Linknote — — 71 words

Business — Technology

A man checking dials

Why data is never raw — Nick Barrowman, the New Atlantis

Why it’s wrong and perhaps even dangerous to expect “raw data” to be neutral and strictly factual.

How data are construed, recorded, and collected is the result of human decisions — decisions about what exactly to measure, when and where to do so, and by what methods. Inevitably, what gets measured and recorded has an impact on the conclusions that are drawn.

Linknote — — 188 words

Web

A more complicated web — Christian Heilmann

A useful explanation as to why we can’t return to “a simpler web” that enabled anyone to easily become a publisher.

What we consider a way to express ourselves on the web – our personal web site – is a welcome opportunity for attackers… [I]t can be recruited as a part of a botnet or to store illegal and malicious content for re-distribution.

So, to me, there is no such thing as going back to the good old web where everything was simple. It never was. What we need now to match the siren call of closed garden publishers is making it easier to publish on the web. And to control your data and protect the one of your users. This isn’t a technical problem – it is one of user interfaces, services and tools that make the new complexity of the web manageable.

I’m not sure I fully agree with (or even understand) his proposed way forward. But it’s useful to think about how we can balance the desire to encourage self-publishing with fully robust, secure solutions. The game changed long ago.

Linknote — — 184 words

Economics — Technology — Web

Typewriter

On blogs in the social media age — Cal Newport, Study Hacks

Putting into economic terms the distinction between blogging and social media, and articulating what we have lost through the decline of blogging.

If you want attention for your blog you have to earn it through a combination of quality, in the sense that you’re producing something valuable for your readers, and trust, in the sense that you’ve produced enough good stuff over time to establish a good reputation with the fellow bloggers whose links will help grow your audience.

I first realised this about blogging when it became clear that comments sections on major websites were almost always cesspits. People in comments sections are generally attempting to freeride on the quality of the website they are posting on.

Bloggers, on the other hand, really need to be high-quality to get any sort of audience at all. That makes blogs generally good.

Social media is quite the opposite. To start getting traction on social media, the threshold is rather low. In fact, often, lower quality works better.

Link via Khürt Williams

Linknote — — 135 words

Business — Technology

Why big companies squander brilliant ideas — Tim Harford

How inflexible organisational structure could be one of the main inhibitors of innovation. This article is full of fascinating examples, but I found the Sony example the most striking.

…the silo that produced the PlayStation had almost nothing to do with the silo that produced portable CD players. The Memory Stick Walkman was like the tank: it didn’t fit neatly into any category. To be a success, the silos that had been designed to work separately would have to work together. That required an architectural change that Sony tried but failed to achieve.

Seemingly, there’s no straightforward answer to this:

Kodak’s position may well have been impossible, no matter what managers had done. If so, the most profitable response would have been to vanish gracefully.

Linknote — — 69 words

Technology

Ring doorbell footage

For owners of Amazon’s Ring security cameras, strangers may have been watching — Sam Biddle, the Intercept

This is jaw-dropping stuff about lacklustre security practices at Ring, the smart doorbell manufacturers — as well as a story about rather lacklustre technology problems. Perhaps I’m naive, but I’m amazed that unencrypted live video footage is available to Ring employees at all. It makes me think twice about internet of things gadgets.

Linknote — — 85 words

Business — User experience

Someone using a screwdriver as a hammer

How harmful is the net promoter score? — Jeff Sauro, MeasuringU

A very useful contribution to the debate surrounding the usefulness/harmfulness of net promoter score. Jeff Sauro transcends the often polemical nature of the debate, by analysing actual research on the effectiveness of net promoter score.

The news still isn’t all that great for proponents of net promoter score. But at the same time, it’s not quite as bad as its detractors make out.

Kudos to Jeff Sauro for doing some actual research on this.

Note — — 225 words

Business — Personal — Society

Work:

It’s 10 years since Woolworths closed down. I worked there at the time. To this day, the whole experience is among the most surreal of my life.

At the time, I wrote a lengthy series of blog posts detailing my own story of the goings-on around the failure of one of Britain’s most iconic businesses.

Being on the shop floor while a British institution collapsed around me taught me a bit about business. But it taught me *a lot* about people. Enjoy this look back.

(These used to be linked to each other using a WordPress plugin, but these were lost during a migration — so here they all are.)

1. [Woolworths: The curiously British US-based company](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/06/woolworths-the-curiously-british-us-based-company/)
2. [Woolworths as it was known and loved, and neglected](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/07/woolworths-as-it-was-known-and-loved-and-neglected/)
3. [Woolworths: Childhood memories and adult gripes](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/08/woolworths-childhood-memories-and-adult-gripes/)
4. [It wasn’t just the credit crunch](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/10/it-wasnt-just-the-credit-crunch/)
5. [The blunder of Woolworths](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/11/the-blunder-of-woolworths/)
6. [Identity crisis](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/12/identity-crisis/)
7. [The beginning of the end](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/13/the-beginning-of-the-end/)
8. [The nasty side of human nature](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/14/the-nasty-side-of-human-nature/)
9. [Woolworths: Final thoughts and wrapping up](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/17/woolworths-final-thoughts-and-wrapping-up/)

For more on Woolworths 10 years on from its collapse, [check out Graham Soult’s excellent report](https://www.cannyinsights.com/2018/12/31/nine-out-of-ten-ex-woolworths-sites-remain-in-active-retail-use-a-decade-after-closure/).