meish dot org: life, unfolding

In most digital workplaces, there’s an unwritten understanding that when someone has headphones on, they’re not to be disturbed. Most of the time, digital workers recognise that sometimes you need to get into a productive flow state, and that means being allowed and encouraged to immerse yourself in the task at hand, undisturbed.

Flow is important to web workers, because it’s hard to come by. As digital knowledge wranglers, just like the machines at our fingertips, we’re constantly context-switching, running multiple processes at once, streaming concurrent thoughts and projects and activities in real time, trying to devote sufficient time and attention to each, but usually failing because of unrealistic timescales, lack of data to complete the task in hand or multiple competing priorities.

Context switching is exhausting, especially if you’re doing it all day long. It takes effort to figure out the context when someone comes up to you and starts talking about that meeting or project, and you’re supposed to instantly know
a) who they are
b) what they’re referring to
c) all background knowledge about the context which may enable you to make a useful or insightful contribution.

I often find myself wishing people came with identifying headers, like email. Just a simple whois with a sensible subject line would do wonders for my ability to react reasonably and rapidly to a distraction, rather than staring blankly for a few moments while my brain variously clears to one side the other things I’ve been processing, then cycles through knowledge files to find pertinent entries, all of the while also trying to summon the person’s name and context based only on their appearance (I’m terrible with names) and the words “that thing we were talking about the other day.”

The phrase “continuous partial attention” was invented by Linda Stone in 1998, and it gets more true with every passing year, perfectly describing the constant infograzing state of the digital generation.

So for the most part, web workers need ways to signal to their colleagues that they are trying to crack on with something without distraction. For many, the universal symbol is ‘headphones on’ – even if you’re not listening to anything, it’s a way of visibly signalling to the world that your attention is in another place. Your body may remain in the room, at your desk, but your attention is in the task. This is what Bruce Sterling means when he wrote about “cyberspace” as the place your attention is when you’re focused on something else:

Cyberspace is the “place” where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person’s phone, in some other city. The place between the phones.
– Bruce Sterling, from the introduction to The Hacker Crackdown [PDF link to whole book]

So we work much of the time in cyberspace, trying to find focus and flow, trying to escape from constant distractions and demands on attention.

Of course, there are exceptional circumstances which mean it’s OK for someone to break into the attention zone. Indeed, we give certain people specific permission to breach the bulkhead. We switch on our “busy” signals on GTalk, but our loved ones know that it’s OK to ignore it. We set up our phones to divert all calls except those from the boss. We instruct our desk phones to deliver a voice message to all calls telling them to email instead. Then we sift through emails when time and attention allow.

We generally prefer forms of contact which can be skimmed, triaged and prioritised. We want to be in control of our time, in a world which makes it increasingly difficult to be so. We tend not to like interruptive, demanding contact like phone or face-to-face disruption, in which someone else takes control of the when, where and how much time the query will take – as well as what else we’ll be able to do during the contact.

Face to face interruptions can’t be compartmentalised, multi-tasked or pomadoroed: it seems rude, when in fact the imposition is on the part of the disturber, not the disturbee. But it’s hard to tell someone to IM instead when they’re looming over your desk. As a result, we digivores get a reputation for being anti-social; for preferring email to facetime; for conducting hour-long sporadic conversations via instant message rather than spending ten minutes on the phone.

So in a distracting and demanding world, we crave the perfect, all-too-fleeting feeling of flow, when dedicated attention combines with lack of distraction to form a productive, devoted, happy state. Nothing beats it: fingers flying, synapses firing: words (or code, or ideas, or photoshop actions, or whatever you do) spilling productively, consistently and cogently onto the screen almost as fast as you can process them.

That’s why dedicated attention time is important, and why geeks (technical, creative and otherwise) resent distraction. We’re not just grumpy sods: we need mental space to focus. Music through headphones helps. Switching off the IM and email clients helps. Making yourself unavailable to the world despite your continued presence in the office helps too, but can prove more problematic.

A year or so ago, in the face of a writing project which demanded lots of head-down time immersed in passages and focused on the screen, I made a little makeshift notice to put beside my desk. It said “Trying to concentrate, please don’t disturb”. I saw it as the physical equivalent of the notice on my GTalk status (“Trying to concentrate: email me instead”) or the voice message I’d set (“Hello, you can leave me a message if you want but I’d really prefer an email to…”).

