Panic Button Added to Social Networking Sites

From Tech Watch 07/12/09:

Facebook and other social networking sites have agreed to adopt recommendations drawn up by the government to provide a panic button on their web pages.

Bebo has already introduced this measure, which basically consists of a highly visible button that kids can click on to report offensive or inappropriate material.

The idea, which is something that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre has been recommending for some time, was put forward by the government’s adviser on online safety, Tanya Byron.

Other guidelines will stress the need for sites to provide parental control options to better supervise their offspring’s online activities, and will also apply to chat rooms, instant messaging services and the like.

I’ve been advocating something along these lines for years. However, in my opinion, a butt which simply provides a means of reporting abuse does not go far enough and it should constitute more of a ‘stop-this-and-get-me-out-of-here-now’ function first and foremost. Reporting of the alleged abuse is surely secondary to stopping it in its tracks.

So, in addition to reporting abuse, pressing the button should also have more immediate functionality. For instance, a single press on it could bring up a window which overrides any window activity below and freezes input of new communication to the user’s account (be that messages, a chat conversation, items posted on a ‘wall’ and so forth.) This window could give the victim a chance to select very easily and quickly those contacts they wanted to stop all communication with – based on who they been in contact with most recently.

This would be much more preferable to just hitting the close button in the appropriate window as, while that would stop the abuse, the victim would still be subjected to witnessing it the next time they logged back in.

The window could prevent the perpetrators from successfully contacting them again at that point or offer a cooling-off period of a pre-defined period of time – perhaps over 24-48 hours. Either way, if the block is made permanent and they wish to do so, abuse could be reported to the service provider at this stage.

In this way, a stop or ‘panic’ button on social networking services could operate in a similar way to what I advocated in my dissertation for virtual worlds which allow for sexual activity between avatars:

Through the modality of code, avatars capable of engaging in sexual activities could be required to have a ‘stop’ function – essentially allowing teleportation or some other means of escape from the unwanted attention of another avatar. This means of regulation represents an ex ante rather than ex post solution – the victim need never be subjected to the trauma in the first place.

Surely this is the right way of regulating the problem of online abuse (in whatever form)? After all, it makes sense to take advantage of the fact the environment is a artificial binary construct which allows a level of regulatory efficiency to be achieved which real-world regulators can only dream of.

Office 2010 Beta

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying out the public beta of the next version of Microsoft Office, just as I did back in summer 2006 for the second beta of what was to be Office 2007. So far my experiences are positive, but this isn’t the quantum leap (from the perspective of UI and, to a certain extent, functionality) as Office 2007 proved over  its predecessors.

I’m not going to run through all of the new stuff in there; I just intend commenting on the new features that I’ve encountered or those which I have particular opinions of - based on my (rather limited) experience with the beta.

I should point out at this stage, I guess, that as Office has matured over the years, certain additions have just felt like change for change’s sake. I get that feeling with Office 2010 – possibly more than ever.

· Pretty new icons for each application and a nice new orange Office logo. Still, I’m not sure how much your average Office user will care about this stuff.

· Stronger colour ‘branding’ for each of the apps; but was identifying between them ever a really issue?

· Much better in-program navigation – the search functionality is superb and surpasses Firefox’s inline search which not only searches as you type but also offers excellent file-wide navigation at the same time in the navigation pane.

· Multiple-paste options much improved – fantastic!

· Task panes are smarter, clearer and offer more context-sensitive options.

· Excel is meant to have got a bunch more functionality. Still, the elementary stuff I do in spread sheets could be done with Office 97 or even earlier.  So it’s a bit of a non-event for me.

· I very much like the improved UI provided the silver theme is turned on. The gradient looks fantastic when the Window isn’t maximised; when it is maximised in Visa, XP, (but not Windows 7) however, the effect is lost but it’s still less in-your-face than the more gaudy Office 2007 themes.

The black theme looked awful in both 2007 and the 2010 beta, but the standard blue theme in the 2010 version, just looks horribly washed-out and lifeless.  The default blue theme of the 2007 version was much more attractive.

· Right click menus in Word are narrower, more streamlined and offer more helpful context-sensitive options than ever before.

· The ‘backstage’ screen accessed via the coloured ‘file’ tab in each of the apps might be seen as slightly retrogressive from a UI standpoint – does it really need to cover the entire workable space?

· Big improvement with Outlook. Shame the Google Calendar sync gizmo isn’t working with it yet which I rely on heavily. I’m told that a registry hack does the trick but this post is about documenting my ‘out of the box’ experience.

· Program Reliability – solid as a rock – touch wood.

· OneNote better than ever, particularly with the ribbon interface.

