The Beast is Dead

Recent Articles

• Immobilised by Apple’s MobileMe

  24 July 2008 in Internet

  [This article was first published in Crikey yesterday. As I write this, the affected MobileMe customers are still without email.]
  As the hype surrounding the god-like iPhone slowly, oh so slowly fades, a problem emerges from the shadows…
  Apple’s subscription email service .Mac was rebranded MobileMe to coincide with the iPhone 3G launch. Existing customers have been [...]

• (Si Si) Je Suis Un Blog Star!

  23 July 2008 in Internet, Media

  It’s a lame excuse to link to Bill Wyman’s old song, but I am actually very happy to have been translated into French and quoted in Le Monde.
  In his column Transnets, Francis Pisani’s article Blogalaxie/4: “futur des médias” et “rumeurs” quotes my rant about journalism from last week.
  Ils ont parlé de la “tension artificielle” blogueurs-journalistes [...]

• Defining “citizen journalism”

  22 July 2008 in Internet, Media

  I’m not a big fan of the term “citizen journalism”. As I’ve said, adopting the label “journalist” will inevitably annoy those who think they are the “real journalists”. And we’re all citizens anyway, even curmudgeonly journalists.
  But I haven’t though of anything better. Neither has anyone else yet, so we’re stuck with it. We might [...]

• Which are the best Australian political blogs?

  22 July 2008 in Internet, Media, Politics

  Since skeptical asked in the comments, where are the good Australian political blogs?
  During Australia’s federal election in 2007, for me Possum’s Pollytics was invaluable for its analysis of opinion polls, as was Peter Brent’s Mumble. Larvatus Prodeo provided interesting commentary from a centre-left perspective. I didn’t get into any of the right-wing commentators, because Howard’s [...]

• Anna Warwick: liar, or just unethical?

  20 July 2008 in Internet, Media

  Given the recent rants about journalism and journalistic standards [mine and Jonathan Este's], Anna Warwick’s current blog entry at news.com.au is particularly apropos.
  In her post Lost my designer sunnies, Ms Warwick (pictured) relates how she acted when she had to pay $14 for a glass of wine at an up-market city bar.
  “I’m a journalist, I [...]