The Art of Documentation

Writers are often tasked with writing persuasive essays or articles for their clients.  In persuasive writing, a writer’s goal is essentially to convince the audience to agree with the writer’s position about an issue. In many cases persuasive arguments are used to motivate the audience to not only agree, but to do something; take action, buy a product, join the revolution, etc.

For example, ad copy is designed to make you believe that buying Whiz Bang Brain Juice will turn your children into geniuses and not drooling sugar junkies.  Political copy is written to convince the audience that Candidate Bob sells children to slavers, while Candidate Ethel will lower your taxes and selling children has never even *occurred* to her as a budget concept and therefore, the audience should vote for Ethel, who won’t sell your children.

As a rule, advertising and political copy aside, the core elements of a persuasive essay rely on facts and research (reasons why the reader should follow your ideas), transitional phrases (how you lead the reader to your conclusion), and a call to action (what you want the reader to do.)

Facts and Research:

Creating a successful persuasive essay requires that you argue facts, not opinions. In order to write a convincing paper you must first establish your facts and then provide statements to support those facts.  The following is an example of fact-argued persuasive writing: The only good reason to ban a book is if you want every student in the school to read it. Studies by Stanford have shown that banning books only make them more popular and heavily sought after by the students.

Transitional Phrases

Transitional phrases and words are used to show how ideas are connected. Transitions take your reader from one thought to another. More importantly, if you don’t make connections between your ideas, the reader may insert their own counter arguments. In persuasive writing, it’s important that you lead the reader in the direction you want them to go. Transitional phrases are also useful in persuasive writing because you can use them to show both sides of an argument, while subtly arguing your point.

For example, in this phrase; This legislation would ban naturally occurring substances that can be found in extracts and essential oils. However, no toxicity has ever been proven when used as a topical application, the word “however” is the transition between ideas.

Robert Harris at Virtual Salt has written a great table of transitional logic, which I recommend as a refresher on transitional phrases.

Call to action

The purpose of a persuasive essay is to exhort the reader to change their beliefs, or to do something they might not have considered before. As an example, I’ve recently written a persuasive essay on why small bath and body manufacturers across the US should lobby against proposed legislation pending in Colorado. You can read the essay here:  Colorado legislation may derail small manufacturers.  The target audience for this essay is small businesses and boutique manufacturers of soap and other bath and body products which will be impacted if this legislation passes as written.  I’ve included the facts about the proposal, explained why the proposal would be bad for the target audience, and then suggested various courses of action that they can take before the bill is voted upon.

Ok, great…but *how* do I write persuasive essays?

1. Choose your position. Which side of the issue or problem are you going to write about, and what solution will you offer? Know the purpose of your essay.
2. Analyze your audience. Decide if your audience agrees with you, is neutral, or disagrees with your position.
3. Research your topic. A persuasive essay must provide specific and convincing evidence.
4. Structure your essay. Determine what evidence you will include and in what order you will present the evidence. Remember to consider your purpose, your audience, and your topic.

The Following Criteria are Essential to Produce an Effective Argument:

1. Be well informed about your topic. To add to your knowledge of a topic, read thoroughly about it, using legitimate sources. Take notes.
2. Test your thesis. Your thesis, i.e., argument, must have two sides. It must be debatable. If you can write down a thesis statement directly opposing your own, you will ensure that your own argument is debatable.
3. Disprove the opposing argument. Understand the opposite viewpoint of your position and then counter it by providing contrasting evidence or by finding mistakes and inconsistencies in the logic of the opposing argument.
4. Support your position with evidence. Remember that your evidence must appeal to reason. The following are different ways to support your argument:
   • Facts – A powerful means of convincing, facts can come from your readings, observations, or personal experiences.
   • Statistics – Be sure your statistics come from responsible sources. Always cite your sources.
   • Quotations – Direct quotations from leading experts effectively support your position.
   • Examples – Examples enhance your meaning and make your ideas concrete. They are the proof that backs up your point.

(A note here: marketing copy, ad copy, and political copy often do not follow the same sort of academic structure rules like the ones above. Those are persuasive arguments based on emotive triggers and memetic structure. They are not, as a rule, fact based arguments. It is still persuasive, but it is a whole different kettle of fish.)

To Evaluate the Effectiveness of an Argument Essay, Ask Two Questions:

1. Is the opinion based on facts and specific evidence rather than on personal judgments and emotional reactions?
2. Does the method of presenting the opinion have enough impact to persuade the reader to agree?

To sum up, persuasive writing utilizes logic and reason to show that one idea is more legitimate than another idea. It attempts to persuade the audience to adopt a certain point of view or to take a particular action. The argument must always use sound reasoning and solid evidence by stating facts, giving logical reasons, using examples, and quoting experts. Persuasive writing is one of the most effective tools in a writer’s box of tricks, and keeping your skills honed is essential to being able to assess and provide the services your clients need.

Do you use Gmail, even for personal mail? Do any of your clients use Gmail? If so, you might have noticed that there was a pretty massive shift in your privacy a couple of days ago. CNET corespondent Molly Wood called it a privacy nightmare. You might not have noticed it. But unless you take a few steps to protect yourself, Google may be sharing some of your confidences with the world.

When Google introduced Buzz — its answer to Facebook and Twitter — it hoped to get the service off to a fast start. New users of Buzz, which was added to Gmail on Tuesday, found themselves with a ready-made network of friends automatically selected by the company based on the people that each user communicated with most frequently through Google’s e-mail and chat services.

As well, if you connected to Buzz via iPhones or other mobile devices, your location could be broadcast to those people whom Google had decided should know where you were, who were emailing, and what you were saying.

As Miguel Helft in the NYTimes said: “E-mail, it turns out, can hold many secrets, from the names of personal physicians and illicit lovers to the identities of whistle-blowers and antigovernment activists.”

Evgeny Morozov wrote in a blog post for Foreign Policy, “If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my Internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government.”

Harriet Jacobs, a psuedonym for a woman who writes about violence against women, succintly writes on her blog that the people she receives email from most often include her ex-husband, his friends, and abusive comments. This, she writes, “is why it’s SO EXCITING, Google, that you AUTOMATICALLY allowed all my most frequent contacts access to me….My privacy concerns are not trite. They are linked to my actual physical safety.”

