You might open a newspaper soon to see an ad like the one at right which appeared in my local paper a few days ago.  It encourages you to “Stand With Main Street” to protest “special treatment” of Amazon.com that allows them to forgo the collection of sales tax on online purchases, resulting in an unfair advantage over “every Hoosier brick and mortar retailer.”  I don’t usually see full-page ads related to Internet commerce in a market this size, so I thought I’d investigate the issues at stake.

The question of taxing e-commerce transactions is a bit complicated to be sure.  If you have a strong and concisely-worded position on it, you’re probably running for national political office, or a Libertarian, or both.

On one hand we can see the clear financial and psychological advantage that an online retailer has with customers who are weighing a purchase from a local store that charges tax against an online store that doesn’t, and maybe offers the item at a slightly lower price too. At the same time, that online retailer may be benefitting from the infrastructure that sales taxes others are collecting help pay for (setting up warehouses, trucking goods around state roads, etc.).

On the other hand, we know that laws around state sales taxation were created prior to the age of the Internet and that the models of online business and affiliate sales have completely changed the way the world does business, and current attempts to rewrite them in order to create short-term bandaids on ailing state economies are probably not in the best interest of business innovation, especially when they favor large retailers (online and off) and send small businesses and people who make a living as Amazon.com or eBay affiliates into a quagmire of tax collection bureaucracy.

(In my company’s work building online stores for our clients, we’ve experienced this firsthand; helping a small business calculate the city, county and state tax rates that affect what they’re selling customers and then keeping that information current can take up a lot of their time.  Services like taxcloud.net are helping make it easier.)

Some states are moving toward “origin-based sourcing” for taxation, where the tax rate is based on the county/state where the vendor selling the goods is located.  This keeps the taxation process simple (the retailer has to know their local rate and doesn’t have to worry about where the buyer lives or what the rates are there) and encourages governments to keep their tax rates competitive for businesses that might locate there.

Indiana is still a “destination” state, where the tax rate is based on where the goods are being sent.  Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, not generally known for advocating taxation, is supporting the move to make Amazon.com and others pay sales tax so that the government isn’t “picking winners and losers.”  But as others point out, the playing field of retail taxation is already off-kilter in favor of big businesses, which get tax credits, exclusions and special pricing that make it very hard for mom-and-pop shops to compete with them.

Back and forth, back and forth.

I don’t have a strong feeling about what direction we should go (hence disqualifying me from running for office), other than that all of this highlights how complex and outdated the modern system of taxation is, for online commerce and pretty much everything else.  When small businesses or people selling used exercise equipment from their basements have to hire tax law professionals just to sell online and be fully compliant, we’re doing something wrong.  I’m not sure the “Stand With Main Street” ad advances the conversation any, but it hopefully encourages more awareness about what’s at stake.

The movie was incredibly well made.  Aaron Sorkin’s writing was as good as the best days of The West Wing, each member of the cast seemed to just nail their role, the editing was some of the best I’ve seen, and so on.

Perhaps most enjoyably, this is a mainstream movie that is at least in part about the culture and goings-on in the modern world of Internet entrepreneurship, I believe the first of its kind. It fully embraces the geekiness that was and is a part of building a web application like Facebook: in the first 30 minutes, the Apache webserver software project is mentioned at least twice, there are dramatic lines about needing more Linux webservers running MySQL, there are punchlines that involve the emacs text editor, and scenes of glorious code writing marathons – wow.

The Social Network also takes on the complex and sometimes dirty aspects of Internet start-ups, business partnerships that go sour, the role of lust, greed, insecurity and power struggles in creating beautiful things, and the general messiness of human relationships in a post-industrial world.  Some of this is probably over-dramatized; if you believe the narrative it presents, success in the world of the Internet means being ready to screw over your friends and then lawyering up to defend against their lawsuits, treating women as decorative sex objects to invite to website launch parties, and deferring basic care of one’s body in order to write software all night long.  My experiences as a web developer in the Midwest have been much less sensational…but then again, I’m not a billionaire, so maybe I’m doin` it wrong.

The movie doesn’t purport to be factually accurate, but there’s enough real history in there that it will likely become the popular understanding of how Facebook actually came to be; it might be close enough.  If you use Facebook, or if you’re interested in some of the crazy stuff that happens to take a start-up business like Facebook to what it is now, I think The Social Network is a great film to check out.

