This week included the last of my output from Linux.conf.au. I’ve just gathered all of my Linux.conf.au coverage plus selected other people’s in one place for your convenience.

Add this week’s media output to last week’s and you can see why I’ve been kind of exhausted. Thank the gods, we’re having a pseudo-long weekend.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 122, “War on the internet: it’s all about power”. The podcast covers the previous weekend’s War on the Internet forum Electronic Frontiers Australia and The Greens, and featured Suelette Dreyfus, co-author with Assange of Underground; Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam; Crikey’s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane; and headline speaker Jacob Appelbaum, internet security researcher, software hacker and activist.

Articles

• Collateral damage in the copyright wars, ABC Drum Opinion, 23 January 2012.
• Beware the piracy clones, Technology Spectator, 23 January 2012.
• Untested buggy UEFI heads for prime-time, ZDNet Australia, 23 January 2012. Also published at TechRepublic.
• Ah, the tech-soap that is Apple will run and run, Crikey, 25 January 2012. Warning: This article offends pompous Randroids. Apparently. Fuck ‘em.
• Linux.conf.au 2012 photos, ZDNet Australia, 25 January 2012. Also published at TechRepublic.
• Hacked or not, Ludlam’s a target of spies, ZDNet Australia, 25 January 2012.

Media Appearances

• On Saturday I spoke with Sydney radio 2UE about cyberbullying and Rose Smith’s suggestion that children should be made to surrender their mobile phones at night.

Corporate Largesse

• D-Link gave me a DCS-930L Wireless N Network Camera, which they sometimes describe as a “cloud camera”, the arsehats. I’ll be writing about that separately.
• On Wednesday Chris Wood, regional director for Australia and New Zealand at security vendor Sourcefire, bought me a coffee.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Three sprigs at Threefold. Three sprigs of mint in three brown bottles grace the windowsill in the toilet at Melbourne's Threefold Foodstore and Eatery. I think that's just a wanked-up word for "cafe". I had the spatchcock, thank you very much.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. There wasn’t quite as much chaos as last week, but still sufficient.

The Patch Monday podcast ended up being published on Tuesday, and I delayed my return to Wentworth Falls until then too. And I ended up coming down to Sydney very early on Friday, on the 0609 train, to cover the Apple vs Samsung case in the Federal Court for ZDNet Australia.

So despite sleeping most of Wednesday, I was still short of sleep by the weekend. Sigh.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 114, “Everyday malware is everyday criminals”. Alex Kirk, senior researcher with the Sourcefire Vulnerability Research Team (VRT), explains that Stuxnet is probably not your problem.

Articles

• Shock analysis: most cybercriminals are stupid, CSO, 15 November 2011. Getting more mileage out of the Alex Kirk interview.
• No easy answers in Apple-Samsung case, ZDNet Australia, 18 November 2011.

Media Appearances

• On Tuesday I spoke about Google’s names policy and suchlike on ABC 105.7 Darwin with presenter Annie Gastin.

Corporate Largesse

• On Tuesday I had lunch at Quay Restaurant courtesy of NetSuite. We were also each given a copy of restaurateur Peter Gilmore’s book Quay: Food inspired by Nature.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: The Commonwealth Bank headquarters, Darling Harbour, photographed from Parkroyal Darling Harbour. Hey, if I'm going to stay in Sydney an extra day I might as well take a photo.]

This week is the 10th birthday of Apple’s iPod and the sixth anniversary of the launch of Apple’s iTunes store in Australia. Yesterday morning I spoke about those things with Keith Conlon and John Kenneally on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa.

I’ve also included the talkback caller they had just before speaking to me, since I refer to his comments.

The audio is ©2011 dmgRadio Australia, but here it is ‘cos it hasn’t been posted on the radio station’s website. Besides, this is a reasonable plug.

It was my first time on the program. I think I did OK.

If you can’t see the embedded video, try watching it directly on YouTube.

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here because you never know how long these things are going to stay online. Broadcast 6 October 2011.

My final radio spot on the death of Steve Jobs was this chat with Louise Maher on ABC 666 Canberra late Friday afternoon.

