I saw this article on Wired.com talking about a man (Ralph Brown) who is planning the Atlantic Ocean in a 21-foot fishing boat designed for shallow water. I poked around a little more and just…Wow.

Alright a bunch things crossed my mind, none of them very polite. First of course was “Are you f-ing insane??” People much more prepared in boats made for crossing the ocean get into trouble out there and this guy thinks that he is going to do it in a boat that is made to not go offshore at all? He claims it is unsinkable. Okay, fine. It won’t sink…but who cares if it sinks or not when it can get swamped easily and off you go. (Besides, if huge cruiseliners aren’t unsinkable coughTitaniccough neither are you buddy.)

The Coast Guard side of me, well words fail me. It looks like it will be doing a lot of the journey up the coast with a bunch of stops, but still…Um. Wow? (and that’s not a WOW! I just got a free candy bar wow, that’s wow dear god did you just run over a chihuahua with a lawn mower wow.)

I scoured the article and poked around online…I see no reference of a boat following these guys if they get in trouble. Which means that with what they are doing, which is completely dangerous, could end up costing them their lives at worst (and risk the lives of people trying to rescue them). At best they would get swamped and call for help to be rescued after costing the tax payers (and whatever AMVER vessel has to pick them up) a lot of money. If someone sees something showing that they are going to be taking another boat to back them up, let me know.

This trip is a LITTLE different than going from South Carolina to Bermuda (which is what their site claims they have already done.

Seriously? The Queen of England and the President wouldn’t endorse this one, check out the article on Tampabay.com. Oh hey, look at that, he designed the boat…but he claimed  “the stunt isn’t simply about proving the seaworthiness of the boat he designed, patented and built.” Listen I am all for doing things for those who serve our country, but come on this is ridiculous and little more than a publicity stunt for his boat building business.

Unwavering patriotism? Trying to raise 3 million by doing this? I am sorry, but this leaves me a little skeptical. IF they manage to do it, their company would stand to make a lot of money on the sales and publicity. I plan to follow this story and see how it turns out.

I do hope that nothing bad happens to him or his brother on this journey, but this sounds like the beginning of a story they would tell us at SAR school.

One thing I have been using a lot is my account on thisMoment.com, and I have to say I am just more and more impressed with the site. It is easy to update from wherever, by email you can post moments, video and pictures just like that. I am really hoping they come out with an iPhone app for the thing and then it will be perfect.

It has a great timeline feature, where you can follow a person’s timeline on a trip or through an event. There is a comment feature and places to comment. I really would suggest checking it out. I actually used it way more than Twitter during our cross country roadtrip.

To me the difference between the two is that thisMoment is a place to actually record those little moments (like staying in the smallest hotel room in South Dakota) to remember them later or share them with other people…and you can say more than 140 characters. Twitter is still the fastest way to transmit quick clips and information…thisMoment is where you can share things in more depth and store memories.

I recently was linked to Posterous, and wasn’t nearly as impressed. It is just another blog site. Unlike thisMoment, I do not see anything really new or inspiring about this site.

The last time I posted about thisMoment, I mentioned that I thought it might be a good site for the Coast Guard to try out. Here is how I see that working, if someone was underway…say on their first patrol to the Arctic, or doing ATON work, the story could be followed in the neat small clips and pictures that thisMoment allows. Instead of using Flickr, Twitter, and trying to come up with huge long blog entries they could post as much or as little as they want with simple emails. Using the email system would also be helpful because it can be a real bear trying to load a webpage when on a boat. This way if the person is just too busy or too tired to write anything really long they could simply say “Reached the ice today!” add a small picture attachment and hit send…there done, story told!

The easier the better!

The subject of anonymous bloggers and those who leave comments is not exactly a new controversy. Basically the moment you had a place where people could comment/speak without any major repercussions…here comes a whole lot of drama.

As much as I loathe the sociopathic, narcissistic personalities who think trolling is acceptable and flaming people worthy of wasting time on, the whole anon thing is a tough call for me…because while I see why it leaves the door open for idiots to be rude it is also the security that some people need to be honest or to protect their privacy.

First of all you have to ask yourself with all the IP tacking and other methods of analytics if you can you ever really remove anonymous anyway and if this is just a moot point? A person could use a name that looks legit, but how much effort are you willing to put in to find out if it is their real name. And when people are bickering about anonymous, do they mean just the word Anonymous when someone posts…or login names which are not real legal names but are a legitimate way to track a personality on a forum.

