Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Y’know, I probably shouldn’t have posted anything about that textbook I popped up in the other day. After months of quiet, as soon as that goes up, the Washington Post includes me in a list of twelve photos that should never have been posted online.

Michael Hanscom did not pose nude on Flickr, attack the locals with a stick on his trip to Mexico, or dress up like the Fairy Princess while calling in sick. His crime? In October 2003, the Microsoft temp posted photos of Macintosh G5s being unloaded on the Redmond campus to his blog with the title “Even Microsoft wants G5s.” And that was enough to get him canned from his job in Microsoft’s print shop for an alleged “security violation.” Apparently, the world’s largest developer of software for the Mac (besides Apple) didn’t want anyone to know that some of its employees use Macs. (Thanks for Michael Hanscom for use of the photo.)

(via Dad)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I’m a case study in a textbook — and, contrary to what might be believed, it’s not a psychological textbook. Rather, it’s the latest repercussion from my fifteen minutes of fame way back when.

From Canadian textbook Business Technology Today, whose authors were kind enough to send me a copy after getting permission to quote me in their text. Thanks!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

The headmaster of a technical school in Lozere, France, has been dismissed after discovery of his anonymously-written weblog, which was deemed obscene and pornographic (link to Babelfish translation). Apparently he was discovered when he posted his photo in a recent entry.

Can remarks published on a blog perso justify a dismissal? Yes according to the national Education which judged that this civil servant held a blog “obscene and pornographic”. It there posted its homosexuality and criticized its administration.

The fact is without precedent in France. Located on Internet via its blog Garfieldd.com, the headmaster of the technical school of Mende, in Lozere (48), at the beginning of January by national Education was revoked. The institution reproaches him for having published contents in “pornographic” matter on its blog, however held under pseudo (Garfieldd). But of the notes on its professional life frays with others intimate and on its states of hearts its function and identifiable place of work returned.

Besides in his last version(filedpartly), the chief of establishment posted his face in banner page. What could convince the professors of another college of the area to alert their hierarchy. “To denounce” others will say.

In an interview on line on the site of RTL, the headmaster reacts highly: “I challenge the pornographic term, that was never the case on my blog (…) in which I spoke about my life (and thus also) of my professional life. Objectively my blog was anonymous.” Like any civil servant, this headmaster was held with the duty of reserve, of which the blogs are not free.

I, unsurprisingly, discovered this when I noticed traffic getting a bit of a boost thanks to a link midway through the article.

This business rests the question of the freedom of the blogs compared to professional space. Abroad precedents exist: a Web designer American laid off in 2002, to have scoffed the life at its company (without quoting of names) on its blog Dooce.com; an employee of Microsoft in 2003, for an impertinent post published on its blog perso; an employee of bookshop in Edinburgh (Scotland) to have disparaged its employers; an air-hostess of Delta Air Lines to have photographed itself in uniform on an aircraft of its company in a sexy installation.

Heh. “Impertinent.” I like that.

I’m also starting to get hits from the ZDNet France article that the Yahoo! page was syndicated from. Two and a quarter years after ‘the incident’, and while things are slower, my 15 minutes of fame is still making itself known from time to time. Yikes.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Everyone’s favorite geeky office shlub takes a look at job-related weblogging today (click to enlarge, of course)…

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Just adding another link to the ever-expanding 15 Minutes category here. Romm pointed out a mention of me in a commentary piece on TechNewsWorld that was published a couple of weeks ago. It’s a nice mention, too, as in addition to the standard “another fired blogger” mention, the author also follows up with my reaction to the incident, and contrasts it to Ellen “Queen of Sky” Simonetti’s Bloggers’ Bill of Rights campaign (which I think is goofy at best).

Contrast Simonetti’s response with that of Michael Hanscom. He was on a temporary assignment with Microsoft when he posted a picture to his blog that he took on the Microsoft campus. Microsoft essentially fired Hanscom, telling his temp agency he wasn’t welcome on campus anymore, thus ending his assignment.

