Stilgherrian » web 2.0

Politics & Technology Forum videos & tweets

Stilgherrian — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:36:45 +0000

Until I get time to write my essay about last week’s Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra, you can relive it on your own.

Thanks to Microsoft’s Nick Hodge, you can view videos of Matt Bai’s keynote address, Panel 1 on Blogging, social networks, political movements and the media with Annabel Crabb, Peter Black and Mark Textor, and Panel 2 on Politics 2.0: information technology and the future of political campaigning with Joe Hockey, Senator Andrew Bartlett, Senator Kate Lundy and Antony Green.

You can also trawl back through the Twitter stream using Summize.com. There’s a lot of material, though, so unless you’re a complete political junkie and want to read through it while listening to the discussions you may want to wait for my essay.

[Disclosure: I was in Canberra as a guest of Microsoft.]

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At PubCamp Sydney today

Stilgherrian — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:37:11 +0000

I will be at PubCamp Sydney this afternoon. Will I see you there?

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At Mobile Content World tomorrow

Stilgherrian — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:17:33 +0000

For my sins, I now have a media pass to the Mobile Content World Australasia conference at Sydney’s Star City Casino. I missed Day 1 today, but from the programme Day 2 will be more interesting from my perspective. Centrally-planned control-freak TV organisations and telcos try to control what’s on mobile phone screens. Fail. We control what’s on our screens, thank you very much! From one clueful attendee today, “Folks all seem like deers in the iPhone headlights.”

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Yeah, this is hyperconnectivity!

Stilgherrian — Mon, 26 May 2008 01:16:39 +0000

Did someone say we’re hyperconnected? Oh yeah, Mark Pesce did last week. And you know what? He did a keynote presentation at a conference this morning and someone’s blogged about it before he’d even left the room. And now I’ve blogged about the blog. And he still hasn’t left the room.

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How will I cope with the looming Geek Week?

Stilgherrian — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:32:54 +0000

Next week is packed! How can I get the best value out of CeBIT Sydney and the associated Transaction 2.0 conference, as well as Microsoft’s ReMIX 08? What should I record or broadcast? What should I write about?

CeBIT was always on my agenda. Despite being disappointing last year and despite annoying me with a flood of email, it’s still the biggest IT trade show in Australia. It’s worth going just to see who’s confidently spending money on promotion, if nothing else.

I’ll be touring the trade show floor on Wednesday 21 May. If you want to meet up, let me know. Maybe I should even do a Stilgherrian Live Alpha from the bloggers media room? Whaddyathink?

If you still haven’t organised your free pass, you can register online using my promotion code: stilcs08.

On Thursday 22 May I’ll be at Transaction 2.0, with an interesting set of speakers. Again, it’s a matter of choosing the priorities. Who should I talk to? Should I pick a fight with Jason Calacanis?

But I kick off the Geek Week on Tuesday 20 May with ReMIX 08, where Microsoft says I’ll “experience all that is new in Silverlight 2, Expression 2, IE8, Live and a host of other great web technologies… You will also see how local Australian innovators are creating the next generation of engaging websites and unprecedented user experiences for the web.”

Provided they build it with Microsoft’s tools, of course.

That’s unfair. Microsoft is changing. It’ll be interesting to hear what they’re up to.

Now my only challenge is working out how all this fits into one week, while still leaving room to do some billable hours for clients.

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Oh you poor, dear record companies…

Stilgherrian — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:32:34 +0000

You’ve got to hand it to “the music industry”. This week they released a propaganda film Australian Music In Tune which asks us to sympathise with musicians because they’re all poor struggling artists. Diddums.

The only reason musicians trying to “make it” are poor is that as soon as they do get that sought-after recording contract they still pay for everything from there on. Before they see a single cent from their music, they have to pay off the studio hire, recording engineer, video director, stylists, set designers, editor and dozens of other parasites — including music company executives with their nice lunches and their BMW leases.

An entire industry — “the music industry” and their retail outlets — sits between the musicians and their audience, sucking out something like 90% of the money in the process.

