No photo again this week because camera-dearth.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 134, “Avoiding your own Logies leak moment”. Web developer Dave Hall, principal engineer at Technocrat, explains how the Herald Sun might have used the robots exclusion standard to stop the world seeing its embargoed story about Gold Logie winner Hamish Blake — but read the first comment on the story for important additional information.

Articles

• AFACT’s appeal against iiNet decision dismissed — but just you wait, Crikey, 20 April 2012.

Media Appearances

• On Tuesday I was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald and other Fairfax media outlets on that Logies oopsie by the Herald Sun.
• On Friday I spoke about the #iiTrial decision on ABC 702 Sydney.

Corporate Largesse

• On Tuesday night Samsung launched their new Smart TV range at Blue Hotel, Woolloomooloo. Apart from food and drink, we all got a goodie bag containing a bottle of Jacob’s Creek Cool Harvest 2011 Pinot Grigio (which was lovely); a Blu-Ray copy of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a double pass to see King of Devil’s Island at the cinema next weekend (when I’m in Perth), a 2-for-1 voucher to see Wish You Were Here at the cinema, all of which I’m giving to Richard Chirgwin; two 330ml cartons of Kokomo coconut water (do they mean “juice”? it tasted like juice), which is “powered by nature” (ugh!) and which I drank; three chocolates from Fardoulis Chocolates, which I ate in about 11 seconds; a 50ml thing of Schwarzkopf [3D]Mension hair and body shampoo (that’s what it says, apparently “body shampoo” is a thing); a 50ml can of Avène Thermal Spring Water, which “smooths and softens sensitive skin” (which sounds like quite a lot of bullshit to me), which I’ll investigate further with Science; and a voucher for Chi Spa at the Shangri-La Hotel to get a 90-minute “treatment” for the price of a 60-minute one, as long as it’s on a weekday, which I threw away because it’s bullshit.
• On Wednesday afternoon LG launched their own Cinema 3D range of smart TVs at Sydney’s newly-renovated Museum of Contemporary Art. Apart from food and drink, there was also a goodie bag — though I ended up not taking one because I was too busy gossiping with Paul Wallbank. Nevertheless, I came away with a voucher to get 40% off buying one of said TVs. Not that I will.

The Week Ahead

Busy. Monday morning you’ll see articles at ABC The Drum and CSO Online that I’ll have written overnight, as well as the Patch Monday podcast.

Then I’ll continue work on the feature story I’m writing for ZDNet Australia and my presentation that’ll be delivered at DigitalMe in Perth on Friday. You’ll be able to hear a preview of that on ABC 720 Perth on Thursday afternoon some time. And while in Perth I’ll be recording the following week’s Patch Monday podcast. Whew!

In terms of my movements, the new plan is that I’ll be in Sydney until I fly to Perth on Thursday, and then in Sydney overnight Sunday night upon my return.

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 (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up). The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

Here’s what I said, unedited. Well, except for fixing a few obvious mistakes.

Hi REDACTED,

I’m always happy to help on student projects. Let’s see where we go with these questions at the end of a long week.

The first thing I’ll say is that I’ll be putting my answers on my own website too — perhaps an edited version — though I won’t mention your name or even your gender or the university you attend.

It’s taken a good three hours to think about this stuff. Your questions were very open-ended and do not have simple one-par answers. I suspect that’s what you’re meant to be doing in this exercise — digging deeper into the issues rather than just assembling the responses from the panel.

There didn’t seem to be any sign in your questions that you’d read any of what I’ve already written on these subjects, particularly on the nature of journalism?

Anyway, to get more value for the world out of my time I’ll post this online and see what responses it gets. That in turn may be useful for you.

The second thing I’ll say is that everything is a dialog, and list-of-questions leading to list-of-answers will lead to a stilted view. I don’t know what the important aspects of your questions might be. You’ll need to think about your own interpretation of this conversation and draw your own conclusions.

If you did this again, I’d strongly suggest doing what other students have done: book an hour of my time for a chat, either over coffee or a beer or via Skype, and have a conversation to explore the issues.

