Episode 7 of Stilgherrian Live Alpha has been recorded and is now online. Enjoy.
Vodafone, are you completely brain-dead?
I’ve previously called Vodafone “brain-dead” because they don’t redirect the misspelt version of their web address and couldn’t respond intelligently when I told them about it. But now… [sigh]
A fortnight ago there was confusion over Vodafone’s plans for the iPhone. Were data charges included in the cap or not? Vodafone’s “explanation” seemed to contradict their published terms a conditions.
Even though all their previous plans allowed data to be included within the cap, billed at $1 per 5 minutes of connection, Vodafone reckons that for the iPhone it’s billed separately. Can anyone give a rational explanation for why the data should be more expensive if the device happens to be an iPhone?
Other than price-gouging, that is.
After all, if your mobile device is a laptop they’ll sell you 5GB/month for $39! Given that Telstra and Optus had already announced their pricing, Vodafone could have scooped them both with a better package, rather than looking like a greedy also-ran.
So with this background, I was… erm… thrilled to receive my phone bill this month.
Crikey: Internet filters a success, if success = failure
[This article was first published in Crikey yesterday. I’ve added some follow-up comments at the end.]
Let’s sing along with Senator Conroy! You’ve got to accentuate the positive / Eliminate the negative / Latch on to the affirmative…
[On Monday] our Minister for Broadband was “encouraged” that lab tests of ISP-level Internet filters showed “significant progress” since 2005, and The Australian had him declaring the trial a success. But if you actually dig into the full report [2.8MB PDF] things aren’t so rosy.
Yes, on average filters might be more accurate than three years ago and have less impact on Internet speeds — well, at least for the six filters actually tested of the 26 put forward. But it’s about them being not quite as crap as before.
Continue reading “Crikey: Internet filters a success, if success = failure”
Immobilised by Apple’s MobileMe
[This article was first published in Crikey yesterday. As I write this, the affected MobileMe customers are still without email.]
As the hype surrounding the god-like iPhone slowly, oh so slowly fades, a problem emerges from the shadows…
Apple’s subscription email service .Mac was rebranded MobileMe to coincide with the iPhone 3G launch. Existing customers have been moved to the new platform, but for some (Apple claims 1%) it’s a disaster. They’ve been unable to use email for five days — not from their Macs, not from their iPhones, not via the web. And that’s not the only problem. As .Mac user Ed Dale said, “Not pleasant to log in and see four years of mail gone.”
Crikey‘s First Dog on the Moon, also a MobileMe-er, says “it’s been crap”.
(Si Si) Je Suis Un Blog Star!
It’s a lame excuse to link to Bill Wyman’s old song, but I am actually very happy to have been translated into French and quoted in Le Monde.
In his column Transnets, Francis Pisani‘s article Blogalaxie/4: “futur des médias†et “rumeurs†quotes my rant about journalism from last week.
Ils ont parlé de la “tension artificielle†blogueurs-journalistes qui, selon Stephen Collins occupe trop de place (voir ce qu’en ont écrit Narvic et Éliane Fiolet sur Transnets).
J’ai bien aimé cette phrase du blogueur australien Stilgherrian: “Ce qui est fatiguant dans cette fausse dichotomie c’est qu’elle compare les idéaux les plus élevés du journalisme et le degré le plus bas du blogging personnel.â€
Et ce petit avis aux journalistes traditionnels: “La forme de votre métier et la forme de vos articles était déterminée par la technologie pour les distribuer.†Aujourd’hui “nous avons tous des claviers, nous avons tous des téléphones mobiles avec des caméras ou nous les aurons bientôt. Nous avons tous des outils de publication et de distribution†comme WordPress ou YouTube entre autres.
I sound much more intelligent in French… and I do like the word “blogalaxie” rather than “blogosphere”. Still, I reckon “blogueur” and “blogueuse” sound more like something you’d pump out of an asthmatic duck.
Defining “citizen journalism”
I’m not a big fan of the term “citizen journalism”. As I’ve said, adopting the label “journalist” will inevitably annoy those who think they are the “real journalists”. And we’re all citizens anyway, even curmudgeonly journalists.
But I haven’t though of anything better. Neither has anyone else yet, so we’re stuck with it. We might as well agree on what it means.
As usual, Wikipedia provides some good background. But Jay Rosen recently repeated his Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism:
It’s mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the “so-called” from in front?
When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.
There are other definitions, but they will have to be discussed in the comments.
I used quote-marks in my headline and first paragraph because I believe that’s how you denote the item of language you’re discussing. But from now on, I’ll use the term “citizen journalism” without quotes — except just then, because I was denoting again.
Does this definition work for you? Got a better name for it?