Spreading My Wings

After spending a couple days to wind down from finals week, I've decided that I'm going to continue writing in this blog. I'm going to change a few things though.

One thing for sure is that I'm going to expand my focus from blogging about social networking to the broader field of overall IT industry. This will allow me to have a greater amount of topics to talk about and also give me a good opportunity to keep up with the IT industry as its going to be part of my future professional life.

Since my ITEC class for this blog has officially ended, I'm going to have a significant drop in readers. I will need to be more diligent about promoting this blog. Aside from my interest in the IT industry, having actual readers is the next highest incentive for me to write this blog. I have to say its one of the biggest ego boost one can feel, and with me being on winter break I will have the chance and time to actually spend time to promote this blog.

That's about it. Oh. I'm on my last year in college and are looking for internship opportunities in the IT field. I already applied to some places but the more the merrier! So if anyone can help out that will be great!

OpenID Commenting

Sweet!

Intermission

Last blog post for the semester. At least last one for me till finals are done. Not too sure what this blog is going to become after final, but one thing is for sure is that I will continue to write in it. I might move all the social networking stuff onto another domain name though. Not too sure yet, but I'll keep you posted if I do or do not.

Thank you for everyone that came to my blog, and hope you will continue to come. I think I will continue with at least one entry a week.

A conversation I overheard yesterday during lunch sums everything up pretty well. 3 older gentlemen around their 40s to 50s were talking about work, and it lead up to them talking about technology. One of them marveled how incredible it is that the internet didn't even exist when he first joined the workforce. Now he can do just about anything on it. Another said something along the line that he didn't even have a cell phone, pager or computer till 1996. The third chimed in, "everyone is on the internet these days, it's so much easier to get in touch with people." By this point their food came and they moved onto another topic, and I finished eating and left. But not before jotting down what they said on those red chopstick paper pocket wrap thing.

Actually that didn't really sum anything up at all lol, but that conversation gave me a good perspective on everything I learned this semester. Technology is changing so rapidly these days, steps in improvement aren't introduced year after year now, they're accomplished each day if not less. It's a marvelous time to be in we are, with social networking we can not only watch but participate in this era. It's great.

And that's that. Good luck on everyone's finals!

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

Labels.

Labels grinds my gears. Elitist, populist, amateur, professional. Who really defines these labels. People with credentials such as degrees, positions, and badges? or mass consensus? Even if we picked a group to align with, a view to look through, there's always an opposing side even within that group.

Why must we lock ourselves into any one position? Why can't I stand in the middle? Oh but if I did that I'm wishy washy. #@&! that.

I just read an article from the American Society of Association Executives and I just about puked. Andrew Keen made me puked a little bit in my mouth. That didn't stop me from reading his other piece at Weekly Standard that says Web2.0 is essentially communism in effect.

Have you ever read or heard something that's just so ridiculous you experience disbelief and immediate nausea? well those 2 articles did that for me. Granted it's a pretty frequent occurence for me of late, all caused by Mr. Keen's elite traditional media no less (The O'Really He Did Not Just Say That Factor, and the recent CNN presidential debates).

Keen is a hypocrite, but I'll get back to this later. Since I'm only a college student, I'm not worthy enough to criticize Mr. Keen. So I'll borrow BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis's view, which I agree with to start. "In web 2.0, Keen sees the means of flattening culture. I see the means of the people speaking. That’s not communism. That’s democracy. That’s freedom."

What Keen calls amateur "junk" are the people's voices. How is that killing culture? how is that "flattening" it. I would think that everyone obeying some elitist's point of view will flatten culture not the other way around.

Keen says that because of Web 2.0, the only courageous thing for people to do is not to write, not to have an opinion. "Since everyone will use digital media to express themselves, the only decisive act will be to not mark the paper." Those are his actual words. It's complete bullshit and this is where he's a hypocrite. He himself have a blog and a podcast. At the end of the day, he's just another Web 2.0 nobody, if you look at it from his point of view. The only thing I can agree with Keen is that Web2.0 is a neutral tool.

I can spiel on and on about this, but I'll leave you with this clip from Good Will Hunting. Matt Damon's last line toward the Harvard graduate student is great.



P.S.: I just added the AnswerTips application, double click anyword to get definition. It even works with movies, so try double clicking anything on this page.