It was small, and people didn’t notice it. I felt too much of a sourpuss to point it out to them, so it became pointless.

A week later, I came in one morning and discovered a new sign beside my desk, made (I think ) by a sneaky elf in the design team who sit not far from me. In brand-consistent font on a hot pink background, the giant-Toblerone-shaped sign said on each face: “Meg is trying to concentrate”. There could be no mistaking it from any angle. The message was clear.

I’ve tried to enforce a good routine with the sign over the last year. I only use it when I’m actually trying to concentrate on something specific (not multiple things which are distractable). I use it in combination with headphones as a double signal to the world of my unavailability. I take it down when I’m done focussing.

And yet.

Here are the interactions I tend to get, when the sign is up. Each of these is accompanied by hand waving designed to induce me to take off the massive headphones I am wearing when the sign is up:

1. Are you actually trying to concentrate?
2. I like your sign.
3. Hahaha. Meg is trying to concentrate! Very good! Does it work?
4. I know you’re trying to concentrate [waves dismissively at sign] but I’ve got a question about…
5. Are you interruptable?
6. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to talk about…
7. Ooh, where did you get your sign from? Did you make it?

and perhaps most often:

8. Can we talk about….[no reference to sign at all]

Why do they do this?

I’m at a loss to know what to do next. Current favoured options include:

• A Lucy-style “The Doctor Is In/Out” sign
• Ignoring people if they ignore the sign when it’s up
• Teenage-style eye-rolling and deep sighing when interrupted
• Getting a bigger sign
• Amending the existing sign to include the words “Please do not disturb”
• A deli-counter take a number/now serving machine

If all else fails, I’m going to get a big piece of black cloth, and attach one end using velcro to the outer rim of my monitor, and drape the other end over my head, like a Victorian photographer’s light hood. This idea is, of course, based on the popular toddler belief that if I can’t see them, they can’t see me to interrupt. It also has the added bonus of shutting out all non-digital stimulus, which might help me to focus a bit better.

How do you find focus in a world of competing attention? Any suggestions?

Every now and again, something happens which reminds you that the internet isn’t the respectful, creative, collaborative place that we rather naively hope it is, but is actually infested with people who seek to exploit, destroy and undermine the work of others.

It’s not that surprising, unfortunately, but it is a bit disappointing.

Take my 2006 camphone photo taken on the tube, of a girl reading a book:

Or rather, don’t take it. Admire it. Link to it. Comment on it. Favourite it. Tell me you like it, you value my work, you think it’s funny/clever/well-composed if you like, but don’t take it and pass it off as your own work.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this (hasty and rather crap resolution due to being taken with a camphone) shot being included in emailed & blogged collections of “great trick photography photos” and the like. Here are just a few of the places it’s been spotted over the years. Without exception in these circumstances, the image is used without permission, with no credit or link to me (therefore falling foul of Flickr’s terms of service as well as my wishes as the creator of the work). Sometimes it even appears with someone else’s watermarked copyright notice on it, which I think is a bit fucking rich, to be honest.

This evening, it happened again. It was brought to my attention by a friend that a “photographer” – Rob Jarvis was passing off the Geisha image as his own on his site (which seems to be hosted on Facebook.

Whether he got this message or otherwise had a coincidental and sudden change of heart I don’t know, but the two images I mentioned above have been taken down from his site now. Many others remain.

UPDATE: see end of post

Now, I’m not seeking to make money from this image, and nor am I particularly ferocious about traditional copyright. In fact, I’m a big believer in the power of creative commons licenses which offer a variety of ways for individuals to assert specific rights, while making content available to be used, remixed, shared and so on, in accordance with their specific wishes.

But this Geisha experience over the last three and a half years, (and it’s not the first time someone’s ripped off my work as their own) makes me want to pull all my content off the internet entirely and never share or publish again. It’s certainly enough to make me restrict who can see larger sizes or download my photos on Flickr.

Ironically, the fact that some people are unable to respect other people’s creative work makes me become more closed and black and white and less likely to share things using creative commons licenses. After all, if people can’t be trusted to understand “simple” copyright, what hope have we got of getting them to understand a more complex (albeit more flexible and open) license?

It’s a shame that this is the result.

I wish we could encourage people to praise, link to and credit each others work when they share it.

