Wow, so apparently there is no way to get MY CONTENT out of Yahoo's Totally Self-Contained little beehive otherwise known as Yahoo Buzz. It's so pathetically lame, I'm not even going to link to it.

How many more non-starter closed cul-de-sacs do we have to endure before we reach the Point of Know Return of the fully transparent and portable open grid that we've all imagined and worked to build over the past half century?

So, it wasn’t enough that multiple uploads of my profile pic (in each of the prescribed formats: .jpg, .gif, .png) from multiple browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera) and multiple platforms (Mac, PC, Linux) all FAILED with the bogus error that the images were the wrong format. No, that wasn’t enough. When I went to send friendly feedback, I was bitchslapped by some anonymous and clueless developer’s uniformed decision to incorrectly parse the email form data. Again.

This has begun happening more and more in recent years: ignorance of, or just ignoring the RFC’s that define how the internet is supposed to work for all of us. Oh, and by the way, this is even the same email that has been my official WSJ.com email for years.

It’s fairly easy to tell a seasoned software developer from an amateur tinkerer by their response to these situations. The lazy say, “well, you should use Gmail like everyone else.” Fine, I do have a Gmail account; but that’s not the point. The true engineer responds more along the lines of, “yikes, yeah, we need to fix that ASAP.” Engineers pay attention to the “boring details” like unified standards so that we are all able to come to the aid of our friends in situations like the #iranelection. You might think it’s a stupid, boring, geeky detail, until your stuff doesn’t work, right? So, let’s not get lazy, my much-envied emerging interwebz geniuses; they’re called the RFC’s. Let’s stick to ‘em, mkay? And as for nicks and dings to the WSJ brand, don’t even get me started. There is simply no excuse.

Reading this post from Activating WOM reminds me of listening to one of my SEO friends describe the challenges facing his business, not all that long ago. As I listened, realized that the initial SEO arms race is basically over. Everyone has a full stockpile of the exact same weapons from the last failed war. There is simply very little opportunity for meaningful marginal differentiation left between SEO providers. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, many of the same people who stand to gain most from the new social media arsenal, also seem to be largely ignoring some of the most refined new tools; or waiting for someone else to go first. Doesn’t that open the door wide open to gain an early mover advantage? “Yeah early,” you might think, “but isn’t it still too early?” That answer depends on where you want to position your company, brand, product, or service. There are already growing numbers of important benchmarks and Case Studies that bear out the effectiveness of word of mouth (WOM) methods that emerging super tools like PeopleBrowsr have instantiated. These tools are rolling out of production and into the active theater, right now. One representative example is the PepsiCo SXSW campaign that continues to evolve as Pepsico Zeitgeist. My very mention of these here is another testament to its ongoing success, because I personally get nothing, nada, Zilch from Zeitgeist! Yet, the brand just got more exposure. Moreover, if you wait until all these examples are all published in the HBR,  McKinsey, or whatever, you’ll be far too late. Again. Why not strive to become that Featured Case Study, this time? Many brands — from the emerging local to the renewing global — will do just that by Activating WOM in 2009 and following suit in 2010. IMO, what Kevin and Jennifer are talking about is not just a trendy new way, but perhaps The Very Best Way to begin defining a more meaningful, practical, and personalized brand value differentiation; one that richly engages a target audience, right down to the core of individual customers. This would be a welcomed departure from recent decades of Death From Above, Business As Usual, during which, the very principles of brand differentiation have been largely hijacked by myopic, perspective-skewed supply-siders. Today’s sophisticated, would-be brand advocates and ambassadors see right through all that noise. Companies that seek to achieve brand loyalty through mass robotic SEO alone, should not be surprised with robotic results that include unenthusiastic, bar-coded, cookied, QR’d, numbered customers who only respond to the next brute force stimuli, come-on, or gimme-half-off gimmick. That’s far too labor intensive and costly to maintain over the long run. If brands want to win hearts and minds for decades at a time, to nurture and grow Legacy Grade brand loyalty, they have no choice but to win them over One At A Time; and the best way — nay, the only way — to do that is through Relationships that are built upon Authenticity and Trust. Toward that end, WOM has a long history of being the highest integrity, least obnoxious, and most reliable conduit for conveying those human values. Period. OTOH, learning how to create a sustainable, scalable WOM marketplace is not quite so straightforward. That’s where companies need all the help they can get. One drawback that I worry about is that if WOM devolves into a pure popularity contest that merely shifts existing resource skews around without enabling an ever more even flow model. I personally think that would utterly miss the mark. Thankfully, none of the credible business leaders exploring and exploiting such methods have ever said that such changes would be quick or easy; only that they would result in steady, sustainable growth of Longitudinal Brand Loyalty. Personally, I further suspect that the most innovative companies and brands will be those that demonstrate how to generously and proportionately allocate the direct financial benefits of this Conversation As Content across the entire value communication spectrum, including the social conveyers of those values themselves — from the most casual mentioner, to the most enthusiastic brand ambassador. These innovators will be numbered among the new banner brands of the post Great Recession economy, and services like Seesmic could have started to realize these disruptive revenue generating opportunities this long ago. Maybe Seesmic did listen to the community way back when (and even farther back) and we just haven’t seen the results, yet. I know that this is saying a mouthful and may be an attempt to compress too much into too small a space; I promise to try and do better to unpack in greater detail in a later post. In any event, these new business methods and models do eventually come full circle in a way that disrupts the old hardened categories and empowers new human capabilities by measured, pragmatic steps. We might also take some small comfort in the reminder that back in the day, people used to call a combination of slightly discomfiting cognitive dissonance and palpable possibility, the meandering, iterative path of progress. Onward!

