A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Well, the bits I’m going to talk about publicly.

Articles

• Wireless on the rise, but fixed broadband still does the work, for Crikey. An attempt to head off misuse of the latest internet activity report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The “wireless will solve everything” meme is strong.
• NBN: too bold for timid Australia? for ABC Unleashed. I’d noticed that amongst the much-needed legitimate criticism of the National Broadband Network there’s also a sense of “We’ll make do” and “No-one else is doing this so why should Australia?” Has Australia lost its nerve? Needless to say, most commenters miss the point I’m making about the bigger picture and just re-bleat their views about the NBN. The party-hack trolls are remarkably obvious.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 58, “For efficiency, send your workers home!”. My guest is Jacob Murray-White, general manager of Salmat At Home. They run a virtual call centre with staff scattered across Australia. He gets quite excited. I’d never realised that call centres could be so interesting, although cartoonist First Dog on the Moon used to manage a call centre. That means something.

Geekery

I still spend roughly a third of my time doing random “geek for hire” stuff with a few long-standing clients. I reckon I might as well list any significant moments.

• I still provide internet hosting for approximately 110 domains for around 40 clients, including my own activities such as this website. I’m right in the middle of migrating all that to a new server. Indeed, this site is now running on that server. It’s another dedicated Linux box at ServePath in San Francisco, although they seem to be emphasising their GoGrid branding these days. I’m thrilled to discover that just packaging and migrating the data will take 14 hours, and my planned process won’t work. A busy weekend ahead. Sigh.

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 view from Beverly Hills Hotel, Sydney, which is a substantially less glamorous view than last week's photo.]

Click through for the full-sized image.

Yes, I still have thousands of things to do. But it’s Friday night and I’m exhausted, so I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Probably.

Meanwhile, I’d live to know what you’re thinking about Project TOTO, so have a look at the previous posts and say stuff and ask questions and things.

And if you’re wondering who the people quoted are, try @mpesce, @snarkyplatypus, @kcarruthers and @apostrophepong. And also click through to ActionAid Australia for The Good Cause.

So… Right now there’s this graphic with two canaries on the very motherfucking front page of NEWS.com.au which links to a story listing 10 of Australia’s most interesting Twitter users. I’m one of them.

Stilgherrian (@stilgherrian) Fiercely opinionated blogger and former broadcaster Stilgherrian (“yes, I only have one name,” he says) is one of the busiest Twitter users in Australia with more than 16,000 posts. Subscribe to his feed for thoughts on media, technology and politics from a web-savvy point of view.

Example: “In all of this, pls differentiate between ‘news’, which we all pass on, and ‘The News’, which journalists manufacture.”

I wonder why they didn’t pick example tweets like this or this or this?

The list also includes Crikey cartoonist First Dog on the Moon (@firstdogonmoon), Fake Stephen Conroy (@stephenconroy) and possibly the least interesting Twitter user of all, Kevin Rudd (@kevinruddpm). Please check out the full list, earn poor Mr Murdoch some advertising revenue and, more importantly, suggest some other folks who might be good additions.

I think it’s hilarious. But I’m also amazed by some of the initial reactions…

All I know about the selection criteria is that journalist Andrew Ramadge (@aramadge) says the list was chosen by news.com.au staff and was by merit rather than number of followers.

Clearly the story is aimed at people who’ve never used Twitter. There’s an obvious What is Twitter? link. Fair enough, there’s fewer than 1 in 5000 Australians using it so far.

Picking just 10 people to appeal to a mainstream audience is a tough call, but reactions on my Facebook profile were harsh. I’d link directly to the item but I can’t figure out how to do that so you’ll have to go digging.

• “I am pretty fucking pissed off I, @mpesce, @silkcharm and @kcarruthers, @bronwen, and who could not forget @lu_lu and the grossness of @grum … FFS News Ltd. FUCKING FAIL FUCKTARDS”
• “does this mean Twitter has jumped the shark?”
• “and why the heck is @stub left out? seriously, we have some credibility right?!? ggrrr!”
• “With all usual love to Stil who has rightly been identified as wheat, most of us are Chaff? Noice one, MSM demonstrating their haughty we know everything stance on something they clearly have no freaking idea about. In the words of Nelson ‘ha ha, your medium is dying.’”

