As I noted earlier, this morning Charlie Schick of Nokia USA left a comment on this blog to reach out to me about my recent heartbreaking experience with the Nokia N95. Here’s what he said:

“These are the nightmares that we never want to happen.

“I remember in the days before we allowed users to do their firmware updates, this was one of the worries that could have killed the whole process.

“I think what makes it hard for us is all the disintermediation – the, sometimes small but crucial, gap between us and you.

“And what concerns me is that we know when it happens to folks like you who write about it. Yet, that leads us to a one-time fix.

“How can we spread a policy or procedure down the line that helps anyone with this issue (and without costing the company or you an bundle)?

“I don’t know, and any more speculation on my part might be irresponsible.

“For sure, the more folks who bring this up, the more likely the company will come with a plan that can deal with this in a way we are both happy with.”

Here is my response — which I hope will lead to further constructive conversation and perhaps better options for current and would-be US users of high-end Nokia products…

Hi, Charlie (and Nokia USA):

Thanks for engaging me in this public conversation. I think that’s a very constructive move, and I’m willing to work with Nokia to help address the problems I encountered.

First of all, let me begin by saying that I think the Nokia N95 is an excellent product. I got a chance to try one out in Europe last fall, and was instantly hooked. This was what I’d been waiting for. And for the few days I had it, it worked well and I fell in love with it pretty quickly. It seems that with this device (and others in your N Series, such as the N82) you’ve hit a real sweet spot for people who want a versatile, powerful, pro-quality mobile tool to create and share content. This growing high-end market includes not only bloggers, but professional journalists — like the ones who read Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, a group weblog I manage.

My complaints are not about your products. Rather, they concern the poor service I received from Nokia USA. For mobile devices (especially high-end, pricey, multifunctional ones like the N95) the quality of service is at least as important as the quality of the hardware. In this case, your service was the dealbreaker for me.

If I had a reasonable assurance that these problems were being addressed (or at least would not leave me assuming an unreasonable level of financial risk) I would purchase another N95 in a heartbeat. I’d also put it through serious paces, and blog the experience extensively.

Fortunately, the quality of your service is something that Nokia would seem to have considerable freedom to improve — IF that’s a priority for your company. (Which it should be, if you’re serious about wanting to sell a lot of fancy phones in the US to compete head-on with the burgeoning iPhone market here.)

To start this conversation, here are the problems I experienced, and some recommendations for how Nokia might improve these situations:

1. Don’t blame your intermediaries.

You wrote: “I think what makes it hard for us is all the disintermediation — the, sometimes small but crucial, gap between us and you.”

In my case, the only intermediary I dealt with was Amazon.com (not one of their retail partners), from whom I bought my N95. The transaction was seamless — and saved me considerable money, compared to purchasing directly from Nokia (more on that next). Buying through Amazon did come with the constraint that I had only 30 days from the date of purchase to return the phone for a full refund — which I think is reasonable. (BTW, Amazon did handle the return and refund promptly and without hassle.)

The problem that turned my lovely N95 into an unresponsive brick occurred when I updated the firmware using the software provided by (and following the process specified by) Nokia. Amazon — or (as far as I know) any other intermediary — had nothing at all to do with that problem. So I think it’s a bit disingenuous to suggest that intermediaries may have been the problem here.

Now if, in fact, Amazon or other online retailers are selling non-US phones represented as US phones, that shouldn’t be the customer’s problem. It’s up to Nokia to resolve that with the retailers and make good with customers if needed. It’s your brand at stake, after all. Customers shouldn’t ever have to wonder if we’ve really gotten the device we paid for, and whether we’ll be left on the hook because of that.

2. Price and sell your product reasonably.

Even before service comes into the picture, there’s much room for improvement in Nokia’s sales practices.

I first tried purchase my N95 directly from Nokia USA, for a total cost of about $860 (including a Bluetooth keyboard and phone cover, plus two-day shipping). I generally prefer to buy expensive, important devices directly from the manufacturer, as long as the price is comparable.

