judith meskill - soc.media.rocks

Today, Joshua Chaffin for FT.com reports Dismay that US army outsources interrogation.
...CACI International, a rising star in the defence contracting business, boasts about its proficiency in information technology, knowledge management and other New Economy-sounding specialties. Nowhere in its promotional materials, however, does the Virginia-based company mention its prisoner interrogation services.
This week, Jack London, CACI's chief executive, was forced to explain those activities after an internal US army report implicated its interrogation specialists in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib near Baghdad.
 
The report, concluded in February, called for one CACI worker to be dismissed and another to lose his security clearance.
 
While the images of prisoners being abused - more of which emerged yesterday - have provoked outrage around the world, the scandal has also come as a shock in the defence and intelligence communities, where few were aware that the army had been outsourcing interrogation.
 
"I'm surprised at the extent of it," a former CIA official said. "Like a lot of people, I had no idea."
 
He and others expressed dismay that the army would entrust such a sensitive task to the private sector, which is not subject to the same military legal code or chain of command. As evidence of this, they noted that while six US soldiers were now facing courts martial, no contractors had been charged...

So yesterday I told you about American Airlines' shameless play to connect our familial dots and then fly us all toour family reunions.
 
Well today Classmates.com getsinto the act of bringing our academic families back together with Reunion Center 2.0offering online ticket sales forschool, work, and military reunions. According to the press release we can utilize Classmates.com Reunion Centerto:

Sell tickets online for all reunion events and collect payment from attendees via Visa, MasterCard or check.
Post reunion information and photos to share with their class.
Increase reunion awareness by leveraging Classmates.com's listing of more than 38 million school alumni.
Send email invitations, updates and reminders to the reunion class, even if they are not yet members of Classmates.com.
Show class members a current RSVP list of reunion attendees.
Find lost alumni and enable class members to stay in touch.
Create class message boards to share reunion ideas and memories.
Get ideas from thousands of other reunion planners.

All for a modest processing fee. Have you been to a High School Reunion lately?

Social Networking in the contextof connecting the dots in your extended familythat's what American Airlines' new Ultimate Family Reunion campaign is all about. That,and getting you to fly with them to connect all of those dots.
 
There is a PRNewswire this morning to this effect. American is running a sweepstakes to fly up to 15 members of your family to areunion, along with hotel stays and meals.
 
I have not recorded much here on the Social Software Weblog about reaching out to network with one's famillyextended,misplaced, lost, or strayed members. But this is certainly another sub-category in the YASNS Meta List category of"common interest" networking services. American is partnering with MyFamily.comand Evite.com in their pitch to contact and bring your family together, organizedon a family website so that you can plan a reunion and fly with American to take you there.
 
I know that my own genealogy research has certainly expanded the horizons of my extended family networkdiscoveringsecond, third, and fourth cousins with a shared interest in mapping out and coloring in all of the leaves and brancheson our family tree. And what an extended social network it is!

And, as American asks on their website, "How long has it been?" since you were all together in one physical spacewith your extended family?

my sister manages an art store on "main street" in a small, scenic, new jersey town. every year she decorates the store window and creates a stunning flower box right below the window. then there is a juried competition - which she often wins. this year she placed first in this competition, and honored me by having one of my spring haiku painted onto the front window of the store.
 
i penned this haiku one early morning in may - while parked on the cherry blossom strewn street before anyone else was stirring but the soulful mourning dove.
 
main street still slumbers
pink snow drifts on blacktop road
mourning dove coo coos...
 
haitech haiku ©2004 judith meskill

Gosh, I could have sworn that SocialGrid (a service described as aGoogle-search-based, grid computing, P2P, file sharing, dating enhancing, Google AdSensefocused SNS, aka: Solve Dating) announced its launchback on January 1, 2004, but here it is again, today, on internetnews.com inan article by Susan Kuchinskas Love on the Grid which announced SocialGrid'slaunch as yesterday, May 3, 2004.
 
Back in January, Clay Shirky posted of SocialGrid: Much, muchcrazier than I thought. Andrew Baio also wrote, in this same timeframe: Socialgrid Kookiness. The comments on JasonKottke's remaindered January 8, 2004 link regardingSocialGrid's wild "Warning to Copycats & Clones" policy were… most insightful.

In the internews.com piece, Love on the Grid, Susan Kuchinskas writes:

Google is notoriously un-amused by anyone taking its name in vain; it has sent cease-and-desist letters to Booble, a directory of X-rated Web sites. But Vuong said that he knows Google is aware of SocialGrid, because several Google employees have signed up.

Hmm… Vuong intends to lower cost for his SocialGrid service as follows:

1. Shift cost to Google for simple searches in exchange fordisplaying Google ads.
2. Shift cost to members' computer via grid computing for complexsearches.
3. Shift bandwidth cost to members' Internet service providers viapeer-to-peer.

Kuchinskas also includes the following comments on SocialGrid from Rael Dornfest:

Dornfest said lots of people already use Google for social networking, although not so explicitly as SocialGrid allows. The API lets users see what pages are linked to the pages they've found, and find unsuspected connections.

"It provides some interesting paths forward rather than just back to what you were looking for," Dornfest said.

