A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — leaving out all of the most important bits.

I can’t tell you about the highly personal things that happened last week, except to say that something which had been gnawing at the very core of my being has… changed. And my mind is still adjusting. As is my shoulder, which continues to misbehave. But codeine is dealing with that. Again.

The tooth situation is being resolved, though. Stage one of the root canal work has been performed.

I can also tell you about the nauseatingly young-and-in-love hipsters, pictured above, with their matching skateboards and matching sneakers. Well, that’s all I want to tell you about them, or I’ll get cranky.

So with the linkage…

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 108, “Adobe’s long battle with security flaws”. A conversation with Brad Arkin, Adobe’s head of product security and privacy.

Articles

• Flash Player 11: Adobe’s great security hope, CSO, 4 October 2011.
• iPhone release: no bunch of fives to the fore, but it’s OK, Crikey, 5 October 2011.
• Steve Jobs deserved his cult — you don’t even know how he influenced you, Crikey, 6 October 2011.
• Gillard and others honour Jobs’ memory (contributor only), ZDNet Australia, 6 October 2011.
• Global time zone database closed following legal threat, CSO, 7 October 2011.

Media Appearances

Every single media spot I did this week related to Apple and/or the death of Steve Jobs.

• On Wednesday I spoke with Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa about the iPhone 4S. But interest in the iPhone subsided when…
• … on Thursday the media spots about the death of Steve Jobs began. The first was with ABC Gold Coast.
• The second spot was with Triple J’s Hack.
• The third spot on Thursday was with ABC News24′s discussion program The Drum.
• And on Friday evening I spoke about the death of Steve Jobs on ABC 666 Canberra.
• On the weekend, I also provided some comments on Steve Jobs to the TECHGEEK Weekly podcast.

Corporate Largesse

• On Thursday lunch, snacks and coffee were provided to me as an attendee at the Digital Culture Public Sphere event in Sydney.

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: Matching skateboards and sneakers, a rather nauseating expression of young love spotted on King Street, Newtown, on Saturday night.]

Could you possibly imagine better timing?

The shoe in the photograph is the Dunlop Volley Classic tennis shoe. A black one. If you’ve met me in the flesh, you may have noticed that it’s my default footwear. Comfortable. Practical. Cheap.

Thing is, the Volley website, which I’ll talk about shortly, exhibits everything but those attributes. Fail.

I don’t play tennis, or any sport for that matter. The thing about the Volley Classic, though, is that its rubber sole offers a firm grip on all sorts of surfaces. Even in the wet. Indeed, I’m told that people in certain SEKRIT professions like them because they’re perfect for scurrying across rooftops on dark, rainy nights.

And they’re black.

If you use a black felt-tip marker, you can colour in that white flash at the rear of the shoe so it’s completely black, and at night you’re totally invisible just like a ninja.

From the ankles down.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because this morning I bought a replacement pair of these truly awesome shoes. I’m sick of my chiropractor giving me grief about the holes in my current pair. Yesterday my usual supplier was out of stock, at least in size 11. But just now I bought new shoes — before 9am on a Sunday — without even getting out of bed.

It’s a lesson in the importance of making sure your website is properly indexed on Google, and that you concentrate on what really helps make a sale.

The thing is, these are simple lessons which need to be repeated over and over again — because so many “web designers” just don’t get it.

I typed “black dunlop volley sydney” into Google. I clicked on the first link in the search results because it looked Australian. It was a page at a shopping aggregator site. It had a photo of the shoe and I went “Yes, that’s what I want to buy.” It linked to a shop which looked trustworthy because they listed their physical address and had clear policies. The price was cheaper than my usual supplier, so I bought a pair right then.

Elapsed time: 45 seconds.

Actually, it was longer than that, because I got out of bed to tell ’Pong how awesome the Internet was and he told me to fuck off because he was running late for his video shoot but that’s not the point. This is my story and the truth is irrelevant.

