VirusTotal Hakkında

Virustotal şüpheli dosyaları inceleyen çevirimiçi bir servistir ve virüslerin, trojanların, casus yazılımların ve çeşitli kötü niyetli dosyaların antivirüs programlarınca kolay bir şekilde bulunmasına yardım eder

VirusTotal şüphelendiğiniz dosyaları yollayarak içerdiği kötü niyetli yazılımı bir çok antivirüs programları bulmanıza yardımcı olur.

Özellikler:

Bedava, bağımsız servis
Bir çok antivirüs programının kullanılması
Gerçek zamanlı otomatik antivirüs güncelleştirmesi
Her bir antivirüs programından detaylı sonuçlar
Gerçek zamanlı küresel istatikler

That you’d define it as such should come as no surprise, but still….

Since Cresta will not allow alternative (read: factual) information on her blog, that information will be supplied here. Here are the first few corrections:

Cresta was never “in charge” of Business Development.

Her passion is for her commission. Nothing else.

Using the company credit card to fund (among other things) a vacation in Paris for yourself and your boyfriend is not usually referred to as being “hard at work”. Unless you’re in a very different kind of sales.  By the way, how's your husband?

This is the tip of the iceberg. More corrections and clarifications will be posted in the following days.

Cresta, you should really listen up. You now have company on the high road.

The disappointment came once Vista configured itself and let us in. Ohmygod, what is that ugly thing on the desktop? You know, I have been using Vista for some time now, and I like it. Yes. I like it. I like its behaviour and I like its looks. What? No, I am not embarrassed of saying this in public. I know, some people are. Anyway, I digress. There was that really ugly thing on the desktop, like a huge horizontal toolbar across the top, holding a few large blackish icons. Also, something similar to Vista's SideBar could be seen, well, down the right edge of the screen, where the SideBar usually appears, only that this thing was not the SideBar but something horrible. It looked more or less like the SideBar, i.e. it was a container-like area where large applets where docked. But it was oh-so-ugly. Not ugly. It was the most unstylish, tacky and trashy Windows application I've seen since the days of Visual Basic 5.

To make things worse (or more interesting, depending on your views), I realised that some McAfee thingy was also running since a menacing "M" was winking at me from the notification area on the taskbar. I am a survivor of McAfee products. I used to be a proud user of them, until one day I admitted that my relationship to them was a vampiric one; they were sucking my blood, stealing my CPU cycles, bombarding me with adware for products I didn't want, and making tasks that should be as low-profile and lightweight as possible a cumbersome and exasperating chore. So I filed for divorce and McAfee left my life forever. I am happily married to Windows Live OneCare now.

So. Mom's computer. Uninstall time.

Okay. The McAfee thingy was the first to fall. I had to sign in blood and swear to several gods that I was sure I wanted to completely remove all McAfee products from the machine. I rebooted. Phew.

After a few minutes of research, I discovered that the ugly toolbar across the top of the screen was Dell's own dock bar (or something like that), which fell next. I love uninstalling crap like this. Then was the turn of Google Desktop, the culprit of that bizarre caricature of the SideBar that I described above. With it fell the Goolge toolbar for Internet Explorer, another piece of digital bad taste.

After all this uninstal fury, mom's computer and I felt happier. Sipping a chilled coke, I asked myself: why do computer manufacturers like Dell ship such big amounts of pre-installed digital glitz on low-cost machines? A 575 € computer is likely to be bought by non-technical grannies like my mom who want a simple-to-use computer for email and web browsing. They want simple stuff. They don't need the four extra apps that I uninstalled. Look at it from this point of view:

• The McAfee anti-malware thing was just a 30-day demo that takes a lot of CPU cycles, uses a highly complex user interface with dozens of buttons that only a knowledgeable person would understand and continuously prompts the user to take actions. This is not the kind of tool that my mom (or a similar user) needs. Keeping a computer virus-free should be something that a tool does silently and with as little user intervention as possible. Windows Live OneCare has not ever prompted me regarding its anti-virus service since I set it up months ago.
• The Dell dock thing is totally superfluous. Vista's desktop, SideBar and taskbar more than make it completely redundant. C'mon, Dell, can't you come up with something a bit more innovative?
• The Google toolbar was okay before Internet Explorer 7 and for internet-savvy users. And it was ugly. With IE 7 it is redundant. And it's still ugly. Who would want it? And why?
• And the Google Desktop must be a joke. I can't think of even a remotely meaningful reason why anybody would want to install Vista, disable a core component of its user interface such as the SideBar, and install a tasteless replacement.