The picture showed a pallet of Apple Macintosh G5’s being delivered to Microsoft. Hanscom said he took care not to show anything in the background that would give away Microsoft secrets, security systems or even building locations. But since the picture was taken on its campus, it made public an activity that Microsoft has a right to keep low-profile if it chooses to.

Unlike Simonetti, Hanscom concedes that Microsoft had a right to toss him out. Although he is a blogger, he realized that the normal legal rules apply to his situation. He started blogging back when blogs were just called “personal Web pages,” so maybe he has enough history to see blogging in its proper context — it’s just publishing. It is not private communications among friends.

I just dropped a note to Philip Albert, the author of the piece, thanking him for that.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I just got done with a lunchtime phone interview with Nick Jesdanun, a reporter for the AP. He’s still finalizing his article, and as this is going to be a wire story, there’s no telling where it might show up, but there’s at least a chance that my name will start popping up again over the next day or so (possibly as early as this evening) in the midst of another story about blogging, jobs, and the occasionally unfortunate intersection of the two.

I’ll toss a link up when I see it, but if one of you kind folks happens to catch it before I do, feel free to let me know!

Update: Prairie wins! She found the story first: Blog-related firings focus on policy. Just a small mention, but I’m in there…

In 2003, a Microsoft Corp. contractor was fired after posting photographs of computers from rival Apple Computer Inc. at a loading dock. Because Michael Hanscom had described a building in his posting, Microsoft said he had violated security, he said.

[…]

Microsoft refused to comment on Hanscom’s case, but pointed out that it encourages blogging and has more than 1,500 unofficial bloggers - the bulk on Microsoft’s official Web sites.

Update: And here’s a CNN version of the same story, courtesy of Tim.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

My Uncle Doug pointed this one out to me: Blogging is all fun and games, until the boss finds out. The article doesn’t cover any new ground, and I just get a single-sentence mention, but it’s another one for the list.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Today’s comic from Joy of Tech is a must-see.

Admiral Nechayev is such a bitch! How come she gets to be an Admiral and I don’t? Is it because I was a Borg? It’s not fair!!!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

About two weeks ago, I spent some time being interviewed by Amy Joyce of the Washington Post about my expulsion from the Microsoft campus for an article she was working on about the potential pitfalls of blogging about one’s job. The article went live today: Free Expression Can Be Costly When Bloggers Bad-Mouth Jobs. Here’s the section where I’m quoted:

Michael Hanscom started his blog, Eclecticism, before 2000, as a way to keep in touch with family and collect things he found on the Internet. A fan of Apple computers, he found himself working at a temporary job with Xerox on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash.

Hanscom said his family teased him that he would burst into flames when he walked onto the Microsoft campus. So one day, when he noticed a pallet of Macs — the same version he just bought for himself — ready to be delivered to Microsoft, he took a picture and posted it. “It struck my sense of humor,” he said.

A few days after Hanscom posted the picture, he said, his Xerox manager called him into an office. The manager had Hanscom’s blog up, and asked if the picture was his. Hanscom said it was, but said it was posted on his own time, on his own computer. According to Hanscom, the manager then said because it was posted on his own space and time, the company couldn’t ask him to take it down, but he could never come to the Microsoft campus again.

“It makes sense, really,” Hanscom said. “I’ve tried since then to look at it from their point of view. I never gave away any secrets, but I was in a position where I saw a lot.”

Quite a few other webloggers were quoted, too. Looks like my fifteen minutes isn’t quite over with yet!

(If anyone happens to be finding my site on a Google search after reading the WaPo article, my 15 Minutes category has all the gory details.)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Another one bites the dust, as they say — this time Mark Jen, formerly of Google.

TDavid has a good wrapup of information on this latest “blogger gets fired” story.

