Another Piece Claiming Social Media Makes You Dumber

I had started a post last night about a recent report that Facebook and Twitter (and probably all social media based on how it's worded) is generally dumbing people down. Then I watched and read reports of the London riots and saw media outlets in the United States, as well as those in England, talk about how technology and social media are inciting violence. I then recalled all the instances of news media mis-reporting based on bogus Twitter tips (among other social-media-based sources) and am starting to come to the conclusion that social media is dumbing down the media instead.

But since that thought process itself can drag me into hours of research to bolster my claims, I'm just going to take the media's way out and claim it as true while I instead focus on the original purpose of my post, with a little bit of London riots for good measure.

The Original Post

Last week The Daily Mail posted the article "Facebook and Twitter are creating a vain generation of self-obsessed people with child-like need for feedback, warns top scientist" with the following introductory paragraph:

Facebook and Twitter have created a generation obsessed with themselves, who have short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback on their lives, a top scientist believes.

The opinion is attributed to Baroness Greenfield, former director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (considered one of Britain’s oldest and most venerable scientific institutions), professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, and who once referred to Stephen Hawking as Taliban-like and later defended it by saying What is dangerous...is to make sweeping assertions about a whole category of academia. It might be fair to say that she is making sweeping assertions about a whole category of social interaction. That the article provides no links to scientific papers or studies to support her claims in any way further demonstrates that there is nothing here beyond both Baroness Greenfield's and The Daily Mail's disdain for social media.

Had the paper or Baroness stated that Twitter and Facebook seem to appeal to the personalities she cites, then it's a different story. I even agree with that sentiment, and at the beginning of this year wrote about Twitter As Passive-Aggressive Enabler. I don't, however, say that Twitter causes that behavior. That behavior is extant, social media just allows people to continue their bad behaviors.

Almost two years ago I remember The Telegraph running the piece "Facebook 'enhances intelligence' but Twitter 'diminishes it', claims psychologist." Major news outlets across the world picked it up, but they all failed to fact check it. Only when directly asked if the researcher had any evidence did she admit there was no study, it was just her opinion. It annoyed me enough to write Facebook Doesn't Make You Smarter, Rigorous Research Does where I discuss essentially the same thing I am discussing here — lack of any research or application of the scientific method to back up a claim otherwise clearly rooted in personal bias.

Related

• Can Facebook Ruin Your Child's Brain?
• Facebook will destroy your children's brains
• A clarification: why people have been concerned by Baroness Greenfield

London Riots and Mis-Reporting

About those London riots, I'm going to keep this brief because I think the facts speak for themselves. Note this tweet:

This is how The Daily Mail reported it:

Ashley AR tweeted: 'I hear Tottenham's going coco-bananas right now. Watch me roll.'

This was in an article reporting on the riots and using Tweets and posts from an internet forum to demonstrate the chaos. Except they misquoted that tweet. Which should make every other quote in that article suspect. Which might account for why the article was later edited to remove them, with no acknowledgment of the misquote. This screen shot shows how the article looked before editing (screen shot stolen from Simon Willison):

I'm starting to think The Daily Mail doesn't like Twitter.

Related

• Is technology to blame for the London riots?
• London Riots: BlackBerry Messenger Used More than Facebook or Twitter

More on HTML5 as DHTML

Guns don't kill people, the bullets do that (unless you pistol-whip someone to death, which means you probably ran out of bullets). Similarly HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and even Flash aren't dangerous on their own, but in the wrong hands and with the wrong motives they can do harm.

I wrote a post almost a couple weeks ago, Don't Let HTML5 Become the New DHTML, where I compared HTML5 with DHTML. I think it is an apt analogy still. Since then I have seen what I think is a spike in posts from people decrying poor development practices, ultimately resulting in whiz-bang sites that claim to be HTML5 but are really just platforms to demonstrate cool features for reasons that have no merit beyond "cool factor."

