‘Cross The Breeze

Today I came across an interesting post on a topic that’s been the subject of quite some discussion during the last few days. Alec Saunders (CEO of iotum) wrote a post called ‘A Privacy Manifesto for the Web 2.0 Era‘ in which he states the right we - consumers - should have online which he calls the 4 principles that form a Privacy Manifesto for this new web era:

Now, what rights should you have? Here are four principles that form a Privacy Manifesto for the Web 2.0 Era (in short):

1. Every customer has the right to know what private information is being collected
2. Every customer has the right to know the purpose for which the data is being collected, in advance
3. Each customer owns his or her personal information
4. Customers have a right to expect that those collecting their personal information will store it securely

The article also shows what the implications of these principles would be on a couple of examples the author gave in the beginning. Now all interesting, but it got me thinking. This just didn’t seem all the unfamiliar to me, and then when I saw @pascalvanhecke’s reply on Twitter it hit me: of course - this is all in the European law related to the protection of personal data. Read the full text at Wikipedia, but it is interesting to see what the initial guidelines where for this law (which data from 1980):

1. Notice—data subjects should be given notice when their data is being collected;
2. Purpose—data should only be used for the purpose stated and not for any other purposes;
3. Consent—data should not be disclosed without the data subject’s consent;
4. Security—collected data should be kept secure from any potential abuses;
5. Disclosure—data subjects should be informed as to who is collecting their data;
6. Access—data subjects should be allowed to access their data and make corrections to any inaccurate data; and
7. Accountability—data subjects should have a method available to them to hold data collectors accountable for following the above principles

Again, this isn’t the actual law - but this gives you the best idea of the intention and idea behind it. Read the full text and you’ll see. Interestingly enough, Dennis Howlett wrote a post today saying ‘Did Scoble break EU law on Facebook?‘ which is talking about the same law. And I agree with Dennis, the whole ‘hack’ was appalling to say the least.

[Update: Mike Butcher at Techcrunch UK also links EU laws to data portability]

What do you think?

After almost 3 weeks of holiday traveling through Borneo, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore I returned back to work yesterday… totally relaxed. I decided to just kill the +8.000 post in my RSS reader waiting for me so if you think there’s something I should absolutely read from the last 2-3 weeks let me know. In the meantime I’ll leave you with this sunset view from one of the bars in Kota Kinabalu. Damn I wish I was still there :)

I don’t remember how I came across this post of ‘Data visualisation: modern approaches‘ on Smashing Magazine, but it describes some pretty cool stuff. It gives an overview of some utterly fascinating ways to visualize data, something you definitely have to go see for yourself. Some of them could be art.

One of my favorites is amaztype ‘a typographic book search’ where each amazon query gets visualized in a very interesting way. Here’s my search for ‘travel’:

You got a see for yourself how cool it is, not quite useful but pretty. Make sure you check out the original post for a lot more interesting examples. And I’ll tell you in a few days why that query on amaztype had to be travel ;)

I’ll be on holidays for the next 2 weeks and although I won’t be traveling that much - that’s what I do at work :) - there will be no blogging. See y’all again later.

A couple of days ago Mark Goren tagged me, asking to do a deepdive in my blog’s archives and look up 5 posts that have a special meaning for this blog in some way. I didn’t want to focus on only those posts that were maybe the best for me, or the best in traffic so I stuck to ’special meaning’. Here they are:

The art of being Belgian
I wrote this one after reading the book with that title, and though it should be one of the posts of this list. It was the first review of a book I did on my blog, I added some of the Belgian character to it as well and since it was picked up by the book’s publisher on their website it learned me even more that everyone’s opinion counts.

Naked Conversations
Although not on purpose, another book review (and really, I don’t do that much of them). This one I found interesting since I was amazed to get a comment from Shel Israel on this post and it would lead us eventually in having a conversation over email. It didn’t end here, as I set up a dinner with Shel and Rick inviting a couple of bloggers in Belgium and it was a great experience of the things that happen in this community.

How Influential are you?
This has become a little bit of a series as I’ve written quite a few posts that belong to this theme (here, here and here) and there are certainly more to come. I’m very interested about the question around influence, how you can measure it, map it, … and for that reason I did write my opinion down on it on a few occasions. And given my interest, many of the offline conversations I have are around this little theme as well. There’s also one person that has some great thoughts to share on this as well, that I hope to interact with on this matter and that is David Armano. David, if you have some spare time? ;) He wrote that fantastic post around the sphere of Influence for instance, exactly what I was thinking.

Everyone is a customer
A bit linked to the subject before, ‘Everyone is a customer’ is the title of the last few presentations I have given related to social media, blogging and brands and outlines some of the content of these presentations. Although the presentation itself was always adapted to the time and location, I like to keep the title. It refers to a case that I do always use in these presentations and that show the great effect of brands listening to their ‘customers’, you can read about that one here.

Not enough drama?
This post is an outsider in many ways. To begin with, it has driven far more traffic to this blog than any other post I’ve ever written. Even only on the first day it brought nearly 8.500 visitors to this blog and many thousands followed the few days after making ‘Cross The Breeze the n°1 blog on WordPress.com for a day or two. It learned me that this can happen to anyone, but given the fact the post was a bit off topic, I learned as well that it doesn’t mean people stick to your blog after.