I wish it was as cool to be a curator as a creator of things.

I’d like people to think it was enough to introduce others to things they like or have found (I find Tumblr is particularly good for this), and not have to pretend it was their own work. Perhaps then we’d see a bit more respect for origin, and more people would be inspired to create and share.

UPDATE 11 January 2010

Rob replied to my Flickr message this morning, saying simply “never claimed to be mine, its now removed.”

Rob, if you’re reading this: Thanks for removing it from your collection, though with respect, you had your copyright notice on it, and were publishing it on your site, and accepting comments and plaudits on it. That looks a lot like you were taking credit for it. Nevertheless, thanks for removing it.

UPDATE 11 January 2010, later

Rob has apologised in the comments below. The specific issue is resolved (thank you), so let’s not dwell on Rob or his particular actions any longer. Apology accepted. Let’s move on.

However, the general point about providing appropriate credit for curated work and being sensitive to other people’s usage wishes, remains. This is perhaps amplified by Piers’ rather surprising comment (also below). He states:

If you don’t want your work copied, you shouldn’t put it online. It’s that simple and it’s up to you not everyone else.

If that is indeed the case (and I don’t believe it is), then how utterly miserable and misanthropic the world must seem.

When you try to connect to the free guest wifi in the lounge, a login screen appears, which says – and I quote:

“The username and password to access this free Wi-Fi service is available from the front desk of the lounge.”

So when a “valued guest” goes up to the front desk to enquire what the username and password for the wifi is, it’d be really awesome if you could prevent yourself from getting a big lip on, barking “the information is posted on at least three cards on the coffee tables,” then marching into the lounge, signalling for the traveller to follow, in order to point to one and say “like this one, for example.”

Because:

a) your own site says the username and password is available from the front desk
b) there are only three of those cards in the lounge, and none of them, by the way, are in the second (quiet zone) lounge, so travellers can hardly be blamed for missing them and
c) your attitude stinks: being passive aggressive, rude and mardy with paying loyal British Airways customers seems like a particularly idiotic and short-sighted way to run a hospitality service.

Also, your cheese is warm and rubbery.

Seth Godin poses the question “Am I the only one distracted by apostrophes and weird quoting?”

When I get a manuscript or see a sign that misuses its and it’s and quotes, I immediately assume that the person who created it is stupid.

I understand that this is a mistake on my part. They’re not necessarily totally stupid, they’re just stupid about apostrophes.

No, it’s not just you Seth. We are judging them.

Longtime readers of this site may be aware that this is a particular bugbear of mine, and one that I have ranted about previously in these pages – with specific reference to marketing and other professional communications – and devised a classification system or malapostrophication offences, to boot.

1. Permissible Error
This usually means that the sign is handwritten, chalked or otherwise home-produced, and is generally an indication that the writer was in a hurry, or without English as a mother tongue, or both, and can therefore be permitted to make a small, apostrophe-sized slip once in a while. Classic greengrocer’s apostrophe territory.

2. Should Know Better
These are usually printed items which are created for a one-off, limited audience purpose. It tends to be that this usage is seen in charity shops, local church/school/community organisation newsletters and on the stand-up A-frame boards for independent delicatessens and sandwich shops. Most of these will have either been created by the proprietor or, occasionally, created by a signwriter acting under direct comission commission (oops!) from the owner. 99% of the time, it’s a plural error.

3. Utterly unforgivable
These are the real clangers. High distribution (vast print run – adverts, merchandise and the like), very visible channels (like billboards and television), otherwise high production values (design, or materials used) and – most importantly of all – very likely to have passed (in copy, design and approval stages) through the hands of several people, at least one of whom should have spotted the mistake. This is a quality issue, and is something that creative or marketing agencies (especially) are particularly bad at managing.

That post from March last year contains a number of photographic examples, too.

As an additional example, here’s a photo of our local chippy, captured for posterity by one of my neighbours:

All the right bits, just not necessarily in the right place.

It’s been like that for at least the six years I’ve lived here, and I’ve come to think of it as one would a slightly batty aunt – well meaning, a little scatty, beyond redemption but utterly forgiveable because she knows how to make a mean saveloy & chips.

Given that I currently spend a minimum of two and a half hours in transit every day, I’ve been pondering for a while whether there’s a particular thing that would improve my commute.

