Gosh, I haven’t posted much detailed work here lately, eh? That’s because I’ve been flat out on many things, including more writing for Crikey than usual. I’ll try to catch up tonight with an overview of the Telstra break-up stories from the last few days.
Stopping the junk mail flood 2
It’s a month since I complained about advertising being inserted to my “no advertising material” mailbox. How that’s gone?
The good news is that immediately following PMP Distribution chastising their walker there was a significant drop in unaddressed advertising material, perhaps to only half what there was before. Good. But there’s still plenty of “bad corporate citizens” who I’ll now name, and a few businesses who failed to respond.
First, kudos to David Jones and their distributors PMP Distribution, and also to MiniMovers and Marrickville Metro (AMP Capital Shopping Centres), who responded promptly and dealt with the problem. Well done.
A slap on the wrist to Domino’s Pizza; Go Green Insulation; Kmart; and Raine & Horne Marrickville, all of whom didn’t even acknowledge my email enquiry. Pathetic.
An especially big slap to Kmart, since your website contact form sent me an email which said:
We value your feedback, and wish to advise that the matter you have raised has been referred to one of our Customer Relations Representatives who will be in contact with you in the near future.
I didn’t bother chasing Cavellis Woodfire Pizzeria, Cut & Save Tree Service, or Papaya Thai Eatery since they didn’t list email addresses.
Now, the new bad apples…
This month’s rude pricks are: Broadway Shopping Centre; De Sousa Real Estate (who also camouflaged their advertising to look like a hand-written note); Domino’s Pizza (again! twice!); Franklins & Family Supermarkets; Marrickville First National Real Estate; Mountain Designs; Prestige Cleaning Specialists; Raine & Horne Marrickville (again!); Ray White Newtown (another real estate agent!).
I’ll be in touch with all of these businesses to give them a chance to respond. And, since real estate agents feature so prominently in this list, I’ll be asking the REIA whether they consider this to be acceptable behaviour.
We also got a message from beyondblue, but since that’s not advertising but a public health message about depression I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Keep up the good work.
Episode 53 is online, James Murdoch!
Episode 53 of Stilgherrian Live, the John Della Bosca Couch of Love Edition, is online for your viewing pleasure.
As always the nominations for “Cnut of the Week” were superbly wide-ranging.
From my idiosyncratically-selected shortlist of four, Geoffrey Emerson, the man who pays people to take on false identities to post blog comments, scored… well, zero votes. Humph. He was my suggestion. Screw you.
John Della Bosca, his sex scandal, and the media who considered it important, together came in 3rd (14%). I won’t link to it. It’s beneath me.
Microsoft were 2nd (27%) for their somewhat racist re-imaging of an advertisement.
The clear winner of “Cnut of the Week”, though, was James Murdoch (59%) for his wide-ranging Cnutery in his MacTaggart Lecture.
To decide who won the t-shirt from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing, we had to draw four names from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity before finding someone who was actually watching the program: delperro, Bob Bain, theparissite and, finally, einspruch.
Congratulations, einspruch!
It is moderately likely that Stilgherrian Live will return tomorrow night at 9.30pm Sydney time.
Telstra closes blog, loses friends
Australia’s biggest telco closed down their corporate blog nowwearetalking without warning yesterday — and deleted all the content. While I can understand they want to put the often-controversial forum behind them, I think the move was a mistake.
I’ve already written about this for Crikey, Telstra consigns nowwearetalking to the memory hole. It seems odd to kill NWAT just as it was changing for the better – even more so given there’s no replacement. There’s comments from Stephen Collins and Fake Stephen Conroy, as well as Telstra’s official spokesperson Craig Middleton. It’s free to read. Off you go.
But I’d also like to publish the full interviews I did for that story. So here they are.
Links for 28 August 2009 through 09 September 2009
Stilgherrian’s links for 28 August 2009 through 09 September 2009, gathered automatically and then forgotten until today:
- REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits: I haven’t encountered this audio/music production tool before. It’s perhaps worth a look.
- Experts look to Australia’s Aborigines for weather help: As it happens, the Aboriginal tribes of the Sydney basin recognised six season, not the European four.
- The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer: This was published back in March, but it’ll show you how trust in various things has changed over time.
