On Monday I discovered by accident — well, by a 5am media release from the Prime Minister — that it was Commonwealth Day. Which used to be called Empire Day. Or even British Empire Day. I thought I’d celebrate by using a selection of avatars on Twitter. These are their stories.

From left to right, a slightly retro illustration of Britannia stolen from the Daily Mail; a model showing off the Fever Rule Britannia Sequin Dress, which you can hire from Bryony Theatrical; some random British military beefcake; Angus Stewart’s photo of Rule Britannia Pete; the DeviantArt profile picture of Britannia–Angel, a male of unstated age from the UK; and some random picture from Sodahead that you can trace back if you can be bothered.

As usual, this does not include the material I wrote elsewhere, for Crikey, ZDNet Australia, ABC The Drum, Technology Spectator, CSO Online and the rest. That’s all listed on my Media Output page.

1. Right, Google, you stupid cunts, this is simply not on! This was my first critique of the Google+ Real Names Policy, and still the most widely read.
2. LinkedIn’s inadequate response to privacy stupidity, which was when they opened up people’s profiles for use in third-party advertising without asking first.
3. Twitter: a guide for busy paranoids, adapted from a piece I wrote for the NSW Local Government Web Network.
4. Tweeting your way out of Paranoia, a video of the presentation I did for the NSW LGWN conference. Yes, it’s related to the previous item.
5. 50 to 50 #9: The Space Age, and the companion piece…
6. 50 to 50 #9A: The Real Space Age. They’re about my personal experience of the Space Age.
7. Goodbye, Artemis, a very personal experience.

You might also like to check out my personal favourites from 2010, 2009 and 2008.

[Update 27 December 2011: Minor corrections to text and HTML markup.]

There’s not a lot to choose from this year. Most of my writing has been elsewhere. But there’s some interesting results nonetheless.

1. Right, Google, you stupid cunts, this is simply not on! I’m not surprised this is the most-read, but it simply wouldn’t have gotten the attention it did if it weren’t for the c-word. I’ve actually received quite a few compliments about this post.
2. I just don’t get LinkedIn, do you?
3. Follow Politics & Technology Forum people on Twitter.
4. Patch Monday: There are no NBN apps: Turnbull. Given that this is actually just linkage to the podcast site, I’m surprised it got this many views.
5. On stage for the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum, being my plug for the event.
6. Goodbye, Artemis. I’m hardly surprised this one generated so much traffic. There was so much interest in the demise of this much-loved feline.
7. So LinkedIn is a giant Rolodex, eh?
8. Twitter: a guide for busy paranoids
9. And so begins 2011… in fear, being one of my rare personal pieces.
10. Google+ gives me grief, generally

And here are the 10 most-read posts of 2011 that weren’t written in 2011.

1. So this is human sexuality? This is what happens when you fill a post with sex-related keywords.
2. Why all corporate PR droids should be shot
3. HTC Desire to OS X tethering via USB, still getting hits despite being for an outdated version of Android.
4. Conroy’s speech to ALIA Information Online 2009
5. Jim Wallace’s pro-censorship lies and distortions. I’m surprised that this post in particular was pulling traffic, out of all those about internet censorship, because I don’t think it’s the best.
6. My new hero: Hideki Moronuki
7. Viocorp Future Forum: The Future of News Reporting
8. Note to “old media” journalists: adapt, or stfu!
9. Topic 9 to discuss Australia 2020 Summit’s government topic
10. Cheap fake tan and fat thighs? Snooki!

If you’d like to compare this with previous years, try these:

• Most popular posts of 2010
• Most popular posts of 2009
• Most popular posts of 2008
• Most popular posts of 2007

Three years ago I even managed to tweet some interesting observations and compile them into blog posts. But these days Twitter has completely taken over the role of recording my personal life and this website has, I think, suffered.

I used to post long, thoughtful essays. Now, such essays tend to be about the things I write about for money, and published elsewhere — and there’s nothing wrong with that, except that I’m possibly becoming typecast as a “tech writer”. But between writing several pieces a week for money and maintaining a high-volume Twitter stream, there isn’t time or energy left for much else.

My other podcast The 9pm Edict has disappeared. So has my little video program Stilgherrian Live. So have presentations like the one I did for PodCamp 2007.

Have I got the balance right? I think not.

That’s not all I’ve gotten wrong this year. But I won’t wallow in the mistakes here. Or at least not now. I’ll merely note that perhaps I do need to disconnect more, provide more time for reflection. And maybe those thoughtful essays will reappear.

