Alec Saunders SquawkBox

A while back I linked to Chris Bliss, juggling.  This fellow has one-upped Bliss.  Bliss juggles with three balls, and this guy with five.  Same music, same routine, five balls. 

The latest OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation) Ottawa Facts email hit my inbox last week while I was taking time off.  They provided some great statistics, and it certainly looks as if tech is back in Ottawa. Unemployment is down, and below the national average.  Between June 2006 and January 2006, high tech employment rose from 71,000 to 76,200, and the number of technology companies increased from 1740 to 1811.  Best of all, Ottawa is still one of the lowest cost places to live and do business in the country.  The average resale price of a home in January 2006 was just C$244,000.

This piece on how cell phones are changing society is fabulous.  First published in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 6th, my Google News subscription on "Cellphone Etiquette" dropped it into my mailbox last week while I was vacationing.  There are all kinds of interesting facts, such as that the average American talks 13 hours per month on the cell, while those in the 18 to 24 age group talk a massive 22 hours per month.  That’s 1320 minutes per month. 

Cell phone etiquette is changing quickly too.

• 87% of Americans cite annoying cell phone calls as the third most bothersome conduct after overall rude behaviour, and use of bad language. 
• 38% of people believe it’s fine to use a cell phone in the bathroom, down from 62 percent in 2003 and 39 percent in 2000.
• Just 2% say that using a cell phone in a movie or theater is acceptable, down from 11% in 2000.
• Cell phone use in restaurants and on public transportation is also declining in acceptability down to 21% and 45% respectively.

Fascinatingly, however, Professor Paul Levinson at Fordham University, thinks that the swing toward better behaved cellular phone users is just temporary. 

"I predict that in five to 10 years we’ll see well over 80 percent have no problem with cell phones in a restaurant. When new media is introduced people tend to be loyal to the old media they grew up with and often suspicious and antagonistic to new media," he said. "But for someone in their 20s, it’s like it’s a part of our bodies. It’s like leaving the house without one of your ears."

Friday’s Ottawa Citizen carried a story on the rise of libel cases in Canada, due to the rising popularity of blogging.  No doubt bloggers are increasingly being attacked for perceived defamation.  So what is defamation?  That’s a tricky question, made doubly difficult by the fact that it is treated differently in US courts than in Canada.    I am not a lawyer, however, I found the following resources helpful:

• The Wikipedia entry on Defamation is quite complete, defining what constitutes defamatory speech, and differentiating between libel and slander.  It also includes a history of defamation law, and outlines the differences in practice between several nations, including the US, Canada, and the UK. 
• EFF.org’s online FAQ on defamation law is also a good resource.  It’s completely US-centric, but does a good job of outlining current case law, and the boundaries that govern free speech.
• Vancouver-based McConchie Law has an extensive website dealing with defamation, privacy and other topics, including case review, in a Canadian context. 

If you post anything controversial, it’s likely you will, at some point, be harrassed.  You can save yourself some headaches by knowing in advance where the boundaries of free speech exist.

The Citizen piece also includes this quote:

McConchie says most Internet libel cases in which damages are awarded are those in which the person responsible for the offensive material refuses to remove it once they are warned that it may be defamatory. Even if they get into legal trouble over a blog entry or discussion board posting, most amateur Internet authors can avoid a full-blown court case with some common sense and willingness to compromise, he says.

It would take an extreme threat for me to remove a posting, or for that matter, a comment to a posting.  This soapbox of mine is intended to provoke discussion.  If you don’t like what I’ve written, well, that’s what the comment boxes are for.  That way, both viewpoints can be viewed and/or discussed by visitors. 

Doc Searls has a great piece on the Intention Economy vs. the Attention Economy. The basic thesis is that you, the user, ought to be able to express your intent to purchase goods, rather than devote your attention to the vendors advertising.  It’s a user controlled world, rather than a vendor controlled world.

Interestingly, it was this initial view that drove Howard and myself to create iotum.  The very first problem we looked at solving was telemarketers: how do you give the user control of which commercial messages are received by telephone?  We realized that the technology we wanted to build was generalizable to managing any kind of conversation request, based on intent.  Doc’s concept of the Intention Economy drives right to the heart of the matter — what is a relevant communication (i.e. pertinent to what I am currently doing), and how do increase the volume of relevant communications I receive?