Ravenweb Blog

Kay Nou is a fascinating new blog by my next door neighbors. Take a visit and you'll be treated to all manner of opinions on a wide range of topics, including running, teaching, law, food, Buffalo and Western New York, and Haiti. With 46 blog posts in September alone, they produce a steady amount of content that rewards repeat visits (or an RSS subscription). Just to put that in perspective, prior to this post, I managed 46 posts on this blog for the entire calendar year . Visit Kay Nou: http://kaynou.wordpress.com/

All companies need creation myths, and if one doesn't exist, it's probably necessary to invent one. It's unclear how much of The Social Network is fact and how much is exaggerated and fictionalized, but it doesn't really matter as David Fincher's film succeeds as a compelling story of a smart but irreverent college student who doesn't quite fit in at Harvard but pounces and executes the right idea at the right time. The results speak for themselves as Facebook has become the number one social network site in the world. I enjoyed the film and especially appreciated the balanced treatment of Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). He comes across neither as a sympathetic figure nor as a villain, but somewhere in between, and mostly as a lonely and sometimes angry kid who desperately wants to fit in. This flailing coupled with his savvy at building innovative web applications (first MP3 software, than the infamous Facemash, and, finally, Facebook), leads to an unexpecte...

Copyright and fair use have become confusing and confounding. Not only is it unclear today what exactly we can copy and create, but it seems incredulous that record companies and movie studios would resort to suing children. In Remix , Lawrence Lessig cuts through the confusion and details how American copyright laws have ceased to perform their original role of protecting artistic creation and allowing artists to build on previous creative works. Today, Lessig contends, digital technologies make it as easy for media artists to remix, as it does for writers to quote from other sources. Unfortunately, such remixing is in violation of the current laws and creates a stifling climate for creativity. Lessig stridently argues against the continuation of such a limited "read only" culture and suggests five major changes to our copyright laws: Deregulation of amateur creativity Opt-in copyright Simplification of the copyright laws Decriminalizing copying Decriminalizing file...

I previously mentioned that I'd be blogging about many of the fascinating speakers and innovative organizations I was exposed to at BIF6 . SeeClickFix advances a civic Internet through progressive technology and social media. Basically, SeeClickFix allows anyone to report and track local community problems to government officials and the media via the internet. Think about it. You're driving through your downtown and see a pothole. You take a picture with your cell phone and use a mobile phone app to send the picture through SeeClickFix. The picture and issue is logged on the site, and the governing (transportation or city works) agency receives an alert about the problem. I'm fascinated by the concept and eager to hear from others if they've used the service and if it's been effective in their communities.

I had the good fortune to attend the Business Innovation Factory's annual summit this year in Providence, RI. The conference featured more than two dozen innovators who took the stage and told stories demonstrating their passion, creativity, smarts and discipline to get things done in new and valuable ways. Think TED , but on a more intimate scale, and with a clear focus on business and social innovation. I found the event absolutely exhilarating and fascinating. Almost a week removed now, and I still can't stop thinking about it. Look for follow up posts in this space about some of the speakers and stories featured at BIF-6

My daughter turns three on September 9th. Her personality is really beginning to develop now, and everyday my wife and I are greeted with new sentences, vocabulary, and concepts that she has mastered. She's also navigating her way through a full range of mannerisms and emotions. One moment she might hold her white teddy bear "Pickles" close and give him a big, expressive hug. Then, in the next, after I've asked her to do something, she might react quite differently. "Cecilia, it's time for dinner. Let's put your toy away and get in your chair." "Daddy, no. Last one," she often says. "Honey, time for dinner." "No. No dinner. NO!" In these moments, while I sometimes feel exasperation depending on the particular outburst and duration, I mostly find myself smiling and wondering if these expressive moments foreshadow the personality traits my daughter will exhibit as she gets older. The possibilities seem endless ...

The message of Buying In is that while modern consumers have becomes smarter and more discriminating, they are nonetheless embracing brands like never before. Despite cynicism in general toward the persuasion industry and new technologies that allow people to bypass advertising in some contexts (using TiVo, DVRs, website ad blockers), author Rob Walker contends that people are increasingly finding value by bringing their own meanings and interpretations to brands. Using varied examples including Hello Kitty, Timberland, Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR), Red Bull, and the iPod, Walker cites case after case where the consumer brings her own meaning to the brand, often ascribing an interpretation totally unanticipated by the company owning and marketing the brand. Bottom up interest in pink Timberlands is just one of many examples from the text. This phenomenon has led to what Walker calls "murketing", partially a range of tactics that blur the lines of the traditional sales pit...

