A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Thanks to the collision of Easter and Anzac Day to create a very long weekend indeed, there were only three official workings days.

Podcasts

There was no Patch Monday podcast because Monday was a public holiday. However I did record the key interviews for the next two episodes. That’s the furthest ahead I’ve ever been.

Articles

• Tired Microsoft delivers solid profits, for now, for Crikey, which as you might imagine is a commentary on the company’s quarterly results.
• I also wrote a piece for ZDNet Australia that should be published tomorrow, and my first two opinion pieces for an outlet that… well… I’ll tell you about that next week.

Media Appearances

• On Wednesday I was interviewed by Carol Duncan on ABC Radio 1233 Newcastle about the security breach of Sony’s PlayStation Network. The audio is available at the ABC website.
• I was interviewed on the same subject by the OzSpot gaming podcast, a production of CBS Interactive’s GameSpot.

[Update 8 May 2011: The direct link to the podcast doesn't work. You'll have to scroll down the list of episodes in the "archive" section on the right to find the one for 26 April.]

• On Thursday I was interviewed by John Kenneally and Jane Doyle on Adelaide radio FIVEaa about… the Sony PlayStation Network hack. There’s no audio published at their website. Should I post my copy, do you think?

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: Road to Bunjaree Cottages, taken earlier today. This is one of the dirt roads leading to Bunjaree Cottages, which is where I've been staying off and on for the last three months. This isn't the official road to take, as for a short distance it crosses through private property, but it's the way I usually take when walking into Wentworth Falls.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week I’m slowly getting back to the normal level of media work, it seems.

I’ve even completely finished the coming week’s edition of the Patch Monday podcast and sent it to ZDNet Australia. I feel so… productive!

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 82, “Trends for a broadband-enabled future”. An interview with Brad Howarth, co-author with Janelle Ledwidge of the new Australian book A Faster Future.

Articles

• Iranian hackers prove internet security is rubbish, for Crikey, explaining the implications of the presumed-Iranian hackers managing to issue themselves fake SSL certificates.
• Electronic voting a threat to democracy, for ABC Unleashed. This opinion piece essentially says that the security risks outweigh the convenience. I was most amused to see commenters claim that I’m therefore “afraid of technology” because I don’t understand it. Convenience is everything, apparently.

Media Appearances

• On Wednesday I was interviewed by Kate O’Toole on ABC Radio Darwin 105.7 about hacking. I have already posted the audio recording.

Corporate Largesse

• Shiva Kumar from PR firm Edelman bought me a cup of coffee on Monday when he briefed me on using LinkedIn. LinkedIn themselves then provided me with a free Pro-level account.

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 Wattle Cottage, which is where I'm living this weekend. Of course it's one of the Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, where I've been based since early February. This is the first time I've stayed in this particular cottage and the view brings with it a vast number of birds.]

• Patch Monday podcast #44: Microsoft versus the cybercriminals. A look at some of the less-well-known work Microsoft is doing in this field — including Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit sponsoring a pop song in Nigeria, a legal tactic for taking down botnets, and how they identify malware through reputation analysis.
• How evil is Google, exactly? for ABC Unleashed. My argument is that Google’s collection of random Wi-Fi data isn’t the massive privacy breach some people are making out, but that it does raise serious questions about whether Google can be trusted. The comment stream is fascinating.
• Turks hack Israeli Facebook accounts over Gaza blockade incident for Crikey. This appears to be the first time that individual Facebook users’ accounts have been the target of political hacking, as opposed to those taking an active part in the propaganda war.

I also did a radio spot on 891 ABC Adelaide early on Monday morning, but I wasn’t quite awake and I forgot to record it. If I recall correctly, I spoke about my visit to Microsoft’s Redmond campus.

If you’re still short of reading for this long weekend, you can always dig back further into my media output.

Tuesday night I was on the panel for Byteside Tech episode 4, this time discussing the dark side of the Internet where the hackers and criminals lurk.

The other panellists were David Peterson from Trend Micro; David Hollingworth, editor of Atomic; journalist Stephen Fenech from the Daily Telegraph; and host Seamus Byrne. And here’s the video.

Once more, we seem to be remarkably enthusiastic. What is it about this event?

If the embedded video doesn’t work for you, click through.

One thing I find interesting about this subject is that so much of it is brand new even for people with an in-depth knowledge of their own field of IT. Does this mean that security issues simply don’t get the coverage they deserve?

I’m on the panel for the next Byteside Tech, to be recorded live at the Shelbourne Hotel in Sydney next Tuesday 27 October. Subject? The dark world of hackers and cyber criminals.

The rest of the panel has yet to be announced, but you can book for the audience now. Go on, you know you want to.

Meanwhile, you can watch the incriminating video from last time.

“Be afraid. Be very afraid. Online criminals are after your personal data. They’re smart. They’re professional. They’re efficient. Meanwhile, those guarding your data are overloaded, under-coordinated and, often, under-trained.”

That’s how I started a piece in Crikey on Tuesday, written after the general manager of AusCERT had given his scary presentation.

UK banks are now seeing criminals correlating data captured from different malware runs, compiling detailed personal profiles. That information is then used to target specific individuals in corporations with an email that looks so legitimate they can’t help but click through  – targeting, say the CFO who knows about planned company mergers or the discover of a new oil field. The aim? Advantage on the stock market.

The article is free to read, so off you go!

• 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.