I have a theory on why there is a recent uptick in this general theme — Adobe released Edge, its tool to help enable HTML5 / CSS3 / JavaScript animation-style development and (wrongly) considered to be a replacement for Flash. As people downloaded it and played around with it, a trend started to emerge. People were looking at the code Edge generated and realizing it was all just div soup (Why has Edge gone with div-based animation over canvas and SVG?). I am one of the many people who downloaded and installed this pre-beta so that I could see what it produced. I was not so lucky to get it working:

I suspect once people saw this code, from software which otherwise is not production-ready (or beta-ready, as Adobe claims), the ideas of HTML5 as a Flash killer coupled with its tag soup output rolled through the heads of lots of people, and so began the posts. I have collected some here:

• Adobe Launches New HTML5 Design Tool, August 1, 2011.
• The Final days of Flash: Adobe releases public preview of Edge HTML5 editor, August 1, 2011.
• Devs respond to Adobe Edge, August 2, 2011.
• Reckless web development practices are encouraging idiots, August 2, 2011.
• Hello, Adobe Edge!, August 4, 2011.
• Primum non nocere, August 5, 2011.
• HTML5, hollow demos and forgetting the basics, August 5, 2011.
• Are CSS3 and HTML5 the "New Flash"? August 8, 2011.

I think comparing HTML5 to Flash is a mistake. They are not the same. Flash is and always has been a proprietary tool built to enable features otherwise unavailable in standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript development while offering a consistent experience for users.

DHTML, however, was just a fake-brand for HTML4, CSS2 and JavaScript. People now use HTML5 to refer to HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, along with some other standards-based technologies. I think the parallels are obvious.

Update: August 11, 2011

Web 2.0 was another one of those marketing terms which encapsulated different things to different people. Now its demise is predicted: The death of Web 2.0 is nigh….

Are Patents Killing HTML5 Video?

You may recall from my post in February, WebM, H.264 Debate Still Going, that the H.264 video codec is considered patent-encumbered (which resulted in its dismissal from the HTML5 specification) and Google has argued that its own WebM / VP8 codec is made up of patents it owns, releasing it as royalty-free.

We all had to know it wouldn't be that simple. MPEG-LA, the licensing entity for multimedia codecs such as H.264, put out a call for patents related to VP8, the underlying technology in WebM, back on February 11, leaving it open for a month. Ostensibly MPEG-LA cast its wide net in the hopes that it could find existing patents that it can then use (perhaps by forming a patent pool or preparing for a lawsuit) to lay claim to rights over technology in VP8.

In April, Google started its own call for patent holders and formed the WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) initiative. Its description from its site:

The WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) initiative enables the web community to further support the WebM Project. Google, Matroska and the Xiph.Org Foundation make the various components of WebM openly available on royalty-free terms. By joining the CCL, member organizations likewise agree to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL.

With no official announcement, MPEG-LA revealed in an interview (WebM Patent Fight Ahead for Google?) that twelve parties had come forward with patents they felt were covered in VP8. If those claims hold up then MPEG-LA's next step is to create a patent pool, which allows even more patents and patent holders to be added to the mix. It also means Google will be faced with either paying for licensing from that patent pool or defending itself in a lawsuit. Given Google's US $105 million outlay to acquire the VP8 codec (via its acquisition of On2) already, you can bet some number crunching will take place to evaluate the value of either approach.

MPEG-LA most likely doesn't care whether or not VP8 wins over H.264. All MPEG-LA is interested in is getting its licensing fees from both of them. While MPEG-LA doesn't necessarily fit the model of a standard patent troll (it isn't located in Texas), if you read my post from yesterday, A Patent Trolling Primer, you can see some parallels.

These are posts I have written both about patent abuse and the H.264 vs. WebM debate. Instead of a recap of each here, you can get more history in these posts:

• A Patent Trolling Primer, August 1, 2011.
• More Frivolous Patents, July 31, 2011.
• Frivolous Patents on the Web, October 15, 2010.
• WebM, H.264 Debate Still Going, February 21, 2011.
• H.264 Getting Dropped from Chrome, January 13, 2011.

Back in January, Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG, a working group of ISO/IEC and not related to MPEG-LA) issued a statement that it plans to move forward with a royalty-free video encoding standard. Sadly, I don't have any news on its progress. If you have any, please comment below and let me know.

Other Media Types

As proponents of Ogg Vorbis will tell you on the We Want Ogg site, while they claim that it is a royalty-free and unpatented audio format, they cannot seem to get either Apple or Microsoft to support it in their browsers — even though the code to embed it natively in the browser is available (a better solution than a plug-in). In this case, owning patents related to audio technologies as a browser maker is motivation to not support an open format.

Google's WebP image format, which uses some of the still-image compression tricks from VP8, isn't being supported in Mozilla (Mozilla rejects WebP image format, Google adds it to Picasa). While patent issues around VP8 may certainly creep into WebP, in this case the argument to refuse support for the image format comes down to its lack of clear benefits to other image formats. If VP8 compression formats become patent-encumbered then you can bet this new format will die on the vine.

