Also this week, Australia gets a new masthead for quality journalism, and everyone goes all wet and judgemental. Something something football on the internet. And I finish all the things that I meant to do on New Year’s Eve but didn’t.

Despite being recorded more than five weeks after the previous episode, this is really just a continuation. More or less. Shut up I’m telling this story don’t question me.

Look, I’m going to be writing some more words for a bit, so feel free to scroll down or click through or whatever and just play the podcast, OK?

Apart from the dogs (which I cover in a little too much detail), Nick Hodge explains why New Year’s Eve in Sydney is so dreadful (five weeks after the event I know shut up), I look briefly at The Global Mail (while most of what I wanted to say has already been said on Radio 2SER, I do add some extra points here), and I become concerned about apples being compared with oranges. So to speak.

Simon (pictured) even tells us The Truth about Facebook! Whoever the fuck Simon is.

En passant I mention La Camera Italian Restaurant in South Yarra and The Tennis Shop.

And the football thing? Oh, I’ve got an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald today.

You can listen to the podcast below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733. Not that anyone ever does.

[Credits: Audio grabs from 10 O'Clock Live, EON's The Spice Must Flow, Stilgherrian Live episode 53, The Larry Sanders Show, ambient sound from Bunjaree Cottages, 40 Years of PM. The little beep sound is by junggle via Freesound.org, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

In this episode you’ll hear what I think about the Prime Minister’s Christmas Message, which doesn’t hold a candle to my own Christmas Message from 2008, let alone the Queen’s Christmas Messages, such as Her Majesty’s 50th such message in 2007; the NRMA’s claim that petrol pricing is too hard to predict and their call for an inquiry; the fact, or supposed fact, that Twitter gets more news mentions than Facebook, even though the latter is much, much bigger; and a really, really stupid tweet from Shahira Abouellail, whose blog is called fazerofzanight.

You can listen below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission. Mark Zuckerberg news item from NewsyTech.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Part of me wants to make a profound comment there but, you know, Christmas.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 119, “2011: IT’s year of consolidation”. A panel discussion with broadcaster, columnist and author Paul Wallbank and open source developer and strategist Jeff Waugh. This was the final episode for 2011. The next one will appear on Monday 9 January 2012.

Articles

• Hactivism goes mobile with Android.Arspam, CSO, 20 December 2011.
• Still mid-game in the digital year that was, Crikey, 21 December 2011.
• Permission-greedy apps not always rogue or lazy, CSO, 22 December 2011.
• Facebook for banking? No thanks!, Technology Spectator, 23 December 2011.

Media Appearances

• On Tuesday I was interviewed on ABC 774 Melbourne about Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal’s $300 million investment in Twitter.

Corporate Largesse

• On Monday night I enjoyed food and drinks at the Hilton Hotel Sydney’s Executive Lounge thanks to Dave Hall, who has membership.
• On Tuesday night I had a little pizza and a rather large number of gin and tonics thanks to infosec firm Black Swan Consulting.

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 Western Distributor, Darling Harbour, photographed from the Parkroyal Darling Harbour.]

A short time ago I did a radio spot on ABC 774 Melbourne with Lindy Burns. She still can’t pronounce my name, but nevertheless I filled her in on Twitter’s value compared with Facebook, Friday’s share market float by Zynga, and the current Silicon Valley boom. And here’s the audio.

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it hasn’t been posted on their website so here it is. In return, I reckon you might choose to listen to Lindy Burns’ drive program some time soon.

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — and a remarkably unproductive week it was. I’m even posting this summary late!

In part that’s because the Tooth and Shoulder Situation lingered, but also because I reacted poorly to some negative comments on some of my writing. I’ll write more about that soon.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 107, “Cyberwar: back to basics”. A conversation with Nigel Phair, a director of the Centre for Internet Safety at the University of Canberra.

Articles

• Google+: What’s in a name?, ABC Drum Opinion, 27 September 2011.

Media Appearances

• On Monday I spoke with ABC Mid North Coast NSW about Facebook and Twitter and spending “too much” time connected. As far as I know there is no recording.
• Also on Monday, I spoke with ABC Gold Coast about Facebook changes.
• On Tuesday I spoke with ABC 105.7 Darwin about Facebook changes.
• On Friday I spoke with ABC Gold Coast about smartphones and daylight saving.

Corporate Largesse

• On Tuesday I had lunch at Wildfire Restaurant, Circular Quay, courtesy of Bass PR. The event was a security roundtable presented by some of their clients, including Websense, WatchGuard and VMinformer, and analysts Frost & Sullivan. I’ll write something about this in due course.