Now it’d be much easier for me to comment if I wasn’t on the goddam list myself, but I am, so take that on board however you like. I’m certainly not saying there’s other people who aren’t also “worthy”, or “important” or “well-known” or “they’re a good friend” or “they’re nice”. And Twitter is indeed representative of an important new mode of human communication and it’s fascinating to talk about social media — if you’re a social media consultant.

But…

The criterion was “interesting”. To a mainstream, non-geek human. Bearing that in mind, what you you think of the list?

Please suggest away. I’ll link to people’s Twitter profiles for you, possibly after some delay.

• The Internet is a filthy cesspit of depravity and moral turpitude (and must be stopped) | the platform: This article makes several points that I’ve been meaning to introduce into the censorship discussion but haven’t had time. “Just as in real life, parents have to protect their children from dangers. Just as in real life, you don’t have to visit the seedy part of town if you don’t want to. Just as in real life, blocking a freeway doesn’t stop me driving on other roads (it will increase congestion though).”
• First Dog on the Moon’s Christmas Spectacular! | Crikey: “Join in the seasonal frivolity with the Official First Dog On The Moon Christmas Spectacular! Hooray! Kevin Rudd’s pets embark on their most ambitious adventure yet, a daring night time raid on the innocence of Australia’s kiddies.” One of First Dog’s best.
• 2008: Dashed dreams and mouldy political compromise | Crikey: Crikey‘s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane has written a magnificent 2000-word essay summing up the key issues of a year in Australian politics.
• Guy Rundle’s that was the year that was | Crikey: Rundle’s delightfully snarky look back at 2008. He’s in fine form here!
• The great porn war | smh.com.au: This overview of the Internet censorship issues seems to be remarkably behind the pace of the debate, but I suppose it’s aimed at what’s considered to a non-technical audience. These days, though, when the vast majority of literate Australians have their own computer, aren’t articles like this speaking to a minority?
• Rundle08: Everything goes to cr-p, and just before Christmas | Crikey: One of Guy Rundle’s more magnificent essays. Did you know that the Ponzi Scheme is named after an episode of Happy Days?
• The Cowbell Project: “We all know when a song needs that extra oomph, that extra push over the top, there’s only one thing that will satisfy: The Cowbell.”
• The right to the Simpsons | Charterblog: And yet another analysis of The Simpsons decision, this time by Jeremy Gans of Melbourne Law School, who teaches and researches in criminal justice law.
• McEWEN v SIMMONS & ANOR [2008] NSWSC 1292: The actual Supreme Court decision itself by Justice Adams. A lot to read, but of course a thoughtful analysis.
• Sex and “The Simpsons” | On Line Opinion: Another analysis of The Simpsons case by lawyer Greg Barns.
• Simpsons and sensibility | ABC Unleashed: Mark Pesce’s analysis of two recent Australian legal decisions: that uploading a video of someone else swinging a baby around makes you a “distributor of child abuse material”; and that characters from The Simpsons are “persons”, making anyone who looks at those popular parody videos of yellow-skinned characters having sex a child sex offender. Channel TEN must now be closed down because they regularly show Homer strangling Bart.
• We are the Future: In 1993 there was a dance party in Adelaide to launch The Core EP, a 12-inch vinyl release containing 4 tracks. I was the executive producer. This website has the DJ mixes from the party.
• To be liked, or not to be liked, that is the question… | nowwearetalking: “Does social media make it easier for customers/stakeholders to develop separate emotions and opinions between product and corporation?” A good question, and it quotes one of my more angry tweets as an example.
• Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable | New Scientist: “Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why should ours be any different?” From April 2008, but even more relevant now.
• Georg Simmel: “The Metropolis & Mental Life”: A fascinating article essay from 1903 about the way cities change us humans. Remarkably prescient, though slightly hard to read the century-old style. Worth the effort.
• Impact of Net filtering overstated, claims agent | Computerworld: Internet filters don’t degrade performance as much as people fear, says a man whose job is selling Internet filters. Anyone see a neutrality issue here?
• 20 signs you don’t want that social media project | qwghlm.co.uk: Chris Applegate’s amusing-because-it’s-true list.
• Enceladus! | Bad Astronomy: Disgustingly beautiful photo of Enceladus, winning my vote for Best Moon of 2008.
• Twitter: Menace or Threat? | Xark!: A brilliant if slightly ranty blog post giving a real face-slap to curmudgeonly journalists who are still behind the pace at understanding new communication tools like Twitter.

