Get the habit!

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Joe

If you take a look at the section of this blog that lists posts by the month in which they appear, you’ll see that whilst recent months have been pretty regular, there have been some hiatuses in the past. Looking back over them I can identify the fact that at the beginning of the period of silence, something happened in the ‘day job’ or in life in general that broke me away from writing the blog post. And I stayed away from the blog for a while after that for the simple reason that I hadn’t really become habituated to blogging.

I remember reading somewhere that you have to repeat a course of action a few thousand times before your mind and body really begin to treat something as a truly ingrained habit. Well, I hope that’s not entirely correct because I’m working on making a daily blog post a positive habit in my life.

Here are some techniques that I’ve adapted from other places and that I’ll be using to get the blogging habit in 2010.

Publicise what you’re doing!

A friend of mine set up a Facebook group where we could publicise our New Year Resolutions to other group members and see whether we could keep them! It’s always good to have an audience of people waiting for you to drop the ball! 🙂 You’re making a promise now to others as well as yourself; many people find it harder to disappoint others even in small ways than let themselves down.

Set a time and a place

Stephen King, in his excellent book ‘On Writing’, suggests that any writer needs to make sure that they’re at their writing desk / writing place at teh same time every day. Excellent idea! It effectively makes an appointment with yourself to be in a place with all the conditions just right for writing.

Remove Distractions

Make that appointment with yourself in a place and at a time where it’s possible to remove distractions. This doesn’t mean working in Monastic silence in a plain white painted room, bare except for a desk, chair and laptop. It’s more a state of mind – whatever might give you cause to prevaricate – despatch it. Don’t schedule your writing time around the time that your cats need feeding, the postie arrives, or when you might expect to get phone calls. If you like to work to music, get your music on your computer so you don’t go grubbing around to find it. If you like a lot of tea or coffee whilst you blog, get a thermos if you need it.

Set a SMART target

I set a target of a minimum of one blog post of between 400 and 600 words a day. It’s a SMART target because it’s:

Sustainable – I reckon I can do this day in, day out.
Measurable– it’s easy to see if I’ve hit the target. 400-600 words.
Action-oriented – you gotta DO something, not talk about it! I will have at least one blog post to point at.
Relevant– the target you set yourself should be relevant to your ultimate goals. It’s relevant to my aim of generating a popular blog.
Timely – should have a timescale attached to it. It happens every day.

So – there you go! Join me in making good habits in 2010!

Crazy, obscene or good investment?

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Joe

Every now and again I come across something online that leaves me staggered, infuriated and thoughtful in reasonably equal measures. The other day I encountered this little gem – a chap has spent $330,000 on a ‘virtual space station’ in an online computer game. Yep, that’s right – a third of a million dollars on stuff in a video game.

I was actually quite surprised to read that back in January 2009 $600 million was invested in virtual worlds, and that in China ‘virtual currency’ is a $2 billion industry. Scary.

OK…I’ll walk you through my thought processes now. My first impression was ‘WTF? Is this man crazy?’ After all, I’m someone who thinks that spending thirty quid on a video game to be the height of extravagance. I already started worrying about how his email inbox was going to cope with all the letters from long lost Nigerian relatives wanting to share money with him – after all, they probably reckon that anyone who spends money like this must be easy pickings for a 419 scam. Next up came ‘This is truly obscene.’ Now this is obviously a personal judgement of mine – I do think spending $330,000 on a piece of game terrain is pretty dire when the world’s in the state it’s in, but it’s his money, he’s earned it, so that’s his judgement call.

Now, assuming he’s not crazy – and anyone who’s gathered together $330,000 in disposable income is unlikley to be totally barking, that leaves us with teh thought that at least he believed he’s got a good investment opportunity. And, putting my own moral and ethical scruples aside for this post, he may be on to something. The figures quoted above are pretty big numbers. The Swedish company who run teh Entropia game have obtained a ‘real world’ banking licence, allowing them to run a bank. Given that the in-game currency has a fixed conversion rate to the US Dollar, it’s a good move for the company. Second Life, whilst not having the hype it once benefited from, is still an environment in which people buy and sell virtual goods, and most large scale multi-player games have some means of making real money (even if they’re frowned upon by the game designers).