Certainly less time on public transport would be a boon, but would unfortunately mean living somewhere either entirely unaffordable or unsavoury, neither of which I’m keen to do.

So in the absence of cutting the time spent down, I’ve been wondering whether the addition or removal of anything specific might actually make the whole thing more tolerable.

The short list so far includes:

• Air conditioning on the tube: not a big thing at the moment, and I understand there’s work under way, but some of the lines – the Victoria, mainly – do seem to get ever so fetid in summer rush hours
• Turning off the heating on London bus services: I know that it’s probably related to the engine of the bus, but there’s been times on my twice-daily bustrek that I’ve been sure I could smell something singeing. Like human flesh. Forty years ago, we managed to put a man on the moon. Are we seriously unable to stop grilles pumping out heat on buses during the hottest part of the year?
• People shutting up on the tube: I know it’s a bit anti-social, but on the longest bit of the tube journey, I generally try and read, and if people are shouting at each other in English, Spanish, French or German, I find it enormously distracting, no matter how loud the music in my ears is. So sometimes I wish they’d SHUSH or (better and less grumpy) that there was a dedicated reading/quiet carriage, like on long-distance trains.
• Less human chaos in and around King’s Cross Underground station: I know they’re redeveloping it at the moment, but the fact that there’s only one main entrance/exit which is around a hairpin corner from the ticket gates means that every day – without fail – is a seething mass of bewildered tourists and idiots dragging suitcases behind them and tripping people up while looking for the right exit for the Eurostar, all bottlenecked into a pretty narrow space.

  Plus don’t get me started on the poor escalator and platform etiquette I observe daily – standing still in the “fast lane” or in the doorway to a platform is still one of the quickest ways to get punched in the back of the head in London. Fact.

  In fact, I feel that a general reduction in human idiocy between stepping off the tube and stepping into the office would be a massive (but unlikely) improvement: the main problem here is that I work close to a major transport hub, so all human life is there, albeit mainly just standing about gormlessly and smoking.

  And on a related point, whose bloody stupid idea was it to put a major bus stop on a bit of pavement just around the corner from the station on York Way? The pavement is so narrow and there are regularly 100+ people waiting for the next bus to trundle along, and since they’re not as well-versed in the art of queueing as their W/SW London compatriots, that makes it impossible to actually walk down the pavement, which instead means anyone wishing to do so needs to make a detour into the (three lane, busy) road, which can’t be a long-term good idea.

All of these things are irritating, and removal/refinement/improvement in each area would doubtless improve both the experience of commuting and the state of my mood when I arrive in the office or back at home.

But after much consideration, I must conclude that the single thing that would improve my commute – and, I’m sure, that of countless other poor souls in London – is some sort of ASBO preventing people in branded T-shirts from handing out free commuter newspapers while standing in the middle of the pavement.

I appreciate that their job is to hand out free newspapers, but standing in the middle of a busy public thoroughfare, desperately thrusting free sheets into the hands of harassed commuters may well be an effective way of dispensing resources but it’s a remarkably piss-poor strategy for making people feel well-minded towards the companies who instruct their minions to do so.

Every evening is like a gauntlet of dodging the eager profferings of these branded thrusters. It’s not enough that I don’t actually want to take one of their papers – I still have to dodge and swerve around them as they slow traffic by standing directly in front of the entrance to the station, or in the middle of the pavement, or at the point at which the pelican crossing disgorges onto the main pavement from the road.

I don’t blame the individuals, but I do wish I could get a message to their shift supervisor, or whoever instructs them in the tactics of their tasks.

So here’s a message, specifically to whoever’s in charge of distribution training at thelondonpaper and London Lite, in the hope that this mention will get picked up by their social media signal filters:

Tell your uniformed distributors to stand beside rather than in the flow of foot traffic around major stations and busy areas.

If you don’t, I’m going to report them – and you – for causing an obstruction and endangering safety on the public highway, and start a campaign to get your antisocial tactics banned altogether.

Here endeth the rant.

Here’s an idea.

You obviously know which country I’m in, because you’re able to determine whether or not a video is available to be viewed where I am.

I don’t necessarily like that, but I do get why you’ve had to do that. So, fine.

But since you know where I am, and what is and isn’t available for a location, how about you just don’t show me search results which aren’t available where I’m browsing from, instead of making me click through to every one in turn in order to discover via your helpful little message whether it’s available?