Well, I guess everything old is new again and Chau Vuong's current Copycats & Clones warning is somewhat revisedfrom the January, 2004 version that stated: The patent application claims coverage of basically all complexobjects, including people, in almost every country.

Out of curiousity, I performed a comparison between the old and new versions of the C&C warning and it appearsthat the most heavily criticized language has been restated. For your reading pleasure, the following marked-upparagraph highlights the differences between the January, 2004, and May 4, 2004 versions of SocialGrid's Copycats &Clones warning (the underlined text is new, the stricken text is gone, and the normal text is that which remainsunchanged):

We haveSocialGrid has retained one of the top intellectual property law firms in America. Everything on this site is copyrighted and trademarked. Thetrademarked, including our search and coding system. Our patent application claims coverage on searches for all complex objects using Internet search engines. of basically all complex objects, including people, in almost every country.Our goal is to ensure a search system that will be free to our members and keep individuals and corporations from profiting by charging for searches. We will marginalize every profit margin. There is no money to made in creating another ID coding system. The world needs only one system. If necessary, we will donategive SocialGrid and the patent to Google to insure one standardized coding system. Any copycats and clones will have to answer to Google. Do not compete with us. Join us and become a partner.Please be advised that any copyright, trademark, and patent infringement will result in legal action.

In Tell Me a Story: Q&A with Steve Denning, Cliff Atkinson asks Steve Denning a series of questions on story telling in a business setting. Cliff specifically steers the questioning to PowerPoint as a help and/or hindrance in facilitating presentational story-telling.
Here is one of the nine questions posed to Steve Denning:
 
CA: What do you make of the criticism of PowerPoint lately that has been fueled by Edward Tufte's essay, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint?
 
SD: Tufte's essay is a cranky piece and I can understand the crankiness of anyone having to sit through the average PowerPoint presentation in a business context. But it's a bit like writing an essay on The Cognitive Style of the English Language and arguing that because most written English these days is flaccid, poorly written and ill-thought-through prose, therefore we should abandon the English language. PowerPoint is a tool and a very flexible tool. The problem is not the tool but rather how it's used.
 
Images are an important mode of communication, and for some people the main way in which they learn things. PowerPoint is tool that can be used to reinforce oral communication with visual images. For some people, words along are fine. But why not use both words and images? The problem isn't PowerPoint. The problem is how it's used.

Valdis Krebs Social Networking Analyst & Management Consultant is now on the third iteration of his detailed mapping of the political book reading habits of left, right, and middleleaning readers.
 
Particulary compelling in this election year in the U.S. is the dearth of middle ground readers.
 
This is Valdis' third "book network" analysis based on the political book purchasing patterns of readers from majorbook retailers on the web. (The full 800 x 800 book network analysis appears on Valdis' Orgnet web site as Divided WeStand.)
 
Most notable for me upon viewing this third network mapping, as opposed to its two predecessors, is the increase innumber of "books in the middle". Valdis explains:

The release of two popular middle books, colored purple, expose a further network of middle books. Ghost Wars reveals one group of middle books, while The Rise of the Vulcans reveals a second group. Yet, the increase in boundary-spanning books does not indicate a shift in the political landscape. The three network maps are not that different within common statistical limits.

The image that I am including here is just a "peek" at the middle ground reading habits of politicallyinclined readers. Once again, for the full current view of Valdis' impressive research in this area go to Divided We Stand. (And for a view of Krebs' previous two maps Early 2003 & Early2004.)
 
What are you reading? One or more of these books? If so, then pleaseshare. (-:=

According to a PR Newswire today, the University of Maryland (UM) will be hosting a Business Plan Competition whichcould, according to University President C. D. Mote Jr., reveal the next Sergey Brin (an UM alumnus.)

Among the Finalists for the 2004 Competition to be heldon May 7 at UM is:

MindSay: with more than 20,000 members and three million Internet visits each month, this company is targeting the largest generation since the Baby Boomers (Generation Y, 60 million members) with an evolutionary, Web-based social networking product. MindSay combines blogging, instant messaging, and Friendster-style cross-networking to create a unique interface for staying in touch with friends, forming new relationships, and sharing content with all of one's social circles.

Blogging + IM + Social Networking = MindSay?

Then it also ='s Motime, and Splinder.it,and Biz Stone says it also ='s Blogger.
 
And, I am certain that it also equals other weblogging + services that integrate both IM and Social Networkingcomponents. A separate category on the YASNSMeta List where contenders for this category currently appear in the 'social networking plus and/or edge cases'category?
 
Do any of you currently utilize IM to update your weblogs? Tried it once? Use it regularly?

An article in Federal Computer Week by Frank Tiboni -- Software speeds airborne preparations -- reports that:
...Officials at CC Intelligent Solutions Inc. and commanders in charge of 150 to 200 paratroopers are developing a suite of applications known as FusionNet Genesis, which cost $330,000 to develop. The software has helped commanders deploy equipment, collect intelligence, order goods ,and plan airborne and helicopter attack operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
FusionNet replaced bulky logbooks and old software that didn't meet the logistical needs of paratroopers assigned to fight the war on terrorism, Army officials said...