How to Uninstall "Junkware"

Friends,

In this sequel to my recent post on junkware, I explain how to get rid of unwanted software that comes preinstalled on new computers.

Blog Post With Sound!

Hi folks,

Well, it took some doing, but I figured out how to create an audio blog post. In this inital exciting installment, I complain about the fact that my wife kept me waiting at the metro. Enjoy!

"Junkware" Cometh

Recently I got a new computer, affording myself the opportunity to learn a new term: “junkware.”

Also called “bloatware” and “crapware,” among other derogatory epithets, junkware refers to unwanted programs that come preinstalled on new machines. Typically these are trial versions designed to entice people to purchase a complete application or to subscribe to some online service.

The negative characterizations are well deserved. Fundamentally, these programs are ads ― billboards that clutter one’s desktop and slow a machine’s processing speed. Almost universally, new computer owners regard them as a nuisance.

Shortly after I purchased my Hewlett Packard last month, I happened upon a New York Times article in the paper’s Circuits section that helped me to understand the downside to junkware and the economic model compelling its proliferation. An excellent read, the article was titled “Exorcise the Demons that Come Preinstalled.”

Some examples of junkware (think of these programs as frequent offenders) include security software from Norton and McAfee, graphics tools from Corel, Internet service from Earthlink, and online phone service from Vonage, according to the Times article. As for my own experience, Earthlink was loaded onto my machine. I also found Microsoft to be among the purveyors of junkware. My computer included a trial version of Microsoft Office Home 2007, which was programmed to expire after 60 days of use.

It should be noted that junkware is an issue specific to Windows and PC manufacturers. Macs have no such software. In fact, earlier this year, Apple created a television commercial mocking the junkware upsurge.


Even though most users despise junkware, analysts suspect that it’s not going away anytime soon. The reason? It helps make brand-name PCs more affordable. Software makers on average pay from $1 to $2 per machine for such placements, which can add up to as much as $20 in revenue for PC manufacturers, depending on how much they load on. The PC industry needs the money, analysts say. To induce people to buy, manufacturers generally pass the savings on to consumers by lowering the price of their machines.

Getting rid of junkware is definitely a good idea. For one thing, an unused program needlessly takes up disk space. But a more immediate issue may be the impact that it has on the performance of one's machine. The Times article quotes David Zipkin, senior product manager for Windows at Microsoft, saying the company's "internal tests show that just uninstalling the preinstalled software that you don’t want can improve a computer’s performance by 20 percent or more."

One PC manufacturer brave enough to speak openly about junkware is Sony, which claims consumers use up to 30 percent of the software preinstalled on its machines. But I find that claim dubious. As is the case with most market research, Sony's findings must be biased reflective of the willingness of any respondent to participate in the company's survey. If those polled are anything like me, they're probably too consumed with removing the junkware on their machines to bother answering a questionnaire.

Book Review: Civic Engagement on the Move

A must-read for communications professionals, a new report titled "Civic Engagement on the Move" imparts useful insights on how mobile media can be employed to serve the public good.

The report was produced by the Aspen Institute's Communications and Society Program in partnership with the Center for Renaissance Journalism at San Francisco State University. Both organizations seek to shed light on the societal impact of digital media, making them fitting collaborators.

Civic Engagement on the Move captures the discussion and learnings from an invitation-only roundtable held in San Francisco, Dec. 10-12, 2007. In all, the gathering featured 28 opinion leaders working at the intersection of mobile media and civic engagement. The participants included Steven Chen, chief technology officer and co-founder of YouTube; Ariel Rosen, director of Pro Social Initiatives at Virgin Mobile USA; Katrin Verclas, co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org; Ben Rigby, founder and co-executive director of Mobile Voter; and James Katz, director of the Rutgers University Center for Mobile Communications Studies.

The report opens by citing a Duke University study that found Americans today feel more socially isolated than ever before even though our nation has a wealth of communications technology at its disposal. People frequently use mobile devices to check stocks, share photos and send text messages, but increasingly, it seems, Americans are reluctant to engage in conversations with strangers, volunteer at soup kitchens or join political efforts.