Blog Content for Sale

After reading Derek Powazek's blog entry on user-generated content, I too have come to despise the term UGC. When did the novelty of blogging become something so dreadfully commodified. It seems like a throwback to the Orwellian 1984, my blog is not newspeak nor will it ever be, and that's what UGC makes it out to be a part of.

In addition, UGC is implying that because I'm writing from the position of the end user, I'm just not as good as other outlet's produced content. This is complete bull. I've read hired published writers who's vocabulary might be more extension than mine, write complete garbage. I've seen news conglomerate who are bias to the point of disgust.

The contents made by the end users weren't meant to be rated, and I agree with puchoo from India when he says, "the quality assigned to a UGC platform is never absolute but perception based."

I leave you with this from Henry Copeland: "Calling blogs consumer-generated media is like calling sex the "clothless generation of heat, musk and mucus." The essential excitement and motivation just doesn't come through, does it?"

Virtual Insanity

With all the stuff on the web nowadays, sometimes it feels a little overwhelming.
This song reminds me a lot of that notion, and its music video is great. One of the first music video I've ever seen, and can remember. Enjoy.

Sweet New Look

Got seriously jealous looking at other bloggers' sweet layout, so I shopped around on the web and modified me a template. Viola! presto! New Layout! I think its real spiff, how about you?

P.S.
I know its spelled voilà, but who doesn't like a good viola (awesome instrument btw) joke? I certainly don't know anyone who doesn't.

P.S.S.
Ok it's pretty lame (the viola thing, not the layout, the layout is friggin' sweet), if its any consolation, I am wired.

P.S.S.S.
psssssss...if anyone want to check out my group's assignment 3 here's a link: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddq2xrmh_1ppbkg7

Tagging Ron Paul

Maybe its the impressive content of my blog, or maybe its because I wrote about Ron Paul, and then tagged him, but my last blog entry so far has 29 diggs and counting on digg.com. Del.icio.us Democracy

The Ron Paul's post gotten me the most traffic ever according to Google Analytics. Amazing. Maybe I should tag Ron Paul on every post from now on till the 2008 presidential election.

Great idea? or Greatest idea?

Del.icio.us Democracy

Six months ago, John Edwards' campaign might have been "arguably the most technologically innovative, experimental, and aggressive." But now? you can't go to any social bookmarking site without stumbling over something about Ron Paul. That's right. A republican candidate that's not even a top candidate for republican front runner.

Do I support his views? No, but you can't but admire how effectively Ron Paul and his constituency is utilizing the web. If I wasn't semi-interested in politics and kept up with it, I probably would've thought Ron Paul was going to be the republican's front runner based on his exposure on the web.

Of the 7 republican debates Ron Paul participated in, Paul won 6 based on online voting from the debates' sponsors (I was going to link to MSNBC's online voting result based on the Michigan debate here, but it would seem in MSNBC's infinite wisdom to not only not close the poll, but only allow you to view the poll by voting on it first).

Ron Paul is currently the top search term on Hitwise, and the only presidential candidate in the current popular list at Technorati. The amount of visitors for ronpaul2008.com on the daily are substantially greater than all the other republican candidates combined according to Alexa.com (The first time I saw the traffic chart at Alexa, I thought I forgot to press something because all I see is the traffic for Ron Paul, but if you look closely at the bottom of the graph, you'll see the traffic for all the other sites). Ron Paul also has the most traffic and subscribers at Youtube.com, where all presidential candidates have used this year as a means of promotion. This is not coming from a young presidential candidate, Ron Paul is a 72 years old great-grandfather.

Ron Paul is probably not going to win, but that's how he is able to explore the unconventional methods the web has now introduce into the political arena. Appearing on web-based shows (an interview conducted in a college dorm room), and using the web to raise money. Michael Prospero's blog entry at fastcompany.com made a really good point, "Paul's greatest contribution to the election may not be what he adds to the political conversation, but how he adds to it."

Internet as a political vehicle is just at its infancy, politicians are still trying to perfect how they are going to approach this method of campaigning. As my generation become more politically aware and candidates become more internet-savvy, the future facebook, myspace, youtube, and social bookmarking sites such as digg, del.icio.us and Technorati are going to be the battleground where candidates are going to duke it out.

*added 9:50pm Sunday

Man I just re-read what I wrote, its pretty dry, but politics has always been a dry topic to talk about. However, that's where internet comes in. Internet imo, the freest medium we currently have, is already and will continue to change the political landscape to become even more commercialized than when MTV came on the scene with Rock the votes. Its getting more people to talk about politics than ever, its increasing visibility of the political world to more demographics whether they want to or not. Which in the end, I think, is a good thing.

