Month: January 2012

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Talking more Murdoch and Twitter on ABC Local Radio

I thought we were done with Rupert Murdoch’s venture into the Twitterverse, but apparently not so. I was invited back onto ABC Local Radio earlier this evening — for a much wider conversation about Twitter.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (10.1MB)

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

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Twitter screwed up TweetDeck, so here’s the old version

Back in May 2011, Twitter bought TweetDeck for $40 million. Now they’ve taken the power users’ Twitter client of choice and, well, fucked it up.

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.]

[Update 17 March 2012: As Wade points out in his comment today, the same Adobe AIR file should work across all platforms. That’s the point of AIR. In my response I explain how the post ended up this way. I’ll fix it in due course.]

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Talking Castro death hoax spam on ABC 774 Melbourne

Apparently the old “Fidel Castro is dead” hoax spam is doing the rounds again. I daresay the bad guys are targetting people during the holiday season when they’re less vigilant and don’t have as much work email to distract them from the spam.

I spoke about this with Matt Parkinson on ABC 774 Melbourne this morning. It’s the usual message. This stuff is common. Scammers act quickly. The aim is to infect your computer and steal your money. I continue to be surprised that most radio presenters seem completely oblivious to what goes on online.

There’s also the now-common ABC glitch of hedging the way they introduce my name. I’ll have to put a stop to that.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.0MB)

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it usually isn’t posted on their website and I don’t get paid for these spots, so here it is.

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Talking Rupert Murdoch and Twitter on ABC Local Radio

So the media’s Lizard King opens a Twitter account and it’s major news? Apparently so. Yesterday the world was busy reading the tea leaves of Rupert Murdoch’s new Twitter account, and I was asked to comment.

I’m amazed at how much people wanted to read into the first 18 tweets or so. The Sydney Morning Herald even said:

Joining Twitter would be the strongest sign yet that Mr Murdoch has moved away from what was previously a strongly held antipathy towards the web, which has caused massive profit slumps in traditional media.

Really? That’s like saying that because someone was seen buying a load of bread that they’ve changed their position on whether it’s now better to invest in agriculture rather than mining. Complete arsehattery, trying to tart up a rather routine retelling of what happened on Twitter so that it looks like business analysis.

Anyway, I spoke to Ian Rogerson yesterday on the ABC Local Radio program that went out nationally on the digital transmitters and online while the cricket was broadcast on the analog channels.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (6.7MB)

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it usually isn’t posted on their website and I don’t get paid for these spots, so here it is.

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Weekly Wrap 82: Anonymous, Stratfor and little else

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This was expected to be a short, easy week between Christmas and New Year, but when news of the Anonymous hack on Stratfor broke, well, that was it. It dominated everything except my personal podcast.

There’s still some end-of-year start-of-year posts to come, but I’ll deal with them over the next few days. I actually took the holiday weekend as a holiday.

Podcasts

  • The 9pm Edict episode 16, which had rather a lot about Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Christmas Message, and a fair amount about Twitter. It thought this episode was a bit weaker than others recently, because I didn’t seem to channel the rage. But I’ve been told it’s OK. I shrug my shoulders.
  • The 9pm Edict episode 17, which was put together in a pub on New Year’s Eve, interrupted by the pub closing early, and filled with more than the usual number of expletives. The bits of the script that had to be left out will appear in a special bonus episode soon.

Articles

The one written piece I did about the Stratfor hack shouldn’t be listed in this Weekly Wrap, technically, because it wasn’t published until 2 January. But I’ll list it here anyway for compeleteness.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. I have been abandoned. It’s not like PR companies are real families.

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 Meaning of Life, Part 1. This uniform was worn by nearly every woman under 25 partying in Sydney on New Year’s Eve. Photograph taken near the corner of George and Goulburn Streets, Sydney.]