Chris Gribble

Be yourself - Everyone else is taken (Oscar Wilde)

Some scary statistics regarding child safety online

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These are statistics compiled by Protectkids.org.They highlight the dangers that our kids face while online.

  • By the end of 1998, more than 40 percent of all American homes had computers, and 25 percent had Internet access. This trend is expected to continue. Children and teenagers are one of the fastest growing groups of Internet users. An estimated 10 million kids are online today. By the year 2002, this figure is expected to increase to 45 million, and by 2005 to 77 million.
    Youth Internet Safety Survey
  • Only 1/3 of the households with Internet access are proactively protecting their children with filtering or blocking software.
    Center for Missing and Exploited Children
  • 75% of children are willing to share personal information online about themselves and their family in exchange for goods and services.
    eMarketer
  • About 25 percent of the youth who encountered a sexual approach or solicitation told a parent.
    Youth Internet Safety Survery
  • One in five U.S. teenagers who regularly log on to the Internet say they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation via the Web. Solicitations were defined as requests to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk, or to give personal sexual information.
    Crimes Against Children Research Center
  • One in 33 youth received an aggressive sexual solicitation in the past year. This means a predator asked a young person to meet somewhere, called a young person on the phone, and/or sent the young person correspondence, money, or gifts through the U.S. Postal Service.
    Youth Internet Safety Survey
  • 77% of the targets for online preditors were age 14 or older. Another 22% were users ages 10 to 13.
    Crimes Against Children Research Center
  • 75 percent of the solicited youth were not troubled, 10 percent did not use chat rooms and 9 percent did not talk to strangers.
    Crimes Against Children Research Center
  • Only 25% of solicited children were distressed by their encounters and told a parent.
    Crimes Against Children Research Center
  • Only 17 percent of youth and 11 percent of parents could name a specific authority, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), CyberTipline, or an Internet service provider, to which they could report an Internet crime.
    Youth Internet Safety Survey

These statistics reflect the use of the internet in most developed countries. The increasing use of the internet as a place where young people meet and communicate socially has introduced a range of new opportunities for them to be exploited. Most parents are unaware of the dangers faced by their children online.

What is needed is for parents to provide their children with the resources to be able to guard against any unnecessary danger. Just like we teach our children at a very young age not to cross the street without an adult, then as they get older to look both ways before they cross and then we allow them to venture out on their own as they mature the same applies to web use.

At a very young age it is very important for a parent to be in total control of their children’s online environment. But, as they mature it become more a matter of supervised learning. Children don’t know what they don’t know.. Hopefully by controlling the level of risk and implementing the appropriate safeguards children can use the web safely.

How to keep your children safe on the internet – Hoopaa

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hoopaa3.jpg Hoopaa (http://www.hoopaa.com) comes from a Polynesian word that means safe or keep secure. The idea of hoopaa is to keep your kids safe while online because you are aware of where they have been and what they are doing. There is a range of programs available to purchase that allow you to keep track of what the kids are up to online.

Hoopaa is free. And it boasts and impressive range of features:

  • Continuous monitoring of all web sites visited;
  • Enables you to block web sites from any place at any time;
  • hoopaa can automatically block web sites according to their category; Sexuality, Games, Hate, Personal, Gambling or Religion. It’s the parents not hoopaa that makes the decision which categories are to be blocked.
  • All Internet access from a computer can be blocked during specified periods of the day.
  • The ability to provide a screen capture (an image of the page) of each web page visited; very important if you wish to track blog’s that children may access on a frequent basis;
  • Tracking and capturing of all MSN Messenger conversations from all computers in your house that hoopaa has been installed;
  • Daily email sent to you containing all web sites visited by each user of each computer registered to your hoopaa account and all MSN Messenger conversations;
  • You can login to hoopaa at any time to view all tracked information in real-time;
  • hoopaa only monitors what you, the Account Administrator authorizes;
  • You can cancel the tracking of any specific web site or MSN Messenger account at any time;
  • hoopaa can monitor your children’s MSN Messenger conversations even when they are at a friends house – as long as hoopaa has been installed on that computer;
  • hoopaa does not share or make available any information that can be tracked back to your email, your computer or MSN Messenger accounts;
  • hoopaa is an absolutely 100% free service to all end users;

The main downsides of this program is that it runs best on Internet Explorer a program that I don’t like because of its security issues. And, it only runs on Windows XP. For most users this will be ok for a while but I expect that as more users move to Vista hoopaa will be upgraded to that OS.

I plan to use it on my children’s computer over the next week so I will keep you up to date on how it goes. I also plan to review a couple of the more popular commercial programs over the next few months and we will see how they stack up against this free service. At first glance hoopaa seems to provide most of the resources that you would expect from the commercial software that is available.