- Salvage Techniques for Wet Electronics | Andy Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA): The title says what it is. Yes, I have wet electronics. I dropped my phone in a “moist environment” and it’s now sitting with silica gel and probably never working again. Read this guide now so you know the drill for the future.
- For SEC, tech-savvy fans might be biggest threats to media exclusivity | St Petersburg Times: The US Southeastern Conference of college sports is trying to stop fans communicating about the game in the most stringent restrictions ever seem. A pity they can’t possibly work.
- User driven service bingo | Doc Searls Weblog: A checklist of activities to see whether some web service or other is truly “user driven”. Does this apply to organisations too?
- Electronic Warfare: Airborne electronic attack – a new offensive role for the RAAF | ADM: Someone took me to task for suggesting the RAAF buying F/A-18 Super Hornets was a waste. He suggested the electronic warfare capability of the “Growler” model was a worthwhile addition to Australia’s defence capability.
- Stop Using the Word “We” | Ted Dziuba: A plea for more direct communication within the corporation. Yes please.
- Economics is not a Natural Science by Douglas Rushkoff | Edge: “Some of us analyzing digital culture and its impact on business must reveal economics as the artificial construction it really is. Although it may be subjected to the scientific method and mathematical scrutiny, it is not a natural science; it is game theory, with a set of underlying assumptions that have little to do with anything resembling genetics, neurology, evolution, or natural systems.”
- Impatient CEOs are all of a Twitter, but it doesn’t work like that | The Observer: John Naughton points out a real dilemma: CEOs have to generate profits to a quarterly cycle, but the business benefits of “social media” (or whatever it’s called next month) will take decades to emerge.
- Draft Open Access and Licensing Framework released | In Development: The New Zealand government’s draft policy recommends that government agencies use the most liberal Creative Commons licensing possible.
- Stark realisation: I no longer depend on Google to find stuff | Alex J Campbell: Alex differentiates between “finding” and “locating”, and along the way observes that the changes in the way we do these things has profound implications for businesses trying to get customers online.
- Words for Webstock – Bruce Sterling: Bruce Sterling sees the Future, and it’s banal. Just like today.
- Last Year’s Model: “It’s totally normal to lust after the hottest new geeky gadgets. It’s also cool to put some thought into what we buy, and what we throw away. So this is a place to show the world that a lot of us are choosing to use Last Year’s Model.” Their slogan is “Saving the planet through sheer laziness”, but it’s also a call for a more informed choice about consuming less.
- OSX Timemachine and Samba/Windows share | Hupio’s Weblog: How to use Apple’s OS X 10.5.2 Time Machine backup software with a Linux server, Windows server or Windows network share. It presumably works just as well with later versions.
- The next 100 years | New Statesman: An extract from Stratfor founder George Friedman’s book of the same name. Can you imagine a war between a Japan-Turkey alliance and US-Poland?
- Depression’s Evolutionary Roots | Scientific American: New research seems to indicate that depression isn’t something “broken”, but rather the brain going into an altered state so that “deep rumination” can be uninterrupted, leading to better analysis of a complex problem. If so, doesn’t that mean anti-depressant medications are preventing the problem being solved?
- John Thompson-Mills: John was the producer of Club Escape, the dance music program I presented with Scott Thompson on Triple J back in 1990 or whenever it was. Happy to have stumbled across this.
- CHART OF THE DAY: Actually, Kids Don’t Hate Twitter Anymore! | Silicon Valley Insider: “While Twitter’s user base historically favored older users, people between ages 12-24 have been Twitter’s fastest growing age group of late. And now that age group is actually disproportionately visiting Twitter, according to comScore.”
NSW offers $100k prizes for application development
In a surprise visit to today’s NSW Sphere event, Premier Nathan Rees announced the apps4nsw program — offering prizes of $100,000 for innovative applications with make use of government data for public good.
I’ve got a piece on the Crikey website, NSW gets its geek on:
“This is all about making government data easy for everyone to use to solve everyday problems,” said Rees…
Entries may be websites or web based services, mobile applications or stand-alone PC based or kiosk-based applications.
“The prizes will be judged by an expert panel – which doesn’t include me – and there will also be a People’s Choice Award and the opportunity for the best entry to go to a prototyping phase”, said Rees.
“Anything we develop as a result of the competition will be licensed as open source and freely available to government and the public. These will be public apps for the common good.”
This is a fascinating initiative. Have a squizz at the Crikey piece. I’ll write more later.