I enjoy technology, I embrace it. I really like social media and the ability it gives us to be connected to the world and to other people in the world. I have a Facebook account, although I’m not ultra active in it. I have a Twitter account and like to peruse it and post to it on a somewhat frequent basis. There is one thing that just irks me beyond all with Twitter. It’s those article spitting people on Twitter.

If you’re connected to a group of people beyond 100 you are bound to have an article spitter. Article spitters are Twitter users who if you check out their Twitter page, you only see posts referring to articles online. Sometimes there are even links to purchase products they are pushing online.

To me, this is Twitter spam. If you’re not going to be communicating with other users and you just spit out random links to articles you’re spamming. Twitter should be a tool for people to connect and communicate, not an alternative to setting up a Web site posting your information online and then spending hours tweaking your site for search engine placement.

More and more I’m seeing articles and products that people buy online that “teach” people how to make money online using Twitter without ever setting up a Web site. The secret behind it? Follow enough people, get lots of follow backs, then start spamming everyone your links to the product you are trying to sell. You then hope that people on Twitter click on your link, then buy the product.

I think that even the emergence of services that allow you to have items saved then posted to your Twitter account at a later time show this trend to Twitter spam. Why would you need to have a service that saves a link to something, then randomly posts it to your Twitter account later? Why not post it when you come across it? Probably because most of the people using this, scour the Internet for articles, then save them and then just tell the service to post it randomly so that Twitter won’t shutdown their account. In all, there’s no real two-way communication taking place online.

I’m not saying that this shouldn’t ever take place, but if that’s all you’re doing…well, you’re entitled to your own opinion. But overall, I think that it contributes to the negativity towards Twitter that is out there online.

I normally like Seth Godin’s take on business and whatever he decides to talk about for the day, but sometimes, I think that his “take” is just copy in order to put something out there on the Web. Blogging too often becomes “take some idea and argue the opposite, regardless of how ridiculous or useless the suggestion may be” type of thing.

The “Square One Underrated” point simply refers to the fact that if you find yourself lost, go back to the original place where you knew which way to go or had a chance to go the right way. I don’t agree with this because in business, square one is a place you have to get out of as fast as possible. Square one is nowhere. It’s the place where if you stay too long, you’re sunk, out of business.

Think about a trail, you start at the beginning and head out. Suddenly you are a mile out and 100 yards off course. Do you start back at the beginning of the trail hoping to not get off course this time? No, make some corrections in your heading and try to get back to the trail. You’re not yet on the trail, but you’re heading back towards it, plus you’re always gaining experience along the way.

In business, ideas fail, projects don’t work, things break. But just because your project failed does it mean you scrap everything and go back to the drawing board? No, you make corrections and keep at it. Because if you scrapped everything you ever started that didn’t work, you’d rarely accomplish anything. Most projects and ideas don’t normally begin as the finished products. Changes and corrections will almost always be done along the way.

No offense, Seth, I like your thinking, but this time, we’ll have to agree to disagree.

There’s been a lot of changes recently to Internet security done mostly by browsers to improve the online safety of Web users. Even though I have a security background, I have some serious issues with the stance browsers and other technology companies have been taking in improving Internet security. My major concern is that not enough is being done to educate end-users.

I understand that there has always been an epic battle between businesses, tech people, and end-users, in regards to educating the everyday computer user. I know it has been a losing battle and understand that companies often resort to “well, if the user is going to be dumb, then I’ll just do everything I can to prevent them from making a mistake”. This mentality is, in an of itself, a mistake. Non-educated users are prone to finding innovative ways to make mistakes, regardless of the safeguards we put in place, despite the amount of preventive security that is put in place.

If you’ve ever seen a site that looks like this, you’ve been “saved” by a browser’s attempt to block “bad” sites. The problem with this is that your safety net, as a user, is dependent entirely upon a browser‘s ability to scan millions of sites and be able to differentiate between those that are good and those that are bad.

Unfortunately, browsers will never be able to catch all bad sites, some are going to get through and users will be defenseless. At some point, we will need to weight which losing battle we will want to fight. So far educating users has not been a popular choice of action, however, there are some changes in the horizon.

I came across a new Web site by Verisign, Phish or No Phish, which quizzes users on which sites are phishing Web sites, and which are real Web sites. It then promotes the use of EV (Extended Validation) SSL Certificates (the green bar on the browser) to identity secure domain names. I like that the approach taken was to educate the end-user on the reality of bad online and how to spot those sites that are bad. I also thought that the Verisign quiz was biased towards having users miss more questions than normal so that they can then show how bad the problem really is. Again, I have a security background and admit that I did not get 100% of the phishing sites on the quiz.

The problem, really, is that most phishing Web sites come from non-standard domain names for the company being copied. Verisign, on the otherhand, user man-in-the-middle (same domain name on both screenshots) for all but one of their quiz questions. Hate to break it to Verisign, but very little of the phishing sites out there operate this way. Most are coming from the garbage domain names. In any case, the overall, the positive effect here is that more emphasis is being placed on educating users.

As technology professionals we can only do so much. Eventually, our users will be left on their own and will have to stand on their own two legs, the question, then, is “will they do the right thing?” I certainly hope that we see more of this from technology companies.