CyberPatrol, NetNanny and CyberSitter are examples of filtering software. http://www.cyberpatrol.com , http://www.netnanny.com and http://www.cybersitter.com

How to keep your children safe on the internet – Create a safe environment for you children

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This is a very important aspect of keeping your children safe. Don’t just rely on monitoring software to keep your children safe online. More and more of our lives are going to be spent on the web and we need to make sure that the web world is as safe for our children as the physical environment that they live in.

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from PC Magazine 2006

Just like the real world there are lots of hazards that face our children online. But with good management these risks can be minimized.

The first step is to create a safe environment for your children to use the internet. As I have mentioned my children are quite young so I need to recognise that at this stage in their life this is primarily my responsibility. Again life online closely parallels the principles of good parenting in the real world.

Make sure they use the computer in a public area. Don’t allow them to use the internet unless you are prepared to supervise them physically. Most parents wouldn’t send their children to another suburb to use a playground by themselves. The same is true of the internet, don’t let them go to an internet site unless you are aware of what that site contains.

Get familiar with the web yourself. Do a bit of research yourself about what are the best sites for kids and set up the computer so that they have easy access to those sites. Firefox has an excellent system for creating bookmarks in a toolbar near the top of the browser. Use this to provide sites that will keep the children’s interest. We tend to use the same sites over and over. I know that I have my favourites that I use to help me in my work and in creating my blog. This also applies to kids, they will mostly want to use the same sites over and over so make sure that you play a big role in choosing those sites.

Set up your search for safety. There will be times when children will need to go outside their familiar areas. This may be for a school research project or they may just be curious about what else is out there. Google has a number of options that you can choose to create a safer search. To do this in Google go to preferences and then choose safe search filtering. You can then choose the filtering level to stop explicit images and text at the extremely safe level. Google is the search engine of choice for most internet users today.

Educate your children about the web. Communication about what is going on is vital. Make sure you talk to your children about some of the dangers of the web. For example by nature they are trusting souls but make sure that they know not to give out their personal details to anyone. Make them aware of the dangers of opening files that they don’t know anything about. Talk to them about the sites they are visiting and let them know that not all websites are good.
Check your browser history.This is not as effective for older children but most younger children will not be aware of the trail they leave in their browser’s history. Even if you have minimal monitoring software you can keep an eye on where they have been by simply clicking on the browsers history button and having a look at all the sites that have been visited. Get to know where you children go on the web.
Set guidelines for their time on the web. Monitor the amount of time they spend on the web. Just like watching too much TV, too much time on the web is not healthy for a child’s overall development. They need to have time to do other creative things as well.

How to keep your children safe on the internet – Introduction

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For many parents this is a big concern. We have friends who have banned their children entirely from the internet. They are not allowed to email, search or even play on designated kid’s sites. This will definitely keep their kids safe from any harm on the web but it certainly create problems for the way that they are able to deal with the modern world.

Keeping your children safe on the internet is not a one step solution. It takes a range of strategies to ensure that they are as safe as they possibly can be online.

What parents have to realize is that there is no silver bullet,says Herbert Lin, senior scientist at the National Research Council of the National Academies, where he directed a 2002 study on protecting children from sexual exploitation and online pornography. Filtering software has certainly gotten better, but do parents rely on it too much? In my opinion, they do. A filter is brittle. Even if it stops 90 percent of the bad stuff, what
do you do about the other 10 percent? You still have to have a thorough educational process.

I use my computer nearly every day for work. But more and more my daughter was wanting to search for things online for school projects or because she had heard about a particular subject. When I wasn’t busy I would let her use my computer to google the subject that she was interested in. However I could see that this was less than ideal because I wanted to work on my computer and she wanted to explore the web.
Recently we acquired a second computer specifically for the kids. I had a number of reasons for this:

  1. It got them off my computer. There is no excuse for any nasty accidents happening to it.
  2. It protects me from getting any nasties on my computer. My kids click and click. They don’t always understand what they are clicking on they will just do it so that the computer responds in some way. They know that much. The danger of this approach is that they could just as easily click on something that will introduce something undesirable to my computer.
  3. It gives them the freedom to explore when they need it not when I am not busy.
  4. It is a desktop PC that is placed in the play area that is overlooked by the kitchen and has a constant stream of traffic past it. It has gotten them out of my office and into the open. Whatever they are doing on the web is easily visible by myself or April.

The trouble with the internet is that it is full of unknowns once your kids are out there. The question that many parents ask is what can I do about this? What do we need to protect against?