The point is that I relied totally on Google to send me somewhere useful. And because Google delivered, I didn’t spend a single second looking any further.

The point is also that I trusted The Tennis Shop not because their website has fancy graphics — it doesn’t — but because they told me who they were and how they do business.

Every dollar spent on making sure those basics are right helps sell product.

Every dollar spent on graphics, animations and other distractions is a dollar wasted. Indeed, if the fancy crap slows down the process of me being able to buy something, you’re actually spending money to reduce your sales.

And with this in mind, something needs to be said…

Dunlop? Your website for Volleys is fucked. Please take your agency out the back, shoot them all twice in the head, and dump them in a river.

I wanted to link directly to a page explaining the Volley Classic. You know, show the folks a few pictures, tell ‘em a bit of history. Instead, there’s some tiny little drop-down menu where I select “shoes”, and then you piss me around with some lame-arsed Flash menu where I have to pick my “environment” (huh?) and leg type (double huh?) without you even telling me the name of the shoes!

And how the fuck am I meant to link to anything when everything has one URL, http://www.volleys.com.au/flash/index.html? What use is that?

And, to top it off, you fucking well play country music at me at 9.30 on a Sunday morning! Did I fucking well ask for country music? I want to look at your shoes!

What sort of morons are you? Are you deliberately trying to drive me away from your website? Because that’s what you achieved! I will never be back.

On Thursday an email told me that I’m a beta tester for ABC Playback, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Internet TV trial. So here we go…

I’ll gloss over the geeky stuff because the massively-brained Simon Rumble has already done a technical reconnaissance. Just three key points there from me:

1. It uses a Flash front end over XML program listings. Simon reckons it’ll be easy to hack up a Linux version for those who can’t use the official Windows and Mac interface. Or who want to avoid the pointless animations. Or who’d rather an easier-to-read high-contrast interface than trendy translucency.
2. A 30-minute program is compressed to a mere 130MB, which seems a reasonable compromise between quality and bandwidth — at least for infotainment — given the ABC’s need to serve regional audiences out on the Information Super-goat-track.
3. Did we really need to spend taxpayers’ money putting a clock in the top right of the screen? Computers already have clocks.

Technically it works just fine… but that’s not the real issue…

Disappointingly, ABC Playback seems more like the last gasp of old-style broadcast TV than a prelude to something new and wonderful.

Currently we’re offered three channels — though “channel” is a curious word in this context, since they’re just menu items.

1. ABC CatchUp has a selection of programs from ABC1 and ABC2 available for a week after their original broadcast. Right now that selection is limited: The Bill (inevitable, I guess), games review program Good Game, At The Movies, The New Inventors and How Art Made The World.
2. ABC Real is archived “factual and documentary” material — currently only the Sex in the Bush series about Aussie fauna on the bonk and the “magnificent documentary” The Kimberley: Land of the Wandjina.
3. ABC Shop is just “previews” (i.e. advertising) for DVDs you can buy. I shall not mention it again. I shall not view it again: the ABC Shop already has a website.

This article seems to be about threes, so here’s a third set: the three reasons I was disappointed.

1. The program selection was unappealing. OK, it’s only a test. I’m guessing the programs on offer were chosen to be “representative”. I can almost hear the dialog: “Well, The Bill is popular, we’d better have that, and David and Margaret too. Better have something for young people, what about Good Game? Oh, and something arty…” But why not have, say, The 7.30 Report and Lateline and the many other programs which are already available for download? Apart from How Art Made The World, everything on ABC CatchUp was disposable.
2. The catch-up is still tied to broadcast schedules. Only episode 2 of How Art Made The World was available, and because it was originally screened on Tuesday night, it’s only available for another 3 days. Who wants to start a series from episode 2? The Bill has already disappeared because it’s Saturday and new episodes are broadcast tonight — but this is precisely the time that a fan would want to catch up if they’d missed out last week.
3. I can’t save things for later. Perhaps this is the same point, but as ABC CatchUp is currently structured I have to watch episode 2 of How Art Made The World this week. I have to watch episode 3 next week. Why can’t I just spend a quiet evening watching the entire series? After all, it’s already been paid for, so the ABC’s aim should be to increase the audience, not put blocks in the way.