Update: A sure sign that I’m on the tail end of my fifteen minutes of fame: in this CNET article about Mark’s firing, I’m the only blogger mentioned who didn’t get a link. This amused me.

(CNET link via Terrance)

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

First off, my apologies, as it’s entirely likely that I managed to mangle the Americanized version of a Japanese greeting. As I only speak English (and some 10-year old, mostly forgotten German), these things are bound to happen.

Looks like the recent Wired article that I’m mentioned in just got picked up in Japan (Yahoo, Hotwired, Goo, Excite, and Infoseek), which is sending another round of visitors my way.

As I said earlier this week: If there are any visitors hitting my site for the first time who might be curious about just what happened to me, I can direct you to my fifteen minutes of fame archives, and specifically, the photo, the day I was let go, and my wrapup and responses on the whole shebang.

And, of course, feel free to kick around and poke around the rest of the site. Nice to see you here!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Over a year after the incident, I’m getting another few seconds added to my fifteen minutes of fame: last week I was interviewed by phone by Wired, and their article hit the ‘net today:

What do a flight attendant in Texas, a temporary employee in Washington and a web designer in Utah have in common? They were all fired for posting content on their blogs that their companies disapproved of.

Aside from that leader being a wee bit misleading (I was let go by my previous employer, not the copy company I currently work for), it’s not a bad article.

Update: Wired was kind enough to slightly edit the introductory paragraph to clear up the wording a touch. Thanks much!

If there are any visitors hitting my site for the first time who might be curious about just what happened to me, I can direct you to my fifteen minutes of fame archives, and specifically, the photo, the day I was let go, and my wrapup and responses on the whole shebang.

And, of course, feel free to kick around and poke around the rest of the site. Nice to see you here!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

One year ago today, I lost my job because of a photo I took, and began my fifteen minutes of fame.

My, how time flies.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Yet another in the ongoing saga of webloggers canned for really stupid reasons. This time, it’s Troutgirl, who until recently worked for Friendster.

Ontario Empoblog has a good rundown of the situation.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Last month, I mentioned that I’d been in contact with a magazine reporter who was working on a story about weblogs and some of the potential pitfalls that can come about when recording your life online for the world to see. As I mentioned at the time, while I at first wasn’t terribly concerned about the tone of the article, as our conversation progressed, I started to worry that it was going to end up all gloom-and-doom.

It appears that Anil has also been contacted by a reporter working on a similar story (possibly the same reporter, or another reporter also working on the story for the same publication, though I can’t be absolutely sure about that), and he ended up having some of the same reservations that I did. In his response to the reporter who contacted him, he expressed a desire shared by myself and, I’m sure, many others in the weblogging world: rather than focusing solely on the things that go wrong, that the media also look at the things that go right, and just why we all keep our weblogs going even in the face of the potential downsides.

One thing I would suggest is considering a, well, more uplifting angle. There have been an awful lot of “blogs can cost you your job!” or “make money fast with blogs!” stories, and very few that cover the positive reasons people have weblogs.

For a lot of your audience, this is their first impression of what weblogs can be, and frankly, if they were all about dire consequences, there wouldn’t be millions of people publishing weblogs every day.

Most of the people in my social circle have met their spouses/significant others, gotten apartments, gotten jobs, made friends, or (in my case) all of the above because of their weblogs. All that plus they get to participate in a new medium instead of just passively consuming media.

From what I know of [name of publication], the audience is one that appreciates a good positive human story, and it’s also much more likely that you’ll get some good cooperation or participation from people in the weblog realm who can help strengthen your story.

I’ve just sent a link to Anil’s post to the reporter I’ve been talking with, in case we are dealing with separate people. With any luck, should this article eventually appear, there will be a bit more to it than mere horror stories.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Meme time, started by A Whole Lotta Nothing, and being tracked by Kottke: how many clicks to get from Google’s homepage to your website without using the search box?

For me, it’s eight.