What a week! I’ve written five articles. Another two are due for Monday. I’ve done my usual Patch Monday podcast. I’ve done five radio appearances on five different topics. I’ve been interviewed for Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast, and that’ll appear next week.

I’ve even been interviewed by an anthropologist for his PhD project. I’m talking to a new editor about more writing. And even — this is weird — to a television production company about a TV project.

That all comes after a month or, really, six weeks or more of travel, intense work, intense and deeply personal events and the tightly-tangled ball of stress, depression and anxiety that can trigger. Which it did.

I’m knackered.

And there’s still plenty of work to do and decisions to make over the next couple of weeks.

I mention all this for a variety of reasons…

• While I do have Weekly Wrap posts, I’ll also do individual posts linking to things like major articles and radio spots. This should make it easier for people to find things they’re interested in, and quite frankly it’s better Google juice. It also gives me more of an opportunity to reflect on each item — like adding a quick personal view to supplement a story that was a straight-news piece.
• There’s about to be a flurry of small posts as I process the week’s radio spots. Consider that a warning.
• I wanted to post at least part of the background before more reflective posts started appearing. I haven’t written much from a deeply personal perspective lately — certainly not like the essays that I was doing a couple years back. This is part of the head-clearing process before I return to that.

I write in so many places these days — ZDNet Australia, Crikey, Technology Spectator, ABC’s The Drum, even occasionally at places like CRN Australia. And, as I mentioned, there’s probably more to come. That’s all writing for other people.

This here is my place, and it’ll be about writing for me.

No, I’m not sure what form that’ll take.

I’m not sure what it even means.

Do those bullet points flow from the intro? No, not really. But that’s where my head is this morning. I’m sure things will become clearer as the day unfolds.

[Photo: That's me (embiggen) photographed with my webcam just now at Rosella Cottage, the somewhat bigger house that's the "family home" of the owners of Bunjaree Cottages. It isn't normally rented out to punters. I've been here at the cottages alone for a week, and I haven't bothered shaving. I'm staring to look like I did before ’Pong and I shot that short film The Shave back in 2008. It's not a good look.]

Earlier this evening I recorded this interview with Iain Dale, who’s keynoting the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra on 1 June. He’s one of the UK’s leading political bloggers, a former Conservative Party politician, publisher of Total Politics magazine and host of the evening show on London’s LBC Radio — amongst other things.

I’d originally intended to use a slab of this in the Patch Monday podcast I do for ZDNet Australia, but it’s not really about technology. Our conversation did touch upon the way political parties use social media such as blogs and Twitter — or, really, why they don’t. But we also covered the attraction of broadcast radio as medium and why it’ll survive, authenticity and much more. So I decided to post the entire recording here as a podcast.

I began by asking Dale about a piece he wrote for The Guardian earlier this month, Is this really the death of political blogging? It turns out the headline is misleading.

For more on Iain Dale, read his Wikipedia entry or follow him on Twitter.

I’ve been thinking of doing a more podcasts of interviews along the lines of this one — not necessarily about politics or technology but whatever strikes my fancy. Indeed, I created the blog post category Conversations for this purpose, although so far I’ve only used it to post random audio I’ve been involved with. What do you think?

As usual, this does not include the material I wrote elsewhere, for Crikey, ZDNet.com.au and ABC Online. That’s all listed on my Media Output page.

1. 50 to 50 #1: Born in Gawler, the first of what was intended to be a series of 50 posts leading up to my 50th birthday. Well, I got a few done, and you can find them in the 50 to 50 category.
2. Internet hosting: the cost of support, the first in a series of three articles to help people understand how internet hosting services work from a small business perspective.
3. Internet hosting: the cost of reliability. The second. Alas, the third article has not yet appeared.
4. Why I’ve deleted my Facebook account, which is self-explanatory.
5. Jetstar, Powderfinger to exploit fan’s enthusiasm, one of my rants against the evils of “crowdsourcing” that’s really just unpaid labour.
6. Homophobic beat-up by Sun-Herald’s Heath Aston. Sometimes the popular stories are also the good ones.
7. Return of the Hallucinating Goldfish: Help! Another brief piece about my little metaphor for government.
8. Problematising the discourse: clear communication fail. A stumbled across an unfamiliar word while reading newmatilda.com, and that triggered an essay on choosing appropriate vocabulary for your audience.

You might also like to check out my personal favourites from 2009 and 2008.

