September 2009

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I was on Sydney radio 2SER’s media program The Fourth Estate yesterday morning talking about the break-up of Telstra. You can grab the podcast for about the next four weeks. It’s the program dated 17 September, and I’m the first item in the half-hour program.

19 September 2009 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Links for 12 September 2009 through 19 September 2009

19 September 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 1 comment

Here are the web links I’ve found for 12 September 2009 through 19 September 2009, posted not-quite-automatically.

Steak House or Gay Bar?: Can you pick the steakhouses from the gay bars, just by their names? It’s harder than you might thing!
Greenpeace frees ocean life from Pacific longliner | Greenpeace Australia Pacific: Greenpeace’s report on their ship Esperanza “freeing tuna, sharks, marlin and an endangered sea turtle from a Taiwanese longliner”, the Ho Tsai Fa 18. Or, as I prefer to label it, Greenpeace committing piracy and endangering the lives of mariners going about their business.
Fish Now, Pay Later | Greenpeace Australia Pacific: Darren Smith told me the article on dolphin-safe tuna wasn’t right, that Greenpeace didn’t support any kind of industrialised fishing. Here’s what Greenpeace is currently doing in the Pacific.
The ecological disaster that is dolphin safe tuna | Southern Fried Science: By promoting “dolphin-safe tuna” — I prefer to spell it with a hyphen thusly — we’ve ended up with a system that’s unsafe for pretty much everything else.
Meet my hot new stripper wife / Turns out the mid-life crisis is a cruel global phenomenon. Can it be stopped? | Mark Morford: Mark Morford is rapidly becoming one of my favourite writers. In this piece from February 2008 he explains a man’s mid-life crisis rather too well. And entertainingly. I’ll never be able to listen to Justin Timberlake in the same way again.
The Lost Seasons | ABC: More details of the Australian Aboriginal six-season cycle, including a nice explanation of the system used by the Sydney basin’s D’harawal people.
War 2.0: Political Violence & New Media | ANU Department of International Relations: I’ve been invited to attend this 2-day symposium in Canberra on 7-8 October. Now, to figure out who’s paying for it, which will be the key factor in deciding whether I can go.
Jimmy Carter says that tea baggers hate President Obama because he's black | The Root: The former president points out a truth so self-evident you wonder how it could possibly be controversial. But controversial it is. Has modern journalism become so timid that it can’t handle the truth?
Understanding the Telstra d-i-v-o-r-c-e | SearchNetworking.com.au: Richard Chirgwin’s backgrounder explains just how difficult it will be to separate Telstra into separate wholesale and retail divisions.
The next generation bends over | 37signals: The makers of Basecamp, something I use every day, reckon the sale of online accounting software Mint to Intuit, the makers of Quicken and Quickbooks, is “indicative of a VC-induced cancer that’s infecting our industry and killing off the next generation”.
Kid Cannabis | Rolling Stone: “How a chubby pizza-delivery boy from Idaho became a drug kingpin.” It’s just another product distribution business, just illegal.
Rudd & Conroy Gambling On Mandatory Internet Censorship Working | broowery.com: An odd statistical analysis of the likelihood of stumbling across banned material online.
ACMA Blacklists Iran Protest Video & Boing Boing: Another example of why the ACMA blacklist process is seemingly out of step with what the community might want. That’s not ACMA’s fault, they’re just implementing a dodgy policy.
Why Sol Trujillo should be sued for stuffing up Telstra: Kohler | SmartCompany: There’s so many historical analyses of Telstra coming out this week, what with the government announcing its break-up and n’all. This one is marvellous.
2009 Menzies Lecture by John Howard (full text) | The Australian: “In the Australian context the adoption of a Charter or Bill of rights would represent the final triumph of elitism in Australian politics,” reckons our former Prime Minister. A fascinating read if only for its disingenuous use of political rhetoric and coded messages rather than rational argument.
Oil Rocks | BLDGBLOG: Imagine a city of 5000 people built on stilts and causeways some 45km out into a lake. Well, it exists, and it’s called Oil Rocks, in the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan.
The Mushroom Tunnel of Mittagong | BLDGBLOG: A fascinating look, with photos, of a mushroom farm inside a disused railway tunnel. The tunnel itself is still government property, with the farm existing on a 5-year lease.
Death by Information Overload | HBR.org: “New research and novel techniques offer a lifeline to you and your organization,” it says.
The Economics of Sex Work | Core Economics: Good to see an update of knowledge since I did a little research on the sex industry for ABC Radio all those years ago.
CHART OF THE DAY: Primetime On Facebook Is Monday To Wednesday | Silicon Valley Insider: “Social media marketers, take note. The best days to spam, erm, publish wall posts on Facebook that you want your ‘fans’ to pay attention to are Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.”

Google and Bing, sitting in a tree…

18 September 2009 in Internet by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

This is sweet! Look what happens when you search for the word “search” on the world’s two leading Internet search engines.

