Well, actually if you do that you’ll be infringing a patent. I love reading patents, but I rarely understand them. This one I do, since it uses words I understand, like ‘roofing nails’ and ‘elastic bands’:
 clipped from patft.uspto.gov
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How to Really Read Blogs
People often ask me what blogs to read. So I thought I’d put together some thoughts on why some blogs are better than others, and how to get the most out of the blogs that you do read. There are five basic rules:
Rule #1: A blog isn’t a publication. It’s a person
The thing about blogs is that the most interesting ones are interesting because of the people who write them and the people who read them. You’ll find that while you’re drawn to a writer because of his/her interest in a particular subject, quite often they’ll write about something else which you’re also interested in. Take a guy called Joi Ito, for example, who is a Japan-based entrepreneur and investor in tech companies. Joi is a fascinating guy and his blog makes for great reading. But it’s not always about tech stuff. One post I read recently was about his reading a book by a woman called Betty Edwards about learning to draw. Joi is no artist, but this book was recommended to him as a way of relaxing. Now I know the book, and I know what he’s talking about. And because I like what he has to say about technology, I’m happy to read about his thoughts on meditation and drawing.
Rule #2: Never read someone who is “excited” about everything
Blogs don’t have to be brutally honest, but they can’t be fake. What makes Joi’s comments about drawing interesting is not just the fact that he has credibility in a field I care about (tech) but because what he writes is frank and, well, real. He’s not your average CEO type talking about how much money he’s invested in stuff and how excited he is by everything. We all have our ups and downs and they should be reflected in our blogs (I don’t do enough of this, to be honest. There, I’m being frank about not being frank enough.) The point is this: If we’re interested in reading someone’s thoughts on a subject, chances are we’re interested in their more life-oriented thoughts and experiences too. Without overdoing, it of course: I am very interested in Joi’s musings, but if he starts cutting his toe nails on his blog, even metaphorically speaking, I might not stick around.
Rule #3: Let a million flowers bloom, and then read them
Blogs thrive on the ability for readers to add comments. A great blog will have great, thoughtful readers, who add their comments on each article, or post. These comments will appear one after the other at the bottom of each post. Sometimes the comments are more interesting than the original article. Sometimes they’re not. But they’re definitely worth reading if you found the original article interesting. Joi’s post on drawing elicited a handful of comments which really added to the topic, especially after Joi added his comments to the comments. This is what the techie world calls a conversation. It’s not unlike a real conversation, actually, so it’s a good term.
Rule #4: Come in, the water’s lovely
If you’re reading blogs that interest you then you will quickly feel that you have some opinion to share. Share it. Still a startlingly small number of people comment on blogs but you really should. Chances are other people will love what you have to say, especially if you express it in a neutral way, as if you were joining a group of friendly looking people at a party. Of course, you have the advantage of knowing what they were already talking about before you sidled up, so be sure to read the original article and comments before throwing in your tupennies’ worth.
Rule #5: Follow the trail
Chances are if you like one person’s blog, you’ll like the blogs they read and the blogs they link to. Experiment. Try adding more blogs to your list of favorites and see whether you like them. If a couple of boring or off-color posts appear, you can always remove the feed from your list.
Remember: with blogs it’s not so much what you read, as who you read, and how you read ‘em.
Do You Read Before You Comment?
Over at the always enlightening Charles on… blog, a good point is made about the limits of having amateurs do the reporting/answering/research. The short answer: Journalists do this better because it’s our job. Not sure I agree with that 100% — I think there’s a certain kind of person, a maven, if you will, who knows the answers, and then another kind of person — a journalist-type person — who is good at gathering it all together.
But Charles in passing hints at another, more worrying point: the kind of people who blog, and comment on blogs, and answer questions on things like Yahoo! Answers, may not be the kind of people who are real mavens. Or who have even read the original article they’re commenting on. What scares me most about the Internet today is how many people feel entitled to comment on stuff that they haven’t even read, let alone researched a little. When ignorance sits on ignorance, we’re all in trouble.
At least I think that’s what Charles is saying. I didn’t read the whole thing.
clipped from www.charlesarthur.com
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ScaMS
F-Secure are calling these things SMS phishing (sometimes called smishing, unfortunately), but really they are more like Nigerian email scams delivered via SMS, which isn’t quite the same. The scam is basically this: send an SMS saying the recipient has won the lottery, have them call the scammer, and the scammer tricks them into giving their account details — or persuading the victim to transfer money to another account.
These things have been going on for a while in Indonesia (which is where F-Secure’s originated.) What’s interesting about F-Secure’s is that it’s targetted at Malaysians, indicating that some Indonesians are beginning to use their shared language to export their scamming skills.
clipped from www.f-secure.com
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A Show of Unwashed Hands
Ever been grossed out, a la Seinfeld, by someone who visits the bathroom but doesn’t seem to know what washbasins are for? You need the iGene:
i-Gene [sic] is designed for washrooms or areas where hand hygiene is critical. It detects movement and after a given period of time (pre-delay setting) will play the following real voice message. “Please wash your hands before leaving this area.”
Usually, I’m not for any kind of nanny-state type stuff, but it does amaze me how few people (read: men) wash their hands after a spell in the bathroom. Now I’m up for not just installing an iGene in every bathroom but of having anti-bacterial handgel guns on either side of the door to fire at miscreants as they try to sneak out without performing any manual cleansing.
Of course, the solution is to fit decent hand dryers so that people a) don’t have to calculate the value of hygiene against the possibility of catching a cold from damp hands and b) can have fun drying their hands in a warm and powerful jet.
The other move would be to either install automatic doors so you don’t have to put your clean hands on a doorknob used by all the non-handwashing Poppys or to at least put a bin outside the bathroom so clean-minded folk have somewhere to discard the paper towel they have to use to open the door to avoid getting all bacterial again.