Shawn C. Reed's shared items

Oh snap! Look who just ate Apple and Google's lunch here? Minutes ago, Amazon rolled out its very own music streaming service which is conveniently dubbed the Amazon Cloud Player. Existing Amazon customers in the US can now upload their MP3 purchases to their 5GB cloud space -- upgradable to a one-year 20GB plan for free upon purchasing an MP3 album, with additional plans starting at $20 a year -- and then start streaming on their computers or Android devices. Oh, and did we mention that this service is free of charge as well? Meanwhile, someone will have some catching up to do, but we have a feeling it won't take them too long.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: As some readers have confirmed, it appears that the Cloud Player will support music purchased from iTunes as well, presumably from the post-DRM era.

Update 2: Press release after the break.

Continue reading Amazon Cloud Player goes live, streams music on your computer and Android

Amazon Cloud Player goes live, streams music on your computer and Android originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A study published in 2010 surfaced a startling statistic, “75 percent of employers say their business has no formal policy instructing employees on the appropriate use of social networking sites on the job.” The report, “Employer Perspectives on Social Networking,” compiled data from 34,000 businesses in 35 countries.

Does your organization have a formal policy regarding employee use of social media? Perhaps better asked, does your organization offer training, guidelines, and insights to help employees excel in new media on behalf of your business?

In the same study, 63% of employers that employed social networking policies reported that those policies improved productivity. More than a third also stated that social media policies helped protect intellectual property.

Social Media represents the democratization of information and the equalization of influence. Therein lies both the challenge and opportunity for organizations. Nowadays, anyone can create, publish, and distribute ideas, observations, news, and information. Content can now travel around the world through a myriad of connected channels and people faster than the time it took you to read this sentence.

While many businesses are attempting to figure out the potential of social media and their voices and roles within relevant networks, many confuse effective engagement with everyday chatter. At the same time, Instead of establishing leadership and investing in communities, a fair share of organizations relegate the important task of social media to the most junior people on staff with some placing interns in charge of representing the brand online. Why you ask? According to brand managers, it’s because they understand how to use Twitter and Facebook already. These “Twinterns” as they’re called, literally hold the fate of the brands they represent in vibrant and influential networks, where years brand reputation can erode in a matter of minutes.

In order for businesses to maximize the opportunity present within social networks, we must place engagement in the hands of those representatives qualified and trained to do so effectively and strategically.

Training Day

Social media is a critical enabler of engagement, connecting businesses with customers and the people who influence their decisions and perceptions. If we look at other important customer facing functions within the organization such as customer service or sales, training on procedures and company-specific value propositions and solutions in a variety of applications is part of the regiment. Social networks present opportunities to reach a variety of important segments that complement the structure of any organization and as such, in addition to standard community management, delegation is necessary to engage on all fronts combined with the wherewithal to do so.

Everything begins with defining the rules of engagement and then providing the necessary training to prepare qualified representatives for the predictable and also unforeseen circumstances that await them.

For example, if we review the oft-cited incident involving GreenPeace and Nestle’s Facebook Brand page, one could argue that the community manager representing Nestle was unprepared for such a hostile engagement. Unfortunately, not everything in social media is sociable. In this case, GreenPeace targeted Nestle over its use of Palm Oil in certain products. Personal beliefs and opinions aside, this is a very real confrontation that took place in a popular social network because of its visibility. But, what works against us can also work for us. These public forums also represent our opportunity to steer perception, conversation, and action in our favor. Without training and preparation however, even the best will fumble.

The careful selection of capable officials combined with coaching is only the start. The pairing of training with the productive policies and guidelines provides the boundaries for fostering performance and governance. In the case of Nestle, even though the representative acted in a questionable manner, I would bet that the actions did not fall outside of any rules of engagement as they were most likely ambiguous or undefined.

With Social Media Comes Great Responsibility and Opportunity

Going back to 2009, BusinessWeek shared a series of examples where companies were caught by surprise over the stories and updates shared by employees on social networks. The article offered simple advice to help businesses shape their presence rather than react to it, “To prevent information leaks and other liabilities, companies are drafting guidelines for social media interaction.”

