Tinyhype, the wise information snack

thinking about buying a macbook air?

tinyhype — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:47:44 +0000

should i buy a macbook air? i've done all the hard work for you to make an informed decision

Thinking about buying a Macbook air huh? Well it can be a complex journey on your way to finding out whether its really worth the money and if it will deliver you all the benefits you really want from a laptop.

This article aims to help you sift through all the facts and considerations I made before buying a Macbook Air. I was particularly vigorous with my purchase for a few reasons, I have been a pc user, and I have already just bought a powerful new Acer 7720 dual core, 500gb HD, 4gb ram Ati HD2600 so I wasn’t expecting on being in the market for a new laptop so soon.

Spending $2499 on another laptop at first didn’t seem like a smart idea, I mean; when you have a look around at what else you could buy – it can get quite scary, even if you have cash to throw around there’s still a big opportunity cost – 2g’s is a lot of premium coffee!.

When comparing the macbook air to the macbook pro where the prices are comparable it initially seems ridiculous to go for the macbook air. And even if you just based your decision on the feature set – so what does the more expensive Macbook Air really give you to justify its purchase?

To help answer this it’s good to remember the key question any salesperson will want to know from you

“what will you use the laptop for, and how do you intend to use it”

If your not yet clear about these two points, you will find it very hard to make the choice whether ‘to buy’ or ‘not to buy’. For me, I had great difficulty in really sorting out these pros and cons of these questions. So I worked out the biggest areas that would affect my decision and rated them against the other mac laptops.

To add another dimension to the graph I wanted to see where my favourite features ranked compared to the laptops. This would help show that even if a mac ranked highly – if it wasn’t a feature I cared about as much, I could see the value gap.

To simplify the whole decision process I ranked things out of 5, instead of overcomplicating everything by comparing a 2.2ghz with 2mb L2 cache to a 2.8ghz blah blah.. After all I’m after a yes / no decision, not a statistical graph of the speed of a wild buffalo on an empty stomache vs. a dual core processor.

If you like making your decisions based on every layer of specifics, its important to remember – that purchase decisions aren’t entirely quantifiable. There is always subjectivity and it’s important to account for that. To alow for this I added the line “my fav features” into the graph. Its’ my way of balancing what is quantifiable with what isn’t – also take into consideration how I interpret the same graph will also be different to you. So where you see a lack in ports and features for the Macbook air, I may see this as a benefit in its overall portability, usability and design appeal.

Price, portability, usability and battery life were my most important features.

what i need versus what they products offer vs. a rating out of 5

Price :

Since I already have a lot of computers, adding another expensive one to my collection needed to be very justified, I’m not the type of person to throw money away, and of course neither are you.

When compared to buying a PC over a mac there have been many blogs and comparative analysis’ which have found that macs aren’t the overpriced machines they are commonly perceived to be. If you find this hard to believe have a quick search on google and you may be enlightened anyway I’ll stay away from the mac vs. pc debate for this article and let you in on some of the savings you MUST know about before considering the Macbook air.

Okay so some of the critical features have now been covered, what about the secrets and tips you don’t hear?

save $AU 250.00 – don’t buy mac office. Try out some free cross compatible alternatives like www.openoffice.org or www.docs.google.com with google gears so you can use it offline, or perhaps even start using the Flock browser and its fantastic inbuilt blogging features for documents on the go. – and don’t forget writeroom and wordpad.

Save $AU 469.00 – buy a refursbished Macbook air, don’t be scared you can still get the applcare warranty with it, and a quick google search will comfort you to discover that the only sacrifice you are really making is the fact you might not get the original box with it – think of the environmental benefits.

refurbhished	online Apple store	Price:$AU	$2030.00
Brand new	licensed apple reseller	Price:$AU	$2499.000

That’s a saving of $469

Save $AU 249.00 – applecare is one of the biggest rip offs if you buy it straight away with your Macbook air heres a tip you will want to know and will save you money and ad 11 months to your warrant.Applcare is just a CD, booklet, phonenumber, warranty and a serial number – most importantly the serial number. ) You can get a copy of applecare on ebay for around $100 brand new, ungregistered and valid for your Macbook air. The best part about this, is not just the savings you make but the fact that apple has a loophole. You may know about the 90 day postpurchase warranty which is all well and good – but did you know that you can buy and register applecare upto 11months after your purchase? Yep so you can just chillout with no warranty for 11 months during the primetime of the laptops life and then after 10-11 months when your lapop might be getting a bit whethered or ready for a service – hop online and get 3 years cover on top of the 11 months of freedom you have just had. So 3 years and 11 months later your Macbook Air is still under warranty: now that’s cool.

Do you go to University?

Save $2100 on photoshop, dreamweaver flash and the rest of creative suite 3. If you buy the educational software packages you can make SERIOUS SAVINGS. As soon as your out of the educational world, the creative suite package costs individuals and businesses around $2500, so when I found out I could get it for $400 since I’m studying at university I was pleased, the only condition is that you must be enrolled in a course that goes for a few years, my guess is around 2-3.

features	macbook	macbook pro	mac air	my fav features
Price	5	3	4	5

Portability:

the Acer laptop I have been using is quite simply not portable, its 3.6 kilograms, its 3-4 centimeters thick and has a 19” screen – it’s a desktop replacement rather than a “lap” top. So having a laptop I can take around with me without the fuss of cables weight and a cinema sized screen which is just impractical although good for your eyes.

features	macbook	macbook pro	mac air	my fav features
still portable	3	3	5	5

Usability :

this aspect was something I didn’t initially consider, I’m very comfortable with the xp and vista platforms however ive heard a lot of internet hype surrounding the phrase “everything just works” and from my experience with macs I was quite excited to experience the level of human usability integration into the platform. I’ve experienced it with several ipods and the ipod touch and was quite sure I could expect the same if not a higher level of that ‘ease of use’ with the leopard o/s and contemporary mac lineup. So why is usability my third highest consideration?

