Tag: internet

  • How to repost a blog post with style and grace

    Since I first wrote about people stealing my content last November, “How to blog, write, and speak with integrity” I’ve gotten lots of contacts asking me how to properly repost or cite blog posts, web articles, and news stories.

    Here are some tips for reposting internet content with style and grace.

    • Never repost an entire article without permission from the site owner. First, its a breach of etiquette. Second, nabbing someone’s content without their consent is theft of their intellectual property. Third, even if you link back, most agree that search engines will punish both domains for duplicate content. How do you get permission? You ask! Email the author or use their contact form or just leave a comment on the post. Most will, happily and free of charge offer you their content.
    • Use an excerpt of no more than two paragraphs. Chose the part of the article that reasonated with you the most or makes the point most clearly, and excerpt it. You can wrap the excerpt in the context of a point you are writing about or simply post the excerpt with a question or thought for discussion. Bloggers consider this a high compliment. And news agencies (and other sources very sensitive about their intellectual property) won’t be concerned that you are trying to gain traffic off of their content.
    • Set your excerpt apart graphically. For any quote of more than two sentences use the block quote feature of any blog editor. To make it even more clear that I’m quoting something, I like to italicize the whole piece.
    • Link directly to the source content. Typically, I link to the source two times just to be absolutely certain my readers know the excerpt is not mine and where to find the source. I set the the quote up (or follow-up) with linking the article to the authors name. “I was reading Adam McLane’s dare for pastors the other day…” Then, after I’ve posted the excerpt, I link to the source with the words “Source” or “Read the rest.“
    • Hat tips and Trackbacks are still good manners. A hat tip is simply a gesture that another person provided the idea for your post or otherwise recognizing another person for contributing to your post. (ht to Adam McLane) A trackback alerts the blog owner that you’ve linked to them. On some sites, the trackback appears as a comment on the original post while on other sites it never appears publicly but is tracked by the owners site software. In WordPress, I manually enter a trackback for every link I put in a post to a news site or blog.

    I hope these tips are useful. Each of these things only takes a few moments but makes a big difference in creating professional quality content. More importantly, to your readers it communicates that you aren’t a slob with other people’s intellectual property.

    Have more questions about this topic? Leave a comment!

  • The internet & privacy

    Photo by Will Lion via Flickr (creative commons)

    Lately there has been a lot of angst about internet privacy. This came to a head when Facebook changed some privacy settings which angered some users who believed that they had a right to privacy with stuff they shared on the site. Some folks ever started a movement called QuitFacebookDay.com over it.

    As a person who does internet development, a long time blogger, and someone who “gets the internet,” I just wanted to give you a reality check.

    You don’t have privacy, anywhere. If you think you do– you have never read those little contracts you sign, user agreements that you click “yes” to in order to use sites or software, nor read a single privacy policy on nearly every commercial website on the planet.

    I don’t want to scare you, but here is a snapshot of the data “we the internet people” collect from you every single day. We don’t do much with this… but we collect this information:

    • Every time you Google something, Google logs that. They know what you search, what you clicked on– Google is, by far, the largest repository of user data anywhere.
    • Every time you make a phone call, your cell phone company knows who you called, where you called from, and how long you talked.
    • If you have a GPS enabled smart phone, your cell phone company knows your exact location any time its turned on whether you are actively using it or not.
    • Your IP and MAC addresses are logged by every website you’ve ever visited. The sites servers know how many times you’ve been there, how long you stayed, and what you looked at. Even free Google Analytics tools can show any website owner this information.
    • Everything you post on Twitter or Facebook (or WordPress or Blogger) belongs to them, not you. Since it is their property they can do whatever they want with it. Every message, every picture, everything you like, everything you direct message.
    • Any time you purchase something from an online retailer, they collect even more information. They know that other stuff about your browsing history, plus they know what you buy, how often you buy, your shipping and billing address, what category of stuff you like to look at, on and on. The only part of the transaction that they can’t really do anything with is your credit card number.
    • If you store documents online, an administrator could access that information, if they wanted or needed to.

    If you don’t see https: (the “s” means that the area of the site is certified as secure by someone like VeriSign. Of course, certified and verified as such are two different things.) in the address bar, you shouldn’t have any perception of privacy.

    Whatever you do online is somehow public

    What is interesting to me about the privacy concerns is that the stuff that people are worried about– is typically happening in real life! Don’t want future employers to see you dancing on a table while intoxicated? Sheesh, don’t blame Facebook for that, blame your drunk self! Don’t want one group of people to know something about you? Don’t talk about it on Twitter!

    The irony of the privacy concerns is that people have willingly agreed to the terms of service and have willingly posted content to websites that they now don’t want put in the public.

    It makes me gigle. No one ever told you this was private, you just thought it was.

    There is no such thing as “internet privacy.”

    It’s about ethics

    As a web developer, you need to know how much value that 99% of website owners put on this data. If a sites privacy policy says they won’t share that information– 99% of organizations won’t. Their reputation is on the line. And there are plenty of watchdogs and lawyers all to happy to create legal grief for those who violate their privacy policies.