Harriet is not the only one who has to worry, and for Google to suddenly decide to monetize gmail by sharing gmail user’s data with a spectrum of un-approved users, certainly seems like a step away from “do no evil”.

Buzz is an “opt-out” service. In other words, your data, if you use gmail, was automatically disclosed to everyone with whom you’ve emailed more than once or twice.  The  people at Google just assume you want to be part of their new world where “[i]f you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

What distressed me most is that Google made Buzz automatic. It was folded into Gmail, assimilated your contacts and email history, and created these first social connections without ever asking permission. If you had ever created a Google Profile (an innocuous webpage that might collect comments you left on Maps or links to your LinkedIn profile), then Google went a step further — it published these social connections in a place accessible to the world. And even if you had not yourself created a Google Profile, your social connections could still be exposed on the other person’s Google Profile.

Don’t like it? The burden was on you to track all this down and make the privacy changes you wanted. Even if you did that, it wasn’t clear that it was even possible to truly “turn off buzz.” Flipping the switch at the bottom of Gmail didn’t work. Who knows how many people have been misled by that. (Google now acknowledges this on one of its support pages. All that switch does is “remove the Buzz label from your Gmail account,” or in other words, hide it within Gmail.)

Even after clicking “turn off buzz”, your Buzz connections persisted, they were still shown on your profile, and Buzz was still active (as you could readily see from a mobile client, such as an iPhone).

Yesterday’s slight modifications by Google make clear that this was indeed their design. Yesterday afternoon, Google released a statement.They did not back away from their business plan — they still make Buzz automatic and create these connections for you. Their response is, in essence, to blame you for not having figured out how to tweak these engineering settings yourself.

In particular, they point out that it’s possible to manually go through and block particular followers. But, to take one example, they do not mention the data leakage, in which these followers get access to information about your other social contacts before you block them. They also don’t mention that each Google-automated follower has to be blocked individually, which for journalists, attorneys, or anyone else with a large contact list that is concerned about client privacy, can take a significant amount of time.

Google did not ask your permission for this repurposing of your personal email information, it did not ask your permission to share it, and is not asking for your forgiveness now.

Imagine if Facebook had done this. Imagine they bought a major email provider, folded all of its users into their social network, and prepopulated lots of connections based on who they had emailed the most frequently.

Okay, now imagine that Facebook had placed a button on the email client page that said “turn Facebook off.” And that the button did not actually do what it said. Users and the press would be calling for Facebook’s head.

How to really turn off buzz

If the “turn off buzz” link at the bottom of Gmail isn’t the right way to actually turn the service off, what is?

Buried within its support pages, Google offers a three-step procedure you can follow to actually disable Buzz. Follow these steps in order, or it doesn’t work at all. The first step, contrary to what you might expect if you were not a Google engineer, is not to click “turn off buzz.”

1. First, you delete your google profile. You don’t hide it or change the name. You have to delete it completely. This doesn’t destroy your overall google account, but it does limit some of your functions. Here’s how to delete your profile.  (For those of us that never opted into having a profile, there is still some question as to what is being shown in other people’s feeds, or how to manage privacy settings.)
2. You have to go into buzz and manually delete your connections, including blocking everyone who is following you already. Depending on how many people Google automatically added, this could take a while.
3. Now it’s safe to go back to Gmail and click “turn off buzz.”

Even if Google ever changes their mind, and gives users an easy way to protect their data and their client’s data, this remains a massive violation of user trust on Google’s part. This sharing of personal information never should have been opt-out.

This is a huge shift in how Gmail uses our data. If this is Google’s method of dealing with our previously private data in the future, how many of us will really feel good about trusting our documents to Google Docs? Or our photos to Picasa?

Google has broken the trust, and taken the first public step towards evil. With millions and millions of user’s and their accompanying data, the question becomes, do they step back, or is there a greater evil coming?

Mollie Vandor is the Product Manager for Ranker.com and Media Director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter and on her blog, where she writes about the web, the world and what it’s like to be a geek chic chick.

The privacy policy might seem like just another box you have to check when signing up for a site. But in today’s web world, privacy is much more than just another barrier to registration, and it will only become more important as we move into the social, semantic world of web 3.0.

Privacy is the core currency of the social web, and like any other type of currency system there’s an exchange rate. In this case, the equation boils down to how much privacy the user is willing to give up in exchange for the features and functionality a site provides. It’s a tricky equation, and the answer varies for every user and for every site. But, with targeted advertising, connected social networks and constant lifestreaming becoming more mainstream by the day, privacy is poised to become one of the core issues that defines the relationship between users and websites. Understanding how and why that relationship works — or doesn’t work — is going to become a hallmark of both smart sites and smart users.

The Common Ground

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Like most transactions, privacy on the web is generally governed by a contract, often known as the “privacy policy.” There is some boilerplate language you can expect to see in pretty much every privacy policy on the web. Most sites will save your cookies, track your IP address, and store your login, registration and contact info. Despite the “Big Brother is watching” fears sometimes associated with words like “tracking” and “cookies,” you can rest assured that most publishers respect the fact that with great tracking power comes great responsibility. So, they’re using this information to serve up more appropriate ads, help you log back in if you forget your password, and make sure that they’re legally covered in case you turn out to be a 12-year-old kid in a place you’re not supposed to be surfing.

Publishers are generally pretty cautious in how they use this information, and sites are certainly learning from the very public battles web giants like Facebook have fought when their users feel uncomfortable with their privacy policies. Of course, there are different comfort levels for different users on different types of sites, particularly in the social media sphere. Although many privacy policies start with the boilerplate blah-blah-blah, the modern social network seems to fall into one of three categories when it comes to crafting their particular balance of privacy and functionality.

The Social Network: Share & Share a Lot

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Since the Friendster days, social networks have walked a fine line between protecting a person’s personal information and helping their members meet each other. Recently, with the rise of real-time social search and the development of entire app-based ecosystems, that line has become even blurrier as social networks struggle to stay both open and private at the same time.