In other words, there does indeed appear to be money made in them thar virtual environments. The owner of the Space Station is now in a position to try and make money from people who wish to run virtual businesses in his station, and will no doubt think of other means of leveraging his investment. Of course, the whole model depends upon people having Internet access, machines capable of running the games, disposable income to play the games and further disposable income to buy in to resources in the game – like rents for space on a virtual space station. I think I’d be happier with the investment opportunities offered by the online gaming world in a less recession-struck world.

But thinking on the positive side…to build a virtual city you don’t have to destroy a forest!!

The last freedom moped from nowhere city….

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Joe

Back in the 1980s there was a sit com on British TV called ‘The Young Ones’, which was based in a student house and followed the surreal adventures of the students who lived there. One of the characters was a rather pompous, arrogant, wannabe anarchist called ‘Rick’, who was constantly going on about revolution, and whose ratherfatuous comments about politics gave rise to the title of this piece…

As my life unfolded and I became involved in left-wing politics in teh 1980s, I encountered a fair number of ‘Ricks’ – folks who were full of talk about how we should pass a resolution condemning some organisation or country or other for their actions but who were surprisingly absent when it came to the grunt work of winning elections to put ourselves in a position where we could at least effect change.

And Ricks are still with us today, in the electronic world. I came across this piece from the Telegraph – ‘The fatal folly of the online revolutionaries’ and was reminded of the posturing of Rick and the other Ricks I have known. The bottom line is that the Iranian Security Services now carry out ‘deep packet inspection’ of a lot of Internet traffic, which allows them to see where traffic originates from and where it’s going, as well as content. Which means that if someone in the West sends a supportive email message, a one to one Tweet, converses by MSN – it increases the chances of the Iranian authorities identifying the recipient and taking action. Much of this sort of intelligence work relies on a lot of traffic between ‘targets’ that can be identified and analysed.

So, being a slightly thoughtless, well-meaning, armchair revolutionary encouraging someone in Iran to take action against the Government via personal message can get someone at the sharp end killed or imprisoned. Real life, as they say, is a bitch. A recent retaliation against Twitter probably got more news footage than many of the deaths that take place in these riots, which tells us something about the priorities of our own news services. A further piece about ‘Twitterised Revolution’ is here.

Now, this doesn’t mean that support cannot be offered – it means that we just have to redress the balance of risk. And activity should not be mistaken for effective action. My initial thoughts:

There are folks in Iran (and other more authoritarian and totalitarian regimes than our own) who are risking life and limb to get video footage and stories out of of their countries, and succeeding. If you’re wanting to help the cause, when you come across this stuff promote it via your own Social Media sites, blogs, etc. Take a look here.
Campaigns like the recent one to turn your avatar green for Iran are great for awareness raising. And they don’t impact individuals ‘over there’ but offer visible support to users of the services.
Work within the laws of our own country, and via the political processes here (wherever here might be for you!) to raise awareness, find out what your own Government is doing and vote accordingly next time around if you don’t like it. Engage with your elected representatives to put pressure on at a Governmental level.

By engaging directly with people ‘on the ground’ in these regimes, encouraging illegal activity, you might get someone killed. You will almost certainly do less good than if you work within your own country. The folks out there can do with our moral support and the indirect support of our Government and media – they can probably do without armchair revolutionaries throwing virtual bombs and pissing off the local authorities who then retaliate with real bullets.

Sitting back and engaging in the above suggested activities may not be sexy or cool, it may even be regarded by some as cowardly – but if you want to play at being Rick, just think about the consequences for those on the other end of the connection. Don’t forget that the aim of the game is to effect change for those people, not provide Westerners with vicarious thrills.