There are the obvious and not so obvious things that we all know about like:

  • Pornography
  • Viruses
  • Online child predators
  • Dangerous chatrooms
  • Stealing personal information
  • Trojans
  • Spyware
  • Malware
  • Phishing
  • and so on

With my kids out their on the web I felt that I had to do some things to ensure that they were as safe as I could possibly make them without wrapping them up in a protective cocoon that didn’t allow them access to the resources and fun that they could have on the web.

The two main steps that I took were to:

  1. Protect them from any nasties – Install some monitoring software
  2. Protect the computer from any nasties – install user privileges

How I went about this I will outline in some coming posts. I will also take a look at some of the more popular software programs that are on the market ie. NetNanny and the like and see what you get for your dollar.

I actually installed a program called Naomi that has the following features:

  • Heuristic analysis capable of recognizing new material automatically.
  • Semantic analysis of web pages contents and analysis of their addresses and links.
  • Recognizes all the major languages (10+).
  • Recognizes ICRA labelling system.
  • Monitoring is not limited to web sites, but covers the whole local internet traffic.
  • Works with all service providers and software applications, and does not alter settings.
  • Allows blocking of file-sharing applications.
  • Password-protected (the password is chosen during the installation).
  • Easy to use: does not require configuration.
  • Can be used on slow connections (it does not perform any download in background).

And, its completely free. You cant get better value than that.
My kids are quite young and this system works just great I don’t want them to even get a glimpse of any pornography. Naomi does a great job in shutting it down very quickly. What all this means and how this compares to other commercial versions I will outline in the coming posts.

I realise that this is a bit of a diversion from the normal theme of ChrisGribble.com but I really want to be a responsible father and ensure that my children are safe. I am sure that there are plenty of other people who feel the same.

I know I love my wife

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Yes it’s true. I recently went to Holland for a conference and on the flight I watched the movie by Chris Rock, called “I think I love my wife”.

The basic premise of the movie was about a family man with a beautiful wife and great kids who was dissatisfied with his life. It was a boring. He allowed his mind to wander. The result was that he had all sorts of fantasies about women.

Then one day a fantasy walks into his life. She is available and beautiful and much of the movie is spent in watching him slowly take steps towards being unfaithful to his wife.

Near the end of the movie is a pivotal moment in his life when he realised where his fantasy had taken him. He sees himself in a mirror and runs from the compromising situation that he is in. He realises what the cost of living out his fantasy would mean in the lives of his wife and children.

He ran from that situation to his wife realising that love was more than the momentary pursuit of pleasure.

When I was away I missed my wife. I had left my best friend behind and I was the poorer for it. Returning to my family after even such a short absence made me realise how much I love my wife and to never forget what a precious gift I have been given.

Where does capitalism take us?

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affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. (de Graaf, 2002)
affluenza, n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. (PBS) (Wikikpedia)

From the affluenza website

“Never before have our emerging environmental crises been laid out so clearly before us. Rather than shouting from the fringes, respected economists, scientists, and politicians are sounding the warnings in high-profile journals and the halls of government — warnings that our oceans are dying, that the ice shelves are melting, and that we are setting ourselves up for the most massive and devastating market failure humanity has ever seen.

So we recycle our garbage. We vote greener. We buy sleek, new hybrid cars and fill our houses with energy-efficient light bulbs. And we put our money and faith in the brave and ingenious technologies that will rescue us from the whirlwind.

But it won’t be enough. Because this is not, fundamentally, a technological problem. Nor is it, fundamentally, a political problem. This is a problem of appetites, and of narcissism, and of self-deceit. The planet is breaking, and it is breaking under the weight of our hunger for more. To reform the world, we must first reform ourselves.“

An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time?

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat, with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution.

You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then, senor?”

The American laughed and said “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions, senor? Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Never Give Up, Never Give Up, Never Give up – living with failure

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Sometimes I feel like the biggest failure. Thankfully I am not a depressive personality so this usually doesn't get me down. But, it does affect the way that I see myself. This week I have failed. Stuffed up, mixed things up and generally fallen far short of my own expectations of myself. "You won't get it right the first time. Your campaign will need to be reinvented, adjusted or scrapped. Count on it." I am not sure where I got this from but it is very true. Whatever we do will never be right the first time, or sometimes the second time or the third time. In these situations ,"Never Give Up, Never Give Up, Never Give up". If we think we got it right the first time we are probably wrong. I have often fallen for this. I have done something that I have thought was pretty good but hadn't realised that it still required more work. This is a mistake that we can all fall for, the belief that we have arrived in some way. When we do this we preclude the possibility that there may be more for us to learn. And, there is always more for us to learn. "Never Give Up, Never Give Up, Never Give up". I was talking to a friend today who told me that the person who said those words suffered from depression. Winston Churchill's legacy as a great politician was the image of tenacity. He was the true British bulldog who worried away at his task until he got what he wanted. There will always be things that we will fail at in some way. It's important to be able to live with that lack of perfection. Learning to live with failure is one of the most important lessons that we will ever learn in life. It is a character lesson that will stand us in good stead to live in this less than perfect world. Once we learn the lesson of living with failure it frees us to be able to see glimpses of perfection. It opens up possibilities of greater love – because one of its fundamental requirements is the ability to overlook minor irritations. It opens up our personal potential and allows us to generate a positive influence on others around us. It always for greater possibilities for satisfaction in every area of our lives. It releases new opportunities to conquer new frontiers in every area of our lives. So when things go wrong some of the best advice ever is to, "Never Give Up, Never Give Up, Never Give up". I found this riff from Seth Godin,

