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Talking Twitter and LulzSec on ABC Local Radio

28 April 2013 in Business, Conversations, Internet, Marketing, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

On Wednesday night I ended up having a long, rambling chat on the radio about Twitter’s new advertising deal and the arrest of an alleged hacker who apparently claimed to be the leader of LulzSec.

This conversation was broadcast on ABC Local Radio around NSW, the presenter was the redoubtable Dom Knight. We begin with Twitter, and then move on to the alleged-hacker’s arrest at around 12 minutes 50 seconds in.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:41 — 10.4MB)

Algorithms and the Filter Bubble

31 March 2013 in Conversations, Internet, Marketing, Media, Personal, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Here’s the guest lecture I delivered at the University of Technology Sydney on 25 March 2012, “Algorithms and the Filter Bubble”. Full audio and slides for now, a transcript to follow in the next few days.

You might want to read the background material first. You’ll definitely want to look at the slides while listening to the audio.

The recording picks up immediately after I was introduced by lecturer, Dr Belinda Middleweek, using the opening paragraphs of my about page.

The audience was primarily first and second year students at the beginning of their media studies degrees. It seems that almost all of this material was brand new to them — though I did notice one geeky-looking lad nodding enthusiastically at mention of some of the more pervasive tracking techniques.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:07 — 32.6MB)

[When the transcript becomes available, this is where it will appear.]

This work is made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. This presentation may be re-used for non-commercial purposes within the terms of the Creative Commons license. The non-commercial and share-alike conditions are required to adhere to the licensing of the imagery used. Please contact me if you require an alternative version. As a minimum, attribution should read: “Source: Stilgherrian.” Online versions must link the word Stilgherrian to the website at stilgherrian.com.

Talking Instagram on ABC 666 Canberra

23 December 2012 in Business, Conversations, Internet, Marketing, Media, Politics, Privacy by Stilgherrian | No comments

By the time I got to doing my third radio spot about the Instagram saga, the issues were clear in my mind and I had a few well-rehearsed sound bites. So my final spot on ABC 666 Canberra was smooth.

I don’t think I need to provide any more background. My conversation with Louise Maher stands for itself, I think. We didn’t speak for as long as we’d originally intended, but they also had to update their listeners on the progress of some bushfires and that does have priority.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:10 — 3.0MB)

At some point in the next few days I’ll post further thoughts about this Instagram incident. Stay tuned.

Talking Instagram on ABC Radio’s “PM”

23 December 2012 in Business, Conversations, Internet, Marketing, Media, Politics, Privacy by Stilgherrian | No comments

With ABC Radio National Breakfast out of the way, I settled down to write my Crikey story about the Instagram saga.

By that stage my understanding of the story had evolved.

I was becoming increasingly cranky with so many people, including many who should know better, pushing the “Instagram wants to sell your photos” line. Failing to distinguish between selling a license to use a photo in various ways and selling the ownership of the photo itself was a massive failure. The difference is as clear at that between selling a house and renting it out to a tenant.

There was also a clarification from Instagram, making it clear that they weren’t seeking such ownership, admitting that they really hadn’t figured out precisely what it was they wanted to do with users’ photos, and agreeing that the language was open to misinterpretation.

I incorporated this into my Crikey piece, which was given the headline: Users snap over Instagram, but should have seen it coming.

In hindsight, and had I know this was to be the headline, I wouldn’t have been so blunt in my final paragraph.

The core lesson here is that services like Instagram aren’t free. You pay for them by licensing the operator to use your content and other data in various ways. If you don’t like that, well, pay for your goddam internet hosting yourself.

All I meant by this was that internet hosting is pretty cheap these days, and there’s plenty of low-cost providers to choose from. It’s not as if Instagram is a public service that owes you anything.

In any event, I filed the Crikey story before midday as usual. It seemed to me that Instagram was responding appropriately, and I’d always thought they were at the responsible end of social networking. My thoughts were now moving to the future. Would Instagram be able to prove they were worth their billion-dollar price tag? How would they behave if they didn’t start generating revenue?

But on the way to a lunch in the Sydney CBD, I ended up discussing the issue with a journalist for ABC TV’s 7.30 and a producer with ABC 666 Canberra. It was becoming clear to me that for most people in the media this was a brand new issue. Further media spots were being organised.

The next to be recorded, though not the next to go to air, was with ABC Radio’s national current affairs program PM. What pleases me about this piece, I think, is that the “tape ID” — the bit at the front of a recording where you identify who you are so there’s no confusion later — was included as part of the story. Because I used the word “arsehattery”.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:00 — 2.2MB)

This audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is an unedited copy of the original audio posted on their website. There’s a transcript over there too, where they spell arsehattery “ass-hattery”. The journalist was Will Ockenden.

Talking Instagram on ABC Radio National Breakfast

23 December 2012 in Business, Conversations, Internet, Marketing, Politics, Privacy by Stilgherrian | No comments

Wednesday was a strange day for me this week, unexpectedly dominated as it was by the public outcry over photo sharing service Instagram changing its terms of use to make it explicit that people’s photographs could be used for promotional purposes.

This is the first of a series of posts that document the media that I was involved with that day — eventually three radio spots and a story for Crikey, plus discussions with a journalist at ABC TV’s 7.30 for a story that ended up not happening — as well as the evolution of my own thoughts on the topic.

I’d gotten up early that morning to work on a Crikey story about the risks of big data, so I was already in media mode when I saw the tweets starting to flood out.

Instagram was claiming the right to sell your photos, they claimed — which I found most unlikely because they can’t sell what they don’t own, and social networks have long since given up trying to claim ownership over their users’ content. At least the ones that intend lasting more than a week online.