(Image from From http://www.antiauthoritarian.net)

Blogging the Party Line?

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Joe

Incendiary political blogger Guido Fawkesmade an interesting observation the other day that the Left are once again saying that 2010 will be their year to dominate the Blogosphere in a run up to an election and beyond. As he points out, they’ve also said this in 2007, and I remember similar thoughts being voiced when Labour first started playing with computers for campaigning back in the 1980s (as an ‘Old Labour’ member I was involved with Computing For Labour for a while, on and off up to my exit from the party in 1996).

The article started me thinking about the whole business of political blogging. Just to provide a quick view of where I personally come from politically…. I come from the left, but have found myself for the last decade inhabiting the territory of the Libertarian. I’ll get the joke out of the way now ‘Being a Libertarian is like being a Liberal; you can come up with lots of ‘out there’ policies because you’ll never have to bear the responsibility of putting them in to action’ 🙂 My own take on Libertarianism is minimum Government, maximum possible empowerment of communities to provide services locally, with national Government providing only the necessary services and infrastructure that it would be inefficient for local communities to provide. On a personal basis I try to practice what I preach by involving myself in local organisations and efforts to develop local economies and local structures of service provision.

Enough about me – back to the blogging. When a party member blogs they almost by definition need to watch what they say if they intend to adhere to the Party Line. Whilst this may not be important for the ‘rank and file’, if you’re anyone with influence or position in the Party, stating anything that is not doctrine will probably get you a slap on the wrist (or a boot up the bottom) from the powers that be, especially when it is viewed as being important for all to be singing from the same hymn sheet. Which frequently makes a political blog by ‘well known’ politicians as interesting as reading excerpts from the Manifesto document of that party. It’s highly unlikely you’ll find anything truly radical and rare that you’ll find anything that confronts the existing status quo within the Party.

My own attitude towards political blogging is to pay more attention to the more ‘independent thinkers’ outside the mainstream political parties, and also pay more attention to the ideas irrespective of who posts them. Politics isn’t about politicians or political bloggers, spin-doctors, media pundits or journalists; they just practice the business that modern mainstream politics has become. So, my advice would be to treat most blogs by ‘professional’ politicians as marketing efforts for the brand they’re working for. As for the other political blogs – go for ’em! Try them out, whether you agree or disagree with their viewpoint. It’s ideas that are important, not which doctrine they come from. There’s a good list of Political Blogs compiled by Iain Dale here.

Real Politics is about our day to day lives, and how we are permitted to live them – whether that permission comes in terms of laws, resources, money, media influence. The old labels are becoming just that – labels on political product that is less and less relevant. Perhaps the real winners in the political blogosphere for 2010 will be ‘none of the above’ but the ‘Real Politics’ blog posts of the rest of us.

The Social Media Numbers Game

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Joe

I’m old enough to have used an address book and still have a Rolodex on the phone table. When I actually sit down and think about the people with whom I have reasonably regular ‘quality’ contact in a 3 month period, either electronically or face to face, it probably amounts to no more than a hundred or so. I guess it’s safe to say that in the world of networking I’m a ‘quality over quantity’ sort of fellow. I’ve never been a great collector of large numbers of business cards or people details – collections are fine for stamps, coins and locomotive numbers but are kind of creepy for people. 🙂

Back in the late 1990s / early 2000s I used a networking site called Ecademy – I stopped after a while because it seemed that people were making contact with you purely from a sales oriented viewpoint. Allow me to explain – if I’m interested in AI, and someone brings something to my attention that’s even vaguely related to the field – that’s cracking! That’s exactly what I’m there for – and hopefully I’ll be able to reciprocate. On the other hand, if someone steams in with a ‘Hi, I’m Fred, I’m in marketing, blah, blah, blah’ I get the feeling I’m receiving a boilerplate message which is likely to end up as a boiler room selling attempt. The site seemed to encourage numbers of contacts over quality – and that’s one of the reasons why I eventually jacked it in.

