Archive for the ‘USA’ category


The rise of the city brand

17.03.2010

I don’t have the other writers’ permission to show their side of this Facebook dialogue, but we had been chatting about growing the creative clusters here in Wellington as one of my mayoral policies.
   I wrote:

Mostly by focusing on growing creative clusters and taking a bigger slice of the cake. So it is not from technocratic ideas or the notion that we are liberating more of the economy, but by growing entrepreneurship. The city will take the most socially responsible, entrepreneurial start-ups and act as an agent to grow them (with an agreement that they remain in Wellington, of course) and create the capital flows to get them funded. I realize there is Grow Wellington already, but their ambit will be shifted.
   So, it’s economic growth from the bottom–up.

Then (italics added for this post):

The clusters have naturally formed but they can get so much stronger. If the city is being them, then there is no reason Wellington cannot become internationally known for them. I think in this last week I have shown that borders mean very little to me, and anyone who wants to be mayor in the 2010s needs to have a similar mindset. We are not competing just for national resources, but global ones; and by being part of the global community, we might start bridging more communities and getting some greater global understanding. The nation–state as it was understood in the 20th century is dying as a concept, and governments have only themselves to blame. Things are shifting to the individual–community level, and you are right, real things happen when it is people acting at the coal face. Those who distance themselves will not be equipped for this century.

   I wish I could claim I had some vision of the death of the nation–state years ago, but I hadn’t. It was something that dawned on me fairly recently, given the scepticism many people (not just in New Zealand) are having toward their national governments. There are many factors, from governmental misbehaviour to the simple fact of a very divergent population, but very importantly we have the rise of technologies that give rise to people power. We want to know that political leaders are one with the public, prepared to do their bidding.
   People are reclaiming their voices, prepared to tell those in authority what they think. Even without the authority, a few of you have told me what you think—good and bad. That’s the way it should be in a democracy—and if we truly believe people are equal. Finally, we are organizing ourselves into active groups more rapidly than before.
   Nation brands are harder to pull off because some marketers are failing to grasp the overall philosophy underlying their people. In New Zealand, we might accept the “100 per cent pure” ideal of our destination-branding campaign, but surely being a New Zealander is something far less clear—is the Kiwi spirit not in independence, innovation, team spirit and, once that team is formed, taking a punt? Very seldom do we see such unified efforts as the successful ‘Incredible India’, which must have changed perceptions of that Asian country more effectively than any nation branding campaign from the continent. It is, however, easier to understand the concept behind a city, and to gain agreement on its meaning.
   The other thing that is emerging in the 2010s is the rise of one-to-one communications across the planet. We might argue we have had this since the internet first dawned, and we can even trace this back to the first satellite TV links, but this is the decade that these ideas are mainstreaming and available to more people than ever before. Twitter is a wonderful example of the awareness of individuals and the death of national borders (which is why it is feared by certain dictatorial rĂ©gimes): suddenly we are in a community together, fighting everything from copyright law to commemorating the death of a woman during the Iranian election’s bloody aftermath.
   I am reminded of a seminal moment on the Phil Donahue show, where he linked his 1980s, Cold War-era audience via satellite with a similar group in the USSR, hosted by Vladimir Posner. There was a tense, icy moment till one of the Russians stated that if he could reach out across the airwaves and give his American counterpart a hug, he would. Humanity came through.
   Anti-Americanism is a very interesting concept, because the American national image has leaned regularly toward the negative. No more so than during the Cold War, in the USSR. Certain American corporations and lobby groups have a lot to answer for, so you don’t even need to travel back in time to find that hatred. How many times have we heard during the 2000–8 period, outside the United States, ‘I don’t mind the Americans, but I hate Bush’?
   I get plenty of strange looks for my preferring the -ize ending, being told that it was ‘American’ and, therefore, inferior and unsuitable for consumption in New Zealand. I simply point them to the authority I trained with in my work: the Concise Oxford Dictionary. For as long as I can remember, -ize is English and the first variant in that publication. My father’s 1950s’ edition and my 1989 one agree on this point. The use of -ise is French, and it only began coming in to English as a knee-jerk reaction against ‘American English’. But the “wisdom” prevails: if the Yanks (a term that some of my American friends find humorous, since in the US it only applies to a certain part of the population) use it, it must be bad. Look at the Ford Taurus.
   It is a trivial thing to argue about, but it is an example of how silly things get. I get dissed while half the population believe their Microsoft Word default spellcheck and write jewelry. By all means, oppose the technocratic abuse of workers wherever it comes from; oppose those lobby groups trying to wreak havoc on our private lives. If they happen to be in the US, direct your wrath at those groups via email or whatever means you have. On those areas the nation–state is not dead yet—not when we need central governments to safeguard our rights. Or when we need someone to root for in a football match. But for everyday matters, being against any one nation—and I have been accused of Japan-bashing (which, incidentally, I deny)—is futile, because we are now so much more aware of how much individuals in other countries are like us, thanks to all these social media.
   Once we start reducing the arguments down to individuals and groups, we begin taking the nation brand out of it. We begin liaising as a global community. For all the hard times I give Facebook, it has probably done more to give us a glimpse in to foreign countries as “just another place my friend lives in” than any travel show on TV. We begin understanding theirs are lives just like our own. We realize that not all Japanese eat whale meat or even care about it. We realize that many Iranians do not believe that their government has a mandate to govern. We realize some Sri Lankans believe their recent election was unfair. (It is, for instance, hard to imagine things getting more personal than when an arrested opposition leader’s daughter starts blogging.) When we reach out, we reach out to people, not to countries.
   Where is, then, our pride about where we live? I argue—as this whole ‘Wellywood’ sign dĂ©bĂącle has shown—that it resides at the city level. We have a far more homogeneous idea of what our cities stand for, and as we come together and choose to live in any one place, we take into our regard what we believe that city’s assets and image to be. Over time, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. New Wellingtonians choose to make this their home because they see it either as the most creative city in the nation or they are fed up with the excesses of a more northern location. It is, as two of my friends who have left their Auckland home this year put it, ‘more cerebral’. While there have been city campaigns that have been botched—‘I Am Dunedin’ was met by plenty of criticism by Dunedinites—there is at least some understanding among citizens, who feel they need no slogan to unite them. (In Wellington, who has uttered ‘Absolutely positively’ in recent years?)
   So the 2010s are the time of city brands. At Medinge, my friend and colleague Philippe Mihailovich stressed that while ‘Made in China’ was naff, ‘Made in Shanghai’ had cachet. Over the weekend, I joked with one friend over poor French workmanship on the CitroĂ«n SM—though ‘Made in Paris’ would probably do quite well for fashion and fragrance (Philippe has more on this, too). Wellington deserves to be alongside the great cities of this world if we can show technological and creative leadership—and we get willing leadership prepared to understand just how we compare and compete at a global level. We already have the unity as we all understand who we are; we now need the voice.

