Modus Cooperandi

Reviewing SquareSpace

SquareSpace is one of the most impressive blogging applications we’ve seen.  SquareSpace’s graphic design, features, and attention to detail are top-notch.  We were stunned by its beauty.  How often can you say that about a blogging tool?

The site’s complexity means there’s a bit higher learning curve than most blogapps.  The site is also not free.  You can test drive for 31 days, but you’ll need to shell out some bucks otherwise.  For a multi-user blog, this can be a little spendy.

Fantastic Features (Claws that Catch)

Creative Commons – SquareSpace allows you to easily create and display your standard copyright or creative commons notice. 

Statistics – SquareSpace has the best statistics we’ve seen thus far.  Full access to usage logs as well as helpful up-to-the-minute reports.

Number of Modules – There’s a lot of extendibility to SquareSpace.  You can add photo albums, threaded conversations, file storage / download, Amazon wish list, change tracking, IM and others.

Post Alerts – strong system to alert Technorati and other engines that you have posted and send out trackback pings.

Fatal Flaws (Bandersnatch)

No SquareSpace Trackbacks:  No trackback ping URLs for your posts, so people can’t easily alert you.

No Technorati Cosmos links:  The obvious thing to save grace from not having trackbacks would be to have Technorati do that for you.  Since the system is already alerting technorati that your post is there, it isn’t much harder to put in a Technorati cosmos link to track interest that way.

Hidden Features – You really have to dig for the features.

Still Some Bugs – A few features made our browsers crash and some were dependent on Internet Explorer to work.

Read the full on review (coming soon)

Rankings (outta 10)

Jim – 8

Ken – 8

Composite Collaberwocky Rating: 8

Note .. we are currently trying to figure out which service to host the reviews we are writing.  We would like to use SquareSpace, but the lack of Trackbacks or a Cosmos link is giving us heartburn.  The problem is, every blog hosting site has some fatal flaw!

Choosing the Wrong Technology

Sweet beautiful irony.  In this blog entry on ZDNet David Berlind interviews Ross Mayfield from SocialText about blogs and wikis and when to use which technology.  They have a long chat about it and, in the end, Berlind ends with the statement:

OK.  So, if you didn’t know what a wiki was before, but are ready to get one now, raise your hand.

This is because the interview itself is circular and confusing.  Mayfield is commenting on how it's sometimes hard to grasp which technology to use in a given circumstance.

But the irony here is that he conducts the interview with Ross entirely over IM.  And then reprints that chat. So, he used the wrong technology to interview someone about the appropriate uses of a given technology.  This was apparently clear enough to Mayfield that before the interview was published, he blogged what he was really thinking.

IM rewards terse verbiage.

So what came from Ross in the ZDNet interview was a smarmy, off-the-cuff set of answers that were obviously made to economize typing and not to communicate subtleties.  His follow-on blog entry is much more thoughtful.  It is likely that in a voice interview, some of his statements would have been different.

Certainly, check out Ross' blog entry above.  It's a very good read.

Throwing the Wiki out with the Blogwater

In this Tech Republic article Ramon Padilla, Jr. misses the ball. Mr. Padilla, Tech Republic’s eGovernment writer, wrote this article to mini-extol the virtues of the wiki over the blog for Government. He believes that blogs are not good for government.  I disagree.

Probably a hint of his misconception is this statement:

…giving government employees a bully pulpit on the intranet would probably result in a negative cost-benefit analysis.

This is the crux of his argument for both internal and external use. Government cannot be effective if government employees are allowed to make statements that may contradict the “official line” of government policy.  ... That government cannot be trusted to blog.

But government already does blog. (Mayor Tom McMahon of Reading, PA, Cuyhoga County Planning , etc. ) And they don’t do it enough.

(To continue reading click the link below)

IBM Gets It

IBM has taken some time to come up with their guidelines for employee blogging.  These guidelines will likely become the basis for the standard for all employee blogging world-wide.  The guidelines are clear, fair and in the spirit of new business.

Above all, these guidelines encourage IBM employees to be thoughtful, respectful and good citizens of the Internet.  They encourage people to be honest, to not pick fights and to understand the power of their own voice. 

Know your fellow bloggers. The most successful bloggers are those who pay attention to what others are saying about the topic they want to write about, and generously reference and link to them. Who’s blogging on the topics that most interest you? On the Internet, a quick way to find out who’s saying what is to use the search tools on Technorati, DayPop or Blogdigger. Drop your fellow bloggers a note to introduce yourself and your blog. There is also an informal community of IBM bloggers, so you can quickly find out which of your peers are part of the conversation.

It is fantastic how these guidelines reflect what is good about blogging and other collaborative tools.  The guidelines themselves do not preach, do not overstate their case, and do not threaten IBM employees.  Employees need to know the general rules that govern what IBM employees do anyway, but they are trusted here to understand their roles and the use of these new tools.

As we move further along in this ethic of information sharing for mutual benefit, direct corporate communication and contact will become the norm.  How close do you feel to GM or to Ford?  Odds are, not very close.  Today, however, we're all a lot closer to Big Blue.

I urge anyone wondering how to use these collaborative tools to give the IBM blog policy web site a once over.  There are guidelines here of value to all.

**Addition** Hopefully the folks from IBM who have been visiting this blog over the last several days will leave some comments and start a conversation!