Oh well. This reminds me of a similar case, a few months ago. A friend asked me to take a look at his high-end laptop, a newish Lenovo which, according to his feelings, was sluggish. I did a quick check and uh-oh, six or seven processes were running, and taking a decent amount of CPU time and memory resources, which had been pre-installed by the manufacturer. My friend, the laptop owner, had no idea what these apps were for.

So much crap these days.

Had I been asked this question a year or two ago my answer would have been "Of course it matters! Hacker Safe is the best solution available and is an essential part of any website." However, things have changed fairly dramatically in the past year.

Hacker Safe was the first company to successfully educate the consumer (shopper) about the importance of buying from a trusted website (merchant). They helped educate consumers on the dangers of credit card fraud and identity theft, and created a consistent way to identify "safe" websites. Just look for the Hacker Safe seal!

However, with the rebranding of Hacker Safe to McAfee secure, that brand recognition has changed. In fact, it has been greatly undermined. Between the rebranding of the seal and the introduction of a Shopping portal that siphons traffic from merchant websites (see my prior blog entry), the Hacker Safe of new is not the same company I promoted to merchants over the past four years.

My good friend Ed Shapiro from http://www.sensoryedge.com/recently echoed my thoughts that "many of those businesses [merchants] will change their business play as Hacker Safe has obviously decided to do with their shopping portal."

In addition, Bryan Eisenberg whom I love and trust, has a truly great post on just this subject as well:

McAfee Pulls a "New Coke": Will it Hurt Retailer's Conversions

So the landscape has changed quite a bit and today any security company can go out and market their security to consumers. All they need is decent technology and an attractive logo and voila, they are competing with McAfee.

Of course, this has always been the case; it's just that consumers aren't familiar with the McAfee Secure logo so the brand recognition of Hacker Safe is gone.

Incidentally a surprising number of the consumers I have polled who are familiar with McAfee, think that the seal has to do with virus protection. In fact, I've had several people say that seal reminds them of the "annoying popups they get on their computer about their antivirus software subscription!" This last comment I don't' make lightly.

I remember a few months ago when the announcement came out that McAfee was buying Hacker Safe and I was still working at Hacker Safe. At the first tradeshow after the news, we promoted the change. Pretty much everyone we talked to that came by the booth said "I get a bad taste in my mouth when I think of McAfee, they aren't going to change the Hacker Safe logo are they???" I told them we were assured that would never happen, but low and behold it has...

So, who do I recommend?

I am currently recommending Control Scan, for a few reasons.

1. They have a proven technology. I won't compromise on service or features when I endorse a product and I can say with confidence that Control Scan does offer the protection a merchant needs. In fact, they've added some features, like Breach Protection, (included in the special package I have had customized for our merchants) that not even McAfee Secure offers!

2. They are a recognized brand. The nice thing about being number two in a space is that when number one goes away, voila you're on top! Hacker Safe was THE brand in the space and McAfee Secure has a long road ahead of them which leaves the door wide open for Control Scan. As consumers become even more familiar with Control Scan (and any other vendor for that matter) the strength of the Control Scan brand will grow.

3. Control Scan is professional. Admittedly they've been my competitor in the past but I've never had anything but respect for the way they conduct their business. Their willingness to customize the "essential ecommerce security package" for me (details below or in my previous blog post) underscored their commitment to their customers.

By the way, we will have the special Control Scan pricing available at the end of this week for our members. I was recently approached by a company called gamasec, I have a call later this week to talk further with them.