Candidates who can keep up and be hip to the internet using population in the future will get their agenda heard. Whether or not that will convert into votes is something we'll have to see.

Résu-blog

Blog substituting as my résumé? or supplementing it?

Man, oh man, time to eliminate all the childish, snide and random remarks I've ever made on my public blog entries. Pictures too. Gotta fix those grammar errors as well.

While I tend to try and make my blogs as accurate a representation of myself as I can, without cheating my readers with an online persona, the phenomenon that's blurring of the line between personal and work, contributed in parts to blogs used as résumé, is a bit jarring. The part about playing, in the saying: "work hard and play hard" is now becoming a penalty.

The blog I linked to higher in the post was by Adam Darowski. In it he's says how blogs can fill in the blanks where a regular résumé can't. Sure I agree with that. Résumés really don't contain anything substantial, especially for people looking for their first job. I don't even see the reason for a résumé aside for screening purposes. Especially when I hear stories where people getting jobs with fake credentials on their résumés.

However, unless employees volunteers a blog for the employers to see, I really don't think employers should be allowed to use what they find online to penalize someone from getting a job without some kind of explanation.

Tom Kyte from Oracle came to my class a week or so back and commented about how he googles potential hires before interviews to get a better feel of an individual. Maybe its just me, but I find that to be unsettling. Sure if I'm working for a company, I'm representing that company where ever I am. It still doesn't make me feel any better that I'm being searched.

Now I understand where Tom Kyte is coming from. In his position at Oracle, anyone he's hiring is going to be taking on a pretty high ranking position within Oracle. It's understandable that he don't want to find his next head of database management to be dancing on a Las Vegas craps table drunk out of his/her mind on Flickr.com. But how about students like me?

Here's my problem with using blogs as a résumé:
- Will something I wrote 2 years ago be used against me?
- Will employers take into considerations that its written 2 years ago?
- Will employers tell me they searched for me online?
- Will they tell me the reason they won't hire me is due to something I have online? (of course not)

Solution?

In addition to a résumé, employers can ask for a detailed package of past projects, case studies, documented experience and other information they would want from a potential hire. If that's in the form of a blog, awesome. Sure they can still use the résumé as a screening device, but when they're actually hiring someone, ask for the things they're looking for. I'm tire of companies being ambiguous about the kind of people they're trying to hire. For example, I have tons of friends losing job opportunities but not knowing why. Employers should give feedbacks. Its not the potential employees that needs a blog, its the employers. Hiring practices should not be secretive. Here's an example of a recruiting blog.

Seriously, are the money spend by HR in hiring someone really used to its full extent? Searching online to know about someone, imho, is the lazy way out.

On the other hand, I will be submitting my blog as part of my résumé. Why? It IS a great way to share a part of who I am to potential employers . However I'm doing so voluntarily. If a company wants to search me online, I feel I should be asked.

If searching online about potential hires ever become a common practice in HR departments worldwide, I can guarantee that the permission to use those information will become a legal issue.

On other news...

Redskin beats Jets in OT. Thank goodness, I was pretty much crying and cursing during the half. Hope the Patriots vs Colts game will be an epic. =]

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

(Read Last Post for class, this one is just extra extra)
Well I've been meaning to do this, especially since my blog subject is about six degrees.
Anyhow, here we go...

Peter Chow -> Kevin Bacon

- Peter Chow is the son of Edvin Chow, CEO of Exact Grow Ltd.

- Edvin Chow is friends with and partner of William Stokes, founder of Stokes Publishing Company.

- Stokes Publishing Company published and produced books for children book writer Betsy Franco. This connection would've been a stretch, if not for the fact that the books Stokes Publishing published for Mrs. Franco are books paired with calculators (these books teaches kids how to count and do math), and the calculators were produced by my father's company. Through Stokes, my dad met Mrs. Franco, and they became friends.

- Betsy Franco is the mother of actor James Franco (Green Goblin of Spiderman 3 (2007)).

- James Franco was in The Wicker Man (2006) with Diane Delano.

- and...Diano Delano was in The Wild River (1994) with none other than the extraordinary Kevin Bacon.

There we have it! 6 degrees to Kevin Bacon!