IBM Blog Policy: Technorati   | Google News

Making Poverty History

I pulled this from a  woman, Michelle whose posts I read on another list.  It's a who set of videos on the ONE project to make poverty history.  In spite of being a little tired of the colored wrist bands, I could go for one of these.

What is The ONE Campaign?
ONE is a new effort by Americans to rally Americans – ONE by ONE – to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty. The ONE Campaign is engaging Americans through a diverse coalition of faith-based and anti-poverty organizers to show the steps people can take, ONE by ONE, to fight global AIDS and poverty.

Cooperative Religion

I have been waiting a while to interview a priest in Wisconsin who is the head of a parish that used to be three parishes.  They had a crisis where they were forced to consolidate the three parishes.  In the past there would have been six to nine priests serving that population.  Now there is only one.

To deal with this, the parishoners themselves had to step up and take on many responsibilities formerly dedicated to the clergy.  This had the effect of giving the parishoners ownership of their own faith.  This ownership strengthened the parish.  In short, less leadership created a stronger community with a stronger faith.

Recently Ulises Ali Mejias presented at the Los Angeles Latino Muslim Association's annual meeting this discussion about the intersection of collaborative technologies and Muslim believers.  Despite the fact that at this echo the two comments engendered were not favorable, I find it very consistent with the Catholic experience above.

Ali Mejias is noting that when religion becomes closer to the person, closer to the heart, practitioners of a faith are forced to come to terms with the intersection of that faith and how they live day to day.  In most cases, these examinations are most effective when done with a community.  While the danger of group think is always possible, the benefits of peer review and support often outweigh.

In this case, the parallel between open source coding and religion, I feel, is apt.  Persons of faith need to work at home on the own (introspection) and need to collaborate with others (community) in order to provide a good product for themselves and society as a whole.

Leadership and Environments

A few weeks ago I wrote this entry about the fragility of any community and how changes to its foundation, no matter how small, have impacts on the functioning the cooperative group.  I'm in Phoenix this week for a conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems.  I used to work a lot in Phoenix and would come to town once a month or so.

During that time I discovered the underground Phoenix art community, which was very vibrant.  During that time I befriended Peter Ragan who ran an establishment called Metropophobobia.  Peter's place was part of a larger scene, although during the scene's ebbs and flows it was around to re-seed future activity.

A contributing factor to the success of the Phoenix underground art community was cheap rent.  Rent was cheap in downtown Phoenix because it was totally ignored and undervalued by the wall-community residents of the greater Phoenix area. 

Phoenix is so fond of walls, in fact, that when they wanted to encourage people to live in downtown Phoenix (to "enlilven" it), they built ... yes ... a walled community in downtown.

However, due to some random development in downtown (easily less than 1% of the development region-wide), land owners in downtown Phoenix raised rents and evicted artists.  Their thought was that new and chiq restaurants would open in their place.  They did not, because the only reason people had to go downtown was to go to the art venues.

Now, a convention goer such as myself, has a very hard time even eating dinner in downtown Phoenix because everything (even Starbucks) closes at 5 pm. 

In the interim, the once-thriving Phoenix art community is in at best a hibernation mode.  The community has strong leadership which now has art shows in vacant lots (of which downtown Phoenix has many).  So you can see performance art, music, exhibits ... in vacant lots. 

In itself, this is a great protest, but a strain on the community.  Rumors are that the community will try to regroup in Glendale, a Phoenix suburb with a nicely walkable downtown that is now becoming affordable because of the shopping malls that have opened in the area.

This is important because of the element of leadership in cooperation.  Cooperation rarely occurs because a group of equals spontaneously erupts in a cooperative frenzy.  Cooperation occurs because someone or some group of people set out to build a cooperative environment, which allows others to participate.

In this case, the arts community was dealt a devistating blow, but the leadership of the group in Phoenix would not let it die.  They had the foresight and wisdom to understand that they couldn't go on with status quo, but there were all sorts of ways they could continue to exist with a little creative problem solving.

Chats with community members indicate that this was not a process without pain or a process without casualties.  Several people, several leaders, became disillusioned, angry, or defeatist and left.  But others stuck it out, keeping their cooperation active while they regrouped to acheive what they had before.

To punctuate the strife in transition, here is a pretty good post detailing the demise.

Cooperation Online

I used to follow a newsgroup for blind folks who were interested in GUIs.  Seems sort of counterintuitive, but I learned a lot of good things on it.  And I met some interesting people.  But I discovered something strange.  As a sighted lurker on a blind group, I was sometimes able help someone on the group because I could see.  But that ended up being sort of strange, since I had to consider in the offer revealing that I could see, and had sort of invaded a cyberspace for blind people.  I found myself being pretty apologetic sometimes.

But I met some great people and have learned a lot from them.  And they have been able to help me with my use of screen readers, giving me tricks, checking things for me, helping me to understand how blind users do or think about some thing etc.  In exchange for this help, I try to "be eyes" for them on occassion.  So today, I am sitting here pasting English translations into figures in an article for someone I met on the group.  I've never met her, and I've never heard her voice.  She's an english translator for a german company and she lives in India.  Talk about an amazing person!  In the spirit of cooperation, she has gladly helped me, and likewise I love the opportunity to help in return with a commodity she doesn't have a lot since I have eyes and speak English and some German.  But short of the incredible world of the internet, how else would that even be possible?