· The Word 2007 bug which makes text render incorrectly giving the impression of duplication until you scroll and it disappears has seemingly been fixed. I know this isn’t a confliction with a specific video driver as I’ve run across the exact same thing on around 6 or 7 machines all running Office 2007. So far, so good in Office 2010.

· Send a smile / send a frown - (the means of providing direct and immediate feedback to Microsoft about things users like and dislike about the beta) ironically is the only patch of buginess I’ve ran into so far.

There’s no doubt about it, there’s a lot of good stuff in Office 2010. Still, I’m not sure how much of a compelling upgrade it makes – particularly if you’re running Office 2007. I guess the conservative, softly-softly approach practiced by the Windows 7 team under Steven Sinofsky’s leadership, which favoured small incremental improvements and fine-tuning over quantum leaps, has filtered down to the Office team too. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; just don’t expect to be blown away by the next version of the world’s favourite office productivity suite.

Status check on the blawgosphere

This post is an update to a couple of others I wrote earlier this year. First and foremost, I guess, it serves as a qualification to the post I published entitled ‘Yet More New Growth in the Blawgosphere’ back on 1st September. Of the 4 blogs I reviewed then, 2 have faltered entirely, and one can no longer be regarded as a ‘blawg’.

Dottie/Kim AKA ‘pink pop polka dot’ – while this blog is still updated, the content is given-over entirely to make-up tips, cosmetic product reviews and the like. Last time I checked, Kim doesn’t link to any blawgs either - which more or less cements the fate of her blog for me.  I’ve nothing against Dottie’s blog per se, only I have little interest reading about make-up tips. Oh well. 
Law Actually blog-roll status: Struck off.

Mad Law Student – it was always a tentative, ‘I’m-not-really-sure-about-this’ start but it finally looks like this blog has fallen by the wayside with only two or three posts to its name.  Still, a comeback isn’t impossible.
Law Actually blog-roll status: … Moved to Missing in Action/AWOL.

Legally Ginge – after being a long-time ‘commenter’ on the blawgs of others, Ginge finally stepped out and launched her own, much-heralded blog. All seemed to be going great and then… nothing.  Disappeared without trace.
Law Actually blog-roll status: … Moved to Missing in Action/AWOL.

In another post, ‘The Blawgsphere Lives On’ that I wrote in May this year, I introduced another bunch of blawgs. Sadly some of those have succumbed to the high attrition rate that seems to be cursing the blawgosphere of late.

Obiter – A high-profile and promising start, this blawg quickly petered out like a damp squib.
Law Actually blog-roll status: … Moved to Missing in Action/AWOL. Suggest strike-off, given long period of inactivity.

Lacunae – As Obiter, only more so.
Law Actually blog-roll status: … Moved to Missing in Action/AWOL. Suggest strike-off, given long period of inactivity.

Poor old Alan Plawtridge is such a new blog, it didn’t even make it on to one of my blawg reviews.  Like so many others, this blawg showed a promising start but he hasn’t posted since 18^th September. Is this it or is a pre-Christmas resurrection on the cards?
Law Actually blog-roll status: …Suggest move to Missing in Action/AWOL in the New Year.

But it gets worse before it gets better; there are a whole load of other blogs which should be put on the ‘sphere’s endangered list as their existence looks increasingly perilous to say the least.

Of those, the revered Law Minx is surely the most well-known. For those that haven’t discovered yet, Minxy seems to have recently made her blawg public again, though no new posts have yet emerged. Has the popular and much-loved Minxy returned to the ‘sphere? I truly hope so!

As for the rest who are on that list, well, no doubt I’ll blog about them in good time, too.

But enough doom and gloom; there is some good news couched within all this. I was reflecting the other day looking through my list of blawgs and blogs on Google Reader that for all of the negativity and high rate of drop-outs, there are still a bunch of high-quality blawgs out there being updated frequently. Many of these are the old-skoolers who have been the distance and then some, and include Charon QC, Andro, Barmaid, Head of Legal, Scot’s Law Student, Oliver Smith, Travis the Trout, ASP Bites, Will I Be Barred, Pooni and so on.   Perhaps I should be approaching this from a glass half full perspective rather than the alternative? 

Still, it’s interesting to note, though, that very few of these active members are student blogs – and no current LPC-ers at all.  Conversely, the US student blawging scene has never been healthier.

Storm in a teacup / rat in a risotto

From BBC News 06/12/09:

I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! winner Gino D'Acampo and Stuart Manning face charges of animal cruelty after cooking and eating a rat in the show.

The RSPCA in New South Wales, Australia, said it was "not acceptable" that a rat had been killed by the pair as part of a performance.

Police confirmed they had issued court attendance notices for 3 February 2010.

The Italian chef and actor ate the rat after they were "exiled" and reduced to rations of rice and beans on the show.