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: My first beer after nearly three weeks of illness and heavy-duty antibiotics. Much deserved. It's a Coopers Pale Ale at The Grand View Hotel, Wentworth Falls. This event actually happened the previous week, but I'm slow.]

Here’s my conversation with Richard Margetson on ABC 105.7 Darwin about the Facebook changes, broadcast on the afternoon of Tuesday 27 September 2011.

Again, this bounces off last week’s Crikey piece, Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous, but Mr Margetson was also aware that I’d just come from a lunchtime briefing with a bunch of information security people so he explored that angle too.

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 I mentioned on Monday, I was scheduled to do more radio spots this week about Facebook’s changes and what they meant for privacy. Here’s another of them, and there’ll be a third posted shortly.

For most of the presenters, the kick-off was my Crikey piece from last week, Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous — and I’ll have more to write about that before the weekend is finished.

This conversation with Nicole Dyer from ABC Gold Coast was broadcast on the morning of Monday 26 September 2011.

It’s interesting to hear how different presenters explore different aspects of the issue, I think. Earlier the same morning I spoke with Katya Quigley on ABC Mid North Coast NSW, and she was much more interested in the idea of being always-connected and whether that gave people enough down time, as it were.

Alas, that radio station isn’t streamed online so I couldn’t record it.

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.

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week was relatively unproductive thanks to continuing pain from my shoulder and continuing gut irritation from nasty anibiotics, about which I may write something later.

Once more I’m posting this on Monday rather than Sunday. Oops. I don’t suppose the world will end. Well, not because of this anyway.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 106, “Fighting malware at SophosLabs”. A conversation with Mark Harris, the head of SophosLabs globally, and Sean McDonald, who manages the lab in North Sydney.

Articles

• Trends on Twitter brief but telling, just like in the real world, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 September 2011, my first article for Fairfax.
• NBN retail pricing neither a bargain nor an extravagance, Crikey, 20 September 2011.
• Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous, Crikey, 23 September 2011.

Media Appearances

• On Monday I spoke with ABC 666 Canberra about Twitter, covering material from the Sydney Morning Herald piece. I’m not sure whether I recorded, but this time the ABC posted the audio themselves.
• On Friday I spoke with ABC 774 Melbourne and ABC 666 Canberra about the Facebook changes.

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: Rosellas at Rosella Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains where I've been staying off and on this year.]

Today on I’m a Goddam Expert it’s Facebook, the recent round of changes, and what it means for users and the world of social networking generally. It began with Friday’s piece for Crikey, Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous, and so far I’ve been booked to do four radio spots. And counting.

I did two spots on Friday afternoon, one with Lindy Burns ABC 774 Melbourne the other with Melanie Tait on ABC 666 Canberra. Here’s the audio for the Canberra conversation.

The Melbourne conversation (2.1MB MP3) covered similar territory, but the recording dropped out near the end so I haven’t bothered posting it as a proper podcast.

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but they generally don’t put these interviews online — and hey, it’s a good plug for them. Well, a minor but useful plug.

I’m doing two more this morning, also for ABC local radio stations. The Gold Coast at 0940 AEST and North Coast NSW at 1010.

If you’re not yet at least experimenting with Twitter, the real-time social messaging service, you should be.

Suppress the corporate paranoia. It’s a lot easier than you might think. And while Twitter does get far more attention than its relatively small size might suggest — truly active Twitter users number perhaps 20 million globally compared with Facebook’s 750 million active users and counting — it punches well above its weight in terms of connecting with influential community members.

Twitter may not ever become the core real-time service used by the masses. Or if it does, it may only be for a few years. You only have to look at the last decade to see the then-leading MySpace surpassed by Facebook in 2008, just four years after Facebook was founded. Google’s launch of Google+ in June this year has generated plenty of speculation that the search and advertising giant’s foray into social networking will in turn wipe Facebook off the planet. Who knows?

There will always be some real-time social messaging service, however. Whether that’s Twitter as a stand-alone service, or whether we all end up using a real-time component of Facebook or Google+ or something that has yet to be deployed — none of that matters. The principles and practices of real-time messaging will doubtless end up being much the same.

Anything you might do with Twitter will be easy to migrate to any other real-time messaging system. The lessons you learn will carry across too.

Now some social media expert gurus (SMEGs) make a big deal about how it’s vital you get Twitter right. Silly beginner’s mistakes will destroy your reputation, they say. Well, that’s only partially true.

