Informationoverlord

You know it is not often I feel sorry for government ministers these days, but I have to admit the whole mountain out of a molehill surrounding the fact that Jacqui Smith’s husband downloaded an watched a couple of soft-core porn films has been ridiculous. Ridiculous because what she did that was wrong has been replaced by the tabloid love of a porn story. Let’s be disgusted, let’s protect the children, let’s be holier than thou …

So, first let’s get the serious bit out of the way. Mrs Smith should not have been charging her TV subscription to the taxpayer; although as a Virgin subscriber too (and by that I do not mean that I subscribe to virgins, but that I subscribe to Virgin Media’s cable services) I am aware that you get the best deal by taking a package on phone, internet and TV services rather than individual services. That aside should we pay for her, her husband or any member of her family to watch VOD films - pornographic or otherwise? No. Should she loose her job over it? No - although whether the same argument can be made over the more serious (yes, more serious) issue of her ’second home’ is another matter. I was also personally more concerned that she saw fit to claim 88p for a bath plug - life as an MP is hard if you can’t afford a buy a plug without trying to claim the money back.

So, let’s get onto the porn, and the type of response this kind of story automatically receives. According to yesterday’s Daily Mail “the case of Jacqui Smith’s husband raises disturbing questions about the availability of porn on TV.” Err, no it doesn’t. How in all seriousness can you say that an adult renting and watch a legally classified BBFC 18 certificate film raises disturbing questions? If you put events in the current context it still fails to raise disturbing questions.

Oh yes it does says Bafta award winning documentary maker, and mother of two, Olivia Lichtenstein. She signed up - for journalistic purposes - and watched some of the adult material available via Sky that Mr Smith apparently watched; amusingly noting that the Playboy TV’s website had a “We’d like to offer all MPs and their husbands a special VIP subscription to Playboy” message on it yesterday.

What did she find? Degradation and tawdriness. She also found programmes/films in the MILF genre (look it up!) upsetting being a mother herself. However, she got more insightful.

In the words of Olivia Lichtenstein:

“After two hours of watching these channels, my conclusion was that these ‘films’ are degrading, exploitative, overlaid with terrible music and, once the shock has worn off, unutterably dull.”

No argument from me that watching the kind of films available on these channels is dull, especially as much of the content is hardcore cut to pass as soft-core, which oddly enough can make it look worse.

“Hundreds of hours of this garbage television are available each day from ten at night until four in the morning in our living rooms — the result of a dangerously misguided liberalism which says there should be no censorship, no moral checks — that we are all grown up enough to see and do whatever we wish.”

I’m sorry Olivia - and apologise here, but I presume when you make documentaries you bother to do your research better - but you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. First off, most of us are grown up enough to see and do whatever we wish - as long as it is within the confines of the law of the country - as viewing these films as well as much hardcore pornography is. Secondly, there actually is censorship in place which is why it is only 18 rated soft-core material that can be broadcast on these channels and not R18 hardcore films, despite the fact that this material is legally available in the UK in shops and via the internet.These channels and their content are regulated by Ofcom and the Broadcast Code. Section 1.24 of the Broadcast Code reads:

“The problem with pornography, of course, is that those same degrading acts will soon not be degrading enough. The user has constantly to raise the stakes in order to derive the same thrill. It’s no wonder that this kind of porn has been compared to crack cocaine.”

I’m sorry? Soft-core porn has been compared to crack cocaine? Where? When? and by Who? Would this be the same Muppet who said if you smoke cannabis you’ll eventually end up on heroin and crack, because, we all know one drug always leads to another. Personally, if I hadn’t ever had that first cup of coffee, I’d had never moved onto beer, wine and spirits.

“One of the many bitter ironies to emerge from this sorry story is that not only did Ms Smith allow his tawdry entertainment to be charged to her expenses, but as Home Secretary — Britain’s first female one, incidentally — she is the person responsible for regulating the adult entertainment industry. As part of that, she has been determined to introduce tough licensing laws for lap dancing clubs, as well as outlining plans to outlaw paying for sex with a woman controlled by another for their financial gain. Who can say whether the women her husband was watching perform for his gratification were not coerced to take part in filming for the gain of others? Were these women keeping the money they earned, or were they forced to hand it over to pimps or agents?”

Ah, now the implication is all the ‘actors’ in these films are sex slaves and prostitutes and all doing it for their pimps and agents who take all of their money.

It is clear that Olivia Lichtenstein is not a fan of pornography, and that is fine. Last time I looked it was neither compulsory to make it or to watch it. Her children are also safe as access to these TV channels is encrypted, PIN protected, and subscription based.

I was alerted, by James Mullan , to a post on social software adoption in law firms on Michael Idinopulos’s blog.

Michael’s view is that most law firms take exactly the wrong approach to social software rollout. “They try to “chip away” at social software implementation by starting with “easy” use cases like know-how. In my experience, however, firms are most successful when they introduce social software right into the heart of their business: Client-specific collaboration.”

First off, I’m not sure I would call the know-how use case ‘easy’, as in practice it tends not to be. Secondly, there really isn’t as much client collaboration as people outside of law firms tend to think there is, which is why client extranets and deal room platforms have tended to be regarded as being unsuccessful over the years. . I will admit that these expensive platforms can now be created cheaply, and for lawyers and their clients working on a draft of an agreement, there seems little reason why this could not be done via a wiki, with the document formatting done at the end of the process.

This adoption is likely to be client lead though, with specific clients asking the law firm to work this way, rather than the other way around. Indeed,what is perhaps more interesting is that clients are now wanting more access to their law firms knowledge - with many wanting some form of access to a firm’s know-how. This makes finding ways to make that know-how more accessible, structured, and current more, not less important.