It’s in the best interests of sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn to make their users feel safe and secure in sharing their information. The more they can convince you to feel comfortable sharing within their walled-off networks, the more incentive there is for other people to use their particular platform to stay up to date on what you’re up to. However, it’s also in these sites’ best interests to keep connections flowing between members, developers, and the major search engines.

Social networks have always had a vested interest in helping members find each other, often by making certain types of information publicly searchable by default on their sites. There’s also a relatively new and growing demand for social network statuses to show up in third-party search engines, and that demand will only continue to grow as more and more customers come to expect everything on the web to arrive in real-time.

These sites have a good reason for wanting to open their data up to search engines now, and they are expecting that consumers will be more receptive to these real-time deals. After all, if you want to see Facebook updates in your Google results, you’re going to have to accept that, at some point, Google had to index those updates. And Facebook — amongst other sites — seems to be banking on the idea that you might be willing to let that wall down a bit in order to gain those Google results.

As a result, many major social networking sites have recently started splitting the information you give them into different categories, some of which is considered public by default, and some of which isn’t. This distinction appears in privacy policies from MySpace to Meebo , where categories of information tend to be broken up into personal, profile information, and publicly posted content and activity. Users can then control who sees these different categories by defining different groups of connections with different levels of access.

Regardless of the site, these groups all start at public and end at totally private, which is nothing new. However, the definition of “public” has changed. Whereas “public” was once considered to mean “open to all users of a social networking site,” it has now become synonymous with “the entire Internet.” This adds a whole new layer of people with access to the privacy pyramid.

A similar shift in privacy expectations is also occurring as social networks become more open to third-party developers who seek to link their applications to the rich networks of data that large social networks have to offer. With 14.3 million users allowing the Mobsters app to access their MySpace data, and 69 million users playing Farmville, it’s clear that people are willing to open up their profiles and forgo some of their privacy in exchange for the services a third-party app developer has to offer. That’s why many sites are now adding clauses allowing them to connect third-party developers to your personal profile information — provided you approve that connection.

LinkedIn’s privacy policy is a perfect example of the balance many sites are trying to strike between encouraging third-party development and protecting your privacy. It explains that the site will “enable you to share your information and communicate with other Users, or provide (usually at your option) your personal details to third parties offering combined services with LinkedIn.” By putting the onus on the user, LinkedIn and sites like it allow the millions of users who want to exchange their information with developers to do so, while keeping the default settings at a more conservative level of privacy.

The Communication Platform: For Everyone’s Eyes Only

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Tumblr , Yelp , and Twitter are all social sites with distinct characteristics and uses. But when it comes to privacy policies, they all share similar struggles and similar solutions, making them more alike than you’d think. At their core, all three types of sites share the same purpose — to help the user broadcast information to a network of (presumably) interested people, many of whom the user may not know, or may not know very well.

Unlike the social networks discussed above, these sites don’t have to worry so much about creating different categories of connections, since they’re already assuming that you’re likely using them to broadcast on a one-to-many basis. So, these sites tend to protect only the most private of your personal information by default. For example, on Twitter, the standard privacy settings make a user’s name, bio and tweets publicly available, and the privacy policy clearly states that “Most of the information you provide to us is information you are asking us to make public.” However, geotagging is one of the few features that is disabled by default for all Twitter users, meaning that you must actively give the company permission to annotate your content with your location. Clearly, Twitter has decided that most users will accept their content being made public by default, but that location is something their users are not willing to exchange so easily.

Yelp does something similar in that their privacy policy posits that all content you create on Yelp is public, but they do promise to protect your most personally-identifying information when sharing that public content across the web. Yelp’s privacy policy says, “When we distribute your submissions to third parties, we typically include your account name (but not your personal information unless you include your personal information in your submissions).”

Tubmlr takes a similar approach, promising to protect your personally-identifying information while also warning the user that “if you submit information to ‘chat rooms,’ ‘forums’ or ‘message boards’ such information becomes public information, meaning that you lose any privacy rights you might have with regards to that information.” By refraining from specifically defining what a “forum” or “message board” means in the Tumblr universe, the company puts the burden on the user to figure out where their information will be public and where they can expect it to remain private. With monthly unique visits in the millions, it seems that Tumblr’s users don’t mind that very much. Clearly, the users creating content on these communication platforms are expecting an exchange rate that favors finding friends, followers, readers and reviewers to maintaining personal privacy.

Ultimately, these communication platforms do rely on that particular attitude towards privacy being a core attribute of their main user base, and so they provide policies that allow for a lot of information sharing, streaming and searching by default. Of course, users can always restrict the flow of that information by setting their profiles to private or protecting their status updates, but the reality is that for sites like these, it’s often as much in the user’s interest to broadcast to many as it is for the site itself.

The Location-Based App: Where You At?

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Like communication platforms, location-based apps have a bit of a luxury when it comes to putting their privacy policies together. They know their users are already open to the idea of giving up a certain amount of privacy in exchange for a certain level of connectivity. After all, why else would you use Foursquare , Loopt, Gowalla , or any other service that exists for the sole purpose of sharing your location with friends? The tricky thing for location-based services is figuring out how to make users feel safe sharing something as private as location with an entire network of people, while also allowing those users to do the things they signed up for in the first place.

That’s why these apps tend to be the most conservative when it comes to the privacy exchange rate — their very functionality hinges on users exchanging information. Loopt explains it well when they write “Loopt uses your personally identifiable, registration, profile, and location information to operate, maintain, and provide to you and other Users all of the features and functionality of the Loopt Services.” Users give information to get access to the service. If a user chooses to disclose less information, they receive fewer benefits of the service.

For example, in Gowalla’s case, the site automatically adds you to the feeds of a particular location when you check in there. Should you choose to turn that feature off, Gowalla says, “your check-ins will not be credited in the spot feed nor will you appear in Top 10 lists amongst other things.” Similarly, you can’t become the mayor of a place on Foursquare unless you upload a profile picture.