If you make a mistake on Twitter, sure, you’ll be slammed within minutes. But most of the criticism will come from SMEGs who spend their time worrying about such things wanting to demonstrate their relevance, or whingers with too much time on their hands. Just remember that it’s all a storm in a teacup, and while the storm might have sprung up within minutes, it’ll also be forgotten within minutes.

Take a deep breath, and move on.

Besides, the SMEGs are trying to sell you their consulting services. Of course they’ll make Twitter sound hard.

It’s not.

Twitter is just people talking to other people, where their conversations are visible to the world.

That’s why I prefer to describe Twitter as social messaging rather than micro-blogging. It’s not a one-way street. You need to listen as well as talk. Respond to the people who talk to you and, just as importantly, introduce yourself to people who are talking about you, or about matters that affect you. That’s how you slowly build connections.

But I get ahead of myself.

“You”? That’s the first key question. In the context of a local government, who is the “You” that’s talking with people?

Many organisations imagine that since their Twitter account is another “official” voice it should be run by the marketing department, or corporate relations. I think that’s a mistake. The usual result is that the Twitter stream becomes nothing but links to media releases, and the tone becomes cold and bureaucratic.

The best organisational Twitter accounts seem to be run by customer service. CSOs are already responding to the general public. They know what issues come up. And they’re usually across everything that’s happening.

The question then becomes one of choosing the right person or people to run the Twitter account. In general that won’t be the newcomer 22-year-old who’s got lots of Facebook friends, but the receptionist, office manager or CSO who’s been around for a decade and a half.

They key is finding someone with the broad knowledge of the organisation and its communities. Learning Twitter, as I say, is the easy bit.

That person then needs to be given the authority to tweet themselves, without having to ask for every tweet to be approved. Real-time is important, and natural language is important. Don’t make the mistake of one federal government department of having every tweet approved by a committee and scheduled for transmission. That way lies Twitter death.

Besides, do you get the marketing department to approve every sentence in every telephone conversation? No, you trust in people’s ability to say the right thing.

Make sure you identify the person operating the account publicly.

A human face always helps communication. Add their name to the Twitter profile, and link the Twitter account back to a page on your website that explains who is tweeting, what they will and won’t be tweeting about — for instance, they might mention road closures but not building approvals — and what their hours of operation are.

Of course in a large organisation you might want to have several people operate the account. In that case, tag every tweet with that person’s name or initials. Margaret Jenkins becomes “^MJ” or “-Margaret” or even “-Marg”. They’re the most common methods, but it really doesn’t matter how you tag the tweets as long as you’re consistent about it.

Another method might be to have the Twitter account be the mayor’s, particularly if he or she is a hands-on kind of person. If you do that, again it’s important to distinguish between the mayor’s own tweets and those added by the team. For example, when he was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would sign the tweets he write himself with “KRudd”, while the rest were signed “KevinPM Team”.

I’d have gone for something shorter than “KevinPM Team”. On Twitter, space is always at a premium. We already know it’s about KevinPM since it’s from his twitter account. “KTeam” would work nicely.

You’ll also have to think ahead, and know what you’ll do with the account when the mayoral robes and chains eventually get passed on.

But what would a local government tweet about?

Anything short that people might want in real time, either because it’s live information they need to know now, or it’s of high value and you want to spread the word widely.

Here’s some examples off the top of my head.

Bin collection back to normal after industrial action. Bins still full? Phone NNNN NNNN to book extra pick-up. ^MJ #rubbish

Garbage truck breakdown. Bin collections in Lilyfield running 3 hours late, but we will finish today. ^MJ #rubbish

Jenny Smith Gallery: Photo portraits by Andrew Jones opens 6pm tonight. FREE. http://counc.il/466 #art ^MJ

Council meeting tonight 7pm Bullathinga Town Hall. Agenda at http://counc.il/468 ^MJ

Council agenda item 4 approved: $20k funding for new pet health centre. http://counc.il/467 ^MJ

Flooding closes Perkins Rd at Hangmans Creek. Will not re-open today. Divert via Bullhorn Rd. Next update 7am. ^MJ

Smithfield Library has 200 new romantic fiction titles. Borrowing is free. Full list at http://counc.il/454 ^MJ

Pensioner? Free cholesterol tests at Bullathinga Town Hall this Friday 8am to 12pm. http://counc.il/467 ^MJ

DA received: shop renovations at 127 Smith St. Comments close 17 Aug. http://counc.il/556 ^MJ

Next on stage at Bullathinga Park: Folk Off, Irish comedy folk trio. http://counc.il/546 #bullafair ^MJ

Spraying footpaths for asthma weed today in areas west of Perkins Rd. It’s safe for humans. http://counc.il/549 ^MJ

See the hashtags, the keywords starting with “#”? They serve two purposes. One, they add keywords to a tweet that might not otherwise be present, so they’ll turn up in searches. Two, by categorising your tweets with hashtags, you allow people who aren’t interested in art, say, to filter out those tweets.

