When it came to the criticism emanating from Boing Boing, Scoble simply… agreed. “MSN Spaces isn’t the blogging service for me,” he wrote. Nobody at Microsoft asked Scoble to comment; he just did it on his own, adding that he would make sure that the team working on Spaces was aware of the complaints. And he kept revisiting the issue on his blog.

“It’s all about openness,” says chairman Bill Gates of Microsoft’s public blogs like Scobleizer. “People see them as a reflection of an open, communicative culture that isn’t afraid to be self-critical.”

The President on his way to some other shafting.

One commenter over on Washington Monthly, a progressive blog, cuts through much of what’s going on to offer some short and sweet advice on major policy revisions.

Given that the current situation has been more or less developing ever since the founding of Israel (actually before that), it’s not likely that the current US administration will implement this advice any time soon.

I believe histroy will show us, one day, that this would have been the way to go … starting yesterday.

- Get off oil

That’s NEW THINKING.

She was comparing, and trying to understand, some comments received in response to Arundhati Roy’s very critical examination of recent Bush Administration doings in Iraq. Some of the commenters were very heated in their criticisms of Roy, and suggested Roy was a terrorist, rather than Bush. This type of logic seems similar to much of what I observe going on in the U.S., with real divisiveness continuing to grow as any criticism of Bushco’s grand adventures is typoically turned upside down … the critics are told that they “hate freedom”, or don’t appreciate Dubya’s far-seeing wisdom (I am so tired of the continued use of the phrase “history will show whether Bush is right or not” … that can be said about absolutely anything, and is NOT in any way a logical support for having invaded Iraq.

Apropos Dina’s (longer) post here, I have read much of Arundhati Roy’s recent work, and readers will know that I have no fondness whatsoever for George Bush.

I found the points of view she has uncovered, and her subsequent exploration of them, very interesting to read and think about. Thanks, Dina.

Am excerpt from her longer blog post:

Its interesting to see how there seems to be a blurring here of who the aggressor is and who the victim. And who is to blame - the perpetrators of atrocities resulting from war or the initiators of the war itself ? And finally who is a terrorist or an enablor of terrorists ? Bush as Arundhati Roy says … or Arundhati Roy as Shanthi suggests ? 

And if the people of Iraq resist this invasion are they terrorists ? Or are they victims who are resisting terrorist attacks ? And what is wrong in Arundhati Roy saying - “One wasn’t urging them to join the army, but to become the resistance, to become part of what ought to be non-violent resistance against a very violent occupation,” she said, adding that the term resistance needed to be redefined. “We can’t assume that resistance means terrorism because that would be playing right into the hands of the occupation,” she said”

Jakob Nielsen talks of the The Most Hated Advertising Techniques :

“Summary : studies of how people react to online advertisements have identified several design techniques that impact the user experience very negatively. …………

Lessons for Websites :

Sites that accept advertising should think twice before accepting ads that 80 to 90% of users strongly dislike. The resulting drop in customer satisfaction will damage your long-term prospects.

How Not To Advertise Online

Advertisers themselves might be tempted to continue with these nasty design techniques as long as they can find sites that will run them. After all, they typically yield higher clickthrough rates. But clickthrough is not the only goal. Users who are deceived into clicking on a misleading ad might drive up your CTR, but they’re unlikely to convert into paying customers. And your brand suffers a distinct negative impact when you antagonize customers and use techniques that are associated with the worst scum on the net.

Corporate websites can also learn from these studies, even if they don’t run ads. Many elements that users dislike in ad design are also common in mainstream Web design, with equally bad affects. A few things to avoid:

Pop-ups

Slow load times

“Teasing” links, misleading categories, and other elements that trick users into clicking

Content that doesn’t clearly state the site’s purpose or what a particular page covers

Content that moves around the page

Sound that plays automatically

All of these techniques have caused problems in traditional usability studies of non-advertising sites, and I’ve warned against them many times before. The fact that they’re associated with the most hated ads is one more reason that respectable sites should avoid them at all costs.”

I think that this is what Wired was looking at with its recent issue that offered a free CD of music to use.

Is the interactive future inevitable ? I think that’s the point of this recent post by Ming the Mechanic that highlights the issue that 15 lines of code in Python provides an effective P2P application … can it ever be controlled from on high ?

Increasingly it will be a world of information that is constantly flowing, fed with original and re-mixed, re-combined bits and pieces of information. Humans combining this bits and pieces will always be the final filter, as they take in the information and turn around and push info back out … publishing to a blog, or email, or to a file that will be saved in their own Personal Server. A Personal Server will be a simple and easy to use “electronic filing cabinet” that accomodates both the diligent person’s need for structure and the ad-hoc nature of many peoples’ inforaging habits.

From Gaping Void:

In a recent gapingvoid post, Microsoft employee/star blogger Robert Scoble asks the question about his employer:

But who knows. Predicting the future is a hazardous business. So is underestimating Microsoft.

Suffice it to say that two worlds are colliding here … a monopolistic outlook on personal-productivity software (Word, excel and Powerpoint) and the world where easy-to-use blogging tools and an increasingly effective infrastructural of link management are creating a new environment for creating and exchanging information.

No wonder Microsoft has come out with MSN Spaces. This intersection - Microsoft personal productivity software and the capabilities for self-expression offered by blogs - is where the world will come to life on the Web over the next decade or so.