I'm an Australian, based in the Washington, DC, area of the United States. I spend a lot of time there with Jasmine, Australia's best-known speedsolver of the Rubik's Cube. Prior to the US, Jasmine and I were based in London, UK. We have also lived previously in the United States and Australia.

I have worked for an Australian business rules and compliance company since 1999 in Australia, the US and the UK. I have also lectured in IT and Law related topics at King's College, London, and at The Australian National University.

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- February 2007
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These are a few of my favourite links:
- Jasmine's site
- Jasmine's blog
- Mikal
- Daveydweeb
- Beth
- Lyn
- Doug
- Marissa
- Lisaloha
- David (Greenomics)
- Paul's Ramblings (music)

Hits since 1 Sep 2004
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[/Cyberspace] permanent link

Pollution of online social networks

My brother, Michael, asks: what do you do when people start giving false descriptions of themselves in an online social networking environment? He writes:

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. It's all about who you know, and who you have worked with. The basic idea seems to be that recording all that information will result in new business opportunities, as well as referrals to jobs et cetera. When someone who claims to have worked for your company joins LinkedIn, you get email asking you if you know them.

So, what do you do when you look in the company address book, and it's quite clear that they don't work for your company? There doesn't seem to be any way in the UI to point out that someone is lying. How annoying.

I can see how this is annoying, but I also don't see how networking with people online is really any different to doing it in the physical world. Online, using tools like LinkedIn, referrals are important: someone you know will often introduce new contacts to you, and these contacts are often more reliable or more receptive than ones you find yourself. The same principle applies in the physical world.

I imagine that often this would temper the effects of false claims on a service like LinkedIn as people who just make everything up are less likely to get good referrals. And imagine what a nightmare it would be for someone to moderate a huge online service like LinkedIn every time someone made a claim about someone else's entry!

In fact, from my limited experience of the service, it appears that LinkedIn mostly works on this basis. You can search other people's networks of people as long as you have connections to the people. However, if you want to connect with someone in another person's list, you normally need to seek a referral from the people between you and your target in the chain of connections. The situation (described in Michael's post) where LinkedIn emails you about other people in your company is not the standard way of linking to people.

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[/United Kingdom] permanent link

Farnborough again

I have not yet got around to doing anything more with my own Farnborough photos, but this photo from John Nevill's website is amazing!

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