I was very excited to get my N95 — so I was pretty annoyed when, on the day it should have arrived, I learned that your US order fulfillment partner (LetsTalk.com) created an unnecessary delay in the process. That bugged me enough that I took the opportunity to shop around further — and learned that I could save a total of $180 by making my purchase through Amazon.com (with overnight shipping).

That’s a very significant savings. So I canceled my order via Nokia/LetsTalk and re-ordered my N95 and accessories through Amazon. I had everything in hand the very next day, no hassles.

It seems odd to me that Amazon.com can sell the same Nokia phone for nearly $200 less than Nokia can. I’d understand a difference of $30-$50 — but nearly $200?!?!? For more hassles and slower service? Something is seriously wrong with how Nokia is selling its own products in this market. I can’t help but think that’s something that Nokia USA can improve.

3. Speed repair turnaround time and enhance your warranty.

Right now, Nokia’s one-year limited warranty (which, as far as I understand it, applies to all Nokia phones, whether sold by Nokia or other vendors) says:

“Nokia will repair the Product under the limited warranty within 30 days after receipt of the Product. If Nokia cannot perform repairs covered under this limited warranty within 30 days, or after a reasonable number of attempts to repair the same defect, Nokia at its option, will provide a replacement Product or refund the purchase price of the Product less a reasonable amount for usage. In some states the Consumer may have the right to a loaner if the repair of the Product takes more than ten (10) days.”

That’s fine for your run-of-the-mill cell phone, but it’s quite inadequate for a high-end, pro-level, multi-use tool like the N95. People spend a lot of money on these phones, and they depend on them. It’s not acceptable to be without this kind of tool for up to a month (plus shipping time back and forth).

I suggest that for its pricey N Series phones, Nokia issue a stronger and more consumer-friendly warranty that includes these provisions:

• Guaranteed expedited one-week turnaround time — Either to repair and return the device, or to deliver a replacement. That means: one week from the date the device is received by Nokia, I have a working unit with up-to-date firmware back in my hands.
• Guaranteed FREE repair/replacement for all firmware updating-related problems, no questions asked. According to what Beth Kanter learned from Nokia, your company is aware that your firmware update process is hurting and killing some phones. (So far, your reps are contending that it’s happening only when you try to update non-US phones — but in my case, unless Amazon did not deliver to me the US model I purchased, this may not be about mixing firmware versions.) Therefore, when customers call to complain about post-update brickification, it might be smarter for Nokia to assume responsibility and make good immediately, rather than to leave the customer in any doubt that they might be stuck with a bill — perhaps in addition to a nonrefundable brick. (You can verify through your servers whether the phone in question recently attempted or completed a firmware update, right? That should help cut down on fraud attempts.) In my case, Nokia reps told me to ship it in, wait, and see whether you’d fix/replace it for free — which galled me.

4. Frankly and publicly discuss your known firmware update problems.

Right now, Nokia’s firmware update issue is a PR bomb that has only just started to explode. Your company’s lack of coherent, clear discussion on this important point (including that some of your own support reps directly discourage users from doing firmware updates) creates considerable fear, uncertainty, and doubt — never a good strategy for growing a new market where you already have strong competition (Apple).

Firmware updates are a necessary process to keep any high-tech device in working order — yet some high-profile N95 users (including Beth Kanter, Steve Garfield, James Whatley, and Jenifer Hanen) are expressing profound dissatisfaction with and trepidation about your firmware update process. Also, George Frink commented that concerns over your firmware update process put him off from getting an N95 — and he was ready to buy!

Until Nokia can fix that process (which I understand will take time), you could boost consumer confidence considerably by owning up to the problem and addressing it proactively — perhaps through your new Conversations blog.

Also, make your information about your firmware updating problems easy to find. Right now, N-series users are guiding each other through this problem with a patchwork of blog posts and forum discussions. By gathering and presenting the most accurate and up-to-date information about its known firmware update problems, Nokia could regain some trust in this marketplace

5. Fix your firmware update process.

Beth Kanter said it best: Updating my Nokia firmware feels like 1995. Besides the fact that your firmware update process needs to work without significant risk of bricking the phone, it needs to be less clunky and also friendly to Mac users. (Is Nokia even planning to release a Mac version of its updater software? If so, what’s your timeframe? We don’t even know that much.)