Now how did I come upon this fabulous but trivial connection? Well during spring cleaning one day at Chow's residence (spring of 2003?), I happened to stumble upon an old Christmas card. The ones with the family photo on it. This one has 3 guys on it, next to I think a Christmas tree. When I saw it I thought it was an advertisement until I saw it was addressed to my dad.

"Dear Edvin, Merry Christmas from us and the boys. Betsy & Doug Franco." (paraphrased, because I don't remember if it said Merry Christmas, best wishes, Happy holiday, or a combination of)

Now it wouldn't have been anything, if the guy in the middle didn't look awfully like James Franco. At the time Spiderman (2002) is still fresh in my head ya see, especially since I'm, though I don't like to admit it in public, a fanboy. So I hustled over to my dad and was like:

Me: "who're these people."
Dad nonchalantly responds: "Oh, that's Betsy's boys."
Me: "Is one of her son an actor?"
Dad: "Yeah, I think Betsy mentioned it once, is he famous?"
Me: "he was just in a movie that grossed more than $400 million"
Dad: "Oh" (goes back to doing whatever he was doing)

Now I knew my dad has a friend named Betsy from California that he did business with, I never knew she was James Franco's mom. At this point I'm pretty much in full fanboy mode, and went online and told all my fanboy friends. "HA, I is connected to Green Goblin yo! BOOYAH!" (This was 5 years ago btw, I'm slightly more mature now. At least I don't say booyah as loudly anymore.)

As for proof? I'll need to find the card, which is in the abyss known as my closet, but when I do, I'll update this blog post or something.

That's it for now, back to the grind. Happy October 29th everyone.

Virtual Handshake

I'm terribly sorry for this late post. My broadband connection has been ADHDing the entire weekend, and then BANG! the power adapter to the router decided to take a dirt nap. Its a miracle that I can even write this blog in time.

Moving on...

I used to belong to an underground Japanese manga translation group, maximum7. We all met online from different corners of the world every week to translate and produce English versions of Japanese comics. Most of us, if not all, never met face to face. The recruitment was done online, the work was done at home and sent out to an editor through the web, who then releases it online.

Everything was done virtually. Everything can be done virtually, and now-a-days, that includes networking.

This leads to me to the article I was reading about virtual networking. The Six Degrees of Cooperation by Yasmin Gharemani, which reminds me a lot about this article about Lois Weisberg that I read earlier this semester. It's all about who you know. And Now-a-days, that doesn't always mean you've met face-to-face.

Sites like LinkedIn, and Facebooks are now the future of networking. Just like search engines, these will and some already are integrated into major corporations. These applications can maximize firm wide resources. Contacts and buyers can be shared. Talents can be found. There won't be redundant hirings, because someone within a firm may already have the skills to do a job. It saves money and increase revenue. Theoretically of course.

Why only theoretically? because this is still untested water. Sure networking sites has been around for a while now. Everyone knows how to use them, and everyone do use them. However, business networking is in a totally different ballpark. There needs to be guidelines, and incentives. The application must be able to protect contacts as well as share them. Concerns of the employees must be addressed. The potentials of these apps are great, but these points must be taken into considerations before implementations.

Okay...onto other topics.

Redskins. Holy crap did they get reamed today. I hope they finally realize how bad they are and finally shape up, instead of continuing to coast, like the last 7 games. (I'm still a fan! for now anyway)

Well that's it for now, hopefully next week I won't have as much trouble getting my blog published. =P

*edited 10:00am 10/29
because I published the wrong draft v_v; GIVE ME A BREAK virtual GOD...sheesh

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

Whenever Captain America utters that famous line in the Marvel comic world, its usually followed by members of the Avengers instantly appearing out of the woodworks to battle whatever current baddies is in town. As if magically Captain America's voice brings forth these members from everywhere around the world.

Of course its probably just a communication device Iron Man built for him, and the magically appearing might be because the Avengers are all superpowered heroes.

It used to seem fantastic being able to communicate to people from around the globe instantly, without delay and without a phone, its stuff only reality in comic books or films. The technology was there, its just expensive and usually unwieldy. Bluetooth? Wifi? Skype? They didn't exist.

Now I can do video conferencing with my friends in Hong Kong, Australia, California, Canada all at once, and all from the comfort of my room. I'm not Captain America, or some ridiculously paid CEO. I'm just a in between job, 23 years old college student with a laptop.

VoIP programs like Skypes and other similar programs are bringing communication to the next level, from boardrooms to the battlefields. Creating real life situation where a military commander can call upon his troops and "assemble" them in a matter of minutes via video screens and/or speakers. While at the same time businesses can conduct their negotiation from different continents using the same technology.

