The Find-a-Human database is a public collection of touch-tone recipes that get you through big companies’ voice-jail systems and through to a live operator. Add your own!
Find-A-Human — IVR Cheat Sheet
Via BoingBoing

A pretty interesting conversation happened recently on the SOCNET list about the practice of cross-posting on multiple mailing lists, including a look at its origins and why it may no longer be quite so necessary (names and quotes used with permission):
Barry Wellman:
“apologies for cross-posting” is one of the most frequent messages I see online when Read More...

The NY Times reports on a A Virtual Holiday in the Virtual Sun, about the growth in popularity of consumer-generated content in multiplayer online games.

I’m speaking today at Oxford & York’s New Media & Entertainment Summit. Chris Clark, the organizer, generously sent me some of the questions which he thought would come up, and I have added them below. I want to thank some of my colleagues for their quick and insightful comments, which are reflected below: Read More...

Recently, a relatively new Ecademy member posted an article from my About Entrepreneurs site in his blog without a link and proper attribution. I don’t believe that he was trying to claim authorship or doing anything malicious, but he caught some pretty heavy flak about it, both from current and former Ecademists. What Read More...

I’m glad to report that the Virtual Handshake Corporate Profiles Wiki is growing steadily. New additions include Buzzoodle
and GoBig Network. Check out their profiles and please add your comments!
I’ve joined GoBig, and it seems that some members are getting useful traction from it. I had told Wil Schroter that I Read More...

Following on my earlier review of new software tools, I’ve been playing with the new edition of Best Software’s Act, Act 2006. (Disclosure: this was a complimentary review copy.)
For my purposes, there are only two significant upgrades:
1) This is significantly faster. Slow speed was my biggest complaint about Act Read More...

Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir of the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem writes some interesting pieces on “One employee maintains a blog which has made some unflattering remarks about the company. Can I take action against the blogger?”. He followed up with a worthwhile post on “Blogs provide an open forum for readers’ comments. Is Read More...

Shannon Clark writes on Time, Identity and Social Networks, and postulates that networks aggregate around shared perceptions of time. I suggest that he’s observing just one example of a general phenomenon, which is that people will form networks around even the most trivial of commonalities. One of our interns, Mimi Owusu, mentioned she Read More...

Malcolm Gladwell writes a great piece on The social logic of Ivy League admissions.

Halfway through the book, however, Shulman and Bowen present what they call a “surprising” finding. Male athletes, despite their lower S.A.T. scores and grades, and despite the fact that many of them are members of minorities and come from lower Read More...