Mike Butcher

Via iPhone. Contact details:
http:/uk.techcrunch.com/about

Posted via email from Mike Butcher’s Posterous

PSFK recently held a Good Ideas Salon in London bringing together commentators (including me) to discuss key areas steering innovation and opportunity. PSFK’s Piers Fawkes moderated a panel that included Dan Hon (Six To Start), me, Matt Jones (Dopplr) and Jonathan MacDonald (Ogilvy) on how the ever-presense of mobile is unveiling new, interesting ways for us to explore, work, and play.

Themes: People, not technology. Applications and tools. Individual needs and desires. Place versus location.

So yesterday I did a fundraising stunt for Red Nose Day / Comic Relief. In order to confirm the widely-held belief that most bloggers blog in their pyjamas, I tried to blog on Waterloo Bridge in said pyjamas. In Winter. It was cold, I can tell you.

So far I’ve raised a pretty decent £785, just by asking for donations on my Twitter account. You can still sponsor me here. Here are a few images and video from the stunt via Anna Bosworth and my own pics/video. It was fun. Even a few people turned up, including the person who put me up to this madness, Amanda Rose. I’d recommend anyone do something like that for Red Nose Day. Comic Relief’s interest in Malaria is also close to my heart as my Dad (Dr Geoff Butcher) has been a scientific researcher, working in Malaria almost all his life.

Many moons ago people used to talk about Work/Life Balance. You know the sort of thing: don’t work so hard that you can’t have “a life” as well. I little idea about what they actually meant in practice, but I imagine it involved having some kind of separation between work and living your life outside of work. Well I may have had something approaching that a few years ago, but that’s all changed now, because what I have now is what I like to call “Work/Life Hum”.

Now this may not be a new concept to many of you, but it made sense to me to actually call it something. I needed a phrase to describe “what just happened” as it were. Because what just happened was this.

Half way though last year I bought an iPhone. Once configured, I started doing the usual stuff: checking email, looking at the Web, etc. However, gradually it became apparent that there was no getting away from this thing.

The first problem was Twitter.

I’ve been on Twitter since November 2006. I now have over 5,600 followers, and I’m following 850. That means Twitter is both a joy and, at times, an amazing time sink (but generally a joy).

As you can see from my iPhone home screen (right) I also have tools there I regularly need. TouchType is a great app for making notes because you can turn the iPhone horizontally and type on a really good keyboard. The basics are also there, like Contacts, Maps, App Store, Calendar, SMS, Phone, Clock for alarms and Camera for impromptu pictures. Facebook I use more on the iPhone than on the Web. I also got the Night Camera app, which takes OK pictures in the low light of a bar – a common location in my journalistic trade. I also use Audio Recorder to record interviews. Xpense Tracker was a rather expensive app I bought to try and get my expenses in order – it will even take a picture of the receipt. Why are settings on the home screen? I often switch WiFi on or off to stop the iPhone connecting to a paid-for node.

The main other draws towards the Black Hole that is the iPhone are Email, Google Reader (for RSS feeds on Safari) and Yammer. The latter is used to communicate with my TechCrunch colleagues internally.

The final piece in the jigsaw is unlimited data from O2. Lord, how I love it so. It means I can do almost anything, almost anywhere.

As a result of this, I realised that the “background hum” of work eminating from my always-connected iPhone was a better way of describing how I now work – and live. It means I can send an important email while I’m fetching some milk and bread from the corner shop – or read RSS feeds while waiting for a train. And I can send a Twitter while walking between my chair and the bar in the pub, or while waiting for my kids to get tired of the climbing frame in the park.

There is no more “balance” any more – as if there ever was – because what I am working on and interested in swaps from second to second as I use my iPhone. The Internet is now an all pervasive background “hum” which never goes away unless I am out of battery or out of wireless signal, which is very rare.

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm……………..

Today is Blog Action Day, an annual nonprofit event that “aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day.” Last year the theme was the environment. This year the theme is world poverty (something I could use as a snarky lift-off comment on the coming recession, but I’ll resist that this point).

The real point is that, even in a bad recession in the Western World, we will rarely really understand true poverty. Such as what it is like to have to walk 5 miles to a well to fetch water every day. Or to see most of your children die young through malnutrition. My father, now retired, was a research scientist (actually he still goes into his London university lab to say hi – he just can’t keep away from the work). All his life he has been researching a vaccine for Malaria, a disease which kills between one and three million people, the majority of whom are young children in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The causes of Malaria are complex, everything from the standing water mosquitos breed in, to the mosquito carrier itself, to the massive complexity of the disease, which seems to morph at every stage of its life-cycle, making a vaccine near impossible to develop.

