Thomas’ December 6, 2010, post “You Know How Sometimes Businesses Like to Go on Flickr Trying to Score Photos for Free?” features a comic and snarky exchange regarding photo Aldo’s Night Club. An unnamed iPhone applications developer asked Thomas permission to use the pic. The developer deserves some credit—asking for permission rather than just lifting the photo and for putting up with Thomas’ nasty responses. But perhaps a little snark and bite is warranted. While asking for permission, the developer’s self-described editor doesn’t get Thomas’ point: He should be paid for the photo’s use.

“Would there be compensation associated with this request?” Thomas asks. “If you give us your kind permission to use your photo we’ll provide a link back to your flickr page and credit you fully for the authorship of this photo”, the editor replies. Later, Thomas asks: “Would this permission need to be permanent, or could I just give permission for a period of time, like say 6 months or 1 year, or something?” The response: “This permission need to be permanent, but we’ll use your photo for our tour guide and iPhone application only. We use photos under Creative Commons license. You’ll remain the copyright owner.”

The exchange is much longer, and I won’t recount the fun Thomas has at the requester’s expense. Read his blog post. Thomas makes an important point through the exchange: Businesses using Flickr photos, even when asking permission, expect too much. They want to take something valuable and use it for free, forever. When businesses license photos from agencies they pay for specific usage and/or time period. There usually isn’t carte blanche to reuse the photo everywhere forever.

I’m a huge believer in content being made available for the public domain. I also oppose onerous copyrights that create mini-monopolies over intellectual property’s usage rights. Creative Commons is a great comprise, allowing creators more freedom how they license content. My stuff is freely available to use and remix for non-commercial purposes. If you want to make money off my stuff, I’d like some of that cash, too. Thomas applies similar license to his photos. Based on Thomas’ exchange with the requester, the self-described editor assumed he was dealing with someone unfamiliar with his rights.

That said, he did ask, which means something. The greater problem is people lifting stuff for free, and profiting from it. Freely available doesn’t mean free to use. Books are freely available in stores. Do most people take them without paying? But they do read freely available magazines for free, which bookstores might consider to be stealing; arguably it’s not so far removed from lifting something off a Website.

Looked at another way, my blog, Facebook or Flickr are my online domiciles—and yours. Stealing stuff from my home breaks the laws and defies American ethos about property ownership. Online should be no different. Right?

Do you have a content rights story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

Yes, I Love Tumblr
I’ll continue by saying that I’m a big Tumblr fan, even while acting traitor, because:

1. Founder David Karp and lead developer Marco Arment belong to the Mark Zuckerberg class of pragmatic, Generation Y entrepreneurs—confident, cunning, convincing and collaborative.
2. Tumblr is based in New York and represents a refreshing cultural and philosophical approach to entrepreneurship and technology that defies Silicon Valley’s start-up rabble (It’s no coincidence that Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg is from New York).
3. Tumblr attracts, or did before the recent explosion of interest, a creative community of bloggers. The community reminds me of the stereotypical New York arts scene but recast for the Millennial generation.
4. The publishing platform is easy and fun to use, and Tumblr has continually added new features that make the microblogging service more appealing. It’s by far my favorite blogging service to use.

But Tumblr Doesn’t Love Me
I signed up for Tumblr in April 2008. For a time, joewilcox.com was hosted there, but more recently oddlytogether.com. I had planned to make Oddly Together my main blog, with focus on storytelling. I retired joewilcox.com in October 2009. However, over the following 11 months, I grew dissatisfied with Tumblr—and not for dislike. I am enamored by the publishing platform’s ease and convenience and its hip and connected community of bloggers. In September 2010, I brought back joewilcox.com, on hosted WordPress, and in November put Oddly Together on hiatus. I will eventually relaunch the blog, quite likely elsewhere. My problems with Tumblr:

Search for the number of “fuck yeah” Tumblrs for examples. Related: The number of porn blogs or porn on Tumblrs is increasing. It’s like people are posting at Tumblr the stuff they can’t at Facebook. I’m not being squeamish about porn, but about what it means—Tumblr, which is a free service, being overrun by naked photos. It represents how the community is changing and how porn pushers cannibalize a free service.

In July, Tumblr announced the hiring of Mark Coatney, who launched a Newsweek microblog on the service. He’s charged with helping traditional media companies set up Tumblrs. In August, I asserted that “Old Media Should Pay Up If It Wants to Tumblr“. It’s my strong assertion that media companies should pay; no free rides. Old Media also is changing Tumblr’s voice—tone, if you prefer—away from independently produced content. That content will be harder to find, as more media companies invade Tumblr.

So one of Tumblr’s major community-oriented features doesn’t work for me. Reblogging is a major character of the Tumblr community and culture, and I don’t participate. That makes me somewhat of an outcast.

It’s not bound to events or something happening now that means little in a few weeks or months. Many of my posts are relevant years later. Tumblr demands that posts be in a timeline stream. For example, when migrating content from the old joewilcox.com to Oddly Together, posts dated years earlier would still appear in the current stream. I see no way to easily expose older content, either from the Tumblr platform or number of free or premium fee themes. This problem clinched my decision to abandon Tumblr.

