You(r)Tube Privacy at Risk

Yes, we know what you watched last summer, or at least Viacom's attorneys soon will.

The owners of Comedy Central and VH1 are attempting to prove that more people watch pirated clips of John Stewart and Behind The Music than, say, the Wii Fit Girl. In the aggregate, maybe more people are watching clips of The Daily Show on them Internets. But a viral video will still draw more eyeballs than any single thing the mainstream media can belch out, regardless of how clever Stewart is. Partly that's because most people who'd want to see it already have, for free, over the airwaves.

Trouble is, our video viewing habits are supposed to be protected by federal law. After a reporter went dumpster diving on Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 and came up with Blockbuster rental receipts (he was looking for porn, but mostly he found Hitchcock and Fellini) Congress passed a law explicitly protecting the privacy of movie rentals. The judge in the Viacom case, Louis Stanton, decided that watching a YouTube video somehow qualified as less worthy of protection than Bork's VCR.

The usual answer from people who claim to be perfectly happy having attorneys rooting around their private lives like squirrels in a nuthouse is that they've "got nothing to hide." To which I usually say, "terrific, now drop your pants." Everybody's got something to hide, even if it probably isn't what they watched on YouTube.

The right to keep one's thoughts and interests private -- and by extension, things that indicate thoughts and interests, like books and movies -- is one of the keys to democracy. Nobody can demand to know what's going on between my ears (and trust me, you don't want to know). That's the way I like it.

The real problem here is the obsession with data collection that infects Google, Microsoft, and other major service providers. If there's a reason to keep a running record of every YouTube video I've watched or Web search I've run over the last 18 months, I can't see it -- and Google has done a p*** poor job of explaining why they need it. Because if a record is out there, you're almost guaranteed that some day a lawyer with a subpoena may come looking for it.

Do you YouTube?

Wi-Fi VoIp?

The Wi-Fi Alliance wants to make voice a part of Wi-Fi networks, and has introduced a program to certify products, it announced on Monday.

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal stamp of approval means a product is capable of making or handling good-quality voice calls in the home or a small office environment, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Access points, wireless routers, handsets (which are growing at a steady rate) and laptops can all be tested and certified.

The push is a way for Wi-Fi Alliance to keep femtocells and upcoming technologies such as WiMax, HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) -- which lately have overshadowed Wi-Fi -- out of the home, according to Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics. Webb thinks Wi-Fi, helped by a low cost and a large installed base, will be able to stay dominant.

"Wi-Fi performance has been continually improved, and this is another step along that road," said Webb.

In a departure from interoperability testing, which has always been Wi-Fi Alliance's bread and butter, it instead looks at performance. To be certified, products have to deliver packet loss of less than 1 percent with no burst losses, as well as latency and maximum jitter of less than 50 milliseconds, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance.

The first round of certified products include Intel's PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (an embedded 802.11a, b and g PCIe Mini Card), Cisco Systems' Aironet 1250 and 1200 Series Access Points, and Meru's access point AP200.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal is only an option for vendors, so users will need to double check a special Wi-Fi product database to see whether a particular product has passed the testing.

Wi-Fi Alliance also has plans to introduce a program for enterprise environments, called Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Enterprise, early next year. It will be based on the Voice-Personal Program, and add support for bandwidth management, hand-offs between access points, enterprise-class security, network management and other features that are necessary in larger environments, according to Wi-Fi Alliance.

Enterprise adoption of IP (Internet Protocol) telephony over WLANs is growing, and vendors have put a lot of effort to improve performance, but many companies are still reticent about putting voice on it, according to Webb.

"Certification gives it a stamp of approval," he said.

You Hear But Do You Listen?

I have had the pleasure of speaking to and listening to top executives from all sizes of companies. A common trait they share is - when someone spoke, they listened. Not only did they hear, but they also listened.

The good listener knows that a good conversation is definitely two-sided, but one learns through listening. Successful people know that and practice the art of listening constantly. “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” - Epictetus

Here are tips to be a better listener:

• Be Legitimately Interested: Drop whatever you were doing and focus.
• Be Honest About Your Time: If you really are in the middle of something important, tell the speaker. Apologize and plan for another meeting where you can ensure your full attention and focus.
• Accept the Speaker’s Point-Of-View: At least until he or she is done speaking.
• Use Body Language, Eye Contact, and Repetition: To show you are listening and interested, lean slightly forward in your chair.
• Go Beyond the Words: Good listeners are actively thinking not just about what was said but also why and how it was said.
• Avoid Planning Counterarguments: Mentally record your disagreement and formulate a response later after the whole message has been received.
• Ask Questions: If there is something said that is not clear to you, ask for clarification. Only ask questions that’ll help your understanding of what the speaker is saying.
• Watch and Learn from the “Good Listener”: We all know one or two “Good Listeners”. Next time you are speaking to them, really pay attention to what they do.

Being a good listener is an invaluable ability and skill. Once aquired it is sure to make you happier and more productive in not only your business but in your life.

Communication is Undervalued

Probably the most important skill anybody needs today in business is the one rarely taught in our education system - how to communicate. This is the skill that gets people their first job, helps them get promoted, creates respect and trust from meetings, develops confidence in others, and help them become leaders.

Technological changes have indisputably led to faster and more efficient communication. To name a few, we have:

• Email
• Fax machines
• Cell Phones
• Telephones
• Telephone conferencing
• Video conferencing
• Pagers

but are we communicating more effectively? No.

Communication is largely undervalued and untaught in the modern world, often with disastrous results. Professor Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University recently stated – that ‘the world’s problems could be solved if we kept talking’. This idea can be applied to almost any situation.

1. Speak to people
2. Smile at people
3. Address people by name
4. Be warm, friendly and helpful
5. Be enthusiastic about life
6. Be genuinely interested in people
7. Look for the opportunity to give praise
8. Be considerate of other people’s feelings
9. Be thoughtful and respectful of other people’s opinions
10. Be a great listener

On the above list, Number 10 may be the most important and also the hardest to do.

Listening and hearing are not the same things.

I will give some tips for being a better listener in tomorrow's blog. For now I will part with a quote from Ernest Hemingway, "I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."