And they have the gall to rope musicians into their propaganda film under false pretences, telling people like Frenzal Rhomb’s Lindsay McDougall that it was a movie about life as an artist.

He said he was told the 10-minute film, which is being distributed for free to all high schools in Australia, was about trying to survive as an Australian musician and no one mentioned the video would be used as part of an anti-piracy campaign.

OK, so who are the guys in the photo? Jared Madden (left) and Adam Purcell (right) have created tune-out.com in response to the industry crying poor.

They know that thanks to teh intenetz, we can distribute that music from musician to audience for a fraction of a cent. They know that the audience is deciding for themselves what’s hot or not through this social media thing, and that the entire music industry is becoming irrelevant.

You the Music Industry have failed to move with us in our discovery of new and exciting ways to interact, collaborate, and communicate. We have embraced the digital space and the opportunities it affords us, and we have changed because of this. We are developing new forms of entertainment which have transformed the way we interact with each other, with you, and with music. This is an ongoing process, and we are excited about what we will discover tomorrow.

For some reason you assume that we are the same as yesterday, and you are kidding yourself.

You wrongly place the blame of declining CD sales on others. Our source of entertainment has diversified, and we are no longer as interested in the concept of the ‘album’.

There is no digital music battle or piracy war. That is a figment of your imagination, and, every time you preach our digital crimes to us, we ‘tune out’ of your deranged ranting. Your declining profits are the symptom of a business model that is fast becoming irrelevant.

You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

Hear hear. I have signed their letter. I look forward to the video they’re producing this weekend.

Meanwhile, read Mark Pesce’s essay, Unevenly Distributed: Production Models for the 21st Century. I’ve linked to it before, but it’s especially apt today. Or read about 1000 True Fans.

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Laurel Papworth on 9am

Stilgherrian — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 03:37:28 +0000

Social networks guru Laurel Papworth was on Channel Ten’s 9am with David and Kim this week. Have a look, ‘cos it’s interesting to see how out of touch mainstream media professionals are in all of this. I write about that in my comment to Laurel’s post.

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Twitter tools, tweaks and theories

Stilgherrian — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:13:59 +0000

Twitter Tools, Tweaks and Theories is a great collection of observations about how Twitter works and how it can be built upon. I’ll be running through these over the next week or so and commenting. Or not.

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Anti-Emo riots break out across Mexico

Stilgherrian — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:59:16 +0000

Attacks began on 7 March when, according to Wired, “several hundred people went on an emo-beating rampage in Querétaro, a town of 1.5 million about 160 miles north of Mexico City.”

The next week punks and rockabillys harassed emo kids in Mexico City, prompting police protection and a TV news story. Meanwhile the emos have organised anti-violence protests (pictured).

Hat-tip to Alex Willemyns for one of the oddest headlines — but this is for real.

The core issue is a clash between Mexico’s macho culture and emo’s sexual ambiguity. Yep, it’s just good old-fashioned gay-bashing.

[O]nly in the past year have emos begun to make their presence felt in the streets. In response, many of the established so-called tribus urbanas like punks and metalheads are responding with violence…

[B]y some accounts, the emo subculture is identified with homosexuality in Mexico. As Mexico City youth worker Victor Mendoza told Time.com: “At the core of this is the homophobic issue. The other arguments are just window dressing for that.”

Perhaps not so old-fashioned: we can drag a web 2.0 angle into this…

Many of the attacks have been planned, or at least fomented, on violently anti-emo websites like Movimiento Anti Emosexual, which features videos of physical violence sprinkled liberally with anti-gay sentiment. Last.fm’s Anti Emo Death Squad group has almost 4,000 members.

Weirdly enough, Gustavo Arellano, the author of Ask a Mexican and an editor at OC Weekly, thinks this could all be a positive for Mexico.

“It’s a great clusterfuck for the American mind’s idea of Mexico,” Arellano said. “This teaches the rest of the world that Mexico is not just a bunch of cactuses and sombreros.”