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Posted in India, New Zealand, USA, Wellington, branding, business, culture, internet, leadership, marketing, politics, technology | 3 Comments »


Hints of Google’s privacy misbehaviours in 2007

08.03.2010

I did my last edits to this blog’s pages that had resided on the old Blogger service today, before decommissioning them from the service. After today (in theory, since the updating stalled twice as I wrote this), you will not be able to make any more comments on posts written before January 1, 2010.
   In doing so, I discovered a very interesting post: my moan about Google Web History on October 1, 2007. It turns out that was the day I switched it off, until Google decided, in its wisdom, to turn it back on again. In the same post, I mentioned how I was unhappy that I was signed up to Orkut and Google Groups without my consent.
   Anyone who thinks Google’s recent misbehaviour is new is (as I was) mistaken.
   Back in 2007, I threatened to shift this blog away from Blogger, which I did not carry out for two years due to busy-ness.
   The silver lining then, as now, is that at least Google has the guts to tell us under what means they were collecting our private data and allow us to opt out (in theory). But the point, surely, is that we should not need to opt out, if we have never opted in, to these services.
   The more things change 


Photograph by http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlesc/; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Do schools kill creativity?

07.03.2010

Stefan Engeseth pasted this to his blog over the weekend, and it’s one of the best TED talks. As Stefan has investigated child behaviour himself, I can see the relevance. But even for the rest of us, it’s a thoroughly entertaining talk by Sir Ken Robinson in 2006 that has some wonderful touchpoints—and humour. It’s very apt when Sir Ken discusses the foundations of the educational system in the Industrial Revolution, and how we still make judgements based on its values.

