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Links for 11 August 2009 through 14 August 2009

13 August 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 11 August 2009 through 14 August 2009, gathered with care and lightly dusted with sugar:

Formal Methods in Modern Critical-Software Development | The Abnormal Distribution: I needed an explanation of Formal Methods in programming, and this one ain’t bad.
Telstra admits to exchange access deception | iTnews.com.au: It turns out that, yes, Telstra did tell other ISPs there was no room in their exchanges for their broadband equipment, when there was.
Narrate Your Work | Scripting News: Dave Winer nails it. “Twitter is at least a dress rehearsal for the news system of the future.” His catchphrase “Narrate Your Work” resonates with me: that’s precisely how I use Twitter, and it’s a sensible work practice for any distributed team.
Are you still marketing like its 1999? | Media Hunter: Online is now your customer’s “number one media priority”, because they spend more time online than with newspapers or TV or radio. Is it yours?
On Language – How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection | NYTimes.com: An excellent summary of the history of FAIL.

Links for 10 August 2009

10 August 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Here are the web links I’ve found for 10 August 2009 and some days beforehand, posted automatically, kinda.

Teens Don’t Tweet… Or Do They? | apophenia: Mashable reported some new statistics on Twitter usage with the headline “Teens Don’t Tweet”;. This article debunks that idiocy.
Why I believe in the link economy | MediaFile: Chris Ahearn, who’s President, Media at Thomson Reuters, provides an interesting counterpoint to Associated Press’ aggressive anti-linking views.
What’s a Big City Without a Newspaper? | NYTimes.com: This feature starts off with a long nostalgic waffle about newspapers, but towards the end it has some excellent points about how journalism may adapt to the new world.
Hunter S Thompson Motivational Posters | Sloshspot Blog: Yes, the world needs Hunter S Thompson motivational posters. It truly does.
The Communications Market 2009 (August) | Ofcom: The UK communications regulatory authority’s latest industry statistics.
TVS – Television Sydney: Community TV station TVS has a website — which is nothing new, except that I just discovered that their program are streamed live as well as being broadcast on UHF analog.
eCrime Symposium panel discussion | Risky Business: One of the panel discussions from last week’s eCrime Symposium in Sydney, featuring: Rachel Dixon, who’s a technology executive for online media group Viocorp, as well as being the deputy chair of consumer group CHOICE; Phil Argy, head of the Technology Dispute Centre, and Sean Richmond from Sophos. The panel was hosted by Nigel Phair, and there’s a question from me.
Mission control | SomaFM: Apollo mission radio feeds from NASA mixed with ambient electronica. Suitably excellent listening.
Rupert and the death of hubris – Alan Kohler | Business Spectator: A solid analysis of Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that News Corporation will pull its content behind paywalls.
Watch the Ebb and Flow of Melbourne Trains | FlowingData: From Australian data visualisation team Flink Labs, a fascinating overview of Melbourne’s railway network in action.
Internet Filter Plan From Stephen Conroy Won’t Work: DPP | theage.com.au: Earlier this week, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery QC, was rather sceptical of the Rudd government’s plans to “filter” the Internet.
Canberra Players League’s All Star Game 2009 | Dnosauria: Not bookmarked because I’m interested in basketball, but because Dean trialled using Livestream.com to put the video online. Live. Seems it’s a batter choice than Ustream, which is what I’d been using until now. I may check it out.

Links for 09 May 2009 through 17 May 2009

17 May 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 09 May 2009 through 17 May 2009, gathered intermittently and jumbled together at random:

