901am

AM Update: Follow the conversation and check out the blatant patterns of misattributions. via Memeorandum

The editorial team over at Engadget blacklisted Dapreview.net a few months ago for commenting on their site about the use of their hard earned stories that were being “sourced” by Engadget. This was picked up by Fark,and Digg users. While no comment was made by the Engadget team I really doubt they would do this intentionally however the evidence has piled up and its looking kind of ugly. The story in question is a picture that edits the original credit to the source.

Read the original digg thread.

Ok so its really ugly if this is true – Engadget should fix this and apologize to the community.

Further Coverage: Design Technica
Comment from Ryan Block:
“Note from Ryan Block, Managing Editor: due to my own misunderstanding I mistakenly changed the source attribution and image on this post, but it has since been restored to its original form. I apologize for any harm or wrongdoing from this error, and respect DAPreview’s rights, content, and understanding.”

Update: I used strong words to make a strong point. Because Jason often does. And this time everyone and their brother is coming to his aid saying its all alright. It’s still not right to misattribute especially when you have railed hard on folks for creating a new css similar to your designs, or (link’s redirect sorry its gone) CNET’s editorial elitism as you call it. Or calling people flat out thieves. Overall however I subscribe to Engadget + Mobile and think its a great read. So keep up the work. Just try not to be “evil”. And you may want to answer this chaps questions too because that’s also not very ethical.

Continuing its push into international business markets SixApart along with Bokee, the leading blog hosting company in China, will partner to make it easy for Chinese businesses to communicate with their customers and for employees to communicate internally through blogging. Under an agreement announced today, Bokee will localize and distribute Movable Type, Six Apart’s leading web publishing platform, to Chinese businesses and educational institutions, beginning in the early second quarter of this year.

According to Niall Kennedy the former Technorati developer Bokee laid off reportedly laid off about 1/3 of its workforce the week before Christmas and plans a billion dollar IPO within the year if they are not first bought by Yahoo! or Google for a rumored $200 million.

via Business Wire

The following video is amazing. It’s going to take you about 5 minutes to watch. But since it’s a slow blogging news day. I have been saving it for a few days. It’s truly an amazing video and potentially what could happen in the future. Blogging IMO is just the middle step between old media and future participatory media. Too bad they left Myspace out of this.

The Blog Herald has a sibling. Yup, a sister site has come along and been born. As The Blog Herald has covered blogging news for a long long time. So the Mobile Herald will be to cellular technology,mobile content, and the mobile tech industry. With a crew of 5+ bloggers, and a creative designer we are very proud to announce the beginnings of this sister site.

The Bloggers:
Ben, our foreign correspondent from Australia
David Krug, the artist formerly known as Cowboy
Jen Lima, a spicy latin cell phone and gadget enthusiast
Chris Pearson, Designer and Cell Phone Enthusiast
Marcus, (me), Freelance Journalist + ProBlogger and Cell Phone Nut

The Sibling: Mobile Herald : Subscribe to the Feed

At E-Tech earlier in the week Ross Mayfield blogged a conversation between Esther Dyson, editor at large for CNET, and Release 1.0 and Pierre Omidyar, the founder of Ebay.

O: Generally less choice can lead towards more satsification. I feel the need to reframe it. If less choice is good, then is users in charge good? It is so important because we are talking about individual self empowerment. When they are empowered, this leads to making the world a better place. What is important is what environment they are in when they are excersizing their choice and their power. With eBay, I focused on the environment where when people act in their interest it leads to a greater good.

Esther: a certain number in the middle that if you treat them well and give them power, they will become better and better. But some will do bad.

O:Focus on environment. I founded eBay on the notion that people are basically good, and 10 years later we have evidence this is the case. The kinds of structures I think are important:

1. Access: open access, level playing field, transparency, equal access to information are attributes of any environment with positive outcomes
2. Connection: enabling individuals to connect and interact with one another. Market solutions, collaboration and wisdom of crowds.
3. Sense of ownership: skin in the game lets individuals feel there is an investment required to participate and accountability (e.g. reputation systems).

One of the ways that you can limit choice is by creating a structure, a set of rules that says this is what this environment is about. So you do not have a choice to behave contrary to the rules. Doing this can make people uncomfortable despite wanting to be inclusive. Be most things to most people. If you are a bad actor we don’t want you in the community. I map rules to limiting choice in this context.

Esther: start with one set of rules, what are the rules for changing rules?

O: And interesting set of questions. If you start with the notion that people are good and enabling them to persue their self interest makes the world a better place, then you have to have the default assumption that allowing them to make their own choices is the right thing to do. That means for eBay, Meetup or other systems — you start with as little structure as possible, watch what they are doing and limit the behavior that is contradicting the environment you are trying to create. Lots of consequences for over regulation. Important to pay attention to what people do when they don’t make a choice.

At eBay we have made a lot of decisions where we had to respond to the community. In the early days we thought of the economic system and taxing behavior that we thought that was okay, but not great. E.g. imposing a tax on reverse price action because the price discovery mechanism was less transparent. That was a good way to do it, can’t think of a negative example offhand. You don’t want to legislate or criminalize all negative behavior.

Esther: many people have free services here and are trying to find how to charge for them appropriately.

O: My approach to this kind of problem is that if you are providing a service of value to users, you as the provider, designing for the user, create a sustainable business model. The best way to do that is derive revenue from the core value you are creating. With eBay, the transactions, rather than something that is happening on the side. We need to be looking for businesses that are a force for social good. But a lot of people do not believe this and think you have to make up for profits through contribution to charity. If you can charge a fair price and can use that to build more services at charge that pays employees and puts their kids through school — all this is a good thing.

Zoe Baird: can you talk a little bit about what you see as the next wave of tools to have both transparency and privacy?

O: Transparency in a system doesn’t mean transparency around individuals actions. Not every user action needs to be transparent. Having control over identity is critical. If you are in an economic system, buyers and sellers need to know each other or intermediaries need to be known, but full transparency is not directly complementary with commerce. Need to protect individual information with their own control, but some level of transparency is important.

Esther: allowing a second pseudonym that authenticates your identity (e.g. Opinity)

O: These are great solutions for privacy without loosing the ability to conduct commerce.

Gary Bolles: with eBay you have an infrastructure, but with the Network what are the kind of rules?

O: One of our important realizations is that business cannot be left out of the equation and can be a force for good. I recently rediscovered Adam Smith, the classic baker selling to shoe maker example where the profit is evidence of the quality of life increasing for both parties. Smith held that we needed competition and no negative externalities, but our modern economies are more complex. Which is where we get to Access, Connection and Ownership.

The wonderful thing about an enabling environment is that it leads to trust. Buy something from a stranger and it can teach you that you can trust a stranger.

Christina Koukkos: what example investments can you share? Someone else asks about clean tech?

O: Example of our investments would not include clean energy. Clearly clean energy is an example of a business that can be a force for good, something that can be sustainable as a business and a sustainable contribution. Compare to the current industry which has a ton of externalities, an industry you cannot be convinced that you are making the world a better place if you work for in it.

A lot of ON investments in this room. Linden Lab demonstrates connection and collaboration, shared interests within world sometime, shared ownership. Meetup: how does my group work? Eventful: has an event demand aggregation tool that increases the level of ownership and user empowerment.

Someone asks: how do I extend my reputation I built within eBay into other environments?

O: Because you can have different environments with different rules and different structures, the reputations you build don’t necessarily map to other environments. There is a desire to say a local reputation should be extended nationally (Mayor of a small town to President of the US), but while it is relevant it may not necessarily map.

***
This guy really is a genius. Ebay is a company that listened to its users and suceeded.