Yes, if you Google for “search” the first result is Bing. And if you Google it on Bing, the first result is Google. Now who said these guys were competitors?

Hat-tip to Derek Jenkins (@ozdj), and doubtless others as the meme spreads.

Gosh, I haven’t posted much detailed work here lately, eh? That’s because I’ve been flat out on many things, including more writing for Crikey than usual. I’ll try to catch up tonight with an overview of the Telstra break-up stories from the last few days.

17 September 2009 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Stopping the junk mail flood 2

09 September 2009 in Marketing, Personal by Stilgherrian | 24 comments

It’s a month since I complained about advertising being inserted to my “no advertising material” mailbox. How that’s gone?

The good news is that immediately following PMP Distribution chastising their walker there was a significant drop in unaddressed advertising material, perhaps to only half what there was before. Good. But there’s still plenty of “bad corporate citizens” who I’ll now name, and a few businesses who failed to respond.

First, kudos to David Jones and their distributors PMP Distribution, and also to MiniMovers and Marrickville Metro (AMP Capital Shopping Centres), who responded promptly and dealt with the problem. Well done.

A slap on the wrist to Domino’s Pizza; Go Green Insulation; Kmart; and Raine & Horne Marrickville, all of whom didn’t even acknowledge my email enquiry. Pathetic.

An especially big slap to Kmart, since your website contact form sent me an email which said:

We value your feedback, and wish to advise that the matter you have raised has been referred to one of our Customer Relations Representatives who will be in contact with you in the near future.

I didn’t bother chasing Cavellis Woodfire Pizzeria, Cut & Save Tree Service, or Papaya Thai Eatery since they didn’t list email addresses.

Now, the new bad apples…

This month’s rude pricks are: Broadway Shopping Centre; De Sousa Real Estate (who also camouflaged their advertising to look like a hand-written note); Domino’s Pizza (again! twice!); Franklins & Family Supermarkets; Marrickville First National Real Estate; Mountain Designs; Prestige Cleaning Specialists; Raine & Horne Marrickville (again!); Ray White Newtown (another real estate agent!).

I’ll be in touch with all of these businesses to give them a chance to respond. And, since real estate agents feature so prominently in this list, I’ll be asking the REIA whether they consider this to be acceptable behaviour.

We also got a message from beyondblue, but since that’s not advertising but a public health message about depression I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Keep up the good work.

Episode 53 is online, James Murdoch!

09 September 2009 in Stilgherrian Live by Stilgherrian | No comments

Episode 53 of Stilgherrian Live, the John Della Bosca Couch of Love Edition, is online for your viewing pleasure.

As always the nominations for “Cnut of the Week” were superbly wide-ranging.

From my idiosyncratically-selected shortlist of four, Geoffrey Emerson, the man who pays people to take on false identities to post blog comments, scored… well, zero votes. Humph. He was my suggestion. Screw you.

John Della Bosca, his sex scandal, and the media who considered it important, together came in 3rd (14%). I won’t link to it. It’s beneath me.

Microsoft were 2nd (27%) for their somewhat racist re-imaging of an advertisement.

James Murdoch as Cnut of the Week

The clear winner of “Cnut of the Week”, though, was James Murdoch (59%) for his wide-ranging Cnutery in his MacTaggart Lecture.

To decide who won the t-shirt from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing, we had to draw four names from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity before finding someone who was actually watching the program: delperro, Bob Bain, theparissite and, finally, einspruch.

Congratulations, einspruch!

It is moderately likely that Stilgherrian Live will return tomorrow night at 9.30pm Sydney time.

Telstra closes blog, loses friends

08 September 2009 in Internet, Marketing, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Crikey logo

Australia’s biggest telco closed down their corporate blog nowwearetalking without warning yesterday — and deleted all the content. While I can understand they want to put the often-controversial forum behind them, I think the move was a mistake.

I’ve already written about this for Crikey, Telstra consigns nowwearetalking to the memory hole. It seems odd to kill NWAT just as it was changing for the better – even more so given there’s no replacement. There’s comments from Stephen Collins and Fake Stephen Conroy, as well as Telstra’s official spokesperson Craig Middleton. It’s free to read. Off you go.

But I’d also like to publish the full interviews I did for that story. So here they are.