Well to put it simply – when I turn on my laptop im generally time poor, and need to get things done – fast and in any situation with internet or no internet. So when I heard the macbook had a fast loading time, has wireless 802.11n and has the new multitouch large trackpad I became more interested. I liked the idea of a trackpad that could replace the mouse in the true sense, not just the fact it “can” if you required it to.. which is my experience with all pc laptops. So being able to flip the hood of a laptop without the need for plugging in usb dongles, or connecting to a laser mouse was a big plus for me.

I’ve heard all the criticism about the lack of optical drive and I have only one thing to say… optical drives are practically obsolete. There’s almost nothing you will even need from a disc that you can’t get in a short time online. And for me, that’s almost everything. If I badly needed something of a disc and couldn’t put it on a 4gb usb stick then I’ll just hijack one that’s hooked up to a wireless lan – not an issue at all..

features	macbook	macbook pro	mac air	my fav features
Price	5	3	4	5
usability	4	3	5	5

Battery life :

over 5 hours on the Macbook air! and despite Apple not allowing for end users to switch the battery without voiding the warranty, its about $129 to get a replacement which isn’t a whole lot – and then if you consider buying a third party battery and getting your local apple Genius ( yep Apple call their staff that. ) to install it then you get to keep your apple care warranty without voiding it, and you solve your problem of reduced battery life.

features	macbook	macbook pro	mac air	my fav features
battery life	3	3	5	5

On the graph you will notice I have explicitly mentioned web chat and design appeal - I’ll explain. I use web chat, web streaming and web conferencing a lot! So having the inbuilt camera ( despite only .3 megapixels, and not the 1.3 like the mac pro ) is a great feature for me – especially when used with a free program called camtwist.

My Acer laptop has an inbuilt webcam, and it has become a must have feature for me.

Design appeal : okay this is obvious, it looks good, feels good, it’s ergonomic, its lightweight and its not an embarrassment to pull out onto a café bench and finish some work or check your emails. I already have a black vista beast which I require a big sturdy case for which I wouldn’t be caught dead with in most public places. The Macbook as you have seen on the advertisements doesn’t really need much more than a manilla folder for a case, its only 3 pounds and is the size of an A4 piece of paper, It fits snugly under your arm and is a pleasure to move around – its not often you come across a laptoip you can hold with one hand as you search for the reclining knob on your chair, or as you reach for your coffee. The design appeal goes a lot further than just the egotistical remarks. Backlit keys! Bright LCD! Fullsize keyboard! High resolution to name a few.

features	macbook	macbook pro	mac air	my fav features
design appeal	3	4	5	4

Conclusion :

The Macbook is not for everyone – but it is for me my reasons for purchasing will be different to yours. For me the Macbook air made sense for my lifestyle, I’m travelling a lot – and even as I write this I’m in a car on a 3 hour transit. And also even when not on transport, I also appreciate being able to sneak a 3pound high end pc around with me to do the computer and internet related stuff without being tied to a paper weight or cabled to a wall.

It’s expensive yes.. but for me i will suck that value right back out of the machine, and the value i get with all those liittle purchase hacks, i actually come out a lot cheaper than if i were to get a small pc, i’ve heard theres some competition brewing for the air, but i’m affraid at the moment theres nothing thats got my eyes switching any time soon.

heres a bunch of links from my google web history that helped me come to my decision, i havent filtered them so theres probably some junk in there too

Apple – Support – Discussions – Frustration with MacBook…

apple.com

Jul 11

MacBook Air Mac OS X (10.5.2) Fully moved in on this baby and 20gigs to spare – after 10yrs mac life and 10hrs of cleaning out …

Searched for

mac air tips

Which Apple notebook should I buy? – Mac Guides

macrumors.com

Jun 24

However, even the 1.6 GHz MacBook Air has enough power to run light applications such as web browsers, word processors and presentation software almost as …

Searched for

macbook air repair

Hosted 3G Video Calling Participation TV Solution

3g.co.uk

May 2

A mass number of subscribers and/or viewers invited to make video calls to a participation TV program creates an influx of air-time minutes and in turn …

Tech Talk Radio – Australia’s Premier Tech Talk Radio Show

techtalkradio.com.au

May 9

Here you can find out all about the presenters you hear on air and our guests. … Here you’ll find everything that made it to air last year! …

Mac News: Notebooks: MacBook vs. MacBook Pro: The Agonizing…

macnewsworld.com

Jun 24

The trackpad on the MBP now also supports the same Multi-Touch trackpad finger swipe features as the new MacBook Air — but the trackpad is still the …

Laptop lowdown: 25 things you need to know to buy the…

cnet.com.au

Jun 26

The MacBook Air personifies this category, even if it is feature-light ….. Apple has reduced the cost of an SSD-based MacBook Air by around AU$700. …

What’s on your iPod? | 9 to 5 Mac

9to5mac.com

Apr 13

MacBook Air price drop clearing inventory for new models? … Apple cuts price of high-end SSD MacBook Air by $500 · MacEnterprise welcomes the formation of …

Macbook Pro Major Issues & Appalling Apple Customer Service…

macrumors.com

Jun 26

More and more customers are surfacing with early Macbook Pro issues to do with …. Mac mini, Notebooks, MacBook, iBook, MacBook Pro, PowerBook, MacBook Air …

Apple Inc. – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wikipedia.org

Apr 4

Hind commented further, “The Macbook Air has less toxic PVC plastic and less toxic BFRs, but it could have zero and that would make Apple an eco-leader. …

1.1.1 iPhone Multipage SpringBoard Hack – The Unofficial…

tuaw.com

Apr 13

… Leopard (367): Mac mini (112): Mac Pro (53): MacBook (202): MacBook Air (79): Macbook Pro (220): MobileMe (17): Multimedia (442): Odds and ends (1442) …

Using iPhone with 3 contract – 3G forum : your 3G community…

3g.co.uk

Apr 4

doubt that very much dude chances of 3 getting the iphone are like very very macbook air slim!! for one o2 have a contract with them though the networks 3g …

cer Aspire 7720G for Gamers Enjoy the ride : Specs,…

mobilewhack.com

Apr 10

Does Your MacBook Air Need More Air? Today On Mobilewhack – 10th of May, 2008. The Daily Wrap Up – 10th of May, 2008 · How Many Zune Buyers are There? …

a nice juicy big self analysis question

tinyhype — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:46:29 +0000

todays big - and random - question :

whats the biggest problem you know of,
and have – or can gather the expertise to
solve and market within a respectable timeframe
and also must considers what you are passionate about?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

liability of social networks, an overview

tinyhype — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:17:43 +0000

liability of social networks, an overview

Who is ultimately responsible for what happens on social networks such as Ning, Myspace and Facebook? There are a series of very tough
questions that technologies such as the internet and communication constantly thrust upon society, however it’s very important that they
are dealt with effectively and ahead of time before unforseen events occur.

