So busy, in fact, that this wrap is being posted a week late! That’s what I get for deciding at the last minute to insert a two-day cybercrime conference into my schedule. I did fit, but it was a bit tight. Shoosh.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 127, “Radiation, nanodiamonds and traffic lights”. From NICTA’s Techfest 2012, researchers explain how to protect their bionic eye circuitry with nanodiamonds, design radiation detectors for ports and airports, and update 40-year-old traffic control algorithms.

Articles

Not a single one. Strange week.

Media Appearances

• On Wednesday I was on the panel for Recordkeeping Roundtable’s forum “Freedom of Information?”

Corporate Largesse

• In the first part of the week I was at the Kickstart Forum. This meant airfares, accommodation at Hyatt Regency Sanctuary Cove and various meals paid for by Media Connect with the funds obviously coming from their corporate sponsors. Also, AVG gave us a small magnifying glass. Ninefold handed out t-shirts, plus I’ve got a hoodie on the way. Symantec gave us a three-PC license for Norton 360 version 6 and a single-Mac license for Norton Internet Security for Macintosh. And CA gave us men a Windsor shaving kit with mirror, brush etc. I don’t know what they gave the women.
• On Thursday and Friday I attended the inaugural Cyber Crime Symposium, with food and drink provided by the Marriott Sydney Harbour thanks to the conference organisers.

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.

[Photo: Clear Blue Sky. The sky meets the distant Pacific Ocean, with the horizon an indistinct blur. This photo was taken from a Jetstar Airbus A321 somewhere over northern NSW.]

[Update 0900: Added in the corporate largesse from Australian cloud provider Ninefold, which I'd accidentally left out.]

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.]

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 77, “Cyberwar: we’re in it together”. This is my wrap-up of the RSA Conference on information security.

Articles

• AFACT versus iiNet appeal decision resolves nothing, for Crikey. In summary, while the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft’s appeal against the Federal Court’s decision in favour of iiNet was lost, this’ll probably all end up being appealed again to the High Court.

Corporate Largesse

• On Wednesday I attended the NICTA Techfest and was provided with free food and drink.
• Starting on Sunday I was attending the Kickstart Forum on the Gold Coast. My airfares and accommodation were paid for by the organisers, Media Connect. On Sunday evening security firm AVG bought me a drink. Sunday night’s dinner was sponsored by MyNetPhone.

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.

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

• Turnbull’s NBN challenge: real analysis, real policies, not rhetoric, for Crikey. A rebuttal of Malcolm Turnbull’s denigration of the National Broadband Network project, which he blogged before the election but which was posted at ABC Unleashed this week.
• Myths of the NBN myths, for ABC Unleashed. A rebuttal of an anti-NBN piece by economist Peter J Cox, Top Ten Myths behind Fibre Policy which, ironically, he also wrote about in Crikey. And thus the circle is complete. I find it telling that he describes people favouring optical fibre for data delivery as “zealots”. Name-calling is of course a technique of propaganda rather than analysis.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 57, “CCTV surveillance: reality versus myth”. My guest is Professor Brian Lovell from NICTA’s Queensland Research Lab.

[Photo: Circular Quay station at dusk, showing how us Sydney residents tend to take the magnificent views for granted.]

Today NICTA is showcasing its latest ICT research and development at Techfest 2009 — and I’ll be liveblogging it right here.

NICTA is Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Centre of Excellence. It focuses on research which can then be commercialised in areas including biomedical and life sciences; intelligent transport systems; safety and security; environmental management; mobile systems and services; and software infrastructure.

The keynote is being given by Dr Ya-Qin Zhang, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft and Chairman of the Microsoft China R&D Group. I’ll be covering that if nothing else.

I’m not sure if the rest of the day is formal presentations (which I’ll liveblog) or a series of meet-and-greets and show-and-tells (which I’ll cover as best I can).

Bookmark this page and come back. We’ll start at about 11am Sydney time live from Australian Technology Park in Sydney.

If you can’t see the CoveritLive tool immediately below, then you’re not using a compatible browser.

Anything written without attribution will be from me. Anything not in quote marks is probably my paraphrase is what someone said, not their exact words.

Feel free to add questions and comments. The Twitter hashtag for the event is #techfest.

• 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.

According to Friday’s media release from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA):

bq. The Government has strengthened its ICT advisory group to include peak business bodies to ensure the needs of ICT business users are also considered in the development of ICT priorities.

And minister Helen Coonan says:

bq. ICT offers significant potential to further build economic growth, prosperity and quality of life for all Australians.

But if you look at who’s actually on this board, you wonder whether anyone will ever get past the “build economic growth” issues to that “quality of life” stuff.

You’ve got seven people from the hardware and software industries, someone from labour hire firm Manpower, two from government research bodies CSIRO and NICTA, a token academic and the inevitable representative from Macquarie Bank.

Let’s run through that again. That’s nine from business, two from government, one from academia.

And from the community?

Nil.

Not a single person representing families and how always-on workplace communications might intrude upon their private time. Not a single person representing workers whose jobs might be affected. Not a single representative from health, legal or social welfare organisations, from religious organisations or from anyone who might want to think about privacy issues.

There’s no doubting Steve Vamos’ understanding of the industry, since he previously ran NineMSN and Apple Computer Australia. But how can he possibly frame the board’s agenda to consider all options when his day job _requires_ him to promote the interests of Microsoft above all else?

Since one priority area is “ensuring Government and industry achieve and maintain the best ICT capability over the next five years,” one obvious question is whether open source software would deliver cost savings or more transparency. Mr Vamos cannot _possibly_ chair such a discussion in any credible way.

Linux Australia president Jonathan Oxer gets it right:

bq. ICT is playing a major role across all industry sectors, [but] the counterpoint is that ICT is also a huge contributor to our current trade deficit. It is crucial for the ICT advisory board to do all it can to support local ICT companies so we are not just a consumer [of IT].

If you were putting together the minister’s ICT advisory board, who would you suggest?