Thank you for the RT’s — greatly appreciated. I hope to get back to more meaningful blogging and tweeting once we get fully settled here in the new digs. In the meantime, #feedly continues its exciting excursion into the new frontier of User Guided, Participatory Design. This embodiment of the now familiar webified version of karma should further help us each to find our unique niche or various areas of effective resonance with the community. Feedly is one of the defining instantiations — like PeopleBrowsr — of an entire new breed of adaptive UI improvements that further prove to me that “The Interface is the Platform.” I consider Feedly to be a bit of a chameleon because it adaptively alters the characteristics of your existing RSS animal to better blend with its current environment. Increasingly, as the browser usurps the desktop and as the exponential proliferation of human-data interactions accelerates, the WAY that we interact with all these data becomes a major, if not primary determinant of human effectiveness: productivity, in the old-world industrial capitalism vernacular, but even that measure is by now increasingly irrelevant outside of meatspace. There is also a natural progression for this interface-as-platform trend toward Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI); but we’ll get to that soon enough. Today, let’s just give Feedly some well deserved RT love, shall we? TIA.

While it seems the pinnacle of tautology to say once again that open source standards must Hold The Center for web development; here I am, repeating the obvious once again, for the sake of the oblivious, who will never even see this. . File under #fatal #futility I suppose. . Yet, the risks to the individual and society of failing that core mission continues to fuel whole NPO’s and even NGO’s. Itemization of risks is not required, but obviously hold paramount the requirement  ”to protect the user’s security and privacy online ...” as reminded by Jay Sullivan @ 36:15 @ Google I/O. . Meanwhile, as of just this week, there is now apparently no longer even the chance to clear your Authentic Human Existence with CAPTCHA on Google. Last week, they’d hammer you with a CAPTCHA for the unsavory act of protecting your own traffic, credit card data, SSN’s, etc. by daring to use an anonymizing proxy for search. . Today, you’re just apparently OUT OF LUCK, all because you’re protecting your ID from theft using fully paid, commercial, off-the-shelf encryption; at least that’s the case with Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.5.7. . If I turn off my privacy proxy, the exact same request goes right through without a hitch. Turn it back on, we go back to this:

Please, spare me the condescending, “well, you might have done this or that …. or multiple requests that might look like bullshit … or whatever.” I’m using search like I’ve always used search, nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. Google is simply becoming increasingly intolerant of privacy. Why do you think Google started crowing about how they defend privacy against backwater regimes? Because they want you to compare your baseline expectation to North Korea, rather than to your own historical norms. Help me Obi Wan Templeton, you’re my only hope.