I am looking for volunteers to try both of these services on a free trial basis, I believe it is 2 weeks, and give me their results for me to publish here. I want to know about the scanning services as well as how did it work to increase your online orders? I want to then take these results and compare them to McAfee. I also would be interested in any other scanning/trust badges companies that would like to participate in this case study. Based on the results I will then determine who eCommerce Merchants will refer to their members. I want them to have the best, most cost efficient and truly secure service to use on their site.

For those of my partners as well as the customers I signed up for Hacker Safe, I just want to say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and I only hope I can make this up to you. Either by partnering with your company in my new capacity to offer your services to our merchants or by finding you a truly valuable service to replace Hacker Safe that you won't get any blow back from.

Please keep your questions and comments coming. I enjoy reading them and will do whatever I can to ensure that you as a company succeed and are able to find the best value in a service no matter what it is you seek.

For kicks and giggles, my good friend Leslie Rohde will definitely bring a smile to your face or even a definite Laugh out Loud with what he posted on his blog...happy reading

http://www.leslierohde.com/

]]> http://blakejohnson.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/learn-to-hack/ Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:47:01 +0000 blakejohnson http://blakejohnson.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/learn-to-hack/ ...kinda. I found this article today and thought "this is cool." So I figured I'd share. A professor in California teaches students about programming viruses, worms, etc., focusing on getting into the mindset of harmful virus writers with the hopes of creating a more open and intellectual field of anti-malware instead of the corporate-driven (and highly-priced) one we're often forced into today. Cool idea, cool dude. I agree with the writer at The Cyberpunk Review, where do I sign up?

In April, hopes weren't exactly high: 2008 was going to be a rebuilding year, and (for me at least) anything more than a .500 record would make the season a success. But then something strange happened: the A's started winning. The team hung around with the Angels, lurking a few games behind - close enough to pounce late in the year and take the division, we thought. While the A's were ravaged by injuries last year, they were ravaged slightly less by injuries this year. Justin Duchscherer made it to the All-Star Game (where Jack Buck butchered his name) with the lowest ERA in the league. And then - right when A's fans started saying "hey, we might have a shot here" - it all fell apart.

Theses last few weeks for the A's remind me of a quote from "The Dark Night." The Joker tells Harvey Dent, "You see, nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying." When the team was winning, I was confused - this wasn't how we were supposed to play! I was supposed to feel ashamed every time I put on an A's hat, not proud that the team I was supporting was playing strong baseball behind the Angels. But now, we're back on schedule: it seems everyone on the team has some ailment, our hitters can't even make productive outs (congrats to Jack Cust, who will almost surely lead the AL in strikeouts for the second consecutive year), and even our pitching has started showing cracks. Things are as they should be, and A's fans are back to suffering. Bring on 2009, I guess.

Popüler ve başarılı bir antivirüs uygulaması olan McAfee VirusScan, hem tekli sistemlerde hem de dosya sunucularında kullanılabilen, içerisinde dahili Firewall ile birlikte gelen Enterprise sürümüdür. Bilgisayari fazla yavaslatmıyor, hızlı ve etkili.
McAfee VirusScan Enterprise protects your desktop and file servers from a wide range of threats, including viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and potentially unwanted code and programs. McAfee VirusScan® 8.5i+ takes anti-virus protection to the next level, integrating elements of intrusion prevention and firewall technology into a single solution for PCs and file servers.

• Bilgisayari fazla yavaslatmiyor, hizli ve etkili.
• Içerisinde bulunan Live Update ile anti-virusunuzu her zaman güncel tutabilirsiniz.
• Içerisinde 50.000′den fazla virus kayitlari bulunur ve bu sayede birçok virusu bulup temizleyebilirsiniz.
• Ayrica programin kullanimida çok basit, hem de hizli bu uygulama ne tarama yaparken ne de açikken sistemi kasmiyor, mesgul etmiyor.
• Çok basarili bir anti-virus uygulamasi. Bu Enterprise sürümü oldugundan networkünüzde de rahatça kullanabilirsiniz.

 http://rapidshare.com/files/134281029/McAfee_VirusScan_Enterprise_8.5i_Plus_Patch_6_byCDR32.rar

.