• Danger Room Debrief: How to do Defense, When the Money’s Gone | Danger Room from Wired.com: “The current global economic and financial meltdown may yet become something worse: a protracted global depression. As with the last century’s Depression, which spawned fascism and WWII, it could recast the world at a fundamental level. As such, it may soon represent our biggest security challenge in over 50 years.”
• The Power of Nightmares | YouTube: The 2.5-minute introduction to The Power of Nightmares, to give you a flavour of the full 3-hour documentary series.
• The Power Of Nightmares (DVD) | Internet Archive: This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today: “Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret organized evil that threatens the world, a fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.” The full DVD image is free to download.
• Irrelevant Al Qaeda | Jon Taplin’s Blog: Is it time to declare Al Qaeda irrelevant and downgrade the War on Terror a police action that’s just mopping up the stragglers?
• Mother Earth Mother Board | Wired 4.12: A massive 1993 feature article in which Neal Stephenson toured six countries following the roll-out of fibre optic cables. It introduced me to his writing and it remains an excellent read today.
• The End | Flickr: A collection of classic “The End” title cards from a wide variety of films.
• Fiscal Conservative vs. Tax & Spend Liberal | Be the signal: Another variation of an infographic pointing out that the Republicans don’t have the best track record for the US economy.
• Opinion graph | Junk Charts: On average, the US stock market does much better under Democrat Presidents than Republicans, as this graph shows.
• How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin Mom Campaign | Advertising Age: A groundswell of opinion on Twitter caused Johnson & Johnson to pull an adverting campaign.
• Thesis Theme for WordPress | DIY Themes: A high-quality but not-free theme framework for WordPress. While I currently use the free Tarski theme for my website maybe this is worth a look at some point.
• NSW Parliamentary Research: Mandatory ISP filtering is not what it seems | Internet Industry Association: Research by the NSW Parliamentary Library shows that Senator Conroy’s claims about other nations’ compulsory Internet censorship regimes are wrong.
• Kerr's curse | ABC Unleashed: If nothing else, I love this essay for the phrase “cardboard cutout think tanks”. But there are many other reasons to like it.
• Internet Censorship and the Irukandji Jellyfish | First Dog on the Moon: Only First Dog on the Moon could successfully combine Senator Conroy’s Internet censorship plan and jellyfish in one cartoon.
• PG Nation | ABC Unleashed: An interesting essay about the neo-wowserism of the Rudd government.
• Europa Film Treasures: An archive of European cinematographic treasures. It looks like there’s a lot of material here.
• The Trojan Horse | Business Spectator: “The current government policy of forcing ISPs to offer their customers a so-called ‘clean feed’ has the overt intention of helping parents to protect their kids while surfing the Internet. It is, we are told, all about child protection. However, the use of content filtering to make the Internet ‘safer’ for kids is already available, to the extent that any statistically significant real demand exists to solve it.”
• Failing hard drive sounds | Datacent: A collection of the sounds made by dying hard disc drives. Yes, they can be used in music provided you contact these guys first.
• 19-year-old Commits Suicide on Justin.tv | NewTeeVee: Abraham K Biggs committed suicide on Wednesday while broadcasting himself on video site Justin.tv. Apparently the 19yo Floridian was egged on by commenters on Justin.tv and forum users on bodybuilding.com. The article canvasses some of the legal and ethical issues.