Related

• MPEG LA: 12 companies own patents essential to Google's VP8 codec
• Royalty-free MPEG video codec ups the ante for Google's WebM/VP8
• Google builds WebM patent pool of its own to fight back against MPEG-LA

Update: March 7, 2013

Today on Google's WebM blog:

Today Google Inc. and MPEG LA, LLC announced agreements that will result in MPEG LA ending its efforts to form a VP8 patent pool.

There is no indication of how much money changed hands.

A Patent Trolling Primer

The timing on my post yesterday (More Frivolous Patents) was pretty good. The patent trolling issues have been getting some coverage lately in more mainstream press (not just in legal or industry press) which has the potential to actually get noticed by someone (or someones) who can make a change.

Unfortunately, some people seem to think that patent reform is already in progress via the America Invents Act (S. 23 & H.R. 1249), which has so far only passed the House. The summary of the bill from OpenCongress.org:

Changes the patent application system from one that awards patents to the first person to invent something to a system that awards the first person to file a patent application on an invention. It would also allow for more public feedback on applications in order to prevent bad patents, establish new rules for challenging patents, guarantee that fees from patent applications can be retained by the patent office, and more.

Not being a lawyer, I have only the wisdom of the Internet on which to rely when it comes to interpreting the legalese of the bill. The bulk of what I have found is focused more on the first-to-file changes of the law. From CNN Money (Patent reform is finally on its way, June 24, 2011):

At the core of both bills is a transition of the U.S. patent law from a "first to invent" to a "first to file" system. That would give the patent to the first applicant, rather than the first inventor. It's the standard most of the rest of the world uses, since it prevents inventors from coming out of the woodwork and and laying claim to a patent.

The CNN article also says that the bill is designed to keep patent battles out of the courts and links to a 2008 article about a trampoline safety net inventor (Is your idea safe?).This bill, however, does not address the overwhelming surge of patent trolling in recent years. In addition, there are a lot of people who don't care for this bill, as a Google search will show.

Last week the radio program This American Life ran an episode titled "When Patents Attack!" detailing its experience with just one patent troll, Intellectual Ventures (who is against the America Invents Act). I have embedded the (too large to fit comfortably in my blog) audio player for the episode. It's perhaps a bit comedic, but it is worth a listen if patent trolling is new to you, especially if you aren't technically inclined.

To tear a piece out of the story out and provide some context about how broken the patent system is, enjoy this example of chaos:

Crawford's patent was for "an online backup system." Another patent from the same time was for "efficiently backing up files using multiple computer systems." Yet another was for "mirroring data in a remote data storage system."

And then there were three different patents with three different patent numbers but that all had the same title: "System and method for backing up computer files over a wide area computer network."

Martin says about 30 percent of U.S. patents are essentially on things that have already been invented. In 2000, for example, the patent office granted a patent on making toast — patent number 6080436, "Bread Refreshing Method."

SFGate takes it a bit further in its piece "Who Does Patent-Trading Firm Intellectual Ventures Work For, Anyway?"

What NPR does not get into, however, is the fact that Intellectual Ventures is backed by many of the biggest and most powerful companies in technology, including Amazon, Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, Nokia, Sony, Yahoo, and — of course — Microsoft.

[...]

These companies are believed to have invested in Intellectual Ventures in part to make sure they have access to its huge patent trove. (Other investors include universities and investment firms.)

The Economist posted its own take on the chaos today, spurred by the piece from This American Life in the article Patents against prosperity. The author makes the case for patent trolling stifling the American economy:

Nevertheless, it remains that America is the world's leader in technical invention, and continues to attract many of the world's most inventive minds. That's why it is so important that America remain especially conducive to innovation. And that's why America's intellectual-property system is a travesty which threatens the wealth and welfare of the whole world.

Some of the commentors on the story make interesting arguments, but nobody denies that the current state of the patent system is broken.

Regardless of your source, they all tend agree that patent trolls are a real concern to businesses, with the risk of litigation ever-present. This has created the new business model of paying into patent companies as a form of protection money, whether by partnering up (such as the Nortel patent bidding) or paying one off.

Yesterday I talked about more companies on the web getting sued, tomorrow (if time allows) I plan to discuss the new MPEG-LA patent pool.