The third thing I’ll say is that my responses probably reflect my specific preoccupations this week and may well change over time.

Oh, and how did you select me for this panel? I’m curious, ‘cos I also saw (obviously) who else you tweeted.

1. Could you please explain what you currently do and how you got there?

• About Stilgherrian

I’m a word-whore. I write for mastheads that might be interested in my take on subject areas that they think I’m qualified to write about, and where they know I can deliver the product on time.

Some people call that “freelance journalism”. I really don’t care what it’s called. The fact of the matter is that editors have a product to deliver and they engage people who can deliver that product. That product might be a 500-word straight news story, or it might be a 900-word op-ed (which means “entertain the punters and stir them into posting comments”), or it might be a 2000-word feature on a specific topic. Or it might be a video or audio piece.

I do this shit for (currently) ZDNet Australia, CSO Online, Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey, Technology Spectator, ABC The Drum and whoever else wants to call and offer money. I do a weekly podcast for ZDNet and an occasional one for myself.

As a supposedly-specialist I end up being a go-to person for comment in other media too.

I also have some legacy technical clients for whom I manage websites or solve network problems. That’s a far better hourly rate but not as much fun.

How did I get here? I’ve been fascinated by language and writing since I was a six-year-old, when I asked for a typewriter as a birthday present. When I got to university I studied computing science and linguistics, but also edited newsletters. When I was maybe 21 I dumped a perfectly good job and volunteered for a community radio station and learnt the craft of broadcasting — and a couple of years later I got a job as a producer for ABC Radio.

The rest is history. See my LinkedIn profile.

2. What is journalism to you? …

• Senate to re-open Bloggers versus Journalists
• Note to “old media” journalists: adapt, or stfu!
• When is a journalist not a journalist?

Above all it’s storytelling. Telling stories that help people explain to each other the world around them.

There’s a lot of pious bullshit talked about journalism, about uncovering the Truth. But at its heart it’s storytelling and entertainment — a core human need.

In all this “journalism is dying” rubbish there’s a core issue that’s forgotten: the vast majority of journalists are factory workers, producing media objects for industrial-age media factories, and they’re just shit-scared about their job security.

3. In a survey in 1991 Public Relations Practitioners believed that 40% of output was based on Public Relations. Editors in contracts estimated it to be an average of 20%. Around what percentage of the news that you produce would you say is sourced from PR? When it comes to working with PR on some articles, how vital is the information that they give you?

20%? 40%? Hahahahahahahahaha! Check out the Crikey/UTS analysis done the other year. It’s WAY over 50% and tech journalism was the worst with 78% of news stories being the direct result of PR placement.

I’ve just counted my own output for the last few months and maybe it’s only 1/3 with some PR input, and perhaps a third of those are little more than straight rewrites of PR material. But then the bulk of my work is analysis and commentary, not daily news cycle reportage.

What’s your count of my work? It’s all listed on my website…

How do you measure this? A government minister announces a new policy and their PR people send the documents. You report what the minister says, read the reports, write some analysis. Was that story PR-driven?

How vital the PR input is to the story depends wildly upon the story itself and what the PR input actually is. Something that might have been seen as important — a company’s view on some aspect of the industry — might be sought and yet comes back as a bland, cliche-filled piece of overly-legalled corporate speak. So it gets dropped.

4. How do you decide if something is news worthy? …

How close are we to deadline?

That’s actually serious. If we’re running out of time then things that might not have seemed newsworthy three hours ago can suddenly look appealing.

If I have to write down words then I’ll end up listing all the standard stuff you see in journalism textbooks. Is it new? Interesting? Surprising? Affects lots of people? Represents danger or excitement or a change of worldview? is there human drama such as a power struggle? Is something being exposed that was otherwise hidden?

But really, this stuff is really decided by a gut emotional reaction. You either know what’s news or you don’t.

Or: Is it the sort of thing that’s going to get people talking to each other about it?

… Is there anything PR practitioners can do to persuade you to place their news over another more notable article?

Of course not. Notability or newsworthiness is the determining factor in editorial. Why on earth would any ethical journalist run a less-newsworthy story as lead?