Yeah, Gustavo. It teaches the rest of the world that Mexico is populated by ignorant, medieval fuckwits who are a long, long way from being fit to inhabit the 21st Century.

More at the Intersections blog, and Mexican newspapers La Jornada’s stories on the original attacks an the follow-up.

[Photo: "Protesta de emos en la ciudad de México el miércoles pasado" from La Jornada. Photographer: María Meléndrez Parada.]

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Facebook finally understands politics (kind of)

Stilgherrian — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:56:49 +0000

Are you frustrated with Facebook because your profile only lists “Political Views” chosen from an American list (as opposed to being frustrated by all the other Facebook annoyances)? Be frustrated no more! “Political Views” is now a write-in field. Hat-tip to Mushroom and Rooster via Lavartus Prodeo’s Facebook group.

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Thoughts on Twitter

Stilgherrian — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:12:41 +0000

In just two months, Twitter has become one of my core communication tools. Non-Twitter instant messaging and Facebook have all but disappeared from the mix. Here’s why.

Actually, before that… If you don’t use Twitter, or if you’ve taken a look but don’t “get it”, watch this 2.5-minute video Twitter in Plain English from those wacky Canadians Common Craft. Love their style.

OK, back?

Like the character in the video, I was sceptical about Twitter. Why do people need to know every little detail of my life? Who cares? I said as much to Perth’s Twitterati late last year. But then I actually tried using it — and I “got it” immediately.

It’s not about what people need to know, but what they want to know. And, as the video, says, the people who care about you are interested in what you’re doing.

Perfectly-named

Calling this service “Twitter” was genius. Listen to real birds twittering, especially during their dawn chorus, and you’ll hear a constant stream of status messages. “I’m alive and healthy.” “This is still my territory, stay clear.” “I’m hungry, feed me.” “I’ve found some food over here.” “Storm coming! Quick! Quick!”

None of these messages necessarily requires an answer — just like typical tweets on Twitter. But you can act upon them or reply if you want.

I’m hungry, going to lunch” can elicit “Hey I’m around the corner, I’ll join you.”
“Firefox has just crashed again” can elicit “Have you tried clearing your cache? That worked for me.”
“Stuck in traffic on the M4″ lets you know that another person, also coming via the freeway, could be late for a meeting — even if they don’t use Twitter themselves.
“Finishing an article before 4pm deadline” tells you not to interrupt that person.
“Finished!’ means you can now ask that person if they’d like a beer.
“Great blog post about Julia Gillard [with a link here]” could lead you in a whole new direction. Beer or no beer.

Or not.

Twitter is, almost literally, the background clucking of so many chickens.

If you need to concentrate on work or a TV program, just tune out. It’s a permanent window onto my world — but that doesn’t mean I need to sit and watch what’s out the window all the time.

I also have tweets coming from ABC News, BBC News and 37signals (which tell me if there’s a problem with Basecamp). One courier company uses Twitter to inform customers of any delays.

Why Twitter works for me

The key factor is that Twitter adheres to the philosophy of small pieces, loosely joined. It’s a clear, simple tool that’s easy to connect to other tools.

I can send or view tweets from the Twitter website, the mobile version at m.twitter.com, the Twitterific application for Mac OS X (that’s what I use most of the time), via SMS or via other instant messaging services. Whatever’s handy at the time.
Ditto for the people following my tweets. They choose whatever’s handy for them. I don’t have to think about where they are at the time.
Everything’s interconnected by RSS, which means I can do things like plug my tweets into this website.

Permanent versus Ephemeral

Twitter helps me distinguish between the things I want to publish for all time, like my longer essays, and the random day-to-day stuff which might be vital at the time but meaningless the next day.

OK, I’m still having trouble with that, because some tweets are worth keeping. But this is experimental stuff.

What do you think? If you already use Twitter, does your experience match mine? If you don’t, please join Twitter and follow me, and let me know how it goes.

[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh's cartoons published online, it's free to use.]