The microblogging motif may be catching on in a big way, but it’s already outdated. What people want is more ability to mash up content. The stream of photos, videos, quotes, links and text posts is too limiting. Millennials are leading the mashup/remix revolution. Tumblr is moving two steps behind (although I concede reblogging is very mashup/remix oriented). Interestingly, the Facebook redesign launched today is more mashup, even though content remains separated by type.

Meet the Mashup/Remix Revolution
The other part of that TechCrunch headline is “Victim Of its Own Success”, which succinctly states my fundamental problems with Tumblr. Success is changing the community. Success is overwhelming the service, which is godawful slow at times. Success is changing Tumblr service and features priorities and possibly slowing down the launch of paid enhancements. I’d feel better about Tumblr if I paid for additional features that allowed me to remix more content.

WordPress 3.x and a theme supporting its new features allow me more ability to mashup content types and from different times. The theme I currently use easily lets me bring to the surface content written long ago. For example, my 2005 post “Remembering Lennon” is still appropriate recollection of the former Beatle’s murder, which was 30 years ago on December 8. As I write, that post is linkable from a large banner across the “Five Minutes with Joe” home page. I also can more easily mix up different types of content, which frequency will increase as I add more audio and video stuff.

But what I lose is the easy-access to community, something Tumblr offers, as does WordPress.com. I’m miffed at Automattic for not offering a paid upgrade allowing custom themes at WordPress.com (sorry CSS editing isn’t good enough). WordPress.com has a wonderful community, which I would participate in if there was suitable option. Sigh. It’s lonely out here in self-hosted land.

Do you have a blogging story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

Going from being an Etsy consumer to seller is quite the change for the family. My wife’s shop is simply Anne Wilcox Designs. We debated about the name. I favored Anne Wilcox Originals—for the connotations and because the necklaces are all one-of-a-kind. There is still much work to do, such as personalizing the shop, adding store policies, tweaking pricing and international shipping costs and optimizing for search.

It’s services like Etsy that disrupt long established retail businesses and empower more people to be entrepreneurs. There are others. My daughter is a YouTube vlogger. She’s now part of the Google free economy, receiving payments whenever her vlog generates $100 from the stuff the information giant wraps around it.

As for Etsy, I’m new to photographing jewelry (and it shows). I shot most of the necklaces with the Olympus PEN E-P2 with Panasonic-made Leica DG MACRO-ELMARIT 45mm F/2.8 ASPH/MEGA O.I.S. micro-four-thirds lens. I used the Leica X1 for a few shots, including the pink bunny rabbit.  ISO is as high as 800 on some jewelry photos, as I shot with natural light at f/2.8 or f/4 for most of the closeups. While higher ISO adds noise, the images still look pretty good. Please see my Anne Wilcox Designs Flickr set.

Amigurumi Flowery Pink Bunny Rabbit

Technically, the PEN E-P2 is now my daughter’s to use, but I’ve got dibs for special needs like shooting closeups. I find that the Leica X1 captures so much detail that I can create more than adequate closeups from crops. The pink bunny is good example.

Much as I like the X1, I miss shooting with a Sigma compact. I owned the Sigma DP1 and DP2s. Sigma’s Foveon sensor produces a unique look that really appeals to me. I gave up the DP1 because it was too slow to use as a street camera and the DP2s because colors shifted to the green (something a firmware updated supposedly fixed a week after I returned the camera to Amazon). I miss the Foveon look and DP2s’ street camera capabilities, which my quick shots from the American Apparel rummage sale show.

Ergonomically, the Leica X1 is a superior compact by every measure. The sensor is larger, and low-light performance is better than the DP2s. I’m hugely satisfied with the X1 as a dSLR-performing compact. But for all enthusiasts’ talk about the “Leica look“, I still prefer the Foveon look, which is richer and 3D-like.

But the gear is only as good as the photographer. My challenge is shooting my wife’s bead necklaces so they look good and color is accurate. We don’t want any unsatisfied customers because the necklace is different from the photos. So far, the first set is representative. It’s a start.

My wife is starting with four necklaces, all featuring Kazuri ceramic beads. She explains about them:

Kazuri are ‘good karma’ beads to wear. They are handmade by women in Kenya in good working conditions. These beads help them support their families and often extended families. I’m happy to work with them and feel it is better than working with beads made in less friendly conditions. I swooned the first time I saw a display of Kazuri beads years ago at a bead bazaar. I knew I wanted to work with them. They are colorful, high quality works of art.

She has collected many of the beads for over 20 years, particularly African trade beads used in some of the designs. There’s a symmetry to using cottage-industry-made Kazuri beads to make necklaces sold from an online-cottage shop. Now if we can just sell some.

Do you have an Etsy or other online retail story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

The “Social Generation” takes cues from its peers. There’s a kind of group think among Millennials, which social networking services like Facebook reinforce. Marketers already are learning that Millennials, also called Echo Boomers or Generation Y, have limited brand loyalty. Product affinity directly relates to the peer group—what friends and other people of similar age are using. According the Australian Leadership Foundation:

While the Builders’ Generation [Gen X] are most influenced by authority figures and Boomers make decisions based on data and facts, post-modern youth are more likely to make a decision based on the influence of their own peers. Our research has further confirmed that the biggest factor determining the choice a teenager will make is the experiences of their core group of 3 to 8 friends. Rather than making independent decisions based on core values, they live in a culture encouraging them to embrace community values, and to reach consensus.