I believe what you’re referring to is called “advertising placement”.

5. Between Journalists and PR practitioners, who do you believe holds more control and why?

Control of what? Of what the audience sees? The journalist. Always. They choose what they write and the manner in which it’s written — well, in conjunction with their editor. Whether they choose to be responsible and ethical and take control is another question.

As soon as you hear a PR person thank a journalist for their “support”, you know that that journalist has failed. They’ve put the needs of someone else ahead of the needs of their audience.

If PR people want more control, then again I believe that’s called “advertising”.

6. What are some strategies that are or could be implemented so that gatekeepers and PR firms can build a strong relationship which allows a win-win situation?

Well, I don’t think of this in terms of wins and losses. But to answer more broadly I think this is less about cultivating relationships with journalists — I mean, by all means buy me lunch or a drink, but that’s just basic courtesy and what you’re buying is the lunch or the drink, not the story — and more about cultivating an acceptable, rational, honest public face for the organisation you represent.

You’ll hear journalists talk about “PR droids” and “minions”. They’re the ones who only ever contact you when they have something to sell, never go beyond the specific line they’re currently pushing, and never seem to think about what kind or work you actually do. They’re the ones who, when asked if there’s a comment on some topic, copy and paste some crap we’ve all seen before, Yawn.

Good PR people develop a a human face for the organisation. Real people saying things they’d say to other real people.

• Why all corporate PR droids should be shot

7. Could you please describe a relationship that you have with a Public Relations Practitioner, how that relationship started and what it’s like now?

I try not to be too close to PR people. Better objectivity comes from maintaining a bit of professional distance.

That’s not the answer you wanted, I know, but I’m on deadline now — a story that was commissioned two hours ago. And to be honest the question feels like you’re asking “How do you get along with the people you encounter?” Every one is different.

I’m about to flip over to the 1000 #iiTrial decision in the High Court and I have to file by midday. If you do have suitable timelines maybe we can come back to that.

Hope this helps. Do feel free to come back to me.

Cheers,

Stil

So, um, what do you think? Have I given this poor student a hard time? Is there anything I should’ve added?

Oh. And I asked them to set me a deadline and they said midday Friday so I sent it by like before 10am but they still haven’t acknowledged receiving it so I reckon they just made some shit up for the deadline.

Yes, less than two days since I posted episode 18, today’s bullshit reportage on a video in which former prime minister Kevin Rudd swears a few times — shock horror! — and a bunch of unsubstantiated rumours from Canberra have triggered this episode.

Just look at this crap, from ninemsn. Even the ABC, which is supposed to be a credible, non-sensationalist news outlet, covers the swearing but then has two “related stories” about the speculation about a leadership challenge, that the cabinet is supposed repeatedly testing support for Julia Gillard and that attorney-general Nicola Roxon had declared her support for her.

The Australian has at least six stories linked from its home page, including some irrelevant commentary from opposition leader Tony Abbott and even Rudd saying he’d do it differently now.

Seven is reporting that independent MP Andrew Wilkie reckons Rudd will launch a challenge, describing the video as “explosive”.

This entire episode is an embarrassment. It’s this sort of Canberra pseudo-insider bullshit that’s precisely the reason I don’t read newspapers or their websites and don’t watch TV news. It’s all a sideshow, the so-called journalists who perpetuate this bullshit know it, and yet they continue to do it.

Why?

Well I think I know why this fucktardery happens, and I have a modest proposal for fixing it.

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.

Um, except… no… oh fuck no, not this!

News has just come through — well, Dennis Shanahan says — that Rudd’s leadership challenge is on. Really. May God have mercy upon our souls.

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 ABC News24 and, of course, the video in question. 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.]

And so it was that at 2.30pm I was interviewed for the station’s current affairs program The Wire by Calliste Weitenberg, along with The Global Mail’s managing editor Monica Attard.

If you haven’t caught up with this yet, The Global Mail has no advertising and no subscription fees. It’s funded entirely by philanthropy — in this case $15 million over five years from Wotif founder Graeme Wood, a man I previously called an arsehat over another matter.