Because it’s bloody irritating the way you’ve done it.

And I can’t help feeling that passing on your legal pain to people trying to use your site, in the form of an annoying user experience, isn’t a particularly well-thought-out or elegant or long-term successful strategy.

It’s lazy, and it’s going to piss people off.

A few days ago, I read one of those articles that social media consultants seem to constantly be producing, about how to make a Facebook fan page successful.

They mentioned widgets and SEO and viral activity and all sorts of other tips and techniques, but failed to mention one very basic thing. The omission was glaring – to me, at least – and rather sad.

At the time, I made a note of it on my tumblr scrapbook, saying:

I read 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page but I’m still wondering where “making a product that people want to become a fan of” comes into it.

But it’s been festering in my head ever since. Surely the best way to make sure your fan page is successful is to make something which inspires fandom. Then it just happens.

‘Twas ever thus!

Then this evening, I read Matt Haughey’s experience of buying a playground swing/slide set for his garden. He compared the experience to that of social media marketing, and said:

maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need “social media marketing” after all.

Too right.

Social media is sometimes waved around like a magic stick, or an enchanted bean, which only some people – hallowed (mostly) self-identified consultants – can manipulate or unlock the secrets of.

But it’s not. Among other definitions, and at its most basic, social media is tools, situations and applications which enable people to talk to & with other people, about stuff they’re passionate or curious about.

Consultants can tell you interesting things about social media, and how it’s being used, and how it might develop or change over time, and how people might use it, but anyone – including me – who tells you that you absolutely MUST do X or Y to definitely make your magic social media beans flourish and grow, is making it up.

Sorry.

Andy Budd touched on this earlier this year when he pondered whether social media consulants were harming social media in the long run:

I don’t mean to sound cynical, but I do wonder what value a lot of social media consultants bring to their clients, and how long that value will last.

[...]

The problem I have with social media consultants … is less about the value they bring to their clients and more to do with the affect it’s having on the web.

Most social media consultants are actually people who are experienced enthusiasts with opinions about about tools and technologies – that’s fine, and they can play a really valuable evangelism role for organisations which need convincing about why social media matters, or how to get started.

Some (fewer, though) may even have valuable experience (professionally or as a passionate amateur) of actually building communities or creating products and tools which help people to share, curate and curate content (rather than just using them and talking about them). Again, they can tell you some really interesting stuff about user experience and interface design and the ethnology of participation.

And all of this can help your audience start talking to you, and to each other. No doubt about that.

But this knowledge and experience is only useful if you:

a) apply it in relevant ways for you and your audience/community, rather than following someone else’s recipe to the letter and
b) concentrate effort on making or having something which people want to talk about in the first place.

No amount of magic fairy dust can make an average, lacklustre proposition or product into a social object. Social media isn’t an exact science, full of calculated recipes and formulae. It’s about people.
And passion.
And communication.
And real stuff or experiences.

Last year at HICKtech in Owen Sound, Ontario, I gave a presentation about social media and community development which had as a central motif a big picture of shambolic detective Columbo, as a reminder that people participating in social experiences online (which only people like me ever call “participating in social experiences online”, while the people themselves call it “twittering” or “joining a Flickr group” or “writing on someone’s facebook wall”) need three things that homicide detectives always come back to in such hackneyed shows.

They need:

• Means
• Motive

and

• Opportunity

The echo-chamber of social media marketeers spends a lot of time thinking about the Means (ability, access, tools) and Opportunity (social graph, stimulus, habits, behaviours) for people to get involved in or pay attention to social activity online, but not nearly enough time thinking about Motive.

Why do people get excited and talk about stuff?
Because they care about it.
Because it’s good.
Because it’s worth talking about.

I wish product makers and media owners would spend a little less time thinking about manipulating audiences, and a little more time thinking about making good things to begin with.

To rather savagely paraphrase Matt Jones’ recent call to arms (now available in T-shirt or limited edition print form):

People get excited when you make good things.

So make your thing – whatever it is – good.

Look, I don’t want to tell anyone how Twitter should be used – each to their own; it’s a big web and there’s room for lots of different experiences, so please yourself and all that.

