This will be a boring post for anyone not interested in Linux, so I’ll put the content after the jump.

Stilgherrian’s coverage

Written articles:

• Open source needed to save democracy, ZDNet Australia, 18 January 2012. Also published at TechRepublic.
• Aus becoming surveillance state: Ludlam, ZDNet Australia, 20 January 2012.
• No SOPA for Australia: AG (contributor only), ZDNet Australia, 20 January 2012.
• Untested buggy UEFI heads for prime-time, ZDNet Australia, 23 January 2012. Also published at TechRepublic.
• Ah, the tech-soap that is Apple will run and run, Crikey, 25 January 2012. Warning: This article offends pompous Randroids. Apparently. Fuck ‘em.
• Linux.conf.au 2012 photos, ZDNet Australia, 25 January 2012. Also published at TechRepublic.

Podcasts:

• TechRepublic at Linux.conf.au, episode 1, “Three threats and a balloon”. Also posted at ZDNet Australia as Linux should copy Apple on user rapport, which isn’t trolling at all. Includes open source luminary Bruce Perens’ comments on a certain attitude problem in some sections of the community, LWN.com’s Jonathan Corbet about the challenges facing Linux kernel development in 2012, and a brief introduction to Project Horus, which has used balloons to send Linux computers to the edge of space.
• TechRepublic at Linux.conf.au, episode 2, “FreedomBox’s privacy”. Also posted at ZDNet Australia. FreedomBox Foundation board member and developer Bdale Garbee provides a progress report on their privacy-enhancing personal servers, Red Hat’s experimental platform as a service (PaaS) product OpenShift is explained by its evangelist and open-source advocate Mark Atwood, and we report exactly what happened to that Linux-equipped balloon launched by Project Horus that we mentioned in episode 1.
• TechRepublic at Linux.conf.au, episode 3, “Cyborg lawyer demands source”. Also posted at ZDNet Australia as Cyborg lawyer demands software source. Lawyer Karen Sandler explains the links between her potentially fatal heart condition and software freedom, there’s part two of our look at FreedomBox, and a conversation with Mary Gardiner and Valerie Aurora about the Ada Initiative, a project to increase the participation of women in open technology and culture.
• TechRepublic at Linux.conf.au, episode 4, “Planes, sounds and freedom”. Also posted at ZDNet Australia as Linux.conf.au 2012: planes and freedom. Security researcher, software hacker and activist Jacob Appelbaum explains the problem with the surveillance state and what individuals can do about it, David Rowe explains the Codec 2 audio compression software that can transmit intelligible speech in as little as 1400 bits per second, and Andrew Tridgell, best-known for his role in developing the Samba networking technology, introduces us to his recent work with semi-autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Angus Kidman’s coverage

• LCA2012 Diary: Student Life And Presentation Panic
• Perens: The iPhone is Destroying Democracy (And Open Source)
• How Can You Stop Your Lanyard Flipping Over?
• LCA2012 Diary: The Smart And The Sweaty
• Beware Of The Decoy Effect When Shopping
• LCA2012 Diary: Rum, Rain, Rehearsals
• Awesome! High-Altitude Balloon Launch At Linux.conf.au In Ballarat

It’s also worth reading Angus’ Linux.conf.au presentation, Cheap Tabloid Tricks: The Truth About Linux, Open Source And The Media. Or watch the video, because that includes the bonus audience questions. It’s a fine reality-check.

Sam Gentle’s coverage

• Ludlam warns against online rights complacency
• Microsoft takes aim at rootkits, misses
• Locking down Linux.conf.au

The main cause of that was covering Linux.conf.au 2012 (LCA) conference. Indeed, some of the conference coverage wasn’t posted until well into the following week — which is this week as I’m posting this post, except it shouldn’t be because this post is about last week. Confused? You should’ve been there!

Now there’s so much stuff here that I’m posting the main body of text over the fold. If you’re only seeing the preview, do click through ‘cos there’s a very important question about the photo.

Podcasts

This week was Podcast Hell. Or Podcast Heaven, depending on how you look at it. Apart from the regular Patch Monday, I did a serious of four daily podcasts from the Linux.conf.au 2012 conference. Ermph.