More Frivolous Patents

The patent trolling continues, which should really be no surprise. Consider that Nortel put its portfolio of 6,000 patents on the auction block, with Google starting bidding at $900 million dollars only to be beat out by a consortium of Apple, Microsoft, Research in Motion, EMC, Ericsson and Sony for $4.5 billion ($750 million each). Each of these companies, Google included, wants to protect itself from patent trolls along with finding new revenue streams from licensing options.

The fun doesn't end there...

Lodsys sues Rovio

Rovio, the makers of the wildly popular (and somewhat addictive) Angry Birds game, is being sued for patent infringement by Lodsys. Lodsys claims that it holds a patent that covers how Angry Birds allows players to purchase new levels in the game. While Apple has maintained that its licenses extend to third-party developers, Lodsys started laying its groundwork in a May 31 post, Apple's License Claim Disputed.

The Lodsys About the Inventor page claims that Dan Abelow is a prolific inventor and an expert on website usability, ease-of-use and assured user performance. It then uses a "click here" link to direct traffic to Dan Abelow's web site. His web site content consists of text as images with image maps for the in-content links. If you are web developer who isn't even at the "expert" level he claims, then you already know that his claim of being an expert on usability is clearly a flat-out lie.

That's the nature of the person behind this suit.

PacketVideo sues Spotify

Spotify has just made its debut in the United States and almost immediately after doing so is getting sued. PacketVideo is leaning on a 1995 (issued in 1997) U.S. patent related to streaming music, itself citing six other patents. PacketVideo was founded in 1998 and purchased by NTT Docomo Inc., Japan's largest mobile phone operator, in August 2010. The patent in question has stayed with PacketVideo. PacketVideo is also suing over a European patent originally owned by a Swiss company.

PacketVideo outlines its position in a press release on its site, PacketVideo Files Patent Infringement Lawsuits Against Spotify. Spotify's response is to be expected: PacketVideo is claiming that by distributing music over the Internet, Spotify (and by inference any other similar digital music service) has infringed one of the patents that has previously been acquired by PacketVideo. Spotify is strongly contesting PacketVideo's claim.

I am wondering if Turntable.fm is just too small to bother suing.

Geotag sues 397 Companies

Last year a client reached out to me over some concern in the jewelry industry about patent lawsuits from a company called Geotag. In particular, companies that used a "find a retailer" feature to allow users to provide a zip code to see nearby stores were being sued. Given that Geotag paid $119 million for the patent, it was clearly in it for the shakedowm. This sampling shows that Geotag was really after the big fish, probably in hopes of a payout: Cartier and its Find a Boutique function at Cartier.us; Rolex and its Dealer Finder at Rolex.com; Sterling Jewelers' store locator on both Kay.com and Jared.com; Van Cleef & Arpels Boutique Search on VanCleef-Arpels.com; the store locator on Zale Corp.-owned GordonsJewelers.com; the store and event finder on Tiffany.com and the store locator on Kroger Co.-owned FredMeyer.com.

Not being a lawyer, I could not counsel my client on any particular legal action, but I could reassure my client that since Google Maps and Microsoft Bing provide much of this capability, it would be a matter of time before those two would either get caught up or step in and duke it out with the patent troll. Strange bedfellows indeed: Microsoft and Google jointly sue GeoTag Inc. in order to invalidate a patent asserted against more than 300 entities and Microsoft And Google Jointly Hit GeoTag With A Lawsuit To Invalidate Its Patent.

Related

• Frivolous Patents on the Web
• Big bidding: Apple, Microsoft, RIM nab Nortel patents for $4.5 billion
• Angry Birds maker sued by US firm Lodsys for 'violating patents'
• That Didn't Take Long: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market
• Tech co. sues majors over Web site component
• Twitter Gets Sued For Letting Famous People Interact Online
• Fighting patent 'trolls' — there's no app for that

Don't Let HTML5 Become the New DHTML

This photo represents some of the technologies (pint glasses) that HTML5 (t-shirt) is thought to encompass (drink). The horror of that concept is represented by the hands (defensive wounds coming).

I had the pleasure of sharing some pints with Bruce Lawson and Chris Mills last week in London. While discussing what bands are emo versus punk rock and during an exchange of favorite phrases to refer to the chronically daft, we touched on HTML5 and its perceptions a bit.