1. HTC Desire to OS X tethering via USB. Hardly the most general article, but it shoes how you can attract website traffic if you have useful how-to information. Of course this article is irrelevant now that the HTC Desire runs Android 2.2, which has tethering as a built-in function.
2. Cheap fake tan and fat thighs? Snooki! This is embarrassing, really, but I get traffic to this post because Google Images lists it as one of the first few results for “snooki fat”.
3. ICT Election Forum: what questions? This one puzzles me. The post just mentions that the pre-election forum was happening, and I asked people to suggest questions. Maybe they’re really looking for something else.
4. Why I’ve deleted my Facebook account, which is self-explanatory.
5. Homophobic beat-up by Sun-Herald’s Heath Aston, about a very grubby tabloid attempt to smear a politician.
6. Senate to re-open Bloggers versus Journalists. When I write about journalism, it usually gets retweeted heavily through media circles. It certainly makes a difference to website traffic.
7. Jetstar, Powderfinger to exploit fan’s enthusiasm, one of my rants against the evils of “crowdsourcing” that’s really just unpaid labour.
8. Adam Schwab’s NBN reply, which is Mr Schwab’s response to my article Adam Schwab’s NBN “analysis” arsehattery.
9. Time to dump 20th Century “leadership”?. The main point is that you can’t just bolt some sort of “government 2.0 module” onto steam-era bureaucracies and magically bring them into the 21st Century.
10. Selling the NBN: couldn’t you do better?. I have no idea why this, of all the things I’ve written about the National Broadband Network, was one of the most-read. It’s certainly not the best.

Just like last year, many older posts also continued to be popular. Indeed, as I worked down the website traffic report, I filled all ten slots in the non-2010 list while managing to find only two stories from the current year. Yet more proof that the more material you have on your website the more visits you’ll get. Don’t delete your old material, people!

However something that worries me is that so many of the items are listed not because people were reading the posts, but because other internet users had hot-linked to the images — that is, included them on another website — or robots attempting to post spam in the comments.

OK, the Top 10 posts of 2010 that weren’t written in 2010.

1. 67 Australian SAS captured airbase defended by 1000 (March 2008). I think this one only makes the list because the photo keeps getting embedded in various military geek forums.
2. Live Blog: Internet censorship forum, which is only in the list because for some reason or other it was hit heavily by the spambots. Who would read a live blog from a forum back in 2008?
3. Julie, I want to make you a star (in a Samantha Fox kind of way) (September 2007) My ode to Julie Bishop, popular because of its photograph of Samantha Fox.
4. Hello Kitty, you’re dead, and other surprise products (October 2007) People link to the (fake) photo of the Hello Kitty AK-47. Few seem to realise it’s a joke.
5. Apple iPhone parodies (January 2007). Another embedded photo, I reckon. I must make sure my traffic reports filter out that stuff.
6. Spaceport America, designed by Foster+Partners (October 2007). I’m puzzled why this one is on the list. Maybe people linking to the photos again?
7. Live Blog: Politics & Technology Forum 2009 (February 2009). Another artefact of the spam robits, I think.
8. The Madness of Corey Worthington Delaney (January 2008), proving once more that the lowest common denominator wins.
9. My new hero: Hideki Moronuki (January 2008). Whenever the work of Sea Shepherd is in the news, people stumble across this post and discover that — shock horror! — I’m no a fan of that organisation.
10. Oz soldiers design own recruitment ads (April 2007).

None of that surprises me. The most common searches which brought visitors to my website were “steve irwin jokes”, “stilgherrian”, “heath ledger jokes”, “julia gillard”, “hideki moronuki”, “snooki fat”, “sas”, “fisting”, “snooki is fat” and “hello kitty ak 47″.

You might also like to check out my own selection for what I think were the best posts from 2010, plus the lists for previous years:

• Most popular posts of 2009
• Most popular posts of 2008
• Most popular posts of 2007

At the end of October the House of Representatives passed the Evidence Amendment (Journalists’ Privilege) Bill 2010, which is all about protecting the confidentiality of journalists’ sources. In the usual jargon, it’s a “journalist shield law”.

Australia was apparently the only major democracy without such a law in place or in progress, so it’s welcome. And, in the words of the new Greens MP for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, “this bill is a good example of how all parties can collaborate on a worthwhile initiative in a way that would not have happened without the currently composed parliament.”