I’ve noticed in recent days that I’m being followed by people who are following thousands of others. And the odd thing is most of them appear to be selling something that is as relevant to me as a comb to Sir Patrick Stewart. The ‘Bio’ of one such follower (soon to be ex-follower in my daily purge) – “A Business Dedicated to providing free online MLM training videos, articles, books and webinars”. If I received an email like this I’d call it spam – pure and simple. I know that Twitter has policies around spam, but my point is that most folks following 20,000 people seem to be in the MLM, ‘sales and marketing’, ‘social media consultancy’ sort of areas. They’re cold calling – they sure ain’t networking.

Bottom line – there is NO WAY, realistically, that the content generated by the 20,000 people these bods follow is ever registering in any meaningful manner with these people – I assume it’s simply being harvested electronically and searched for keywords that might suggest a sales lead.

Joe’s categorisation of Twitter users…

Vast number of followers, smallish number of followed – publisher / celeb.
Vast number of followers, vast number of followed – probably sales / mass marketing
Smallish followers, large number of followed – probably spammer
Smallish followers / smallish followed – personal / business networking

OK – it’s not a brilliant classification but it works for me. Just watch out if you’re in category 2 or 3 ‘cos I’m binning you!

Whilst I was drafting this yesterday, I came across this piece on the same topic: http://juliorvarela.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/when-twitter-numbers-are-meaningless/

Don’t get too hung up on your numbers on Twitter. If you’re following lots of people, just check WHY. Do they add value to your day? Amuse / entertain you? Educate you? Guide or enlighten you? If not, ditch ’em. And those following you – just take a look at their numbers and think about what I’ve said.

And I hope you don’t chuck me off your lists. 🙂

What goes in to a blog?

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Joe

I recently came across a couple of articles about blogging. Well, I’ll be honest – they were in my Twitter feed and I took a look at them to see what other people’s views were on the subject of content in blogs. It was sort of distressing to me – according to those particular authors I’m doing absolutely everything wrong. For example:

I mix subjects – I have technical stuff sitting side by side with personal stuff.
I rarely have articles that have ‘xxx ways to do yyy’ as the title.
I definitely don’t have a marketing plan for Joe’s Jottings

There were a few other items that cropped up in these pieces – enough to make me sit back in my chair (carefully moving Marvin the cat form behind me – he’s a big fellow and would not tolerate being squished) and think about this article. What goes in a blog?

I guess the bottom line answer is ‘What’s the blog about?’ If you’ve set out to write the world’s authoritative blog on Mousterian Variability then you will have a fairly shrewd idea of what’s good. A blog entry on your trip toLe Moustier is good, 500 words on your views on nearby spa towns, not so good in the consistency stakes. But if you’re writing a personal blog, then I’m afraid that as far as I’m concerned it should be a case of ‘publish and be damned’ – what you want to go in, goes in. After all, one definition of the word ‘blog’ is very straight forward:

“A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links”

and applying this definition I hit the spot a little better. Joe’s Jottings is indeed chronological, consists of personal thoughts and web links, and strives to be frequent. 🙂

Unfortunately for the digerati and the marketing types out there, my personal thoughts do tend to wander around somewhat and very rarely do they include a line that says ‘How can I market / monetise Joe’s Jottings’ and even less frequently do I bother about whether I think about technical stuff after non-technical stuff, and whether I remembered to include a 5 point list in my thinking every 20 minutes. People’s personal thoughts, to me the basis of a personal blog, don’t run like that. They’re the stream of everyday consciousness that makes us the interesting souls that we are. When we start filtering the contents of what is supposed to be our personal thoughts and writings to suit marketing demographics and audience statistics then we need not worry about censorship of the web – we’re already doing it nicely ourselves.