• Patch Monday episode 122, “Cyber extortion: a victim’s story”, in which Suleiman Revell explains what it’s like when a distributed denial of service attack takes your business offline.
• TechRepublic at Linux.conf.au, episode 1, “Three threats and a balloon”. Also posted at ZDNet Australia as Linux should copy Apple on user rapport, which isn’t trolling at all. Includes open source luminary Bruce Perens’ comments on a certain attitude problem in some sections of the community, LWN.com’s Jonathan Corbet about the challenges facing Linux kernel development in 2012, and a brief introduction to Project Horus, which has used balloons to send Linux computers to the edge of space.
• TechRepublic at Linux.conf.au, episode 2, “FreedomBox’s privacy”. Also posted at ZDNet Australia. FreedomBox Foundation board member and developer Bdale Garbee provides a progress report on their privacy-enhancing personal servers, Red Hat’s experimental platform as a service (PaaS) product OpenShift is explained by its evangelist and open-source advocate Mark Atwood, and we report exactly what happened to that Linux-equipped balloon launched by Project Horus that we mentioned in episode 1.
• TechRepublic at Linux.conf.au, episode 3, “Cyborg lawyer demands source”. Also posted at ZDNet Australia as Cyborg lawyer demands software source. Lawyer Karen Sandler explains the links between her potentially fatal heart condition and software freedom, there’s part two of our look at FreedomBox, and a conversation with Mary Gardiner and Valerie Aurora about the Ada Initiative, a project to increase the participation of women in open technology and culture.
• TechRepublic at Linux.conf.au, episode 4, “Planes, sounds and freedom”. Also posted at ZDNet Australia as Linux.conf.au 2012: planes and freedom. Security researcher, software hacker and activist Jacob Appelbaum explains the problem with the surveillance state and what individuals can do about it, David Rowe explains the Codec 2 audio compression software that can transmit intelligible speech in as little as 1400 bits per second, and Andrew Tridgell, best-known for his role in developing the Samba networking technology, introduces us to his recent work with semi-autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Articles

• Open source needed to save democracy, ZDNet Australia, 18 January 2012. Also published at TechRepublic.
• Aus becoming surveillance state: Ludlam, ZDNet Australia, 20 January 2012.
• No SOPA for Australia: AG (contributor only), ZDNet Australia, 20 January 2012.

Media Appearances

• On Wednesday morning I spoke about the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and the internet blackout protest with Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa.
• On Wednesday evening I spoke about the same thing on ABC Local Radio with Dom Knight, but I screwed up the recording.

Corporate Largesse

None. Again. All the Linux.conf.au social events were part of a conference I covered so that’s work, dammit. And the stingy bastards at The Greens and Electronic Frontiers Australia didn’t provide any refreshments at Saturday’s War on the Internet forum. No wonder I drink.

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: Trackside Australia, Victorian division. This snapshot was taken from the train somewhere between Melbourne and Ballarat. Can anyone identify the precise location? The location has been identified as the spot where the Bacchus Marsh – Balliang Road crosses the railway.]

I’m exhausted. So it might be another day or two before I catch up with everything here. As usual, the best way to stay in touch with what I’m doing is my high-volume Twitter stream.

OK, the fact that the new TweetDeck doesn’t run under Adobe AIR but directly as an OS X program will improve the battery life of my MacBook Pro. Eventually. When the program catches up to what we’d all been used to.

Whenever the heck that’s likely to be.

I’m not holding my breath.

Until then, here’s TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for OS X [2.4MB .zip], the final Adobe AIR version. Enjoy.

[Update 0840: You can download the equivalent TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Windows from OldApps.com. It'll do you for Windows XP, Vista, or 7.]

[Update 0850: Can we trust that website? I'd better mirror it here. Here's TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Windows [2.4MB .zip]]

[Update 0900: And now we also have a Linux installer! For your enjoyment, TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Linux. Thank you, sylmobile.]

While in many ways it’s a standard conference coverage gig, it’ll be particularly interesting for a few reasons.