• Annual Report 2007–08 | ACMA: The Australian Communications and Media Authority’s annual report for the financial year ended… four months ago. Trying to understand the emerging world by looking at documents like this is like trying to steer a fast car by reading traffic statistics from last week’s newspaper.
• ISP-level Filtering Discussion part 2 | Whirlpool Broadband Forums: A women — a Christian and a mother — explains why she is against Internet censorship.
• The perplexing Internet debate | On Line Opinion: Mark Newton, the network engineer who Senator Conroy’s office tried to bully into silence, has only become more vocal. Here he lists in clear bullet-point form the arguments the government has to counter.
• ISP-level content filtering won’t work | ZDNet Australia: Three of Australia’s largest ISPs take a stand against the government’s plans to censor the Internet.
• Clean feeds | ABC Unleashed: Mark Pesce’s piece about the Internet censorship debacle steps back and looks at how the last fortnight has been affected by what he calls “hyperpolitics”.
• Keep Your Filter Off Our Internet | AWIA: “As the professional body representing people working across a broad spectrum of the web industry, the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) objects to the Government’s plans to trial ISP filtering, with a view to introducing it nationally.”
• Have Your Bunny Repeatedly: Crikey cartoonist First Dog on the Moon’s contribution to the campaign against Internet censorship in Australia.
• Twitter Goes Mainstream | WSJ.com: When a major mainstream newspaper says something is mainstream then it must be mainstream.
• Copyright Infringement as Stealing: Pfft! | Brendan Scott’s Weblog: One important part of any propaganda campaign is framing the discussion to benefit your side’s arguments. Major copyright-holders are keen to frame their bad guys as :”thieves” and “pirates”. This post is a well-reasoned piece explaining why “theft” is an inappropriate and disrespectful use of language.
• Eee PC 1000H HackBook | Flickr: Photo of Stephen Collins’ HackBook, an Asus Eee PC 1000H running OS X. Includes shopping list.
• Why follow @Stilgherrian on Twitter? | Matt’s Musings: One smart person’s musings on why he chooses to follow people on Twitter. I’ll write a response some time this week. It’s amusing to be called “the Rove [McManus] of the Streaming Web”.
• Sarah Palin Wardrobe Challenge: Kathryn Builds ENTIRE Wardrobe for the Candidate for Less Than $2500 | The Budget Fashionista: Just what it says. How to look just like the world’s most glamorous moose-killer without her $150k budget.
• Multicolr Search Lab | Idée Inc.: Punch in a selection of up to 10 colours, and this’ll search through more than 10 million Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr and show you those which match. Very cool and, I suspect, very useful.
• 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate | BBC News: A nice collection of 50 examples of annoying business-speak. It’s from June, but it’s still valid.

• The twisted language of politics | Bloghound: A nice post on the hypocrisy shown in the differing descriptions of Republican US Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama.
• Send an e-mail message on behalf of someone else | Microsoft Office Online: The procedure for setting up delegated email access in Office 2007, e.g. a secretary having access to their boss’ email. I think it’s rather quaint that Microsoft still uses “e-mail” with a hyphen.
• Use Outlook Anywhere to connect to your Exchange server without VPN | Microsoft Office Online: This is the procedure for making individual Outlook 2007 users connect securely to a remote Exchange server over the Internet. “Outlook Anywhere” is what used to be called “RPC over HTTP”. I’m tagging this because I’ll be making this work for a client shortly.
• Configure Outlook Anywhere in Outlook 2007 | Microsoft TechNet: This is the procedure for making a group of Outlook 2007 users connect securely to a remote Exchange server over the Internet. “Outlook Anywhere” is what used to be called “RPC over HTTP”.
• 2006 Olympic Food Stealing Champion – My Dog! | First Dog on the Moon: One of First Dog’s more delightful (as opposed to deeply cynical) cartoons.
• Cursebird: What the f#@! is everyone swearing about?: A live feed of everyone who swears on Twitter, with a nice animated effect when a new curse pops up. Compelling viewing.

Stilgherrian Live episode 28, the Totally Natural Edition, is now online for your viewing pleasure.

The audio problems which had plagued us recently were gone, and we started on time. The talk flowed smoothly through the first part of the program, and it was maybe 15 minutes before we hit our first technical glitch. I must find a way to present images in Cam Twist that allows me to preview the picture that’s about to go to air!

For the second week running, the US Federal Reserve (pictured) was the clear winner of “Cnut of the Week”, beating nominees John McCain, Sydney Anglican archibishop Dr Peter Jensen and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

I failed to make contact with Nathanael Boehm to talk about the big day of geekery in Sydney, including the Web Directions South conference — I wasn’t watching my Twitter messages during the program — but First Dog on the Moon phoned in again and that filled an awkward gap when I completely forgot about “Stilgherrian’s Street View”. That’s a shame, because that would have triggered more of a rant. About clueless taxi drivers.

The after-show chat included some interesting thoughts about the nature of the program, and they’ll be reflected next week. Stay tuned.

Last night’s episode 26 of Stilgherrian Live is now online for your viewing pleasure.