The radio story includes my approval of the new masthead’s long-form journalism and the experience of the editorial team, and notes that it’s easy to differentiate between Wood’s open philanthropy or the similar position held by Al Jazeera and the more power-hungry approach of Rupert Murdoch or would-be media magnate Gina Rinehart.

What it omits is my observation that despite Attard’s claim that everyone is their audience the staff seem almost entirely white middle-aged middle-class types, that you can’t possibly be everything to all people, and that I’m hanging out for things like database journalism and innovative storytelling techniques.

And don’t get me started on the custom sideways scrolling that simple doesn’t respond to trackpad gestures on my MacBook Pro.

But all that said, it’s only Day One for The Global Mail. I wish them well.

The audio is ©2012 2SER-FM 107.3, and you can download a podcast of the entire episode. But as usual I’m archiving and mirroring the relevant segment here.

This is a start-of-year get-together for IT journalists and the vendors who wish to spruik to them. There is also drinking. Allegedly. I’ll be there along with the usual suspects from Sunday 26 February.

As it happens, it’s worth updating this story. Yes, Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter and we’ve been analysing every single tweet as if it’s being delivered on a stone tablet. But while that was happening, Twitter decided to verify not only Murdoch’s Twitter account but the one belonging to his wife Wendi Deng.

Except they verified the wrong one. @Wendi_Deng was a spoof account set up by a chap in London. Business Insider ran a transcript of the fake Deng coming clean, and questions were asked about Twitter’s still-secret verification process.

It should’ve been @wendideng, without the underscore, although as I write this the real account has been taken offline.

Mathew Ingram’s piece at GigaOM summed it up nicely: Why Twitter’s “verified account” failure matters. It’s about trust.

Anyway the ABC Radio conversation wandered well into other matters and hardly touched upon Rupert and Wendi. The pace of news. The appropriateness of Twitter marketing. Potential revenue streams for Twitter. And so on. And so forth.

The Sundays presenter was Jennifer Fleming, who’s filling in for James O’Loghlin over summer. The producer was Siobhan Moylan.

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Apparently Sundays is usually podcast, but I’m going to post my interview here anyway.

In this episode you’ll hear what I think about the Sydney Morning Herald’s review of 2011 and Charlie Brooker and his drama series Black Mirror.

I also refer to Charlie Brooker’s glorious explanation of the grammar of a TV news story. Watch it.

And as I mentioned on Twitter, this episode has been recorded in bursts of one-take recordings at the C Bar, also known as the Chamberlain Hotel in Haymarket, Sydney. The arseholes closed early. I refer to that, and I shall follow it up next episode.

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.]

There’s not a lot to choose from this year. Most of my writing has been elsewhere. But there’s some interesting results nonetheless.

1. Right, Google, you stupid cunts, this is simply not on! I’m not surprised this is the most-read, but it simply wouldn’t have gotten the attention it did if it weren’t for the c-word. I’ve actually received quite a few compliments about this post.
2. I just don’t get LinkedIn, do you?
3. Follow Politics & Technology Forum people on Twitter.
4. Patch Monday: There are no NBN apps: Turnbull. Given that this is actually just linkage to the podcast site, I’m surprised it got this many views.
5. On stage for the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum, being my plug for the event.
6. Goodbye, Artemis. I’m hardly surprised this one generated so much traffic. There was so much interest in the demise of this much-loved feline.
7. So LinkedIn is a giant Rolodex, eh?
8. Twitter: a guide for busy paranoids
9. And so begins 2011… in fear, being one of my rare personal pieces.
10. Google+ gives me grief, generally

And here are the 10 most-read posts of 2011 that weren’t written in 2011.

1. So this is human sexuality? This is what happens when you fill a post with sex-related keywords.
2. Why all corporate PR droids should be shot
3. HTC Desire to OS X tethering via USB, still getting hits despite being for an outdated version of Android.
4. Conroy’s speech to ALIA Information Online 2009
5. Jim Wallace’s pro-censorship lies and distortions. I’m surprised that this post in particular was pulling traffic, out of all those about internet censorship, because I don’t think it’s the best.
6. My new hero: Hideki Moronuki
7. Viocorp Future Forum: The Future of News Reporting
8. Note to “old media” journalists: adapt, or stfu!
9. Topic 9 to discuss Australia 2020 Summit’s government topic
10. Cheap fake tan and fat thighs? Snooki!