Jeanna Mastrodicasa, University of Florida assistant vice president for Student Affairs, identifies seven traits Millennials share in common:

• They feel “special”
• They’re “sheltered” by parents
• The feel “confident”—empowered
• They are “team-oriented” in actions/decisions
• They are “conventional” in attitudes about intolerance
• They feel “pressured” to succeed or to take certain actions
• They make “achieving” a priority, which is reinforced by peer groups

Apple has cued up The Fab Four to benefit from Millennials’ communal consensus attitudes. The Beatles came to iTunes one week ago, in an exclusive digital download distribution deal that ends sometime in 2011. A day later, Nov. 17, 2010, all 17 Beatles albums carried on iTunes ranked in to Top 50 and Beatles singles accounted for about one-quarter of the songs in the Top 200. But The Beatles iTunes reign with Millennials may be short-lived. Today, only seven albums make the Top 50, with “Abbey Road” the highest at No. 18. Only nine Beatles singles are in the Top 200, with “Here Comes the Sun” the highest at No. 66. Once again, the Millennials mob has topped the charts with contemporary artists, like Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Rihanna and Kanye West.

Millennials aren’t necessarily fickle, just consensus-oriented. Apple introduced The Beatles to a new generation of listeners. How far The Beatles go with Millennials will depend much on how the mob rules.

Here are some randomly-chosen Generation Y primers:

• “Generations Online in 2009“, Pew Internet
• “The Millennial Generation“, Jeanna Mastrodicasa, University of Florida
• “Millennials will make Online Sharing in Networks a Lifelong Habit“, Pew Internet
• “Questions and Answers about Generation X/Generation Y“, Boston College’s Sloan Work and Family Research Network
• “Understanding Generation Y“, Mark McCrindle, Australian Leadership Foundation

By far, educators provide the best assessments of Millennials’ character and cultural attitudes.

Do you have a generational story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

From the Economist email:

From today, the full print edition will be available to download for reading on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch by 9pm London time (4pm New York time) each Thursday. We have reformatted the newspaper to make the most of these devices while retaining the familiar feel of the Economist, with all the articles, charts, maps and images from each week’s print edition.

All articles are fully cached for reading even when you don’t have an internet connection. And we have included our audio edition so you can listen to every article, read by professional newscasters, with easy switching between reading and listening.

Full access to the Economist via the apps is included with your current subscription.

Full access “included” with my print subscription is outstanding. It’s just what I, or you, deserve for being a loyal print subscriber. By comparison, to get each week’s New Yorker on iPad, readers must pay $4.99 per issue, whether they are casual readers or subscribers. It’s a simply stupid approach: Punish loyal customers by separately charging them everywhere they read. Condé Nast editors should instead reward loyal subscribers and seek to move the readership away from print to digital, which would greatly reduce publication and distribution costs.

Wired.com, which also is owned by Condé Nast, put some perspective on the ridiculous digital pricing in September 27 post. John Abell writes:

Media executives inside and outside of Condé Nast have told wired.com that they are determined to try to charge more for digital subscriptions than they do for print—small digital dollars instead of print pennies—because they believe they are offering a much greater experience and value than possible on paper.

My New Yorker subscription expired in early summer, but I chose not to renew. I assumed that an iPad app would soon release, and it came in late September. But the $5 per-copy pricing simply stunned. There is no “greater experience” for which I would pay $4.99 a week, when a yearly print subscription is $39.95 for 47 issues. Would you? Did you? The New Yorker‘s approach is likely to hurt the magazine’s long-term economics with paying customers and to slow down digital adoption.

Early Ebook and Digital Magazine Comparisons
Some historical perspective: I read my first ebook in 1999, and I repeatedly praised the format as the logical successor to print. Among the benefits:

• Publishers could increase margins by reducing publication costs
• Ebooks are more convenient to carry and font-sizes are adjustable
• Consumers could buy ebooks for less than they would pay for print
• Digital could make publishing easier and cheaper for newer writers
• Book publishers could make available out-of-print titles in digital formats

In March 2000, when I worked at CNET News.com, colleague Evan Hansen asked: “Is online publishing ready for prime time?” He asked the right question. Stephen King released a digital download around that time, and there were e-book investments from Barnesandnoble.com, Microsoft and Time Warner, among others. The ebook was posed to be big business. But it flopped; signature failure: Shuttering of Barnesandnoble.com’s ebook three year after its opening— RIP: 2000-2003. There are many reasons why in the early go, e-books flopped, but one stands out: Pricing. Publishers generally priced e-books the same as hard cover editions, negating all the aforementioned benefits while taking away others, such as lending.

Amazon deserves high praise for breaking the ebook pricing logjam and providing through Kindle Reader a mass-market consumption device. Amazon made e-books affordable, an approach Condé Nast should apply to digital magazines like the New Yorker. Book publishers weren’t threatened by the Internet in the early Noughties the way magazine and newspaper publishers are today. Publishers struggle to make money, in part because they give so much content away for free. So what? Their remedy is to bleed loyalists and let the rabble scoff down free content?