"Now, of course, most blogs are one-person operations. Which means that successful blogs are often run by restless, outward-bound people in a hurry. And a lot of bloggers either have day jobs or passionate sidelines. I think that's a good thing, even when they fail. It's frustrating for me to hear, "stick to your blogging," when people criticize a project created by a blogger–because it's part of the blogging, part of the learning, part of what's unfolding. I'd rather read a book that's informed by the activities (not the reporting) of the writer, and I'd rather read a blog that's based on the successes (and failures) of the blogger."

Finding yourself is about finding others

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I think that one of the major weaknesses of society is the emphasis on me.

  1. We are told to look after number one.
  2. We are told that the most important person is me
  3. We are told that you have to look after yourself first
  4. We are told that the most important discovery that we will make is about ourselves.

Of course there are elements of truth in all of the above list. We do need to have a certain level of self care. We cannot ignore some of our basic needs. But any system of self help must include the question how do I find my place among others.

Humans are social beings. We live in societies, we work in teams, we have families, we join groups. These are all important parts of being human. We cannot find ourselves until we are able to deal with the realities of living in a community.

One of the fundamental weaknesses of democracy is its insistence on the rights of the individual. This is because to a large extent we have failed to discover a common set of values that can bind us together as a community. We see the effects of the breakdown in community all around us. Broken families, depression, anxiety, stress, physical distress are all evidence of a breakdown in our wellbeing.
But the real outcome of this is that people become lost. When we no longer are able to function in community or find a community that we can function in and so we lose our way.

I have worked with people for a long time and over and over the story I hear is one of people trying to discover their place in the world. They ask the question, from where do I get meaning? And as much as self help can be an aid in that journey its not the destination.

Any journey of self discovery must take you to a place where you are able to meet with others. A place where people know your name, where you are valued because of who you are and not what you produce, where you begin to see yourself clearly through the eyes of others. It is only when we begin to realise the impact that we have on others that we can begin to change. If we only ever look at ourselves we will lack the impetus to make life altering changes in our own lives.

Facing Criticism – Who am I?

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Criticism always seems to be unfair. Even constructive criticism my have a barb to it and even though it may be intended for my good there may be a prick as the point is made. Because I have often held positions of leadership over the past 15 years I have often been the target of criticism. I have seen people want to inflict damage and hurt upon others and myself because of their perception about what I should or shouldn't have done or what I did or didn't do. My conclusion – I will never make everyone happy all of the time. And I will make most people unhappy some of the time. It is very important for me to know who I am if I want successfully lead, take the initiative and be a positive influence on my world. For some reason there will be people who will want to criticize even my noblest efforts. Why, I really don't know. I can't understand such a mentality that seeks to destroy and tear down. But they will are a part of my reality. Therefore to face this I need to have a solid sense of my own reality. I need to know who I am. Or in the words of someone else, "know thyself." Otherwise I will wrongly draw my self concept from the criticism that I face.

  1. If I know myself I do not immediately need to defend myself against everything that is said against me.
  2. If I know myself I can learn to laugh easily at the sillier aspects of the criticism that I face
  3. If I know myself i don't have to try to change to suit everyone else's perception of what I should be.

Who am I? I am Chris. I am over 40. Going a bit gray. Father of 4 kids. Husband to April. A bit intense in personality. I have some obsessive traits but I try to control them. A bit useless practically. But someone who cares deeply, tries to be a good friend to others and tries to make a positive contribution to other's lives. Thats me. Welcome.