• I’ll get to interview some developers with unusual experiences such as Jacob Appelbaum, developer of The TOR Project, to name just one. Indeed, I’m hoping he’ll be a guest for the Patch Monday podcast.
• We’re toying with the idea of doing a daily podcast. That’d be a fun challenge, if exhausting.
• I’ll end up giving myself a crash updater course on Linux. While I’ve been a Linux systems administrator for years, and even did some less-common stuff such as custom installer CDs, I haven’t really done any hands-on work for two or three years. Geekery shall ensue.
• I haven’t been to Ballarat in ages, and it’s a lovely little town.

I’ll post further details of my plans for the trip and our plans for the coverage as we get closer to the date.

At this stage it looks like I’ll arrive in Ballarat on Monday 16 January and depart on Saturday 21 January. My intention is to bracket the event with other things in Melbourne. If you know of anything that you think I should know about, please tell me!

I’m off to America! Some tin-pot little IT start-up called Microsoft has invited me to visit their headquarters in Redmond, Washington (pictured) to find out what they’re doing about security, and in particular their Trustworthy Computing initiatives.

Now if you’re a crusty old network administrator like me, you may think that “Microsoft” and “security” in the same sentence is an oxymoron. A decade ago I was building Linux-based firewalls and, like so many people doing the same, I referred to Windows-based computers as “the targets”. And certainly the vast majority of the world’s malware is targeted at Windows.

But I’ve always though that the simplistic “Windows is bad, m’kay” was a bit, well, simplistic. Information security isn’t just about the technology, it’s also about people. Human factors are also the weakest link. And over the years I’ve found that people who throw around those tired platform-wars slogans usually aren’t up to date when it comes to the things they love to hate.

So, I’m off to Redmond later this month to spend three days with some of Microsoft’s engineers and developers, including briefing sessions with senior executives from Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group.

There’s a lot to cover here, so what should I be looking at, do you think? The security of Windows Server, or Windows 7, or of Microsoft’s cloud services? Privacy issues? The fight against foreign governments, criminals and child abusers? Viruses and malware? Identity and authentication? What? You tell me!

What are some of the hard questions I should be asking?

Some of what I do will end up in a special edition of the Patch Monday podcast, and I’m also doing a “Letter from Redmond” for Crikey‘s “Letter from…” column. And I’ll be looking for more writing opportunities.

Dear Editors and Producers, is there anything you’d like me to research and write about? Please let me know if you’d like me to pitch some stories.

I’ll be flying out of Sydney on Monday 24 May, and will be in Redmond from Tuesday to Thursday that week, Seattle time. And yes, Microsoft is paying for the airfares, meals and accommodation, so there’s your journalistic disclosure.

[Photo: Microsoft's Redmond Campus, looking east, courtesy Microsoft Inc.]

• REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits: I haven’t encountered this audio/music production tool before. It’s perhaps worth a look.
• Experts look to Australia’s Aborigines for weather help: As it happens, the Aboriginal tribes of the Sydney basin recognised six season, not the European four.
• The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer: This was published back in March, but it’ll show you how trust in various things has changed over time.
• Salvage Techniques for Wet Electronics | Andy Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA): The title says what it is. Yes, I have wet electronics. I dropped my phone in a “moist environment” and it’s now sitting with silica gel and probably never working again. Read this guide now so you know the drill for the future.
• For SEC, tech-savvy fans might be biggest threats to media exclusivity | St Petersburg Times: The US Southeastern Conference of college sports is trying to stop fans communicating about the game in the most stringent restrictions ever seem. A pity they can’t possibly work.
• User driven service bingo | Doc Searls Weblog: A checklist of activities to see whether some web service or other is truly “user driven”. Does this apply to organisations too?
• Electronic Warfare: Airborne electronic attack – a new offensive role for the RAAF | ADM: Someone took me to task for suggesting the RAAF buying F/A-18 Super Hornets was a waste. He suggested the electronic warfare capability of the “Growler” model was a worthwhile addition to Australia’s defence capability.
• Stop Using the Word “We” | Ted Dziuba: A plea for more direct communication within the corporation. Yes please.
• Economics is not a Natural Science by Douglas Rushkoff | Edge: “Some of us analyzing digital culture and its impact on business must reveal economics as the artificial construction it really is. Although it may be subjected to the scientific method and mathematical scrutiny, it is not a natural science; it is game theory, with a set of underlying assumptions that have little to do with anything resembling genetics, neurology, evolution, or natural systems.”
• Impatient CEOs are all of a Twitter, but it doesn’t work like that | The Observer: John Naughton points out a real dilemma: CEOs have to generate profits to a quarterly cycle, but the business benefits of “social media” (or whatever it’s called next month) will take decades to emerge.
• Draft Open Access and Licensing Framework released | In Development: The New Zealand government’s draft policy recommends that government agencies use the most liberal Creative Commons licensing possible.
• Stark realisation: I no longer depend on Google to find stuff | Alex J Campbell: Alex differentiates between “finding” and “locating”, and along the way observes that the changes in the way we do these things has profound implications for businesses trying to get customers online.
• Words for Webstock – Bruce Sterling: Bruce Sterling sees the Future, and it’s banal. Just like today.
• Last Year’s Model: “It’s totally normal to lust after the hottest new geeky gadgets. It’s also cool to put some thought into what we buy, and what we throw away. So this is a place to show the world that a lot of us are choosing to use Last Year’s Model.” Their slogan is “Saving the planet through sheer laziness”, but it’s also a call for a more informed choice about consuming less.
• OSX Timemachine and Samba/Windows share | Hupio’s Weblog: How to use Apple’s OS X 10.5.2 Time Machine backup software with a Linux server, Windows server or Windows network share. It presumably works just as well with later versions.
• The next 100 years | New Statesman: An extract from Stratfor founder George Friedman’s book of the same name. Can you imagine a war between a Japan-Turkey alliance and US-Poland?
• Depression’s Evolutionary Roots | Scientific American: New research seems to indicate that depression isn’t something “broken”, but rather the brain going into an altered state so that “deep rumination” can be uninterrupted, leading to better analysis of a complex problem. If so, doesn’t that mean anti-depressant medications are preventing the problem being solved?
• John Thompson-Mills: John was the producer of Club Escape, the dance music program I presented with Scott Thompson on Triple J back in 1990 or whenever it was. Happy to have stumbled across this.
• CHART OF THE DAY: Actually, Kids Don’t Hate Twitter Anymore! | Silicon Valley Insider: “While Twitter’s user base historically favored older users, people between ages 12-24 have been Twitter’s fastest growing age group of late. And now that age group is actually disproportionately visiting Twitter, according to comScore.”