I found this a tough task, but fun to do anyway. Going trough over 500 posts thinking which ones were special in some way is not really easy and I’m sure that I’ll think of another one or two in the next few days :) Anyway, I’m going to pass this along to Ine, Tom and Veerle. Hope you too will find some time to go through your archives, I’m interested to see your top five.

Technorati Tags: tag, archive, blog, blogging, history, transmission

Laurent - a colleague here in the Belgian office - told Philippe and myself an amazing story about HP’s support for PC’s. This was so bad that we both had the same reaction, send me an email with that story so we can blog about it. Read it and weep! After that, link to the story to make sure they notice.

Here’s the story from Laurent:

“I bought a 2.5 years old HP Presario 2500 laptop on Ebay. I bought this for my girlfriend during her maternity leave so she could stay connected, even while “imprisoned” at home. I took the opportunity to initiate her to the joy of IM and she pulled her mother and half her family into the service. I also showed her how to use Ebay , which  was a bad move though, as  she spends all our money on baby clothes :)

A few weeks ago, the “h” touch died. I checked on the web and apparently it’s a common problem with this model (or at least, people have been vocal about the “h” touch). But, ok, she could live wit tat, h is not tat important is it? ;) Yesterday night the whole keyboard stopped working. “e” gives “w”, backspace, delete and enter don’t work… that was the end of my wife surfing the internet and having fun with her family every night.

So, arriving at the office today, with all the references in my pocket, I surf to the HP website to find an after-sales/customer service number I could call to solve this asap. It’s not critical, she does not need the computer for work matters, but it has become really  important in her life and I don’t want to let her without that. Ok, number found..doh, a 0900 billed 0.74€/min…?? Ok, the computer is probably not guaranteed anymore, but still. 

First call, robot voice spelling me a huuuuuuge (this is stupid by the way, who can possibly remember that?) url I could check to read about HP privacy policy, press 2 to get someone answering, wait wait wait, at least, a friendly human voice. The guy asks for my postal code so he could give me phone numbers of companies that could repair my laptop. I hung up the phone after he had given 3 numbers.

• 1^st number : unknown (you know, that Belgacom lady that tells you that number does not exist)
• 2^nd number : yess!! It rings!! Bad luck for me, that company does not repair computers from people, only corporations
• 3^rd number : unknown again (same Belgacom “lady”)

Hmmm, ok, I have an issue there. Back to my 0900 overtaxed number (again 2 minutes waiting time to get that humongous url spelled), press 2 to get someone answering, a lady now. I do the postal code thing and she gives me a 03 phone number. I kindly ask her to give me a # close to my place (why asking for the postal code otherwise? 03 stands for Antwerp and that’s not even close to where I live) and she tells me that’s the only one she has (??) The number? : 03.382223366. For those of you who don’t know, Belgian phone numbers do not contain 8 figures. And that’s what I told her of course. She puts me on hold “to check sir”… the line was cut after 10 minutes waiting time :-/

Back to the HP website, a bit angry and bored, I see a small link allowing to estimate what the repair price could be. If I can not get the contact of someone who can help me, maybe at least I could figure out how much it would cost. Click, click, click, my computer model? of course I have the reference,  click click again : 389€ estimated repair price…but nowhere I could type what type of reparation I needed, so how can that estimation be right?”

I guess you all agree this is a terrible support experience. We all know DELL is listening, and looking at the comments on Philippe’s post about this they’re listening so good, that they even try to help on HP issues ;). What I want to know is what HP is going to do about this though. Are you listening HP?

Yesterday and today it’s Meeting of Minds in Antwerp. I was going to go, but my agenda decided otherwise the very last minute which is a bit of a shame as I’m reading a lot of good stuff about it. Take a look for instance at what Clo had to say about it, she seems to have loved it so far. I’m trying to follow it a bit on Twitter, but that’s hardly the real thing is it…

Luckily, since Loic Le Meur was coming to MoM, we had a chance to reconnect. We went out for dinner Wednesday night in the renewed ‘Wok & Tandoor’ and had some interesting conversations around LeWeb3 and next year’s LeWeb, the new & exciting project he’s working on, Microsoft, …. and much more. It was good to meet again, too bad I had to miss out on the discussion at MoM on television 2.0… who knows next time.

I’m sorry, nothing to do with classic advertising this time. Tomorrow it’s time again for one of the greatest sports classics you can find on this planet - the Tour of Flanders. Ok, this might not ring a bell with big part of my readers, but the Belgians will know for sure. And yes it’s a cycling event, but I can tell you that it’s a lot more than ‘just’ a cycling event. Come and see for yourself.

We’ll be guests again of Lotto in their tent by the Kapelmuur:

Hopefully witnessing something like this again:

Technorati tags: tour of flanders, kapelmuur, classic, cycling, belgium, sport

For those who figured out my blog is named after a Sonic Youth classic… you’ll like this: youth sentiment on Youtube by Bart Van Belle - subscribed!

[Via Pietel | Claudia]

Technorati tags: youth, sentiment, sonic youth, youtube