George Orwell wrote a column for the Tribune newspaper in the 1940s called ‘As I Please’ that would find political pieces next to home handyman tips, for example. And that was the way that Orwell thought – he was a writer, a political thinker, but also a chap who had other interests that he felt were important enough to him to get featured in his ‘weekly bloggings’ for Tribune.

Ha! My question answered, indirectly by George Orwell. What goes in to a blog? Whatever you like…as you please.

Do No Evil – Ursula Le Guin, The Authors Guild and Google

Posted on December 26, 2009 by Joe

During Google’s formative years, the company decided to come up withthe equivalent of a short mission / vision statement that summed up what it was to be Google. After some serious thinking, the slogan emerged. ‘Do No Evil’. Nice…although as someone pointed out – it really is just civilised good manners to do no evil. Why make such a fuss about it?

Well, the years pass and Google just keep dipping a toe in the muddy waters of naughtiness, with occasional activities that, whilst usually not up there with breeding sharks with head mounted laser cannons, a la the handsome fellow top left, might be construed as being pretty darn close to very bad indeed.

Take a look at parts of John Batelle’s book ‘The Search’.

Anyway….enough of the history lesson. Recently Google have been scanning books. Hundreds of thousands of books. MILLIONS of books!Some old and out of copyright…other…not so old and definitely not out of copyright. And they’re going to be scanning millions more. Their aim is to create an online scanned library of books to equal the scope and reach of national libraries. Now, various settlements have been agreed and Google take efforts to try and restrict copying of copyrighted materials, but there have been a number of legal blocks to Google based on their breach of copyright.

The US Authors Guild – an organisation that supports the rights of authors in the united States – has recently entered in to an agreement with Google to support the project. In many ways, this gives the project the apparent support of a large number of authors, but some individuals – like Ursual Le Guin – are quitting the AG in protest.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/24/le-guin-authors-guild-deal

I can see the point of the author’s protest – after all I’m a published author myself – but at the same time agree that Google seem to be taking steps to restrict the amount of the book that you can read online. However, my fears are for the future. This set of agreements seem to have given Googlean incredible’head start’ on what is effectively a large tranche of the world’s written knowledge. What happens in a few years time when a library or a publisher hits hard times, and that nice friendly Googlecomes along and says ‘Hey, we can help. Just let us have the rights to display all of each of your books online, and an e-book publishing right, and we’ll buy you out / licence your stuff.’ All of a sudden Google starts becoming the arbiter of what’s published across the board.

At themoment, Google can effectively make or break web sites the world over by the simple expedient of adjusting it’s search engines or, in some cases, excluding sites directly. Google currently only takes the latter steps when they’re compelled to by law or someone like the Chinese Government tells them to do so, but the technology is there. Again, see ‘The Search’. Now, imagine 2015 when Googlehave the online rights to the book collections of a few major publishers. And you happen to run ‘Bill’s Books’ – a little shop still selling books the old fashioned way – and you have old stock that might just conflict withthe publisher that Google have just bought up. You might just find yourself falling off the search results… Conflict of interest, maybe?

I’m afraid I don’t trust anyone withthe sort of control that Googleis getting over the world’s knowledge and information. It’s an extreme idea, but could Google end therevolution of available knowledge started by Gutenberg. If all knowledgeis increasingly online, and access is directly or indirectly arbitrated by one corporation, that is a Hell of an opportunity for censorship of the sort last practised in the Middle ages by the Catholic Church or by the Totalitarian Governments of the 20th Century.

Like most of us – I use Google quite extensively. I’m just not quite sure that the spoon I’m using to sup with is long enough anymore.

Is this really to the public good?

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Joe

A couple of weeks ago I came across this article in the Guardian (not my normal read, but their online media pages are useful) referring to the publication by the Wikileaks organisationof an archive of text and pager messages from 9th September, 2001, which effectively provides a narration to the terrorist attacks on New York city that day.

