Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: In Context Blog

Here is an interesting idea, a Bill of Rights for the Social Web:

A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web
Authored by Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, and Michael Arrington
September 4, 2007

We publicly assert that all users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically:

• Ownership of their own personal information, including:
  • their own profile data
  • the list of people they are connected to
  • the activity stream of content they create;
• Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
• Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

Sites supporting these rights shall:

• Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that’s shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
• Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
• Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
• Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.

I first discovered the concept of reputation as a sort of currency for social status in the book “Distraction“, by Bruce Sterling. It has stuck with me and influenced much of my thinking about emerging media, web 2.0, and the future of communication and personal interaction.

There is a new, non-fiction book about this very subject by Daniel Solove, called “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet“. There is a short review and links to download the first chapter here.

Professor Daniel J. Solove warns that this new world demands new thinking about the nature of privacy.

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there’s a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives - often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false - will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with stories of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy.

Solove explores how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cyber mobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for self-development and freedom.

I have read the first chapter, and look forward to reading the rest. What do you think of the changes in the nature of privacy and communication that the internet has brought? Please discuss in the Comments.

Related posts here:

The Importance of Trust…
7 C’s of Productive Leadership
Invest in Your Relationships

UPDATE: See the in-depth coverage of reputation at reputationXchange. There is a lot of good information and conversation-starters here.

I have had a couple of people ask which blogs and sites that I subscribe to in my Feed Reader, so I thought that I would share with you all. I use NewsGator to do my reading, and I have broken them up into groups based on days of the week. The following is the complete list:

Buzz, Balls & Hype
Alex Shalman . com
blog to discovery
Bokardo - Social Design by Joshua Porter
Collaborative Ideation
Copyblogger
Doc Searls Weblog
Eject! Eject! Eject!
Evomend EN - Timeless resources for personal organization.
Getting Things Done
Ho-ohana Blog
KnowledgeCraft
Life Learning Today
LifeReboot.com
Mastery of Meditation, Zen & Kundalini Yoga
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
Open The Dialogue
ProBlogger Blog Tips
Productivity501
Project Armannd
Seth Godin’s Blog
Slacker Manager
Smashing Magazine
Sufficient Thrust
TechCrunch
The Action Blog - Blog Action Day
The BrandingWire blog
The Marketing Minute
The Rapid eLearning Blog
The Warrior Class Blog
Web Worker Daily
WebedtecH

There are a bunch of Productivity Blogs that I keep up with via the GTD Network Feed so they are not listed individually. Those blogs are as follows:

• What’s the next action*
• #doesNotUnderstand:
• (trying to) Get Things Done
• 7Breaths
• [Productivity Workflows]
• Além Das Curvas’ blog
• Black Belt Productivity
• C’éclair!
• cynicalgeek.com
• Did I Get Things Done? - Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success
• El Canasto
• experiments in effectiveness
• Flipping Heck! Productivity, Technology and Motivation blog
• Gearfire Productivity
• Genuine Curiosity
• Getting Things Done
• Getting Things Done Blog - Nozbe
• GTD Wannabe
• HD BizBlog 1.2
• Ho-ohana Blog
• How to be an Original
• Ian’s Messy Desk
• Lifemuncher
• Matt’s Idea Blog
• Organize IT
• Productivity @ Home
• Setting Contexts
• Shawn’s Thoughts » Productivity/GTD
• strategievincenti.net
• Tech Rest
• The Cranking Widgets Blog
• The Daily Saint
• ToDoOrElse.com
• ToolBlog
• Web Goodness
• zen habits

Yes, that is a lot of reading.

I have been crazy busy this past week, so I am catching up on my RSS reading and here are some interesting links that I thought I would share:

• Seth Godin points out that Prince, Madonna, and Radiohead have boarded the Cluetrain.
  

  [Godin writes:]This is the sort thing I’ve been talking about for seven years and many unknown bands have been doing for at least that long.

• Via TechCrunch: Is your website accessible by the visually impaired? A judge in California has ruled that a lawsuit against Target is eligible for “class-action” status, and may require websites to provide access to visually impaired users.
• Via TechCrunch: Facebook is going after LinkedIn, adding a new feature in the middle of the night.
• I have added a new bookmarking widget [ ] from Add This.com. Check it out, down by the Comments bar. And please use it to save any posts that you find useful.
• Rick Cockrum [who writes and podcasts at Shards of Consciousness] is guest posting at Alex Shalman.com: (I am a subscriber, and you should be too)
  

  We have forgotten the difference between that which is productive and that which is constructive. For all too many people efficiency and productivity has become an end in itself. Productivity isn’t bad. It is a way to conserve resources and maximize our talents. But when it becomes an end in itself it becomes as much a blight as aimlessly wandering through our lives.

• Talking about free WiFi over at Doc Searls Weblog:
  

  Chris Pirillo: According to my friend Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld.com, Starbucks will begin providing their customers with free Wi-Fi within the next year. Specifically, Mike sees free wi-fi at McDonalds forcing the issue, and concludes…

  Unsurprisingly, coffee drinks at Starbucks are super profitable. By making Wi-Fi free, Starbucks will be able to counter the lure of free Wi-Fi at McDonald’s and not miss out on the real money — the sale of coffee.

  Well, that’s my prediction. I’ll report back one year from now — or when Starbucks makes Wi-Fi free, whichever comes first.

• Kate has some pointers for “Hot Desking” at Blog to Discovery
• Marina takes a radical approach to purposing her home over at Sufficient Thrust:
  

  • I put eight dry-erase boards up around the living room area and hung my inboxes on the wall next to them. (It was only later that I read about David Allen’s admiration for a friend who converted his living room into his office.)
  • The kitchen counter, which opened into the living room, became the perfect spot for the printer and was the perfect height to work on my laptop.
  • Instead of a chair, I use a stability ball, or I stand. (Burns more calories!)

  I have been thinking about this myself, as I pack up the house for our own big move to Portland, Maine.

So that is what I have been reading about this morning. I will be doing some more packing this afternoon, and I’ll post more about the move later in the week. Have a great Sunday!