1. Google »
2. More »
3. Blogger »
4. Knowledge »
5. Working With Blogger »
6. How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog »
7. Seattle Times: Microsoft Fires Worker Over Weblog »
8. eclecticism

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

A few months ago, I was contacted by a writer for a national magazine who wanted to interview me regarding my fallout with Microsoft. Turns out that the magazine he writes for was planning a story on some of the things that can suddenly and unexpectedly go wrong when weblogging (such as blogging yourself right out of a job). I was one of a few different webloggers interviewed for the story, and we spent about two days doing the interview in two phone sessions. It seemed to go pretty well, though at times I wondered if my story was a little on the boring side — no book offers, movie deals, incredible job offers or anything along those lines, just the incident itself and then life proceeded more or less as it normally does.

In any case, the interview was fun to do, and I was looking forward to eventually having my story (and possibly my photo) pop up on newsstands across America. Unfortunately, at the time the Powers That Be eventually decided that there wasn’t quite enough material (not just with me, but with all the other webloggers that were interviewed) for a full feature, and the story was shelved.

However, it appears that it’s possible that not all is lost. I got an e-mail yesterday from the reporter who interviewed me letting me know that there is an attempt being made to resurrect the story! To do so, though, they’re looking for more material — and here’s where you all come in, if you’re able and willing.

They’d like to expand the scope of the story to go beyond just employment difficulties, and include stories from people who have suddenly found their relationships affected by their weblogs. Here’s the note I got from the reporter:

Hey! The editors…are trying to ressurect our blogging story. So I just wanted to let you know that all hope has not been lost.

BUT, we’re desperately trying to find other “My Blog Ruined My Life” stories, esp. ones that have more to do with relationships than employment.

Can you please recommend any major blogging sites where I should look, or to contact their administrators, or, if you can tap into your readers and ask them if they’ve ever had a romantic/dating blowout w/ someone because of their blog — that’d be helpful.

Now, as I put this post together, I realize that this may strike some people as being rather sordid and muckraking — and, to be honest, for all I know it may be. However, at the time I was interviewed, that was not at all the impression I got from the gentleman who interviewed me. Yes, we were talking about some very unfortunate events in my life for a story about weblogging which focused on the problems that weblogs could cause, but at the time, I didn’t get the feeling that it was going to be overly sensationalistic in nature. It’s entirely possible that with the change of focus of the article, the tone may change as well — which, admittedly, would be something of a shame.

I’d hate to eventually find out that the final story focused solely on the “dark side” of weblogging, painting a picture of webloggers as a legion of sad, jobless and loveless souls pouring their hopes, dreams and inspirations out through their keyboards and onto the web in a desperate attempt to find justification and company in the few kindred souls that might end up poring over their writings in the wee hours of the morning, the wan light of the monitor washing over their skin as they avoid the troubling dreams that they know await them when they fall asleep.

(Whee — I like that. But anyway…)

Of course, I’m merely an interviewee, and as such, won’t really know what the final article will be like until it finally sees the light of day and hits the newsstands. But, really, I’d like to see the story come out, and so I turn to you, my loyal readers. If you know of any good resources or any potential interview subjects that may be willing to tell their stories, I’d love to hear about them so that I could pass them on to the reporter.

I’m sure that the venerable LiveJournal is a veritable fount of such stories, but I’m not active enough with LJ to know where too look or which communities to poke into. There’s also the web at large and the multitude of TypePad, Movable Type, WordPress, Blogger, and other assorted weblogging/journaling tools, but I don’t know of any stories that fit the bill off the top of my head.

So — anyone have some good pointers?

Update: I just sent the following to the reporter, expressing some of my concerns with the apparent new direction the article may be taking. Hopefully I’m not shooting myself in the foot and editing myself right out of the article with this, but the more I thought about it, the more it started to concern me.