I know these spots are starting to sound the same, but they were all on different radio stations and so reached different audiences. I’m posting them here for reference as much as anything else. You don’t have to listen to them all.

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented here as always because the ABC doesn’t generally post these live interviews and it’s a decent plug for them. Broadcast 7 October 2011.

Just minutes after finishing my conversation on ABC Gold Coast via a TARDIS at the ABC’s Ultimo studios in Sydney, I headed upstairs to Triple J to chat about Steve Jobs on their national current affairs program Hack.

I’ve posted their entire segment on Jobs, because I think Hack did a great job of exploring so many issues in a short time. The presenter is Tom Tilley.

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It has been extracted from the full program audio [MP3]. Broadcast 6 October 2011.

My Crikey piece on the death of Steve Jobs was written in just one hour, and yet it seems to have struck a chord. I ended up doing four media spots — and this one for ABC Gold Coast was the first.

The presenter is Tony Johnston.

He chose to top and tail the segment with extracts from Jobs’ much-loved 2005 speech at Stanford University. You can watch the video or read the text. It’s worth it, even if you’re not a Jobs fan.

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented here as always because the ABC doesn’t generally post these live interviews and it’s a decent plug for them. Broadcast 6 October 2011.

I’d originally planned to ignore the iPhone 4S news this week, but early Wednesday morning I got an SMS from Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa and… well… here it is. My chat with Keith Conlon, John Kenneally and Jane Doyle.

What’s embarrassing listening back to it today is that I’d completely missed the significance of Siri, the combination of voice recognition and artificial intelligence that creates personal assistant far more sophisticated than mere voice-control of the phone.

Oops.

My excuse? My entire research time was about seven minutes.

The audio is ©2011 dmgRadio Australia. Even though they did put this on their own website, I don’t know how long that’ll last. Besides, this is a reasonable plug.

That’s in addition to the pieces I did for Crikey:

• iPhone release: no bunch of fives to the fore, but it’s OK
• Steve Jobs deserved his cult — you don’t even know how he influenced you

Normal service, on a wider range of topics, will doubtless resume tomorrow. Or Monday. Or… somewhen.

This was unexpected. A call yesterday from ABC Gold Coast to talk about whether smartphones were smart enough to properly handle the change to daylight saving tomorrow — or, more correctly, to deal with the situation when the Gold Coast doesn’t change time but locations just across the border in NSW do.

The short answer, of course, is “It depends”.

The long answer was what I discussed with Bernadette Young, whether the phone is set to get its time automatically from the network or from the tome zone manually set by the user.

We also mentioned that stuff-up in 2006 when Victoria changed the end date for daylight saving at the last minute to make life easier for Commonwealth Games attendees, and confusing for everyone else.

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented here as always because the ABC doesn’t generally post these live interviews and it’s a decent plug for them.

As soon as I heard the news on Thursday of Steve Jobs’ resignation as CEO of Apple Inc, I knew it would re-shape my day.

Sure enough, it did. While I was already scheduled to write two stories for CSO Online, Crikey soon commissioned a Jobs piece. And in the afternoon I did two radio spots. This is one of them.

Tom Elliott was filling in for 3AW’s drive presenter Derryn Hinch, and did a perfectly competent job.

The audio is ©2011 Radio 3AW Melbourne Pty Ltd, of course, but it hasn’t been posted online by 3AW and this does act as a nice plug for them.

I continue to be fascinated by what I get asked to talk about on the radio. Today it was news about Google, with an amused emphasis on the product names.

The station was ABC Gold Coast, the presenter was Bernadette Young, and producer Nicole Gundi had chosen two specific stories. The Australian’s coverage of the launch of Google+, the competitor to Facebook, and the Herald Sun’s story on the smartphone operating system wars.

Speaking live from the pub at fairly short notice, I managed to wrap a few facts and opinions into the 10-minute interview. And here’s a recording.

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented here as always because the ABC doesn’t post it and it’s a decent plug for them.

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week was very much a calm — sort of — before the storm.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 86, “Apple: Big Brother or just misunderstood?”. When news broke that Apple’s iOS-based devices were logging location-based information, the media went wild. I speak with information security engineer Alex Levinson from Katana Forensics and Professor Roger Clarke, chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation.