Sure enough, I looked at Instagram’s proposed new terms of use, and they actually made it quite explicit that they were not doing that. As I expected, they were seeking the right to use photographs in connection with promotions of unspecified nature — though they’d stated the fact that you wouldn’t be paid for this rather baldly.

To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

Moreover, it looked to me like Instagram’s existing terms of use already gave them this right, though the wording was vague.

… you hereby agree that Instagram may place such advertising and promotions on the Instagram Services or on, about, or in conjunction with your Content. The manner, mode and extent of such advertising and promotions are subject to change without specific notice to you.

In retrospect, I think both are worded rather vaguely, with a phrase like “in connection with” being able to cover a multitude of sins. But “without any compensation to you” is clear enough, and that obviously triggered the fears.

But Instagram’s actions weren’t unusual, they weren’t claiming ownership of your photos, and there was no need to panic — and that’s what I tried to stress in this first media spot, a chat with John Doyle on ABC Radio National Breakfast at around 0840 AEDT.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:57 — 3.7MB)

Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone first impressions

11 June 2012 in Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Three days ago I finally got around to setting up the Samsung Galaxy S III review unit that I’d been given. Here are my initial impressions after a few hours of playing around on the long weekend.

These comments should be read in light of what I wrote for Technology Spectator in terms of this new smartphone being a shot across the bows for Apple. But bear in mind that I’ve never used an Apple iPhone, so I can’t make direct comparisons.

I’m also upgrading from a very bashed-around two-year-old HTC Desire, as seen in the photo above. That means a jump from Android version 2.3 to 4.0, and I’m not making clear distinctions between Android improvements and Samsung-specific features — but then I don’t think average users do either.

In other words, this is definitely not a proper review. “First impressions”, I said.

Read the rest of this entry »

iSpy: Talking total surveillance at Sydney Writers’ Festival

26 May 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Marketing, Personal, Politics, Privacy by Stilgherrian | No comments

Here’s the complete audio recording of last weekend’s panel discussion iSpy at the Sydney Writer’s Festival with Tommy Tudehope, me and moderator Marc Fennell.

Even before Google controversially demolished the privacy walls between its various products, we were already living in the total surveillance society. With every keystroke we are voluntarily telling companies, governments and heaven knows who else an awful lot about ourselves. Should we be worried about the uses to which this information could be put?

The panel was originally inspired by my Sydney Morning Herald op-ed You are what you surf, buy or tweet, and I thought we’d also talk about some of the issues I raised in my more recent ZDNet Australia story The Facebook experiment.

But we covered a lot more, including research by Sophos that showed around 50% of people would automatically befriend anyone on Facebook, the progress of the Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill and the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, the fact that The Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam seems to be the only Australian politician paying attention to this stuff, using TOR to help make your web browsing anonymous, the surveillance policy split between the NSA and FBI, anonymous currencies like Bitcoin and Canada’s MintChip, Electronic Frontiers Australia, the Pirate Party Australia, Georgie Guy’s blog, and data mining company Acxiom — which in the recording you’ll hear me misspell as “Axxiom”.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:16 — 39.4MB)

The recording was made using my Zoom H4n sitting mid-way between me and Mr Tudehope, so Mr Fennell is off in the distance somewhat. But at least we have a recording.

If there are any issues you’d like to follow up, well, please post a comment.

Video: 5 Conference Tips for PR Professionals

19 May 2012 in Business, Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

On the way back from the AusCERT 2012 information security conference this afternoon I found myself stranded at Gold Coast airport for a couple hours, exhausted. What better, then, than an impromptu video explaining how public relations operatives can improve the way they interact with journalists at these events.

This video was shot with a Nikon Coolpix S8100 compact digital camera, using the in-camera stereo microphone for the audio. The only post-production was to top and tail it, and compress it to a YouTube-optimised MP4 using iSkysoft Video Converter. Otherwise it’s exactly as it came out of the camera.

Should I list the tips themselves, here, in text form? Perhaps later. I simply couldn’t be arsed right now.

Stilgherrian’s advice to a PR student, uhoh

20 April 2012 in Internet, Marketing, Media by Stilgherrian | 17 comments

So there was a student who tweeted at me the other night to ask if they could ask me some questions for their marketing and public relations course at some university somewhere and I said yeah sure because I’m like polite and stuff and they emailed me questions and I sent off some answers today and because it took me ages and it was all about the nature of journalism and shit I thought I should share them with you to see what you think.

Here’s what I said, unedited. Well, except for fixing a few obvious mistakes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Samsung’s website survey arsehattery

27 December 2011 in Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

This week’s Golden Cow Award for Corporate Arsehattery goes to Samsung for this piece of meaningless bullshit in a survey asking about my experience using their website.

Now as background, I was after the technical specifications of the Samsung Slate Series 7 tablet PC, but couldn’t find them. There was no section or link labelled “specifications”. That’s a fail, I reckon. So I decided I would do the survey.

Like all such surveys, it asked the kind of questions that market research companies think are important, such as how soon I was thinking of buying, what competing brands I was looking at, and my demographic details. But this question caused me, literally, to laugh out loud.

Thinking of today’s website experience, how successful has the Samsung website been in conveying the following concepts of the Samsung brand?

And the concepts listed? Fresh, clean, inspiring, unique, interesting, elegant, contemporary, intelligent, engaging, bright, simple, relevant, upbeat, forward-thinking, charismatic, chic, unexpected, visionary.

WTF? Who the heck thinks in those terms when visiting a website? “Oh, I couldn’t find the technical specifications. This website just doesn’t convey the charismatic or chic brand values.”

I’d like to find whoever was responsible for this idiocy and ask them to define, in concrete web development terms, the three key differences between a brand experience that’s “fresh” rather than “clean” or “simple”.

And then I’d like to bury them in a ditch.

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