Mr. Porter, a web designer/developer reports on the recent release of Yahoo’s social design patterns for reputation systems release. Yahoo classifies one’s site activity into the following types of competitive spectrums: Caring, Collaborative, Cordial, Competitive and Combative. Apparently Mr. Glass of Yahoo gave a talk at last year’s IA Summit on ‘Designing your reputation system’ that gives an impressive outline for starting your own reputation system. His best advice for improving one reputation is… (click for the rest)

Why isn’t twitter used by everybody? I think one of the reasons is that it doesn’t do group very well.

Sure there are many twitter fanatics who use it enthusiastically and innovatively. But we all reach a point that we want to twitter in groups. “Group” is the essence of social media. Twitter needs group features to truly differentiate from SMS. That’s how we had tags, hashtags, none worked that well. Tweme is down, again. Surely we need something better!

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There are something you need to pay attention when you promoting your business with social media. It is really crucial that don’t treat your blog as an advertisement, as we don’t want to annoy the reader by nagging constantly.Through “how to blog your business”, there come up with some suggestion. The very thing that you need to bear in mind is: people don’t seek out advertising but seek out interesting and thoughtful content.That comes from having a personal touch and displaying your expertise on your subject matter.
Blog is a platform for mutual exchange, rather than a blatant ad site.Write some interesting subjects beyond the scope of the company. Don’t think that is a waste of time. Expressing your own view and participation, it is also can establish the self-image of your company.

Kenya’s elephants send text messages to rangers

Well, no, the elephants themselves aren’t texting  —  as that would require opposable thumbs, or at least fingers, or a really really big keyboard — but some of them have radio collars with SIM cards.  And when one of them decides head over to raid a farmer’s crops, the mobile phone card sends rangers a text message. The rangers mobilize and scare the elephant away, averting disaster for the farmer.  And possibly for the elephant.

An interesting and creative way of using technology pro-actively for conservation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_re_af/af_kenya_texting_elephants;_ylt=Ak60sfq7KJCzhLchl_AMdyKs0NUE

A Canadian human rights group along with computer security researchers have discovered a huge surveillance system that monitors certain Internet text conversations in China.  Researchers have estimated that more than 30,000 “Internet police” have been watching for certain political phrases like “Falun”, “Taiwan independence”, and “quit the party” are sent to a server that contains millions of censored messages. 

Skype works by permitting mobile phone users with a software on their handset provided by the nearest Skype user to send text messages or make free phone calls.   The company President Josh Silverman admitted that China’s surveillance was “common knowledge”  and that their Chinese partner TOM Online meet local laws and regulations.  “These regulations include the requirement to monitor and block instant message containing certain words deemed offensive by the Chinese authorities,” Mr Silverman said. 

If social media is an important organizing tool for civil advocacy groups then what happens when international conversations are recorded outside China?

AdvertisingAge today published an announcement of the folding of CosmoGirl magazine. This follows the trend of several of the teen targeted publications, including Teen People and ElleGirl, which have gone out of print as well.

However, the print-age has not dried up completely. The publisher of CosmoGirl will take on the same role at Hearst’s NEW Food Network magazine. This seems to say that teens are less interested in hard-copy information, while there may still be hope for print in the “mom” demographic. This also reinforces that one of the best target markets to go after is affluent women.

Today, when I was browsing through the weblog: http://asianfanaticfans.blogspot.com/2008/10/jay-chous-leaked-new-album-being-dealt.html, I found a very interesting news article that I think might worth our attention.

One of the latest album “Capricorn” of Jay Chou,  one of the most popular singers and musicians in Taiwan,  has been leaked online before its formal releasing. The record company, JVR Music, obviously got angry and announced that it was actually a case of piracy.  They are going to find out who did it and will sue this sneaky guy. Meanwhile, the record company is encouraging Jay’s fans to “boycott the thieving actions of those people, and respect the intellectual properties of artists and support original music”

This article got my attention because I was wondering who the record company is going to sue. The sneaky “rat” who leak out the album, or Jay Chou’s  hundreds of thousands fans who downloaded from each other’s blog, YouTube and Kugoo, and then spread the album further through social media platforms?

Who to blame?  It is really like a question of the sneaky “rat”, community and technologies, who should be sued?  It is up to you.

Good Night and Good Luck is one of my favorite movies. It captures a time that changed the history of television, and the nation 60 years ago. Edward R. Murrow seems to have been prescient on a number of levels as we now see continuing evolution of the box with wires and lights that he portrayed in the speech portrayed in the movie.

And, here is a modern take on the future of journalism, as Steven Smith steps down from his position as Editor of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. I picked up this interview of Smith from our colleagues at USC in a column written by Michelle McLellan for the Knight Digital Media Center.  The most poignant statement sounds a bit like an echo of Murrow. “It is no longer my job or our job to save newspapers. Our job is to save journalism and the values that underlie newspaper journalism,” such as the free flow of information and aggressive coverage of government.”