Frame grabbing: The art of drawing great photography from video | Nieman Journalism Lab: As the boundary between video and still camera blurs, photojournalists and other people we’d normally consider “photographers” are using video stills in mainstream media.
How to kill five hours in Parliament House | Crikey Team: The wond’rously snarky Ruth Brown reports on a day in Australia’s Palace of Democracy. Great fun.
Internet Meme Database | Know Your Meme: I haven’t explored it properly, but it does seem someone has decided to catalog all the stupid “memes” that proliferate online. Also, I hate this degradation of Richard Dawkin’s concept of memetics to mean “a joke we pass on”. Fuckwits.
Computing in Melbourne: A Historical Tour: The next one’s on Sunday 31 May 2009, running 9.30am to 5pm, with plenty of tram travel and café-snacking along the way.
Google outage lesson: Don’t get stuck in a cloud | Macworld: When I see stories like this, warning of the peril of relying on an external party for your IT needs, I often react by asking whether such an outage would be more or less likely on your own systems, given your own current contingency plans. But this piece also points out the interdependency of so many systems.
Critical Mass, The Road, and a new wave of graphic nuke porn | Slate Magazine: Apparently our thrillers are no longer looking at the “before” and “after” of nuclear war, but more directly at what happens when the bomb drops.
EWN – The Early Warning Network: The Australian Early Warning Network provides free emergency alerts covering everything from tsunamis through to severe weather, via SMS, pagers, phone (text to voice), web, email and their Desktop ALERT™. (I’m not sure how legit it is to trademark something as obvious as “Desktop ALERT” though.)
Older Australians less likely to participate in the digital economy | ACMA: Nearly three out of four Australians (73%) have a home Internet connection and 87% of the population have used the Internet. In contrast, only 48% of people aged 65 and over have the Internet at home and 44% have never used the internet
Anal Bleaching— NOT just for women | best of craigslist: When I posted this to Twitter, a disturbingly large number of people didn’t seem to realise that it was satire.
1952: London fog clears after days of chaos | BBC ON THIS DAY: Well, the “on this day” bit is for 9 December. Nevertheless, this has the echo of Kevin Rudd’s further delays in actually starting Australia’s response to global warming. In 1952, London's "Great Fog" killed 4000 people. Drastic action was called for. The Clean Air Act was rushed through… in 1956.
25 things about twitter that are pissing me off | The Bloggess: I couldn’t agree with her more. Also, she writes the best blog on the planet.
China's Commercialization of Censorship | Far Eastern Economic Review: China’s government doesn’t have to do all the hard work of censorship itself, it just bullies commercial operators into doing it for them.

Links for 29 April 2009

30 April 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 2 comments

Here are the web links I’ve found for 29 April 2009, posted with postalness.

Australia 2020: Government Response: A year after the event which seemed so important at the time, we finally have the government’s response.
Developments in internet filtering technologies and other measures for promoting online safety | ACMA: The second of ACMA’s three annual reports on “developments in internet filtering technologies and other safety initiatives to protect consumers, including minors, who access content on the internet”.
The Full Story: “The Full Story is a media and information release portal where individuals and organisations can post breaking news, publicity, information or their side of the story on issues of local or national importance — free, as it happens, unedited and in full.”
Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview | McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: “Course Description: As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new literary age, one in which writers no longer need to feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and excessive use of words traditionally associated with the writing trade. Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era focuses on the creation of short-form prose that is not intended to be reproduced on pulp fibers.”
NBN Luddites will be proven wrong | BuddeBlog: Analyst Paul Budde with another thoughtful piece.
RedR Australia: This organisation provides training for people working in overseas aid and disaster relief, covering everything from logistics to personal protection. Yes, there is a reason this is being bookmarked, but it’s secret.
Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform | Net Effect: Once more, the usual human trait of passing on information which may or may not be true is blamed on Twitter, not on the humans. Fail.

Links for 30 March 2009 through 04 April 2009

04 April 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 30 March 2009 through 04 April 2009, gathered with the assistance of pumpkins and bees:

The Australian Sex Party: “The Australian Sex Party is a political response to the sexual needs of Australia in the 21st century. It is an attempt to restore the balance between sexual privacy and sexual publicity that has been severely distorted by morals campaigners and prudish politicians.”
Measuring the Information Society: The ICT Development Index 2009: Australia is ranked #14 based on figures from 2007. In 2003 it was at #13.
Ho Hum, Sweden Passes new anti File Sharing Legislation | Perceptric Forum: Tom Koltai’s analysis of that new Swedish law: It’ll make no difference long term.
As Sweden’s Internet anonymity fades, traffic plunges | Ars Technica: A new Swedish law that went into effect 1 April makes it possible for copyright holders to go to court and unmask a user based on an IP address. Sweden’s Internet traffic dropped 40% overnight.
Study: online sexual predators not like popular perception | Ars Technica: This survey rejects the idea that the Internet is an especially perilous place for minors, and finds that while the nature of online sex crimes against minors changed little between 2000 and 2006, the profile of the offenders has been shifting — and both differ markedly from the popular conception.
What Is Fail Whale?: The complete history of the Twitter’s error-bringing Fail Whale, along with all the art and craft it’s inspired to date.
Voda/Hutch merger rattles ACCC | ZDNet Australia: Australia’s competition watchdog tonight issued a strongly worded statement of concern that the proposed merger of mobile carriers Hutchison and Vodafone could lead to increased retail prices on mobile telephony and broadband services.
All the news that’s fit to tweet | guardian.co.uk: The Guardian has also announced a new 140-character commenting system. “You’ll never again need to wade through paragraphs of extended argument, looking for the point, or suffer the unbearable tedium of having to read multiple protracted, well-grounded perspectives on the blogs you love.”
Share This Lecture! | Viddler.com: Mark Pesce’s annual lecture for “Cyberworlds” class, Sydney University, 31 March 2009. About the significance of sharing across three domains: sharing media, sharing knowledge, and how these two inevitably lead to the sharing of power.
Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink | The Guardian: One of the better April Fools’ Day pieces. I particularly like the extracts from the Twitterised news archive. 1927: “OMG first successful transatlantic air flight wow, pretty cool! Boring day otherwise *sigh*”
Flappers, wine, cocaine and revels (Pt II) | The Vapour Trail: A few hours after five Melbourne girls were arrested for vagrancy in late March 1928, the headline of Melbourne’s Truth broadcast their misdeeds: “White Girls with Negro Lovers. Flappers, Wine, Cocaine and Revels. Raid Discloses Wild Scene of Abandon”.
A Blacklist for Websites Backfires in Australia | TIME: Time‘s take on the leak of the Australian Internet censorship blacklist portrays it as a joke and a scandal. There are some factual errors in the story, but this looks like how it’ll end up being perceived internationally.

