The U.S. financial overhaul bill signed last Friday by House and Senate negotiators, has a provision that would highlight the use of ” conflict minerals ” by makers of computers, cell phones and other electronics. The Dodd-Frank bill will require companies to disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission the nature and origin of some of the materials they use in creating their products. These minerals are used much in the same way “blood diamonds” were, by strong men and rebels to finance brutal wars and massacres. Sponsor Minerals affected by the bill include the following. + Tantalum: stores electricity in cell phones + Tungsten: creations vibrations in phones + Tin: circuit boards + Gold: used to coat wiring Of the countries involved in the sale of conflict materials, none has been so woefully affected as Congo , according to the anti-genocide group Enough . 5.4 million deaths, countless rapes and mutilations have been fueled by the country’s mineral resources over the past decade and a half. The groups fighting each other, primarily in the eastern part of the country, make $180 million off the four minerals listed above. Instead of fighting against this legislation, any of the major computer or cell phone manufacturers could come out against it. This would have few negatives in exchange for some titanic PR. Oh, and maybe fewer people would die too. We have a request for comments in to Steve Jobs. We will let you know if he responds. Photos from the Grassroots Reconciliation Group , devoted to helping ex-child soldiers. Discuss

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It all sounds good when Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff is on stage like he was today, stirring the faithful with his rousing presence. If you ever get the chance, go see Benioff present. He has a style that’s part P.T. Barnum, part passionate geek. With Chatter , Salesforce.com is embracing the concept of the activity stream. And customers do seem to like the flow that comes with a river of news. Geeks have been shouting about this style of receiving news for years. RSS initiated many of us to the way data can flow into our aggregarors. We first heard Dave Winer talk about the concept. It has since become a foundation element in the user experience for a line of apps such as Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Sponsor We mentioned several companies in a previous post today that make activity streams a part of its core offering. Blogtronix , Jive Software and SAP Streamwork are a few others that have previously developed activity streams into its infrastructure. So that leads to our question of the week: Is Salesforce.com Chatter Really That Unique? Does it Matter if it is not? Take Our Poll survey software We can’t expect too much objectivity from competitors. They’ve been doing their fair share of squawking today in reaction to the Chatter marketing juggernaut. But it does help to see how they view a service like Chatter. Blogtronix Founder Vassil Mladjov says Salesforce.com is a good business microblogging service but points to its lack of robustness: “….in terms of functionalities: – Profile – Chatter profiles are very basic and lack major privacy settings that others offer. I am not sure how you can customize the profiles in Chatter and set permissions for different fields like cell phones, emails, work history, etc. – Groups – you can only create public or private you can’t even have hidden groups – You have a one-way integration for Twitter/Facebook, companies need two-way integration, so you can share internal information externally as well.” Bantam Live is not so kind, comparing Chatter to lipstick on a pig: “Salesforce CRM has an interface that only the mother of a database technician could love. As a bolt-on, the glossy lipstick of Chatter may help as a overlaying concealer to the core CRM app, but the user experience is still like walking in mud. For small businesses, it seems Salesforce CRM will be easy to use when pigs fly in the cloud. We’re flattered that Salesforce’s Chatter is following Bantam Live’s lead in the small business sector by offering real-time activity streams, team collaboration tools, and social CRM features. And as a competitor, we’re delighted that their makeover is but a fresh coat of paint applied to a vintage CRM system.” Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com has his own criticism of vendors in the space, which he provided as part of an eWeek interview: “The problem with a lot of these collaboration tools is that they turn into Grandma’s attic. There’s tons and tons of interesting stuff up there, but it’s got no organization. You end up having to pay a third-party consultant to continually come in and work with you to make it usable storage instead of just sharable storage.” CRM Outsiders smartly points out that most all enterprises are mostly consuming the data from the social Web. There is little interaction, which calls into question if customers really want social CRM: “….but very few enable a company to transcend the firewall between the “customer” as an individual and the CRM system. Salesforce’s Chatter is guilty of this gap. But so are most other B2B CRM systems. Why is this? Perhaps our reliance on selling “seats” rather than total business value makes it hard to open the floodgates of customer activity into a CRM system. Maybe we haven’t figured out security concerns. Or, maybe the nature of B2B selling, and where social CRM is right now in terms of B2B, dictates that we do not need this type of transparency. Is it enough to have all of your employees on the same page, provide a consistent response to any customer inquiry, and consume data from social media rather than engage directly inside the networks where they are created?” Analysts vary in their views but there seems to be some consensus that it’s not the technology but the Salesforce.com presence and longevity that makes the difference. As Sameer Patel posted on Twitter: “….Also, unique doesn’t always win. Enterprises don’t buy unique or best, most buy good enough. So its all relative…” So, what do you think? Is Salesforce.com really that unique? Discuss

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The ReadWriteWeb Real-Time Web Summit is just about here! It will take place on June 11 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. For the next 24 hours get 40% off the full ticket price . If you’re short on cash, don’t fret as we’re giving discounts to independents and students. Email us at summits@readwriteweb.com to take advantage of the discount. Sponsor What’s So Special About the Summit? What if Chris Dixon and John Borthwick were sitting at the same table as you, ready to have a real conversation about what's next for the real-time Web? Would you like to sit across from Marshall Kirkpatrick and Richard MacManus and have a straight-shooting conversation about real-time online media? If so, then the ReadWriteWeb Real-Time Web Summit is for you. And thanks to its unconference format, the day will be like participating in a think tank – you and a group of tech luminaries collaborating on the future of the Web. That's the nature of ReadWriteWeb summits – straight talking, collegial settings where individuals who are striving to move an industry forward, sit down and create the future. Everyone learns. Everyone advances. You leave feeling energized and full of “next'. Who Will be There? Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about some of the amazing attendees that you will get to meet and discuss issues with face-to-face. Discuss