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Posted in USA, culture, leadership | 2 Comments »


An unplanned post about Google (Friend Connect this time)

03.03.2010

The disappearance of my Google Friend Connect gadget from the right-hand column was not part of my plans to de-Google my life: after all, it took me a while to amass the followers there (I think I had a mere 18, but some of them were friends).
   From my Google Dashboard, I noticed there were Friend Connect entries for all sorts of things, including blogs I had deleted. And, oddly, there were two entries for this domain: one for the main site, and one for the blog.
   Naturally, I deleted the entries for the dead blogs (which I never entered anyway), and since there were two for jackyan.com, I took out the one for the site and retained the one for the blog. Logical, but wrong.
   Now that the gadget has disappeared from the right-hand column, the penny dropped: the one for the site was one I manually set up, and was the account used for the gadget formerly on the right. The one for the blog was one that Google “helpfully” put in to Friend Connect.
   This is precisely the point I and others have been driving home for weeks on this whole Google mess: if we have not asked for it, don’t do it.
   I never asked for any sites to appear in Google Friend Connect except the ones I added. Granted, it was still my action that killed the gadget at right, and lost me those followers, but Google’s practice of trying to trick you into using its services (‘Look, you’ve already signed up to them’) sure didn’t help me.
   So to my 18 followers, my apologies. Hindsight is a great thing. And it seems I have even fewer connections with Google now—even if it was unintentional. (I’ll be deleting the unrequested blog entry in Friend Connect, too, as it has no followers.)

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Jailed Minnesota Toyota owner may get retrial

27.02.2010

You can’t help but wonder (without reading the court transcripts and judgement) how the sentencing of Koua Fong Lee could be so harsh. In 2006, Lee’s Toyota Camry, with his pregnant wife, daughter, brother and father on board, accelerated out of control and smashed into an Oldsmobile, killing three people in the second car back in 2006. The judge threw the book at him, giving him the maximum eight years, even though Lee, a recent immigrant, was adamant he was hard on the brakes and not the accelerator at the time of the accident. I don’t know Minnesotan criminal law, but one would think this churchgoing man, with no prior crimes, lacked the mens rea to deserve the full sentence; unless it was cumulative for the three deaths.
   Investigations showed there was nothing wrong with the brakes—but, with hindsight, there could have been something wrong with the accelerator or the cruise control, considering that Lee’s Camry was going at 90 mph when it hit the Oldsmobile.
   What we can very likely say was that this was not the America that Koua Fong Lee expected to emigrate to.
   While the 1996 Camry Lee drove was not part of the Toyota recall, American media suggest that some of these models were repaired for faulty cruise controls. Chances are he will get a retrial, so in light of this new evidence, let’s hope the Lees, and the Adams and Boltons who lost their family members, will see some justice.

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Posted in USA, cars | 1 Comment »


Anyone else with a new Google results’ page?

25.02.2010

Google results' page

Anyone else have a different results’ page layout for Google? Only began happening this morning (NZDT) to me, though I imagine others must have this by now.
   Despite my fairly regular moans about technology, I seem to be among the first to get some features. I remember getting the Digg Toolbar about two or three weeks before it was mentioned on Mashable or one of the tech guides; ditto with YouTube when there was a layout change there; and I managed to get the Twitter lists on the first day. Have I been among the early ones this time?
   I’m pretty blasĂ© about the whole thing. I think I’m suffering from Google fatigue after spending much of the last few months dissing them and their failings. This change doesn’t really annoy me, especially after all the other dodgy things that have been happening at Google.

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Posted in USA, design, internet | No Comments »


I don’t have Gmail. So how did I get a Buzz account again?

18.02.2010

Can someone please explain to me how I have a Google Buzz account?
   Yes, I know, all those people complaining about Google Buzz found that their Gmail contacts where, all of a sudden, added to the service.
   And Google, this week, apologized for messing up.
   Well, Google, please explain my scenario, because I don’t have a bloody Gmail account.
   Yet, you’ve seen fit to provide me with a Buzz account—something I do not want—and, like so many others, added 19 followers to it.


Above: Buzz has been the centre of complaints for Gmail users these past few weeks. Google now extends that to non-Gmail users.

   This was today. This was after your supposed apology for messing up people’s privacy.
   I guess you’ve figured that after messing up Gmail users’ lives, you’re now going after non-Gmail users.
   Incidentally, can someone also please explain to me why I have 18 requests for Google Reader followers when I have done everything possible to remove every last piece of information out of there? Just where did these 18 suddenly come from?