I also think the post makes the mistake of equating success of law firm social software adoption with lawyer adoption. Around half (or more) of most law firm staff are non lawyers/support staff/business services staff. The use of social software can greatly enhance the way many of those staff do their jobs within the firm, which in turn will provide benefits to the firm as a whole. For example, even something as simple as using a wiki page for online meeting agendas and subsequent meeting minutes writing up, can cut down on email traffic and save time.

I would, however, agree with the point Michael makes about self interest. Indeed I would go as far as the say that this is the key to social software adoption, full stop. The way most people see the value of things such as tagging, social bookmarking etc is when they can see the value to them - not the value to the firm or anyone else: if they can see the added value to the way they work and operate they will then adopt something and the by-product of that is the wider benefits that can be derived from that self interest. Encouraging people to care about personal information management can help bring about a social software revolution.

The FT has launched a new business news search engine called Newssift. Newssift indexes about 4,000 business news sources, from online newspapers and blogs to news portals and research sites. It is ingesting about 120,000 articles a day right now and applying semantic tags to each one. In the end it can categorize each article by business topic, organization, place, person, and theme.

You can enter a search term, or choose from news topics - random topics currently in news in the Business, Organisation, Place, Person, and Theme categories . If you put in a search term, all these topic boxes are then populated with any matching terms. For example, I put ‘Clifford Chance’ in the search box and got hits on Organisation and Person.

Clicking on the Organisation link, it ran a search returning 25 articles. The search can now be further refined by adding additional terms yourself or by selecting additional terms that have appeared in the original 5 category boxes.

The search results also provide two pie charts - one ranking whether the articles are positive, negative or neutral and one detailing where the articles come from.

This has a lot of promise. The Faceted search approach is a good one. Whilst is by no means perfect out of the box, it is certainly worth keeping an eye on and adding to you list of news search tools.

Update: It has been pointed out to me that the T&Cs for the service have been written by someone for whom web2.0 hasn’t happened - or more likely they simply copied and reworked old FT.com terms from around 5 years ago that also used - like many news sites at the time - to have daft ‘linking’ permission rules. Someone remind me how the web works again?

You may be granted a limited, nonexclusive right to create a hyperlink to Newssift.com Web provided you give FT Search Inc. notice of such link by writing to privacyofficer@newssift.com, (ii) FT Search Inc. confirms in writing that you may establish the link, (iii) you do not remove or obscure the copyright notice or other notices on Newssift.com Web, (iv) such link does not portray Newssift.com Web or any of its products, software, content or services in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise defamatory manner, and (v) you immediately discontinue providing a link to Newssift.com Web if so requested by FT Search Inc. You may not use an Newssift.com logo or other proprietary graphic or trademark of Newssift.com to link to the Newssift.com Web without the express written permission of FT Search Inc.
…Except as expressly approved by FT Search Inc. in writing, you agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion, or use of, or access to, Newssift.com Web.

All this wouldn’t be as funny, were it not for the fact that the site is a news aggregating service. I hope Newssift removed this backward and pointless clause from their site asap. Oh, and whilst they’re at it: Saved Searches - great , but how about an email/RSS option rather than having to revist the site each time, which frankly, I’m not going to do.

Russ at Ofcomwatch has alerted me to the fact that our communication regulator, Ofcom, has joined Twitter: no, really they have - here’s their page, and here is a page on the Ofcom site about Twitter. The first three posts are links to Ofcom press releases, site updates - but done with an attempt to make them sound a bit more interesting. It is too early yet to know if Ofcom (or their twitterer(s)) will actually engage in any two way conversations via Twitter, or if this is merely another way to get their content ‘out there.’ As such, I will reserve judgement on the move until a later date. I notice they are not following any PMs yet.

I will say that it does, once again, demonstrate just how much Twitter is becoming mainstream and THE ‘in thing’ for 2009 - in the same way Facebook was the in thing in 2008.

It has been one of those weeks, this week [actually, for me it has been one of those weeks in more ways than I would have liked, but that’s another story].

The new trainees arrived, or in my case the latest three third and forth seat trainees joined my group. This is a blessing from a training point of view as by this stage trainees know their way around the firm’s systems and usually are happy using LNB, Companies House, and the like.

Even so, the main Corporate Finance department take them through it all once again just to make sure. This means, by the time they get to me, all I need to do is introduce them to what additional resources the CMT group has; what kind of current awareness we have; who I am; and what I am here for.

This is usually quite fun, informal, and more often than not lead by my getting an idea of what their experiences have been in other departments and what their expectations are of an Information office/practice area library.

What I also do, to help break the ice and put some fun into things is to give away some tat. Now, I will have to admit I stole this idea wholesale from the wonderful Phil Bradley, but I hand out some post-it-notes, pens, notepads - whatever: but all with some personal branding on.

How much does this cost? Well, it can cost as much as ‘the postage’ from places such as vistaprint. Or you can spend a few quid, as I have also done on one off occassions.

I have found, by doing this for the last 4 sets of trainees now, that it always gets a smile - although some think I’m a little mad - and that they get a gentle reminder that I am here and that I am here to help.

From LIS

Interested by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, talking about Twitter: “I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems […] I think the innovation is great. In Google’s case, we have a very successful instant messaging product, and that’s what most people end up using”.

HELLO !!, you paid money for Twitter wannabe, Jaiku (and yes, I know you’ve now withdrawn official support for it now, but it is still yours) so 18 month ago you thought it was a poor man’s email system you wanted. Also, does anyone who doesn’t work for Google actually use Gtalk?