A bit of a media storm is brewing over insider revelations by ex-Lonely Planet travel writer Thomas Kohnstamm.

Kohnstamm’s soon-to-be-published book “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” claims to blow the cover off the travel guide book industry. He claims that much of the content he wrote was plagiarized or fraudulent because the low pay and short deadlines made it simply impossible to do the work ethically.

Lonely Planet has posted a rebuttal on their website.

In Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree travel forums, there is quite an outrage brewing. The outrage is partially over the content of Kohnstamm’s article, partially over a perception that LP and their parent company (The BBC) has quashed some of the postings on the topic in the South America forum.

Several blogs have written damning criticism of Kohnstamm including “5 reasons to be outraged by the Lonely Planet fraud” at Gadling and one article by Eva Holland predicting that hell will be the destination for Kohnstamm at Brave New Traveler.

But some travel writers, like David Stanley, stand alongside Kohnstamm in saying that the wages to guidebook writers can’t possibly fund the hands-on research that the guidebooks say they provide.

“To save money and maintain full control, Lonely Planet often assigns inexperienced office clerks and interns to update their guides. Little wonder that some of these underpaid novices resort to plagiarism. My books have been copied by Lonely Planet writers time and again … Today Lonely Planet updaters get no royalties and must sign away all rights, even moral rights. Thus it’s no surprise that the quality of Lonely Planet guides is so uneven.”

Here are my thoughts.

Kohnstamm has written or contributed to 12 books. After one or two he would have known that, if, as he claims, the work was impossible to do for the budget allocated, then he could have walked away. He chose to stay and write more–nobody forced him to do it.

He freely admits that he has passed off work that contains fabrications in the past–so any claims he makes now–especially ones that line his pocket (by promoting his tell-all book) should be taken with a great deal of skepticism.

I know several guidebook writers. The ones I know personally are solid people and their work is outstanding. I travel in the places they write about and I have used their books. I have never been disappointed or mislead.

I have never had a really bad experience with LP guidebooks–other than some prices and info being out of date–but that’s a dead-tree publishing issue, not just guidebooks or Lonely Planet.

(By dead-tree publishing issue, I mean that, by the time you print something on a dead tree and distribute it, the information printed on the paper is no longer current. Say you buy a guidebook the day it hits the shelves of your local bookstore; the information contained in it is 6-24 months old (that’s how long it took the writer to compile his notes, the editor to edit it, the printer to print it, the shipper to ship it, etc.); if the book has a 2 year shelf life–the information is quite dated.)

On the flip side, I do know that, in spite of LP’s claim that “we lead the industry in the fees we pay, and are committed to a yearly review of author fees,” the fees to guidebook writers in general have been going down–and the cost of living and traveling has been going up. Lower wages mean that some of the best people will walk away from the work.

I know the time it takes to do the field research (I have done it myself) and I know the volume of research required and the ballpark of the fees paid and Kohnstamm’s assertion that it’s not enough to do thorough research rings quite true.

One thing is for sure: Kohnstamm’s claims will have reverberations in the industry. Guidebooks will have to scrutinize who they hire and how their material is compiled. It will also make travelers think a bit more critically about the books they read.

Having had travel guides on the brain for the better part of 10 years now, I see there are some real problems with the travel content industry in general. The volume of information that must be researched, sifted and sorted is gargantuan. It takes a small army to do that kind of work. Communities can form that sort of small army–but then you run into the problems of credibility and reputation as well. (Without authorship that is credible and reputable you can nver achieve authority–ad guidebooks are nothing without some measure of authority-that’s why this scandal has so much potential to damage Lonely Planet.)

My burning question is: how do you utilize community and still be able to surmount the issues of credibility and reputability of the contributors so you retain a level of quality and authority?

The folks over at the Ministry of Information and Computer Technology here in Thailand just keep up the great work.

What can they do to top their random and ridiculous website block lists?

Well, they can hack websites they deem offensive to the Thai character:

The Information and Communications Technology Ministry is to ‘hack and crack’ foreign websites deemed offensive to Thailand’s revered institutions. A March 15 report in Krungthep Turakij newspaper (www.bangkokbiznews.com) quoted a source at the ICT that the ministry could pursue legal proceedings only with websites registered in Thailand, and is now planning a ‘hack and crack’ programme to hack offensive websites hosted abroad and delete their contents, because the legal process would take too long.

Wow. What a twisted mindset.

Via the good folks at Freedom Against Internet Censorship Thailand.

I have a lot of passwords. Hundreds. I need some place to store them. But that storage system has to be secure. Having a spreadsheet or text document of all your passwords stored on your computer–or a sheet tucked in your wallet–is an invitation to disaster. If you computer is hacked or your list is found by somebody, if it is NOT ENCRYPTED they have the keys to your personal (online) kingdom and they can reek all manner of havoc.

