Posts tagged News
News Commentary: The Lunacy of Follower Counting
Jun 28th
SPOILER ALERT! I am going to ruin the surprise! When it is all said and done, President Obama is going to have had a more substantial effect on our world than Lady Gaga. OK, now that being said, we can discuss our IT Thought of the Day News Commentary of the Week. 
On Mondays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week. Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.
Today’s comments were generated after I read a CNN story. It is all about “race” between Lady Gaga and President Obama to get to 10 million Facebook followers. I recommend it to you. Give it a read below.
CNN.com – Obama, Lady Gaga compete for Facebook fan record
“Lady Gaga and President Obama don’t often travel in the same circles, but they’re the top competitors in a popularity contest that could have one of them setting a record by this weekend.
Facebook publicists told CNN on Thursday that the pop star and the president are neck-and-neck in the race to become the first living person with more than 10 million fans on the social networking site.”
I am just going to go ahead and say it. WHO CARES! I cannot believe that so many people go through life trying to relive their High School Class President election. That is exactly what this manic obsession with Twitter and Facebook followers represents. Can you image if Ghandi, Albert Einstein, or Mother Teresa had spent even a millisecond worrying about what others thought of them – let alone who had more people willing to “follow”” them on these social media services?
OK, that is what I think of this topic. What do you think about this topic? Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for June 28, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.
News Commentary: The Bit.ly Challenge
Jun 7th
As an active twitterer, I can certainly appreciate the value of a URL shortener – that is a service that takes a thousand character web link and shrinks it down to 10 or so for Twitter. However, I also am concerned that it violates one of the
fundamental value propositions of the world wide web – that of linking plain text, man readable, and enduring hyperlinks.
On Mondays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week. Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.
Today’s comments were generated after I read a CNN story. It is all about the rise of Bit.ly as the greatest URL shortener of them all. I recommend it to you. Give it a read below.
CNN.com – Clicking small links on bit.ly keeps getting bigger
“The rise of Twitter and instant messaging has been good to bit.ly — the URL-shortening service that has become a go-to tool for users across the web.
On Thursday, while announcing a host of new partners for its premium pay service, bit.ly trotted out a big number for a service based on little links.
Bit.ly is nearing 5 billion clicks per month, according to a post on the company’s official blog.”
There are many many hyperlinks that items that I have posted online that are still good links after 15 years. I know that they are good because I made them, I own them, and I pay to keep them live. The problem with URL shortener is that they are simply spreadsheets and look-up tables linking real hyperlinks to a shortened version that is in no way related to the original. They are great for ease of use, saving space on Twitter, and replacing overly cumbersome URLs with easy to remember ones. What they are not good at is being enduring, reliable, or permanent. If the URL shortener service goes away, so go the links. That is why, as a web author, I love to hate them.
I am resigned that they are a necessary evil for the time being, but I still am uneasy with how fragile the link to so much of what I have created really is on today’s web.
What do you think about this topic? Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for June 7, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.
Image Credit: VEED.in – Tech News
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News Commentary: Lions and Tigers and CyberWar – Oh My!
Jul 5th
Posted by Scott Coughlin in Human Resources
No comments
You know that a topic has become du jour when The Economist puts out multiple stories about it in rapid succession. I greatly respect this venerable news magazine and appreciate that it is one of the last fronts on the attack on quality journalism. That being said, they can never pass up the opportunity to pile on to a topic! Hence, they get to be the subject of the IT Thought of the Day News Commentary of the Week.
On Mondays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week. Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.
Today’s comments were generated after I read not one, but two stories from The Economist about the threat, fear, and realities of CyberWar. Great articles, both, that I recommend to you. Give them a read below.
The Economist – War in the fifth domain: Are the mouse and keyboard the new weapons of conflict?
The Economist – Cyberwar: It is time for countries to start talking about arms control on the internet
Seriously good writing about seriously complicated topics containing serious information, commentary, and consideration. What is not to love here. If you are an Information Professional then you need to read these stories. Enjoy them. I suspect that if The Economist is now writing about this weekly, the topic will be showing up everywhere!
OK, that is what I think of this topic. What do you think about this topic? Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for July 5, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.
Image Credit: Help Net Security at net-security.org