Note that I’ve put the critical information at the front of the tweet, making it easier for retweeters to chop off bits at the end if they want to add their own comments. I’ve used a custom URL shortener to create short web addresses. Twitter does URL shortening anyway, but the yourls.org tools make it easy to set up your own shortener for added branding and a whiff of professionalism.

Note that every tweet must stand alone. Tweet often get retweeted out of context, and in any event people usually only see the most recent tweets. If you opened conversation on an issue then you need to close it again, and use all the key words on the closure.

Flooding subsides. Perkins Rd has re-opened at Hangmans Creek. ^MJ

I haven’t covered how you respond to tweets directed at your account, or how you do customer service via Twitter, striking the balance between answering immediately or directing people elsewhere for more comprehensive answers. They’re whole topics in themselves.

But for some good examples, look no further than Telstra. Despite their once-traditional reputation for poor customer service, Telstra is actually doing really well on Twitter.

So how do you start?

Register an official Twitter account, and also get whoever will be tweeting on your organisation’s behalf to set up a personal account. Fill in all your profile. Don’t stress about getting it 100% right, you can change it at any time.

Install TweetDeck as your Twitter client software, rather than using the Twitter website. It provides a lot more flexibility, and it’s available for Windows, OS X, iPhone and iPads and Android.

Start by listening. Set up search columns in TweetDeck for the names of the towns an suburbs in your area, and note what people are saying. Start to follow the interesting people in your area. Note the regular questions people have, and answer them. Note the misconceptions and correct them.

Follow other local governments, here and overseas. Think about what works for them and might work for you, and what doesn’t. Adopt what seem to be good behaviours. Follow a few high-profile tweeters and learn from them.

Tweet about a small subset of things at first. Choose easy, non-controversial things to start with, like letting people know when and where meeting are and pointing them to the documentation. Then add in new sets of tweets as you become more comfortable with the medium and can persuade staff members to contribute from their area. The fact that you’re adding more to what you’re tweeting about is worth its own tweet.

Don’t panic. Have fun.

[Image: Twitter bird drawing by Hugh McLeod.]

LinkedIn has responded to criticism over their opting-in of everyone to their “social advertising” program with a self-serving blog post. I’m less than impressed.

I wrote two articles yesterday. For Crikey, Sorry too hard a word for LinkedIn over privacy faux pas, in which I describe LinkedIn’s response as bullshit. And for CSO Online, Five lessons from LinkedIn’s opt-out stupidity, which reminds people to keep an eye on social networking services for unannounced changes to the rules of engagement.

Paul Ducklin from security vendor Sophos gives them an easier time, praising them for a quick response. He’s nicer than I am.

In the cold, clear light of Saturday morning, what depresses me most about this whole episode is not that a supposedly-professional service would pull a trick like this and, when caught out, just smear PR bull over the top. It’s that they’ll probably get away with it, and imagine they handled it well.

Like Ducklin, many will doubtless see their quick response and the superficial changes to the appearance of the social adverts, and be pleased. Few will notice that they haven’t made any commitment to pro-actively notifying people of privacy changes nor any commitment to ceasing the unethical practice of automatically reducing people’s privacy settings and requiring them to opt out.

From LinkedIn’s point of view, the lesson is that they can opt people in, weather a PR storm for a few days, and survive. They’ll be encouraged to do it again.

Sigh.

I’m also unimpressed that my comment on their blog post didn’t pass moderation.

Here’s what I said:

I don’t seem to be able to find the word “sorry” anywhere here. An oversight?

What’s also missing here is a commitment to make any changes to people’s privacy settings contingent on them opting in rather than opting out. Not doing that makes a mockery of the “Putting Members First” in the headline.

Is a blog post really sufficient notice for such an important change to the terms of service? Since you seem capable of emailing members with your own promotional material, perhaps a direct, plain-language email explaining any changes to terms of service is more appropriate.