This thought process was rekindled just this week when I got in a discussion with a not-very-technical manager of web projects who insisted on mobile support and decidedly CSS3-based styling by implementing HTML5. The key here is the insistence on using HTML5. For a little context, we use HTML 4.01 Transitional for our projects. It's a valid and complete specification. It allows us to use things like WOFF, CSS3, AJAX, support mobile devices and so on.

I understand that many have co-opted "HTML5" as a brand for a suite of new technologies (most of them even from the W3C or WHATWG). I do not accept that, however, because it confuses the point when it comes time to make choices about technologies. This is a battle I have already fought repeatedly back when DHTML (and IE4!) became the rage and I had clients asking what technologies I would use to build their pages — insisting in advance that it be DHTML. I could explain that DHTML was just a terrible term coined to mean HTML4, CSS and JavaScript, but clients didn't care. It didn't matter to them. Good for them.

For developers and the people that manage them, including those who write on these topics, I have a different expectation than I have from clients. Allowing HTML5 to mean CSS3, geolocation, H.264, or any other technology just makes it harder on us who work in this space. A technology for a project should be chosen based on the goals at hand, not because a client insists on it because of a misunderstanding of a brand or because the press release will sound great when citing how cutting edge everyone is. Most importantly, a technology should not be chosen because of confusion over terminology — least of all when that term actually refers to one particular specification.

Please, fellow developer/writer/manager, make an effort to understand the technologies you reference so you do not confuse other developers/writers/managers, set incorrect expectations with clients, or generally demonstrate that you do not get it (especially if you want to work for me).

I have written on this extensively (with many links in each article that are to further details not written by me):

• W3C Clarifies HTML5 Logo Is for HTML Only
• HTML5 Finally Gets... a Logo?
• Google, Arcade Fire Confused on HTML5
• Google Doodle: Bouncy Balls Aren't HTML5
• HTML5 and CSS3 Confusion

If you are a writer (whether a journalist, blogger or analyst) then please take a few moments to read this useful and informational post: HTML5: notes for analysts and journalists (also not written by me). There will be a quiz. I don't know when, but there will be a quiz.

Now, to reveal how Bruce and Chris really felt about the HTML5 confusion:

Here are posts from both Bruce and Chris discussing this confusion, within the context of the new HTML5 logo muddying the point earlier this year:

• On the HTML5 logo, by Bruce Lawson on January 18, 2011.
• HTML5 logo: be proud, but don’t muddy the waters!, by Chris Mills on January 18, 2011.

Social Media Day 2011 in Buffalo #smdayBUF

Last night marked the second Mashable-sponsored Social Media Day here in Buffalo. With 154 RSVPs for the event, the venue, The Eights Bistro, saw a steady churn throughout the night as people came and went (but mostly came and stayed).

If you were not there then you can catch up with some of the activity by viewing the Twitter stream, tagged with #smdayBUF. There were many photos throughout the evening, and as some of the albums start to show up I will link them here. If you have one you want linked, please pass it along. This includes any video or news coverage.

This year's event was organized by the Buffalo chapter of Social Media Club. The Buffalo chapter is less than a year old and has many of the members that helped organize the event last year, plus many newcomers. This year the event enjoyed a greater turnout and more people who can claim that social media is an official part of their jobs now, when even just a year ago many organizations were still just dabbling. Thanks for this year go out to (yes, I am just using their Twitter handles): @buffalogal, @k8creative, @dangigante, @ecollins7, @ashleiJ, @Isimon33, @aaronpsmith, and @djlopro

The list of sponsors is pictured below, and they were all kind enough to generate door prizes, services, time and effort.

In addition to all this fun, I decided to follow someone around who was capturing video of the event on her phone, making for a nice, pointless, unnecessarily loud video of my own (if you are at work, turn down your speakers before playing it):

As I said above, if you have your own images, videos or links, please send me the links or comment below.

Photos and Videos

• Buffalo.com pre-event coverage.
• Buffalo Rising pre-event coverage, written by Social Media Club Buffalo chapter president.
• Photos from Buffalo.com (#18 shows my awesome QR code shirt, and #27 makes me glad I sucked in my gut).
• Photos from Clark Dever, who provided photography services for last year's event as well.

Previous Events

• Social Media Club Buffalo: #TacoVino, December 10, 2010.
• Buffalo Launches Social Media Club Chapter, September 23, 2010.
• Event Profile: #smdayBUF & #smdayBUF 2.0, August 12, 2010 (posted at City Love Cloting).
• Social Media Day in Buffalo #smdayBUF, July 1, 2010.