I'm just in awe of what technology can allow us to do today, and what it can lead to in the future.

Now if only I can get my hands on Captain America's Shield and I'll be set.

Ego Surfing

I didn't know there was a term for it, but that's just me being naive. We're in the internet age. There's a term for everything, whether you need one or not. Just look at UrbanDictionary.com, you get everything from "pwn" to "leave-britney-alone." Which kinda already prove the point I'm gonna try to make in this post. You can find everything on the internet, E-VE-RY-thing.

Which brings me back to ego surfing or googling yourself. Anyone who's proficient enough to type a search query in any search engine has done this before. It's pretty fun to find out what people with your name are doing out there in the world. I share my name with doctors, a martial art master, CTOs, an actor, an artist, a professor, and the list goes on. I remember when I first googled myself, around 1999?, there was no more than a handful of Peter Chow's on the internet and maybe 10 pages of search result. 8 years later? Google throws me a hefty number of 2,280,000 search results and shows me that someone has registered both the domain name http://www.peterchow.com/ and http://www.peterchow.org/. That's a huge leap, that's mind-boggling expansion. That's the kind of growth in information we're facing today, where everything is becoming searchable. Our lives are now being digitally documented. Pictures, blogs, videos, and profiles.

During the NBA season I probably will never agree with him, but Mark Cuban makes an excellent observation that I found humorous. "By the time [my daughter] starts dating, I won't need to greet her dates at the door with a shotgun, I will have a digital history of the poor kid and know pretty much everything about him, before I meet him."

That's the truth. Anyone who's determining enough can find just about anything you or I have ever put on the internet. That includes anything ranging from what you bought last on eBay to a topographical rendering of your neighborhood made from the address you entered into one of those stupid "Get free Ipod" advertisement (I'm almost 100% sure 80-90% of internet user have done this once in their internet usage lifetime).

Which is why I don't agree with the article Seth Godin of Fast Company wrote about privacy. There's a reason for anonymity. I don't want everyone and their mama to look at anything of mine even if I can see who they were. That's like saying, sure anyone can look into my house because their credential is for all to see. Plus most of the argument he makes about auctions, newsgroup, email and information exchange can be said the same of their offline counterpart. All anyone need is a little common sense. Here's a little list to help people with a little less C.S. than some.

- Ignore morons who can't make good arguments, or make a counter argument so good that it leave them speechless. (If that doesn't work, go back to ignoring)
- Don't give out your internet address too freely to avoid spam (Seriously, you probably won't get that IPhone, so stop submitting those forms that want not only your email address but your home address)
- Make rational judgment before believing what you read on the internet.

As for privacy, just remember this one simple rule one of my classmate told me: "If you don't want your mama to see it, don't put it on the internet."

To Digg or Not to Digg

I've been "digging" a lot lately. Its great watching the newest dugged links. From viral videos, reports of police brutality, biased political blogs and another blog piece defending PC or praising Mac.

Ok I'm being sarcastic. Not that great, but I can't seem to stop myself from checking Digg.com every time I open my web browser. Heck Digg.com is one of my home tabs and so are a couple other link ranking sites. However, the ranking systems on all of these link-ranking sites are really bothering me.

I keep asking myself every time I go onto Digg, "Why aren’t there undigg buttons for the links?" There's an undigg button for comments, but not one for links. There are so many rankings on the web that no one knows whose number 1! Doc Searls of Linux Journal and The Cluetrain Manifesto made a good point about how its "odd not to see BoingBoing, long #1 on Technorati’s list, not present at all on Techmeme’s. Same with the new #1, Huffington Post. Not technical enough, perhaps? One can only guess."

What's really getting to me in addition to the ranking is how link-ranking sites are now getting bought. Reddit.com last year was bought out by the owner of Wired.com, Conde Nast. Just today, Newsvine to my surprise was acquired by MSNBC.com.

My independent news source has just been acquired by a major news corporation. While I'm glad that Mike D and the rest of his staff will get the help to expand the site, how independent will it remain? How will ranking of news be affected in the future? Will the restraints come up against biased articles?

A Second Universe

I read an article in Times last year where the reporter took a virtual tour of Second Life. After reading it, I went and checked out what the fuss was all about. Aside from being taken back by how rampant the virtual sex part is within Second Life, the rest of Second Life is absolutely astounding.