If you have been tracking social media stories you might have seen that recently a blogger in the UK who had his identity revealed even though he tried to file an injunction. Mind you that was in England but it is still an interesting case. He was a police officer blogging about his work, and from what I read writing about he was posting things that he shouldn’t have been revealing to the public (case information, etc). It is a pretty major case that could set some interesting precedent when it becomes an issue brought to court in other countries.

Recently the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard posted saying that his blog would no longer allow anonymous comments. “Unfortunately allowing anonymous posters has allowed trolls and bottom feeders to post without any accountability.”

I am sure there are a lot of people who are bent out of shape at his phrasing…but when you think about it, he has a point.

Let me define troll for you: a troll is a person who posts inflammatory, irrelevant, and off-topic messages in an online community with the main goal of provoking other users, usually done for the amusement of the troll. Read Write Web has an interesting piece on trolls you can find here, which discusses the problems with trolls online. (Side note, there are actual sites that teach you how to be a better troll. Really? Do we need to teach them how to be bigger jerks?)

Why do people troll, flame or other wise act like prats online when they wouldn’t in person? There are some who say there are psychological reasons for it. I would be inclined to agree…individuation is a major player in the troll and bottom feeder game. What is individuation? Basically it is losing the need to be socially acceptable because you no longer have an identity. In other words, wear a mask to go beat someone up with a group of your buddies because when no one can see your face you can’t be caught.

Since we become psychologically distanced from the people we are talking to, people are more inclined to mouth off and say/do things that would get them slapped in person, or fired, or arrested. Here is a rather pointed (and rude, so if foul language bothers you don’t click the link) comic on the theory.

The thing is, even knowing that being anonymous encourages some people to behave like social mongrels…I still kind of walk a middle line on the whole should anonymous be allowed or not. There are really times when people might have something important to say but be scared to do so…and I go back around in circles again. How much of a security blanket should people really be allowed?

Heck, like I said earlier does anyone know what we are defining anonymous when we argue if being anonymous should be allowed?

Is using a login name anonymous if I always use the same log in name every time I post on a forum? Doesn’t that mark me as an individual? I would argue that it establishes a personality that is no longer anonymous.

On the other side of the arguement, can I ever really be anonymous? Anyone who thinks that their IP isn’t tracked, or that people can’t tell that you are the same person posting from 100 different names on their blog or a site they visit to buy shoes or whatever else? Is spending a little too much time playing Atari and drinking Jolt and not enough time reading. Yes, I said Atari.

I don’t think I will ever fall into the whole idea that we need anonymous abilities to be able to have real free speech (yeah yeah I have heard the Deep Throat argument) I mean if you are going to stand up for something stand up. The sad fact is, because not everyone can behave like a grown up when it comes to posting and maintaining some decorum the priviledge of being anonymous often has to be removed from comment areas…and sometimes has to be peeled away from a blogger.

From the Coast Guard perspective I can see why they would not allow anonymous, I actually agree with them. They are trying to have a conversation with their public and being a government organization they are the target of some pretty ridiculous flamers and trolls. The thing is if you go to the Master Chief’s blog, you can still log in using Open ID…which means as long as you log in and have a consistent user name it looks like you can engage in the conversation even if you have something to say that might be controversial. Anyone who thinks the CG is asking people to not be anon to “track them down” needs to stop watching so many movies…the CG is WAY to busy to worry about tracking down trolls. Anyone who wants to be a troll? Should find somewhere else to do that.

Yesterday, I talked about how before you go believing something you read, either in a blog, on Twitter, or anywhere else you should check your source. Thing is, how can you know your source is reliable if they are pretending to be all cloak and dagger?

Watching the news about Jackson’s death unfold was interesting because I was in the middle of BFE South Dakota and did not really have access to the TV, Radio or anything else other than my iPhone easily at hand (as I was enjoying being too lazy to reach behind my seat get my laptop and the Mifi out). So, I was poking around my Facebook and Twitter accounts when I saw people start posting about his death.  The only way I even heard the news was because I was looking at Twitter. What made the whole thing so interesting was that I saw at least 4 tweets from friends saying Jackson was dead before he was…and when I followed the retweet trail…I realized that people were just retweeting without following up on the news.

The kicker? Jackson was not dead when the tweets started saying he was, he was just in a coma. (Mind you within a short amount of time he was actually dead, but still)I found this out because I took the news with a “huh, I wonder if that is actually true” attitude and dug a little deeper.

Then the fake stories of celebrity deaths started appearing on the web and the sheeple on the social media sites (the ones who just follow along and retweet without thought) including the fake death of Jeff Goldblum (Yes the linked story is fake) and a whole bunch of nonsense about Harrison Ford.