It is paramount that every company, regardless of size, industry, or location, immediately draft and circulate guidelines and policies – whether or not social media is practiced officially or unofficially within the organization. The larger the company the greater the imminent risk and drafting policies and providing the training necessary to representatives and employees alike, will prevent unwanted details from spreading. Accordingly, it will encourage the propagation of desirable information.

Employees are enraptured with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networks  and the sense and sensibility that governs self-restraint and judgment is, for the moment, circumvented by the public recognition that ensues after pressing the “publish” button. In some regards, social media clouds our gift of inner monologue and common sense exchanged in part for instant recognition.

This is more than publishing and it’s far more important than empowering employees with the ability to chat online. It’s our responsibility to contribute to the increase of a significant, tuned, and strategic signal over noise. I assure you that in doing so, you will earn a place among the elite in the ranks of social, new, and emerging media practices within your organization.

Establishing Policies and Guidelines

When writing Engage!, I reviewed countless examples of Social Media policies, many of which are available online for your review.

One of the most universal rules I encountered in my research was to “not be stupid” or to “use common sense.” To assume that common sense is common, however, isn’t applying common sense at all. It leaves actions open to interpretation and not everyone will approach the same instance equally.

Perhaps the biggest mistakes committed by businesses, personalities, and brands in Social Media are those that jump into social networks blindly without a plan of action, a sense of what people are seeking and how and why they communicate.

To help, I assembled a list of best practices for guidelines based on published policies I reviewed. Use them as a framework to provide specific instruction of what to do and what not to do in your branded profiles, outside communities, and also when acting on behalf of the brand or the individual’s personal brand.

Once completed, holding formal workshops around these guidelines for spokespersons and general employees provides a foundation for a formal understanding of the circumstances, objectives, hazards, and nuances associated with community building. Doing so also introduces the governance necessary for rewards and reproach.

The Top 25 Best Practices for Drafting Policies and Guidelines

1. Define a voice and persona representative of the brand’s purpose, mission, and characteristics

2. People expect to interact with people, be personable, consistent, and helpful

3. Keep things conversational as it applies to portraying and reinforcing the personality and value of your brand and the brand you represent

4. Add value to each engagement — contribute to the stature and legacy of the brand

5. Respect those whom you’re engaging and also respect the forum in which you participate

6. Ensure that you honor copyrights and practice and promote fair use of applicable content

7. Protect confidential and proprietary information

8. Business accounts are no place to share personal views unless they reinforce the brand values and are done according to the guidelines and code of conduct

9. Be transparent and be human yes, but also do so based on true value propositions and solutions

10. Represent what you should represent and do not overstep your bounds without prior approval

11. Know and operate within the boundaries defined, doing so protects you, the company, and the people with whom you’re hoping to connect

12. Know when to walk away. Don’t engage trolls or fall into conversational traps

13. Stay on message, on point and on track with the goals of your role and its impact to the real world business in which you contribute

14. Don’t trash competition, spotlight points of differentiation and value

15. Apologize where applicable and according to the established code of conduct. Seek approval by legal or management where such action is not pre-defined

16. Take accountability for your actions and offer no excuses

17. Know whom you’re taking to and what they’re seeking

18. Disclose relationships, representation, affiliation and intentions

19. Refer open issues or questions to those most qualified to answer

20. Practice self-restraint, some things are not worth sharing

21. Empower qualified spokespersons to offer solutions and resolutions

22. Seek the approval of customers and partners before spotlighting their case studies

23. Take the time to interpret the context of a situation before jumping in with a response

24. What you share can and will be used against you – The internet as a long memory

25. When in doubt, ask for guidance

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook

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The New ENGAGE!: If you’re looking to FIND answers in social media and not short cuts, consider Engage!: Choose from the Deluxe or Paperback edition

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If you were to explain to someone how the web browser works, this wonderful comic strip from Vlad Gerasimov should come handy.

