services (my personal and work email accounts run off Gmail and Google Apps, respectively). Before this update I had two apps installed on my phones and had to exit the one and open the other to check both mail. With this update the Google mobile app becomes a viable alternative to my E71’s built in mail service, at least from the perspective of handling some of my email requirements (I don’t think it is possible to set up the Google mobile app to be the default mail client when I create email from my Contacts or elsewhere on my phone using the phone’s menu options - let me know if I am wrong?).

The offline support, for one thing, in the update is a fantastic addition because the previous versions have been dependent on the phone being online.

(I signed up for Nokia’s beta email service the other day to see what all the fuss is about and while it looked appealing at the time, the sign up process was a little convoluted and it is going to be a paid service when it moves out of beta so I haven’t done much with the service since signing up. The benefit of that service is that it will give users access to up to 6 email accounts over a secure connection but since my email is pretty much running off Google’s mail services, the new mobile app is a better option for me. I just don’t find the thought of paying to receive my free email appealing so even if the new Google app wasn’t available, I’d probably just stick with the E71’s (pretty good) email client.)

I had my E71’s mail client automatically retrieving headers from my mail accounts. I’ve disabled that and I have the new Google app running in the background. It has a notification function so I want to see how that works. One question I have is what impact having it running in the background will have on my phone’s battery. My E71 seems to have a 2-3 day battery life with the way I use it (I use it for data quite a bit, alternating between mobile data and wifi as well as for GPS - still playing). I think having the automatic retrieval on probably shaved half a day or so off that with the periodic checks during the day.

All in all it seems like a great update. I am curious whether I can substitute this app for my built in mail service when it comes to composing mail using the phone’s menu options. I know I can customise some of the keys to activate the service when I do want to send/receive email but that isn’t quite full integration.

Have you tried out this version? What do you think?

Technorati Tags:
e71, gmail, google, google mobile, mobile data, gmail for mobile 2.0, mobile app, nokia email

(there should be a gadget above this line … it didn’t show when I published this post, hopefully it will be visible by the time you see this)

If you are a lawyer or law student or know of really good South African legal resources, let me know and I’ll add the site to the search engine.

Technorati Tags:
google, search, custom search, legal research resources, legal research

• Jaiku Mobile (ok, not really an IM service but close
• Fring
• Gizmo
• Nokia Chat
• Mxit

Of the lot I am probably going to use Mxit the least. I think it is one of those services which is better for a certain age group and I am a good decade outside that age group. It is the application I have on my phone so I can feel a little more hip/cool/whatever when I am around the younger folk.

Jaiku is pretty much in a class of its own but I included it here because its location based capability is along similar lines to Nokia Chat which takes location a step further and integrates with GPS and the address book. Nokia Chat is a great app. It is Jabber based and doesn’t allow for integration with other services so it isn’t exactly going to overtake the likes of Fring or Gizmo which do allow for that level of integration. At the same time it does interest me, if anything because Jonathan Greene raved about it (I think I am becoming a bit of a Jonathan Greene fanboy … apologies to Jonathan Greene …). You connect using your Ovi credentials (anyone else using Ovi?) which translate into Jabber credentials and you can add other Jabber users (including GTalk) to your contacts list.

The two that intrigue me at the moment are Fring and Gizmo. Most people I know are using Fring on their mobile devices. It connects a range of IM services including Skype and even allows for Skype calls (very handy). Gizmo also connects to a range of IM services and uses the Gizmo VOIP service which is based on something called SIP. I don’t know much about SIP except I understand is based on an open protocol for whatever that is worth. I am actually hoping that one of the very bright people who come across this post can explain the value of SIP to me.

Of course I must just point out that Fring also supports SIP (I just haven’t been able to persuade Fring to log into my SIP service) so it isn’t a case of SIP based Gizmo versus Fring. There is some overlap. Of course the reverse isn’t true and Gizmo doesn’t connect to the Skype service so if Skype connectivity on the go is a big issue for you, don’t even look at Gizmo.

One advantage Gizmo does have for me is that it integrates into my E71 alongside Nokia Chat in my address book (is that an old fashioned term? should that be “contacts list”?) and my phone will use Gizmo as the facilitator for Internet calls on the phone. Integration with my phone is a big plus but the difference between Gizmo’s level of integration and Fring’s installation is probably marginal.

I don’t have a conclusion of any sort right now when it comes to whether to prefer Fring over Gizmo or vice versa. I would like to know if you do have any thoughts one way or another or about what the whole SIP thing is all about and what it means for VOIP and world peace?

FYI: I have started posting a couple SIP-related links to Delicious if you are interested …

Technorati Tags:
e71, nokia, nokia e71, SIP, voip, gizmo, skype, nokia chat




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