However, that being said, it’s my web experience as well, so as a point of reference, it may be worth mentioning that there are a few things/habits/behaviours on Twitter which are pretty much guaranteed to make me unfollow you – temporarily or permanently – and that’s my right, too.

UPDATE, because people keep reading and linking to this as RULES FOR HOW TO USE TWITTER: These are not rules for how to use Twitter. Use it however you want. This is simply a list of habits that bother me – in varying amounts and at various times – when other people do them a lot. This is a list of things that might make me switch off from following someone, just as certain formats or personalities on the television bother me and make me more likely to switch off from watching.

You may not agree. You don’t have to agree. You don’t even have to stop doing them. If you like doing any of the below, or think they’re completely fine to do, then great; please carry on. No-one’s judging you, and most of all, no-one’s telling you what you should or shouldn’t do. Use Twitter however you want.

(For the record, I don’t much like celery, either. If you do like it, then great. I’m not judging you on your celery consumption, I don’t think you’re a horrible, person, or an idiot, and I certainly wouldn’t dream of stopping you eating crunchy vegetables, because that would be weird and inappropriate. But if you invite me over for dinner, and tell me you’re going to be serving celery stew followed by celery pate with a celery gravy, you’ll understand if I don’t eat much, or choose not to come, or maybe just meet you for drinks later, yes?)

1. Endless retweeting without adding any value or original thought in between. Or at all. If you retweet more than once a day, especially from the same source(s), I’ll likely dump you and follow them instead. NB, this is even more irritating when I already follow the person you’re retweeting.
2. Posting link after link after link even if they’re to really interesting articles and sites and things you’ve spotted on the web. I appreciate that this is a retro thing to say these days, but: Get a blog.
3. Saying good morning, hello, good night to your followers. This is not your personal radio show. This is not an AOL chatroom from 1995. We’ll know when you’ve woken up, because you’ll start twittering. We’ll know when you’ve gone up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire because you’ll have gone quiet, or possibly will have indicated something circumstantially relevant before you went (e.g. “Bugger this, there’s nothing on television: I’m going to bed”). Even though your mother brought you up well and it’s good manners generally, there really is no need to say “good night”. Except if you’re @JohnBoyWalton.
4. Going to an event and liveblogging it via Twitter. Does what you’re communicating need to be communicated to this group of people, immediately? If not, then you could probably use a blog, and twitter once to say you’re covering it over there. NB This behaviour marks an interesting shift in people using Twitter as communication medium with known group to people using it as a microblog, so I see why it’s increasingly happening – but it’s infernally spammy if you’re not interested.
5. Using it to organise an event or rendezvous with other people who happen to be in your twitter list. Use email. Use direct messages. Use the telephone. Or invite everyone. But using a public medium for a private conversation is most vexatious and supererogatory.
6. Flooding the screen by updating 84 times in rapid succession. This matters, when you’re abroad and paying for every bit of data downloaded. A stream-hog is like a roadhog: inconsiderate and difficult to ignore.
7. Referring to people as “tweeple” or “tweeps”, questions as “twestions” or “twask”, adding someone to your list as a “twadd”, use of “tweet” or any other kind of meaningless derivative which is wholly unnecessary and infantile. People are still people, even if they’re on twitter. Questions are still questions. I realise that language evolves and new words are constantly being coined, but this stuff just makes me want to tweam and tweam and tweam until I’m twick.

Also, there are four things (features?) I’d dearly love to see implemented somewhere, which would help to manage some of the above and some additional twirratations (gah! I’m doing it now!):

1. When someone (public) replies to my (private) Twitter stream, please don’t show it in the search, dearest darling Twitter.
2. Let me put people on pause, occasionally – or rate limit them. Sometimes you need a holiday from your friends.
3. If I’m private, let me shout (public message) as well as talk to people I know. Or if I’m public, let me whisper (to an identified group of followers). Call it semi public/semi private.
4. Let me ignore (or opt into) following particular hashtags. If someone twitters something including “#guardiancommunity”, I want to know about it, even if I’m not following them – let it break through into my consciousness. On the other hand, even if my closest friends twitter using a hashtag like “#spurs” don’t show it to me. I love them dearly, and value their friendship, but I’m just not interested in the topic.