I’ve gathered from the noise of conversation happening on forums
and blogs a collaboration of some of the most compelling arguments and points to feed the discussion and bring some of the broader issues to
light. This article will be usefull for social network creators, and members; who want a deeper understanding of where they stand and what is
going on behind the scenes.

this post was collaborated using a web clip board, so some parts may seem incomplete, however i generally tried to capture the most compelling parts of
the individuals arguments so you can get the cream of their point without indulging in a fully fledged article. - you can always click the corresponding links if you simply can’t resist.

The authors highlight recent litigation involving harassment charges, defamation, privacy issues and even insurance claim legitimacy. The most disturbing for me is the American insurance company’s (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) refusing to honour several claimants’ policies, going so far as to use the claimants’ personal postings on social networking sites to argue the individuals were not emotionally stable. More on this case here.

Accidental Aussie: Social Networking Sites and the Liability Factors

monitoring and retrieval of personal employee information on the web

Accidental Aussie: Social Networking Sites and the Liability Factors

Informational professionals need to educate their patrons/clients on the practical do’s and don’ts of social networking participation. They should also work closely with their HR and legal departments, reviewing current company policy concerning online activity both at work and during hours away from the job. This is tough one, considering many of us bring our work home and don’t set boundaries between our personal and professional online time.

Accidental Aussie: Social Networking Sites and the Liability Factors

exchanging email addresses and telephone numbers, and talking for a month or so, they went on a date. The 14 year old and her mother now claims that Solis “sexually assaulted” her during that date.

14 Year Old Girl and Mom Sue MySpace for $30million for Date Gone Wrong – The Internet Patrol

Educating company executives and management on the relevance of online social networking participation in the corporate environment is also equally important for information and knowledge professionals. Sharing stories, best practices, personal “on the job” experiences, helpful contacts and the like are all beneficial exercises in the realm of online community interaction while at work. The key is understanding and knowing the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour

Accidental Aussie: Social Networking Sites and the Liability Factors

Companies and organisations will be increasing their scrutiny of both potential and current employees, trying to monitor and locate inappropriate online behaviour from their workforce. This task will be overwhelming given the vast amount of both social networking and media sites that now engage online users in public commentary.

Accidental Aussie: Social Networking Sites and the Liability Factors

counter-suing, claiming that she lied in her MySpace profile, claiming that she was 15.

14 Year Old Girl and Mom Sue MySpace for $30million for Date Gone Wrong – The Internet Patrol

MySpace, which is now the world’s biggest website, responded by saying that parents should share the burden of watching their children’s internet use. “MySpace serves as an industry leader on internet safety and we take proactive measure to protect our members,” said Hemanshu Nigam, the company’s chief security officer. “We provide users with a range of tools to enable a safer online experience.”

Families of abused teenagers sue MySpace | Media | guardian.co.uk

“In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users,” said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer.

Four families suing MySpace over assaults – Security- msnbc.com

MySpace knows that it is a haven for sexual predators, yet doesn’t put in any security measures to protect young girls,” said Jason Itkin, whose firm is also involved in six other suits against the popular site. Roughly 29,000 sex offenders have been found on MySpace, but courts have thus far failed to insist on stronger age verification.

Parents Sue MySpace After Teen’s Suicide – Newser

Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.

Four families suing MySpace over assaults – Security- msnbc.com

the blind can not fully utilize the MySpace system. CAPTCHA Killer has created a service that can help the blind access all parts of MySpace. The service is found online at www.captchakiller.com. MySpace has called and emailed CAPTCHA Killer and threatens to sue, saying bypassing the CAPTCHA system is against their terms of service. CAPTCHA Killer now actively blocks people from using the service with MySpace. And the blind still don’t have a solution!

MySpace threatens to sue CAPTCHA Killer – Free-Press-Release.com

drinking, cig, driving, sexual consent & voting age laws

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

but we are talking about Children Actually, we’re talking about teenagers. They can ride a bus alone, get a job and drive a car, so if they’re responsible enough for all that, they can’t handle myspace

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

Minors are not legally allowed to enter in to contracts in most states. Terms of service is basically a contract.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

I think one key question is whether there are steps that myspace can take to reduce the probability of such incidents without compromising the privacy of their members. Really, it all comes down to age. An online exchange that would be perfectly acceptable between two twenty-somethings would be highly problematic if one participant was 14 and the other 43.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

I can see where an attorney could easily convince a jury that a “business” did not do enough to protect children.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

solution to the age issue is to have some positive identification by a third party. State driver’s licenses in the US are used to prove age for, say, buying cigarettes or entering a bar. To require such positive identification for a site like myspace, though, would be very difficult and messy. The logistics, cost, and privacy implications would be huge

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

As webwork pointed out there isn’t really any good way, from a programming standpoint, to “protect” minors. And from an human editorial standpoint it’s an even more unmanageable situation. So, what might the government force myspace to do? 1) Force them to verify age using creditcards or scanned/faxed IDs. – Result: People stop using myspace, it disappears overnight. 2) Force them to develop some kind of automated system to flag certain types of conversation for editorial review. – Result: Big brother. People stop using myspace, it disappears overnight. 3) Force them to allow no interaction between people under (pick an arbitrary age) 18. – Result: People lie about their age and if that doesn’t work, myspace disappears overnight. And once myspace is gone? People will use some other social net site. And if the US imposes regulations that apply to all social networking? Social networking moves overseas. Once you assign the responsibility for this kind of thing to the service providers, that’s the end of the service because there’s really nothing they can do to stop it.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

GM may have built the car. They did not create the situation.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

A few things people really need to understand. 1. The internet requires no physical contact between people.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

there is a reason News Corp hired Hemanshu Nigam, ex federal prosecutor for the US Department of Justice, as chief security officer “to oversee safety, education and privacy programs and law enforcement affairs for MySpace”

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

The difference is that MySpace and its corporate parent are a visible target with deep pockets. Big companies are held to a higher standard by litigation and regulation, or the fear of those actions.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

MySpace is a double-edge sword for people that prey on our children. Yes, right now it is leading them to our kids, but it can also lead us to them. What about harsher penalties and swifter justice for those that choose children as their targets? Let a jury decide their fate.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

cyberbullied, taunted, inflicted with emotional distress

MySpace and the law « ThinkingShift

Dateline do their next “To Catch a Predator” using MySpace.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

defamation.