If you’ve seen it, tell me what you thought!

1. Visit public Twitter feeds in a web browser. This may seem fairly obvious, but you can view anything that anyone posts to Twitter just by visiting their Twitter profile page (as long as they haven’t marked their updates as “private”).  So, to view all of my Tweets, just visit http://twitter.com/ChrisHardie – no account required.
2. Subscribe to Twitter feed updates via RSS. Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can subscribe to receive new status updates from any Twitter user (again, assuming their updates are public) via RSS.  By putting the feed in a feed reader like Google Reader, you can be aware of new status updates without even visiting the site in a web browser.  So, on my twitter.com/ChrisHardie page, just look for the link that says “RSS Feed of ChrisHardie’s tweets”
3. Use Twitter’s real-time search. You can visit http://search.twitter.com/ and enter a few keywords to see recent Tweets that relate to those words.  This can be useful to find mentions of you, your product/service/company, or just news and events in the world.  It’s also a fun way to see what conversations are happening right now.  (If you like that, you might enjoy TweetGrid or Twistori.)  You might also consider using the Greasemonkey plug-in that will show you relevant tweets as a part of a Google search on any topic.
4. Find people in your community using Twitter. Using Google, you can look for people in your geographical area who are using Twitter, and see if there are any individuals or organizations you want to follow.  For example, I can use the search terms ‘site:twitter.com location (“richmond, indiana” OR “richmond, in”)‘ to find Twitter users in Richmond, IN (as long as they’ve identified themselves as such in their Twitter profiles).  Services like NearbyTweets.com make this search even more fun and interesting, and if you want to expand beyond your local area, TwitterVision shows a neat visualization of Tweets coming in from all over the world.
5. Monitor Twitter for mentions of topics of interest. If you’d like to be notified when someone on Twitter mentions you or your organization, you can set up a Google Alert.  For example, I can decide to be e-mailed by Google Alerts every time they index a tweet mentioning Richmond, using this search: ‘site:twitter.com Richmond, IN’.  Services like TweetBeep.com also provide this kind of feature with additional options.

I hope that’s helpful.  If you have other ways to use Twitter without being a Twitter user, please post them in the comments.  You can also follow along with my Twitter-related bookmarks on Delicious.com.

My suggested tips for success:

1. Don’t leave the subject line blank. When you send someone an email with a blank subject line, they are lost. They have no idea what the message is about. Even if they know you, even if they’re expecting an email from you, there will be that moment where they just don’t know what’s gonna happen when they open your message. That kind of uncertainty breeds fear and paranoia, and you don’t want to be a part of that, do you?
2. Don’t put the name of the person you’re sending the message to as the subject line AND don’t put your name as the subject line. The sender/recipient information is already embedded in the message in these handy little fields called the “To:” line and the “From:” line. You need not repeat them, and it’s a waste of subject line space.
3. Don’t replace the subject line of a reply with something completely different (unless the topic has really completely changed). Even if the subject line is no longer completely accurate or timely (e.g. “feedback about this afternoon” still being used 3 days later), it’s still an important cue to the reader that tunes them into the ongoing conversation quickly. When you obliterate it just because you can, you make your recipient work harder. In some cases, mail reading programs also take advantage of the repeated subject line for better sorting and searching. One possible exception: if you’re forwarding on a message to someone for the first time, you can enhance the subject line for their clarity of understanding.
4. Be specific but concise, don’t use generic words. Your goal is to help the recipient know in about 5-10 words exactly what they can expect to find in the content of your message. If it’s a request that requires action, say so. If it’s an FYI, say so. Use nouns and verbs that will evoke meaning, and don’t use words that just take up space (e.g. “a message about…”).
5. If it’s time sensitive or high priority, indicate that. If someone gets a lot of email, they may not read your message right away, so don’t wait until the message body to indicate your expectations for how they will prioritize it. If you need a response by a certain date, tack that on to the end of the subject line, e.g. “reply by 10/5/08″. If it’s just generally high priority, you can say that instead (and in addition to using your mail program’s priority flag, which not all other mail programs recognize), e.g “high priority”.
6. Be careful about words that may be caught by junk mail filters. Sadly, a modern consideration for email sending is whether or not your message will seem suspicious to automated spam filters. If you use words that reference items of a sexual nature, pharmaceutical solutions, or money-making opportunities, know that your message may be more likely to be delayed. In some cases, your recipient may not ever see it.