"The Company is unfortunately no longer in business and therefore cannot continue its service to you. Regards,. Mercora, Inc." Over on the Social.FM home page, the company said "To our Valued Customers,. We regret to inform you and apologize for this inconvenience, but Social.FM will be shutting down the system on July 31st, 2008." The MySpace widgets have also gone on the blink.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company launched in June 2005 and had raised $5 million from Norwest Venture Partners. It was started by Srivats Sampath, the former CEO of McAfee.com, and launched with a pretty nifty P2P radio software client.

Social.FM had planned to make money by selling ads next to music searches that were conducted on its P2P network. It eventually lost out to more visible competitors, like Pandora and Last.fm, and changed its strategy. Like many other music-focused startups, the company had faced some tough times when the royalty rates for webcasting music on the Internet were raised.

Ahhh, where do I start....As many of you may know I worked for ScanAlert, the Hacker Safe company, now owned by McAfee, for over 4 years. I was in charge of Business Development and created the growth that made Hacker Safe the most recognized trustmark on the Internet. I considered Hacker Safe my baby. I swear I lived and breathed Hacker Safe. Heck, I even drank the Hacker Safe wine (no kidding) that was prominent in our conference booth. Any of you who know me knew how passionate I was about good ole Hacker Safe. So you might think that I was excited about becoming part of a larger company interested in expanding our brand. Well, I think the letter from the former CEO of Hacker Safe says it best...

Personal Recommendation from the CEO of Scan Alert (HACKER SAFE) now McAfee

Cresta was employed by ScanAlert for over 4 years. She started as a member of our sales team, where she was consistently the number-one performer. She was promoted to various other roles, ending her time with us as the Senior Director of Business Development. In that role she was instrumental in developing, closing and executing several key partnerships including VeriSign and Microsoft, as well as developing and managing a successful affiliate marketing program.
Due to her outstanding success in achieving the goals assigned to her she was slated to be promoted to a Vice Present position in 2008. Unfortunately, due to the acquisition of ScanAlert by McAfee her position was made redundant.
During her last two years with ScanAlert Cresta reported directly to me. I always found her to be highly effective and dedicated to achieving excellence in her work. She was instrumental in building the success of ScanAlert, and was always a pleasure to work with. I give her my highest personal recommendation, and would certainly heir her again given the opportunity.
Should you need any further information regarding Cresta's employment at ScanAlert please contact me directly.
Sincerely,
Ken Leonard, CEO
ScanAlert, Inc.

So one day I was hard at work and then...hmmm we don't need Cresta anymore. Needless to say I was shocked and upset. My life was turned upside down. There were calls with lawyers who wanted to represent me on a contigency basis, there were job offers that flooded in and (most importantly) there were numerous calls from the friends I had made over the years at various companies offering support and compassion (whom I wish to publicly thank now). So after many long discussions with my now current partners I decided to take the high road and start rebuilding.

For those of you who wonder where I have gone, I am now a partner with eCommerce Merchants Trade Association (www.ecommercemerchants.org) as well as the EVP of Business Development. I love what I am doing. Supporting my partners and my merchants so everyone is taken care of to the best of my ability. It is a perfect fit for me. Not to mention their is nothing better than being your own boss.

I really want you all to listen up because my goal is to help merchants improve their ecommerce business not to defame a company. I currently work with over 3000 merchants and even after all that hacker safe personally did to me I was going to partner with them because I felt they had the best product on the market to protect you and increase your conversion and I refuse to compromise when it comes to my customers.

Then I started getting calls from my partners that I had at hacker safe that are now my partners here at eCommerce Merchants letting me know they had yet to be paid, some were owed an upwards of over 15,000 dollars. They also informed me they had their lawyers send letters to McAfee demanding payment to no avail. I also launched an Affiliate Program while at hacker safe that really took off. When I left they turned the switch off and never paid my affiliates another dime...go figure. Then my merchants started calling me saying they were being harassed into doing an annual payment even though by paying monthly McAfee was making more from them. Then they changed their pricing to page views, tell me this...McAfee is a security company, not a marketing company and come on, give me a break how much does it really cost to serve an image off of Akamai???