MySpace and the law « ThinkingShift

“12. Among other things, the MySpace TOS required prospective members, members and users of the website to: a. Provide truthful and accurate registration information; b. Refrain from using any information obtained from MySpace services to harass, abuse or harm other people”. Clause 14 of the indictment outlines a charge of conspiracy in that Drew (and her co-conspirators) allegedly knowingly and intentionally accessed a computer used in interstate and foreign commerce (ie a social network) without authorisation and obtained information from the MySpace computers “to further a tortuous act, namely, intentional infliction of emotional distress”. So not only was fraud committed across State boundaries but so was cyberbullying. So essentially, California prosecutors are charging Drew with criminal trespass of the MySpace social network, computers and servers because, it is alleged, she knowingly created a false MySpace account and therefore violated the TOS or contract.

MySpace and the law « ThinkingShift

from what I can tell, Federal prosecutors are using decades old legislation – Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030. One real weakness I can see (apart from using this legislation to make all of us into criminals when we violate TOS on websites) is that the prosecution must show that Drew intentionally violated the TOS. How on earth are they going to show that? How will they show that she read the TOS let alone intentionally violated it? Sure, the TOS is on the MySpace site, so I guess the prosecution will attempt to argue that the TOS was posted and if Drew clicked Agree, she intentionally violated. But I think this is a weak legal argument because the legislation requires “intent”.

MySpace and the law « ThinkingShift

A US judge has ordered a pair of accused spammers to pay MySpace about $US230 million ($A246.65 million) in has been billed as a record-setting punishment for such internet abuses.

Spammers made to pay MySpace $247m – SBS World News Australia

“MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site.”

Spammers made to pay MySpace $247m – SBS World News Australia

“Perhaps thousands more sexual predators – not registered or using fictitious names – are lurking on your website,” stated the letter signed by the attorneys-general. “We remain concerned about the design of your site, the failure to require parental permission, and the lack of safeguards necessary to protect our children.”

Prosecutors want MySpace sex offenders exposed – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

“We agree with the attorneys-general that keeping bad people out of good places on the Internet is a challenge and a priority,” MySpace security chief Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement. “It requires a commitment to develop new technologies and build tight collaborations between companies, law enforcement and policy makers.” MySpace this month launched software that identifies known sex offenders and deletes their accounts. MySpace is lobbying for a US federal law requiring convicted sex offenders to register their email addresses to make it easier to screen them from membership websites used by young people. US law requires people convicted of sex crimes to register their addresses with local police after they are released from custody.

Prosecutors want MySpace sex offenders exposed – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The plan calls for tighter age verification systems and the increased online presence of law enforcement groups. MySpace has vowed to improve its age verification system and make the profiles of all users between the ages of 14 and 17 set to ‘private’ by default. The site has also promised to develop new parental control software. Individual US states will beef up their presence on MySpace by establishing a 24-hour hotline and forming a new task force charged with improving safety controls on the site.

MySpace steps up safety plans – Internet – iTnews Australia

The programme has the support of attorneys general from 49 US states along with the District of Columbia. Texas attorney general Greg Abbot emerged as the only detractor, telling reporters that the new guidelines would be inadequate fully to protect children. Keeping sexual predators off MySpace has proved a major issue for the social networking site. Tens of thousands of sex offenders have been identified on the site, prompting the deletion of 29,000 profiles in July last year

MySpace steps up safety plans – Internet – iTnews Australia

describes how students’ online activities, especially what occurs in social networks like MySpace and Facebook, could be hazardous to their job prospects.

More concern over social networks and student liability | Chris Millet

A Few Thoughts On Network Creator Liability for Copyrighted Content Posted by Gina Bianchini on November 13, 2007 at 7:00pm Previous Post View Blog Posts Recently, a few of you have asked us whether a Network Creator can be held liable for content posted or uploaded to a social network by a member of your network. Here’s how we see it. First, we want you to be able to use the Ning Platform to build your own social networks without having to worry about liability. Second, we want you to retain ownership of the code and content you upload to your network and we want members to retain ownership of their code and content they add to your network. So, with these goals, how should you think about liability? The best way to think about liability is to divide the universe into 3 categories: Ning, Network Creators and members of networks. We have drafted our Terms of Service so that all of us are obligated to comply with applicable laws (including the DMCA – more on that later) so that you and your members contractually own the code and content that you create. Under our Terms of Service, Ning is responsible for providing you with a platform to build your networks (among other things) and you and your members are responsible for complying with the Acceptable Use and Conduct section (among other things). As long as you comply with the requirements of this section, we don’t think you have anything to worry about. But, let’s say that one of your members uploads a file that they don’t have rights in (e.g. a copyrighted music or video clip). This is a violation of our Terms of Service and, if we learn about it, we are obligated to notify you and the member and to take down the clip under the DMCA, which protects the rights of the copyright owner. In this case, Ning will not have any liability since we have complied with the DMCA. The Network Creator will get the benefit of Ning’s DMCA compliance and will not have any liability either because the Network Creator is only using the Ning platform to provide a service to the members and was not involved in the posting or uploading of the infringing content. The member, however, may be liable to the copyright owner for posting the clip. This same line of thinking applies to libelous or defamatory speech posted by a member on your networks. Ultimately, the member has the obligation to comply with applicable laws and is solely responsible for the posted or uploaded content. It’s obvious, but worth mentioning, that if the Network Creator (not the member) posted or uploaded the content, then she may be liable for violating the Terms of Service and the rights of third parties. So, we don’t suggest doing this. Moreover, if you as the Network Creator are aware of – or should be aware of – the consistent and regular uploading of content on your network to which you or your members do not have the rights and you do not take proactive steps to take down this content, then we will need to use our judgment in either providing notification of the takedown notices or, more rarely, shutting down accounts and networks. Unfortunately, we will not always be in the position to give you advanced warning about us shutting down your network. That’s certainly never our goal, but we will continue to put the interest of the other hundreds of thousands of networks on the Ning service and our ability to preserve and maintain them ahead of advanced notice on any single network in violation of our Terms of Service. We should note that the law in many areas, including the DMCA, is evolving rapidly. As there are new developments, we’ll definitely post about them here. Thanks!

