Month: July 2012

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Weekly Wrap 111: Banking and the decline of civilisation

The less said about my week Monday 16 to Sunday 22 July 2012 the better. I’ll just list the stuff I did in the media, and be done with it.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 146, “Banking’s future is Facebook? Really?” Commonwealth Bank’s general manager of online banking Drew Unsworth explains the reasoning behind their moves to roll out banking on Facebook, and that’s put into context by Charis Palmer, editor of Online Banking Review.

Articles

None.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I had lunch at Wildfire Restaurant, Circular Quay, courtesy of Bass PR and a number of clients at Mobility Press Lunch Forum. At least one article will come out of this little discussion.

The Week Ahead

I dare not say a word. I’ll jinx it.

[Photo: A screenshot of the Patch Monday podcast being mixed in Reaper, which is something that has been working. Mind you, I took the picture well after production was finished, and it’s last Monday’s episode not the one due to be published today. You just can’t be too careful with these things.]

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Talking Twitter trolling on ABC Local Radio

Tuesday was the night for radio. I also spoke with ABC Brisbane’s Rebecca Levingston about people’s terrible behaviour on Twitter and Facebook.

Oh, that makes it sound all a bit twee. Terrible manners these days, and all that. It was actually a great conversation during which I managed to mention theory of mind as well as allude to my Crikey piece, Twitter is humanity, warts and all. Where’s the story in that?

ABC Radio has posted their version of the audio at Why are we so nasty to each other on the internet? Here’s mine.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.8MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It was broadcast on ABC Local Radio across Queensland.

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Talking Facebook banking on Balls Radio, FM 99.3

For my sins, I’ve agree to do a regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio, originally a podcast and now also a program on FM 99.3 Northside Radio in Sydney every Tuesday night at 7pm.

The first broadcast edition was this week, Tuesday 17 July. Since it was fresh in my mind, I spoke about the Commonwealth Bank’s plans for us to do our banking on Facebook — which I also covered on this week’s Patch Monday podcast.

We also spoke briefly about Microsoft’s plans for Windows 8 and Office 2013 and how they fit into the company’s strategy.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, Mr Dobbie has posted the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:07 — 5.8MB)

I’m fairly sure that copyright remains with Mr Dobbie rather than being transferred to Northside Radio, but I’ll figure that out later.

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Weekly Wrap 110: Loss, damage and dead animals

Not to put too fine a point on it, for me Monday 9 to Sunday 15 July 2012 was a cunt of a week. I use the strongest of all taboo words deliberately to indicate the level of upfuckness involved.

Monday night, as I was returning to my SEKRIT hideaway from doing a spot on ABC Local Radio, the key broke in the door lock, necessitating a $155 call-out by a locksmith. The next day I realised I’d lost my notebook somewhere. Then on Wednesday I spilt a beer onto my MacBook Pro, with dire consequences.

I shall leave it there for now. That’s enough misery for you to digest at once. I, however, had no such luxury.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 145, “Twitter mimics Facebook, kills own ecosystem”. A panel discussion with Henare Degan, co-founder of Bleeply, who make Twitter tools for business; Leslie Nassar, technology director at digital agency Amnesia Razorfish and founder of TweeVee TV, which provides tools for integrating Twitter with live television; and Kate Carruthers, business strategist and founder of Social Innovation.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday morning Symantec held their Next@Norton media briefing, and provided a lovely “high tea” brunch. There were chocolates in the take-home bag of goodies

The Week Ahead

Well, it’s already started, but at least Monday has gone largely to plan. On Tuesday morning I’m attending Commonwealth Bank’s event “The Future of Business is Coming”, but they won’t tell me what it is. Then at lunchtime I’m covering a forum on mobility and bring your own device (BYOD) policies — what, another one? — for Technology Spectator.

On Wednesday I’ll return to Wentworth Falls, where I’ll probably be staying until Tuesday 24 July, doing a bunch of writing and stuff while I’m up there. To be honest, it’s all fairly flexible at that point.

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) and via Instagram. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags. Yes, I should probably update this stock paragraph to match the current reality.

[Photo: Elegance of Dance Part 37: The Dying Swan, taken on Market Street in the Sydney CBD on 13 July 2012.]

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Talking DNSChanger on ABC Local Radio

I was surprised at all the media attention given to the DNSChanger thing last week. I even did a radio spot about it — even though the DNS turnoff affected just 0.015% of computers on the internet.

Just in case you missed it, read the Wikipedia article and Paul Vixie’s first-hand account of swapping in the good DNS servers to replace the criminals’.

The radio spot was last Monday night on ABC Local Radio across NSW with host Dom Knight.

Here’s almost all of the audio recording. There’s an annoying gap around 50 seconds in, and what’s missing is my explanation of the internet’s domain name system (DNS). So if you don’t know what that is, read this first.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.0MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it isn’t being archived anywhere else.

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Expensive beer kills computer, honesty kills my budget

Things have been delayed around here, and elsewhere, because last Wednesday I spilt a beer onto my MacBook Pro, sending it comatose. That’s one damn expensive beer. And it’ll take me a while to catch up.

Now a splash of beer or, presumably, any other liquid should you be mad enough to drink them, won’t necessarily kill a computer or smartphone. The emergency procedure is straightforward.

Turn it off. Pull the battery, if you can. Get rid of as much liquid as fast as you can by mopping it up. Then get rid of any lingering moisture: dismantle the device as much as it can be, and put it in a sealed container packed with silica gel or uncooked rice for three days or more.

If the liquid is potentially damaging to the device — a certain popular cola drink, say, which is acidic and will damage some components — you can rinse it with distilled water or isopropyl alcohol too. Choose the one that’ll dissolve the threat.

With a laptop computer, if you’re quick the worst case scenario is that you might lose the keyboard. I’ve managed to resurrect completely saturated smartphones.

My procedure failed. MacBook Pro computers now make the keyboard extremely difficult to get to. I simply couldn’t get in there promptly. I had to transport the computer to the rice, and in doing so it was carried on its side, potentially allowing liquid to flow into other parts of the computer. And then, in my impatience, I powered it up after just one night on the rice to see how things we going.

How things were going was not at all.

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