• The Age of the Essay | Paul Graham: This essay dates from 2004, but it’s still valid. The essay, the kind that’s about exploring an issue, is a natural form of writing online. Plus I like his comments about disobedience and creativity.
• GLAM | Wikimedia Australia: One for your diaries! A little conference called “Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums & Wikimedia: Finding the common ground” at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 6-7 August 2009. Hosted by Wikimedia Australia, with discussions on four themes: Education, Technology, Business, Law. To be opened by Senator Kate Lundy, Senator for the ACT.
• That 180ms is the bane of my life: Network engineer Glen Turner explains why the 180 milliseconds it takes for Internet data to cross the Pacific causes problems. “You’ve got to realise that Australia is almost unique in being a long way from the centre of gravity of its language. Broadly, almost all German-speakers live in Germany, whereas a tiny proportion of English-speakers live in Australia. That has an effect on Internet traffic. Most Internet traffic in Germany stays within Germany. Most Internet traffic in Australia goes offshore.”
• One thing PC users can do that Mac users can’t…: Crude but effective.
• Media and Brand Supremacy: Why the New Media Brand Could Be Nike | The Huffington Post: Heidi Sinclair notes that individual journalists and commentators are sometimes bigger news brands than the outlets they work for. There’s plenty here which meshes with my complains that some folks don’t separate the content (“news”) from the container (“newspapers”).
• texts from last night: A scarily funny collection of people’s (allegedly) drunken text messages. Don’t click through unless you’ve got plenty of time to spare.
• Death in Birth – Where Life’s Start Is a Deadly Risk | NYTimes.com: The first of three articles on efforts to lower the death rate in Tanzania. Excellent timing, given Project TOTO. Challenging to read, however
• The Angelina Factor | Bitchy Jones’ Diary: A ranty article which, in language which may be confronting for some, explores the social and psycho-sexual issues around the idea that Angelina Jolie is universally sexually attractive. Just for the record, I do not find her the least bit attractive.
• Rethinking the Global Money Supply: Scientific American: China has proposed that the world move to a more symmetrical monetary system, in which nations peg their currencies to a representative basket of others rather than to the US dollar alone. The article includes a little history, too.
• “We did not know that child abuse was a crime,”says retired Catholic archbishop | the freethinker: The retired Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert G Weakland, says “We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature… [I] Accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it’.” WTF?
• Comedy Thrives in Times of Despair | Spiegel Online: Monty Python’s Michael Palin on what the financial crisis is a boon for comics, and the perils of political correctness.
• Hello Africa | Vimeo: A 42-minute documentary about mobile phone culture in Africa.
• Shell On Trial | newmatilda.com: Next week, Shell will appear before a US federal court on charges of torture, extra-judicial killing and crimes against humanity for incidents which took place in the Niger Delta. Will it be the first multinational found guilty of human rights abuses?
• Genital warts take Shoaib out of Twenty20 World Cup | ABC News: There was a time when someone’s medical history was considered private, even if they played sports professionally. Personally, I reckon the specific of Shoaib’s medical problem are none of anyone else’s business.
• PlugComputer Community: The developer community for Marvell’s Plug Computer.
• Plugging In $40 Computers | NYTimes.com: Marvell Technology Group has created a “plug computer”. A tiny plastic box you plug into an electric outlet. No display, but Gigabit Ethernet and a USB. Inside is a 1.2GHz processor running Linux, 512MB RAM and 512MB Flash memory. US$99 today, probably under US$40 in two years.
• Misguided middle-class moaners | BusinessDay: Ross Gittins explodes a few myths about Australia, class, taxation and social welfare.

OK, I’m not going to write a blog post every time the PM tweets something. But this gives you an idea of the scrutiny he’s under. He (or an as-yet-unnamed minion) types eight words and suddenly hundreds of people are a’flutter. Or a’twitter.

Mr Rudd’s first challenge will be to explain why he had over 400 followers last night, and had followed most of them back, but now half of them are gone. It’s probably just a Twitter glitch, but we all Need To Know. Now please. I’m sure the friendly folks at Twitter will respond quickly when they know it’s Australia’s Prime Minister (or an as-yet-unnamed minion) asking. That’s like even more important than Sarah Palin!

Have you ever seen Sarah Palin and Kevin Rudd in the same room? Spooky!

Since my welcome to the PM yesterday, I’ve been thinking about some suitably Prime Ministerial tweets.

Most of us don’t get that classified message each morning telling us where the Prime Minister will be, so it’d be harmless enough to feed us a little information as the day goes by. He could add a personal, reflective note without being a security risk.

“‘Only’ 200 pages to read over breakfast. Now I know why the coffee is free.”
“On way to CBR airport, flying to SYD. Constant travel is the tiring part of the job.”
“Glad to see NSW farmland looking better after the rains. Have farmers started to recover?”

As I said yesterday, Twitter is about just being yourself. Twitter could humanise the role of PM. Make visible the questions in the PM’s mind, like the ones about the farmers, and people will respond. They’ll also understand that Rudd is busy man and won’t respond personally to every reply, but he does need to show that he’s seen what they said.

He could also use Twitter to send (not-so-)subtly coded political messages.

“Meeting Gordon Brown, looking forward to resolving the pensions problem”
“Hoping Conroy’s finished writing his resignation letter”

The folks who write books about political tactics said that one of John Howard’s more successful tricks was using talkback radio to speak over the heads of “the media” and communicate directly with listeners. His mistake was thinking all those bitter, hate-filled time-wasters on the phones were actually representative of Australia now, rather than being an old-fashioned whingefest — the last remnants of a medium almost dead. A bit like Mr Howard himself.

Twitter and other social media tools could allow Rudd to take that tactic to the next level, talking directly over the heads of the talkback hosts, his media minders (read: limiters) and forum moderators to interact directly with The People. A bit like that story of the King going amongst the peasants in disguise, but without the disguise.