This is important because your N Series phones compete directly with Apple’s iPhone, especially in the US — so Nokia is currently the underdog in this fight. At Apple, user experience and quality service are paramount. That’s the hurdle you have to jump. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if a significant portion (perhaps even a majority) of the content creators who’d be willing to shell out big bucks for a fancy moblogging tool like the N95 are dedicated Mac users. If you want to make serious headway in this market, you need a Mac-friendly firmware update process. The sooner, the better.

6. Expand US local retail availability and service.

I understand this is probably my most costly, challenging, and risky recommendation, but it comes down to this: Is Nokia serious about serving the growing high-end US mobile phone market, or not?

If so (and I hope you are), then you need to become more accessible to your customers. You need to be where they are.

Right now, the only places in the US where someone can walk in and buy (or return, or replace) an N95 are your flagship stores in New York and Chicago, plus a few BestBuy stores. Nice for people in those cities, but lousy for most of the country. With a pricey, fancy phone like this, people want to try it out — and they want to know who’s nearby to run to if there are problems.

Also, as far as I understand it, your warranty only covers service done by shipping the phone back to Nokia — you don’t have authorized local service dealers.

How about this:

• Partner more extensively with major retailers like BestBuy and Circuit City to stock and sell your N Series phones. These phones should be in all their locations — or at least a few locations in each state. People should be able to purchase their phones at these retailers and get them replaced quickly under warranty there, too. (Enough with this ship-and-wait nonsense.) Also, since AT&T and T-Mobile are currently the only US carriers that support unlocked phones, why not get N Series phones in their stores and service centers, too?
• Authorize local service partners to repair N Series phones under warranty.

What I want is a local experience similar to what my friend, happy N95 user from the UK Koan Bremner, reports in this comment:

“In the UK, most High Streets contain little *but* mobile phone shops – if mine went brick-like, I can walk into any T-Mobile store, and walk out with a fresh N95, in minutes (because my warranty and insurance plan includes that option). I am shocked, and saddened, that you don’t have that choice in the (I thought) technologically-superior US.”

…OK, that’s enough for now. Again, I’m glad to hear that Nokia is open to at least starting a discussion on this topic. I hope it continues.

Again, I LOVED my N95. I don’t want an iPhone. So far, the iPhone does not do what I really need it to do — and I doubt it will anytime soon. The N95 is what I want. It wasn’t perfect, but it was wonderful. I’m willing to deal with its idiosyncrasies and learning curve. If I only felt like Nokia really wanted my business and was willing to provide the level of service commensurate with such a vital high-end piece of equipment, I’d buy one again in a heartbeat. But right now, you need to regain my trust.

Ball’s in your court, Nokia. Thanks for listening. I look forward to working with you on this.

- Amy Gahran

Having to assign a year to a copyright notice makes things rather confusing in online media. For instance, In a blog or any other site where fresh content regularly appears, there typically is a date assigned to each item (at least in the metadata, if not displayed). But then… there generally is a visible copyright notice that appears throughout the site and is managed by a template. So if you look up archived content from previous years, you’ll view the older content on a page that bears the copyright notice for the current year.

That doesn’t make much sense to me…

My colleague Steve Outing recently reminded his readers to update the year in their online copyright notice. This made me wonder whether a year is really a legal requirement. So I looked it up. Here’s what the US Copyright Office says:

Visually Perceptible Copies

The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain three elements. They should appear together or in close proximity on the copies. The elements are:

1. The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word “Copyright,� or the abbreviation “Copr.�; and
2. The year of first publication. If the work is a derivative work or a compilation incorporating previously published material, the year date of first publication of the derivative work or compilation is sufficient. Examples of derivative works are translations or dramatizations; an example of a compilation is an anthology. The year may be omitted when a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, with accompanying textual matter, if any, is reproduced in or on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys, or useful articles; and
3. The name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner. Example: © 2004 Jane Doe

However, the Copyright Office also says that any work of intellectual property is automatically considered copyrighted from the moment it is created. Therefore, no notice or registration is necessary in order to claim copyright for a work:

“No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. …Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is ‘created’ when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. ‘Copies’ are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”

So: Considering that the web is a medium that allows a work to be visually perceived “with the aid of a machine or device” (a computer, Blackberry, etc.), I gather that publication to the web — or even just saving a word processing file — constitutes “creation” of a valid copyrighted work.