Changing Economics Demand New Approaches
In August 2009, I asked: “Can You Charge for News? Ask Google“. The answer is disturbing. I looked at three organizations—Advertising Age, GigOM and Wall Street Journal—using three different paywall models. But all three organizations shared one thing in common: Their content in some form or another is accessible by Google search bots. In April 2010 post “The Price You Pay Google for Paywalls“, I casestudied Reid Reviews. The site is behind a paywall, with only two pages available to Google search. The result: Reid Reviews is nearly invisible. What’s that saying? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, does it make a sound?”

Back-end publishing economics are the same today as 20 years ago. Publisher pays someone to write content, which subscribers used to pay for. But with so much stuff given away for free online, to support the Google search-driven economy, publishers give readers less incentive—in many instances none whatsoever—to pay. Content still costs to produce, but fewer people pay for it. Digital subscriptions are a new market where people can pay. The question is approach. The New Yorker chooses to treat iPad like single-copy newsstand sales. That makes sense for non-subscribers. A second—it’s included in the cost of your subscription—option would reward loyal readers, and the magazine could open a new market on iPad and other portable devices. As explained in July, iPad reading is more immersive than any other device or print. More immersive reading should exactly be the priority of a magazine like the New Yorker. Economist has the right approach.

I can’t resist taking another dig at the New Yorker, which is meant more in fun. Since September, the magazine has sent me “past due” notices, with increasingly credit collector tones. The most recent notice warned that my “credit privileges” had been suspended. Credit for what? I pay in advance by the year. My wife and I got good laughs out of the notices, which seemed simply other-universe absurd. Three days ago, after seeing how the Economist rightly treated subscribers, I called the New Yorker asking if  there might be in the future an affordable iPad subscription. Maybe. I also took advantage of the $29.95/year offer to renew my print edition—one penny more than buy six issues on iPad.

Do you have a news media that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

The polling started innocently enough. On November 12th, I blogged: “This film is rated PC: No Macs were used in the making of this video“, praising a Microsoft marketing video. I also inserted the aforementioned poll. Respondents had four choices: Windows PC, Macintosh, Linux PC and Other. Three days later, I awoke to 682 votes, with 507 for Windows PC, 77 for Linux PC, 70 for Macintosh and 19 for Other. That worked out to about 76 percent Windows PC, nearly 12 percent Linux PC and more than 11 percent Macintosh. The Windows PC response was a little lower than I expected, but not by much.

An Unbelievable Result
Linux PC surprised me, so I embedded the same poll in new post: “Do more Betanews readers use Linux PCs than Macs?” I predicted: “This post may marshall the fanboys and skew further results”. That same day, November 15th, a poll commenter simply identified as Jesse responded (comment grammatically corrected):

I have a feeling this poll has massive amounts of bullshit in it, provided by Betanews’s core audience of 13 year-old Xbox Live kids. More people browse the Web on iOS than Linux, so honestly it’s not even a question. Would someone would mark Linux when they’re on Windows just to make Apple look worse? Probably. You people are that sad.

I don’t agree with the “sad” dig at my readers, but Jesse and I are otherwise in agreement about the results being skewed—well, with a caveat I’ll explain in a few paragraphs. As I write there are 1,961 votes:

• 1,191 for Windows PC (60.73 percent)
• 496 for Linux PC (25.29 percent)
• 236 for Macintosh (12.03 percent)
• 38 for Other (1.94 percent)

That’s a fairly good size sampling, but it’s unqualified. I don’t know who the people responding are. I also don’t have handy information on which Websites or forums link to the poll. Could there be a rallying among Linux blogs and forums? The poll uses cookies to prevent repeat voters, but it wouldn’t take much tech savvy to get around that. PollDaddy provides just basic tools, even with my $200/year Pro account, for analyzing data. IP filtering is revealing. There are 1,807 IP addresses, with the largest number of votes (22) coming from bellsouth.net string. Microsoft.com accounts for another 7 IPs.

Geographic analysis is surprisingly useful. Only 958 responses are from the United States. Nearly 64 percent for Windows PC, about 19 percent for Linux PC and 14.5 percent for Macintosh. Canada: 158 responses. United Kingdom: 132 responses. If you believe the Netherlands’ 16 votes, then an equal number—43.75 percent—of people identify themselves as Windows PC users and Linux PC users. Bulgaria’s 59 votes come out to 83 percent Linux PC users (I just might believe that). To my surprise—and I see this as good finding—people from 94 countries responded to the poll.

Questioning Polls and Surveys
Now for that caveat: I didn’t ask which PC operating system people use but how they identify themselves as personal computer users. The poll is specifically meant to measure sentiment, which is about the only value I see coming from any poll or survey. The results reflect respondents’ attitudes rather than what they actually use. But sentiments of whom? That’s the data problem with this poll and many others like it.