How to get perspective on your problems

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I know that we all have the feeling sometimes that our circumstances are overwhelming. There may be too much happening in your life or there may be unfortunate events or we may just be having a really bad day. All of us face problems, some because of our choices and others because of what's happening around us. Life is often a struggle. This is the universal state of mankind. "suffering is universal." This struggle is often the reason why we call out to God for help or get angry or depressed. Here are a few tips that I try to live by when trying to gain perspective on some of the problems that I face

  1. Most problems are not permanent – be very careful about making permanent choices regarding issues that won't last.
  2. Most problems are minor in the big scheme of things – What worried me as a teenager does not worry me now.
  3. Embrace the problem – the cliche what doesn't destroy me makes me stronger can be true if the problem is dealt with constructively. I try to use difficulties to become a better person in the end. In a recent book that I read about finding wholeness each of the case studies overcame some personal difficulties that brought them into a better place.
  4. Get over yourself – My wife has said this at time when I have tried to express my rightness over an issue. I may be right but I need to get over my need to be right. I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world if I think that things are bad its because I have limited my vision to myself. It isn't all about me and if my problems are overwhelming maybe I just need to broaden my focus.

So life is just a little bit overwhelming for me at the moment. Lots of changes are happening that are beyond my control and I need take a bit of my own advice.

Weighting – the first 2 kilos

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Yes I have lost some weight. Not much but more to the point I have tried to institute a lifestyle change. There are two major areas that I have addressed:

I am not on a diet. I still have some fries when I feel like it although I am trying to feel like it less. Chocolate is still there but more occasionally. I am trying to eat more salads, fruits and vegetables. Even with main meals I am trying to up their intake and lower my meat intake.

I am exercising. It is amazing how much better this makes me feel.  More importantly it means that I don’t have to watch as carefully what I eat. Because I don’t need to lose a lot of weight (I think about 7 kilos)  I have a bit of flexibility in this a area. The 8 seconds at a time is a bit tedious. Even though I know that it will help me to lose weight quickly there also has to be a level of enjoyment in it all. I like to exercise and think. Concentrating on pedaling fast for 8 seconds precludes this. Most of the time I try to ensure that my pulse is in the working heart rate zone and I forget about the 8 second sprints. I
am looking forward to getting back out on the road again. But, the beauty of an exercise bike is that I can do it at night when its dark because that’s the time that I often get home. I am also using a rowing machine. This is good too because it is more an overall workout.

So there you have it. Not big changes but a couple of kilos is the result. Two kilos means that I can fit back into clothes a bit more comfortably. It has meant about an inch off my waist measurement. And I feel a little bit better about myself because I have achieved something positive. To me they are all good results so far.

9 reasons why it’s good to work at home

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  1. You have a daily 1 minute commute.
  2. You have more time for other things because of the 1 minute commute
  3. You can eat lunch at home and save money
  4. You save money on fuel and other transport costs
  5. You can take a productive break when you want and do something around the home
  6. You are available for the kids
  7. You can be more flexible with your hours
  8. It’s nice to feel like you are your own boss even if you are still really working for someone else
  9. There are less office politics to deal with

Lose weight in 8 seconds – We’ll see?

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Yes it’s time. Time to make a few changes in my life. This year has been a year of changes but this could be one of the more important ones that I make. Like many Australians I have slipped into a fairly sedentary lifestyle. I enjoyed a burst of energy during my mid 30’s that lasted for a few years and slowly I have slipped into a lifestyle of less and less activity.
But I realise that I cannot continue this way. I have always enjoyed bike riding so this one is right up my alley.

A REVOLUTION in weight loss is about to hit Sydney after scientists devised a workout that burns three times the amount of fat.

They found their specific brand of interval training prompts the body to click into a metabolic response that allows more fat to be burned under the skin and within the muscles.

Researchers at the University of NSW and the Garvan Institute studied 45 overweight women over 15 weeks, putting them through a 20 minute cycling regime in which they sprinted on a stationary bike for eight seconds followed by 12 seconds of cycling lightly.

“They lost three times more weight as other women who exercised at a continuous, regular pace for 40 minutes,” UNSW Associate Professor Steve Boutcher said.

I intend to lose about 10 kg all up. Theoretically this should take me about 10 weeks but I will give myself 3 whole months. I don’t intend to blog all the time about it but it is an important part of the development of myself as a person.

A crucial figure is my waist measurement. It is 2 inches above what it should be and at my age this becomes increasingly important. So I need to reduce it.

Lets go!

The difference between a blog and a web site – reflections on blogging

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After a couple of years of blogging (most of it at another site), I believe that blogging is one of the best things to happen on the web. Remember when we all had a home page, it was everyone’s chance to have their 5 minutes of glory on the newest medium around. The trouble was that these pages were hard to update requiring some technical skills to be able to update regularly.

Now we have lots of blog content management systems that can meet the need of every user. For those who are a slightly tech savvy there is wordpress or a range of other platforms that allow a great total control over the look of their site with an easy to manage dashboard allowing the blogger to post. Then there are the paid hosted systems, typepad stands out in this group and is used by many popular blogs. For example TechCrunch uses typepad. Then there is a plethora of free hosted systems that usually have limited flexibility and are paid for by advertising.

