• Viral Wedding Video’s 10M Views Drive Chris Brown Buzz and Sales | Nielsen Wire: That “viral” (by which they just mean “popular”) video of a wedding party dancing into the church [was it a church?] reminded everyone of Chris Brown’s tedious autotune’d song again, with the result that it ended up in iTunes’ Top 10. Yet another example of how something being given away increases its sales.
• Who needs newspapers when you have Twitter? | Salon News: A massive troll by Wired editor Chris Anderson, seeking attention for his new book Free, which is not free. He starts by saying he doesn’t use the words “media” or “news” or “journalism”, but doesn’t offer any alternatives. Wanker.
• Techfest 2009 | NICTA: On 12 August 2009, NICTA showcases some of the new ICT research and development they’ree working on at this most-of-the-day event in Sydney. Let me know if you’d like to join me.
• Women In Film | YouTube: A morph-montage of some of the most famous female faces in film. Note how the eyes are so similar.
• Men In Film | YouTube: A morph-montage of some of film’s most famous male faces. It’s a challenge to spot all of them. Note how similar most of the noses are.
• Ashes 09: Hughes’ Twitter drop – Gen Y meets the Baggy Green | Crikey: Twitter, Criket Australia style: “We get the Twitter from Phillip and I feed them into our IT guy.” Somehow I don’t think they get this “personal” and “spontaneous” stuff.
• 栏目（目录): China’s PLA Daily offers free downloads of (military) music, plus some cheesy animated GIFs.
• Real Black Hats Hack Security Experts on Eve of Conference | Wired.com: Infosec “expert” Dan Kaminsky has been pwn3d, and his lame choice for passwords exposed.
• Tesla_Downunder: Some amazing photos of electrical effects from an Australian who’s been building large Tesla coils.
• AdViews: A digital archive of thousands of vintage TV commercials from the 1950s to 1980s, created or collected by ad agency Benton & Bowles or its successor, D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B).
• Profile: Gary McKinnon | guardian.co.uk: 43yo Gary McKinnon, diagnosed last August with Asperger’s syndrome, admits to hacking US military computers to fuel his UFO obsession.
• Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments | UK Cabinet Office: The UK has developed a standard 20-page template which departments can use for their own Twitter strategy. I can’t help think that it’ll kill spontaneity before it starts. “All other tweets will be cleared by staff at Information Officer grade and above in the digital media team, consulting relevant colleagues in comms and private offices as necessary.” Gawd.
• The Mind Of A US Army Sniper | newmatilda.com: A fine article on what it means for a soldier, particularly a sniper, to kill a person. And then do it again. Not an easy read, but an important read.
• Reconceptualising “time” and “space” in the era of electronic media and communications | Australian Policy Online: “This paper examines to what extent electronic media and communications have contributed to currently changing concepts of time and space and how crucial their role is in experiencing temporality, spatiality and mobility.”
• Cutthroat Capitalism: An Economic Analysis of the Somali Pirate Business Model | Wired: “Like any business, Somali piracy can be explained in purely economic terms. It flourishes by exploiting the incentives that drive international maritime trade. The other parties involved — shippers, insurers, private security contractors, and numerous national navies — stand to gain more (or at least lose less) by tolerating it than by putting up a serious fight. As for the pirates, their escalating demands are a method of price discovery, a way of gauging how much the market will bear.”
• Mark Thomas Info: I first encountered Mark Thomas by reading his book As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandala: underground adventures in the arms & torture trade. The stand-up comedian and activist for human rights is worth paying attention to.
• The Arms Trade | A Stubborn Mule’s Perspective: Sean Carmody turns his data analysis skills to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfer Database, which I mentioned the other day. This initial foray generates some nice maps.
• The Coming Upstream Revolution. And We Need It | Gigaom: Just as I thought, increasingly two-way communication on the web leads to increased demand for fast uplinks as well as downlinks.
• Metadata for news | BuzzMachine: Jeff Jarvis’ write-up of Associated Press and the Media Standards Trust proposal for a new standard for metadata for news, plus his own thoughts.
• SIPRI Arms Transfers Database | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: A searchable database of all international transfers in seven categories of major conventional weapons from 1950 to the most recent full calendar year.