He could also use Twitter to listen over the moderators’ heads. If Rudd (or any politician) learned for themselves to use the searching and filtering and analysis tools, they could investigate what they wanted to see, rather than rely on the minions who, let’s face it, are only serving the PM because they want to climb that greasy pole themselves. Would you trust them to give you accurate information if it showed them, personally, in a bad light? I thought not.

There’s a whole essay in there about how politics and government is the last remnant of an age when information was hoarded rather than shared. Us hyperconnected folks know that sharing information is where the power truly lies. That’s the big difference between the industrial age and the post-industrial.

We’re in transition, though. Some organisations get it, some don’t. The open source software community is all about sharing and making the process public — warts and all — and as a result they can deliver a secure operating system like Linux for free when it takes Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars to come close. The NSW state government couldn’t even roll out Wi-Fi hotspots in Sydney because they wanted to plan it from the top down with similarly top-down centrally-controlled businesses. Wrong tool for the job, people!

But, as I say, another essay for another time.

Both of Kevin Rudd’s tweets so far have been exactly eight words, and eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture. Will the next tweet also be eight words, making it the super-lucky “888″ message from Chairman Rudd?

Or, it’s a Full Moon in Spring tonight, the first in Rudd’s time as PM. Maybe this is when he reveals that he’s a super-powered were-robot, and the Twitter account will spew forth the hypnotic trigger-words to activate his army of Iced Vo-Vo-eating slaves. Man, that’d be so cool! Scary though.

Full Moon is at 5.18pm Sydney time.

Bonus Link: The mild-mannered Stephen Collins has unleashed his own super-powers to write Welcome Prime Minister. Now please engage.

• Actor’s Release Form | PakBuzz: I was looking for a sample release form which people could use to sign away their rights when they participate in my media projects. This one isn’t a bad start.
• Video Capture and Editing in Linux using Kino | SLUG: Marghanita da Cruz’s notes from a year ago, explaining how to use a low-end (by today’s standards) laptop, free Kino software and consumer-grade video cameras to capture and edit video.
• Is there anybody out there? | VatorNews: A 22-minute video interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in which he explains the concept of “ambient social awareness”.
• Cake Wrecks: As the subtitle explains, this is blog is about “when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong”. Gentle amusement value.
• Wirecast : Vara Software: “Wirecast is the most advanced live webcasting product available for your Mac or PC. You can stream multiple live video cameras, while dynamically mixing in other media (movies, images etc).” To be investigated soon, though the US$500 commercial license is putting me off a bit.
• RAAF Bases | Google Maps: A map showing the bases operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
• Mines of Papua New Guinea | Google Maps: A map showing the location of (presumably significant) mines in PNG.
• AtGoogleTalks’ Channel | YouTube: Full recordings of the various @Google events, such as Authors@Google. More than 450 of them, including names like Noam Chomsky, George Lakoff, Salman Rushdie, Ralph Nader, Barack Obama…
• Big Things of Australia | Google Maps: There’s more than 145 Big Things in Australia, from the original Big Banana in Coffs Harbour to… Well, this map shows them all. Explore!

• The State of the Web – Summer 2008: A million people mentioned this fine commentary on the current state of the web. Nice work.
• Future of Media Summit 2008 | Future Exploration Network: The third annual Future of Media Summit will be held simultaneously in Silicon Valley on 14 July and Sydney on 15 July. Why was I not told about this? OK, time to scam…
• TuneRanger | Acertant: A tool to synchronise, copy or merge multiple iTunes libraries and iPods over the network. Available for both OS X and Windows. US$29, with 30-day free trial.
• Mercury Messenger: Client software for MSN Messenger written in Java and runnable on OS X, Windows and Linux. Allows you to use the Mac's built-in iSight camera for video chats, unlike Microsoft's own software.
• Scrivener | Literature and Latte: Word processors are for processing words. Like processed cheese. If you CREATE words, then you need a writing tool. Scrivener is just that, for OS X only.
• iPhone in Australia – now for the bad news | Web Directions: A comprehensive analysis of the available data plans to support iPhone in Australia. Recommends NOT getting an iPhone yet to force carriers to lift their game.