…Yes, it’s true that registering your copyright helps a lot if you want to actually be able to legally defend your copyright. But even the government acknowledges that this is a legal formality, not a prerequisite for copyright protection.

Seems to me that this is a case where, once again, media-related law has fallen drastically behind the current state of media.

This is why my copyright notice for this site (see the right-hand sidebar of any page on Contentious) does not include a year. I don’t know whether that makes my notice “invalid” in any legal sense — but since my copyright protection doesn’t require a notice, then so what? Every item I post to this blog is displayed with the date of publication. I figure, that’s enough to clarify the date issue.

Even better: A dateless copyright notice means I have one less picky task to perform every January.

What do you think of this approach? Please comment below.

What does "Digg bait" look like? These screen grabs from a site that sells dental insurance via an affiliate program show how out-of-place the article "Geek’s Guide to Getting in Shape" is. (Click to enlarge)

Well, I knew it would happen. Spammers have figured out how to game social media news aggregation sites like Digg, Reddit, and Newsvine.

On Nov. 21, blogger Niall Kennedy examined one example of this kind of spamming in detail, explaining how it happened and why it’s a problem.

Here’s his explanation of how this particular instance of social media spam worked:

"Last weekend I noticed a Digg submission about weight loss tips had climbed the site’s front page, earning a covetous position in the top 5 technology stories of the moment. The 13 sure-fire tips were authored by ‘Dental Geek’ and posted to the ‘Discount Dental Plan’ category on his WordPress blog. Scanning the sidebar links and adjacent content it was obvious this content was out of place on a page optimized for dental insurance. The Webmaster of i-dentalresources.com had inserted some Digg bait, seeded a few social bookmarking services, and waited for links and page views to roll in, creating a new node in a spam farm fueled by high-paying affiliate programs and identity collection for resale."

Ick! Now, I’m all for posting valuable content as a way to engage communities and attract audiences. But this really crosses a line, I think…

Clearly a lot of people found this particular article useful — just check out the comments. That said, relevance is the true currency of online communities. Using apparently relevant content as bait to lure people to an irrelevant destination is indeed an insidious type of spamming, I think.

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

Well, I don’t know — but Ravi, who commented on Kennedy’s post, offered this idea: "I hope that social networking sites evolve to behave more like Wikipedia, in the sense that the crowd can become smart enough to quickly detect and ‘blacklist’ sites that are obviously out there just to game the system."

Also, bdeseattle offered this idea: "I find it fascinating to watch Digg Swarm and actually see how readers gravitate from story to story in real time. I’d love to mine that data and have the ability to trace diggs user by user, story by story, and then look for common patterns for how
users navigate in real time from story to story. Would also likely help with exposing spammers and others who are exploiting the social networks. Maybe we need to whip up some spambots that crawl the social networks and nuke all spam-related content/comments/etc. Your post
underscores the importance of baking anti-spamming ninjas directly into socially-driven systems in the hopes of slaying the spammers."

Meanwhile, Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr observed, "Our research shows that consumers see social news sites as less trustworthy than news media or portal sites — by a fairly wide margin. Stories like this tell us it’s going to take a while for social news aggregators to win the trust they need to be more than a fringe source for most consumers."

(NOTE: I originally posted this item on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits blog. I’m cross-posting it here because I think it’s also relevant to Contentious readers.)

On Nov. 6, Technorati published its latest quarterly state of the blogosphere report. Currently, this search service tracks 57 million feeds, mostly from blogs — with a strong focus on English-language blogs, especially from North America.