Users looking to make the most of a particular location-based app are also increasingly turning to third-party services like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to share their statuses with their entire social networks. This presents another privacy policy challenge to these sites, as they must address the way user information is shared outside the relatively close confines of their protected, proprietary networks.

Foursquare recently revised its privacy settings to allow users to specify very specific kinds of information to be sent to each site they connect their account to. A user can specify different levels of privacy for their friends on Facebook and their followers on Twitter. They also built a caveat into their privacy policy that allows them to share certain pieces of profile information in search results — both within the network and outside of it. They couched this caveat in the promise that sharing the really personal stuff would still be up to the user, since that information would only be viewable by the user’s friends. Loopt also puts the onus on the user to dictate their own privacy policy by specifying that Loopt will only share personally identifiable information with third parties based on the user’s personal settings.

The location-based apps expect their users — or at least their power users — to be willing to give up a certain level of privacy in exchange for features and functionality. The amount of people doing so tends to be much higher on these sites than it does on the traditional social network. However, these location-based sites also put users in control of the exchange rate, allowing them to easily manage the publicity of their updates and information.

Conclusion

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Ultimately, it is up to users to take that kind of control on all social sites. The only truly effective privacy policy is the one a user sets for himself by being conscious of the value of privacy as currency and making informed decisions about these exchange rates. And while that consciousness starts by understanding why different sites treat privacy the way they do, it ends with the user making educated choices about what to share and where to share it. The best privacy policies are not written by coders, copywriters or corporate lawyers. They’re the ones observed by people who know what they want from the web, and what they’re willing to give up to get it. That makes privacy a much more important issue than that innocuous little checkbox seems to imply.

As a visual writer, finding the right image to use is always important. Because there are a ton of photographers and graphic artists that generously upload photos for free and fair use using Creative Commons licenses, there is a lot of material out there.  But it can be difficult to sort through free and licensed images.  Because, while the images are free, it’s always important to properly credit the source.

All photo-sharing websites publish licensing information. But a newcomer in the image search universe makes it incredibly easy to use the photo with the due attribution.

Sprixi is a free image search engine. Using Sprixi is just a three step process – Search, Choose and Use. Sprixi sorts all images into topics. You can browse the topics in graphics or text using the Browse link placed right at the foot of the page.

Enter your search query and Sprixi takes over. What you get is a double framed window with the images on one scrollable pane. Choose any image from the results and view it in larger dimensions on the View pane.

The View pane provides usage and credit information about the image with a rollover of the mouse.

Usefulness – Sprixi learns and tries to sort all images by usefulness i.e. relevancy. Images are rated according to use, downloads, the ratings added from the yes/maybe/no buttons etc. Images are weighted more by the ratings given by registered users. Images can also be flagged for inappropriateness.

Image Size – Touch the bar chart like colored indicators and you can choose a specific size.

About this image provides complete information on the creator and the license.

The last step is to select your choice image and click on the corner placed Use tab. Sprixi gives you two options for fair use -

The Image with credit option comes with the attribution inked in fine print while the Image without credit asks you to manually provide that link. A Copy button makes it easy to copy-paste the image attribution link.

Look at the same images below to note the difference between the two options.

The image with the assigned license (the first option) is useful for cases where the image credit source is not explicitly mentioned. Images which are smaller in size may need an explicit credit link.

How Does Sprixi Source The Images?

Sprixi uses the Flickr API (but the service is not officially endorsed by Flickr). According to the FAQ, Sprixi is presently sourcing images from its own collection, Flickr and OpenClipArt. It also has a leaning towards public domain and commercial-friendly Creative Commons licenses.

Image search is no longer about Google and Bing. Services like Sprixi are re-working the usual with their unusual take. As I mentioned before, getting an image online is easy – what’s overlooked is giving the creator his or her rightful reward. Sprixi makes it a more deliberate affair.

Sprixi seems to be a win for both content creators who need images, and image creators who want a larger audience.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Tim Enalls of Inspiration Pro

According to numerous surveys, approximately 85% percent of our success in life is directly attributable to our communication and relationship building skills.

That means that no matter how ambitious someone is or how much they overcome their fears or how high their level of education, they’ll still have a low probability of going far in life without effective communication with skills needed to really connect with people.

And when I say connect with people, I don’t mean the ones that you naturally connect with from time to time. It is likely that those people have values and temperaments that closely match your values and temperaments. It doesn’t require much effort or skill to connect with those people.

Communication and success

I’m referring to the people that you like but you often find it more difficult to build a connection with them because you’re not sure what to say or do.

It takes skill to expand outside of that small circle of people that you’re used to and learning how to connect with the majority of people you come across. It is this kind of power that is guaranteed to catapult your success in life.

Developing your communication skills

When you’re trying to connect with the majority of people, you need to ask yourself 5 questions:

- Are you finding a common ground between you two?
- Are you making them feel comfortable?
- Are you making them feel understood?
- Is your relationship clearly defined?
- Are they feeling positive emotions as a result of interacting with you?

In order to fulfill these goals, you might want to consider the following…

14 Effective communication skills

1) Give them the impression that you’re enthusiastic about talking to them — Give them the impression that you would rather talk to them than anyone else in the world. When you give them the impression that you are excited about talking to them and that you care about them, you make them feel supremely positive and confident about themselves. They’ll be more likely to open up to you and have deep, personable conversations with you.

2) Ask open-ended questions about their interests — Ask questions that will get them to talk about their interests and their life in a way they never have before. Go into as much detail as possible and help them gain a new perspective about themselves and where they want to go in life.

3) Adapt to their body language and feelings — Get a feel for how they are feeling at the moment by observing their body language and voice tone. From this standpoint, you can tailor your words, body language, and voice tone to the ones they are more likely to respond positively to.

4) Show them approval: Tell them what you admire about them and why — One of the best ways to instantly connect with people is to be forthright and tell them exactly why you like or admire them. If being too direct isn’t appropriate, insinuate with a few indirect statements here and there. Either approach can be equally as effective.