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Stupid uses of “solution”

Stilgherrian — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:14:51 +0000

Pet gripe: the use of the word “solution” in (originally) the IT industry and now, seemingly, everywhere.

Wikipedia doesn’t give it it’s own page, merely saying:

In business, a solution is a product, service, or combination of both which is said to solve a business or consumer’s problem; the term is often considered an overused and unimaginative buzzword.

So when I saw this truck (pictured) in Stanmore yesterday afternoon I wondered, “WFT is a ‘tree solution’?”

I assume this guy is an arborist, or “tree surgeon”. The former ain’t great marketing in the 21st Century ‘cos it’s latinesque, but I can live with the latter — after all, he’s a bloke what cuts down or fixes trees, yeah?

Other annoying buzzwords for me: “business ecology”, “DNA” (when used to talk about “our business’ DNA”), “space” and “Web 2.0″. Any others?

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That Business Conversation

Stilgherrian — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:34:07 +0000

Mark Pesce’s latest speech, That Business Conversation, given to about 170 CEO-types at the Western Sydney Business Connection yesterday, is another good read.

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Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0

Stilgherrian — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:57:54 +0000

First Monday is a peer-reviewed journal about the Internet. Almost always good reading — but this month’s special feature Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0 is double-plus good.

The Preface gives the flavour:

Web 2.0 represents a blurring of the boundaries between Web users and producers, consumption and participation, authority and amateurism, play and work, data and the network, reality and virtuality. The rhetoric surrounding Web 2.0 infrastructures presents certain cultural claims about media, identity, and technology. It suggests that everyone can and should use new Internet technologies to organize and share information, to interact within communities, and to express oneself. It promises to empower creativity, to democratize media production, and to celebrate the individual while also relishing the power of collaboration and social networks.

But Web 2.0 also embodies a set of unintended consequences, including the increased flow of personal information across networks, the diffusion of one’s identity across fractured spaces, the emergence of powerful tools for peer surveillance, the exploitation of free labor for commercial gain, and the fear of increased corporatization of online social and collaborative spaces and outputs…

Much, much food for thought in the essays. Expect to see it reflected — somehow — in my writing over the coming week.

Hat-tip to Professor Roger Clarke, who says, “I thought my paper was reasonably critical of the phenomenon, but these make me seem like a pussycat (or maybe a respectable academic?).”

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The Four Stages of the Internet of Things

Stilgherrian — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:36:26 +0000

Further to comments in my piece about that Web 2.0 session, I’ve stumbled across Kevin Kelly’s explanation of The Four Stages in the Internet of Things, riffing of an essay by Tim Berners-Lee (i.e. the bloke what invented the web).

I can summarise the four stages like this:

Connect all the computers together (i.e. the Internet)
Connect and share pages of data (i.e. the World Wide Web)
Connect and share individual data elements (Web 2.0 through Web 3.0?)
Connect and share things themselves, not just the data about things

So where are we now?

Kelly reckons we’re at the end of the beginning of the third stage.

What happens here is that after linking and sharing computers, then linking and sharing documents, we are linking and sharing data in those documents. We are sharing and linking the subjects and meaning of what those documents are about… The data is unbundled and in a form that can be read by any device on the web. Indeed, when done correctly it can be comprehended by the web itself since it is not rendered in English but in a general semantic form. That universal form is something that will live in a database. In fact, you could think of this stage as the World Wide Database.

Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired, is a techno-optimist. However we does finish his essay with some observations about implications of all this.

If the web knows you are always you, who are you? If the price of total personal service is total personal transparency, is that any different than total personal surveillance?

The smartness of this thing will unnerve many people. Even though it will be miles from anything human, the fact that it will know anything at all, and know anything about them, will make many folks jump back. And push back. I’m counting on the fact that kids will love it.

I must admit, I’m sometimes one of the “unnerved”. But I’m afraid of what we’re doing. I’m afraid of how it could all go terribly wrong if the social, legal and political aspects don’t receive the same level of attention as the technical and business aspects.