Louis Halpern's View

What an employee posts online, even in a personal guise, can have direct implications for their employer. This is a problem that we’ve seen before, from naked policeman in public sector organisations like The Met to offensive retail staff in Currys and PC World, and it’s a problem we can expect to see time and time again unless businesses start taking a proactive approach to educating their employees about online literacy.

Following the sacking of naked bobby Malcolm Thomas, a senior Met source said on the incidence that: “Firearms officers must behave impeccably in their professional and personal life. They cannot lay themselves open to blackmail or disclose information that could put them or their colleagues at risk. Armed officers keep…

Have a beef with someone? Why it’s time to wise up on Wikipedia

Wiki-bullying is at the top of the news agenda following the revelation that the Tower of London has suspended two beefeaters as part of a harassment investigation of its first female Yeoman Moira Cameron, with resulting implications for the legal system that will directly affect cases brought to court.

Wiki-bullying could result in criminal convictions that see the bullies responsible put behind bars. With direct legal consequences as a result of an individual’s online actions, internet users need to think before they edit what the ramifications of their conduct may be.

There are now legal implications for anyone posting inappropriate content to sites such as Wikipedia, as Scotland Yard yesterday…

I keep hearing an old refrain that I was reminded of in an article in today’s Financial Times – “Twittering Workers Cost Businesses £1.4bn.” Oh yeah. All that time spent on social media at work. Shockingly, the article found the average person spends 40 minutes a week on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook (my casual observation is that this is an understatement) and valued the time wasted by employees at £1.4bn per annum.

I believe this research has the wrong spin. We should be talking about the potential for UK businesses to use their talent pool to spread positive messaging about their brands.

Just think… what do people do when they spend time on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc? They communicate,…

Wide awake at 4 in the morning for the third night in a row, I knew the idea that was niggling at me wasn’t going to go away. I’d have to see it through.

I was inspired to put pen to paper – that’s quite a challenge for me, as the team I work with know; my dyslexia makes it a challenge to write down what I’m thinking articulately. The excitement about helping people harness the explosive growth of search engines, for their own personal empowerment won.

How we find the information that is important to us has changed dramatically over the last ten years. We now live in a world where the internet and search engines dominate our business,…

I’ve just been introduced to a theory that I agree with about the impact of the information revolution on mankind.  Transforming the nature of what we are.

The revolutions were:

1. “A round Earth” – The realisation that the earth is not flat
2. “Evolution” – Acceptance of Darwin’s theory that we evolved and were not simply put here by G-d in our current form
3. “Unconscious mind” – Psychology & Freud showing us that is much going on in our minds beyond the rational
4. “Information” – Technology facilitating modifying the way we interact with everything around us

There are lots of things that shape what we are.  The information revolution has changed the constraints of what we do.  We shape ourselves in ways that have never been possible.…