Bandt continued:

To facilitate its passage, the Greens will support the bill in its current form in the House, but I indicate now that we will seek minor amendments to it in the Senate. In particular, we believe that it should be made explicit that the bill covers bloggers, citizen journalists and documentary filmmakers, and that the privileges provided by the bill cover anyone engaged in the process of journalism, no matter who they are or in what medium they publish.

Well I reckon it’s great that the new law might cover more people, not just those who work as employee-journalists in the industrial media factories. It’s great that it might be technology- and medium-neutral. But…

What the heck is a “blogger” or a “citizen journalist”?

As the bill currently stands, the definitions of “journalist” and “news medium” are already quite broad. In Schedule 1, section 126G:

informant means a person who gives information to a journalist in the normal course of the journalist’s work in the expectation that the information may be published in a news medium

journalist means a person who in the normal course of that person’s work may be given information by an informant in the expectation that the information may be published in a news medium

news medium means a medium for the dissemination to the public or a section of the public of news and observations on news

My understanding is that “observations on news” is meant to cover the analysis and opinion (“op-ed”) that typically appears in newspapers and current affairs programs. But many blog posts would also fit that description.

Heck, you could even argue that my Twitter stream is a news medium because it contains news (of what me and others are doing) and observations thereupon, conveyed to “a section of the public”.

What I don’t know is whether “in the normal course of that person’s work” implies that a journalist has to be paid. Any media lawyers want to have a go at that?

In my view, “journalism” and “blogging” are two activities amongst many that end up producing certain kinds of media outputs. Whether you’re paid or not is a separate issue.

As I’ve expounded at length before, journalism is the job of producing the media objects needed by industrial-age media factories. That’s why I love John E McIntyre’s description of his work at The Baltimore Sun as sub-editor — “copy editor” in his American English — as “a shift at the paragraph factory”. On his blog.

Blogging evolved in a different environment. It produces a more fluid kind of media output — one that involves the readers in discussion. Indeed, I’m one of the people who thinks that the dialog is what makes it blogging — as opposed to an essay or a polemic.

There are other definitions, of course. I won’t list them all here except one. The idea that a proper capital-J journalist is a member of their professional association. In Australia that’s the Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance. Like most professions it has a Code of Ethics.

Is a Code of Ethics what turns writing about current events into “journalism”?

Labor MP Graham Perrett supported the bill but was concerned about extending protection to those unruly bloggers:

I do support this bill and I support shield laws which provide a presumption in favour of journalists privilege. However, I believe that this bill could be improved by providing an expanded definition for ‘journalist’ or ‘reporter’… As an additional safeguard, this definition enshrined in legislation would ensure that rogues — who do not uphold the journalists’ code of ethics — are not able to hide their shonky reporting behind shield laws. In terms of the modern day, it is easy to see people like [veteran political journalist] Laurie Oakes and the others who sit up in the journalists gallery as journalists, but there is then quite a continuum down to the perhaps aggrieved blogger who puts out something every week…

I would suggest to the Senate that the definition of journalist include some additional words. If we go to the 126G definition where journalist is defined, I would suggest that it also include ‘a person who ascribes to the journalist code of ethics as published and codified by Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’. This would be a narrower definition that would still cover the intent of the member for Denison’s legislation.

Perrett isn’t necessarily suggesting every blogger become a member of the MEAA. But I make two observations for now.

1. The MEAA’s codification of journalistic ethics is not necessarily the only view of how things should work. I’ve nothing against the MEAA. Far from it! But I wouldn’t like to see them enshrined in legislation as the only view of how the media should operate.
2. There are plenty of MEAA members who fail to live up to this high ethical standard. Witness any episode of ABC TV’s Media Watch. This test for ethical behaviour fails in practice.

When the recent changes were made to Australia’s Freedom of Information laws, it was proposed to grant journalists the first five hours of decision-making time free of charge. But as the new Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan told iTnews.com.au:

There was a debate about whether someone was a journalist or not for the purposes of the Act. They resolved that by giving everybody FOI free for the first 5 hours.

The can of worms was not opened on that occasion. But it looks like it’s going to be this time. This will be an interesting can of worms to open. Good luck, Senators.

I’m doing a one-hour masterclass on producing podcasts at this year’s Walkley Media Conference in Sydney on Wednesday 11 August 2010. Well, more a tutorial, really.

According to the conference program I’m covering: “Recording and editing audio — and putting it out there in a podcast. What software/tools do you need?” In reality, we’ll look at the needs of the people who register and structure the session around that.