If you’d like to compare this with previous years, try these:

• Most popular posts of 2010
• Most popular posts of 2009
• Most popular posts of 2008
• Most popular posts of 2007

I think he did it deliberately. Watch the video and see for yourself.

Also, Australians are a bunch of wankers with an inflated sense of entitlement.

We are the richest people in the world. And, as Possum of Possum’s Pollytics explained in Crikey last Thursday, we lead the world in everything from decent minimum wages to economic growth over the past decade. Read that article. Please. And while you’re at it, see where you sit on the Global Rich List.

We also hear about the world’s most impatient meth dealer.

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.

[Update 16 December 2011: My comments about Senator Conroy's f-bomb have sparked some interest. If you're after that bit, it starts exactly 11 minutes into the program.]

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.]

Three years ago I even managed to tweet some interesting observations and compile them into blog posts. But these days Twitter has completely taken over the role of recording my personal life and this website has, I think, suffered.

I used to post long, thoughtful essays. Now, such essays tend to be about the things I write about for money, and published elsewhere — and there’s nothing wrong with that, except that I’m possibly becoming typecast as a “tech writer”. But between writing several pieces a week for money and maintaining a high-volume Twitter stream, there isn’t time or energy left for much else.

My other podcast The 9pm Edict has disappeared. So has my little video program Stilgherrian Live. So have presentations like the one I did for PodCamp 2007.

Have I got the balance right? I think not.

That’s not all I’ve gotten wrong this year. But I won’t wallow in the mistakes here. Or at least not now. I’ll merely note that perhaps I do need to disconnect more, provide more time for reflection. And maybe those thoughtful essays will reappear.

High-profile hacking collective LulzSec is currently claiming to have hacked UK newspaper The Sun and redirected its home page to a fake story about the suicide of Rupert Murdoch.

While The Sun was looking just fine to me, there was certainly a story inserted into a News International website.

The screenshot shows the page at www.new-times.co.uk/sun/ as of about 0730 AEST this morning.

Gizmodo is currently saying the home page was hacked, but they’re also saying the hack was done by Anonymous. That’s journalism right there.

At 0815 AEST LulzSec then claimed to have redirected The Sun home page to their Twitter feed. I’ve just confirmed that to be true.

Since I write about information security, it looks like I’m in for a busy day. I’ll update this post as things unfold.

[Update 0910 AEST: I've had many witnesses confirm that The Sun's home page did indeed redirect to the fake story. I will assume for the moment that the Next G mobile broadband I'm currently using is cached to buggery.]

[Update 1015 AEST: My story at CSO Online has just been published, LulzSec hacks UK's "The Sun", News International. Meanwhile, a few minutes ago LulzSec claimed that "News International's DNS servers (link web addresses to servers) and all 1,024 web addresses are down."]

[Update 1235 AEST: The consensus seems to be that News International has taken itself offline. There has been no further activity from LulzSec, apart from more of their trademark cocky tweets.]

[Update 1415 AEST: My Crikey story is now online, LulzSec 1, Murdoch 0: News Int, the hacker, becomes the hacked.]

[Update 1840 AEST: I've just posted audio of my interview with ABC 774 Melbourne on this story.]

It seems that awareness of the News of the World voicemail hacking scandal is starting to spread from media-about-the-media like Crikey through the mainstream current affairs programs to, well, mainstream talk radio.

Earlier this morning I was interviewed on the topic by Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa, and here’s the audio.

It was kinda fun to be interviewed by presenters Keith Conlon and John Kenneally. Keith taught me how to do radio when I started in that medium and he was station manager at what is now Radio Adelaide. I later worked with him and with John at the ABC. And the newsreader I heard just before our interview, Jane Doyle, was at the ABC at that time too. Small world.