The user, seen here as the king, orders the browser to fetch a website who goes around negotiating with firewalls, talking to DNS servers and hosts (the wise owls) to get that site. This cute illustration is courtesy vladstudio.com.

Special thanks to Catherine Roy for writing the long description of the comic strip.

     

This article, titled Comic: How a Web Browser Works?, was originally published at Digital Inspiration under Infographics, Wide, Internet.

Intel's latest business-model takes a page out of Hollywood's playbook: they're selling processors that have had some of their capabilities crippled (some of the cache and the hyperthreading support are switched off). For $50, they'll sell you a code that will unlock these capabilities. Conceptually, this is similar to the DRM notion that I can sell you a movie that you can watch on one screen for $5 today, and if you want to unlock your receiver's wireless output so you can watch it upstairs, it'll be another $5.

I remember the first time someone from the studios put this position to me. It was a rep from the MPAA at a DRM standards meeting, and that was just the example he used. He said: "When you buy a movie to watch in your living room, we're only selling you the right to see it in your living room. Sending the same show upstairs to watch in your bedroom has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it."

This idea, which Siva Vaidhyanathan calls "If value, then right," sounds reasonable on its face. But it's a principle that flies in the face of the entire human history of innovation. By this reasoning, the company that makes big tins of juice should be able to charge you extra for the right to use the empty cans to store lugnuts; the company that makes your living room TV should be able to charge more when you retire it to the cottage; the company that makes your coat-hanger should be able to charge more when you unbend it to fish something out from under the dryer.

Moreover, it's an idea that is fundamentally anti-private-property. Under the "If value, then right" theory, you don't own anything you buy. You are a mere licensor, entitled to extract only the value that your vendor has deigned to provide you with. The matchbook is to light birthday candles, not to fix a wobbly table. The toilet roll is to hold the paper, not to use in a craft project. "If value, then right," is a business model that relies on all the innovation taking place in large corporate labs, with none of it happening at the lab in your kitchen, or in your skull. It's a business model that says only companies can have the absolute right of property, and the rest of us are mere tenants.

If there's one industry where "If value, then right," is a dead letter, it's computing. The first processors Intel ever sold went into PCs did practically nothing. It was only the addition of unlicensed, unauthorized, independent third-party innovation -- software, peripherals, networks -- that made them valuable enough to send more business Intel's way.

Intel is a direct beneficiary of our property rights in our computers: the company's best customers are hobbyists who buy Intel processors directly in order to upgrade their PCs. What if Dell asserted "If value, then right," and told its customers that they had only purchased the right to run their PCs as-is, an if they wanted a faster processor, they'd have to pay Dell to unlock this latent value?

One thing remains to be seen: will Intel try to sue people who figure out how to unlock their processors without paying Intel? Under the more exotic interpretations of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, showing your neighbor how to unlock her Intel processor is a copyright violation (though a recent court decision went the other way).

Just this week, Intel's spokesman sang the praises of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules and promised to use them to club down its competitors. Let's hope that this anti-property mania doesn't extend to attempts at shutting down websites that distribute software that let us unlock our own processors.

Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do (via /.)

(Image: Engadget/Brian)

Just a week after issuing a report titled "iPhone 4's supposed signal woes aren't unique, and may not be serious," Consumer Reports today announces that the iPhone 4 won't go on the "Recommended" list because lab tests showed that without a non-conductive case, or a little bit of strategically placed tape, reception can take a hit when the device is gripped a certain way:

When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side--an easy thing, especially for lefties--the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal.

The iPhone 4 scored high in all other respects, but "until Apple offers a fix" at "no extra cost," the device won't receive CU's coveted blessing.

The post goes on to say that AT&T's network might not be the sole or primary cause for reception issues reported early on, including in my own review of the device. While "normal grip" use sans case or tape in good signal areas resulted in relatively stable reception for me, I was able to repeat the "death grip" results in extended testing with the iPhone 4: cover all three of those gaps between the band that wraps around the edge, and reception strength drops by varying degrees. I compared and cross-tested extensively with an iPhone 3GS, and a first-gen device. I used SpeedTest to measure signal strength in various grips, at various locations with varying signal strengths (as indicated by the device itself, in the number of bars displayed).