5) Listen attentively to everything they say — Don’t focus too much on what you’re going to say next as they are talking. Instead, listen to every word they say and respond back as relevantly and smoothly as possible. This shows people that you are truly listening to what they have to say and you are fully engaged and in the moment with them. Also make sure to ask questions whenever there’s something they say that you don’t quite understand. You want to avoid all possible lapses in communication if you want to develop a fully engaged relationship with that person.

6) Give them prolonged eye contact — Strong eye contact communicates to the other person that you are not only captivated by them and what they have to say but that you are also trustworthy. When done in moderation, they will also assume you are confident in yourself because of your willingness to face them directly. As a result, people will naturally want to pay more attention to you and what you have to say.

7) Reveal as much about yourself as possible — One of the best ways to earn someone’s trust is to reveal yourself as openly as you can. Tell stories about interesting events from your life or just describe zany instances from normal everyday life. As you do this, make sure not to mention things that stray too far from where their interests and values lie. You can let them find out more about you as the relationship progresses.

8 ) Give the impression that you’re both on the same team — Use words like “we, us, we’re, our, and ourselves” to instantly build a bond. When you use those words, you make it seem like you and the other person are on the same team while everyone else seems more distant from the two of you.

9) Give them your best smile — When you smile at people, you communicate that you like them and their presence brings you happiness. Smiling at them will cause them to subconsciously want to smile back at you which will instantly build rapport between the two of you.

10) Offer helpful suggestions — Recommend restaurants you’ve been to, places you’ve been to, movies you’ve seen, helpful people they’d like to meet, books you’ve read, career opportunities and whatever else you can think of. Describe what was so great about those people, places and things and how they might appeal to the other person. If you suggest enough ideas that interest them, they will look at you as a “go to” person when they need to make a decision about what to do next.

11) Give them encouragement — If the person you’re dealing with is younger or in a more difficult position than you, they might want to hear some words of encouragement from you since you are more experienced or you seem to be doing well in life. This helps even out the relationship. If you want to have a healthy relationship with that person, you don’t want to seem like you have it all while the other person has nothing. Convince them that they can surpass their problems and limitations and they will look forward to having you as a person to talk to.

12) Appear to have a slightly higher energy level than the other person — Generally, people want to be around those who lift them up, instead of bringing them down. If you consistently have a lower energy level than other people, they will naturally gravitate away from you in favor of someone who is more energetic. To prevent this from happening, consistently indicate with your voice and your body language that you have a slightly higher energy level so that they’ll feel more energized and positive while around you. Don’t be so energetic that you put people off, but have just the right amount of energy and aliveness that will slightly build up their enthusiasm.

13) Say their name in a way that is pleasing to their ears — A person’s name is one of the most emotionally powerful words for them. But it’s not necessarily how often you say someone’s name that has an impact but how you say it. It may help if you practiced saying a person’s name for a minute or two so that you’ll induce just the right emotional reaction you’re going after. Invariably, if you state their name the most eloquently out of everyone they know, they’ll find you to be the most memorable.

14) Offer to take the relationship a step further — There are a number of things you could do to advance your friendship with someone: offer to eat with them, talk over a cup of coffee, see a sports game, have a beer or two with them, etc. Even if people don’t take you up on your offers, they will be flattered that you like them enough to want to take the friendship to a deeper level. In a way, they will look up to you because you have the guts to take charge of your life and build friendships instead of expecting those friendships to magically appear for you.

Become a skilled communicator

If you can develop only a few of these techniques, you’ll dramatically improve your ability to connect with people from all walks in life and social circles. Take some time to observe the most sociable people in your life and you’ll see many of these methods in full use. And they aren’t done in a way that is rigid or in a way that would be too noticeable by most people. They are done naturally and in a way that fits in with the current situation.

For the best results, just relax and let these techniques flow out of you naturally. Be as close to your true self as you can. Choose the techniques that fit best with your personality and what your motives are when you interact with people. Learn to get a feel for which ones to use for particular situations and the ones that don’t match so well with who you are as a person.

Communication skills lead to new opportunities

Since people play such a big role in your life, your entire life will go much smoother if you develop not only the techniques that fit best with who you are as an individual but the ones you can think of that aren’t on this list.

Before long, you’ll learn to connect with the people you’ve always wanted to get to know better but couldn’t because you weren’t quite sure what to say or do to build a more meaningful relationship with them. And as a result of these new relationships, you’ll open up an abundance of new opportunities for yourself that weren’t available to you before. That’s the power of effective communication skills.

Would you like to read more articles by Tim Enalls? I encourage you to visit his blog Inspiration Pro, or subscribe to his feed.

Most of my friends have Facebook accounts, and none can understand my constant refusal to join them there. Beside the fact that I don’t have any burning desire to be stalked by ex’s from the 80’s, and I don’t care that my kindergarten teacher is now teaching fuzz appreciation to unloved muppets, and I object to any service that makes you use your full legal name in a public forum, my primary objection to Facebook and the auxiliary services it offers are the draconian and absurd privacy policies of both the parent site and the companies which operate using their platform.

For instance; Zynga, the creator of all those FB games,  has this lovely gem tucked away in their TOS, which applies to users who just get spammed by their friends – you don’t even need to play their FB games for them to legally be allowed to sell all of your data.

“You grant to zynga the unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual fully-paid and royalty-free right and license to host, use, copy, distribute, reproduce, disclose, sell, resell, sublicense, display, perform, transmit, publish, broadcast, modify, make derivative works from, retitle, reformat, translate, archive, store, cache or otherwise exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content to which you have contributed, for any purpose whatsoever, in any and all formats; on or through any and all media, software, formula or medium now known or hereafter known; and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed and to advertise, market and promote same.”

Seriously?  Why would anyone agree to this?  It’s insanely egregious.  Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus admits he “did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues” and that scamming users was part of social gaming company Zynga’s revenue model right from the start.

Take for example the “free game cash for taking a survey” scams on Facebook.  The way this works is that you have to give your cell phone number and get the results via a text message. This is what sets up the scam – by simply opening the text message to see their survey ‘results’ the unwitting user is automatically subscribed to a $9.99 recurring charge service. (read Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell for more examples of how they hide the terms of use by making them the same color as the page background so you can’t see them.)