My observations — in between other work, so this isn’t representative:

• Senator Stephen Conroy’s little joke of re-reading the PM’s statement about pay restraint whenever anyone asked about executive salaries wore thin. Please, just have the spine to say, “No, I won’t be making a separate statement.”
• Senator Simon Birmingham wasted time asking the head of SBS questions whose answers could have easily been found on their website or in their annual report. Maybe you should organise a coffee with him or a staff member to catch up on these basics.
• Senator Eric Abetz had a detailed list of quite specific questions for Australia Post. It’s precisely this kind of forensic examination which gives Senate Estimates such importance to our democracy.
• Senator David Johnstone was… no, he gets more than a bullet point!

Senator Johnstone was angry that when the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) awarded two new community radio licenses in Perth last month, one long-running “aspirant” (license applicant) called Western Sports Media wasn’t a winner.

Apparently some cricket fans were upset. However Senator Johnstone tackled the ACMA representatives with what I thought was inappropriate aggression — particularly as he obviously wasn’t across the details. I therefore fired off an email…

Dear Senator Johnston,

I understand that it’s important for Senate committees to rigorously investigate how taxpayers’ money is spent. However I thought your tone and attitude this afternoon in questioning the ACMA representatives regarding the awarding of certain community radio licenses in WA was unnecessarily hostile — particularly as you seemed to be arguing from a position of ignorance regarding the laws and procedures for community radio licensing.

I’ve previously been Station Manager of a community radio station, and a board member of the Community Broadcasting Association of SA. I can therefore say with some confidence that this isn’t the first time that ACMA and its predecessors have faced the difficult task of choosing between a number of worthy aspirants when there’s only one permanent license to be had.

Nor is it the first time that one of the “losers” has been running test broadcasts for some time. In the early days of what was then the Australian Broadcasting Authority, some aspirants had been broadcasting on temporary licenses for years — but temporary they were.

I can also say that since I haven’t read the details of this decision, I have no idea what the strengths and weaknesses of the various applicants were. And neither do you.

The two “winners”, an indigenous broadcaster and one targeting the ageing population, seem valid enough in terms of the communities served. But, as I say, neither you nor I have actually read the decision.

I am appalled that you waved the word “cricket” as if such self-indulgent activities as sport are automatically deserving of the limited broadcast spectrum.

If, as you claim, there were 16 thousand letters of complaint from the cricket fans, then this would surely represent a commercially viable radio audience. Perhaps your noisy cricket fans who formerly listened to Western Sports Media’s temporary broadcasts could put their case to a commercial broadcaster, or one of the licensed community broadcasters — or even use the Internet to stream sound and vision of their favourite game, just as I’ve been watching your performance this afternoon.

If there was a fault in ACMA’s decision as a matter of law or procedure, then by all means go your hardest. I’d then congratulate you for doing what the Senate does best. But until you’ve established the facts of the case, I’d have thought that common decency and good manners would require you to treat ACMA’s representatives politely and with respect.

Regards,

Stilgherrian

Naturally I will publish any response I receive.

[Update: Here's a great example of how numbers get twisted. According to Western Sports Media's website, they received a total of 16,000 "emails and letters of support" across 6 weeks as part of their license application. While that certainly shows a significant level of community support, it's certainly not the same thing as "16 thousand complaints" at not winning.]

Sure, my trusty Macquarie Dictionary says “whitewash” can refer to “a defeat in which the loser fails to score”.

But even though there’s still some editors employed in this country, virtually every news outlet parroted “whitewash”: SBS (where I first heard it, but I doubt they were first), ABC, Murdoch, NineMSN, The Sydney Morning Herald and virtually every news outlet from Kenya to Korea.

Would you like me to buy you a thesaurus, you lazy bastards? Because if it were my job to write the news, I’d be embarrassed to be so unimaginative!