One of the most controversial sections of this report discusses a key concern for any media: influence or perceived authority. Personally, I think Technorati’s interpretation is rather awry…

Technorati measures influence by counting inbound links to blogs.
This report ranks the approximately 1.5 million blogs it tracks which
have attracted at least three inbound links into these groups:

• Low Authority: Three to nine blogs linking in the last six months (1,111,882 blogs, average 12 posts/month)
• Middle Authority: 10-99 blogs linking in the last six months (416,073 blogs, average 18 posts/month)
• High Authority: 100-499 blogs linking in the last six months (26,418 blogs, average 25 posts/month)
• Very High Authority: 500 or more blogs linking in the last six months (4,070 blogs, average 53 posts/month)

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, Technorati’s ranking mostly reflects popularity and the effects of posting frequency. In some cases these may correlate with influence or authority — but not always.

First of all, people link to blogs for all sorts of reasons — not always because they consider a particular posting authoritative. Often people link to blog postings in order to question, disagree with, refute, or even ridicule them. Or they may link to blogs strictly for entertainment. Also, people often link to blogs in the hope of attracting return links — and thus traffic. Most serious bloggers watch their referral logs closely, and this strategy does often work.

Posting frequency also can drive inbound links, because if you give people more stuff to read, it’s more likely they’ll find something worth a link. But more frequent posts aren’t always better or more authoritative. In fact, often I’ve found just the opposite. Some of the blogs I consider most influential don’t post daily. Thoughtfulness counts in many circles.

The truth is, influence depends entirely upon the audiences each blog reaches. Sometimes those audiences or communities are very small in terms of numbers. For instance, Alaskablawg is a pretty authoritative blog for certain types of legal and political issues affecting Alaska. It undoubtedly attracts a much smaller audience and fewer inbound links than Firedoglake, currently the top-ranked blog in the "law" category in Technorati’s blog directory. Does that make Alaskablawg less influential or authoritative? Probably not — at least not among the communities it aims to reach.

Influence also depends on the range of topics a blog addresses. A given blogger may be considered extremely authoritative on green chemistry, but less so on parenting or Chinese cooking (even though her blog may address all three topics).

I don’t think Technorati’s view of influence is entirely amiss. Inbound links can indeed be one factor to gauge influence — but it can never be the only one. Companies like BuzzLogic have a better grasp of what really constitutes influence in conversational media. Of course, Buzzlogic isn’t free, and Technorati is. And in this case of Technorati’s analysis, I think you get what you pay for.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE over at The Right Conversation. You also can comment there if you like.

Almost invariably, the hotel or conference center has no infrastructure for providing wifi in the conference areas — especially meeting rooms and ballrooms where events on the main agenda are taking place.

What is wrong with the hospitality industry? Yeah, wifi in the lobby is nice — but these days, it’s downright crucial to offer it in the meeting spaces…

At BlogHer 2006, the conference organizers and volunteers went to a lot of trouble to set up wifi in conference areas, since the Hyatt San Jose (yeah, that’s right, in Silicon Valley) offered net access only in guest rooms. The BlogHer folks did their best with a lot of equipment and technical expertise at hand, but the best they could manage for that huge area was sparse and flaky coverage.

Likewise at SPJ 2006 this summer in Chicago, wifi was available only in some of the session areas — and not at all in the building for the sessions I was attending and presenting at!

At Search Engine Strategies: Local Search in Denver last month — with many geeks and media pros in attendance — Denver’s Adam’s Mark Hotel offered no wifi in the meeting areas. The event organizers did arrange for several available ethernet connections in the press room, which helped somewhat but didn’t help me in terms of providing live blogging from the sessions. If I sat near some windows you might snag a wisp of the municipal wifi network along Pearl St. outside the hotel, but the sessions were too jammed to make that feasible in most cases.

Today I learn that, contrary to my initial information, there will be no wifi available at all in the session areas at the SEJ2006 conference this week in Burlington, VT.

Now, SEJ’s conference staff did well to provide a few public-access terminals near the registration table. But if you can’t wait in line for that access (and believe me, there WILL be lines) and you need to blog that conference or even do some quick research to fact-check what a speaker just told an audience, you’ll have to run out to the hotel front lobby or restaurant to do that. Oh, and they charge you $10/day for that wifi access — even if you’re already paying $10/day for ethernet access in your room at the Sheraton Burlington.