The archive contains text and page messages generated by both human beings and computerised systems. Many IT systems fall back on sending pager and text messages when something goes wrong, and unsurprisingly a lot of IT systems were going wrong that day. There were also lots of ‘tactical’ messages betweenthe emergency services, requesting people come in to work, etc. But what I find rather distressing – and maybe I’m over-sensitive here – is that amount of private messages between normal people involved in a very abnormal situation – folks in imminent danger of death reaching out to their loved ones in the only way possible to say ‘I love you’; worried watchers of unfolding events realising that their family was in the middle of it all and asking them to get in touch; basically, an awful lot of people in extremis reaching out to family and friends with concern and to say, in some cases, Goodbye.

Now, who on Earth could consider the latter clutch of messages to be of any public interest whatsoever? I’m honestly dismayed that Wikileaks did this. There are soem things in this world that are just personal. They may be of titillation value to the public, but to argue that there is any public interest value in publishing such personal messages in this way just beggars belief. I have to say I’d be very annoyed if I found a loved one’s last message to me published for all and sundry to read without my say so.

Wikileaksdoes a lot of good work, but they need to realise that there are categories of hidden information in the world. For the sake of argument, let’s call them Sensibly Secret, Public Interest, Private and Personal. Sensibly Secret is stuff that’s been officially labelled as ‘secret’ for purposes of national security, and validly so. Public Interest is stuff that is generated by our governments, local and national, our leaders, businesses, etc. that some may wish to hide but that it is genuinely in the wider public interest to ‘out’ – a government department covering up mistakes, a business hiding poor safety reports, bad public budget management, public safety, military errors that have cost the lives of our troops, etc. Then there’s Private – things that businesses and individuals MAY wish to keep secret – the day to day details of the running of a business, or Government, which may need to be publicised or made available to others in order to ensure that no wrongdoing is taking place. And then there’s personal; the stuff of the red-top tabloids; who Tiger Woods is sleeping with/ has slept with, whether x,y or z is gay or has a fish fetish, and private texts and emails between people facing death.

There….not perfect but not too difficult to get ones head around, is it? Personal information may well get out in to the world but it isn’t the role of whistle blowing groups like Wikileaks to publicise it. There are enough real, live, current Public Interest issues to chase up without becoming an electronic tabloid.

RATM vs X-Factor – Corporate Music Win!

Posted on December 21, 2009 by Joe

There’s a lovely comment in the movie ‘Con Air’ in which the character Garland Greene, a psychopath played by Steve Buscemi, watches the inmates on a prison transport plane celebrate their take over of the aircraft by having a mid-flight party to the song ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd. This encourages him to define irony as:

Bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.

Now, for those of you who’ve spent the last few weeks slumbering in a deep, dark cave in the Outer Hebrides (or who’re outside the UK and so don’t get exposed to this sort of rubbish) there’s a TV show called ‘The X-Factor’ – a sort of ‘talent show’ for wannabe celebs – that was this year won by a young chap called Joe Mcelderry. The tradition in recent years has been that show’s impresario Simon Cowell would take the winner under his capacious wing, get him / her a deal with his recond company (part of Sony BMG), and, usually, grab the UK Christmas Number One Chart Spot (a place in musical history usually occupied by such rock and roll phenomena as children’s choirs and Mr Blobby.

With me so far? Well, this year a bunch of radical, anti-corporate rock fans decided to set up a campaign to ensure that whoever won the X-factor wouldn’t be getting the Christmas Number One slot. The group – here – decided that the tune to do the job would be Rage Against The Machine’s 90s hit ‘Killing in the name of’.

Sounds good in principle, yes? People power overturning the desires of a Corporate Media Monster like Simon Cowell? Evil vanquished by the marvels of Facebook? The chart returned to ‘real rock for real people’?