D'Acampo, 33, told the show's video diary room, the Bush Telegraph: "I saw one of these rats running around. I got a knife, I got its throat, I picked it up."

The "exiled" group, including 30-year-old Manning, ate the rat as part of a meal.

Ch Insp David Oshannessy, from the RSPCA in New South Wales, told BBC Radio 5 live there was a "code of practice" which dictated how animals could be used in theatrical productions and films.

"The killing of a rat for a performance is not acceptable. The concern is this was done purely for the cameras," he said.

This strikes me as utterly ridiculous. I would actually contend that the rat wasn’t killed ‘purely for the cameras’ but rather purely for sustenance.  But oh well.  As well as complaining about cockroaches being ill-treated, Australian animal rights busybodies are also grumbling about horses getting their hooves wet in a river.

If you want to see an example of genuine animal cruelty, see this.

Annoying new verb for office-based communication

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed a rather disturbing new trend in everyday office-speak. It seems that a new verb has descended into common parlance over the last few weeks to describe the sending of emails and faxes and making phone calls - 'to drop'.

I realise that the phrase to 'drop a line' has been around for decades to describe the act of writing a letter but the fact that it seems to have been now rolled out to cover all other forms of communication strikes me as a touch grating.  I have to endure the increasingly stale expressions, "Oh, I'll just drop you an email", I'll drop them a text now", "I'll just drop you a voicemail later on" countless times each day.  And of course, being the habitual contrarian that I am, I make a point of never using the phrase. 

I’ve heard it muttered recently on the train, too, but I’m curious to know whether it’s more of southern thing or if it’s spread across the UK like a killer virus.

… I hope the ‘sphere doesn’t mind me dropping everyone a blog post, just to highlight this annoyance.

Sigh.

Poole’s Christmas Tree / Astroturf Cone

From the Times 27/11/09:

Shoppers stared in bemusement at the mysterious object that landed in a shopping precinct in Poole, Dorset, this week. Some compared it to a giant traffic cone, a witch’s hat or a cheap special effect from an early episode of Doctor Who.

The 33ft structure turned out to be their Christmas tree, designed according to the principles of health and safety, circa 2009.

Thus it has no trunk so it won’t blow over, no branches to break off and land on someone’s head, no pine needles to poke a passer-by in the eye, no decorations for drunken teenagers to steal and no angel, presumably because it would need a dangerously long ladder to place it at the top.

Last year Poole boasted a Norwegian fir draped with strings of coloured lights. It cost £500 and continued a decades-old tradition. The replacement, which is constructed on a metal frame overlaid with what appears to be artificial grass, cost £14,000 and comes with built-in fairy lights and hidden speakers to play Christmas tunes that will put shoppers in the festive mood. But the only mood apparent among shoppers who saw the tree yesterday was a bad one.

Seriously? This just looks terrible and at a cost of £14K, this pathetic excuse for a Christmas tree is probably worse than no Christmas tree at all. Maybe it’s just me but shouldn’t the fact that this ‘tree’ lacks branches, pine needles, decorations and  and angel on top be regarded as a bad thing?

It just looks like a cone of Astroturf pointing towards the sky. I don’t know why they bothered.

A Problem in Briefs

From The Times – Garry Slapper’s Weird Cases 6/11/09:

In Florida, Judge Patricia Kinsey ruled recently in the case of Albert Freed who sued a men’s briefs manufacturer claiming he was injured on holiday by their badly designed underwear.

In a judgement she probably did not anticipate making while at law school, Judge Kinsey was required to engage in a detailed analysis of the relationship between male anatomy and male underwear. An alleged design defect supposedly exposed Freed to beach sand that had accumulated in swimming trunks he was wearing over his briefs. Judge Kinsey doubted the contention that the briefs had opened “whereupon the edges of the opening abraded his penis like “’sandpaper belts’”.

Ouch! More intriguingly:

Why had Freed spent two weeks on holiday aggravating the problem without reporting it to his wife? He said he was so excited about this holiday to Hawaii – which he had won – that he did not want to complain about his debilitating pain until they got home. [Edit – there’s a first time for everything, I guess!! --]. Asked in cross-examination why he had not inspected the problem early to assess the possible dangers, he replied that he was a “belly man” and could not see his penis.

Wow. Still, Underwear injuries seem to be more common than you might think.

According to official data on accidents, underwear injures many Britons every year. In 2002, for example, 369 people were caused serious injury by underpants or knickers.

All of these underwear mishaps remind me of watching a spoof scene based on the old BBC show 999, in which a middle-aged chap did himself a mischief pulling on a pair of underpants. I think it essentially involved him putting his left leg into the right pant hole and, well, you’ve guessed it – disaster ensued. The Fire Brigade has quite a time cutting him out of them as I recall.  Not pretty.