I have been using Password Safe, a free, open source password manager that stores all my passwords in an encrypted, password protected file. (Yeah–you have to remember that one password, but everybody can remember one password, can’t they?)

Password Safe was created by Bruce Schneier–the guy that, literally, wrote the book on cryptography. The Java version of Password Safe is cross-platform, so you can use it on Linux, Mac and PC. It allows you to store and manage all your passwords from one place. The data files are small and securely encrypted, so you can back them up to a USB drive, send them to your Gmail account or store them wherever and not worry that somebody will open the data file and steal all your passwords. (Assuming, of course, that you have created a good, secure password for the data file itself.)

As more and more of our lives is transacted online, keeping our identity, our bank accounts and our information private and secure becomes more and more important.

Use good passwords and keep them stored in a secure manner. Please.

Do you have the feeling that people you are not following on Twitter are talking about you or even trying to @message you but the messages are not reaching you because you are not following them?

Do you even care?

Well, if you do care, here is a simple solution to seeing who’s tweeting about you. Use the Twitter Track feature and track your user name! On Twitter I am jfxberns so I would use the following command to track my user name:

track jfxberns

Now, any time somebody’s tweet has jfxberns in it, I see it on my Twitter client. Pretty handy!

If you want to see who’s tweeting about you–just track yourself.

track yourusername

I love A List Apart; it’s certainly one of the best websites out there on website design. We are not talking just web design as in “just cool graphics,” but big picture, user-centered design philosophy kinda stuff, presented in a way you can use in practical every day scenarios.

I especially liked their recent article Sign Up Forms Must Die:

I’ll just come out and say this: sign-up forms must die. In the introduction to this book I described the process of stumbling upon or being recommended to a web service. You arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what’s the first thing that greets you? A form.

Photo by Tuis

Don’t you hate those in-your-face forms? Don’t you hate barriers? I do.

I strongly believe that engaging a user in your site is the main goal of most websites. Registrations are a nice metric and marketers, accountants and other people that have to show reports and be accountable love to show registration numbers. But it might not be the best strategy to build a strong user base.

Throwing a barrier in front of a potential user before they see the value in your site is a lot like asking a customer in a car showroom to sign a sales contract before he or she has test driven a car. WHY would anybody be interested in committing BEFORE they see the value?

But web architects still continue to throw registration forms in the users face well before the user has had a chance to see the value a website / web service provides. (See my recent rant about Kodak Easyshare.)

Better to lure them in, reveal value a piece at a time and make registration part of the unfolding process. Quid pro quo: I show you some value, you give me a little information, OK? It keeps the users interested and \motivated to take the next gradual step of engagement.

Unless of course, you like registration forms.

I love the article. Well written, excellent examples. If you design websites, do read it, please!

I usually don’t get all gooey and gushy when I write up a website, but this is one I like a lot: DrupalModules.com built by John Forsythe.

DrupalModules.com does a great job of taking the list of Drupal Module (which was nothing more than a raw information dump on the Drupal site) and wrapping it with a smattering of practical community features and thereby turning it into an extremely useful resource for Drupal developers.

It’s not only the site itself that shines, the people that use it are doing a bang-up job with the information they are contributing. The reviews are generally well written, they give examples of how people have used the modules in real life to solve problems and they link to other off site resources (examples of the module in action, tutorials) that help clarify what the module can do and how it does it.

In comparison, Drupal.org lists the modules and has a short blurb–usually written by the maintainer who, even though he knows the module the best, often does a terrible job explaining the modules capabilities and uses. Lots of data, not much information.

DrupalModules.com is a big step forward.

By the way, John has also developed a nifty search engine for sifting through the Drupal code base appropriately called DrupalCodeSearch.com.

The NY Times has an interesting article on people who are blogging for a living and the 24/7 lifestyle that driven bloggers have adopted.

Photo by Aaron Jacobs

Some blog-for-money folks do it to make some spare cash, some in the hopes of becoming a blog star and the riches that fame (or a book deal) can bring, some do it well… just because it’s kind of a rush to know that people all over the world are reading what you write.

After almost 3 years, my blog has finally undergone a major renovation

• A new theme (4u)
• Upgrade WordPress 2.0.x to 2.5.x
• A few new modules and upgrades to old ones
• Some re-edits of old entries
• Streamlined categorization

It’s still a work in progress.

I just had a friend email me some pictures from a trip we were on together a few weeks ago. She posted the pics to Kodak’s EasyShare gallery. Naturally, I wanted to see the pictures, so I followed the link.

I was stunned: I had to register just to view the photos.

Huh? Register to view photos?

WHY?

My friend wants me to see the photos. She did all the work: she took the photos, she posted them online, she emailed me… There is nothing in the photos that is of a private or sensitive nature, why would she be eager to make me register to see them–unless she was encouraged to as me to register.

I decided to see if that was the case.

Sure enough, it appeared to be a not-so-subltle ploy by Kodak to ask people to get their friends to register.