A Few Thoughts On Network Creator Liability for Copyrighted Content – Ning Network Creators

as a Network Creator I think that there is a very strong case to be made that you fall under the DMCA’s “safe harbor”: DMCA Title II: Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act DMCA Title II, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (“OCILLA”) creates a safe harbor for online service providers (OSPs, including ISPs) against copyright liability if they adhere to and qualify for certain prescribed safe harbor guidelines and promptly block access to allegedly infringing material (or remove such material from their systems) if they receive a notification claiming infringement from a copyright holder or the copyright holder’s agent. OCILLA also includes a counter-notification provision that offers OSPs a safe harbor from liability to their users, if they restore the material upon notice from such users claiming that the material in question is not, in fact, infringing. OCILLA also provides for subpoenas to OSPs to provide their users’ identity. Again, you should do what you feel comfortable with, but it’s not a black and white case of liability. Thanks!…

Search Results – liability – Ning Network Creators

according to U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien. Most importantly, for all the scare reports in the media of MySpace aiding and abetting crime and other moral backsliding, the Justice Department and the FBI sent a clear message that the company is not liable for the behavior of its users outside the site’s stated restrictions

Crime: MySpace avoids liability in Megan Meier suicide, victim of terms of use breach

The attention economy isn’t about to magically expand. We aren’t going to suddenly get an extra 8 hours added to the day to interact with each other across numerous Twitters, Facebooks, and Second Life platforms. Therefore, the attention doesn’t generally go to the best site, but the site making the most noise generated by the cool kids.

Social Networks and the Law of Diminishing Coolness | Epicenter from Wired.com

If, for example, you write something in a blog and a person hundreds of miles away applies it to himself when he shouldn’t have, your disclaimer might be the only thing standing between you and a successful liability suit. That’s because it’s reasonable for a layperson to assume that as a physician you have superior knowledge about medical matters.

Giving medical advice on social networking sites – Malpractice Consult – Medical Economics

Operational Policing Child Protection Read about the Home Secretary’s Taskforce on Online Child Protection and the Child Exploitation Online Protection (CEOP) Centre. The Internet Taskforce for Child Protection on the Internet aims to make the UK the best and safest place in the world for children to use the internet. It also helps protect children the world over from abuse fuelled by criminal misuse of new technologies. The Taskforce brings together government, law enforcement, children’s agencies and the internet industry, who are all working to ensure that children can use the internet in safety. Social Networking Guidance 4 April 2008 The first UK Social Networking Guidance provides advice for industry, parents and children about how to stay safe online. This has been developed by a taskforce of representatives from industry, charity and law enforcement agencies including Vodafone, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said, ‘I want to see every child living their lives free from fear, whether they are meeting friends in a youth club or in a chat room. ‘We have some of the strictest controls on sex offenders in the world to protect our children. We are working together with police, industry and charities to create a hostile environment for sex offenders on the internet and are determined to make it as hard for predators to strike online, as in the real world.’ Other guidance created to help keep children safe on the internet includes: * Good Practice Guidance for the Moderation of Interactive Services for Children * Good Practice Guidance for Search Service Providers and Advice to the Public on how to Search Safely * Guidance for Using Real Life Examples Involving Children or Young People * Good Practice Models and Guidance for the Industry Guidance on chat rooms, instant messaging and web-based services that encourages clear safety messages and advice, and user-friendly ways of reporting abuse. Current work of the Taskforce Blocking child abuse images * The Taskforce has set the end of 2007 as a target for all UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to have implement a system to block URLs containing child abuse images as identified by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) (new window) Publicly Available Standard * The Home Office, OFCOM, and the British Standards Institute are currently working on developing a Publicly Available Standard (PAS), against which rating, filtering and monitoring software products can be tested and a kite mark awarded. Background The Taskforce was established in March 2001, in response to a report by the Internet Crime Forum. The report made several recommendations for protecting children on the internet, including: * improved supervision of chat rooms * better display of safety messages The Taskforce is currently chaired by Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker. Meeting summaries Click on the links below to read summary notes from the meetings held by the Home Secretary’s Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet: * Home Secretary’s Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet: meeting 2 March 2006 summary note * Home Secretary’s Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet: meeting 28 October 2005 summary note * Home Secretary’s Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet: meeting 6 July 2005 summary note * Home Secretary’s Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet: meeting 23 February 2005 summary note Child Exploitation Online Protection (CEOP) centre Since its creation in 2006, the CEOP centre has had considerable success in protecting children. They provide a single point of contact for the public, law enforcers, and the communications industry to report targeting of children online. Not only do they offer advice and information to parents and potential victims of abuse, 24 hours a day, they also carry out proactive investigations and work with police forces around the world to protect children. On 21 April, the CEOP published their second annual review 2007-2008 (new window). Please visit the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre (new window) for more information. The CEOP have also developed the thinkyouknow website (new window), which gives advice and tips to young people on how to stay safe online. The CEOP are part of the Virtual Global Taskforce (new window), which enables law enforcement from around the world to coordinate intelligence and track offenders across borders. G8 Justice and Interior Ministers Meeting The G8 Justice and Interior Ministers met on 24 May 2007 to discuss combatting child pornography. The meeting resulted in a ministers declaration on ‘reinforcing the international fight against child pornography’ (new window).