This situation is simply abysmal, especially at media conferences. What, if anything, can be done about it? Are there sound reasons (other than technical ignorance and sheer laziness or greed in the hospitality industry) why we’re constantly facing this obstacle at conferences?

Ideas, please?

This year, I set up an unofficial SEJ2006 group weblog. It’s "unofficial" because it’s a strictly volunteer, independent effort by people who are either SEJ members, attending the conference (speakers, exhibitors, others, etc.) or who are working on the conference (staff, etc.). I did this mainly because it was more efficient to just set it up by myself, on my own, than to have to deal with any organization to get it done.

To be quite honest, this blog has been consuming much of my time this week. More than I’d intended — but this is an experimental project, and experiments always entail unforeseen resource demands as well as results. It’s OK, I’ve been learning a ton of useful stuff from this effort.

So if you’re considering setting up a blog in support of your conference, benefit from my experience. Here’s what I’ve learned, so far…

(READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE at my other weblog, The Right Conversation. You can also leave comments there, if you wish.)

Now that it’s up and the crew of volunteer bloggers is mostly trained in how to use our blogging tool, Typepad, they’re starting to request more guidance on content. Most of these contributing bloggers come from print media. They know how to write, but they’ve never blogged before — and most of them also have little or no experience in creating any content specifically for online media.

Consequently, they aren’t familiar with conference blogs. That’s fine — many people aren’t, although that’s starting to change. I’ve worked on some conference blogging efforts, so I’ve pulled together a list of 10 kinds of posts that work well on conference blogs.

As with any conversational-media effort, it helps to know your audience, as well as your community of contributors (both bloggers and commenters). What skills and expertise do they bring to the table? What do they want? Ultimately, that should be your guide.

Here’s my list…

(READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE at my other weblog, The Right Conversation. You can also leave comments there if you wish.)

Over at the Center for Citizen Media blog, I’ve joined an interesting conversation concerning the thorny issue of payola in online media. See: PayPerPost: A Cancer on the Blogosphere, or Merely Semi-Sleazy? by Dan Gillmor.

Background: The controversial online advertising service PayPerPost attracted considerable blog and media attention after it recently got $3 million in venture funding. In a nutshell, PayPerPost is an automated system where companies can advertise their sites, products, services, or brands through a network of approved bloggers who get paid $2 per qualifying post. That is, bloggers who sign on to PayPerPost agree to write about those advertisers.

PayPerPost reviews and approves those posts, which can be required to be positive. Although PayPerPost urges its bloggers to be "honest," it discourages them from disclosing their relationship with PayPerPost. So, ethically, everyone involved appears to be on thin ice — but when did ethics ever have much to do with the advertising business?

…Anyway, Dan Gillmor’s post on the PayPerPost flap nudged me to consider the issue of payola more closely. Here are a couple of comments I contributed to that discussion…

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE over at my other blog, The Right Conversation…
– If you wish to leave a comment on this post, you can do so there.

"I have had many clients ask me about the risks of blogging. How do you keep competitors and arch enemies from taking over the conversation and dissolving the ‘conversation’ into a shouting match?"

Her answers:

1. Moderate comments.
2. Have a written comment policy to manage expectations.
3. Be in it for the long haul.
4. Ban grossly abusive comments, but let most negative comments ride.
5. Turn comments off if necessary, preferably temporarily.

A few quibbles notwithstanding, I mostly agree with Kami’s advice.

That said, I also believe it’s important for everyone who chooses to participate in conversational media to learn how to handle the inevitable unpleasant bumps of conflict and even flames.That’s not something you can learn theoretically. Personally I think you need to live through it. Only then can you put Kami’s advice into balanced practice. Otherwise, you might be tempted to protect yourself into total vulnerability.

Of course, surviving public conversational conflicts is not fun — but it’s crucial. If there’s one thing you learn fast in conversational media, it’s that you can never really control the conversation. Most of it happens in venues that are beyond your control, anyway The best you can do is influence it.

I raised that issue in this comment to Kami’s post…

READ THE REST of this article over at my other blog, The Right Conversation…