But it’s clear that one of the greatest weapons we have against poverty is education. If you can educate someone to use a mosquito net, you will have already improved the chances of their family surviving, thus broken the cycle of poverty which keeps every new generation from developing. And that’s where the technology industry can help. Already, the mobile phone has proved its worth in creating a sort of trading platform for African farmers and Indian fisherman to check prices at the local village markets for their produce. Mere SMS is a powerful thing. But that’s not enough. You can’t really read articles and browser the Web on a mobile, or educate children. So the efforts of Nicholas Negroponte to create a cheap laptop (under $100) for children in developing countries has been one of the great projects of our time. It’s such a pity that some people inside Microsoft and Intel appeared, according to some, to have done their best to stop it ever happening. Thankfully, that is not the official line of those organisations, and I hope they remedy their well-intentioned words with ever more action.

At TechCrunch, we generally think information is most powerful when it lives in the “Cloud”, hence the project to create a cheap cloud computer tablet for under $200. That’s not a project for children in poverty specifically, but since the whole idea is open source, the ideas could be applied anywhere.

Personally I was heartened by the Simputer project in India a few years ago. A handheld device like a mobile on an open platform. It may well be the case that Google’s Android ends up being the cheap, open operating system which could drive simple web tablets for developing countries as well as mobiles.

But for now it looks like the mobile phone is very much going to be the single most important piece of tech in developing countries going forward. You can use it to message and talk and it can be charged from a car battery. WiFi is no real use across the vast distances in Africa, and WiMax is still a pipe-dream. A few years ago the StarSight project looked like it was poised to WiFi-up Africa, though it seems not to have made much dent as yet.

Anyway, if you want to blog about poverty today, then why not register your blog and do something.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

I recently asked my twitter friends how they protect their Windows XP PC from viruses and clean up all the crap you usually find on Windows machines (I wouldn’t know, I have always used Macs). Here are their answers:

freecloud @mbites as well as AVG, use something like Lavasoft and CrapCleaner and   run those every so often. XP is quite clean, strip the addware

rmmarshall @mbites Windows defender can find adware that AVG won’t. Best rule: run all the programs several times to completion.

After some time away from my venerable old blog, I’m going to start using this site again. Hell, it is my namesake, the site I started in 2002. For my “work” you can still check out Techcrunch UK and TechCrunch.com. But anything else that occurs to me – new media and whatever else I want to blog about outside of TechCrunch – will appear here. (Many thanks to the guys at Isotoma for converting six years of Drupal archives into WordPress!).

Being a traditionally trained journalist (prior to entering the blogging world a few years ago) I have always had a healthy respect for the libel law in the UK, which is, in the main, anti-media, anti-journalism, and now out of date in the new online world. However, a recent conversation with an extremely helpful lawyer, Victoria McEvedy of McEvedy & Associates (www.mcevedy.eu), has resulted in her sending me a “Primer on Defamation for Bloggers” which (gasp!) actually points to a defence you could use in your blogging, were a libel action mounted against you and your content. It’s not literally ‘new news’, but it’s the best explanation I’ve come across yet about this subject.

It turns out that bloggers – along with the rest of the media – are also now able to make use of a special form of privilege, known as “The Reynolds defense of Responsible Journalism.” This requires a Defendant (that’s you the blogger) to show that the publication was:

(1) in the public interest

(2) that the you met the standard of Responsible Journalism on the date the blog post went live

Key to this is that the defence is not dependant on proving Truth, which is usually the defense a media outfit relies on and is often really hard to get at. That is a big deal. In other words, you don’t have to prove what you are blogging about someone is true, but you have to prove you met the standard of “Responsible Journalism” before you pressed the Publish button.

So if you publish material of public interest “in any medium” then bloggers, by definition, can use this defense.

Most critical to your defense is the requirement that the subject of the blog post must be:

1. Given the precise allegations that are to be published

2. A meaningful opportunity to respond to them

3. The gist of that response should be published in a balanced way

I am re-printing below what was sent to me in a word document. Let’s spread this knowledge…

Primer on Defamation for Bloggers

——————————————–

The elements of a cause of action for defamation are:

1. A defamatory (pejorative) statement.

2. Published by the Defendant.

3. Reasonably understood to refer to the Claimant.

Be aware that repeating a statement makes you liable for it. It is no defense to libel that one was merely repeating the statements of another—this is the repetition rule. In addition, the republication rule means you can be liable for damages for all foreseeable republications by others who repeat it. This stems from the fact that every of a libel is a new libel, and each publisher is answerable for his act to the same extent as if it originated with him.

