I came across this video via Kottke.org . A group of young men from Sudan travel to the United States. The video shows just a few of the many cultural and technologies differences between these two countries. Truly fascinating!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT0kzF4A-WQ]
In the age where pretty much each and every websites considers it its duty to ask for your email address and subscribe you to some kind of mailing list or notification system, it is still rare to see an email integration done right. Showing bad examples is not my favorite approach to treating the problem, since there are too many of them and they seldom do any good. Today, however, I have a good example to show.
As many of you know, I am a member of LinkedIn social network for professionals. One of the things you can do on LinkedIn is join the groups according to your professional interests. These groups are very much like forums – full of discussions. The groups you are subscribed to also show up on your profile, so other people can easily see what are you interested in.
LinkedIn has a system of notifications, where you could get an email for when something happens in those discussions. You can get individual emails or digests. In most systems that I’ve used until now, the setting is only up to the user. If one gets too many emails, a switch to digest mode usually happens. If too few are coming in, then the opposite occurs. I can’t remember a system that was helping the user to make a decision or to realize a need for the change.
Today I received the following email from LinkedIn.
Apparently, the system is smart enough to realize that I’ve been busy and didn’t have the time to follow up discussions in this particular group. So it not only suggested, but automatically changed a preference for me. It notified me accordingly, and provided a quick way to change it back (‘Change Settings’ button).
This is how you tell your users you love them. I have no other way to interpret this. Very well done!
While reading this article, I was really amazed by how much US Navy embraced social networks.
Over 90 documents relating to Navy social media use were made available online that give a window onto recommended military security practices for popular services and how naval culture squares with the anarchic world of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. More importantly, it also reveals how the Navy keeps tabs on sailors via social media.
In one case, the Navy shared a poster of sexual assault prevention tips on their official Facebook page at the request of the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response office. The poster was a repurposed graphic that the Navy copied from Slutwalk Austin’s Facebook page.
The idea was to intentionally spur a debate among Navy personnel on sexual assault and to bring discussion of the topic into a semi-public forum. According to the Navy’s own report, “many thought [the poster] was funny, ‘dumb,’ or a joke, others were outraged, a few recognized the tone and intent” and Navy social media personnel managed the resulting comments thread. They moderated the discussion, noted how sailors treat discussion of sexual assault online and attempted to keep a respectful tone. In one case, the thread even uncovered what appeared to have been the sexual assault of a former sailor.
I wish more companies and organizations did the same.
Once again I found stumbled upon an excellent photograph in Yimmy Yayo blog. No comments, no links, no story, no copyrights. Just an image.
Being a pathological liar myself, I often hear people saying how bad lies are and how lies are only making things worse. Of course, there are counter examples of telling a lie to prevent hurting people and such. But there weren’t so many examples of constructive, useful lies. Here is one such example of lies used by an educator to assist students with a boring course.
The topic of Corporate Finance/Capital Markets is, even within the world of the Dismal Science, (Economics) an exceptionally dry and boring subject matter, encumbered by complex mathematic models and obscure economic theory.
What made Dr. K memorable was a gimmick he employed that began with his introduction at the beginning of his first class:
“Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day.”
Read the whole story – it’s pretty fascinating.