ofcom Archives - TheWayoftheWeb

Just to end off the day, here’s some stuff that caught my eye from my Google Shared Items page.

Interesting interview on Venturebeat with futurist Paul Staffo. It’s about the 40th Anniversary of Doug Engelbart’s demonstration fo the first computer mouse (among other revolutionary ideas). And it’s got some great quotable ideas:

For instance, on why the mouse has lasted 40 years: ‘I hadn’t thought about it. There is an intrinsic conservatism behind our media devices. They last a lot longer than we think they ever will, once they are accepted.’

Or on what visionaries should do today: Someone like Doug would be working on exactly what he was working on in the 1960s. He didn’t set out to invent a mouse or a display for editing. His goal was to augment human intellect in the service of giving human beings tools that were the equal of the growing challenges humans were facing.

And it turns out Doug Engelbart is still pursuing his goal today with the Doug Engelbart Institute.

From Gigom came the news: Brits get broadband bill of rights. It’s from Ofcom, and although it’s only a basic code, at least it’s a start. Now can someone please find a way to get cheap 20Mb+ broadband to every house in the UK, for an incredibly low cost so we can kickstart innovation and industry for the coming 100 years?

Tim Windsor references Martin Langeveld in writing about how ‘What it means to transform to a Digital Enterprise‘ – specifically if you’ve been putting daily news on dead trees for a while.

And in the midst of rolling out Google Friend Connect, a redesign for Youtube, a redesign for Google Reader, cutting back on data center investment, and killing Lively, it’s good to see someone is still pursuing the important things at Google. Such as tracking the eternal battle between pirates and ninjas.

My favourite piece of data?

Top Queries of 2008 related to “Ninjas Are…”

ninjas are there
ninjas are everywhere
ninjas are better
ninjas are awesome
ninjas are sexy

Oh, and I don’t think I’ve done my usual cross promotion – my first report on the response to using Magpie advertising on my Twitter accounts is online over at www.140char.com, along with a review and interview with the man behind Twilert – a monitoring service for Twitter similar to Google Alerts.

I recently noticed several missed calls on my mobile from a number I didn’t recognise, so decided to Google it in a spare moment, and discovered that it’s a well known nuisance cold caller, LBM Marketing. Luckily there’s a page with plenty of information with what you can do if you’re called by them: ‘LBM Direct Marketing – nuisance calls‘.

While I was happy to find that information before I got cornered by an annoying cold call, I started wondering about how much of an effect the internet has really had in convincing companies to become more honest. Obviously there will always be bad apples, but the complaints on that page go back to July 2006. And despite details of complaints to the likes of the Telephone Preference Service, and Ofcom, the calls are still continuing for new targets.

It made me question how many people did any research on these numbers after being cold-called. With over half of the UK on broadband, if everyone researched who was calling them, it should soon make it unprofitable for LBM to continue the way they have – and yet they seems to be still able to continue as normal.

The question is how to improve the information available online, and help to inform as many people as possible about the options available to them, or how online information could help regulators.

(And it’s not just companies creating problems, after the confusion caused by the @ExxonMobilCorp account on Twitter, which was perceived as an official source, and has since been revealed as a fake.)

Some late night linkage…

Will the internet reputation ever regulate companies?