As the Internet has collapsed the relative costs for forming and maintaining large groups, it has paved the way for a new breed of distributed, decentralized organizations. The Starfish and the Spider is all about emerging, leaderless organizations in comparison to traditional, centralized organizations. The authors use the great title metaphor to setup and explain the two types of organizations. Here, centralized organizations are like spiders, with a head and command and control system, and distributed organizations are like starfish, with no central brain and nearly-autonomous parts that can function so well indpendently that you can cut off a starfish's leg and the leg will grow an entirely new starfish. Practical examples follow, with studies showing how Alcoholics Anonymous, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Napster, and Skype all flourished as they embraced distributed models or aspects. The text does a good job elaborating the differences between centralized and decentralized o...

Following Polly is a fresh and fun novel about Alice Teakle, a women who tries to inject some excitement and pulse into her nondescript life by following a more interesting woman, a former classmate named Polly. Alice finds the stalking strangely affirming, but things turn when Polly ends up murdered and Alice finds herself the prime suspect in the murder. I started Following Polly not sure what to expect. I suspected that the book was written primarily for women (in the vein of The Nanny Diaries ), but I was intrigued enough by the hook of a bored and lonely person following someone much more interesting that I knew wanted to start reading. I'm glad I did, as I enjoyed the evenly-paced plot, the dialog, and the blurring of genre elements, especially as the book shifted from a traditional romantic fantasy to a comedic murder mystery thriller and then went back and forth. Ultimately, the book will likely appeal more to a female audience, but I think male readers will enjoy ...

The City & The City refers to two overlapping and interspersing cities -- Beszel and Ul Qoma -- somewhere in Europe. Despite the proximity of the cities, that at times is so tight that part of a street may be in Beszel while the rest is in Ul Qoma, it is both law and custom that people observe only the environs of their city and "unsee" the other city. So, if they are in Beszel, they only see Beszel buildings, streets, and people, just as people in Ul Qoma only see people and places that are in Ul Qoma. To do otherwise is to commit breach, a serious crime enforceable by a secret power that mandates the perception of Beszel and Ul Qoma as distinct cities. If this all sounds confusing, I submit that it is probably due to my inability to capture what Miéville has done in this novel, which is to take a speculative premise that completely jars against our expections and sense of what should be, and make it work and flow. We are introduced to Beszel and Ul Qoma through In...

After sharing the Buffalo and Cleveland post that compared sports failures between the two cities, I wanted to follow up with something positive. I've been tossing some ideas around when a co-worked forwarded me this great clip from the 1978 NBA All-Star game featuring Randy Smith (a former Buffalo Brave) going on a tear and hitting shot after shot. When I saw this, I knew immediately this was what I wanted to post. Enjoy!

Cognitive Surplus continues where Here Comes Everybody ends and examines how excess free time and the adoption of social media are transforming us from consumers into collaborators. We've had surplus free time for a while, Shirky contents, at least since the postwar boom. However, because we spent so much of this excess time watching television, the surplus was mostly used for consumption. It has only been in recent years, with the emergence of online social networks, that we're beginning to see our cognitive surplus applied beyond consumption, to all manner of sharing and collaborative creation. It's worth noting here that the application of our cognitive surplus to social networks is instrumental. It won't by definition produce output of higher quality. You will instead get everything from Wikipedia to Napster to millions of blogs and Twitter posts. But because the Internet has removed the barriers to entry for amateurs creating and sharing content, the pool of ...

I'm a Buffalo sports fan, but I found myself acutely disappointed when LeBron James choose the Miami Heat over the Cleveland Cavaliers. You see, it's not easy being a Buffalo sports fans, with the Bills' four Super Bowl losses and the Sabres' inability to win the Stanley Cup. I've always felt that the only fans who truly understand the continual disappointment and ache of no championships are Cleveland sports fans. So, somewhere along the way, I've become a stand-in Cleveland fan, and I always cheer for Cleveland teams to win when they make the playoffs (excepting on the rare occasion when the Browns and Bills meet in the post-season, when I root for the Bills). This year was no different, and I really thought it was the Cavs' year and LeBron would lead them over the top. It was obviously not to be, though. But the Cavs' loss to the Celtics and LeBron's decision to play for Miami got me thinking about other famous sports letdowns and disappointme...