I’ve just run through my liveblog from Media 09 and fixed the spelling mistakes and added a few links. I still haven’t found the time to write more reflective pieces, but I’ll get there.

22 February 2009 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Live Blog: Media 09

10 February 2009 in Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 8 comments

This Friday 13 February I’m liveblogging from Media 09, billed as “the Annual Forecast for Digital Media Professionals”.

The event runs all day from 9am to 5pm Sydney time, and I’ll cover as much as I can. Bookmark this page and come back on the day. I’ll also issue reminders via my Twitter stream and tag everything #media09.

I’m rather amused that the event is being staged by Fairfax Digital, since arguably they’re well behind Murdoch’s News Limited. Maybe they wanted expert advice, couldn’t afford it, so decided to invite others and charge admission.

One keynote speaker is Ben Self, Director and Founding Partner of Blue State Digital, the guy who ran Barack Obama’s online campaign.

Read the rest of this entry »

Links for 23 September 2008 through 25 September 2008

26 September 2008 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 23 September 2008 through 25 September 2008, scrubbed up with a wire brush:

Australia: Twitter statistics | Laurel Papworth: Twitter usage is up 518.12% in Australia, if you believe (1) that website traffic is the relevant metric, and (2) you can possibly measure this stuff to 5 significant figures.
Wotnews Australian News Search: Wotnews used to be called Plugger, but they’re now associated with Wotif in some way. Wotnews harvests news from over 3500 different sources including mainstream publishers, niche blogs, direct from companies and government bodies as well as from the relentless stream of company announcements coming out of the Australian Stock Exchange.
Tax Plans (that’s one for you, nineteen for me) | chartjunk: Viveka Weiley’s re-drawing of charts comparing John McCain and Barack Obama’s tax plans. The difference is pretty obvious.
Text Messages Seen as Dangerously Distracting | NYTimes.com: “The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points” and many other scare-quotes.

Links for 21 July 2008 through 25 July 2008

27 July 2008 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 1 comment

Stilgherrian’s links for 21 July 2008 through 25 July 2008, gathered by a small, well-trained pig, washed by hand and exposed to cool, dry air:

The Changing Newsroom | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ): A detailed analysis of the American daily newspaper of 2008, incuding the role of citizen journalist and a look to the future.
Google Maps (Part I of "The Googling") | YouTube: The first of 5 short films about a Google-run world gone scary.
How to Think | Ed Boyden's blog:: "I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation."
2055: Voyage to Mars | YouTube: 9 minutes of animation by David Ross, with no CGI whatsoever. A fine tribute to an almost-lost craft.
Font Conference | CollegeHumor video: It's not often I can tag a video both "typography" and "humour", but here it is…
Manned spaceship design unveiled | BBC News: The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been released. It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia.
Afghanistan. 1986-1987. It is photographed by the pilot of the helicopter. | Military Photos: My crusty Cold War correspondent writes: "Militaryphotos.net is frequented by Walter Mittyish paintball types, but they occasionally post material of real interest." Like a Soviet helicopter pilot's personal photos from his 1986-87 tour of Afghanistan.
Privacy | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: After Mark Pesce's offhand remark that privacy was a construct of the Enlightenment, I decided to do some reading. This is where I started.

Links for 04 June 2008 through 11 June 2008

16 June 2008 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 04 June 2008 through 11 June 2008, collected semi-automatically:

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