Some of my thoughts on blogging after using a number of these and sharing my thoughts about fatherhood and personal development to the world are:
1. Blogging is about my personal interaction with whatever content matter I choose to write about. That’s what makes is special and unique. I know there are lots of spam blogs out there but they are blogs in name only. There are also a number of professional blogs that exist solely to make money that are really a cross dressing website.
2. Blogging is about the people who are reading your site. With adequate spam protection your blog joins a worldwide conversation of people interacting personally with your content.
3. Blogging is soul enhancing. I find that what I am writing about is also about sharing a part of my spirit with others. I think that writing is essentially about this and that we need to remember that the energy that is dispersed should enhance anyone who comes into contact with it.
4. Blogging is about people. Write for people, talk like a person and respond as a person is the best advice that I can give for building a successful blog.
5. My blog is my gift to others. I know that I may not be the most eloquent of writers but I want to share something of myself with others. The subjects that I write about I care about. I want to see people improve and to have the resources that will enable their self development.

What’s the difference?

Well they look pretty similar but dig in a blog and you will find something special, a person.

Service – Same company different price tag

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I recently with a friend made a large purchase of technical equipment at a prominent Australian retailer. We had two staff members collecting the stuff and they could not have been more helpful. They even waited for us at the counter and helped us to carry all the gear to the car. They were chatting and and friendly and we couldn’t really have asked for any better service.

Same company different day. I purchased a single less expensive item. The sales assistant was obviously not that interested in the service that I received. I was given the product and pointed to the direction of the front counter and there was not time for any idle chat.

I am not complaining about either transaction. I am just wondering what a commission based sales structure does to customer service? Does it really motivate or does it in the end devalue?

This is not a blog about customer service but I am always interested in the attitudes that drive us. I could talk all day about some of the ways that people are treated by companies. I am left wondering about this company? It is very successful but has it missed something important?

Or is it just a reflection on society. That is the way we are treated because of the size of our purchase a reflection on the values that are important to each one of us. Or are we going to break out of this?

I would like to think that we can be different.

I think of the responses that I have received from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger fame. Early in my blogging career I wrote a couple of emails to him. I always received a response and it was always polite. I realise that my requests were not really valid but never was I treated in a way that devalued myself.
Darren’s blog is one of the most popular on the blogosphere and yet he took the time to respond to me at ChrisGribble.com. It gives me hope that there are people who are able to live differently to others. I don’t know him personally yet I appreciated the way that he has differentiated himself in this way.

Don’t worry be messy

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That’s right its been proven. I doesn’t matter if you are messy. In fact if you are messy you will probably be more creative.

Don’t ask me the references for my evidence but I heard it on very good authority that those impressively neat people with immaculate desks and a file name for everything are not neccessarily more efficient or happier than us messies. Almost certainly from the research it appears they will be less creative.

And guess what? Whether we are tidy or messy we will all spend the same time looking for stuff. About 6 minutes.
tabithamessy.jpg

See here is my evidence. Messy kid happy face. Have we have just lost the ability to enjoy it as adults?

Love the ones that you are with……

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What is our relationship to the rest of the world? here are some more insights to being a positive presence person.

The highest honor a French chef can attain is to have his retaurant listed as a three star restaurant in the Michelin Guid to fine eating. According to one newspaper, the 1995 guide added a twentieth resturant to its three star listing: the Auberge de Eridan in Annecy, France.

The owner and self taught chef, Marc Veyrat, is a culinary maverick. His unorthodox ideas got him kicked outof three hotel culinary schols, and local hotels would not even take him on as an apprentice in the kitchen.

Veyrat is from the French Alps. Alpine herbs, such as caraway, cumin, wild thyme, and chenopodium, are key ingredients in his recipies. Once a week at dawn Veyrat ventures into the mountains to pick the herbs.

I know I’m not a traditional chef,says Veyrat.I’m a student of nature, because before you love the cuisine you have to love the ingredients.

To be a positive presence person (PPP) you have to really love other people before you can appreciate what they do. To do this means that we value them for who they are and refuse to view others as a commodity. It is about loving the ingredients that come together to make each person that we meet a precious encounter.

Try it and you will find that the way that they respond to you will be different. Sure there will still be the users. Learn to recognise them quickly and limit the access they have to your core being. Seek out other PPP’s and allow them to see those special attributes that belong to you.

Web wanders on a Sunday afternoon

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I went for a wander this afternoon and traveled around the web. Here is where I ended up. Remember when we used to surf the web for fun?

Start here at homeworking.com

This site is for anyone wanting to work at home and anyone already working at home. You will find lots to get you started, help you find work at home and avoid scams.

I went first to the case studies because I like stories.