What you have is a couple trolls thinking it funny to use the sudden death of one more celebrity this week (that is 3 in a week I think?) to stir things up . So, these people post outlandish stories about who also died and then a whole bunch of other people who don’t bother to check their facts pass it on.

This is overall a great example of how social media isn’t always a good thing, because sometimes the stories can run ahead of the actual facts. Okay, in some cases, like the fake stories about Ford and Goldblum…social media doesn’t just get ahead of the facts they don’t even have any foundation in reality. It’s like a game of telephone on steriods.

Today’s social media BS-pandemic is a pretty dramatic example about how people need to be a little more cautious about the information they take as “fact” when it comes to what they hear on any social media forum (or anywhere else for that matter). When you are reading something think about who is writing it, what agenda do they have…what credibility?

Heck, there are number people out there who will tell you all sorts of things about the Coast Guard (in case you haven’t been following the blog long I work for the Coast Guard), claiming that they have proof and facts… but in reality many of them are just trolls who have no proof of what they are saying (not even going to link to them, don’t feed the trolls!)…they are just disgruntled and want to stir $h1% up. Good for them, personally I would find a more satisfying outlet for my anger at the world, like underwater electric basket weaving.

Having seen this time and time again, and not just in reference to the Coast Guard,  it can be pretty irritating watching someone who obviously has a personal agenda make things up and try to pass them off as fact. Or, just as irritating the people who take everything they read as fact and pass on the stupid. I wonder how Goldblum felt when he found out that he had been declared dead by the internet?

Seriously? Make it a habit of looking at the about page for any blog you read, and following the weblink/bio of anyone you are looking at on Twitter. I don’t know about you, but I want to know who it is I am reading. After looking all that information about the author up,  I still follow up on what they said before I pass it along. Why? Because that is the responsible thing to do.

Social media can be a good thing, a great thing even, for education and broadening your understanding of the world through interaction with the human factor on a global scale…but there are a lot of trolls out there and just like you wouldn’t trust everyone you meet at a bar, people really need to check their facts before reposting information (or believing it) online.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/24/neda-soltan-iran-family-forced-out

If Iran was trying to make the world forget about her, that was completely the wrong way to do it…if this story in the Guardian is true they just made her a bigger martyr.

Their actions are violent, their burial of Neda was disrespectful to her family, and their firewall might be mighty I still argue is too little too late…you can’t unspill the blood that has splashed in the eyes of millions around the world. When Iran suddenly goes silent, Neda and others killed in the conflict will still be dying over and over in full view of the world.

Before I go into this let me make something clear…I took an oath when I joined the Coast Guard. In taking that oath I knew that I would not be voicing my opinions about political parties in a public forum, and I knew that I would become a representative of my organization any time I put my name to something. This means that even though what I am saying here is NOT the official opinion of the Coast Guard, if I were to go off on whatever…I am Coast Guard the uniform doesn’t go away just because I change clothes. I agreed to be a part of something bigger than my personal opinions. Anyway…back to the post at hand.

Wired has a story about the AP and their policy on social media here. They even have a link where you can download the policy and read it for yourself. There is a bit of a grumble fest going on about the policies set into place by the AP when it comes to their employees and how they interact in social media.

The News Media Guild, which represents 1,520 AP employees here in the U.S., brought up the issue that one policy requires Facebook users who are AP employees to delete material posted by others that violates AP standards. Basically what that means is this, if AP standards say you can’t post about a rhino in a pink dress doing tap dance, then if someone on your friend’s list posts something about that rhino on your wall…you must remove it.

There is actually a part of their policy that states: Posting material about the AP’s internal operations is prohibited on employees’ personal pages, and employees also should avoid including political affiliations in their profiles and steer clear of making any postings that express political views or take stands on contentious issues.

Man, that is a pretty broad statement in general, and kind of neuters any of their employees in social media at all. I can understand not having any political affiliation (non-biased reporting and all that) but steering clear of making any postings that take a stand on contentious issues? Does that mean the draft picks on a football team, that chocolate cupcakes are better than vanilla, that who won the Oscar last year was ridiculous, or just the major stuff like Iran, or the fact that the traditional news media is being beaten to a pulp by the internet? The memo is pretty ambiguous on this and I guess it would be up to interpretation on a day to day basis? I mean think about it right now you and I could probably agree on a bunch of contentious issues, but we would also have differences on others.