Arrington’s three-part exposé of the exploitative business practices of Zynga, other big social gaming sites, and the social networks that host the games are must read material for every online user:

• Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell (Oct. 31, 2009)
• Social Games: How the Big Three Make Millions (Oct. 26, 2009)
• Zynga Takes Steps To Remove Scams From Games (Nov. 2, 2009)

I am pro-business when business is pro-consumer.  Internet companies make money in three ways – selling access to you, selling information about you, and now, by deliberately scamming you. Your biggest risks online are not contact, conduct or content, in spite of the frequency in which these are cited. Your greatest risks come from a lack of understanding.

• Failure to consider what information you share and making appropriate decisions about whether information should be shared.
• Failure to identify trustworthiness – of people, products, services, Web sites, content, and businesses.
• Failure to understand predatory behavior in its broadest sense, including bullies, stalkers, scammers, hackers, ID thieves, exploitative companies, and other predators.

Online you hold the aces. Collectively, you have the power to bankrupt any one – or all – of these companies; Zynga, playfish, Playdom, Facebook, MySpace, etc. in short order. How?

Quit using them until they agree that scamming their customer base shouldn’t be part of their business model. You have a right to an online experience free of corporate exploitation.

See also:

• Facebook changes privacy policy, but removes granular control from power users.
• “Horrible Things” Slink Back Into Zynga
• Facebook game offers slammed as scams
• Zynga draws sanction from Facebook
• Time Magazine asks Are You Getting Scammed by Facebook Games?

Things are hectic here at The Art, but I wanted to share some really brilliant thinking of some of the brightest minds working on communication and new media.  I give you:

Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens

More Scientists Treat Experiments As a Team Sport

Wall Street Journal (motto: we have never met a URL we cannot complicate) looks at the trend for More Scientists Treat Experiments as a Team Sport. I do not think team is the right term.

If you have spent time in higher education, you are likely aware that the only team that exists is between a prof and the students involved in her research interests. Higher education research is a highly individualistic endeavour (note, for example, the “ Principal Investigator” status on grants). It would be more accurate to say that scientists now treat experiments as networked.

From the article:

“Around the world, scientists are cutting across boundaries of place, organization and technical specialty to conduct ever more ambitious experiments. Inspired by such cooperative enterprises as Linux and Wikipedia, they are encouraging creative collaborations through networks of blogs, wikis, shared databases and crowd-sourcing. Once a mostly solitary endeavour, science in the 21st century has become a team sport. Research collaborations are larger, more common, more widely cited and more influential than ever, management studies show.“

New Tools For Personal Learning

If you would like to get up to speed fairly quickly with the state of Stephen Downes‘ thinking on education, technology, and learning, have a listen to his presentation on New Tools for Personal Learning – slides and audio are available.

I am surprised at the resiliency of concepts (complexity, ecology, mesh networks, connectivism, etc) that the edutech network has been fleshing out over the last decade. To me, it is an indication that we are moving in the right direction…

Grading 2.0: Evaluation In The Digital Age

HASTAC is running a series of forums related to education / media / society. A current topic – Grading 2.0: Evaluation in the Digital Age – is being actively discussed.

The introduction to the discussion states:

“As the educational and cultural climate changes in response to new technologies for creating and sharing information, educators have begun to ask if the current framework for assessing student work, standardized testing, and grading is incompatible with the way these students should be learning and the skills they need to acquire to compete in the information age.“

Grading is a waste of time. We only do it in schools and universities. It is a sorting technique, not truly an evaluation technique. Iterative and formative feedback is what is really required for learning. This is achieved through active engagement with and contribution to networks of learners.

On a side note, William Farish is credited with creating “grading“ in the first place… and it is a recent addition to education.

How did educators evaluate competency before grading? Sustained participation and engagement with networks of learners and educators. But, of course, the authors of the HASTAC post are not trying to do away with grading (as I would suggest we should). They are trying to use technology to make grading more “modern” or “in line” with society’s needs today. I think that is exactly the wrong way to go about it. Question the model, do not modernize it.

Connecting With Others…

During our LearnTrends conference last week, I experimented with the Cormier Live Slides method. Dave would say I went a bit soft – I had an established structure for the slides, instead of free flowing. However, it did generate a fair bit of discussion and contributions from the audience.

Kristina offers comments and reactions from her experience as a participant in the session. As Tony Karrer states, it is about learning from others in the room.

Danah Boyd, Back Channel, Tocqueville

I have been reading a combination of Tocqueville and the Federalist papers over the last few weeks. I am fully convinced that these two documents need to be recast in terms of the web.

While I am a huge fan of openness, personal choice, democracy, and rights of individuals, a brief run through YouTube comments or a typical Twitter conversation calls into question the ideal that humanity aspires to the greater good.

In order for democracy to flourish, appropriate constraints are required. Danah Boyd shares her painful experience in using a back channel during a conference. I posted on a similar back channel issue recently, arguing that speakers need to accept the reality that audiences now speak back. However, effective feedback should not be mob-like… and it certainly should be respectful.

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on November 27th, 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About George Siemens

From late 2009, George Siemens holds a position at the the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute in Athabasca University. He was former Associate Director in the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. George blogs at www.elearnspace.org where he shares his vision on the educational landscape and the impact that media technologies have on the educational system. George Siemens is also the author of Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and the book “ Knowing Knowledge” where he developes a learning theory called connectivism which uses a network as the central metaphor for learning and focuses on knowledge as a way to making connections.

Identify your Audience

One of the first steps in researching and writing about a topic should be to identify the audience and the purpose of your message.  Your language and content will often be drastically different based on different audiences.  For example if you were writing about the current state of social media, you wouldn’t write the same white paper for a venture capital prospectus as you would write for a magazine that targeted teenagers.

You should ask yourself the following questions about your audience:

1. Who are your readers and what is their current knowledge of your topic?
2. Why are you communicating with them?
3. What do you expect or hope them to do?

The answers to those questions will help you create clear and definitive communication.

Writing for Managerial Audiences

Managers are usually the key decision makers for projects, and as such are often the primary source of information for team members that report up to them.  They are usually responsible for synthesizing received information, and then disseminating action items to the team members responsible for accomplishing the items themselves.