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The human capacity to find hidden meanings in things has given us poetry, physics and software. It’s also given us superstitions, conspiracy theories and hoaxes. Given that this capacity is enduring it shouldn’t come as any surprise that each new thing that comes along is inflected by it, and that includes technologies. RFID is radio frequency identification. It’s setting a small transmitter at a certain frequency, setting a reader to recognize that frequency. That’s it. The implications as we have outlined, can include tracking wine inventory and sushi freshness . But there are other implications, ones rooted in, say, less demonstrable realities. RFID, to some, is the number of the beast . Sponsor Cattle Rustling, RFID & The End Times When we wrote the first article on the possible use of RFID as a way to stop an increase in cattle rustling, it was, predictably, not the most wildly popular of our posts. No Facebook connection, for one thing. But suddenly, it shot up in page views. We researched it and found out that our post had made its way onto a website that featured a news feed for those who are certain the world is about to end. We could not figure out why. Then it dawned on us. Between the red heifer some believe will usher in the Apocalypse, and the assignment of numbers to human subjects of the anti-Christ, we were good to go. The flaw in the logic that assigns a particular evil to a particular technology is that any technology can be rendered into numbers. Anything from language to music to a printing press to a computer can be assigned numbers or produce them. I wouldn’t bad-mouth anyone’s religious expectations, but it’s straight out syllogism to presume they are dependent on the technologies that just happened to be of recent vintage. Plus, just a sample of the different recent technologies that have been assigned an apocalyptic role in addition to RFID include magnetic strips, barcodes, computer chips and biochips. Three RFID Hoaxes Money Replaced With Implanted Chips . This refers again to the fears behind Christian teleology. Biochips were going to take the place of money. The chips were to be planted in the body. This is close in approach to the idea of paying with your smart phone . The only problem is that it’s not true. The giveaway is the fact that those who “revealed” this plan manage to confuse and conflate biochips, RFID and magnetic cards. The U.S. Government Tracks Homeless with Chips . If the fact that it was an April Fool’s joke to the Politech mailing list weren’t enough, the fact that it was supposedly Health and Human Services behind this that should have been. Police Will Use RFID Rifles to Tag Dissidents . An artist, Jakob S Boeskov, cobbled together a convincing-looking rifle and toted it to an Chinese arms and armament conference, describing it as a way to non-lethally and permanently tag any trouble-makers in a mob situation. Practically everyone bought it. It turns out it was a “Fictionism” art event. Why was it accepted? The gun looked cool. It was performed in a context where such a thing might be valued. It was reported on by journalists looking for an angle – this was certainly one. The reasons these tech hoaxes found a purchase on our imagination First, the people who reported them, whether professional journalists or not, either wanted to believe them or didn’t do due diligence in researching them. Second, professional journalists do not always explore and explain complex technologies as well as they should. For one thing, often times, we are excited about them and that can cloud the need to delve into their implications. For another, this stuff is hard. It can be hard for us to get our heads around, much less yours. (Neither of the foregoing are excuses, by the way. If anything, they are self-indictments.) Second, this is an extremely complex era, in which changes in technology are matched by changes, challenges and crises in politics and environment. Even if it is not approaching a ” singularity ,” it all seems to be getting faster almost exponentially. This drives people to seek explanations. When we fail at expressing the nature and limitations of technology as technology journalists, others fall in to breach the gap. Sometimes they do an excellent job. Sometimes they make a mess. Discuss

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In the spirit of all things being not equal, ReadWriteWeb is offering a deep discount to independents, freelancers and individual consultants for the ReadWriteWeb Real-Time Web Summit , June 11 in New York City. Simply email independents@readwriteweb.com to take advantage of the discount. Richard MacManus is packing his bags in New Zealand as we speak in anticipation of meeting you in New York! Sponsor As we plan our week in New York for the conference and Internet Week, we’re looking at the attributes of the real-time Web that independents – including entrepreneurs, consultants and freelancers – should know about. Here are five use cases for the real-time Web that demonstrate its relevance for independents like yourself. 1. Real-time technologies change the user experience As the Web goes real-time, the World Wide Wait just isn’t going to cut it. Users will come to expect everything right now , and served up via instant notification. It will be interesting to see how this impacts users’ desires to actually visit websites. Or will we become so used to instant transfer of knowledge and notifications that it will change the very nature of how we use the Web? 2. Real-time technology enhances collaboration and crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing will become possible on a mass scale. Instead of you and four other collaborators to get the job done, try thousands. Imagine Mechanical Turk on steroids and think of all the work you can get done, right now, with other people. 3. Customers provide feedback in real time This phenomenon is happening now. Launch a product online and immediately you will you have five DMs in your inbox with suggestions or reports of bugs. The world becomes your test market, and iteration of your product happens in real time. 4. Conventions for real-time design are being defined now Real-time experience conventions are being created as new real-time services pop up all over the Web. It’s important to make note of what is working and what isn’t and imagine ways we can improve the experience. 5. Real-Time technologies need to be in your development plans As users come to expect information in real-time, real-time technologies need to be on your development and enhancement register. Discussion needs to happen now so we can understand how real-time might change your service delivery experience. The Summit is an Unconference Because it’s an unconference, you’re going to get tons of networking and business value from the summit. Along with the help of a professional moderator, you and your peers will make the agenda and sit alongside industry luminaries such as John Borthwick, Chris Dixon and Marshall Kirkpatrick to discuss, debate and shape what comes next for the real-time Web. It’s like your own private think-tank. That’s the nature of ReadWriteWeb summits – straight-talking, collegial settings where you get to create the future. Everyone learns. Everyone advances. You leave feeling energized and full of “next”! Discuss

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