Once the Claimant has proved the above, the burden shifts to the Defendant to establish one of 3 primary defenses:

• Truth (justification)

• Fair Comment (honest opinion based on true facts)

• Privilege.

If the Defendant cannot make out a defense, the Claimant will succeed and the defamatory statement, if written becomes a Libel, and if oral, a Slander. The Claimant is then entitled as of right, to an award of general damages without need for proof of damage because it is presumed that some damage will flow from the invasion of the right to reputation.

The real defense is privilege. The others are too onerous.

The media now has a special form of privilege, the Reynolds defense of Responsible Journalism. This Reynolds defense requires a Defendant to show that the publication was (1) in the public interest; and (2) that the Defendant met the standard of Responsible Journalism as at the date of publication. The defense is not dependant on proving Truth. It is the main defense the media will rely on.

The courts have indicated that this will be available to anyone who publishes material of public interest in any medium. That means bloggers.

Bloggers should therefore be aware of the 10 point test below from Reynolds v Times [1999] UKHL 45. Most critical are the requirement that the subject of the article must be given the precise allegations that are to be published and a meaningful opportunity to respond to them and the gist of that response should be published in a balanced way. The table below is designed to act as a prompt or checklist.

The 10 point test



1. The seriousness of the allegation. The more serious the charge, the more the public is misinformed and the individual harmed, if the allegation is not true.

In plain English:

This affects the rest, if it’s career ending then all the more important that due caution is exercised.

2. The nature of the information, and the extent to which the subject-matter is a matter of public concern.

In plain English:

The hook on which everything else will be hung, this is the reason the public should know, irrespective of the fact that the writer can’t prove its true and it might not be.

3. The source of the information. Some informants have no direct knowledge of the events. Some have their own axes to grind, or are being paid for their stories.

In plain English:

What is the quality, how reliable are they, how direct is their knowledge? Are they biased, holding a grudge or beyond reproach? Are they being paid for the story? The answers to these questions should inform the writer of the level of verification necessary. Even if the identity of the source is withheld—as may be appropriate, these questions must be asked and answered.

4. The steps taken to verify the information.

In plain English:

What or who verified the source’s information? What steps were taken to verify even if unsuccessful or did they not bother? Who did not verify?

5. The status of the information. The allegation may have already been the subject of an investigation which commands respect.

In plain English:

What is the quality? Are they uncorroborated allegations or the subject of official inquiries, investigations or findings? Rumor and speculation has no status nor does the premature allocation of blame. Care should be exercised.

6. The urgency of the matter. News is often a perishable commodity.

In plain English:

News is a perishable commodity but is there an urgent need for the public to be told of untested and highly damaging allegations? The writer’s own interest in a scoop is not relevant nor is their convenience or deadline.

7. Whether comment was sought from the claimant. He may have information others do not possess or have not disclosed. An approach to the plaintiff will not always be necessary.

In plain English:

A meaning opportunity to respond to the precise allegations should be given. Door stopping, calls with half an hour before print/broadcast and ambushing are not a proper opportunity to give a measured response to very serious allegations.

8. Whether the article contained the gist of the claimant’s side of the story.

In plain English:

Formulaic references to a denial may not be enough nor any longer will the one paragraph at the end provide sufficient balance to an article full of allegations of the utmost seriousness laid out in great detail.

9. The tone of the article. A newspaper can raise queries or call for an investigation. It need not adopt allegations as statements of fact.

In plain English:

Sensational will cost the writer as will adopting mere allegations as facts, premature allocation of blame.

10. The circumstances of the publication, including the timing.

In plain English:

The writer’s subjective belief as to the truth of the story is important.

Where publication is continuing in an online form –once the writer/publisher is advised of its untruth or the commencement of a libel claim –they can lose the benefit of the defense if continuing to publish without correction or qualification. So a story that originally qualified for the defense can lose it later if events render continuing publication irresponsible in light of facts of matters which have changed. It is now common practice for notices to be affixed online to inform readers that the item is the subject of a libel action.

This article does not provide legal advice but rather general information. It is not a complete discussion nor a substitute for legal advice. This is general information provided on an as-is basis and no warranties are given and no relationship created.

McEvedy & Associates

www.mcevedy.eu

Here are my recent appearances last week on Sky and Channel 4 News talking about the Microsoft bid for Yahoo. It was a crazy Friday involving getting across London twice in one evening. Kinda fun though. (Thanks to Paul Walsh for the videos).

On Sky News: http://qik.com/video/14393

On Channel 4: http://qik.com/video/14385