Child Protection | Home Office – Police

Social networking dangers in perspective Print E-mail August 01, 2007 by Anne Collier and Larry Magid There has been a flurry of media coverage of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper’s announcement that MySpace had found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders’ profiles on its site. As shocking as this news may seem, parents of teen social networkers deserve some perspective. Finding and expelling sexual predators from social Web sites – something MySpace says it now does routinely – is a good thing. Other social sites are similarly cooperating with law enforcement. But this announcement from North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper (see General Cooper’s “Protecting Children from MySpace,” a link under “What’s New” on his page) was only possible because MySpace took the initiative to develop a law-enforcement tool the federal government called for in a recently passed law but failed to create: a national sex offender database that MySpace then donated to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for broader use. * Beyond the Web. Sex offenders aren’t just in social-networking sites online. They’re in chatrooms and newsgroups, on discussion boards and file-sharing networks. They’ve been on the Internet since before there was a World Wide Web, long before social networking took off. Now social sites are helping to expose their online activities. * The numbers. Let’s put the 29,000 profiles in context: More will probably be found, but there are more than 190 million profiles on MySpace at the moment. Now let’s move from the Net to “real life.” There are 602,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. That’s just registered ones – those who’ve been caught and convicted. The vast majority of child molesters are not strangers whom children meet online. Very, very few are strangers in real life even: According to the California Department of Justice, “90% of child victims know their offender, with almost half of the offenders being a family member. Of sexual assaults against people age 12 and up, approximately 80% of the victims know the offender.” * Actual cases. Last spring I was looking for a solid figure for sexual exploitation of minors in social-networking sites after hearing Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s reference to “the towering danger of sexual predators” (see “Predators vs. cyberbullies”). General Cooper’s office told me there were approximately 100 known cases in MySpace in 2005, but that number was based not on government statistics but a Lexis-Nexis search of news reports. That’s 100 cases too many, but an extremely small proportion of the 12 million teens who use such sites, and it pales compared to the number of kids molested by acquaintances and family members. * No kidnappings. In all those cases, a teenager willingly got together with someone he or she met online and, contrary to what many people think, the kids often knew what they were getting into and, in every known case, went to meet the offenders themselves. This doesn’t excuse these crimes in any way, but parents need to understand how this victimization works and what signs to look for…. * Who’s actually victimized. At a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center, gave a profile of what he described as a fairly typical victim of online predation: “Jenna” was 13 and “from a divorced family, frequented sex-oriented chatrooms, had the screenname ‘Evilgirl.’ There she met a guy who, after a number of conversations admitted he was 45. He flattered her, sent her gifts, jewelry. They talked about intimate things. And eventually he drove across several states to meet her for sex on several occasions in motel rooms. When he was arrested, in her company, she was reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement authorities” (see the full story). “Jenna” is not a typical teen or social networker; she’s a typical victim of online predation, a high-risk teen offline, representing somewhere between 2% and 5% of online teens, Dr. Finkelhor indicated in a recent briefing on Capitol Hill. * Social networking’s very individual. Whether it’s a positive or negative experience depends on who uses it. The vast majority of our online kids are for the most part using social sites to socialize with their friends at school. Some are decorating their pages and learning graphic design, writing software code, playing with digital photos, producing and editing video, and so on, all in a very collective way. Unfortunately, some teens are seeking the wrong kind of validation online for destructive behaviors such as eating disorders, cutting, and substance abuse. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline told us over a year ago that MySpace was its No. 1 source of referrals, so teens are also getting help in MySpace for depression, domestic violence, loneliness, and substance abuse, as well as suicidal thinking, through the work of 120 crisis centers nationwide whose work the Lifeline coordinates. * Cyberbullying affects a lot more teens. So far two nationwide surveys in the US have found that about one-third of online teens in this country have been victimized by cyberbullying (one in Canada put the figure at about two-thirds for Canadian kids!). That’s at least 8 million young people in the US (this too in “Predators vs. cyberbullies”). This peer harassment needs to be addressed, which will certainly happen at home and in school, as we teach our kids to be good friends and “citizens” online as well as off. So let’s keep these scary predator announcements in perspective. We want parents to have the facts so they can remain calm. When parents (and officials) overreact and start banning things, kids just go underground – as they have since the beginning of time. Only now they can do so online too – on hundreds of social networking sites, in IM, on phones and all sorts of other devices and at proliferating connection points in parks, libraries, cafes, and at friends’ houses. < Prev Next >

ConnectSafely – Social networking dangers in perspective

Eighty-six percent of the CEOs surveyed plan substantial changes in the capabilities that distinguish leading organizations — their knowledge and asset mix. CEOs expect to carefully calibrate business model designs based on principles of global integration, which includes global searches for sources of expertise, resources and assets that can help it differentiate

CEOs agreed that customer expectations around corporate social responsibility (‘CSR’) are increasing, and that CSR will play an important role in differentiating an enterprise in the future.

Businesses such as H&R Block and Zappos are now using Twitter to respond to customer queries

Social networks are not a flat layer of connections but are in fact multi-dimensional, variable and dynamic – with multiple facets (in the eyes of the participant) based on relationships, situations and other preferences.

The same thing if I owned a building and rented space to sexual offenders and allowed families to live in the same building. I am sure in some places that would be illegal for me to do as a landlord.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

you can’t protect all kids, but you can make reasonable efforts.

Families sue News Corp, alleging MySpace negligence

Top prosecutors in eight US states have asked MySpace to expose convicted sex offenders who have posted their profiles on the youth-oriented social networking website. The state attorneys-general have sent the News Corporation-owned website a letter saying: “We are gravely concerned that sexual predators are using MySpace to lure children into face-to-face encounters”.

Prosecutors want MySpace sex offenders exposed – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

It’s a 2001 Florida Supreme Court ruling that interprets the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) to determine that AOL was not responsible for policing chat rooms. The Florida court here dismissed an $8 million suit against AOL alleging that AOL facilitated the distribution of child pornography. This does not bode well for the parents wishing to pursue a “premises liability” argument against a social network.