Reading @rodrigo_b at Un Breve Comentario got me thinking about this again: Hace casi ocho años descubrí el teclado Dvorak. Sus ventajas me parecieron interesantes, pero se veía difícil de aprender por lo que sencillamente quedó archivado en el baúl de las cosas que me gustaría aprender algún día. leer más And, Ubiquitized: Almost eight years ago I discovered the Dvorak keyboard. Its advantages seemed interesting but was hard to learn it was simply filed away in the trunk of the things I like to learn someday.

Hey, Eric, I’m going to try to extend the benefit of the doubt, but on the other hand, it’s a challenge given this increasingly widespread phenomenon. This probably doesn’t apply to you, yet many seem to have not noticed that Agism is Illegal just like gender, race, and orientation discrimination; yet it is increasingly pervasive and in everyday situations perversely deemed acceptable. Like racism, gender bias, or gay discrimination, agism’s effects are most deeply insidious when cloaked in the guise of little everyday situations, decisions, policies, and priorities. The “mood” I chose for the comments below was something like “intentionally provocative” or “optimistically provocative” to make it 100% clear that I’m making a double point with the post: 1.) such features as the ones request here are all too often pushed to the bottom of the priority stack and 2.) all too often it’s because, “those old people aren’t our primary market anyway.” Anyone who has done software for more than 4 or 5 years knows these two things to be true, and if using irony and hyperbole to make the point is “abusive” then progressives of all persuasions only stand to lose ground. Why are the mood comments omitted, by the way? Isn’t that a fairly important Context Signal for readers? In fact, isn’t the very purpose of mood comments to provide Context? In this case — just like black people get to talk about black issues, women about women’s issues, immigrants about immigration issues, gays about marriage equality issues — as a 50 year “old person” I’m thinking I have every right to address agism issues; in fact, every OBLIGATION to do so in the “little everyday situations” where agism is most felt by victims of instituationalized, revoltingly Acceptable Agism. Perhaps I’m simply in the camp of compatriots like @jew4palestine where my only infraction here is questioning the status quo. Wouldn’t you agree? Please do let me know, I’m very curious about this one. Is this really “abusive language” even when tagged as “intentionally thought provoking?” My bet is that I’m only in trouble for exposing what far too many 20 to 40 year-olds actually do think, today. It wouldn’t matter except that those perceptions drive behavior — illegal behavior — every day. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see these same agist people try to play some convoluted “reverse agism” tactic to try to defend their own hypocritical insecurities. If the glove don’t fit, we surely must acquit; but if the shoe fits, you’re probably wearing it. In other words, if you know you’re definitely not prone to any of these improper views about older people in the workplace and in the world in general, gentle reader, then there’s absolutely no reason to get your dander up, right? On the other hand, if any reader feels defensive right about now, what would that seem to indicate? Oh, and have a nice day. I have to get back to doing my Old People Work, now; you know, the kind where anyone over 40 and white is too lazy to do manual labor, doesn’t even know what a blog is, let alone Twitter, Qik, or the like, right? Sorry, I’ll stay out of sight and out of mind like a good boy, next time. ——– Original Message ——– From: moderation@getsatisfaction.com Subject: Your reply on Get Satisfaction was removed To: michael@silverton This reply has been removed by Seesmic: what are YOU looking at, anyway, old man? don’t you realize that old people are not supposed to use technology? why should we bother with font sizes? who cares about you, anyway, you’re OLD. in fact, if you use the newest stuff, you’re kind of a CREEP and scary to all us real people. i suppose you’ll want cell phones helpful for 80 year olds next. where will your whining demands ever end? “wah, wah, wah, we want adjustable fonts like the Kindle.” what do you mean you are the fastest growing demographic? don’t try to weasel out of this with mere facts. you are old, you suck, you should shut up and not be seen in public; and yet, you have the audacity to apply for a job with us real people in our 20s and 30s? what? you think we weren’t born yesterday? ROTFLMAO!!! just for this request, we are decreasing the font by 2 points, permanently. good luck, losers. seriously, though; development for this rapidly growing demographic is grossly under funded and under energized. truly, there are important cultural biases about which all software developers should become mindful http://alloldpeoplesuck.blogspot.com/ . well, not all of them, only the ones who want to be positioned to best profit from this exploding demographic so you see, actually, usability for diverse populations is directly relevant to product development roadmaps. Replies can be removed by company employees if they contain inappropriate content or private customer information. This was the reason given in this case: Seesmic: “Abusive language.”

