The Letters Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald confirms today that there’s little support for Senator Conroy’s Rabbit-Proof Firewall. “There was near unanimity on the date when the Federal Government’s internet filter should be implemented — never. One or two sided with Jim Wallace’s opinion piece, but many more put cogent and scornful arguments against.” I’ve already had my say.
Disoriented concrete giraffe
Why, exactly, is this confused-looking concrete giraffe in Dixon Street, the heart of Sydney’s Chinatown?
It’s not like they have giraffes in China. It’s not like there’s a giraffe in the Chinese zodiac. It’s not like giraffes are a good-luck charm or anything. WFT? Please explain!
Links for 31 January 2009
Stilgherrian’s links for 31 January 2009, arranged by intensity of floral attitude:
- Twittering away standards or tweeting the future of journalism? | Reuters Blogs: Reuters News editor David Schlesinger tweets from Davos, beats his own news wires, and then blogs about the experience. If Twitter is changing journalism, his response is “Bring it on!”
- The LEGO Turing Machine | YouTube: The Turing Machine was a hypothetical computing device created by Alan Turing in 1936 to explain basic theoretical concepts in computing. While very simple, a Turing Machine is mathematically equivalent to any other general purpose computer, if slower. So, these guys have built one using LEGO Mindstorms components. The video has a bonus soundtrack via The A-Team.
- A radical idea: Charge people for your product | 37signals: The blog post is from November 2008, but the message is current given all the media flutter about Twitter — which has yet to earn a single dollar of revenue. Need income? Um, charge for your product!
- FORA.tv: “Videos Covering Today’s Top Social, Political, and Tech Issues.” I haven’t checked them out properly yet, so this is really a reminder to self.
- GoodBarry: These guys provide an integrated “Software as a Service” (SaaS) system for small business, covering eCommerce, content management (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM), email marketing and analytics. All hooked together, and all at good prices. I’m checking them out for a client.
- Life Matters’ Mandatory Internet Filter Transcript | Off Topic with Ashley: An unofficial transcript of ABC Radio National’s Life Matters program with network engineer Mark Newton and Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby.
- Mandatory internet filter | ABC Life Matters: On Thursday, ABC Radio National’s Life Matters interviewed network engineer Mark Newton and Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby. Audio available for download.
- The Economy According To Mint | TechCrunch: Mint is an online accounting system for consumers. Tracing their 900,000 customers through 2008 shows how their spending patterns have changed as the Global Financial Crisis worsens.
- Labor’s “deafening silence” as web censorship trials delayed | theage.com.au:
- Newspapers Saw the Digital Train A-Coming | Advertising Age: Bradley Johnson points out that the newspapers themselves were exploring digital delivery of news in the 1980s, but failed to do anything about it in terms of reviewing their business models.
- OpenNet Initiative: “ONI’s mission is to identify and document Internet filtering and surveillance, and to promote and inform wider public dialogs about such practices.”
- The Unmistakable Smell Of Decay | newmatilda.com: With the NSW Labor zombie army smelling worse all the time, party hacks are considering swapping their front-line cadaver, writes Bob Dumpling.
Choosing who I follow on Twitter
Since being listed as an “interesting Aussie Twitter user” at NEWS.com.au the other night, I’ve gained 300-ish new followers. Here’s how I’ve been deciding who to follow back.
First, though, I don’t think Twitter starts to make sense unless you have a reasonable number of people in your network. For me, the penny dropped when I had about 50 followers and followees, and you actually interact with them. At that point I started to see the live communication rippling through the hyperconnected mob. It helped that I already knew some well-connected geeks to get the ball rolling.
Once you hit hundreds of followers, though, there’s a phase shift. You simply can’t see everything that happens. It scrolls by too fast. At first that’s stressful — until you realise there’s always more in the world than you can ever experience. So another penny drops, and you detach. Zen. The Twitter-river flows on 24/7, but you don’t stop to watch every fish.
I use Tweetdeck most of the time, not Twitter’s standard web interface, because I can create groups of people. The unfiltered Twitterstream rolls by on the left of my screen, with separate groups for close friends, for media contacts I need to keep an eye on, direct messages and so on. Another panel shows everyone who replies to me or mentions me. So while I can’t see everything on the main stream, just mentioning me will grab my attention.
(I daresay it changes again when you’re like Stephen Fry with more than 88,000 followers. [Update 5 February 2009: It’s now more than 122,000.] May the gods forbid I reach that level of fame! He wouldn’t even be able to monitor all his @replies and DMs!)
So, how do I choose who to follow? Here’s what I’ve noticed today.
Links for 29 January 2009 through 30 January 2009
Stilgherrian’s links for 29 January 2009 through 30 January 2009, gathered by a poisonous frog:
- Study challenges AGs on predator danger | CNET News: A new study from the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use (CSRIU) challenges recent assertions by several state attorneys general that young people are at significant risk from online predators on social-networking sites.
- Co-generation Cyber-Cafe Internet coffee appliance | Link: The Link Institute today announced a breakthrough in energy saving to combat global warming: the “Cyber-Cafe”. This unit provides web services for a home or small business and uses the waste heat to keep coffee warm.
- What is so costly to Telstra about 38GB? | Core Economics: Joshua Gans asks the age-old question: if the first 60GB of a broadband plan costs $130, why does an additional 38GB cost $6000?
- ACMA rolls out cybersafety professional development program for educators | ACMA: ACMA’s Cybersafety Outreach — Professional Development for Educators is the national cyber-safety program designed for primary and secondary level educators. It's part of a wider education initiative which will, I contend, be money better spent than on Internet filters.
- Going private | Inside Story: The evidence suggests that publicly-listed media companies are digging their own graves. Does this mean a return to the age of moguls, asks Jonathan Este.
- Australia’s Holy Man likes a Good War | sydwalker.info: Syd Walker profiles Jim Wallace, head of the Australian Christian Lobby, former head of Australia’s elite SAS Regiment and now stormtrooper in the fight for Internet censorship.
- More of London from above, at night | The Big Picture: Boston.com’s The Big Picture is almost always beyond excellent. This set of aerial images of London at night is stunning. Photographer: Jason Hawkes.
- The next P-I might be electronic, and on a plastic sheet | Crosscut: The Hearst empire has been experimenting with epaper versions of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
- http://walterhiggins.net/projects/follower_mosaic.pl: A straightforward tool to create a mosaic of your Twitter followers’ avatar images. Produces HTML for pasting into a blog post or whatever.
- Australian Journalists on Twitter | Laurel Papworth – Social Network Strategy: Ms @SilkCharm has been compiling a list as indicated, with a very wide interpretation of “journalist”. Useful.
- TinEye Reverse Image Search: “TinEye a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.”
- The Phenomenon of Retweeting: A Deep Analysis | Pistachio: A numerical analysis of how people retweet — that is, pass on others’ tweets — on Twitter.
I’m interesting… and you’re not
So… Right now there’s this graphic with two canaries on the very motherfucking front page of NEWS.com.au which links to a story listing 10 of Australia’s most interesting Twitter users. I’m one of them.
Stilgherrian (@stilgherrian) Fiercely opinionated blogger and former broadcaster Stilgherrian (“yes, I only have one name,” he says) is one of the busiest Twitter users in Australia with more than 16,000 posts. Subscribe to his feed for thoughts on media, technology and politics from a web-savvy point of view.
Example: “In all of this, pls differentiate between ‘news’, which we all pass on, and ‘The News’, which journalists manufacture.”
I wonder why they didn’t pick example tweets like this or this or this?
Continue reading “I’m interesting… and you’re not”