Beyond that the whole idea about don’t talk about your work?? Really AP? Heck the Coast Guard lets people do that! I mean, no we are not allowed to post anything that violates security…but we are allowed to talk about what we do, what makes us tick, etc…and I quote from the message that went out to Coast Guard service members on the subject:

COAST GUARD PERSONNEL WHILE IN AN OFF-DUTY STATUS (OR AS SPECIFIED BY PARAGRAPHS 3.B. AND 3.C.
BELOW) ARE AUTHORIZED TO MAKE INTERNET POSTS ON COAST GUARD RELATED TOPICS AS OUTLINED IN THIS ALCOAST. THE COAST GUARD PERFORMS VALUABLE SERVICES AROUND THE WORLD EVERY DAY AND THERE IS NOBODY IN A BETTER POSITION TO TELL THIS STORY THAN EACH OF YOU.

If you are curious to see what else the message says you can read the whole thing here.

One point the AP and the Coast Guard agree on is remembering that (to quote Admiral Allen, Commandant of the Coast Guard very loosely) social media is like the linguistic version of non-biodegradable plastic…once you put it out there it is out there for good. In AP’s letter to their staff they say: “Employees should be mindful that any personal information they disclose about themselves or colleagues may be linked to the AP’s name.” The Coast Guard message to their personnel agrees with this concept and reads: COAST GUARD PERSONNEL SHOULD KEEP IN MIND HOW THEIR POSTS WILL REFLECT UPON THEMSELVES, THEIR UNIT, AND OUR SERVICE.

I can kind of see where AP is coming from in that they don’t want their reporters breaking the news stories before the AP does…it is a competition thing in a sense, but it seems like their new policies are causing some indigestion for being a bit of overkill. Like I said earlier think what has me scratching my head is how vague the memo appears to be.

Trust me, I understand maintaining impartiality, and protecting your interests. Coast Guard members as members of the military shouldn’t be campaigning in a public forum for a political party, they have an honor code, we have security concerns, privacy act all of that…so I really can understand what AP is trying for… but being held responsible because your cousin might say something stupid on your site? Or your friend from overseas posts and asks you to support Iran? I ask my friends to remember what I do for a living and be respectful of that, but man I might have to ditch half my friends list on Facebook for the goofy things they say if I worked for AP!

So while I can see why they have the policies they do, I have to chuckle when it looks (from what I have been reading mind you)  like my armed service of choice is more permissive and open-minded  in how its people to participate in social media than the AP appears to be.

Mostly it is an excuse to play with a new site and so far I am really enjoying ThisMoment. It has a smooth easy to use interface that is seamless and very dynamic. It is like Twitter meets Livejournal with a dash of Flickr and Youtube.  I think I am going to have a lot of fun with this.

Coast Guard application wise,  I think ThisMoment.com would be really sweet for an underway blog to get a deckplate level view following a Coast Guard crewmember.  You know me always thinking about how social media tools can be used for the Coast Guard…this one could be pretty cool.  Of course there would be security concerns (on the site you can release your location for example) but really? I think it could be a really great way to show what it is like, and because of the way it is set up it would be fairly simple for someone underway to keep up with on a multimedia level that is missing from Twitter. Pick an enlisted crew member, a non rate or whoever wants to, that is on their first underway trip to the Arctic, or someone who is doing their first patrol to wherever and share that experience. Not something for constant use like the Compass, or the Commandant’s blog, but for shorter term story telling.

So I am on ThisMoment.com tinkering around. Yes I know, I am also on Twitter (Tweetdeck I <3 you), Facebook,  this blog, etc…how will I keep up with it all. Luckily much of it is integrated together and really when you think about it they all serve different functions. Twitter is a quick and easy way to give people updates (so I can stop answering the pesky question of where in the country I am now 15 times a day) and to share links for information. Facebook is obvious, a place to talk to friends share pictures, etc.

More to follow as I get more time to play with the site.

He searched on Facebook. As luck would have it…this worked and he ended up with not only an address but a phone number. Calling that number the SAR controller was able to speak to the fisherman directly.

I am sure there are people out there freaking out (OMG!! WTF! YOU CAN’T CONDUCT SAR USING FACEBOOK!!!) No…you can’t. You have to use the processes and follow the policies that are in place. That being said a good SAR controller is going to think outside the box and use any possible tool to successfully search for a missing person or vessel. Social media is providing new tools to the Coast Guard and this is just one more example of the plethora of uses we can find for it when we try.

Reading this article, and having championed social media to the Coast Guard for a while, I had this little voice in my head saying neeeener neeeener! Of course not being the mature choice instead I emailed the story to a bunch of people instead. A subtle electronic neener is much more mature than running around the office singing like a 5 year old.