Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The audience can be large or small and people will listen to what you say, sometimes they do not like what they hear!

Everyone has a point of view and many people express their opinions freely. I write how I feel on this blog and speak to people in an open and frank manner. I am not alone but some people have a larger media profile than others! Anton Du Beke is a dancer on the television programme called Strictly Come Dancing. His partner, the actress Laila Rouass, was wearing a backless cat suit when – live on television – the professional dancer remarked that he’d like to see the actress shaking her torso to the Samba.

Anton said: “Pop the frock on back to front – we’ll all have a lovely time.”

...Now then, this comment was supposed to have made Laila Rouass look visibly shocked! I thought his comment was rather witty and is maybe what a lot of viewers were thinking. Watch the video below and I think that you can see that Anton does have a valid point here, if you can imagine Laila wearing the cat suit back to front!



So, what has this post got to do with smaller audiences? Well, your humble blogger may be spied upon by the CIA . Social media websites offer a powerful opportunity for "open source" intelligence – publicly available data that can be mined for information. In an attempt to sift through the blizzard of information, the investment arm of the CIA, In-Q-Tel, has invested in a software firm that monitors social media. According to Wired magazine, In-Q-Tel has put money into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specialises in monitoring the internet.

Visible Technologies examines more than half a million websites a day, looking through more than a million posts and interactions happening on blogs, in online forums and on popular social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Amazon.
The company's customers, who include Microsoft, Hormel Foods and Xerox, receive real-time data on what's being said on these sites, based on a number of predetermined key words. A "score" is then assigned to each item, identifying it as positive, negative, mixed or neutral.

...So, whatever you write can be monitored by very powerful software and the results of this analysis can then be forwarded to the interested party. Beware, this means that both the mighty CIA in Washington and a debt riddled company in Birmingham can be notified of your internet postings! Once your postings have been flagged they will watch your every move. Of course some people will use this internet visibility to wind up some agencies, companies or people. But then these same people should have a sense of humour as well as a respect for free speech and the freedom of expression.

We should all have the confidence to dress, talk and write freely. Thankfully Alex Reid has set a marvelous example at a book launch of how you can dress and hold your head up high.


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