The audio is ©2011 dmgRadio Australia, but since they don’t post many of their live interviews I’m doing their job for them. Besides, it’s not as if I get paid, and it’s not as if this ain’t a decent plug for them.

Interestingly, most of the soundbites we recorded were about how easy it is to access someone’s voicemail, but the resulting story was more about whether something like the News of the World scandal could already be happening in Australia.

Recording this piece was a pleasant reminder of working in daily live radio. The pace is kinda fun. The ABC called me at 2.15pm, and arranged for the crew to meet me at 3.15pm. We drove to a nearby park and recorded the main interview as well as the cutaways in a total of 45 minutes. And that was in between the noise of aircraft taking off, motor cycles, and pedestrians and cyclists walking between me and the camera.

I’m shown using both laptop and phone. Does that put me into the category of mouse-using TV expert?

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Despite succumbing to a random fever for two or three days, I got quite a bit of writing done — and then forgot to post this until Monday. Sigh.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 79, “Cybercrime convention: civil liberties risk?”. Australia intends to sign on to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. My guests? Cybercrime specialist Nigel Phair from the Surete Group, who’s previously been with the Australian High Tech Crime Centre. His second book has just been published, Cybercrime: The Challenge for the Legal Profession. And Electronic Frontiers Australia chair Colin Jacobs.

Articles

• How Al Jazeera leads the world in social media for news reporting, for Crikey, based on comments made by their head of social media Riyaad Minty at Digital Directions 2011.
• Apple: saving old media, or just making them its bitch?, for Crikey. This was based on material presented at Digital Directions 2011 and elsewhere. I simply don’t get this idea that Apple’s iPad will be the saviour of the media factories.
• Digital fingerprints the next privacy invasion?, for ABC Unleashed, a more personal opinion on the plans to sign on to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.
• Two chefs, Next G and the ‘wireless’ confusion, for CRN Australia. My first article for this masthead is about the communication gap between IT vendors and their small business customers.

Media Appearances

• I was a guest on this week’s edition of The Fourth Estate, the community radio program and podcast, talking about Australia’s new journalist shield law.

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: Tea Tree Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls, where I've been living. I'll write more about this experience very soon.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. With three full working days occupied by conferences, I still managed to get a few things done. And not all of it was drinking.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 78, “Bionic eyes, gigabit Wi-Fi and the NBN”. This is my wrap-up of the NICTA Techfest, including an interview with Dr Terry Percival, one of the inventors of Wi-Fi, about potential future uses of the National Broadband Network. He reckons video will be the killer technology, with the world returning to non-written communication as the norm.

Articles

• Build the NBN, but be careful of the detail: Optus boss, for Crikey. Some of what Optus CEO Paul O’Sullivan had to say at the Kickstart Forum on Sunday.
• Journo shield law covers bloggers, independent media, for Crikey. The Evidence Amendment (Journalists’ Privilege) Bill 2010 was originally intended to give protection only to employee-journalists. Simple but effective amendments by The Greens extended protection to everyone who publishes news or commentary in any medium.

Media Appearances

• This week’s edition of the Business 21C Weekly podcast from Sydney community radio station 2SER was all about the Australian government’s plans for internet censorship, and I was one of the guests. The program also features web developer Scott David from Flock and the president of the Internet Society of Australia, Tony Hill.

Corporate Largesse

• The Kickstart Forum on the Gold Coast continued on Monday and Tuesday. My airfares and accommodation were paid for by the organisers, Media Connect. Monday’s lunch was sponsored by Samsung. There was also plenty of freebies from the vendors, though notably less than last year. And substantially fewer USB memory sticks. Should I bother reporting all this stuff? If nothing else, it’s interesting to document for posterity.
• On Thursday I attended the Digital Directions 2011 conference as their guest. They provided food and drink. Stories relates to the event will appear next week.
• The lovely folks at Saasu — well, their CEO Marc Lehmann — decided to give me a three-month extension on my subscription, just as a gift. I’d still say it’s a delightful online accounting system even without that.

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 this morning from the front door of Tea Tree Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls, where I'm living this week. I'll write more about this experience very soon.]