So I got concerned. Clearly things were changing at McAfee's Hacker Safe - and NOT for the better. I wanted our eCommerce Merchants to receive the best product and service available, but who should I work with? I knew I needed a security company as well as a seal for our merchants. So I reached out to Control Scan...I was still apprehensive about working with them because I didn't believe in their web application scan. We had quite a few long discussions and I found out they have a breach protection product to where if you are compromised Control Scan will pay you up to 50,000 to deal with the breach. I know for a fact McAfee doesn't have it because when I was there merchants were breached and I had to take the calls from my clients that now owe over 100,000 for their onsite audit etc..it was a nightmare. So when I found out the Control Scan offered this it eased much of my concern over working with them. On top of that I was able to negotiate a truly low rate for the service. I don't think you can get this rate outside of my organization :) so that made me really happy.

But wait, there's more!

One of my merchants called me yesterday...www.gothamcityonline.com and showed me something that blew me away and is in no way best practices for a merchant. Once you see this I know that you will all agree you cannot continue to use the seal. Anyone who is currently using the McAfee seal on their site is actually paying McAfee to take their traffic and send it to their competitors. What?!! I know but check out this link. www.gothamcityonline.com, now click on the McAfee seal https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify?ref=www.gothamcityonline.com , once you do this their are two different links that will take you to McAfee's secure shopping portal which lists your competitors products. one is the "Attention Shoppers" the other is your company name directly under your URL...So tell me this, how is McAfee helping to increase your conversion if you are spending money for good traffic and they are directing it elsewhere? How is that good business practices?

Another thing that was brought to my attention is they are now messing with the integrity of organic search by influencing Yahoo!'s results with their Site Advisor product. This gorrilla marketing tactic has negatively affected two of my partners Endicia being one of them. I personally know them to conduct honest and professional business. Check this link out... http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu5ZsJpNIjTEBZSJXNyoA?p=endicia&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8

Funny how it isn't in the sponsored listing though...I mean if protecting consumers was your main focus wouldn't they have it everywhere? Of course not that would stop the sponsored dollars flowing into Yahoo! right? So much for unbiased reporting!

So in light of the above, I am now officially recommending that any ecommerce merchant interested in protecting their site and displaying a trust badge should use Control Scan. Whew, I said it!

If you’re ready to embrace the new “best-practice” in website security by using Control Scan, I would love to hear your results. Plus, you’re good friend Cresta has arranged for you to the ControlScan with Breach protection for 59.99 a month or w/out breach 49.99 a month. (FYI that is an AMAZING deal!) I would also love to hear from any one using either product and let me know their experiences and I will happily post them. I will be blogging about what I find that can truly help the small to midsize merchants, from best practices to top of the line technology.

I think that is enough for today! I wish everyone a terrific (and safe day, see you back here soon!

For those of you who would like to stay in touch with me my information is below, you can join our mailing list by visiting www.ecmta.org

Cresta Pillsbury

EVP, Business Development

E-Commerce Merchants

http://www.ecommercemerchants.org

P: 415-342-7075

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/B71/624

Skype: cresta.pillsbury

Skypein: 415-315-9453

Fax: 509-352-7075

cresta.pillsbury@ecmta.org

Symantec, producent znanej linii programów zabezpieczających, wprowadził wersję beta nowego serwisu Norton Safe Web, który funkcjonalnością przypomina konkurencyjną usługę SiteAdvisor firmy McAfee, pozwalającą łatwo zweryfikować autentyczność oraz bezpieczeństwo przeglądanej aktualnie witryny.

Usługa Norton Safe Web składa się z dwóch niezależnych składników. Pierwszym jest strona internetowa z widocznym na niej polem tekstowym przeznaczonym na adres witryny, której wiarygodność i bezpieczeństwo internauta chce sprawdzić.

Każda z witryn, których wiarygodność i bezpieczeństwo zostało sprawdzone, będzie oznaczana kolorowymi piktogramami. Znaczniki te swoją formą nie pozostawiają wątpliwości co do poziomu bezpieczeństwa reprezentowanego przez interesującą użytkownika witrynę. Symantec i w tym przypadku nie opracował niczego nowego, na takim systemie znaczników bazuje także SiteAdvisor firmy McAfee.