And by that, I don’t mean an email that says “it’s changed” and linking to a long legalistic document. Explain the changes in the email.

Navigating two levels down into your account settings is not “one click”, it’s three. Don’t fib.

[I later realised it's five clicks. Three to navigate there as described, one for the checkbox, one for "OK".]

“Members First”, you say. So act like you mean it, rather than just smearing some PR spin on top of what you’re doing to serve your own needs.

If you’re a LinkedIn user and want to opt out of all this, go to where your name is displayed on the top right of your LinkedIn screen and click on “Settings”. Click on “Account” at the bottom left of screen, then “Manage Social Advertising”.

[Disclosure: I receive a free LinkedIn Pro account as part of their media outreach program. I haven't deleted it... yet.]

“Social advertising”. It sounds so innocuous. But it isn’t. It means that simply by “liking” something on LinkedIn, or if you “take other actions”, they can use your name and photo in third-party advertising. Pricks.

I’ve written about this in Crikey today, LinkedIn pulls a Facebook-like swifty on ‘social advertising’. I called them “exploitative”. I compared them to the “consumer-grade arseholes at Facebook”. I stand by all of that, and more.

I asked how LinkedIn could be so stupid. But it’s more than that.

Just what sort of mindset do LinkedIn’s executives have if they reckon this is an acceptable way to do business with people?

To me it indicates that they have no idea how people might react to discovering their face in someone else’s advertising. Or, if they do realise that, a disturbingly callous disregard for others, putting their business profits before their basic responsibilities as human beings.

Is that antisocial personality disorder? That seems to be what we call being a psychopath these days.

If you’re a LinkedIn user and want to opt out of all this, go to where your name is displayed on the top right of your LinkedIn screen and click on “Settings”. Click on “Account” at the bottom left of screen, then “Manage Social Advertising”.

[Disclosure: I receive a free LinkedIn Pro account as part of their media outreach program.]

In their Communiqué and Summary of Decisions [25kb PDF] they say:

R 18+ Classification for Computer Games

Ministers made a decision in principle, to introduce an R 18+ category for computer games. NSW abstained.

Ministers:

(a) agreed to take the Guidelines for the Classification of Computer games, as amended at the meeting, to their respective Cabinets

(b) agreed in principle, with the exception of the NSW Attorney General who abstained, that the Commonwealth introduce the proposed amendments to the National Classification Code to support the introduction of an R 18+ category

(c) agreed, with the exception of the NSW Attorney General who abstained, to commence drafting amendments to their enforcement legislation to reflect the introduction of an R 18 + category for computer games

(d) agreed that it would be desirable for classifications of existing games to be reviewed in light of the new classification Guidelines.

This leads to the interesting possibility that the federal government could legislate to create the R18+ category, but NSW could choose not to implement matching laws. The result would be that the games would be legal to sell everywhere in Australia except NSW.

A similar situation already exists for X-rated movies. The federal government passed the laws, but the states changed their minds later. So X-rated material is available in the ACT.

But as I say, there was precious little on cybercrime.

There’s what the communiqué said on that subject.

Cyber Crime

Ministers:

(a) noted the progress of the National Cyber Crime Working Group in developing a national response to cyber crime

(b) noted that a detailed proposal for the establishment of a national online reporting facility for cyber crime is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Model Computer Offences

Ministers:

(a) endorsed the Model Criminal Law Officers Committee’s conclusion that the model computer offences are adequate and do not require revision

(b) agreed that jurisdictions continue to monitor their computer offences and other laws relevant to cyber crime to ensure they keep pace with advances in technology.

The seemed more interested in being afraid of general internet use.

Suppression Orders – Internet Sites

Ministers considered the adequacy of the Court Suppression and Non-Publication Orders model Bill to deal with the publication of suppressed material on the internet by private individuals.

Facebook and Privacy

Ministers discussed concerns about parents being unable to access or otherwise deal with inappropriate content uploaded onto their child’s social networking pages (whether by the child themselves or by others).

When Ministers “considered” and “discussed” things but haven’t agreed on any concrete words or actions, once does wonder what has going on and what will actually happen next, no?

It seems to have been my annointed role this week to press back against the rush to join Google+, the new social networking service (SNS) from Google.

It all began when I posted the Patch Monday podcast on, erm, Monday. “Can Google+ kill Facebook? Twitter?” I asked. But as I discussed the potential success of Google+ and its strengths and weaknesses compared with Facebook, I couldn’t help but think…

I don’t want to do this.