Internet polls are suddenly the rage, and the results are easily shared on social networks (yeah, yeah, Facebook). Just click “Like”. The results are too easily believed as they spread. But the data isn’t necessarily representative of anything, and results can be manipulated. Take this post. Based on the data I could have written here or at Betanews something sensational about the surprisingly large number of Linux users or dwindling number of Windows users. I’ve got the data, backed up nearly 2,000 respondents from more than 90 countries. That makes the poll seemingly credible. But it’s not. I know from my everyday dealings, where I often either observe or ask what operating systems businesses or consumers use, the majority run Windows. Virtually no one uses Linux. If by some strangeness, I’m wrong, I just passed up one of the biggest tech stories of the decade. But I’m not wrong, because the data is incomplete and respondents haven’t been properly vetted.

I see poll or survey data being manipulated or misreported nearly every day. Sometimes the fault is the interpretation (by the pollster or people reporting/blogging about it) or the actual poll or survey (Web metrics data is among the most problematic). For online polls, people self-select to take them. Good pollsters weight the data to compensate for how self-selection skews the data, but if the data is relatively clean why should math massaging be necessary? Phone polls/surveys can be fairly random in their representation of the target populace, unless the respondents have been prequalified. Sentiment is another problem, because it can change, sometimes dramatically. Imagine a poll taken about Americans’ attitudes towards muslims on Sept. 10, 2001 and one taken two days later.

CBS News’ Airport Scanner Poll
On November 15th, CBS news posted story “Poll: 4 in 5 Support Full-Body Airport Scanners“. The headline actually misstates the data. CBS News asked 1,137 U.S. adults by telephone: “Should airports use full-body airport scanners?” Eighty-one percent said yes. But agreeing that airports should use the scanners isn’t the same thing as supporting them. It’s this kind of nuance that a comprehensive survey would seek to reveal. For example, I may believe that Barack Obama should be president but not support all of his agenda. You might answer a poll saying the government should use whatever means necessary to fight terrorism, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean supporting surveillance of you or your neighbors.

Timing is important, too. CBS News conducted the poll November 7-10, just as full-body scanners were coming to major airports—San Diego’s scanner(s) arrived in August, among 11 airports planned for this year. Presumably, most respondents haven’t been through a full-body scanner. How would they answer if asked November 29th, right after the busy Thanksgiving travel weekend?

CBS News’ poll result is startling. For most of November there have been news stories every day regarding conflict and controversy about full-body scanners (Then there was the high-profile incident here in San Diego just last week). The U.S. Senate held hearings on airport scanners just two days ago. Has CBS News uncovered some media conspiracy? The news stories suggest people are pissed about the scanners. In contrast, the poll indicates most Americans believe that airports should use the security devices. A broader, well-crafted survey might sniff out the differences and truly be newsworthy. So there remains uncertainty between the poll and the news about the extent of Americans’ outrage or acceptance of full-body scanners. That the poll raises the question but offers no real answer makes the findings unreliable.

Can you really trust polls or surveys? My answer is no for the majority of them. In a future post, I’ll offer tips on how to conduct reasonably reliable polls or surveys.

[Photo Credit: Greg Grieco/Penn State University]

Do you have a story about polls, pollsters or surveys that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

I’m a longstanding critic of public companies, because of conflicting ethical objectives. It’s the great American contradiction: U.S. law treats businesses like people, but the organizations don’t share the same moral objectives as the human beings they represent. The “good of all” is the shareholder, not humankind. This moral difference is one of the major reasons some businesses egregiously act against the common good of all people—some of whom are their customers.

There is in business no moral high ground. The high ground is quagmire, because all public companies share a single, moral objective—to make profits for stockholders. By that measure, any action that undermines making money for shareholders is immoral. Similarly, investment banks and other Wall Street entities represent investors with the same moral objective and another: For those individuals servicing investments to make as much money as possible. Their self-serving objective often puts individual gain ahead of the good of investor customers.

I’m making a distinction between company shareholders and investors with broader portfolios, because Desoer does. From her prepared testimony:

Many investors limit Bank of America’s discretion to take certain actions. When working with delinquent customers, we aim to achieve an outcome that meets customer and investor interests, consistent with whatever contractual obligations we have to the investor. Duties to investors add complexities to the execution of modification programs and can result in confusion for customers.

Desoer isn’t talking about casual investors but the U.S. government. She explains that BoA only owns 23 percent of the loans it services. Of the remaining 77 percent, “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the investors on 60 percent of these loans,” she blithely asserts, adding:

Treasury, investors and other constituencies often change the requirements of their modification programs. HAMP [Home Affordable Modification Program] alone has had nearly 100 major program changes in the past 20 months. Fannie and Freddie, as investors, have layered on additional requirements, conditions and restrictions for HAMP processing. When these changes occur, we and other servicers have to change our process, train our staff and update technology. These changes can also affect what is required of the customer, for example the need for new or different documentation.

Talk about playing the blame game. Desoer basically blames the government, creator of the HAMP program, for BoA’s inability to modify more mortgages. In making such audacious claim she shifts the focus away from the reason for the Congressional hearings—industrywide, pervasive mishandling of mortgage and foreclosure paperwork. Asserting that “changes” necessitate customers providing “new or different documentation” distracts from Bank of America’s mishandling of foreclosure paperwork, which by far is the greater problem.