Here’s where the ironic reality check comes in. It’s quite rich…

The whole business has kept Mcelderry, X-Factor and Cowell being talked about. This typically equates to money, promotion and PR opportunities.
Both Simon Cowell and RATM are part of the Sony Behemoth. Sony will get wealthier whatever happens.
Mcelderry was given a dire song this year – the sales of the song would probably have been less had the campaign not taken place. It might be that the campaign has actually boosted Cowell’s earnings directly as well as indirectly via the Sony connection.
It’s great that £77,000 has been raised for Shelter, and RATM have promised a proportion of the profits will also go to charity. However, another runner in the Christmas Number 1 race this year was Peter Kay’s novelty record for the BBC Children In Need, which had managed to raise £170,000 for children’s charities by December 9th without all this palaver. Maybe….the effort could have been put behind this song?
There’s a delicious irony in the choice of a song that is probably most famous for the refrain ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me’ being used in a campaign where people are….told to buy the song. And as for choosing a band who ‘rage against the machine’ whilst being on a multi-national corporate label like Sony – irony meter just hit max.

Whilst it’s been quite an achievement to get the chart manipulated in this way – and whether folks want to hear that phrase or not, that’s what it is – if the aim was to poke Cowell, X-Factor and corporate musical pap in the eye then I’m sure that Cowell, the X-factor team and Sony BMG are smarting with discomfort all the way to the bank.

I’m just going to put Sweet Home Alabama on and have a boogie around the kitchen….

Twitter hacked – not the end of the world, no surprise, and a badge of honour.

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Joe

There’s a scene in the movie ‘Blazing Saddles’ where the Waco Kid, being asked why he’s ended up in prison for drunkenness, bewails the fact that when he was the well known gun-slinger everyone wanted to try and get him, so they could be the new number one. He tells how he eventually hung up his guns when he heard a voice yelling ‘Draw’, turned around to fight, and nearly shot a 5 year old child.

He turns his back on the little brat, who then shoots the Waco Kid in the ass…..

Life in the online world gets like that, too.

Apparently Twitter was hacked last night by an outfit called the Iranian Cyber Army. The story broke on the Mashable web site – I have to say that were I not receiving Tweets from Mashable I wouldn’t have known, as I’ve been getting (I think) Tweeted over the period of the hack and I can quite happily see their home page. The fact that this is now being reported as a DNS based attack means that it wasn’t so much Twitter that was walloped as that traffic to Twitter was diverted elsewhere for a while …

Anyway, let’s face it – this is a slap in the face to Twitter (indirectly) but isn’t the end of the world. At least some of us – if not most of us who’re not using the DNS system that was compromised – are still Tweeting and the world will not slide to DEFCON1 because the global inanity stream was temporarily interrupted for the Digerati.

But, assuming these chaps ARE who they claim to be – a group with Iranian sympathies – we shouldn’t be surprised. A campaign was organised through Twitter earlier this year to protest about the clamp down on civil rights in Iran. This attack may be regarded by the originators as ‘payback’ and goes to show that in Cyberspace, as in the real world, ‘people power’ is not a one way street. The big boys do sometimes have their day of successful protest as well. Governments can quite easily learn the fine arts of online civil disobedience, and do it with greater ease than the folks running the protest.

When people use a site as a base or launching ground for civil disobedience, campaigning or protest then it will become a target for those who object to the issues being promoted. That kickback may come in the form of debate, negative campaigning against the site, abuse of people on the site, legal efforts to remove or silence the site, or, as here, technical efforts to remove the site. Which means that more and more sites used by people to organise campaigns will either have to become ‘hardened’ to protect against attack or stop carrying legitimate material that someone, somewhere, is pissed enough about to want it removed.

We may be heading in to a period of ‘big boy’s rules’ in cyberspace where sites that permit the exposition of people power are simply taken down by this sort of online activity. But if that happens to your favourite site, and the cause is just, don’t be sad; regard it as a badge of honour that your activities have upset someone enough to want to take you down.

Remember the words of Winston Churchill ‘ ‘You have enemies; that’s good – it means that you have stood up for something sometime in your life’.

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