Of course, efficiency isn’t always the only consideration in writing email subject lines. You may be writing to be clever or mysterious, or to brighten someone’s day, in which case you can happily throw out the above and I promise not to call you out on it.

How do those work for you? Do you have other tips and suggestions to add?

With the photo here, I don’t even know what the hell is going on. It’s like the creepy older guy is trying to arm wrestle with the maniacally screaming younger dude over who gets to use the laptop, while the two women totally ignore them and instead grin broadly at the hamster dancing on their screen. But I’m like “creepy older dude, BACK OFF!” Why does he need to lunge into younger dude’s space like that, using his fingertips as a push-off to further invade? And why won’t either of the women help younger dude? This is some messed up stock photography. What was the photographer yelling at them? “Pretend you went to the office holiday party and took Ecstasy!”

I won’t say I’ve never had a hand in building such a website, but with apologies to stock photo models everywhere, I thoroughly discourage this practice. If you really want to put a human face on your website, then put your face on it (or that of your staff, customers, partners, family, etc.) When you use a stock photo of an ethnically balanced group of people to show how diverse and contemporary you are, you look stupid. When you use a stock photo of a bunch of high-powered blinking servers stacked up in a huge data center to show that you know something about technology, you look stupid. When you use real pictures of real people related to you or your organization, then you look authentic. If you can’t do that, then consider doing without the photos altogether.

Since then, I’ve used a few other handles that were more appropriate and cool (to me, anyway), but lately, I’ve decided that the handle that best represents of my personality online is the same one that represents it offline: my real name. And in most cases, I’m of the opinion that we should all use our real names when engaging in online discussion and community-building.

It’s sometimes a suggestion that makes people uncomfortable, so I want to provide some additional reasoning to consider and discuss:

Participating in a healthy public life is an important part of the human experience. Online discussions are now a part of the public sphere, and when used well, can bring people together in ways that complement and enhance real-world community.

To truly participate in public life, we must do so as ourselves, with our identities revealed. Part of the usefulness of the public conversation about issues that matter to us is the accountability that it demands. If we really want to make a certain neighborhood better, then we need to hear from people who live in that neighborhood and know that they speak from experience. If we really want to flesh out the best ways to approach sustainable economic policy, we need to know who is at the table and what resources, interests, and agendas they bring. If we just want to get to know each other better, we need trust and intimacy before we can form any real bonds. As Duc Francois de La Rochefoucauld wrote, “almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.”

The corollary to the great accountability that comes with real names, as Amitai Etzioni notes, is that “people who use aliases are on average much more abusive, unfair, and intemperate than those who disclose their true identity.” I’ve found this to be true in 100% of the online communities I’ve participated in. When you can dismiss or berate someone’s views without any real accountability to them, it is likely to happen more often (even at the hand of those who wish to be accountable). When you can attack an institution or business or person or idea from behind the shield of a pseudonym, it is so much easier to take off the gloves of civil interaction and dialogue that most of us wear and trade them for sharp words, hyperbole, and points made only to harm, not to inform or improve. When we do not have to consider the impact of our words on another, even if only through a facial expression or grunted response, we can be reckless with their hearts.

I hear some recurring responses to the suggestion that we user our real names online:

Bad people will exploit my vulnerability and come after me. If I am a woman, I will be stalked. If I am a liberal, Bill O’Reilly will have FOX security drag me away.

Maybe they will. In all my years of having personal information posted on the Internet, I have never had a problem where the voluntary online availability of that information was itself the cause for some sort of personal invasion of privacy. Anecdotally speaking, this seems to be true for the Internet as a whole; in the “nightmare scenarios” you hear about, either the perpetrating party already had it out for the victim, or the victim disregarded advice like “don’t trust strangers with the pass-code to your life savings account.” We are rarely targeted for just “being somewhere” in the real world (where not only might our names be available, but our appearances, habits, and quirks), so why do we expect to be targeted for just “being somewhere” as our real selves, online?