I’ve touched on some of this stuff before, as Twitter has evolved over the last three years or so:

• Breaking the news: Dear Twitter friend
• Twitter ye not: further thoughts on an evolving medium
• Twit by name
• Musings on Twitter
• The seven deadly sins of Twitter

Interesting (to me at least) to note how the “sins” in the latter link there have mostly been resolved by people adapting to the tool, but that new behaviours and rather annoying tics have taken their place (see above).

Incidentally, you can find my public twitter stream at twitter.com/megpickard. I have a private one, too – but that’s mostly for people I know in person, have ranted with in pubs, and for whom the conversation is off-the-record. It’s never that juicy, though. (Sorry).

If you could change one aspect of other people’s behaviour – one habit, one activity, one thing they do or say – what would it be?

Bear in mind this needs to be something that is fairly common, and not specific to any individual, otherwise there’d be no point outlawing it – you could just lock the person concerned away, or tell them off or whatever.

Let’s also imagine for the sake of argument that it has to be something that annoys you, and something people have control over – so stuff like snoring is out.

For the guardian-readers among you, let’s also imagine that it has to be something habitual and daily and identifiable as a whole thing not a broad concept, so “saying yeah at the end of sentences” rather than “racism” or whatever.

What would you ban?

Public displays of affection?
Text-spk?
The wearing of a low-slung trouser?

I know what mine would be. I’ll add it to the comments later.

Indulge me a brief rant about my mobile phone supplier.

I have an iPhone. I like it – mostly – and though I use it mostly for data (mail, web, twitter) and creative diversions (camera, itunes, a few casual games), I do occasionally use it to send and receive texts and calls, too, and although a boatload of calls and texts are included in my (somewhat extravagant, IMO) tariff, because I’ve been travelling a bit, that means that my bill is sometimes more than just the standard monthly connection charge.

In an effort to reduce the amount of paper I have to deal with, I have chosen to get my bills emailed to me by my provider, O2, who diligently do so every month when payment is due.

The Good

The email they send me contains a figure for the total amount owing (which is whipped out of my bank account shortly after).

It also contains a friendly message about clicking through to view your bill on the O2 site:

The Bad
I am a woman with a lot of passwords. In fact, you could say that I suffer from password fatigue. There are too many in my life, and I’m not alone in this, drowning in a sea of upper-and-lower-case-at-least-six-characters-must-contain-numbers-and-be-difficult-to-guess combinations.

My head hurts.

This is not O2′s fault, just by way of explanation, so I can hopefully be forgiven for forgetting the particular character combo I’ve chosen for their online service, once in a while.

And I do. Frequently. Every month, in fact.

So I do as they suggest, and follow the procedure for reminding myself of the username and password, which is outlined here. It’s easy to be reminded of your login details! Or so they say.

But what actually happens is that you fill in a form like this:

(and you try really hard not to wince at the ever-so-slight misalignment of the text on the two buttons in the bottom right corner)

and then you receive a little code sent to your mobile, which you pop into the relevant box on the subsequent screen. So far, so good. Your password can only be mere moments away from being reset, surely.

And then, suddenly…

Meh? Account number? WTF?

So you search through your online correspondence with O2 hunting for a reference to your account number, and nothing doing. And you gradually realise that the only reference to an account number you vaguely remember seeing is on the flimsy bit of paper you signed when you got the iPhone in the first place, in approximately 7pt type.

Unsurprisingly, you do not have this information to hand. In fact, it’s probably in a filing cabinet in your study at home. Probably.

So you phone up the call centre, and tell them (nicely) that you’re trying to reset your password online, but you don’t know your account number.

And the nice, well-spoken young man on the other end says no problem, that’s fine. He then tells you that in order to tell you the account number, he’ll need your password.

You start to tell him that you’ve forgotten it, which is why you’re calling, but he interrupts to tell you that, naturally, this is a different password; one for using on the phone.

Oh. Right.

And in order to reset that one, you need to answer some security questions…and provide your account number.

It is at this point that you start to weep and/or bite your keyboard in frustration.

Would it be impossible to have a security check/reset flow that recognises that you have:

1. access to an email address (verified)
2. a phone in your hand (verified)
3. the answers to a bunch of security questions in your head

..and that doesn’t require you to produce information you don’t know, or don’t have handy, or can’t easily find?

I would happily, willingly, gleefully pay good money to be able to deal with utilities companies who can provide decent web billing/enquiry/info experiences.

Whatever the future of online billing is, this isn’t it.