Mortgage holders and servicers are sitting on a powder keg of toxic mortgages, potentially much greater than already revealed. Some of the mangled paperwork reveals that somebody awarded mortgages that home owners weren’t qualified to receive, such as “liar’s loans“. These risky mortgages were later bundled together as investment packages given AAA-ratings. That’s fraud, by several legal measures, securities and/or tax fraud depending on how the mortgages were packaged as investments.

In making such accusation and misdirection, Desoer is acting on behalf of BoA shareholders and their short-term interests. There’s the distinction between investors and shareholders—the latter being in Bank of America. Her first moral objective is to her shareholders, by using tactics to minimize risks that BoA’s mortgage portfolio will explode into financial hardship if not disaster. She has no incentive to be truthful or forthcoming.

That’s the problem unraveling foreclosure fallout resulting from the housing bubble collapse. Government agencies, Congress, aggrieved mortgage holders and many other outsiders expect one kind of behavior when they’re confronted by another. The highest moral objective of these investment banks and other mortgage holders or servicers is money—if not making it then not losing it. Journalist Matt Taibbi has recognized much of the behavior for what it is: Scamming. I highly recommend his book  Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America and regular writings for Rolling Stone.

By the way, Desoer’s investor accusation/misdirection is itself a scam. A lie. A cheat. From a story yesterday by Karen Weise in ProPublica:

Desoer’s testimony echoes what homeowners have long heard, that investors are frequently denying them help from federal program created to foster loan modifications. But as ProPublica has reported, that’s simply not the case. Investors rarely have a say in loan modifications or block such modifications.

Something else revealing in Desoer’s testimony: “Of the nearly 14 million loans in our servicing portfolio, 23 percent of the portfolio is owned by Bank of America.” That’s a stunning figure. More than three quarters of the loans being serviced by BoA belong to some other organization. That’s another context from which to look at her investors accusation/misdirection, as it’s essentially the 77 percent she uses to protect 23 percent obligation to her shareholders.

The investor blame game is but one tactic. Another is to blame homeowners for not paying their bills. Blame, blame, blame is meant to distract from the real problem. The mangled paperwork. In the latest Rolling Stone, issue 1118, Matt Taibbi writes in “Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners“:

Why don’t the banks want us to see the paperwork on all these mortgages? Because the documents represent a death sentence for them. According to the rules of the mortgage trusts, a lender like Bank of America, which controls all the Countrywide loans, is required by law to buy back from investors every faulty loan the crooks at Countrywide ever issued. Think about what that would do to Bank of America’s bottom line the next time you wonder why they’re trying so hard to rush these loans into someone else’s hands…

That’s why one banker CEO after another keeps going on TV to explain that despite their own deceptive loans and fraudulent paperwork, the real problem is these deadbeat homeowners who won’t pay their fucking bills. And that’s why most people in this country are so ready to buy that explanation. Because in America, it’s far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it.

[Photo Credit: Jeff Turner]

Do you have a mortgage or foreclosure story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

I cringe when walking by a public toilet stall and hearing someone talking into their cell phone. I’ve heard men taking what clearly are business calls. Oh, please! I’d fire your ass, for sitting it on the toilet seat and talking to me (your client or boss). Could toilet talking be the real reason for noise-cancelling cell phones or Bluetooth earpieces? Surely someone will hear you doing your toilet business—or that of the person in the next stall—while you’re taking the call.

Perhaps the problem is an old one, and I am naïve about it. Cordless phones predate cellulars. I would never use a cordless phone in the bathroom, but many other people surely have. Perhaps you? Hotels encourage bathroom calling by often placing phones within reach of room toilets. What’s different now: Calling in public restrooms. What next? Hotels adding fold-down desks to public stalls, so that patrons can set up temporary toilet offices? “Our stalls are soundproof and comfy with free Wi-Fi should you want to make video calls”.

Bad Phone Behavior by the Numbers
Today, Microsoft released results from a survey conducted by Harris Interactive spotlighting bad phone behavior. Harris telephoned 2,024 Americans over age 18 between Oct. 6-17, 2010, about their mobile phone usage. Forty percent of respondents admitted to using cell phones in the bathroom—55 percent of 18-34 year olds. Among 18-24 year-olds, 19 percent admitted to dropping cell phones in a toilet—6 percent of respondents 25 or older.

What I wonder: How many people were too embarrassed to admit bathroom calling or mishaps? I wouldn’t be surprised if the overall percentages aren’t higher, particularly when weighing an important group not included in the survey: 13 to 18 year-olds. Mobiles are so common, maybe 10-18 year-olds would be more sensible. What? You think teens and tweens don’t phone from the throne?

The Harris survey suggests people aren’t being totally honest: “72 percent identified bad mobile phone behavior as one of their top 10 pet peeves, but only 18 percent of mobile phone owners admit they are guilty of displaying such behavior.” But what is bad phone behavior?

