I'm not sure why the media is so fussed about the Canadian military's decision to temporarily shut down a blog being written by a soldier, Matt Austin, in Afghanistan. I mean, he's involved in a dangerous military operation in which dozens of Canadian soliders have been killed. Does it really make sense from an intelligence, morale or strategic perspective to let Austin blog even though – as his mother told the Toronto Star – he was being “pretty careful about what he wrote”? Hey, I'm all for freedom of speech and the power of blogging to communicate but there are circumstances and situations where limitations have to be enforced for the greater good. I'm sure Austin, a University of Waterloo engineering student, is trying to carefully blog but what he may see as non-essential information could be easily regarded by the Taliban as insightful. One of the questions that begs to be asked is why Austin feels he needs to blog when there are other ways (letters, telephone calls, e-mail) to communicate with friends and family. Sure blogs are the new, cool tool (other than, I guess, having a MySpace account) but sometimes common sense needs to come into play. Maybe Austin's just a well-intentioned 21-year-old trying to stand out from the crowd but he needs to ask himself whether blogging in Afghanistan is appropriate.
Maybe the key lesson to be gleaned from this situation is the Canadian military's need to have a well-defined blogging policy to replace the current rules that gives it “the right to remove any content that puts the safety of personnel of the mission at risk”. Instead, there has be rules on whether soliders can blog or not. If they're allowed to blog, then it must be clearly spelled out when, where and how – with proper checks/systems in place to ensure the safety of themselves and fellow soliders.
Update: Austin's blog is back online. You can read his side of the story, which comes across as fairly pragmatic, although I still believe phone calls, e-mail and letters are more viable ways to communicate with friends and family as opposed to a public blog.
Note: For more, check out p2pnet and Blogging Times.
Is Rojo Elitist (or just an A-List Flunky)?
Here's a Friday morning rant: anyone get Rojo's weekly update, “The Week in Rojo” of
what's been happening on the blogosphere? Anyone notice it's the same-old
high-profile names every week (Scoble, Arrington, Huffington, John Battelle,
Steve Rubel, Silicon Beat)? Not to jump on the Nick Carr bandwagon but you figure
that a start-up such as Rollyo would give some love to people other than
A-listers, right? Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh but it would be nice to see some new, fresh names once in awhile.
Wireless Wishes
After a week of blogging from the semi-wilderness of Ontario, here's a few things on my wireless wish-list. First, a really cool mobile blogging tool that would let you use a Blackberry, Treo or smart phone to do basic things such as hyper-linking, trackbacks, respond to comments and highlighting text (bold, italic, etc.). I've been doing posts to Blogware via e-mail on my Blackberry but it's not an elegant or feature-rich process. (Typepad just introduced a mobile blogging tool, while a Waterloo, Ont.-based company is working on one while we speak). Second, I'd like a multi-pronged broadband package that would offer residential service, Wi-Fi, Wi-Max and 1X/EVDO service. Let's say, for example, you're camping: that's when your Wi-Max service would kick in. When you're running around town, Wi-Fi takes over; while your 1X/EVDO (and hopefully 3G) service jumps into fray when you're on a Blackberry or a Treo. Would a pay a convenience premium for this kind of package? Sure as long as it's reasonable. Third, a Blackberry 8100. Without a doubt, the Blackberry is the mobile e-mail tool and a fairly good phone. With a camera, solid Web browser and the ability to play video and music, that would be most excellent.
Sign of Apocalypse 2.0?
How should one read into an AdAge story that MySpace is holding talks with Nylon about the launch of a magazine – you know, those old-style, paper-based publications with glossy covers. “We're in the process of modeling it,” an executive involved in the
discussions told AdAge. “Our main concern is the MySpace brand. We don't want to
do anything that would hurt the brand.” Apparently, this potential magazine would focus on the interests of popular MySpace members. Interesting idea but I was under the impression the MySpace generation has abandoned magazines, newspapers, etc., which is why advertisers are rushing to the Web to reach young consumers. People Magazine, for example, recently decided to scrap the paper version of Teen People and make it a Web-only property. MySpace's apparent interest in a magazine reminds me of the dot-com days when Business 2.0 put out issues teeming with so many ads it eventually felt compelled to go bi-weekly to meet demand (and, of course, cash in on all those free-spending dot-coms). Who knows, maybe the MySpace folks figure there is room to extend the brand and the “platform” but it seems like an odd strategic foray.
Update: If a MySpace magazine is possible, how far could the brand be extended? What about youth-oriented products such as condoms, CDs, mobile phones, video games? Peter Cashmore thinks a MySpace idea is a terrible idea because there would be distribution costs and the content would never be as diverse as the Web. Seamus McCauley, however, believes the concept is a “surprisingly subtle strategy”, while Scott Karp describes the idea as an “April Fool's Joke” before pondering whether MySpace should create a tool for its member to create personalized magazines used PDF files.
Does TechCrunch Love Work?
My friend and fellow mesh organizer, Michael McDerment, has got himself some TechCrunch Love for Freshbooks, a cool Web-based invoicing company. Freshbooks, which is based in Toronto, recently unveiled a new service that lets users send invoices to customers by first-class U.S. Mail rather than over the Web. As everyone knows, TechCrunch has become the way to launch a new Web 2.0 company and/or service but I wonder how much actual “juice” these profiled companies receive. Does traffic suddenly to their Web sites suddenly surge and then level off to a healthy level? Do VCs look at TechCrunch Love as a positive endorsement that deems a company worthy of investment? Does TechCrunch have that much influence? Maybe. Then again, TechCrunch crunches through an awful lot of companies every week/month so it becomes more difficult to tell what companies are really on to something and what companies/services are simply new. In terms of Freshbooks, a little TechCrunch Love can only be a good thing given it's a real company with paying customers that generates revenue – which makes it a bit of an anomaly within the Web 2.0 landscape.
Shutting Down the Bad Guys on the 'Net
Telecom consultant Mark Goldberg has got himself involved in the middle of a disturbing situation involving some alleged white supremacists who – via Web sites in Canada and the U.S. - are apparently calling for the murder of a human rights lawyer in Ottawa who put Tomasz Winnicki in jail for ignoring a court order to stop posting hate on the Internet. Goldberg has teamed up with lawyers from Papazian Heisey Myers and Bernie Farber, CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress, to file an application with the CRTC under section 36 of the Telecom Act to ask the regulator to order ISPs to block access to these Web sites. You can read Mark's post here. While I'm not sure I agree with Jon Arnold's view this is the dark side of Net Neutrality, I agree with Jon that ISPs (carriers, cablecos and re-sellers) and governments have a responsibility to block content that is clearly illegal. How they proceed should follow the legal process and respect freedom of speech but the Internet is not a free for all or the wild west. Here's a Canadian Press story.