MetzMash: Premise Liability and Social Networking: The DOJ’s Changing It’s Position

So how does an entrepreneur interested in social media deal with The Law of Diminishing Coolness? When you consider shorter attention spans online and a noisier marketplace, I think ZeFrank got it right. He’s a great example of how to cultivate an audience, interactive with them, then leave them wanting more just before the lovefest becomes stale. He did the show for a year and then walked away having made a distinct impression on the Internet and his fans. Every Web 2.0 venture could learn a lot from his strategy. Invent, cultivate, exit, repeat.

Social Networks and the Law of Diminishing Coolness | Epicenter from Wired.com

liability may still attach if you don’t add a disclaimer or if the advice seems to be sufficiently self-contained and personally directed to make a reasonable person believe that they could ignore the disclaimer and utilize the advice as it stands.

Giving medical advice on social networking sites – Malpractice Consult – Medical Economics

many courts would agree with this view: Since these people are your patients, communicating with them through a chat room wouldn’t be materially different from offering advice via e-mail.

Giving medical advice on social networking sites – Malpractice Consult – Medical Economics

Blogged with the Flock Browser

understanding innovation

tinyhype — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:56:20 +0000

Create a shared understanding of innovation

A nearly universal obstacle for innovation success is that people have pervasive misunderstandings about what innovation is, where it comes from, and even how to define, measure, foster, or reward it.

With fundamentals like these all up for grabs, it’s amazing that innovation ever occurs.

Doblin offers innovation workshops to help fix these misconceptions, get firms and teams on the same page and adopt far more effective approaches to innovation.

Doblin’s innovation workshops:

Are built around and leverage Doblin’s deep research on innovation effectiveness. They show the weaknesses in common approaches to innovation and substitute pragmatic alternatives that work reliably.

Use – and transfer to participants – Doblin’s unique tools to foster innovation

Can be scaled from one hour to four days and conducted in Doblin’s unique facilities or your own

Can be custom-tailored to any industry, enterprise, or project team

Drive towards specific innovation initiatives that will work in the marketplace and return value to the enterprise

Are used not only by firms but now also at Illinois Institute of Technolgy’s Institute of Design, at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and other leading schools

If executives are asked if their company has a process for innovation, they often point to protocols for managing their portfolio of innovation initiatives. This is like pointing to an oar if you are asked if you have a rowboat.

A first class innovation process not only manages innovation initiatives, it also helps executives break from industry orthodoxies; aligns executives around specific innovation opportunities; efficiently generates innovation initiative concepts; provides incentives for employees to innovate, uses smart discovery and invention methods, and streamlines decision-making.

Based on years of research on innovation successes and failures around the world, Doblin has developed a comprehensive innovation process that fixes common errors of omission and commission.

Diagnose your situation by studying your industry’s innovation patterns, your innovation capabilities, your network platform and community strengths, and your innovation performance scorecard

Develop and declare your innovation intent by articulating and illustrating a compelling theme that will animate and direct your innovation efforts

Author initiatives by involving your management team in developing candidate initiatives and selecting among alternatives

Foster initiatives by putting in place the right post stage-gate protocols to allow you to foster winning ideas and quickly terminate losing ones

Doblin will also help you do the following to run successful innovation initiatives:

Enhance discovery by using proprietary tools and forms of research specifically designed to inform innovation and generate insights that will differentiate you from your competitors

Improve invention by helping you see the implications of the research on how you might act differently to take advantage of opportunities

Support implementation by helping you find implementation resources and by advising you as projects turn into pilots, and pilots turn into launches

Doctors don’t operate on or treat patients until they think they know what’s wrong and what they can do to improve the situation. For some reason, companies set about innovating without diagnosing innovation patterns in their industry or their own unique innovation capabilities.

No firm should try to innovate without having a good diagnostic foundation at the outset. We have worked to create the first comprehensive set of diagnostics that work both individually and collectively to help you know how you are doing, where the gold is buried, and how best to leverage your strengths.

thorough understanding of your innovation condition demands some combination of these four Doblin diagnostics:

1
Industry patterns: Innovation Landscape™ Diagnostics
Reveal collective decisions for an industry or category.

2
Enterprise assessments: Capability Diagnostics
Compare innovation skills to norms and competitors.

3
Network assessments: Platform & Community Strengths
Examine ability to amplify innovation through others.

4
Performance assessments: Innovation Results Scorecards
Help evaluate the return on investment you actually achieve.

Too often senior executives are warned to stay out of the labs and avoid interfering with “geniuses at work” in a company’s innovation projects. This reinforces a broad pattern that causes innovation initiatives to dive under the radar and diverge from a company’s strategic agenda.

The results: lots of innovation projects that head off in different directions, achieving no integrated impact, as well as big difficulties choosing which projects to foster or kill, leading to practices where top executives say little more than what financial targets ‘innovation’ must achieve. Companies, divisions, and brands should create an “innovation intent” to declare their stretch goals.

To help you develop innovation intent Doblin will:

Conduct research designed specifically to inform innovation intents including diagnosing innovation conditions, identifying internal orthodoxies and blind spots, uncovering latent and blatant customer desires and identifying new technologies and innovations emerging in other industries.

Author a small number of candidate innovation themes

Create a set of illustrative innovation concepts to make these themes vivid and easy to experience

Conduct a series of workshops and meetings with executives carefully selected from the across an organization. Participants explore opportunity spaces with protocols designed to both generate uptake and use their time effectively.

Collectively author statements that define stretch goals in ways that open up options instead of closing them down, while inspiring and focusing talent across the enterprise.

There is just nothing more important for innovation success than a hot project.

No matter how great your ambition, how deep and sincere the top management support, how motivated the team, individual projects are ultimately where the innovation rubber meets the road.

If you’re confident that you have one or two sure fire winners in the pipeline, support ‘em. Pour fuel on the fire. But if you sense that the ideas are ordinary, that the teams aren’t really pumped up, or that everyone is just going through the motions, watch out- you’re in trouble.

Doblin can help you bust out the big ideas and connect them to customers and to your own company. We can:

Help immerse teams in rich customer insights, with helpful starter speculations.