Blah, blah, blah. LinkedIn has apps. Woo-woo. Yes, the monkey knows how to use sticks to dig for grubs in the nooks and crannies of the proliferating digital tree trunks. Aren’t you impressed? I know I am. Don’t worry if you aren’t trackin’ with this post, it’s only here to show whether the tag thing works. So far, not.

Hello to my fellow digital native interwebz tweeple. I’d like to once again suggest that the era of top secret insider trading 19th century paper resume fluffing and pimping is long over; therefore, you are reading this open application even before the hiring board members and founding team leaders read it. In part because, today, every hiring manager is participating in an increasingly open and transparent team-building process wherein new norms need to be modeled both from the bottom up and the top down. Individually, none of us is perfect; however, each can pledge to continually do our best to fulfill our own part in building a more sustainable, adaptable, accessible world, moving forward. As always, I look forward to learning from the next steps of this ongoing, collectively co-constructed and implemented experiment called life. Subject: Revolutionary startup seeks C-level consumer Internet professional (palo alto) Date: 2009-01-27, 8:41AM PST Position and company highlights: –very competitive salary plus significant equity –work within a dynamic team within a unique, growing company Requirements: –Excellent grasp of Consumer Internet growth strategy, methodology and measurable prior experience. –Ability to design, implement and manage local and regional marketing plan Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster. Please, no phone calls about this job! Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests. Cover Letter Hello, Below, please find my resume, comprehensive digital identity, and more background check material than one could readily pay for: http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/ I am interested in working with the team to attain category leadership through continuous creative innovation in parallel with superior business execution. I believe it is important that we seize the current global market opportunity to model more sustainable, adaptive business norms, derived from already proven best practices. Therefore, I am interested in a progressive company structure; one that enthusiastically adopts a 20x multiple salary cap on all executives; obviously, including myself. Please see http://tr.im/sharedfate for the concept. We can work out the math together if we agree with this principle. I am also interested in a company whose equity structure improves upon the now defunct winner-take-all VC model, by proportionately rewarding each and every team member with an equity stake that parallels the prescribed salary caps, above. We may need to work together to create that new model from scratch. I understand legacy VC risk-reward philosophical justifications; however, we are in a new environment that requires more realistic thinking and recalibrated expectations for what constitutes reasonable returns on capital, moving forward. Within a day-to-day team context, I am consensus-driven and prefer a role wherein I can help to provide the team with the tools and resources required to achieve its objectives; however, wherever consensus conviction or clear direction are lacking, I am able to articulate creative, actionable strategic visions and pragmatic tactical product marketing road maps, as required. I will constantly challenge the team with original, sometimes orthogonal, and even unorthodox thinking. Upon a foundation of daily Specific Task Accomplishments, I will encourage cognitive diversity and open, transparent communication among all team members. I will advocate for a company culture derived from the final published issue of the Whole Earth Catalog, as recently highlighted in Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, namely: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, @silverton Related articles by Zemanta

Steve Jobs on the Stupidity of Living in the Past and Uncertainty of the Future [Steve Jobs] (i.gizmodo.com) “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” (longnow.org) Remember the Whole Earth Catalog? (greatthinkers.suite101.com)