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I’m going to Consilium and you’re not invited

I’m rather flattered to have been invited to speak at Consilium on 23 to 25 August, an invitation-only annual conference put together by the Centre for Independent Studies.

There’s a brochure [PDF]. but essentially Consilium is “leading thinkers from business, politics, policy, academia and the community” talking the “critical issues facing the world” under a modified Chatham House Rule. So I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to tell you afterwards.

I’m on a panel discussion called “Social Creatures: How social media is changing the landscape”, with Iarla Flynn, Google Australia’s head of public policy and government affairs; Nick Holder, a partner at LEK Consulting; and Cassandra Wilkinson, co-founder and president of FBi Radio, and author of Don’t Panic! Nearly Everything is Better than You Think.

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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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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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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.

Continue reading “Expensive beer kills computer, honesty kills my budget”

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Weekly Wrap 109: Cold and wet until it wasn’t

My week from Monday 2 to Sunday 8 July 2012 started in the cold and rain of winter, but ended on a brighter note.

That simple sentence suppresses vast amounts of depressing detail that you simply don’t need to know about.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 144, “Hands off our packets, it’s the law”. Geoff Huston, chief scientist at APNIC and the guy who more or less connected Australia’s universities to the internet, reckons that Telstra handing over web browsing logs to an external organisation is something that should be investigated by law enforcement. I posted the background earlier.

Articles

  • Cashing in on Kaching, Technology Spectator, 6 July 2012. All about Commonwealth Bank’s mobile banking strategy, in an article twice the length of anything I’ve written previously for this masthead.

Media Appearances

  • On Thursday I spoke about the Telstra thing and other mobile data privacy issues on the Twisted Wire podcast, Is your phone watching you?

Corporate Largesse

  • On Thursday the Commonwealth Bank briefed the media about their new Kaching for Android app and their mobile strategy generally, and that happened over food and wine at Sydney’s Flying Fish Restaurant on their tab.

The Week Ahead

So it’s the second week of the school holidays, so Bunjaree Cottages is still booked out, so I’m still lurking in a SEKRIT location in Sydney. Until Sunday lunchtime, probably.

On Tuesday Symantec is holding its Next@Norton media briefing as “an indulgent High Tea” from 0930 to 1200, presumably oblivious to the fact that high tea is an early evening meal for labourers and children. I’ll probably write it up for CSO Online.

On Thursday afternoon I’m interviewing futurist Mark Pesce about the themes being discussed in the blog-cum-book he’s writing with Robert Tercek, The Next Billion Seconds. That’ll be the following week’s Patch Monday podcast, unless some news cycle event bumps it.

There’s other writing tasks to interleave with that, as well as some work on the last remaining web management client on my books.

I might take the afternoon off on Friday.

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: Sydney, Two-masted City, being a view of Sydney Tower and the mast of an unidentified ship over the roof of Jones Bay Wharf, Pyrmont, on 5 July 2012.]

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Two podcasts on Telstra’s web monitoring ultragaffe

A couple weeks ago Telstra was caught monitoring the web browsing done by customers of its Next G mobile network and reporting them to an overseas company, Netsweeper. I’m writing more about this soon, so here’s some background so I can link to it.

Josh Taylor explained the story for ZDNet Australia, I did for Crikey, and of course there were others. In brief, though, Telstra told Netsweeper what URLs were being visited by Next G customers — in theory with any personally-identifiable information removed — so Netsweeper could discover new web content and classify it for the content filtering system they were developing for Telstra.

It’s a bit wrong. Telstra stopped the project quick smart. But some people, including me, reckon the situation is rather more serious.

Geoff Huston, chief scientist of regional internet registry Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), reckons it’s so far outside the law that law enforcement agencies should be getting involved. As a common-carrier telco, Telstra is in a privileged position. It shouldn’t be reporting anything about any aspect of digital communications to third parties, except as strictly required under law, just as it can’t do anything with analog phone calls.

Huston explained his views in a blog post, All Your Packets Belong to Us, and discussed it with me on this week’s Patch Monday podcast, Hands off our packets, it’s the law.

You can hear Telstra’s PR response on Phil Dobbie’s Twisted Wire podcast, Is your phone watching you?

(Neither of those podcasts are yet appearing in iTunes or other podcast application feeds. On Monday ZDNet Australia was merged into a new global content management system and the podcast feeds broke. I know the CBS Interactive technicians know it’s a problem, but I don’t have an ETA on when it might be fixed yet.)

On Tuesday, Whirlpool had what purported to be an internal Telstra memo from chief executive David Thodey, who seemed to agree that they’d very much crossed the line.

That’s why I want to remind everyone that privacy is not an aspiration at Telstra — it is an essential requirement and our license to operate.

Privacy at Telstra is everyone’s responsibility. We have to do better.

Now there’s some complicated issues in all this. I’ll be exploring them in the coming week. Meanwhile, do listen to those two podcasts and have a bit of a think.