• NSLU2-Linux: Technical information for hacking the Linksys NSLU2 NAS device, along with the Synology DS101, the Iomega NAS100d, the D-Link DSMG600 and other ixp4xx-based devices with large attached storage.
• Hacking WD MyBook World Ed: Western Digital's My Book World Edition network storage device is actually a little Linux RAID server. This Wiki has technical information on how to hack them.
• Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like A Horse: Well, she does. And here's the website. Proof that people have too much time on their hands.
• A twittering experiment | eicolab: An interesting use Twitter, with a comment added by yours truly.
• Friends, Enemies and My Army | Viddler.com: Another recent presentation by Mark Pesce, this one at the 2008 Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, on 25 May 2008. A nice trip through the power of Twitter, the "nuclear option", and the surprising influence of Josh Marshall's army.
• Phoenix Lander “Talks” to Twitterers | NYTimes.com: Includes an interview with the NASA employee who's been playing the part of the Mars Phoenix spacecraft on Twitter (@MarsPhoenix).
• Australian Strategic Policy Institute: "One for the feed reader", I've been told. I haven't explored this site yet.
• A discussion paper on the singular use of “they”: This link looks like it solves this question forever. If only people read it…
• Twitter Co-Opted by Users as Better SMS, Social Media Platform | URBEINGRECORDED: Yet another superb essay on the impact of Twitter.
• The Gruen Transfer | ABC TV: A new TV series looking at the art and science of persuasion as used by the advertising industry. Much good stuff here.
• Ern Malley | Wikipedia: Not exactly a new story, but I was recently reminded of this wonderful literary hoax from the 1940s.
• Scaling a Microblogging Service – Part I | Hueniverse: A comprehensive but fairly technical explanation of the problems Twitter faces.
• The Digital Media Revolution | YouTube: Mark Pesce, Technology Futurist speaks about the Digital Media Revolution at the SAGEM conference, April 2008, in Adelaide. Will the government heed his advice? In 5 parts, this links to part 1.
• Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address | YouTube: An inspirational 15 mins about the importance of following your dream, even if the end result isn't clear. "You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back."

I’ve finally found a use for that iPod Photo 60GB that’s been languishing in my desk drawer. I’m going to use it as a field recorder for my podcasts.

The resale value of an iPod that’s bigger than a postage stamp but doesn’t play video is, presumably, three-fifths of bugger all. However it can record sound.

Apple deliberately crippled the iPod’s recording functions to mere 8-bit quality — OK for recording dictation and the like, but not good enough for snarfing surreptitious bootlegs of a Silverchair concert. But running Linux on the iPod unleashes its full 16-bit glory.

After a couple hours’ work I now understand the process of Linuxing a ’Pod. But to get it to work, my MacPod (that is, an iPod formatted for Mac file systems) has to be turned into a WinPod (one using Microsoft’s file systems). I won’t bother explaining why, but it’s yet another example of that old phenomenon…

In general, Macs can read Windows file systems, but Windows machines can’t read Mac file systems. Sigh. I’ll finish it on the weekend.

• The Newseum: The interactive museum of news, including "today's front pages" for 500+ world newspapers.
• TV Fugly Awards: An "alternative" to Australia's Logie awards for TV.
• Eurovision Song Contest – Belgrade 2008: Official website of the Eurovision Song Contest.
• The Bugle | Times Online: Weekly news satire audio podcast from the UK.
• The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Richard Hofstadter's article from Harper's Magazine, November 1964. Paranoia Politics isn't new.
• Twitter Rulez! (via Todd Langowski) | Newick: An apt sign spotted in workplace.
• Plugger: Australian Business News: A customisable aggregator for Australian business news.
• Secondary DNS Service: An inexpensive service which provides secondary domain name servers.
• The seriously inconvenient truth on drugs | the Daily Mail: UK Daily Mail columnist Andrew Alexander puts a cogent case for the decriminalisation of recreational drugs.
• A second summer of love: 20th anniversary of acid house: The Guardian's retrospective on the acid house Summer of Love of 1988.
• The Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report 2008: A 20-page report on the state of the open source software world in Australia. A freely downloadable PDF and is redistributable under a Creative Commons BY-ND license.