Join Google+, that is.

I’d first written about Google+ for Crikey a week and a bit earlier. It was a cranky piece. I speculated that Google would have to come up with something pretty persuasive to get people to migrate from Facebook.

That of course soon triggered one of the usual, predictable comments.

sorry im not on facebook, i dont need to be, i dont have a mobile phone, i really dont need one, i dont have a GPS, i have a brain and know how to get around, hell, i dont even have a watch, i do have a job , im thankfull of that and i do manufacture and retail a product that everyone wants.

… said William Magnusson, who also seems to live without capital letters, apostrophes or the ability to decide when it’s time to end his sentence and start a new one.

I’d expected that. But what I hadn’t expected was much of the reaction to my follow-up Crikey piece, There’s no way I’m handing over data to Google+, and to a lesser extent my ABC The Drum piece, Why rush? Let others find the Google+ privacy landmines.

Now the headline to that Crikey piece wasn’t mine. I’d probably have added “just yet” or something, and indeed that’s why I toned it down for the ABC piece. But the lead paragraph of the Crikey piece set the tone…

The sheer stupidity of technology’s early adopters never ceases to amaze me. Facebook continues to be slammed for its dodgy privacy practices. But Google launches Google+, essentially the same thing, and the shiny-chasers are clamouring to pour in their most intimate information.

… and people reacted.

Some of it was clearly in response to my use of the word “stupid”, and thinking I meant that all people who use Facebook or Google+ were stupid. No, only those who rush in without considering the trade-offs.

But there were two threads to the reaction that surprised me.

• All Facebook and Google are doing is finding out more about you to show you more accurate advertising. What’s the harm in that? That struck me as naive. I pointed to the possibilities of (mis-)use by insurance companies or employers as obvious examples. People seem not to understand the imbalance in the power relationship.
• “They” know everything about you anyway, so what does it matter? Either be part of our internet-enabled future, or disconnect. That struck me as simplistic, as if this is an all-or-nothing thing and there’s only one way of doing it.

I have no neat and tidy way to finish this blog post. My thoughts are still open-ended. But what do you think?

[Photo: Google signage at the Google Kobi Günü event, Ergenekon, Gumussuyu/beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey, on 21 April 2011 by Halil Gökdal. Used under a Creative Commons BY-ND-SA license.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week was busy enough, but this week was even busier. Something’s gotta give.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 94, “ISP filtering goes ‘voluntary’”. Even though Australia’s controversial mandatory internet filtering program is at least two years away from being implemented, internet service providers will soon start filtering child exploitation material on a voluntary basis. My guests are Peter Black, who teaches internet and media law at the Queensland University of Technology; Network engineer Mark Newton; Lyle Shelton, chief of staff of the Australian Christian Lobby.

Articles

• The only NBN monopoly seems to be on ignorance, for ABC Drum Opinion. My response to opponents of the National Broadband Network claiming that it’ll destroy competition in the telecommunications industry.
• Internet filtering isn’t compulsory, but everyone will volunteer, for Crikey, covering the recent news the “voluntary” of filtering of the internet will soon begin in Australia, covering child exploitation material only.
• Voluntary filtering removes the controversy, for CSO. In this op-ed I explain how the voluntary filtering makes sense technically and politically, if not necessarily for effective child protection.
• Drug spam rules, thanks to WikiPharmacy: Symantec, for CSO. It’s a shame I didn’t notice that my headline is a crash blossom.
• If Facebook killed Myspace will Google+ kill THE social network? Crikey. At rather short notice, when I’d already been up very early to wrote two other articles, I was asked to write a piece covering the news of both Google launching Google+ and Myspace being sold for UD 35 million and how that’d affect Facebook. This is what resulted.
• Interpol blacklist goes live in Canberra, for ZDNet Australia. “Voluntary” internet filtering started on Friday.

Media Appearances

Two radio spots this week, and a guest appearance on someone else’s podcast.

• On Wednesday I spoke with ABC Gold Coast about Google+ and how it’ll affect Facebook. There’s audio at the link.
• On Thursday I was talking about information security for business on Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast.
• On Friday I was talking about Myspace, Google+ and Facebook on ABC 774 Melbourne. Again, there’s audio at the link.

Corporate Largesse

None. I am reliably informed that the drought will be broken next week.

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: A misty dawn at Bunjaree Cottages, 1 July 2011. This is the view from Roselle Cottage, not normally rented to the punters. The much-battered camera in my phone does not do this scene justice.]