Read the rest of this entry »

Links for 28 August 2009 through 09 September 2009

08 September 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 2 comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 28 August 2009 through 09 September 2009, gathered automatically and then forgotten until today:

REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits: I haven’t encountered this audio/music production tool before. It’s perhaps worth a look.
Experts look to Australia’s Aborigines for weather help: As it happens, the Aboriginal tribes of the Sydney basin recognised six season, not the European four.
The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer: This was published back in March, but it’ll show you how trust in various things has changed over time.
Salvage Techniques for Wet Electronics | Andy Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA): The title says what it is. Yes, I have wet electronics. I dropped my phone in a “moist environment” and it’s now sitting with silica gel and probably never working again. Read this guide now so you know the drill for the future.
For SEC, tech-savvy fans might be biggest threats to media exclusivity | St Petersburg Times: The US Southeastern Conference of college sports is trying to stop fans communicating about the game in the most stringent restrictions ever seem. A pity they can’t possibly work.
User driven service bingo | Doc Searls Weblog: A checklist of activities to see whether some web service or other is truly “user driven”. Does this apply to organisations too?
Electronic Warfare: Airborne electronic attack – a new offensive role for the RAAF | ADM: Someone took me to task for suggesting the RAAF buying F/A-18 Super Hornets was a waste. He suggested the electronic warfare capability of the “Growler” model was a worthwhile addition to Australia’s defence capability.
Stop Using the Word “We” | Ted Dziuba: A plea for more direct communication within the corporation. Yes please.
Economics is not a Natural Science by Douglas Rushkoff | Edge: “Some of us analyzing digital culture and its impact on business must reveal economics as the artificial construction it really is. Although it may be subjected to the scientific method and mathematical scrutiny, it is not a natural science; it is game theory, with a set of underlying assumptions that have little to do with anything resembling genetics, neurology, evolution, or natural systems.”
Impatient CEOs are all of a Twitter, but it doesn’t work like that | The Observer: John Naughton points out a real dilemma: CEOs have to generate profits to a quarterly cycle, but the business benefits of “social media” (or whatever it’s called next month) will take decades to emerge.
Draft Open Access and Licensing Framework released | In Development: The New Zealand government’s draft policy recommends that government agencies use the most liberal Creative Commons licensing possible.
Stark realisation: I no longer depend on Google to find stuff | Alex J Campbell: Alex differentiates between “finding” and “locating”, and along the way observes that the changes in the way we do these things has profound implications for businesses trying to get customers online.
Words for Webstock – Bruce Sterling: Bruce Sterling sees the Future, and it’s banal. Just like today.
Last Year’s Model: “It’s totally normal to lust after the hottest new geeky gadgets. It’s also cool to put some thought into what we buy, and what we throw away. So this is a place to show the world that a lot of us are choosing to use Last Year’s Model.” Their slogan is “Saving the planet through sheer laziness”, but it’s also a call for a more informed choice about consuming less.
OSX Timemachine and Samba/Windows share | Hupio’s Weblog: How to use Apple’s OS X 10.5.2 Time Machine backup software with a Linux server, Windows server or Windows network share. It presumably works just as well with later versions.
The next 100 years | New Statesman: An extract from Stratfor founder George Friedman’s book of the same name. Can you imagine a war between a Japan-Turkey alliance and US-Poland?
Depression’s Evolutionary Roots | Scientific American: New research seems to indicate that depression isn’t something “broken”, but rather the brain going into an altered state so that “deep rumination” can be uninterrupted, leading to better analysis of a complex problem. If so, doesn’t that mean anti-depressant medications are preventing the problem being solved?
John Thompson-Mills: John was the producer of Club Escape, the dance music program I presented with Scott Thompson on Triple J back in 1990 or whenever it was. Happy to have stumbled across this.
CHART OF THE DAY: Actually, Kids Don’t Hate Twitter Anymore! | Silicon Valley Insider: “While Twitter’s user base historically favored older users, people between ages 12-24 have been Twitter’s fastest growing age group of late. And now that age group is actually disproportionately visiting Twitter, according to comScore.”

NSW offers $100k prizes for application development

04 September 2009 in Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Crikey logo

In a surprise visit to today’s NSW Sphere event, Premier Nathan Rees announced the apps4nsw program — offering prizes of $100,000 for innovative applications with make use of government data for public good.

I’ve got a piece on the Crikey website, NSW gets its geek on:

“This is all about making government data easy for everyone to use to solve everyday problems,” said Rees…

Entries may be websites or web based services, mobile applications or stand-alone PC based or kiosk-based applications.

“The prizes will be judged by an expert panel – which doesn’t include me – and there will also be a People’s Choice Award and the opportunity for the best entry to go to a prototyping phase”, said Rees.

“Anything we develop as a result of the competition will be licensed as open source and freely available to government and the public. These will be public apps for the common good.”

This is a fascinating initiative. Have a squizz at the Crikey piece. I’ll write more later.

NSW Sphere: Government 2.0 for NSW

04 September 2009 in Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

I should’ve written more about this earlier, but today I’m speaking at NSW Sphere, a discussion event on Government 2.0 organised by Penny Sharpe MLC.

It’s being run along the style of Senator Kate Lundy’s Public Sphere events, and interest is so high that all places are booked out.

As I write this, some early-bird participants are watching the movie Us Now, and I’m figuring out exactly what I’ll say in my 10-minute presentation, Risk, Fear, Paranoia: Perspective, People!

You can participate live wherever you are, and I’ll post my presentation and thoughts later. The Twitter hashtag is #nswsphere.

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