The report makes no assertions as to whether civic engagement has risen or fallen, but it challenges perceptions about the role of digital media. It references a growing body of evidence that indicates U.S. citizens — especially the young — are using mobile media in ways that bolster civic engagement, encourage widespread participation and, ultimately, serve to strengthen democracy.

J.D. Lasica, author of the report and executive director of Ourmedia.org, grouped civic engagement enabled by mobile media into three broad categories: journalistic, social-cultural, and political or governance related. Here are examples cited in the report from each category.

Journalistic: Used by journalists and citizens alike, mobile phones have become an important tool for elections monitoring. AfricaNews.com gave cell phones to journalists in several African countries for that very purpose in early 2007, and later that year reporters in Kenya used the phones to cover the turmoil surrounding their country's disputed national elections.

More broadly, journalists working in remote areas are equipped not just with cell phones but also with devices as varied as mobile tablets, satellite receivers and GPS-enabled pens. Filing dispatches from outlying areas and distant lands has become commonplace, the report observes.

One of the roundtable participants identified another use of mobile media in the offing. Evan Hansen of Wired News predicted that reporters soon would create small groups of trusted readers with whom they would communicate using the Twitter application. A journalist will text his or her "Twitter Posse," as Hansen called them, alerting these advisers of a looming interview. The posse might suggest questions for the journalist to pose or other sources to help inform the reporting.

The report also referred to Placeblogger.com, which lists some 2,000 sites that local citizens use to post community news. Called "place blogs," the sites differ from one another based on the volume of traffic they elicit, but they all have one thing in common: Their contributors are local residents who feel the need to supplement coverage by the community newspaper, either because they think the paper is missing stories or because they question the journalistic ideal of "objective reporting." Many place blogs are updated via mobile devices, making them more current than the online editions of some community papers.

Social-Cultural: To help fight rising STD rates among San Francisco youth, the city's department of public health partnered with a local nonprofit called Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS) to establish a pilot project that would allow young adults to receive text messages on STD prevention.

The health department and ISIS opted for the text message strategy for two reasons: First, an estimated 80 percent of their target audience had both cell phones and a low-cost text message service; and second, there already were numerous Web sites that young people in San Francisco could use to get answers to their questions on STDs.

Youth could text "SEXINFO" to a local number and receive on their cell phones a menu of services, instructing them to text certain codes, such as "B2 if ur condom broke" or "D4 to find out about HIV." Depending on the text they sent, the service immediately would provide guidance or other relevant information. The service was well received and widely used by the target population. ISIS Director Deb Levine said it was successful because it provided information not when organizers wanted to send it, but when youth asked for it.

Political or Governance. A New York City project called ComNET has employed mobile devices to make it possible for community organizations to help identify city property in need of repair, such as graffiti, pot holes, and malfunctioning street lights. Established in 1998, ComNET stands for "Computerized Neighborhood Environment Tracking."

ComNET provides handheld computers with digital cameras to community groups, which allow them to capture images of conditions on the street, along with text descriptions and map information. They also can connect to a database that shows the municipal agency in charge of making the needed repairs and lets them track requests over time. They also can use the system to propose community action plans, such as to carry out the painting of a street lamp on their own.

Before ComNET, citizens could play a role in identifying troublesome street conditions, but there was no way for the city government to systematically learn of community-wide concerns or to prioritize needed fixes reflective of those concerns. The system has served to connect citizens with local government and helped them to feel empowered as they have seen neighborhood improvements firsthand. ComNET has been so successful that it has been adopted in 30 areas outside of New York and has inspired similar projects in other U.S. cities, as well as in Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Civic Engagement on the Move features many practical examples of mobile media campaigns and insights on future, anticipated uses of mobile technology. Those who wish to read the report can download it free at the Communications and Society Program site.

Health Policy and Presidential Politics

There's an interesting article in the New York Times titled "Obstacles for Obama in Meeting Health Care Goal," which makes a pretty good case that the candidate has promised more than he can deliver in the way of health care reform.

It's a good read. The crux of it is that while Obama has promised to reduce health insurance premiums by $2,500 for the typical family (of four people) by the end of his first term, many health economists say our nation may not be able to achieve that over a 10-year period, let alone over four years.