Thus, information at the manager level needs to be technical, informative, and at the same time quickly digestible into easily parsed and distributed points.

Writing for Nonspecialist Audiences

Nonspecialist audiences are readers who are depending on you, the writer, to teach them about a subject area.  It can be difficult for a specialized writer who has a deep understanding of a topic area to “come up for air” and define the topic to someone completely unfamiliar with it.

It’s important to remember that they don’t know the acronyms you may toss off blithely, nor do they have the built in knowledge of predecessors and other knowledge chunks that you take for granted.  When writing for nonspecialists it is important to walk the line between explaining everything without being condescending.  Never assume that your readers are idiots for not having the knowledge you have.

The solution then is to start by defining knowledge areas and then building up from there.  Use conventional presentation modes like bullet points and definition call-outs for areas where you think there might be confusion.  In the case of user documents, if the user can’t figure out how to use the product, they’ll move to a competitor that does offer solid documentation.  Product success can depend on clear communication from the tech creators to the users.

Peer Audiences

Peers are usually working with the same knowledge base as you are.  With peer audiences, if you write for them as though they were a nonspecialist audience, they may think that you are being patronizing and have a negative reaction to your message.

With peers, you can:

1. Use standard technical terms.
2. Use a conventional format.
3. Emphasize data and display it in standard ways, using graphs, tables, equations, or other appropriate forms.
4. Use standard forms of reasoning and argumentation.
5. Make your main points clear and accessible.

There are a plethora of other audience types, but for technical writers, the majority of our readers fall into those three categories.  But whomever your audience may be; defining who they are, their existing knowledge level, and what you need to communicate to them, are the first steps towards creating communication that is useful for them.

You may be the most intelligent human to have ever graced our gorgeous green and blue marble.  But if you mangle the language like a well known national leader was prone to do, people will tend toward thinking that you are a blithering idiot.

Misuse of the language damages your credibility and reduces your ability to communicate. Either people will be distracted by your mistake, or the mistake may actually change the actual meaning of what you’ve said or written.

In a completely informal and non-peer reviewed survey of fellow editors, teachers, writing coaches and writers, we’ve created a list of most commonly misused words and phrases. And, if we learned anything from Saturday morning cartoon interstitials, it was that knowing is half the battle.

Accept/Except- Although these two words sound alike (they’re homophones), they have two completely different meanings. “Accept” means to willingly receive something (accept a present.) “Except” means to exclude something (I’ll take all of the books except the one with the red cover.)

Affect/Effect- The way you “affect” someone can have an “effect” on them. “Affect” is usually a verb and “Effect” is a noun.

Allude/Elude- When someone alludes to something in conversation (indirectly references), if you aren’t paying attention the meaning may elude you (escape you).

Capital/Capitol- “Capitol” generally refers to an official building. “Capital” can mean the city which serves as a seat of government or money or property owned by a company. “Capital” can also mean “punishable by death.”

Climactic, Climatic:  Climactic is derived from climax, the point of greatest intensity in a series or progression of events. Climatic is derived from climate; it refers to meteorological conditions. The climactic period in the dinosaurs’ reign was reached just before severe climatic conditions brought on the ice age.

Complement/Compliment- Complement is a noun which usually means “something that completes or makes perfect”, whereas Compliment is a noun which is used to mean “an expression of praise, commendation, or admiration”.  Example: I should compliment my son for how well his love of cake complements my love for baking.

Comprise/Compose- Comprise is a verb used with an object to contain or include that object. It is synonymous with “include”. In a bit of tricky language fun, Compose, when used as a verb with an object has a similar meaning, but it is mostly commonly used as verb without an object, in which case it means the resulting state or product of a composition.  English can be weird.  Example:  The article I’m composing is comprised of multiple parts.

Could Of- It’s “could have” not “could of.” When you hear people talking, they’re saying “could’ve” as a contraction for could have. As in “I could’ve had the jello, but I chose the cheesecake instead.” Could “of” makes no sense.

Desert/Dessert- A desert is arid land with usually sparse vegetation. Dessert, on the other hand, is a usually sweet course or dish usually served at the end of a meal. One may have dessert in the desert, but one should hope that no desert finds itself into dessert.

Discreet/Discrete- Discreet is an adjective that describes actions which are prudent or circumspect.  Discrete is an adjective that describes something consisting of or characterized by distinct or individual parts.  Example: We can break people into two discrete (separate) groups, the discreet (secretive) and indiscreet.

Emigrate/Immigrate- If I leave North America to move to Europe, the leaving is emigrating and the arriving is immigrating. You emigrate from, you immigrate to.

Elicit/Illicit- Illicit is an adjective that describes something illegal, immoral or otherwise causes disapproval.  Elicit is a verb used with an object to mean educe or evoke.  Example: Some people post illicit things on message boards to elicit outrageous reactions from others.

Farther/Further- Farther is used for physical distance, whereas further means to a greater degree.

Fewer/Less- Use fewer when referring to something that can be counted one-by-one. Use less when it’s something that doesn’t lend itself to a simple numeric amount.

Flair/Flare- A flair is a talent, while a flare is a burst (of anger, fire, etc.)

i.e/e.g- I.e. is used to say “in other words.” E.g. is used in place of “for example.”

Inflammable- Don’t let the prefix confuse you, if something is inflammable it can catch on fire.

It’s/Its- It’s= it is. Its=a possessive pronoun meaning of it or belonging to. Whatever you do, please don’t use its’.

Imply/Infer- A reader infers what an author implies. In other words, when you imply something, you hint at it. When you infer something, you draw a conclusion based on clues.

Lie, Lay – Lie is an intransitive verb meaning to recline or rest on a surface. Its principal parts are lie, lay, lain. Lay is a transitive verb meaning to put or place. Its principal parts are lay, laid. Chickens lay eggs. I lie down when I am tired.

Literally- If you say “My head literally exploded because I was so mad!” then we know that your brains have been left on a wall somewhere else, and you are now the walking dead. Therefore, we are allowed to unleash the flamethrower on you.