Actually there’s a fourth disappointment. I have to go to this “special place”, ABC Playback, to watch the programs. This isn’t how people are choosing to view online media.

Increasingly, people watch media where they want to watch it — in a proprietary system like iTunes or Windows Media Player, or an open system like Miro TV.

They expect to be able to use the media aggregator of their choice, to compile playlists of material from any source, and consume it when they want. In this respect, ABC Playback is a backwards step. It can’t be integrated with an existing media-consumption framework (unless someone like Simon hacks it), the playlists can contain only the ABC programs on offer, and things disappear according to arbitrary rules.

And there’s a fifth disappointment: I can’t schedule program downloads to happen late at night during my ISP’s off-peak time. I can only download as I watch.

Actually there’s a sixth disappointment too: where are the RSS feeds?

Again, I have to go to the special website and log in, just to see if there’s anything new. Wrong.

I do understand this is a trial. I do understand that storage space might be limited, or that there might be copyright restrictions — but they’re not my problems. This is precisely the old-medium thinking that needs to be overcome. And that’s where the effort needs to be expended — not on meaningless Flash animations to impress senior management.

Delivering broadcast-quality video to lots of viewers over the Internet isn’t rocket science. It’s just storage space and bandwidth — routine engineering problems. And as Norway’s national broadcaster has already demonstrated, it’s easy if you use BitTorrent instead of fearing it.

What the ABC needs to address is how it delivers its Charter obligations in the new age of the Internet.

(a) to provide within Australia innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard as part of the Australian broadcasting system consisting of national, commercial and public sectors and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, to provide:

(i) broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community; and
(ii) broadcasting programs of an educational nature;

(b) to transmit to countries outside Australia broadcasting programs of news, current affairs, entertainment and cultural enrichment that will:

(i) encourage awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes on world affairs; and
(ii) enable Australian citizens living or travelling outside Australia to obtain information about Australian affairs and Australian attitudes on world affairs; and

(c) to encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia.

Perhaps in the case of ABC Television, that word “broadcast” keeps causing problems…

“Broadcast” still has that sense of “we spend millions of dollars making packaged entities called ‘programs’ which we then transmit at you”. In radio — and perhaps especially in the 4000-odd hours of talk and talkback radio I produced for the ABC — there’s already the sense of “broadcasting” as “managing a dialog”.

And this is the real challenge. How does the ABC contribute to “a sense of national identity” when everybody who isn’t totally poverty-stricken has a computer or telephone with a camera, a microphone and editing tools? When they all have access to broadcast services like Ustream or Justin.TV?

Talking about “national identity” is no longer the purview of a professional media class… and that’s where I’ll leave this already-long thought for today.

If you click through to the full-size graphic, you’ll see how it begins in 1998 with observations like “Flash is bad” and variations on “Appropriate technology” through to current observations like “markets are conversations” and “business is personal” — things I happen to agree on.

What would your career look like in this format? What were the observations, tools and guiding principles which shaped your career path?

These three cleverly-designed clocks make the world look nicer… and the gods know we need that on a Monday morning!

Clockr (pictured above) by Mario Klingermann uses photographs of numbers randomly selected from the picture-sharing website Flickr. There’s also a Clockr screen saver for Windows.

The Industorius Clock by Yugo Nakamura uses animated images of hand-drawn numbers. (Thanks to Richard Watts for the pointer.)

And finally this 8-metre high water clock uses 260 litres of coloured fluid and some very clever plumbing to full glass spheres as time passes. (Thanks to _information aesthetics_ for that one — check their site for links to more pictures and an explanation of how it works.)