The 3L Mantra to live by!

We’re all labeled apparently; income level, sex, age, single, married, children and more. To sum up, we are seen to add up to nothing but a cookie that travels with a click of a mouse. WE are our own worst enemy. Naïve about our journeys online, we have supposedly become a gold mine for the government, advertising companies, and more who want so desperately to get to know us better. We are, literally, worth knowing. Our web choices, our little escapades into online dating and shopping are being tracked and profiled. This seems like our fate. The world is spilling with our data. There are no coincidences anymore. You don’t just happen to see online that there is a sale at Macy in San Francisco or that SRK, the Bollywood king just came out with a new movie. It’s all part of the design of public life online. But before we really get caught up with this Big Brother Orwellian notion, let’s take a moment to think of ourselves in all our complexity. I love Beatles, old Hindi songs, Aamir Khan...

Citations are the lifeblood of academia: who you cite, what you cite, when you cite…it’s the site of all contention, creation, and collaboration. But in this new media age, what happens when you’re examining a web site and its activity only to discover that having referenced it, it may no longer exist. Ah…your word stands alone as witness to a cyber event that perhaps is long gone or migrated to some other nook on cyberspace. Also, it’s painful to reference a webpage without getting into the messiness of copyright…who owns that space? Is it the user, the platform owner, an organization that perhaps the user belongs to or all of the above? It’s the hell of online copyright. And things can get even more complicated. For instance, I need to reference an image online that a user was looking at. That happens to be the photograph of a painting of Mona Lisa. So apparently, even though the original may be out of copyright, the photograph is not. The delightful chase begins…starting with the p...

Cybercafe in Almora, Central Himalayas

Just when we got over our nostalgia for the radio days, it seems to be back with a vengeance. Digital NPR is having its hay day…from iphones to the web; they’re scaling and scaling fast. All Things Considered…24/7 online and offline it seems. Check these stats out: http://www.truemeasure.com/onlineStatistics.php

Facebook warns you that you can choose your Username only once…you’re pretty much stuck with “iWearNeonUnderwearToBed” as a sign in..best of luck on getting that job! As employers, colleagues and friends that you haven’t yet gotten around to de-friend check you out and scrutinize your moves and shakes online, are you forced to live with your mistakes? Really? I see that with the Kodak mafia threatening to make my online photos “disappear” if I don’t order some prints from them..their threats have become part of my monthly routine and yet my photos continue to live a long and supposedly healthy life on their turf. I get it. There’s no free lunch…until someone else comes along to offer you free food? Do threats really work in this online business? If you threaten, you’ve got to see it through otherwise you lose credibility. If this is the new cat and mouse game between online users and producers, what is the prize?

Enterprise Ireland surely knows how to woo you! In little brown conference bags you find Jameson Irish Whiskey to take you through for the rest of the evening in Palo Alto. Mainly Irish and Irish American entrepreneurs and venture capitalists gather to plot and plan how to chase money from pennies to dollars in this economic climate. Some good advice spews forth from a venture capitalist…if someone asks you, “will you be my mentor,” I say “No” …much of this is equated with dating…you don’t ask to get married on your first date, do you? Now that’s good advice. But they also demand face-to-face courtship. What then should we make of all the LinkedIn and Facebook chase that goes on with relative strangers? Does that go far at all? I personally have befriended several researchers, professors and practitioners in my field online. Over the years I would say some of these have become genuine relationships as we exchange Real favors in Virtual settings. So is Venture Capital in Silicon Valley ...