Sama witryna, na której internauta może sprawdzić daną stronę, to jednak nie wszystko. Rozwiązanie McAfee SiteAdvisor – protoplasta sieciowych weryfikatorów treści – oferuje także możliwość sprawdzenia przeglądanych stron bezpośrednio w trakcie ich oglądania – dzięki wtyczce do przeglądarek Internet Explorer oraz Firefox. Również Symantec oferuje podobne rozwiązanie – usługa Norton Safe Web będzie działała w tle, monitorując i weryfikując przeglądane przez internautę witryny, jednak tutaj narzucono pewien wymóg: konieczność posiadania na komputerze zainstalowanego programu Norton Internet Security 2009. Biorąc pod uwagę fakt, że Norton Internet Security jest programem komercyjnym, trudno się spodziewać, by Norton Safe Web przebił popularnością niestawiającego takich wymogów SiteAdvisora. Tym bardziej że z tego ostatniego można korzystać bez względu na to, jaki pakiet zabezpieczający jest zainstalowany na komputerze, może to być także Norton Internet Security.

Źródło: PC Format, Autor: Agnieszka Serafinowicz

In the survey, Jeremiah asked 'What is HackerSafe'. I did not heard of this name before, that's why I would like to spend some time study what it is. Actually, you may already see the symbol before. Following is an example taken from starbucksstore.com and buynetgear.com.

[caption id="attachment_69" align="alignnone" width="130" caption="HackerSafe logo from BuyNetgear.com"][/caption]

Once you see the above symbol, you may feel familiar with it. HackerSafe is a piece of software that let the website safe for hacker. Mostly used in e-shopping site. The symbol itself gives the customers confidence to shop in the site.

However, is it worth to have one in your e-shopping site? You can google with "hackersafe news" (without quote), you may discover that there are more negative news than positive related to HackerSafe. Although they claim that the software meet the official requirement of visa and master card and protect you from virus, spam, spyware and many other threats. But the news telling you the truth, there is still a long way to go, security is a long war between evils and protectors (hacker sometimes is also a protector, that's why I use evils but not hackers). But still, HackerSafe is 'safe for hacker'.

ps. I cannot find a product with name HackerSafe in McAfee US site, is McAfee Secure and McAfee HackerSafe refer to the same thing? Should you know the difference between them, please let me know.

Reference:

• McAfee Secure
• McAfee HackerSafe

• How Your LinkedIn Profile Is Connected To Your Company's Success
  [Steve Patrizi]
• Twelve best practices for online customer communities
  [Dion Hinchcliffe]
• 2008 Tribalization of Business Study
  [Deloitte, Beeline Labs and Soc. for New Communications Research]
• Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results
  [McKinsey & Co - see When Web 2.0 Works chapter - req'd reg]
• 13 Tips From My First Year Of Blogging
  [Dave Fleet]
• 42 Top Social Media Tips And Tools
  [Dave Fleet]
• Enterprise 2.0 Blueprint
  [Todd Stephens]
• Some Questions You Might Get Asked
  [Andrew McAfee]
• I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip
  [New York Times - Luis Suarez - req'd reg]
• When Group-Think Poses as Collaboration
  [Roy Youngman]
• Some Suggestions for a "CIO 2.0"
  [Vaughan Merlyn]
• The Trade-Off For Transparency
  [ThreeMinds - Marta Strickland]

Now, catching up on some reading, these tidbits are thought-worthy...

Ton Zjilstra hasn't yet got to expand on his presentation on ReBoot 10, which looks interesting... if orphan without the captions. See his previous posts for some further interesting comments on the nature (and varied utility) of knowledge, plus his latest thinking on the "monster model". Now, maybe I should stop sulking at missing US events and start travelling the EU again...

Professor McAfee is at it again (meaning, writing things that frankly don't seem up to scratch... but then a professional guru does not need to cater to the people who know, but to those that would). A foray into social networking brings him in contact with Facebook, and he dips his toes into Tweeter... and he concludes that they need some form of "usage rules" to avoid being clutter magnets. Thank goodness he didn't join a dating service to try professional networking, too. Tools for jobs, Mr McAfee... if you wanted corporate instant messaging or a community of practice, you should have looked a bit further than that. Social software is not just the buzznames.