Introduce your senior executives to the discipline of innovation, and involve them in authoring initiatives to help decide what hills to take.

Help teams author bold initiatives, define them sharply, and make sure they are not being pursued by six of your closest competitors.

Turbo-boost the initiatives through their discovery and concept development phases

Companies very logically optimize their staffing and operations around doing things well rather than around inventing new things to do. It is understandable, then, that they need outside help when the time comes to invent instead of improv

initiative projects until the marching orders become clear.
We help clients:

Develop insights relevant to the project. These should cover subtle, unmet needs of current and potential customers, pertinent emerging technologies and business strategies, and pertinent innovations in other industries.

Translate insights into opportunity definitions and specific innovations to exploit the opportunities. These include illustrations and arguments distilled into compelling presentations, brand plans, and illustrative future stories that make it easy for colleagues, customers and partners to stand in the future and try it on for size.

Create road maps to identify short, medium and long term steps to fully exploit the activity.

Decide on a direction and commit to it

Identify implementation resources to augment internal capabilities

Companies usually have tons of data on current customers who use their products and services, plus data about customer satisfaction, perceptions and preferences within the industry category. This type of data is mostly useful in learning how to do the same kinds of things a little better.

However, it’s not very useful for learning what different things to do to serve current customers and rarely tells you anything about non-customers who avoid your brand or category completely.

Research that examines an activity from the customer’s perspective, and looks for latent needs and desires not currently addressed, has a much better chance of providing insight into how to do things differently to attract customers and generate new revenues.

Doblin has been a pioneer in customer research for innovation for 17 years. We can deliver juicy insights that help innovation teams:

Understand customer goals and activities that surround and incorporate offerings – all from their point of view

Spot latent needs that consumers aren’t aware of and could never articulate in a focus group or in questionnaires

Gain subtle qualitative customer understanding in ways that frame new possibilities and identify better measures of satisfaction and success

Understand the needs of people you don’t sell to now at all – precisely the ones that might drive your next wave of runaway, profitable growth

Get what they need to convert insights into innovation prototypes

Surprisingly, one reason innovation fails so miserably is not a lack of ideas but an overabundance of them. Companies generate scores of initiatives, put them in ‘funnels,’ then shepherd them along in a big pack. This dissipates scarce resources rather than concentrating them, so no idea gets much focus. Often this forces firms to reduce all innovation candidates to estimates of their financial returns (even though these are notoriously unreliable) and pick ideas ‘by the numbers.’

Of course there’s a better way. You start by authoring fewer and stronger concepts in the first place, building them from a rich understanding of customers and of company capabilities. Then you prototype ideas in tangible ways that go far beyond financial modeling, making it easy to elicit realistic reactions from customers and partners. Other timely tasks, like using a good developmental roadmap, help firms to stand in the future, make the concepts stronger, and dramatically ‘de-risk’ innovation.

Doblin can help you:

Build custom concept selection tools tailored to any firm, market, or strategic challenge

Create digital concept archives, so innovation initiatives can be managed better than ever – both at the individual project level and as a collective group

Identify selection criteria against which candidate concepts can be evaluated

Model alternatives in ways that are especially suited both for testing ideas and getting customers and partners to work with you to make the concepts stronger

Refine, choose, and develop winners in ways that are more effective than typical innovation portfolio model

8 Steps to Prioritise your social media marketing efforts

tinyhype — Wed, 28 May 2008 04:56:14 +0000

“With the infinite amount of social sites and connections on the web, you need to create your own short list with the highest priority items at the top that generate the most high value traffic to your content.The idea is to generate as many effective touch points around the web as possible so that it will be hard not to spot your marketing activity.”

Provide tools to spread your purchase / solution. If someone has managed to find themselves on your site, – they want facts and value – right now! give them your order form or your download links before they lose interest – and most importantly make it portable , if your product is good let them share it with links, widgets or an html badge

Blog About It - Make sure you have a prominent link to the highest value points of your website so that readers can easily purchase or find the core value of what you have to offer. Also provide incentives to check these links out – perhaps a charity angle – *5% of the proceeds from this link.. etc*

Twitter Commentary - people will follow a quality conversation, even if its about your product, let them know how things are going and build hype around your product or service in the mediums that your audience live – twitter is only a suggestion.

Digg & send emails and shouts to friends requesting Diggs.

Stumble the posts listed & tell friends to do the same.

Add your post to other social media outlets ( Digg , stumbleupon Technorati, Ma.gnolia, Furl, BlinkList, Newsvine, Facebook, etc.)

Send an Old Fashioned email to your friends about the site.

Keep talking – Get on camfrog, msn, ooVoo, iChat, Aim, or where ever you like to talk, and start talking.

This List is not the only way to approach social media marketing – Every website targets a slightly different audience or niche, however this is a good starting point for those seriously interested in gathering customer attention online. Share your tips.

“marketing in social media outlets is so dynamic, that what might work this month to attract and conversate with customers – may not be where your customers are communicating and spending time next month.”

Tags: social, marketing, social media, twitter, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, digg, tips, advice, steps, dynamic, time

“IBM 2008 Global CEO Study : CEOs Battle to Keep Up With the Pace of Change”

tinyhype — Wed, 28 May 2008 04:28:42 +0000

3 Key points -

from the IBM Global CEO study 2008.

… Overall, 83 percent of surveyed CEOs expect substantial change in the future, an increase of 28 percent in just two years. However, CEOs report their ability to effectively manage change is increasing at a far slower pace.

CEOs agreed that customer expectations around corporate social responsibility (‘CSR’) are increasing, and that CSR will play an important role in differentiating an enterprise in the future.

Eighty-six percent of the CEOs surveyed plan substantial changes in the capabilities that distinguish leading organizations — their knowledge and asset mix. CEOs expect to carefully calibrate business model designs based on principles of global integration, which includes global searches for sources of expertise, resources and assets that can help it differentiate.

Reality Check :

Businesses such as H&R Block and Zappos are now using
Twitter to respond to customer queries

Tags: ibm, research, ceo, twitter, survey, fact