Articles

• APF urges criminal penalties for smartphone privacy breaches, for ZDNet Australia, based on Professor Clarke’s comments on Patch Monday.
• Gamification: Hot, new, unethical? for the new site Technology Spectator. I’ll say it straight up: the mindset behind the gamification trend disgusts me. And, despite what the first two commenters on that op-ed imagine, it’s not because I haven’t heard or read enough about it. The more I hear and read from gamification’s buzzword-addled cheer squad the more disgusted I become.

Media Appearances

• On Monday I spoke with Perth radio RTRfm about the Sony PlayStation Network hack.
• On Friday I spoke with Kate O’Toole on ABC 105.7 Darwin about the surge of spam and malware following the killing of Osama bin Laden.

I haven’t posted the audio files of those radio interviews, even though I have them. Should I? Part of me says I should do so, because it helps create a proper archive of what I do. But another part of me reckons that radio in particular is ephemeral, and that my conversations about these issues really haven’t added much new to the vast global pool of media on these subjects. What do you think?

Corporate Largesse

None. But that will seriously change next week. Stand by.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Victory is mine! The view from the dining table at Wattle Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages where I've been living off and on for the last three months. The title is because this was the last in a sequence of photos documenting my battle with the forces of natural gas. I guess you had to be there...]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Another week of doing most of my work from my temporary home in the Blue Mountains.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 80, “‘Arrogant’ Apple battles over copyright”. Australian TV production company Jigsaw Entertainment is suing Apple for selling an iPhone app containing their copyright material. Apple declined the opportunity to comment, but Jigsaw were happy to speak. Indeed, on Tuesday Apple complained in court about some of the comments from Jigsaw CEO Nick Murray. The federal magistrate thought that on the face of it they seemed “unhelpful” and were “close to the wind” in terms of possibly being in contempt of court. I was amused to hear Patch Monday described as “a quasi-radio program”. Maybe the Federal Magistrates Court isn’t up to the word “podcast” yet.

Articles

• Apple, Oz TV firm copyright mediation fails, for ZDNet Australia, essentially the highlights of Jigsaw Entertainment vs Apple as heard on Patch Monday.
• ‘Arrogant’ Apple faces copyright suit over iPhone app content, for Crikey. Ditto.

Geekery

• I didn’t do this personally, but via my little business the Fender Australia website was made to look like the US, the Fender Musical Instrument Corporation. Well, the home page was. Our next project is to turn that 950-page manually-maintained site into something built with WordPress.

Corporate Largesse

None. Again. I’ll have to fix that. In fact there’s a big corporate party next Friday, but I’m wondering whether I can be bothered coming down to Sydney for it.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Railway Parade, Wentworth Falls, in the fog, taken on 16 March 2011. This is the regular path I take when walking from Wentworth Falls station back to the Bunjaree Cottages.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Despite succumbing to a random fever for two or three days, I got quite a bit of writing done — and then forgot to post this until Monday. Sigh.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 79, “Cybercrime convention: civil liberties risk?”. Australia intends to sign on to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. My guests? Cybercrime specialist Nigel Phair from the Surete Group, who’s previously been with the Australian High Tech Crime Centre. His second book has just been published, Cybercrime: The Challenge for the Legal Profession. And Electronic Frontiers Australia chair Colin Jacobs.

Articles

• How Al Jazeera leads the world in social media for news reporting, for Crikey, based on comments made by their head of social media Riyaad Minty at Digital Directions 2011.
• Apple: saving old media, or just making them its bitch?, for Crikey. This was based on material presented at Digital Directions 2011 and elsewhere. I simply don’t get this idea that Apple’s iPad will be the saviour of the media factories.
• Digital fingerprints the next privacy invasion?, for ABC Unleashed, a more personal opinion on the plans to sign on to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.
• Two chefs, Next G and the ‘wireless’ confusion, for CRN Australia. My first article for this masthead is about the communication gap between IT vendors and their small business customers.

Media Appearances

• I was a guest on this week’s edition of The Fourth Estate, the community radio program and podcast, talking about Australia’s new journalist shield law.

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Tea Tree Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls, where I've been living. I'll write more about this experience very soon.]