A virtual social network equipped with a fully functional capitalist system that is connected to the real world. Virtual concerts, speeches, movie screenings and debates. Real estates to user created applications, and of course just a place to network.

While all these amazed me, and was intellectually stimulating, I made the mistake of thinking Second Life was a game. It wasn't, and if you think it is, you'll be absolutely bored to tears if that's how you're approaching it. I haven't been on since the day I downloaded it.

However since finding out Second Life is on my Social Network curriculum, I have since made a new account, and explored Second Life in a new light this time. "How can I use Second Life as I use Facebook or Myspace?"

I'm not sure yet. All I know is its going to be time consuming and seems to me, it's going to make me more antisocial in real life than social in Second Life.

Law and Order: Blog Monitor Force

I was watching Law & Order: SVU (the best out of all the spinoffs) the other day, and something stuck out to me. Mariska Hargitay is hot!...and so is the lawyer chick (the redheaded one, not Bobby Flay's wife). Ok...something else popped out at me too, the hired experts the defense and the prosecution both brought to the table in that episode. Each side spinning the spiel that blah blah blah blah blah....dang that lawyer is hot when she interrogates...what's the actress name...oh yeah Diane Neal.

Ok..back to the hired experts. One said, due to medical condition criminal wasn't responsible for crime, other said it was. Why did this stick out to me? It did because I was just thinking...if court cases can be decided on paid testimonies, what's preventing other outlets from doing the same thing? Such as blogs.

Blogs are mostly opinions and commentaries, but they're opinions and commentaries people listens to. So what's to prevent large corporation from hiring experts to write blogs in favor of them? or anonymously write a blog themselves?

We all know that ethics are in tatters in many American corporations. Every other fortune 500 company has been in a scandal where it could've been prevented if everyone followed the code of ethics.

Just a little food for thought while blogs continue to progress into the forefront of main stream media. Where blog celebrity can get their own Tv show, and blogs can bring upon a class action suit.

I Link Therefore I Am.

Rum, capoeira, and sunny california. Read the blog that gives you all that and more, Morgan's.

Emmy results and a "naked conversation" with the Emperor

So in between watching the cheating Patriots thrash the Chargers and an E! special on the top 25 most memorable swimsuit moments, I watched the 59th Prime-time Emmy Awards on Fox.

The Sopranos of course snagged a medley of awards including the one for Outstanding Drama series, which beat out one of my favorite show, Heroes. Heroes' Hiro (Masi Oka) also didn't win his supporting actor nomination, which was a bummer, but I was more upset at how incompetent John Madden was as a commentator when Masi was losing. However one of the thing that did catch my attention during the award show was Al Gore's CurrentTv.com's Emmy win for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television.

Now I'm only a semi-Al Gore supporter, which pretty much means I voted for him in the last election, thought the Inconvenient Truth was a pretty good documentary, think it'll be nice if my car was a hybrid, and recycle when it's convenient. But that's not why his win caught my attention. It caught my attention because of how much CurrentTv reminded me of what Robert Scoble and Shel Israel was talking about in their book, naked conversation, which I'm currently reading for class.

Anyway, I never even heard of CurrentTv.com till I watched the Emmy tonight, so I googled it and found this article by Ellen McGirt of FastCompany.com that quickly updated me. CurrentTv is pretty much a cable TV network that lets the viewers pick or create what they want to watch on the network. A Youtubian TV network to put it simply. This expands the TV experience from the one-way exchange of information that it has always been, to direct interactions between network and customers that has never been done before in that medium. CurrentTv's manifest mirrors the current emerging corporate blogging scene talked about in naked conversation, where corporate bloggers and consumer bloggers can "interrupt each other to ask questions, make suggestions, [and] challenge arguments." It gives the big corporations a friendly, understanding face that is sorely absent in today's consumer market.

However imho, these big company need to realize that while these new means of interactions with the consumer is certainly good for business, they need to make sure that this new face they're projecting does not become a façade that does more harm then good. Case in point, I was surfing Hewlett Packward's website the other day, while checking for new ways I can contact HP customer service (read my previous post for reason), I found my way to HP's corporate blogs.

It's nice to see ethusiastic HP employees blogging about work and even what they do in their spare time, but many of the bloggers missed the whole point of actual dialoguing with the customers. If they said they won't dialogue, it would have been alright, but it clearly states in their Blogging Code of Conduct that they will. Now I'm not saying they have to respond to everyone and everything, but when there's a fair amount of comments on a blog that talked about HP inventing customer experiences, and almost all of those comments are challenging what it says, you would think that warrant some "dialoguing." But nope, no response. So rather than being a human face for the company, the blogs instead patronizes.