I do have one concern, though, which I touch upon in my post (and which, admittedly, could be entirely unfounded…or even if it’s not, it may not be something you have any control over). At the time you interviewed me, I never got the impression that this was going to be an overly sensationalistic story, though it was dealing with some unfortunate circumstances. However, expanding the scope to include relationship issues, coupled with the “my blog ruined my life” concept — well, I now worry a bit that the story may end up painting a rather unflattering portrait of weblogs and webloggers in general.

While weblogs are becoming more known and more popular, there is still a large segment of the general population that sees them as nothing more than online journals for angst-ridden teenagers to whine to the world (often doing so with absolutely atrocious and nearly unreadable grammar, slang, and ”leet-speak’). One of the reasons your story interested me when you first contacted me (at a time when, to be honest, I was getting rather tired of rehashing the events around my dismissal) was that I got the impression that it was going to look at both the bad and the good of the situation and the aftermath, both for myself and for the other webloggers being contacted for the article. Now, though, I’m a little less sure of the tack that the final article will be taking.

Of course, I’m quite aware that I may be reading too much into what you sent me (and even if I’m not, it may be out of your hands). All in all, I’m just hoping for a good article, and wanted to let you know of some of my concerns. However it turns out, good luck with the current round of searching, and should I get any worthwhile pointers from the post on my site, I’ll pass them your way.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

A couple of months ago, I was interviewed by a prominent news/entertainment magazine for an article they were preparing on webloggers who had lost their jobs or faced some other form of catastrophe due to their weblogging. The interview took place over the phone over a period of about two days, and once it was concluded, I was told to expect a call from photographers for the magazine, so that they could get a picture of me at my computer here at home to run alongside my section of the article.

Unfortunately, I didn’t hear anything back in the next few days…which eventually stretched on to weeks. Eventually, I assumed that for one reason or another, the story had been scrapped. I recently got this e-mail confirming my suspicion:

Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you. The blogging story has been put on ice, unfortunately, mainly because we couldn’t find enough people who got in trouble with their blogs. Sorry, will let you know if anything changes.

A pity, really. I was looking forward to seeing my face in a national newsmagazine, even if it was more press centered around my making something of a stupid mistake.

I’ve sent the interviewer a link to the list of dangerous bloggers in the hope that there might be one or two names on it that didn’t get tapped in the first round, but at this point, I’m not holding my breath. Looks like I’ll just continue my slide back into obscurity.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Twilight Invasion recently posted a list of people who’ve been fired because of their weblog. Interesting to read the stories other than mine.

• dooce
• Sarcastic Journalist
• Michael Hanscom, a Microsoft employee
• Banjo Jones, a reporter for the Houston Chronicle
• Gibberations
• sassy little punkin
• geekly
• Denis Horgan, who was forced to shut down his blog by his employer

Apparently, this list should also include Stephen Stewart, though with only a post-by-post method of trawling the archives, I didn’t attempt to dig backwards through 18 months of posts to see if there’s a more specific mention on his site.

Anyone else?

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Sounds kind of familiar in these parts, doesn’t it? This time, it’s a bit more serious than a few computers, though.

Last Sunday, the Seattle Times ran this picture, taken by a civillian cargo worker based out of Kuwait:

Today, the lead story in the Times was detailing how the woman who took the photograph has now lost her job because of the photo.

A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday’s edition of The Seattle Times.

Silicio was let go yesterday for violating U.S. government and company regulations, said William Silva, president of Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio at Kuwait International Airport.

“I feel like I was hit in the chest with a steel bar and got my wind knocked out. I have to admit I liked my job, and I liked what I did,” Silicio said.

Her photograph, taken earlier this month, shows more than 20 flag-draped coffins in a cargo plane about to depart from Kuwait. Since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the United States.

The Times has a good series of articles on the controversy surrounding the publication of the photograph, including an editorial from Sunday explaining their decision to run the photo after it was submitted to the paper by a friend of the photographer.