Bottom line from my own extensive testing: with normal use, and normal grip, this just wasn't a big problem for me.

I live and work in areas where AT&T coverage is relatively strong. But with one of those $30 "bumper" cases offered by Apple with the iPhone 4, or a little bit of gaffer tape over the sensitive bits, call stability (reception and sound quality, number of dropped calls) compared to earlier editions has been great. Consumer Reports may not be able to recommend it, but I can (and have) with good conscience and that one caveat: use a case for best results.

Overall reception and stability (for voice calls and cellular data) are far better—measurably so— than earlier models. And as noted in my earlier review, a wide array of other upgrades—the display clarify, improved camera, zippy speeds with the A4 processor—make the device a big improvement from those earlier models, and from competing smartphones.

It's too bad the debut of an otherwise terrific device was marred by an issue that seems to be solveable with such a simple fix.

Update: Several commenters have pointed out the Anandtech review of iPhone 4, which includes lots of meaty, detailed technical testing on the "antenna issue." It's a good read, and their results are in line with my experience. "The antenna is improved," they report, but:

The drop in signal from holding the phone with your left hand arguably remains a problem. Changing the bars visualization may indeed help mask it, and to be fair the phone works fine all the way down to -113 dBm, but it will persist - software updates can change physics as much as they can change hardware design. At the end of the day, Apple should add an insulative coating to the stainless steel band, or subsidize bumper cases. It's that simple.

Related reports: New York Times, Washington Post, Engadget, Gizmodo, and Joel Johnson's thoughtful piece ("Poetically, the very same thing that gives the new phone its otherwise excellent reception can occasionally be shorted out").

19-year-old serial criminal Colton Harris-Moore has been caught, in the Carribean. Finally. The 6-foot-five teen was dubbed the "Barefoot Burglar" during his two-year crime spree because of his habit of removing his shoes prior to break-ins, and sometimes leaving white chalk footprints as a calling card.

In the photo at left (courtesy of the Sounder newspaper of Orcas Island, WA) chalk drawings of bare feet are shown on the floor of a store he'd just hit.

"Colt" became an internet folk hero. He was an outdoor survivalist, a pilot and crasher of planes, a hot-wirer of cars, a pirate of boats, a stealer of other people's stuff, and a prolific amasser of Facebook fans (log in today and hear their lamentations, mostly "Busted, Bro!"). His momma has a book deal, and has retained a lawyer to handle their "entertainment interests."

The long arm of the law caught up with Colt this morning, just before dawn, as he tried to dock a boat he'd recently stolen at a tourist spot in the Bahamas:

Burglary victims in Eleuthera told The Associated Press on Saturday they had little doubt the lanky (...) fugitive was on the island. Ferry boat captain Freddie Grant said he was returning from Harbour Island in northern Eleuthera on Wednesday evening when he saw a tall, white teenager bathing or swimming in an inlet near the ferry landing. Ferry service employee Stan Pennerman also said he saw Harris-Moore lurking in the woods the same day. Neither man thought much of it until they noticed the next morning that somebody had damaged the ignition system on three of their boats.

A bar at the ferry landing was also burglarized Wednesday night by a thief who cut a screen to break in, dismantled a security light, and moved the television's remote controls, said Denaldo Bain, the 30-year-old manager of Coakley's International Sporting Lounge.

"He was watching television. He was just chilling," said Bain, who also said he saw the teenager in the inlet.

Bahamas police catch 'Barefoot Bandit' (King 5 via Glenn Fleishmann)

'Barefoot bandit' apprehended in Bahamas (CNN)

With a capacity of 5 MB, the IBM 350 disk storage unit could have stored about two MP3 files. This photo, showing a unit getting forklifted onto a plane, is from 1956.

IBM's history website has more information about the drive.

IBM 350 disk storage unit (Thanks, Roy Doty!)