Earlier this year, I gave ten reasons why Memorial Day is my favorite holiday . I stand by that list, but, in full disclosure, I really like Independence Day too, almost or even as much as Memorial Day. To flush this out, I decided to make a case for Independence Day as the best holiday of them all. Don't worry, I won't do this for every holiday. Note: As with Memorial Day, I'm aware that Independence Day (on the Fourth of July) is a U.S. holiday, but I know other countries have similar holidays, so I figured people everywhere can relate. I also tried to pick qualities that aren't specific to America. If anything, they're more season-specific. Here's the list: It's a holiday for everybody.  Almost everyone gets off work on Independence Day and most businesses are closed. It makes the day feel extra special and celebratory, and there are only a few holidays where this is the case. It's affordable. Unless you're hosting a giant party, you won'...

Groundswell is a really great survey book about the importance of social media for business. Here, the authors interpret social media as the groundswell, "a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, take charge of their experience, and get what they need -- information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power -- from each other." The book is well-structured and begins at a high-level, defining the groundswell and why it's vital for businesses today. Next, the authors include case studies and go through various strategies for tapping into the groundswell. The final section includes tactical examples detailing how to implement social media initiatives and gain buy-in throughout an organization. As you read the book, it's easy to tell that Groundswell pulls together a ton of relevant information, and the authors did an excellent job of leveraging data from their parent organization ( Forrester Research ) and gathering new information tho...

She's Out of My League is a mildly funny and easy-going-down comedy about an average guy named Kirk (played by Jay Baruchel) who finds himself dating Molly (Alice Eve), who's better looking, smarter, and more successful than he is. Basically, he's a 5 out of 10, and she's a 10. The premise works because the characters are likable and we want them to work it out and be happy. This is true despite the fact that there are no real surprises here, and the plot paints by the usual romantic comedy numbers. I did like that the story took place in Pittsburgh, and that the writers gave Molly some substance -- she is ridiculously pretty, but she's not an airhead. I recommend She's Out of My League if you're interested in a light romantic comedy with some probable rising stars, especially Jay Baruchel and Alice Eve.

I love using social media sites to meet new professionals for networking and sharing ideas. LinkedIn and Twitter are my favorite social media sites for this, as they bring you into contact with a ton of people in all different fields and specialties. Over the past few months, I've been trying to add new professional contacts and I've reached out to people I didn't previously know. At first, this was a little awkward, as I had to overcome my own hesitation about connecting with strangers. I was worried I was being too intrusive or even spamming people. I tried to balance this by being transparent about my intent to connect and never bothering anyone with duplicate messages or invitations. Overall, this process has been rewarding and very positive, as the majority of people with whom I've interacted have been very receptive to networking and connecting on LinkedIn or Twitter, and I now am connected to many more interesting professional contacts that I would be other...

I recently discovered the Book Blogger Appreciation group which works to "recognize the hard work and contribution of book bloggers" . Even more, the group also sponsors a Book Blogger Appreciation Week to recognize the contributions of book bloggers everywhere. I'm by no means a full-time book blogger, but I comment about enough books here that I wanted to participate in their event. I also like the intent of the Book Blogger Appreciate group, and want to do my small part in publicizing their activity. For the BBAW awards, there are several niche categories you may pick from to enroll your blog. After traversing the categories and looking at what I posted this past year, I decided to select the Best Nonfiction Book Blog category and have selected the following as representative review posts: Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn McKenna (Book Review) Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford (Book Review) Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and...

Lately, I've been hearing more and more covers of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah". This includes adaptations for TV, the movies, and special events, like the last Olympics and the recent Hope for Haiti fundraiser. The song was also performed by two recent American Idol finalists, Jason Castro (in 2008) and Lee DeWyze (this season, 2010). According to a Wikipedia article summarizing the song and the website The Leonard Cohen Files , the song has been covered by different artists almost 200 times. There's also a great awmusic.ca blog post that goes into more detail about the many covers of Hallelujah, and suggests that it is now " the most overused song ever". Good stuff. Anyway, after hearing DeWyze attempt the song last month, it got me thinking about the different versions of the song, and which interpretation I like the best. For my part, while I appreciate the emotional intensity of the the Jeff Buckley version, I favor the controlled sincerity...

Often, the books that frighten me the most aren't horror novels. Instead, I'm more likely to be disturbed after reading texts detailing real-life threats, especially dangers that are under reported and not taken seriously. So it's probably no surprise that Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA scared the hell out of me. As the text's title indicates, Superbug is all about MRSA, a bacterium responsible for a range of difficult-to-treat infections. MRSA stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus but is commonly labeled as staph, or, more appropriately, drug-resistant staph. It is especially dangerous because is has developed resistance to many antibiotic drugs that are normally used to counter bacterial infections. In this sense, MRSA has become more drug-resistant in part because of our societal overuse of antibiotics. There are a variety of strains and manifestations of MRSA, from minor skin infections to severe necrotizing or flesh bacteria syndrome. The...