Above: Despite deleting everything out of my Google Reader account, today I have 18 people wanting to be the followers of an empty account. Nice one, Google.

   Of those eighteen, I know seven.
   I am talking about Google Reader—that service which still gave me recommendations for sites to follow based on my feeds and Web History, even though I had no feeds and had turned off Web History. Privacy breach much?
   Then, in my Google Profile, why have you introduced new fields in there and checked them by default? I was very careful to remove information out of there, but now, supposedly, I want you to ‘Display the list of people I’m following and people following me’.


Above: A new field was added to my Google Profile, checked by default—to ensure less privacy. Less than a day after it apologized for breaching people’s privacy. Hypocrisy much?

   Are your people so stupid that you would introduce a new field dealing with privacy and turn it on by default? The week after your Google Buzz dĂ©bĂącle? Who did you hire? People from Facebook?
   Does your HR department hire bottom-of-the-class guys, or do you find morons and train them down?
   Rather ironical, considering that this week, I have been de-Googling my life. Looks like Google doesn’t like my removing myself from its services, so it’s forcibly put me on to new ones and created new options which it has checked by default, decreasing my privacy.
   It wasn’t enough that you had put me on to Reader and turned on Web History after I turned it off.
   Consider my profile deleted, dickheads. You are not getting any more of my personal information from me.
   Really, Google, WTF?


Above: I don’t have Gmail. Look, Google, it’s in my “new products to try” section.

PS.: Deleting my profile has made no difference to my Buzz account: it remains there, complete with followers.—JY

P.PS.: Scootley at the Gmail forums explains that anyone can get a Buzz account, even if they do not use Gmail. Here’s what I don’t get (correct me if I am wrong):
‱ Buzz is part of Gmail.
‱ If I have never signed up to Gmail and agreed to its terms and conditions, what governs my relationship with Google over Buzz?
   I decided to find out.
   Answer: none.
   On visiting Google Buzz’s home page, and following the links at the bottom of that page to the terms and conditions and privacy policy, I encountered these two pages:


Above: Google has no terms and conditions for Buzz (URL accessed 2.27 p.m. GMT [and again at 10.26 p.m. GMT]).


Above: Google has no privacy policy for Buzz (URL accessed 2.27 p.m. GMT [and again at 10.26 p.m. GMT]).

   Ironically, I re-created a new profile and unchecked the ‘Display the list of people I’m following and people following me’ option, and now, Buzz has finally disappeared. (This did not work earlier—and Scootley confirms that that should have had no effect on Buzz’s presence in my Google Dashboard. Still, it’s gone, so I’m happy.)—JY

P.P.PS.: One consequence of having no Google profile is that Google punishes you in the search results. In an ego-surf of my name with quotes, I dipped 10,000 results because of the missing profile. (I also dipped 10,000 after an earlier attempt a few days ago of having my profile turned off.) Like one page on Google really counts for 10,000 hits—but apparently, Google gets pissy at you for turning your profile off!
   Well, I’d rather have a drop of 10,000 references than have weird services appear in my Google profile!—JY

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Posted in USA, business, internet, technology | 6 Comments »


A belated thank-you to independent software creators

18.02.2010

When I had to reinstall everything late last year, I didn’t thank the software developers for making it easy for me to get a new ID. I got personal replies from the programmers behind Barcode Maker 3 and SayNow, and found it relatively easy to sort out registration for FontLab and Gammadyne Mailer. The rest of the programs were straightforward with their licence numbers, but I have to give props to the independents—people who still give a damn about their creations. Thank you.

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Posted in Sweden, USA, internet, technology | No Comments »


A way to delete your Google Wave account?

15.02.2010

For those trying to leave Google Wave—and who have had no satisfaction whatsoever from the Google forums (what a surprise)—there might be one way.
   There are quite a few reasons people want to leave Wave. One netizen had this concern: ‘It appears I have been linked to former associates who I have kept in my contacts list in case I need to take legal action against them; I want nothing to do with them. I am concerned now that I am going to appear in the Wave contacts of everyone in my contacts list—this is a nightmare scenario. This is a serious breach of my privacy.’
   Others have found total strangers among their Wave followers who are not part of their Gmail contacts’ list or any others. Still others have found hackers and abusers who are writing extensions and other things to crash their accounts—something that has happened as early as October 2009.
   With me, I can’t find much reason to keep Wave if I am de-Googling my life right now—it’s one service too many, and I am increasingly Google-sceptic these days. I also don’t like the fact that a brand-new email account at googlewave.com has been set up for me without my consent (this probably accounts for the appearance of “strangers” in people’s Google Wave accounts).
   Today, Google announced that s. 11.1 would change insofar as its terms and conditions for Wave are concerned. It now reads, just for this service (and does not appear on the site-wide terms and conditions linked from your Google account settings, and to date, there is no separate set of terms governing Wave):

Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Google Wave account. You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold to Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service. By submitting, posting or displaying the Content, you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its Privacy Policy.