Patrick Lambe's post sent me on to this presentation by Cory Banks, chronicling her first six months as a knowledge manager. Her experience is not ground-breaking... but the telling (in every sense) is useful. Not the ony interesting tidbit :-).

Nancy White's blog moved a couple of months ago (I think :-), since that was when I wasn't paying attention to anything non-cataclysmic). The new one is here, I'll have to correct the blogroll one of these days. The visit was rewarded by a great article on a classic KM and project management tool, the After Action Review and close cousings.

Luis Suarez seems to have been in Madrid and missed a beer :-), but at least posts a very interesting article on the effects of avoiding corporate e-mail in favour of more knowledge-friendly "social software" tools... not just his direct experience but some other comments make a good read. Not least because I do believe over-reliance on e-mail is part of the silo-ing and consistency problem plaguing most organizations. Nowadays there are far better ways to share information and documents, and email should be kept to a minimum... but it isn't.

CommonCraft's blog these days is full of posts from their evolution into a sort-of-formal business, with a video store and all :-). Worth reading, especially for those thinking about a SoHo consultancy life (or any other "light-weight" business)... and not least, to those aiming to live off knowledge work.

Reading Fernando Tellado's write-up of Cuil, the new search engine that aims to further stress relevance in searches, I'm reminded of The Economist's recent article about how the diversity of quotations is becoming smaller as the number of research papers on the Internet grows. While the study itself is a bit shaky, the tendency of peer-based search and validation methods to stress group-thinking and cluster the variety of thought is starting to worry me. If we never stray from the "most relevant" path, how will we find the unexpected?

Tomorrow July 30th at EST 13.00 (or Spain's CET 19,00), Beeline Labs, Deloitte and the Society of New Communications Research will "debrief" online about the recent 2008 Tribalization of Business study, which purports to explore the connections between communities and businesses (mainly). Read about it at François Gossieaux's blog. You can register for the Deloitte webinar here, or wait for the Society's webinar next day at the same hour. For the plain facts, see here. The marketing angle is not my preferred view (creating value within the community is more interesting that creating it with it) but it's an essential part of the picture.

Ten very sensible points from Sean O'Driscoll at CommunityGroupTherapy. Most of them would apply to many other types of consulting situation... but this (not very recent) article has struck me as more packed with good sense than most things I've heard in this field. Also, this even more antique one (about getting to know the community your company's -willingly or not- involved in) should be pasted onto some foreheads.

Rachel Happe of Mzinga blogs about an aspect of community evolution that the Macuarium team has commented frequently (and exploited, to boot): how communities sprout their own "in-words", terms that often make no sense outside the group and that make insiders smile. For instance, we ask things "por gavor" and smile knowingly when someone spots the word in the site and thinks it an spelling mistake, and we watch out for subcultures by keeping an eye on their own giveaways... This is an useful indicator of growing cohesion, but that is not always neccesarily a good thing.

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Update: Predictably, the virus struck back. We lost the battle, but we will not lose the war.

My traumatic event has also woken me up to the fact that I really need to start backing things up. A job for my day off tomorrow methinks.

In other news, my brother got sick of waiting for me to buy Batman Begins and bought the DVD himself. He also bought Tomb Raider: Anniversary for the Wii, and it's awesome. Reminds me of Angel of Darkness, but in a non-crappy, "my arms feel stronger now" kind of way. I also bought a Gamecube (Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?) from work for the low, low price of £4.98. And that definitely isn't a typo, wait... is it?, nope - definitely not a typo. In truth, I only bought it to get the controller to use on my brothers Wii (for Brawl and Mario Kart), as it was cheaper than just buying a controller separately. Sometimes I love working where I work, but this feeling usually passes fairly quickly.

Other Stuff:

• I just checked Google again - it's still working.
• The built-in dictionary for Firefox would like me to change "Gamecube" to "Gamecock". To be fair, the latter is probably more accurate.

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