Next week I’ll post details of my own Mac-based toolkit and workflows for producing the Patch Monday podcast. Does anyone know of a good listing of Windows options?

There’s some great-looking sessions, and plenty of people I want to meet or catch up with again, so I’ll be staying around for as much of the event as I can. It runs for four days, from 9 to 12 August.

Not posting here for a week makes it look like I’ve vanished. But increasingly, more of my work is elsewhere. Like my Crikey piece It’s called iPad, and the Kindle is rooted. Like the 2000-word feature I’m slaving to finish today for ZDNet.com.au. Look in the sidebar under “More Stilgherrian”. My online presence is now scattered amongst so many streams of data!

There’s an essay here about the meaning of all this fragmentation. But if I write that essay, I’ll end up having to admit this is precisely why Facebook has been so successful. So much of your life can happen through Facebook and its myriad third-party data-sucking privacy-perverting applications, from organising a BBQ to marketing a business.

The ease with which Facebook can become your all-encompassing social portal means Facebook will win.

That means I’ll probably never write that essay. I don’t want to admit Facebook will win. Because it’s ugly. And because they’re cunts.

[Update 29 December 2009: In case it isn't obvious, these are in order of writing through the year, not of merit or anything else.]

1. Jim Wallace’s pro-censorship lies and distortions (26 January) It disgusts me that someone claiming to speak on behalf of “moral” Christianity deliberately distorts the evidence and misrepresents his opponents. It’s the most appalling hypocrisy. While this piece relates to specific events in the news, the explanation of his dirty tricks stands the test of time, methinks.
2. “Clive Hamilton, you’re really starting to shit me!” (16 February) Wallace’s compatriot Clive Hamilton is equally guilty of dodgy rhetoric and straight-up misrepresentation. Again, some useful lessons about political messaging.
3. Fisting Twitter and the birth of “trend fisting” (1 March) This was the most popular post too. Perhaps this is my true legacy from 2009?
4. Pia Waugh: An interview for Ada Lovelace Day 2009 (24 March) This video interview was recorded before Pia started working for Senator Kate Lundy. An interesting backgrounder.
5. Anzac Day 2009: Sacrifice (25 April) Anzac Day always brings out my reflective nature — though perhaps only I would start an Anzac piece with cat vomit.
6. Look, about that damn topless gnome… (27 May) I’m annoyed that a tangential discussion about a $3.50 garden gnome soaked up so much time which should have been spent on the real purpose of Project TOTO. Nevertheless, it gave me a chance to make some points about independence and how organisations can get trapped in their own worldview.
7. The Poverty Web (3 July) The only lengthy Project TOTO piece to be written while I was actually in Tanzania, and still perhaps the best — though more will emerge. Eventually.
8. The really real revolutionary revolution of the Internet (23 July) I posit that things like the many Government 2.0 initiatives are still only nibbling around the edges.
9. Conversations are not markets, people! (26 July) This one was popular. I’ve noticed that this year I’ve been increasingly concerned about the focus on markets and business at the neglect of other aspects of our society.
10. Risk, Fear and Paranoia: Perspective, People! (27 September) Penny Sharpe MLC asked me to say something controversial at her NSW Sphere event on 4 September. Here it is. The full video and transcript of my somewhat rambling discussion of the challenges facing the Government 2.0 revolution.
11. Letter from Newcastle (8 October) I wrote so very few “observational essays” in 2009. This is the best, I reckon.
12. Media140: What do journos do better, exactly? (5 November) My presentation to Media140 Sydney was widely misunderstood. I was posing a question, a challenge, not saying that journalists have no purpose. What I was trying to say was that in a rapidly-changing media landscape, employee-journalists need to be able to answer this question.
13. Virgin Blue’s mistake reveals countless selfish whingers (15 November) Apart from all my writing about Internet censorship, the other prominent theme does seem to be a certain dissatisfaction with selfishness and consumerism. What struck me most about the comments on this piece was that those who disagreed took it all so very personally.

One thing this list doesn’t reflect is that so much of my writing was elsewhere this year. My plan to do more paid media work and less geek-for-hire did actually unfold reasonably well.

I’ve been very happy with some of the pieces I wrote for Crikey, newmatilda.com, ZDNet.com.au and ABC Online, and the work I did on the podcasts A Series of Tubes and Patch Monday, and even the various radio and TV interviews that were linked to as the year progressed.

Most of the written material is linked from my Media Output page. I encourage you to explore — if only for your children’s sake.

You might also like to check out my personal favourites from 2008.