Lose/Loose- If your pants are too loose you may lose them. So pull up your pants, and check your O.

Moral/Morale- Morals are the principles of right and wrong in behavior.  Morale is the mental and emotional condition of an individual or group with regard to the function or tasks at hand.  Betsy’s morale was low after attempting to teach morals to her cat.

Percent/Percentage- The word “percent” should only be used when a specific number is given. “Percentage” is more of a general term.

Set, Sit – Set is a transitive verb meaning to put or to place. Its principal parts are set, set, set. Sit is an intransitive verb meaning to be seated. Its principal parts are sit, sat, sat.  She set the dough in a warm corner of the kitchen. Because the cat had no morals, (see above), the cat sat in the dough.

Stationary/Stationery- You are stationary when you aren’t moving. Stationery is something you write on.

Then/Than- “Then” is another word for “after.” Incidentally, the word “then” makes for boring writing. “Than” is a comparative word (e.g. I am smarter than you).

There/Their/They’re- There is an adverb specifying place; it is also an expletive. Adverb:   Sylvia is lying there unconscious. Expletive: There  are two plums left. Their is a possessive pronoun.   They’re is a contraction of they are.  Fred and Jane finally washed their car.   They’re later than usual today.

Hints:

• If you are using there to tell the reader where, both words have h-e-r-e. Here is also a place.

• If you are using their as a possessive pronoun, you are telling the reader what “they own. Their has h-e-i-r, which also means heir, as in someone who inherits something. Both words have to do with ownership.

• They’re is a contraction of they are. Sound out they are in the sentence and see if it works. If it does not, it must be one of the previous versions.

Unique- Something can’t be “kind of unique” or even “very unique.” It’s either one-of-a-kind or it isn’t. There is no in between when it comes to unique.

Your/You’re- Your is a possessive pronoun;   you’re is a contraction of you are.  You’re going to catch a cold if you don’t wear your coat.

Hints:

• Sound out you are in the sentence. If it works in the sentence it can be written as you’re. If it sounds awkward, it is probably supposed to be  Your. EXAMPLE: You’re shoes are muddy. “You are shoes are muddy” does not work, so it should be written as: Your shoes are muddy.

To/Too/Two- To is a preposition;  too is an adverb;  two is a number.  Those last two jello shots were two too many.

Whose/Who’s- Whose is the possessive form of who. Who’s is a contraction meaning “who is.”

Who, Which, That – Do not use which to refer to persons. Use who instead. That, though generally used to refer to things, may be used to refer to a group or class of people. I just saw a boy who was wearing a Flying Spaghetti Monster costume. I have to go to the DMV, a place which I despise. Where is the book that I was reading?

Other common problem phrases:

• Supposed to: Do not omit the d. Suppose to is incorrect.
• Used to: Same as above. Do not write use to.
• Toward: There is no s at the end of the word.
• Anyway: Also has no ending s. Anyways is nonstandard.
• Couldn’t care less: Be sure to make it negative. (Not I could care less.)

Which misused words drive you crazy? Share them in the replies.

Social Media Time

Nielsen’s research states that 18% of time spent online is spent on social networking sites and services. At first glance, this seems a bit high – especially considering the figure is 3x’s greater than last year.

However, if accurate, it provides strong support to the reports claim that

“This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used… While video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth“.

More info is available here.

Social Search

Google just announced Social Search. The service helps you “to find publicly available content from your social circle“.

Google slurps information on your social circle from three sources: Google Reader subscriptions, Google Profiles, and Google chat (GMail). They use the term “surfacing” connections to describe not only adding your friends, but one additional degree: your friend’s friends.

Hmmm…that “do no evil” thing…the ground under that statement is starting to look a little shaky now that google has become an OED verb.

The Web In 5 Years: More of Now

Speaking of Google…Interesting thoughts from Eric Schmidt – CEO, Google – on the web in five years.

It is interesting to note that we are seeing increased consolidation of ideas and concepts around the future of technology and the web.

Schmidt’s comments do not provide anything new. It is a laundry list of topics and predictions that most people who are involved in technology fields are already familiar with:

• Real-time web,
• greater bandwidth,
• user-generated information,
• power / authority shifts due to amateur content,
• growth of Chinese language online, etc.

What’s tragic about this list is that nothing in it seems revolutionary.  Five years ago, the web intelligencia was atwitter (heh) with the buzz of the possibilities of the social web.  And a lot of that possibility has become reality.

But what has also come about is the death of the information revolution, and the birth of concept normalization.  This time, the revolution will be monetized.

Go Grandpa!

By now, I think the view of innate generational differences in technology use has been sufficiently debunked (see Mark Bullen’s Netgenskeptic site).

NY Times highlights the appeal of technology among the elderly:

“Some of the highest growth rates in broadband use are happening among the elderly. The Pew Research Center found that broadband use for those 65 and older increased from 19 percent in May 2008 to 30 percent in April 2009. Since 2005, broadband use has tripled in that group.“

Communicating Complexity

I adore, simply adore Indexed – a site that uses simple visuals to communicate complex relationships and interactions.

For example: The relationship between information and confusion. The simplicity of the approach somewhat hides the impact. We live life in flows, but we are remembered by artifacts. A blog post, a paper, or an image are artifacts.

Given the abundance of information that washes across our mind on a daily basis, an image can have greater impact than a well-reasoned scientific paper. Connections, associations, and relationships can often be better communicated visually than with text.

Falling of The Cliff

When change happens in a networked environment, it is rapid. We have seen it in the financial markets, music industry, TV (YouTube), and, perhaps at it is most pronounced, the newspaper industry.

For example, consider these results from major publications in the US. The average weekday circulation of the nearly 400 daily papers that reported sales slid 10.6% to 30.4 million from April to September compared with the same six-month period in 2008, the Audit Bureau of Circulations said Monday. That was bigger than the 7.1% decline recorded during the previous six-month period.

Only one had increased circulation – others had enormous drops – up to 25% in a six month period. Hierarchical organizations are simply not designed to adapt to change at this pace.  The question then becomes, how do they adapt before they become extinct?