   Therefore, I wrote to Google’s Privacy Policy people saying I disagreed with the above change, and would they please cancel my Wave account?
   You can find a link to the Privacy Policy here. There’s a further link from there to a form which goes to the Privacy Matters’ department.
   I concluded the email with this paragraph:

Please be advised that I do not accept this change to our agreement insofar as my Google Wave usage is concerned, and request that my Google Wave account be terminated. However, please retain my other Google products until further notice.

   You never know, it might work. It’s the only area where there still seems to be a form that’s read by human beings at Google.
   I take no responsibility for others’ use of this information—it’s provided simply as a chronicle of what I’m trying. I would rather be Wave-free immediately than wait the nine months that Google claims a cancellation would take. (That’s right: officially, if you want to leave Wave, you have to be inactive for nine months, and then Google might cancel your account. No word on whether you also lose your googlewave.com email account.) I had hoped it could be done in nine seconds by surfing to a page, clicking ‘Cancel’ and having some processing time.

In related news, you now need three entries in your Google profile in order to be listed in search results. This is an increase of one: over the weekend, you only required two.

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Posted in USA, internet | No Comments »


More Google privacy breaches in Reader?

14.02.2010

Tonight, I removed every single blog I followed—including my own—from Blogger. My de-Googling continues. I’ve also taken myself off as an author on some Blogger blogs as of tonight, as an intermediate step of ending my association with Blogger altogether.
   I had hoped that deleting my Blogger reading list would get me off the Google Reader service, which I never (knowingly) signed up for. As mentioned recently, Google decided that my following blogs on Blogger would mean (a) it would open a Google Reader account (it was in its help pages, which I did not read—I argue this should have been on a terms and conditions page); (b) allow others to begin following that account; (c) prevent any removal of my Google Reader account, even when I did not want one.
   You would think that deleting everything associated with Google Reader would allow its removal, but no. In fact, I was rather disturbed to see the following: feed recommendations in Reader.

Google Reader recommendations

   Among the recommendations is my friend Sharon Haver’s site, Focus on Style, and another from CondĂ© Nast’s Style.com.
   Normally I would not have a problem with seeing either of these, if I was an avid Reader user, but it begs the question: if I have turned off all the sharing of my data in Google, to the point where the company claims to no longer knows my preferences, then how does it know my preferences? How does it, in this case, know that I have interests in the fashion industry? Or is everyone on the planet interested in fashion, according to Google, and these are its default recommendations?
   After all, Google itself states that it compiles these preferences based on the following:

It takes into account the feeds you’re already subscribed to, as well as information from your Web History, including your location.

Well, Google, not only have I switched Web History off (twice: once on launch and once after you turned it back on without telling me), I have no feeds.
   Which must mean, I assume, that turning stuff off in Google does not mean turning stuff off in Google. Google might say you have Web History turned off, but I am wondering if that’s just more BS from this company.
   It might have decent blokes like Rick Klau working there at Blogger, but the rest of the company seems dodgier by the day to me. We’ve already had tech support guys who know very little about tech or support (those six months probably were what kicked off my de-Googling), we’ve had the whole Buzz dĂ©bĂącle (Harriet Jacobs, a.k.a. Fugitivus, mentioned in that post, has since shut her blog to unregistered users after, presumably, abuse was sent to her), and now, it seems that Google spies on you.
   The 2010s will see the dĂ©but of some form of portal site, but it definitely won’t be Facebook, and, at this rate, it won’t be Google.
   And that’s a shame. I like some of the things that Google has offered me over the last 11 years, but its behaviour of late, and its ill-thought technologies, remind me of another American giant. That’s the one that people in the 1990s picked on a lot: Microsoft.

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Posted in USA, business, internet, technology | 3 Comments »