When Is It Rude to Use Your Mobile?
Well, hell’s bells, I’ve got a personal list of bad phone behavior. In order of offensiveness or dangerousness:

1. Texting and driving, which isn’t just rude, it’s dangerous. Last year, I nearly had an accident with some guy texting while riding a motorcycle.
2. Retrieving data and driving. If you’re lost or looking for the next Starbucks, pull over. Don’t use Bing or Google search or maps from a cell phone while driving.
3. Driving one-handed talking on a cell phone. Hands-free, baby—it’s the law in California and some other states.
4. Toilet talking. There’s no reason to do your business while, ah, doing your business.
5. Talking while waiting in line for service. Are you bugged as much as I am by people blabbering on their mobiles while paying for groceries, fast food or other goods? It’s obnoxiously rude to everyone waiting behind you and to the cashier most of all.
6. Obsessively texting in the presence of others. Have you never heard Stephen Stills song “Love the One You’re With”? Be present with the people who are with you, not the ones somewhere else. There’s time for those other folks when you’re alone.
7. Cell phone ringing in movie or meeting. You were told to turn it off. Nearly one-quarter of 18-24 year-olds acknowledged disrupting an “event such as a wedding, religious service or play”.
8. Texting or gaming while walking in public places. It’s rude and dangerous. Forty-nine percent of 18-24 year-olds admitted to having “tripped or walked into something while walking and texting or emailing on their mobile phone”.

There is a real mobile phone etiquette problem, for which Americans’ lack of proper toilet training is evidence. According to Harris: “Less than half (48 percent) of adults believed talking on a mobile phone in a public restroom is inappropriate phone behavior, and two in five (43 percent) believed texting, emailing or surfing the Web in a public restroom is inappropriate.” Cough. Cough.

I Need Your Toilet Talking Confession
In September, I planned to relaunch joewilcox.com as “5 minutes with Joe”. But job hunting, writing for Betanews, family responsibilities and blog migration/retooling delayed the plan until November. All along I planned to debut with podcast “Toilet Training”. Today’s Microsoft survey deflates the plans. Too bad, Microsoft’s data would have made good follow-up post to mine. It’s a lesson learned: Don’t hesitate! Move faster!

I’m simply not ready to do the podcast in a rush—so this post is its substitute. Originally, I had planned two companion “Toilet Training” podcasts, and there’s no reason why not do the second. The first would have been the contents of this post, with accompanying survey about bad bathroom behavior. No survey is needed now, given the breadth of the one commissioned by Microsoft.

The second podcast still fits, but it can only happen with your help. I’m asking for people to call my Google Voice number (619-940-7220) and leave a message about using cell phones in bathrooms. If you’re opposed to such activity, then say so. If you use a cell phone in the bathroom, particularly in a public toilet, I want to hear why. I will use the recordings as main content for a podcast about why or why not people use cell phones in bathrooms. Please identify yourself—first and last name. No crank calls.

[Illustration Credit: Microsoft infographic]

Do you have a mobile etiquette story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

Bias, eh? Don’t make me laugh. In some mythological land existing in some news management’s imagination, there is unbiased reporting. In the real world, there is no such thing. Good journalists may strive for objectivity, but there is always some slanting influence, even nothing more than culture, experience or personality. News reporters are as opinionated as anyone else. They have their favorite brands and political leanings that can be tough to set aside, even unsconsciously. Then there are factors going on behind the scenes, like the quest for ratings, subscriptions or pageviews.

Keith’s show long ago moved from news to opinion. A real peacock (not the NBC mascot) couldn’t bluster more colors than KO’s liberal primping. For example, on October 27th, Keith opined: “If the Tea Party wins, America loses“.

Keith pontificated:

Vote backward, vote Tea Party. And if you are somehow indifferent to what is planned for next Tuesday, it is nothing short of an attempt to use Democracy to end this Democracy, to buy America wholesale and pave over the freedoms and the care we take of one another, which have combined to keep us the envy of the world.

That’s a fairly strong opinion. So, what? NBC brass is shocked that one of its star anchors has liberal political leanings? I mean, c`mon now. That said, MSNBC does have policies in place governing political contributions. Keith violated them, and, strangely, fairly late in the election process. I guess someone put the fear of Tea party into him.

Keith donated 2,400 bucks to each of three Democrats: Jack Conway in Kentucky and Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grivalva in Arizona. Those aren’t exactly huge sums of money. But any one of the contributions would violate NBC news rules prohibiting political donations without special exception. This kind of restriction is common among reputable news organizations, and KO has been in the business long enough to have known better. Bias considerations aside, he broke the rules.

Did Keith think that perhaps he was above the rules? After all, he is among MSNBC’s most popular anchors, if not the most. I’m much more bothered by attitudes of entitlement than political contributions. Quite possibly Keith is the news because he believed he was above the news.

This afternoon, KO thanked his fans, whose support perhaps he hopes will get him off the hot seat and back into the anchor’s chair. He tweeted: “Greetings From Exile! A quick, overwhelmed, stunned THANK YOU for support that feels like a global hug & obviously left me tweetless XO”. Exile? Yeah, I’m bleeding for you (of course, that’s sarcastically meant!). No doubt, the headhunters are banging down the door with job offers. No one should feel sorry for Keith Olbermann.

But you should feel, or think, something about his self-described exile. Was MSNBC right to suspend him? Please answer the simple poll above.