I can’t fully point out the faults of my employer/family/government/neighbor if they know who I am – the possibility for retaliation demands anonymity.

In some cases, perhaps. I find that any system which cannot stand up to the criticism of those who participate in it, or any relationship which does not permit respectful and faithfully-engaged conflicts, does not deserve to survive. If you’re at the point of wanting to enumerate your grievances in an online discussion, then presumably you’ve already gone through the standard approaches – direct confrontation, letter writing, reporting concerns to the equivalent of an ombudsman of an organization, etc. By that time in most cases, everyone who would care about finding out your identity because of what you say online should already know your point of view anyway.

It’s just too uncomfortable to use my real name online.

Of course, if you’re uncomfortable using your real name, don’t. I’m not saying we can’t have authentic interactions as anonymous parties, and in most cases I would rather we participate in the conversation as an alias than not at all. But in doing so, I hope we reflect on what we’re withholding from those around us, and what we’re missing out on as a result.

Different people have different degrees of comfort with what they’ll reveal online, even when they are trying to use their real identity. For some, a full name is as far as they’ll go, while others will post intimate details of their daily routines, love lives, financial doings. There’s certainly a line we can cross from “being ourselves online” to exhibitionism.

There are plenty of times when it is appropriate (or more fun) to use an alias online. For example:

• The subject of discussion or the existence of the discussion itself is illegal or ethically vague (assume that your communications are being read by an NSA analyst or even your local law enforcement)
• The discussion centers around revealing information where sources need protection (e.g. journalistic or crime solving endeavors)
• The quality of the exchange is enhanced by abstracting online personality from real-world personality (areas where discrimination has traditionally been present, or where power dynamics would typically prevent authentic conversation)

My hope, though, is that where possible, we will tend toward being ourselves in our online personalities. The world is complicated enough and we’re isolated from each other enough that anything we can do to make the world a little smaller, including using our real names, is for the better.

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and
hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives
of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods
of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
–Elizabeth Cady Stanton

For example, earlier this week, a user visited my website without any referring URL information. This means they probably entered the address directly in their browser’s location bar, but it could also mean they followed a bookmark, or are actively trying to hide where they came from. As soon as they got to my site, they started searching for the word “congress” in my content. When I traced the IP address, it went back to a location in McLean, Virginia, which is the home of the Central Intelligence Agency.

So what can we conclude from this? Obviously, a CIA operative was investigating my website because in my ramblings about politics and the government, I’ve clearly come too close to the truth about a cover-up related to U.S. energy policy and the War on Terra, and now they’re coming to take me away, ha-ha.

Fun game, eh?

Some recent search terms people have used in Google or other search engines that cause them to end up on my website and weblog:

• so many people I want to kill (YIKES!)
• how do I remove candle wax from my cat
  (probably because of this…but YIKES!)
• ramada worldwide keith j. pierce
• summary of hope for the flowers by trina paulus (dude, it’s a really short book, just read it!)

And the list goes on.

Don’t worry, I take the privacy of my website visitors very seriously, and I won’t reveal the usage information of any particular user (though my friend at the CIA might prefer otherwise). That said, be careful where you browse, and if you don’t want someone watching you on the other end, use protection.

So I’m glad that someone out there is having fun imagining what the headlines will be on the day when the whole Internet crashes and all online data is lost. I can just hear Tony Snow saying that “we deeply regret that a backup of the Internet does not exist at this time…we had always meant to get around to making one.”

What would it mean for your life?

Part of it is probably the sense that I’d rather be spending time strengthening ties in my real-world community than in an online one. Another part is just not caring. But most importantly, it seems the trend is such that soon we’ll have one social networking site per each person with an Internet connection, and we’ll be back where we started. I’ve got enough passwords to remember as it is, okay?

But it is funny to me when the networking sites scrape information off of my website in an attempt to make me look like a member. Like Spoke, which just did this without asking. Unfortunately, they get some significant things wrong, e.g. listing Earlham College President Doug Bennett as the president of my company, Summersault. To be clear, Doug has not left his position as the president of an internationally known liberal arts college to serve as President of a website development firm.

If he is looking for that kind of position with us, we’re open to, um, networking with him…without the help of a website.