Jason is 27 and married to Stel. They have lots of furry creatures and the Cat Spedie! Case Study written in 2000 and not updated

mmm.. not updated not a good sign. So I quickly click around. The home employment agency looks interesting. So I click there

Samantha is in her 30’s and lives with her partner and 3 children aged 6 and under.
Sam runs the Home Employment Agency and talks here about being self-employed and the part it has played in her life.

Don’t click on her site. It takes you to a place of pop ups. I begin to wonder about the value of this site. So I go to Yaro the Entrepreneur to share in his journey.

Lots of links here. I go to the young go getter. Thankfully there is a back button. Nothing wrong with the site it doesn’t interest me at all.

For any eager beavers if you are ready to join as a client of Rich Schefren’s coaching program you can do so here – StrategicProfits.com/coaching/

but they are full. back to the back button again.

Next link is to Simpleology:

Here’s What You’ll Learn in the FREE Simpleology 101:The one simple “brain hack” known by the world’s richest 1% that allows you to get 300% more done in the same amount of time. (This one is so obvious that you’ll be amazed the whole planet doesn’t know it. And yes, this is why it seems the more these jet-setters lounge around the pool, the more money they make. It’s disgusting.)

But as I go through the sign on process they want more and more information so I get out of here. I am out of time almost an hour later and really none the wiser.

I am generally a happy person so I wonder what this article says about me? Why Intelligent People Tend to be Unhappy

Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we have the odd notable personality such as Albert Einstein, we also have many extremely intelligent people working in occupations that are considered among the lowliest, as may be attested by a review of the membership lists of Mensa (the club for the top two percent on intelligence scales).

Finally I found something that interested me.

Is education a cure for the ills of globalisation?

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Summary

The concept of a global village encompassing the whole world seemed to become a reality in recent decades with the rapid advances in technology, the web, changing industrial practice and the shift towards the information economy. However the web (the primary communications medium of globalization) has also effectively communicated the differences that are increasingly obvious in our world. Globalization has ushered in a new information economy. The web was once hailed as the means by which the massification of education would occur with many seeing opportunities to capture new markets made accessible by the internet. Yet globalization has not resulted in the world that many hoped for. The question is will education provide the way for creating a better world or will it be the tool to further divide our world?

Globalization Definition

Today Globalisation is a term used to describe a number of paradigm shifts that have or are occurring in our world. It describes a borderless community in which the traditional nation state boundaries are redefined in light of economic partnerships that transcend these established boundaries. McWorld and Coca-colonisation of the world are global brands that are often viewed as symbols a new form of imperialism that is sometimes termed the Americanisation of the world. It is also used to describe the convergence of culture often to the detriment of local communities and values.

The web began as a medium by which academics could communicate to each other so that they could exchange information and ideas. It emerged in the early 1990’s from being a communication medium for a few elite academics to linking the world electronically. It very quickly was seen as a means to create income. For many the idea of communicating to the whole world also brought ideas of massive new markets to be tapped. At first no one was really sure how this would occur. The dot com emerged and during the 1990’s and generated huge amounts of investment capital based on little income and none of the traditional tangible assets. The mantra was if it was new technology it was good.

The bubble burst. The dot com collapse and resulting losses incurred devastated many people’s confidence in internet. Much of the early hype was based on a lack of understanding of how the web works as a communication’s medium. The halcyon days of the 90’s are now behind us but the web is still growing at a phenomenal rate. It is a medium that provides instant access to billions of searchable pages of information. Google currently the worlds leading search engine handles 200 million such searches per day. Millions of people everyday send emails, engage in virtual discussions in chatroom or instant messages and post views and opinions on discussion boards. It connects our world instantly in a way never before possible.

A second great influence is the shift in our world from being an industrial economy to an information economy. Alvin Toffler in the Third Wave describes the ramifications of such a shift. Production of goods is based on cost savings such as cheap labour and is not dependent on national boundaries. Once exporting was about the movement of raw materials to the next stage of manufacturing. The transnational corporation functions as its own entity moving production and finances outside the restrictions of the traditional nation state that has dominated world political systems for the past few centuries.

Out of these great changes the nation state are seeking to redefine their place in our global village. For many developing nations globalization is seen as a synonymous with Americanisation. There is a strong resistance to the homogenization of culture within a world of global brands dominated by American economic and cultural imperialism. The so called economic equal playing field strongly favours western nations who demand access to developing nation’s markets but are still able to impose tariffs to protect their local more expensive producers.