[Update: About 30 minutes after I posted, MSNBC announced that KO would return on Tuesday (November 9th). So I've added a second poll, to supersede the first. Did MSNBC do the right thing? Also, I corrected the time stamp. Looks like my Webhost failed to turn back the clocks. I hope that won't cause other problems.]

Do you have a media ethics story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.

On November 1, 2010, I received a custom-configured 11.6-inch MacBook Air, which I ordered from Apple (upgraded to 1.6GHz processor and 4GB of DDR 3 memory). A day later, the tiny computer—0.3-1.7 cm high, 29.95 cm wide, 19.2 cm deep and 1.06 kg weight—replaced a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro. I can’t imagine being much more satisfied. MacBook Air is netbook enough me, despite the price gulf separating it from category-defining devices from manufacturers like ASUS and Acer. I would never buy a traditional netbook. There are too many sacrifices for the size and price. Also my priority is probably different from many other buyers. Based on analyst surveys, most netbook purchasers use their tiny weeny computer as adjunct to a more powerful PC. I want a thin-and-light laptop that’s enough to be my full-time machines.

Every sub-$400 netbook I’ve handled feels cheap and the screens lack something, starting with lower resolution. In a compact portable with small display, screen resolution, contrast and viewability from sharp angles are important usability benefits often missing, presumably to meet lower price points. I see traditional netbooks as lacking:

• Adequate screens
• Acceptable performance
• Robust graphics capability

Apple resolves all three problems—granted for higher price points—by providing:

• High-resolution display
• Speedy , solid-sate storage
• 256MB nVidia graphics chip

I would recommend the 11.6-inch to anyone looking for the benefits of a traditional netbook without the baggage, assuming they can justify the higher price. I wouldn’t pay what Apple charges ($999-$1,399, depending on 11.6-inch model configuration) for a small companion computer. It’s either good enough for full-time use or it’s not good enough at all.

I am thoroughly delighted by MacBook Ar, starting with the crisp , clear screen and zippy performance. In my forthcoming Betanews review I’ll more specifically assert why Apple’s little laptop offers similar benefits as netbooks—small size, light weight and long battery life, among them—without sacrificing performance or usability. I wouldn’t have believed that a tiny computer running a 1.4GHz or 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor could be sufficient for daily, demanding tasks. For nearly everything I do, including photo editing using Adobe Lightroom 3.2, the 11.6-inch MacBook Air responds better than the 2.53GHz MacBook Pro, which my wife inherited.

Giving Up Old Habits
My site redesign came to a screeching halt this week, because of the thinner Air I breathe. There is still much work to do here at joewilcox.com, following my official November 1st relaunch. Adopting Air means changing habits, in part to accommodate smaller hard drive (128GB vs 256GB) and slower Intel Core 2 Duo processor (1.6GHz vs 2.53GHz) compared to MacBook Pro. I’m running fewer apps and doing more in the browser. The change, which probably is unnecessary for nominal tasks, has disrupted my workflow; I am, like most people, a creature of habits. For creative work, habitual disruption is burdensome.

Change is good. New habits are good. I typically find disruptive environmental or computing changes bring unexpected long-term benefits. Rather than subsist by well trodden habits, I make changes that should eventually enliven the creative process and open up other areas of thought and inventiveness. Short-list of changes:

1. Working more in the browser. I’ve abandoned apps like NetNewsWire and Tweetie for Google News and Twitter Websites, among others. I had wanted to use Web-based mail but found Apple’s service too unacceptably sluggish. Although I’ve had no performance issues, they may come as I do more video editing. I can easily kill and relaunch browser apps in two clicks. I’m enjoying the different way of working, although it’s fresh, not new. I’ve merely increased the amount of productivity done in browser.
2. Kissing off Adobe Flash. Not that anyone reading Betanews would know, I agree with Apple CEO Steve Jobs that Flash is a resource hog. My Air’s Safari browser came Flash-free, and I’m going to keep it that way. I may use a Flash-to-HTML5 video extension or plugin, but there’s no rush. Two reasons: I’m rather enjoying not being assaulted by Flash ads on many Website, and I’ve observed that this Air and other 11.6-inch models tested at Apple Store won’t play YouTube embedded HTML5 videos. I want to know why. If Apple is touting HTML5 standards, but not conforming to them, there’s a story there.
3. Using lighter applications. This is future task. Sometime in early 2011, Apple will launch an application store for Snow Leopard. I’m assuming many of them will be lighter apps like those available for the iOS App Store.
4. Pushing up external storage. Even with a beefier hard drive, I always use an external disk for my music library, which is closing in on 100GB in size. I had been using a 500MB LaCie Little Lisk. I moved up to the Rikiki Superspeed 1 TB USB 3.0 external hard drive, which backward compatible with USB 2.0.
5. Getting out more. I want to do more storytelling about people, and that means getting out easily and processing and posting content quickly. MacBook Air is perfect compliment to my Leica X1 and Olympus LS-10 digital audio recorder.

As I will later explain in my review, MacBook Air isn’t for everyone, and many people will buy the little laptop as companion to a bigger machine. The littler Air is exactly what I’ve searched for in, light, lithe and lively laptop.

Do you have a MacBook Air story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: joewilcox at gmail dot com.