Learning in the 21st Century

This month I was privileged to participate in the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colo., a leading forum for public dialogue in our country. Among this year's speakers were President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, JP Morgan Chase & Company CEO Jamie Dimon, and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Oconnor, among more than 250 other experts and opinion leaders.

If you're not familiar with the Ideas Festival, I encourage you to check out the event Web site, where video of the many panel discussions will soon be posted. The Ideas Festival is a gathering that defies easy description. Briefly, though, it is one of the few places where members of the public can exchange ideas with Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" recipients and myriad other luminaries in considering the most pressing issues of our time.

As an employee of one of the Aspen Institute's policy programs, my role at the Ideas Festival prevented me from taking part in many of the sessions that I wanted to attend, but I managed to make it to a couple sessions in the program track called "The 'Net Generation," which is of great interest to me.

Among the panels I enjoyed was "Learning in the 21st Century," which centered on how youngsters prefer to learn today and already learn, in many instances — and how very different those learning styles are from twentieth century approaches.

Connie Yowell, director of education at the MacArthur Foundation program on human and community development, moderated the panel. She began by noting that the organization's research has shown that young people are changing the way they learn in part as a result of digital media. "It's not really about technology, but about the social and cultural practices of young people," Yowell said. "Learning is happening anywhere at any time."

We have arrived at a juncture that requires us to rethink the very paradigms we use to characterize learning, Yowell said, adding that we soon will need to develop a new field.

Following Yowell's introductory remarks, the first panelist to speak was Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University, who is best known for his theory of "multiple intelligences." He opened by saying that he felt digital media held the potential to change the way people percieved time, space, objects and the self. Not so long ago, he observed, a person would write a letter to a friend or colleague and could expect a response in maybe a week or two. "Now, we're in touch with people everywhere, all of the time," he said.

Research focusing on new media is emerging as several distinct areas of specialization, according to Gardner. They include the following:

• The sense of identity
• Issues of privacy
• Issues of ownership, involving copyright and intellectual property, which the courts are tackling
• Trust and credibility (and how to achieve it), and
• Community (how to define it, what it means to participate, and how communities can be influenced or mobilized, such as for advocacy)

Panelist Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Harvard Law School Center for Internet and Society, noted that up until very recently IT was recognized as providing two major functions: information access (think search engines) and communication (email).

"These functions used to be separate," she said. "Now they're interconnected, and they're getting interconnected more and more."

Growing numbers of children are not only going online but also using tools such as social networks, Boyd added. As a consequence, the process of learning to interact with one another — once primarily the province of the playground — increasingly is occurring when youngsters are engaged online.

Facilitated by digital media, youth are building communities of practice around their interests. They are taking on all manner of projects simply because they enjoy them and yet they are learning a great deal in the process, Boyd said. Often they are not aware that they are learning.

As an example, Boyd related the story of some 200 Chinese youth who set out to see how quickly they could translate Book Six of Harry Potter. In a terrific example of what is known as "cloud computing," the Chinese teenagers used a Wiki to translate the entire book from English to Chinese in less than two days following the work's official release in the United States. This exercise did little to please the Chinese copyright holders, but it nevertheless was a meaningful lesson in collaborative dynamics and the power of digital media.

The panel discussion made clear that new media would be a driving force in education. Boyd ended her remarks by challenging the audience to consider how schools could use digital media to encourage students to pursue things that truly interest them.

"Young people are pushing at the edges," Boyd said. "They are learning to do things that adults don't know how to do."

Even so, youth will always need adult guidance, Boyd added. So we must value the role of adult co-participation.

What's the significance of my blog's title?

There is none. I tried probably 50 different titles, all of which were taken. So after wasting 45 minutes I settled on "PR Dachshund." I once owned two miniature dachshunds, for that's worth.

The purpose of this blog is to fullfill an asignmenment for a course in which I am enrolled, titled "Internet Advocacy Communications," in the weekend graduate program for public communications at American University. I intend for this blog to be insightful, but I make no guarantees.

Read at your own peril.