Alright, my head been hurting all day and I still haven't done my Japanese homework and it's due at 8:30 in the morning, I think I'm gonna go past out.

*edit

Oh...and I finally got hold of a case manager from HP the other day (Thank you God of Luck, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Buddha!), apparently calling at 12:07pm (EST) on a friday is the best time. My laptop is gonna be replaced by a brand spanking new upgraded one, a compensation from HP for it being so lousy, however I'll need to wait 2-3 weeks for it to be build. So if anyone out there want a sweet laptop and you don't want to pay as much, all you have to do is buy a lower end laptop from HP, wait till it breaks down, be frustrated and aggravated for 3 months and BANG, voila, a new sweetass laptop! Oh...and that's only if you get through to someone important from HP customer service by the second month! Good luck, and good night.

Theories For Dummies: Things everyone know, but apparently there's a need for doctors to explain it to you.

I'm usually a very patient and calm person, but there are moment of late that I haven't been. These moments usually start with a phone call to Hewlett-Packard's customer service line, ending a hour later with me cussing at the dead phone like it just insulted my entire family including my dog and my hamster.

Why?

It's a long story, but the gist of it is that my laptop has been in service for 2 months and I still haven't gotten it back. Plus it would seem all the case managers in HP seem to be too busy to deal with me, despite me calling in the morning, the evening, the afternoon, the beginning of their shift, the middle or the end. They're so diligent in fact, that of the 8 times their technicians say they'll call me back, they have called me zero times.

I was reading the other day about network theories and I was thinking why are there even a field of study there? It seems like things everyone should know, things like how people connect to each another and how to make that connection better comes naturally. You don't need lines and diagrams to tell you why A and B connects and why C is left out, its human nature to know how social network works. Even a socially inept person knows the rules of social network, they're just people that aren't motivated or is afraid to change what's making them inept.

However after speaking (or not speaking) to HP customer service, I understand why there's a need for network theories. Because BIG COMPANIES apparently loses sight of how to maintain good relationships with their customers. If they can't even do that, how do they manage their own employees?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this but I'm gonna be back later and elaborate after I marinate on this thought a little.

Premiere Blog

Seeing how the name of the class is "six degrees" and my blog is doing it to the 6th degree, the Malcolm Gladwell article about Lois Weisberg (link) definitely perked my interest. Who is this women? and how is it possible for her to be the "connector" to so many different social groups? She knows actors, writers, doctors, lawyers, artists, park lovers, politicians, railroad buffs, flea-market aficionados, musicians, and the list goes on. What motivates her to be pretty much a human Facebook?

At the time the article was published, Mrs Weisberg was 74 and she was still meeting new people and trying her hands on new professions. She's an indomitable social networking machine and she reminds me of my grandmother before she had her stroke 10 years ago.

Before her stroke my grandmother was the social hub of the DC Metropolitan area's Chinese community. Still is actually, but just at a lesser capacity, as she is wheelchair bound now. I remember being dragged to dinners with political figures, various charity events, community gatherings, and plays when I was younger. Everyone knew her, whether it was our neighbor or the taiwanese ambassador, they always go out of their way to say hello to my grandmother when they know she's around. I'm always surprise at the amount of people that comes to greet her, and even more surprise at who they are.

I admire people like my grandma and Mrs Weisberg, not for their wealth of acquaintances but for their ability to move among subcultures and niches with ease. They're not only peripherally in different groups, but are well within the heart of every group they're in. They increase the "social capital" to every group they touch, they're the ones that everyone can trust, and they're the one that we should all learn from, so that we can benefit ourselves as well as our own community.

That's it for today, till next time,
Emperor Pete

P.S. Here's a list I found of almost 150 things you can do to increase social capital, the website also explains in detail more about what exactly social capital is. (BetterTogether.org's social capital list)

Blogging 101

Hello Bloggers! Fresh from the womb of the real world, I come to you in virtual space to bring you scholastic blogging at its very best...well at least to the very best of my abilities. I hail from American University in Washington DC and this blog is for my social networking class. "On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own."

Just a salutation, and I promise future posts will be a lot more enticing compared to this one.

It's lunch time EST,
Peter Chow (The Emperor)