In a disorganised episode which started late thanks to Art — I’ll write more about that later — former Treasurer Peter Costello was voted “Cnut of the Week”, narrowly beating controversial Thai prime minister Samak Sundaravej (สมัคร สุนทรเวช) and journalist Mark Day for his backward-looking story Blogs can’t match probing reports.

There was also an impromptu interview with Crikey cartoonist First Dog on the Moon wherein we discuss, inter alia, deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop and rabbits.

Germaine Greer On Rage? Well, yes, she does get more than a little grumpy, wink wink, eh? (Although as someone asked me, “Greer on Rage? What would she guest program?”) David Malouf On Experience? Yeah, he’s getting a bit long in the tooth, sure… and need I mention the probable subject of Blanche d’Alpuget’s longing in On Longing?

Yeah, time for another nudge-nudge wink-wink there too.

Now Mark Pesce tells me that Greer’s book is written in the context of the NT Intervention — something worth getting angry about. “A cogent book about rage,” he says. “Perhaps an important one. Time will tell.”

Sure, he’s a fan. Greer is an important public intellectual, though, and today’s First Dog on the Moon cartoon explains very well why everyone hates Germaine Greer. But for me the line-up of little pastel covers and the gift-set option tells me this is for people who want to look like they’re intellectuals.

If Greer’s book is indeed important, then it needs to be more than a fetish for someone’s mantlepiece, along with that unread (and unreadable) hardback of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. And maybe that means more descriptive covers?

[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 moved to the new platform, but for some (Apple claims 1%) it’s a disaster. They’ve been unable to use email for five days — not from their Macs, not from their iPhones, not via the web. And that’s not the only problem. As .Mac user Ed Dale said, “Not pleasant to log in and see four years of mail gone.”

Crikey‘s First Dog on the Moon, also a MobileMe-er, says “it’s been crap”.

According to AppleInsider, a mail server crash and fibre-optic line faults have added to the problems. One subscriber told them he knew at least 10 people with MobileMe and all of them were affected.

“Now either it’s just a coincidence that everyone I know is in the 1%, or Apple is flat out lying,” he said.

Sydney businessman Mark Bowyer, presumably like many .Mac customers, subscribed years ago assuming that paying $139.95 per annum would deliver greater reliability than free services like Hotmail and Gmail, as well as features like shared calendars. Today, he’s angry. The only message from Apple has been “we’re working on it”.

“There is no phone [support] available for [MobileMe] in Australia,” he told Crikey.

“Despite the army of Apple personnel selling iPhones and other gadgetry, nobody here can answer any enquiries about the problem.”

Not that this would make any difference. Ultra-secretive Apple never provides information beyond its official statements.

Although, in a very unusual step, it has apologised to .Mac users, sending this email:

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks…

The Terms of Service say MobileMe “is designed for personal use and not intended to be used for commercial business purposes.” Bowyer, who does run his business email elsewhere, reckons that shouldn’t make a difference.

“I have become painfully aware of how I have entrusted so much of my life to Apple — banking, subscriptions — including my Crikey subscription — credit card statements, not to mention an international network of friends and contacts. Who’’s to say I don’t value my personal life more than my business?”

This personal/business distinction also seems odd given that Apple markets MobileMe as “Exchange for the rest of us“, a reference to Microsoft’s corporate messaging server. Perhaps it’s irony, given Exchange’s notorious reputation for being difficult to manage.

Will this hurt Apple’s reputation and sales? Not one bit. It’d make Kim Jong-il proud to see the fields filled with happy iPhone-waving infoworkers smiling for Chairman Steve, oblivious to the obvious flaws around them.

• Over at New Matilda, Ben Eltham has written a fine summary of The Super Seasprites Saga. He links to an explanation of the sunk cost fallacy which probably contributed to this monumental fuck-up.
• Laurel Papworth’s piece 2020 Summit: Objective Journalists vs Passionate Blogging, which I’m planning to respond to at length some time this weekend.
• A piece from The New Yorker, Scents and Sensibility: What the nose knows, which ponders, amongst other things, why one molecule smells of spearmint when its exact mirror image smells of caraway. (Hat-tip to 3 Quarks Daily.)
• And for a change of pace, try the selection of First Dog on the Moon cartoons which were published in Crikey through January and February.

Four pieces feels about right for today.