    Companies may (and most do) use it for their own purposes as outlined in the privacy policy. The funny part is that collecting and learning from this information makes you love most sites instead of loathe them. Most people like it that iTunes or Amazon.com “gets to know their preferences” and make recommendations to you. Statistics show you are much more likely to click on, and buy from, advertisers who target their ads to your preferences. If you are called to appear in court, you’d be happy to know that your cell phone can provide an alibi.

    The opposite of compartmentalism

    When I was a high school student, youth pastors preached about the ills of compartmentalism all the time. The irony is that todays privacy-free society has those same people crying for just a little compartmentalization!

    Fair Warning

    My recommendation is not to flee. It’s to live an honest and transparent life. If you live in a way where you have nothing to hide than your level of privacy is rather innocuous.

    But the opposite is also true, as well. If you are going places you ought not go or doing things you know are naughty… you are just building up the evidence against yourself. Somewhere someone already knows. And everything you are doing leaves a breadcrumb to your future embarrassment.

  • The Internet is Not Flat

    full-20earth2Every time I go to a networking event with social media types I hear the hopeful phrase, “The World is Flat.“ The premise with the world is flat is that in the internet age the start-up entrepreneur has an equal shot at making it against the powerhouse media conglomerates or the big company on top of any given industry. The phrase the world is flat is like fly paper drawing the bugs to the trap. Anyone who wants to get-rich-quick loves that phrase.

    While it is true that start-ups can take on and defeat the big dogs today, (this has always been true) it isn’t because the world is flat.

    Start-ups take out big dogs because of these two factors:

    1. The winner in a space is always smarter. I’ve met up with loads of developers, entrepreneurs, and wide-eyed bloggers hoping to make a million on their idea. I OFTEN am left with the impression that they are investing in a dumb idea or have ruined their ability to take out their competitor because of a horrible business plan or having sold out their long-term hopes for short-term VC dollars. Recently, I’ve met start-up owners who are extraordinarily smart but lack the funding to make their idea happen. And I’ve met start-up owners who are dumb, but have well-funded projects. Bing.com thinks they can beat Google if they outspend them. It’s a stupid strategy and will be a billion dollar failure. Mint.com has a great business model and took out Microsoft Money by making money on the back-end (advertising) and giving the product away for free to customers. (Last week Intuit bought Mint.com. A 28-year old entrepreneur who started the thing in his apartment just sold his baby for $170 million to the company he was about to take out. Delicious irony.)

    2. The winner always contains costs. I am continually shocked when I hear the type of money people invest in developing technology. Half a million on development, 10 million on marketing. Eighty thousand to add this piece. On and on. These ideas are destined for failure before they have a single customer. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Very few companies can invest a million and make a billion. But loads can invest a million and lose it all with only the manager getting fired.

    All of the internet is boiled down to a single formula and yet even the smartest companies manage to screw it up. Every single internet entrepreneur talks about ROI, but only a couple seem to truly be driven by minimizing the I. Each space has a finite amount of return. The false assumption is that everything on the internet can be a gold mine of infinite return– it’s a stupid assumption. Each niche only has a certain amount of customers/revenue. Therefore, the only way to maximize return is to minimize the I. Investing $500,000 in a technology that may return $2,000,000 in revenue over 4 years is almost a 0% return after expenses. At best it’s a 2:1 ratio. (You could do better at the horse track.) But a start-up investing $5,000 in that same $2m space has a ROI ratio potential of 400:1. I’ll take that guy!

    The internet world is not flat. The world is flat for smart people and people who are willing to work for free to make their dreams happen. The world is as dangerous as ever for everyone else.

    The internet world is full of fast talkers. That’s another thing I’ve learned at networking events. The same adage from the high school locker room is true among internet types, “He who talks the biggest game probably scores the least.” As with any new gold rush industry, for every good business person out there there are 10 shysters.

  • Old Video of Newspapers Online

    Check this out, in 1981 the idea of people getting the news via the internet was already well underway. It took a while, but online is a primary way people get news these days. I love that monitor!

    HT to Mark

  • History of the Internet

    Prepare to nerd out for the next 8 minutes.

  • Fair Warning

    Starting tomorrow, I have about a week off. Since my move to San Diego I have not taken a break and in many ways I am just ready to chill and do nothing.

    At the same time, Kristen knows well, that when I have significant time off I get bored and create things. And since I am a dork my inventions are typically internet related. And that last statement reveals why my post is titled, fair warning.

    What am I creating? I have 3 new websites planned in my head that will get birthed during this time off. And for the first time in a long time, these new websites won’t have anything to do with youth ministry or even Christianity. Here’s what will hatch out my soul and be shoved down the throats against your will because of their unbelievable awesomeness:

    _ something on San Diego living

    _ something about life

    _ something about death

    Does this need to be said? None of them have anything to do with my job.

  • Web people

    genius or idiotThis is what I’ve learned in my years as a Web dude. People either see you as a genius or an idiot. There isn’t much middle ground. And often in conversation, you can tell the people you’re talking to are thinking you are both an idiot and a genius at the same time.