Kodak: don’t you think your customers are smart enough to see through the artificial barrier you are throwing in their way, barrier that is obviously to your own benefit?”

Kodak has a golden opportunity for viral marketing here and they squandered it by setting up barriers to entry—barriers that are obviously a manipulation that is in Kodak’s own self interest.

But is encouraging people to ask their friends to register really in Kodak’s best interest?

I would assert that Kodak would get FAR MORE BENEFIT from encouraging people to allow their friends immediate access to view photos and then, once they are on the site, Kodak could promote their products and services. Hell, if my friend posted 20, 30, 50 photos, how many opportunities is that to communicate messages and make offers about the products and services that Kodak offers?

Their core business is hardware, accessories and photo printing services–not photo sharing. Open up photo sharing—make it wide open and remove all barriers—go to great lengths to get people to your site—and use that to market your core products. The free users of a photo sharing site ARE EXACTLY THE TARGET MARKET FOR YOUR CORE PRODUCTS!

Why are you encouraging people to create barriers for your potential customers?

If this is the strategy that Kodak uses to market to the Generation Digital, they might as well stick to hawking rolls of film.

ADDENDUM

OK, I broke down and finally registered and took a look at he pictures–it was from a friend after all. The disappointment did not end at the required registration; the site navigation was horrible; a zillion thumbnail images made the page take forever to load and the navigation between images was slower than molasses on a cold winter day. Quite a poor user experience in all.

ADDENDUM 2

And what should I read just days after I posted this? An awesome article called Signup Forms Must Die. Read it–it’s a great article. Too bad the guys at Kodak never read it.

In theory, I like Pownce. It’s like Twitter on steroids–and I love Twitter; so I should go gaga over Pownce. But, like most people, I haven’t gotten past the “OK, this is Pownce. I am here. Is anybody alive?” stage.

I have made three or four attempts at warming up to Pownce and every time I walk away thinking “it should be interesting, but… it’s not.” Today I made one more effort at becoming a fan–but with a more critical eye as to why it was not clicking for me.

No Critical Mass of Friends

The main flaw to enjoying Pownce is that none of my friends are using it. There is nobody to communicate with. No friends using, it, no motive to use it.

Maybe I could start using it and, get my friends to use it. Well I tried that. But the lack of a good client that is fast, easy and simple to install means that I am not checking Pownce messages when they were online. I did not reply, they stopped using it. They did not use it, I stopped checking. Catch 22.

So the problem is that there is no critical mass in my social circle. But that arises from another problem…

Not Enough Options for Pownce Clients

The main reason that there is no easy to use client–and probably won’t be for the foreseeable future.

With Twitter, I didn’t get tweeting until some friends of mine who were tweeters showed me how to use Twitter through Google Talk. I always have Google Talk open, so once their Tweets started to appear on Gtalk and I started replying… I was hooked.

There is no equivalent for Pownce. No GTalk integration as far as I know. (There could be; the Pownce pages, by the way are really weak when it comes to telling you ways to use Pownce easily—an opportunity missed to remove that barrier.)

Sure, there is the Adobe Air client but I use Linux as my desktop (and so do a large percentage of my techie friends), so an Air client would require that I download and install Air for Windows (which, Adobe in their infinite wisdom, tells me I cannot do as there is not client for my platform–no option to download the Windows client on Linux–just a “no client available error message) and figure out how to run it under Wine. It’s too much work for a social service that none of my friends are using.

Catch 22.

I could use the web page, you know, just sit at the Pownce page and hit F5 every minute. But why do that when my friends are no using Pownce?

Catch 22

To make Pownce viral, they need to have a client that either is one you are already using (GTalk) or one that is so fast, easy and simple to set up that you are willing to waste 30 seconds to do so. Nobody is going to jump through hoops to set up a client for an social tool unless there is overwhelming critical mass to lure them; there will be no overwhelming critical mass until there is a fast, easy and simple client setup.

But if there was some action to see, I might jump through a hoop and install a client. But there is not and that’s is because…

Pownce is Not Viral Enough

Twitter lets you follow people. It’s one sided and at times oddly voyeuristic, but “following” different people or services can keep involved long enough to build up a social network on Twitter.

Pownce requires you to add a friend and them to accept you. I have added some friends that have accepted me and tried to add some random people that might be interesting to communicate with–but the have not returned the favor. (Maybe the Pownce–or maybe they got bored and gave up–who knows.)

The Follow and Track features of Twitter are hugely viral. I could have become a Twitter fan without a single friend if somebody had shown me how to Track key words then follow the people that regularly tweet about what interests me. I could have started with interest and made friends.

Pownce lacks this. Or, I should say. Pownce has not shown me how I can do things like this.

Same difference.

So… Pownce continues to be relegated to something I check occasionally to see if it has gotten better social tool, rather than becoming a part of my life.

Oh well, only so many minutes in a day. If you can’t capture my interest for a few, you will so have none.