The caller said she had a picture a friend had sent to her. “Somebody should see it,” she said.

Barry Fitzsimmons, a veteran photojournalist, has handled many of those calls and knows most of the pictures are never published. The Seattle Times photo editor also knows, “one in a thousand is a gem,” so he agreed to give this one a look.

When the photo arrived, “I just said wow,” Fitzsimmons recalls. “The picture was something we don’t have access to as the media,” and yet it seemed undeniably newsworthy.

[…]

Readers likely will have differing reactions to the photo, depending on their views of the war.

“It’s a photo that evokes an emotional response and one that people are sure to see through their own filters, political or otherwise,” said Espinoza, who is responsible for the Sunday front page.

Some readers will object to the image because the press has been largely denied access to take photos of coffins returning from war since the 1991 Gulf War.

Some will see the picture as an anti-war statement because the image is reminiscent of photos from the Vietnam era, when the press wasn’t denied such access. But that isn’t Silicio’s or The Times’ motivation.

“We’re not making a statement about the course of the war,” Fitzsimmons said. “Readers will make their own sense of the picture, their own judgment.”

One of the most interesting things to me was a poll attached to a list of reader reactions, where the Times asked whether visitors to the website supported or opposed the military’s ban on such photographs. As of just after midnight on Friday morning, with 684 responses, the poll shows an overwhelming 86% of respondents choosing “I disagree with the ban; the public has a right to see what’s going on.”

Admittedly, Seattle tends to lean more liberal than many other places, but I was still somewhat surprised to see that the results were that heavily weighted in that direction.

I’ll freely admit that I’m one of that 86%, too. One of the things that has bothered me about this war, and that bothered me about the previous Iraq war, was how utterly impersonal it seems much of the time. While the casualties lists keep growing (706 dead, 2374 wounded and not returned to duty — and there’s a large question of just how many soldiers suffered injuries that would have killed them in earlier wars, and now, while alive, are severely disabled), we here at home see little beyond a few statistics in each day’s headlines that all too soon are buried in the onslaught of reality show wrapups, celebrity scandals, and other pablum that passes as news these days. Statistics will only really get noticed by the people that are looking for them — it’s photos such as Silico’s that will really affect the most people, whether they choose to view it as an indictment of an injust, unnecessary war, or as a comforting reminder that the dead are not forgotten and are treated with respect on their journey back home — or both.

That said, I’m not as sure as I used to be that I’d necessarily call for completely unrestricted media access to all areas of a conflict. A quote from Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter in an article looking at the arguments for and against releasing such photographs really struck me: “The Normandy invasion was a success, but how would we have felt at the time if we had seen the pictures of all these dead American soldiers on the beaches?”

Casualties are, of course, one of the many very sad side effects of a military conflict. Speaking generally, and not just about the current war in Iraq, I don’t believe that we should be shielded from that fact through media blackouts instituted by a government afraid of letting the public see anything outside the accepted party line of America the Saviour — the costs of war should be as publicly accepted and known as the possible benefits in order for people to decide where they stand for themselves. Those costs, though, should not be the only things reported (unless that is all there is to report) — the unquestioning presentation of only one side of any story is little more than propaganda.

The current war has, until recently, seemed to be presented to the American public as just that kind of unquestioning propaganda, unfortunately. That seems to be changing as the casualties mount, and while it’s a sad thing that it took this long for the media to start to attempt to break free of the “everything’s fine” face the Bush administration seems to want to present, at least it’s starting to happen.

Kudos to the Times for presenting the photo, for doing their best to present it without an overt editorial slant, and for exploring the controversy around its publication. Best of luck, also, to Tami Silicio and her husband (who was also dismissed from his job, a decision that I don’t understand, and isn’t explained in the articles) as they return home and face the prospects of finding work again.

(On a side note, I suppose it was inevitable: my situation was brought up in the Daily Kos discussion thread about this.)