Globalisation has not been the cure all for the ills of the world. After the collapse of the communism late last century capitalism and its accompanying democracy is seen as the only viable financial and governing model. But it has also failed to realize solutions to many of the issues that plague society. World Bank initiatives to bail out some of the Asian tiger economies after their meltdown during the 90’s have imposed unfair impositions on nations that had little to do with the lending of money. For example the condition of receiving money is to open markets. These conditions have often exacerbated the receiving nation’s problems and this is evident in the growing divide between the world’s have’s and the have nots. During the recent Iraqi war the United Nations was largely ineffectual in staving off the United States dogged commitment to replace Saddam Hussein. Its resolutions and weapons reports were treated disdainfully by George Bush who chose to ignore it and go to the war on the premise of Iraq‘s possession of arms of mass destruction.

Education has long been seen as the means by which disadvantaged groups can modernize and achieve economic equality. This is even truer in an information economy where wealth is evaluated by one’s access to information. As one becomes better educated they gain higher incomes, they move up through society’s pecking order and they are better able to serve the community. Because of this the whole community is considered better off.

A concern is that education is now seen as another economic commodity. This tension is felt acutely in higher education institutions where courses are now closely linked to industry expectations. Once a University’s role was clearly defined, it accumulated information through research and disseminated that information by teaching. To a large extent this occurred outside the market influences, was largely government subsidized and was regarded as a community service. Today education institutions face increased pressures to do more with less and meet the demands of industry. With the burgeoning student population professors are under more pressure to meet increasing demands from their clients.

Within the education paradigm many viewed technological advances with an eye for cost saving and mass production and dissemination of education. Two thirds of the world lives within 800 miles of Bangkok and so far is largely untapped market. It was envisioned that there was a huge market for secondary education for these emerging economies. Many thought that transmissive models of learning would allow cheap mass produced education. This is reflected in terminology such as learning materials to describe a course of instruction.

Online learning opportunities may not be the educational panacea that everyone hoped for. It is not cheap. Instead quality online learning may be more expensive than or at least as expensive as traditional face to face educational models. One of the strengths of online learning is its ability to construct learning communities through computer mediated conferencing (CMC). Most suggest that a student ratio of one teacher to 25 or so students is the optimal ratio for effective learning to occur.

At the recent G8 conference in Evian, Jaques Chirac, France‘s Prime Minister suggested that unless there is an investment in infrastructure that globalization is doomed to failure. The evaluation in 2002 of the primary commitments of the G8 countries at Kananaskis of the Genoa summit in 2001 suggests that there is little interest or political will by the G8 countries to invest in the resources that are required to supply a primary education for many disadvantaged people.

Therefore rather than the liberator that it has been in the past if used wrongly it may become another tool that results in further oppression of disadvantaged groups. Current World Bank policies are orientated to an economistic development of human capital model of education. Education policies are designed to increase the efficiency of the way it is administered with an emphasis on the outcomes. They have created a global model that has little understanding or place for local needs, culture or communities. Instead of being in the hands of local teachers it comes under the realm of global economic rationalism.

Any global education initiatives will need to be able to identify with local needs if they are to be effective. The African continent is today facing an Aids epidemic that will infect one third of its population and will create a huge drain on its resources in the coming decade. Israelis and Palestinians continue to blow each other up on an almost daily basis. SARS recently erupted in flashpoints around the world carried at an unprecedented rate in a borderless world. Within a decade many baby boomers will begin drawing on their superannuation and many analysts are certain that this will result in an economic downturn as less funds are available for investment.

The possibilities offered to our world by technology and education are enormous. Online learning is poised to contribute to an emerging post colonial; post industrial world with its values of access and equity to all.  Is online learning the panacea to the ills of globalization? It could contribute to the growing world divide by furthering the gap between the information have’s and have nots. This scenario only serves the haves and enables them to be better off. However, with the right infrastructure it could provide access to learning opportunities without limitations of time or space or race or culture. This could serve to bring together co-operatively the strengths of our global community and create a win/win situation.

Readings

Barboza, D, When Golden Arches Are Too Red, White and Blue, www.nyt.com accessed 10.06.03.

Coxon, E, From Patronage to Profiteering, New Zealand’s relationship with the small states of Oceania, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2002., accessed 10.06.03

Heath, G, Introduction to Symposium on Globalisation, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2002., accessed 10.06.03

Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, Stephen Wolff, A Brief History of the Internet, http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml accessed 10.06.3

LEONHARD, D,  Globalization Hits a Political Speed Bump, www.nyt.com accessed 10.06.03.

Mayes, T. 2000, ‘The technology of learning in a social world.’ Paper for Lifelong Learning Forum, Glasgow Caledonian University, pp.1-11.

Peters, M., Roberts, P., Universities, Futurology and Gloablisation, Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, Vol.21, No.2., 2000., Accessed 10.06.03

Tapsall, S., All aboard the Borderless Education Bandwagon, Open Learning, Vol. 16, No.1, 2001 accessed 10.06.03