Blog – Page 263 – Stilgherrian

16 November 200816 November 2008

Crikey: @KevinRuddPM stumbles into the Twitterverse

[This article was first published in Crikey on Friday. It covers much the same material as my previous three posts [1, 2, 3] but for a general non-Twitter audience.]

Wednesday 1.35pm. Someone logs into the newly-created account “KevinRuddPM” and types “Looking forward to communicating with you on Twitter“. Thus did our Prime Minister enter the crazy hyperconnected global front bar cum water cooler conversation that is the Twitterverse.

It took a couple of hours for word to spread and for KevinRuddPM to gather his first ten “followers”. But soon the numbers grew. People said their greetings, asked questions and offered opinions — and most of the opinions were calling for an end to the Internet filtering trials. Smart-arses like me even offered snarky advice.

By mid-evening, KevinRuddPM had more than 700 followers. Those hanging out for a response eagerly devoured the second Prime Ministerial tweet: “Thanks to everyone for adding me on Twitter.” [My reaction: OMFG! Kevin Rudd tweeted again!] And then all the followers suddenly disappeared. Huh?

Continue reading “Crikey: @KevinRuddPM stumbles into the Twitterverse”

16 November 2008

Links for 16 November 2008

Here are the web links I’ve found for 16 November 2008, posted automatically and not.

Filtering Pilot and ACMA Blacklist – Not just “illegal” material | Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA): EFA’s analysis of the Australian goverment&’s policy makes it clear that it’s not just illegal material being targetted for Internet “filtering”.
From cutlass to AK-47 | BBC News: A brief history of piracy through to the present day — the real kind of piracy, not “copyright infringement”.
From Pickin’ Cotton to Pickin’ Presidents | Strange Maps: There’s been plenty of discussion about how race (i.e. the fact that Barack Obama isn’t white) affected the US election. Here’s a comparison of the map of cotton production from 1860 compared with voting patterns earlier this month. The resemblance is both uncanny and scary.
This Isn’t England | Noisy Decent Graphics: Pax Britannia! London-based graphic designer Ben Terrett notices that the UK isn’t always drawn as it should be on maps. All maps, by definition, present a distorted view of the world. But how distorted?
How This Bear Market Compares | NYTimes.com: Once more the New York Times wins with its superb infographics. Want to compare the current stock market crash with previous ones? This interactive graphic allows you to do just that, clearly and simply.
Introducing Recession: Simple Advice for Designers | Noisy Decent Graphics: While the blog is aimed at designers overall, this post is about the current world economic recession and includes links to some good infographics to help understand it, as well a rather nice FAIL photo.
Digital Surveillance Event Recorder | Jaycar Electronics: There’s just got to be some cool uses for a gadget that comes with two infra-red video cameras and records a 10-second burst of low-res video every time something moves. And it costs less that AUD$300.
Resampled Space | BLDGBLOG: Amazing but probably impossible buildings, assembled thanks to some nifty photo editing.
Anything Looks Cooler with a NASA Logo | Flickr: Yes, even mundane things.
Ethics & Principles of Permaculture browse | Permaculture Business Guild: Bill Mollison published these principles in 1980 in Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual (Tagari Publications), but the “Principles for Functional Design” apply everywhere, I think.
Internet filtering and censorship forum UNSW 27 November 2008 | Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre: A free forum in Sydney later this month discusses Australia’s proposals for Internet filtering / censorship. I;ll be there.
Economics of Spam | Link: The paper “Spamalytics: An Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion”, details how researchers hacked into a spam network to measure its effectiveness. This post asks whether the technique of hacking into a spam botnet was ethical.
japanese bert | Flickr: There’s an uncanny resemblance between this chap and Australian television presenter Bert Newton.

15 November 200826 August 2020

Space: we’ve still such a long way to go

This morning I watched the Space Shuttle Endeavor [sic] rocket into orbit on NASA TV. Exciting. But now I see this new photograph (above) of a planet found orbiting Fomalhaut, and realise we’re still only taking the tiniest of baby-steps into the universe.

I’m a child of the Space Age. When I was born, no-one had been outside the earth’s atmosphere. I was too young to be aware of the flights of Yuri Gararin or Alan Shepherd. But when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong walked upon the Moon we got the day off school to watch the grainy video imagery — our rural school didn’t have enough TVs for everyone to see.

Today I watched quietly as Endeavor became a tiny blue dot in the empty black sky — oh so quickly! And yet… And yet in the full-sized Hubble Space Telescope imagery the newly-photographed planet Fomalhaut b is also just a faint dot.

25 light-years away.

Endeavour would take more than 900,000 years to get there at its low Earth orbit speed of 8 kilometres a second.

Tiny. Baby. Steps.

15 November 2008

Links for 15 November 2008

Here are the web links I’ve found for 15 November 2008, served with a mild mustard and posted automatically.

New Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Causes Chaos | ReadWriteWeb: The real reason Kevin Rudd’s Twitter account was misbehaving.
Too many twitters drown out Rudd website | theage.com.au: The Age‘s article claiming the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Twitter account “crashed&” because of overload.
Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Joins Twitter – The Reponse: No Clean Feed | Young PR: Australian PR expert chap Paull Young’s take on Kevin Rudd’s launch into the Twitterverse. He reckons it’s a waste of time because the audience is too small.
Internet addiction disorder | Wikipedia: The Wikipedia article says that the definition and status of Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is still somewhat controversial.
China classes Web addiction as clinical disorder | The Inquirer: China appears to be the first nation to official classify Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) as a clinical condition.
Reservoir Thunderbirds | YouTube: YouTube recommended that I watch this mashup of Thunderbirds and Reservoir Dogs. I agree.
Was Simpson Desert closed because of aliens? | AdelaideNow…: The South Australian government refuses to rule out that their closure of the Simpson Desert Conservation Park was due to the presence of aliens.
A senior fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence | International Herald Tribune: The news report that Sarah Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent was a hoax, set up by two guys developing a character for a new TV series.

14 November 200814 November 2008

@KevinRuddPM isn’t really Kevin

I’m not particularly surprised to discover that the Prime Minister’s Twitter presence isn’t really Kevin Rudd but a minion of some kind.

I’ve already written about this [1, 2], and will doubtless write again, but I figure today’s the day they really do need to sort out how they’re going to use this Twitter account.

Are they talking in first person like “I’m on my way to the G20…” or the third like “We think getting 700 followers in 7 hours + following back caused us to crash“? How will they respond to the massive return traffic, making sure everyone feels like they’ve been heard while not sounding like a robot?

Why wasn’t this written up on the site before the account went live? After all, those basic ground rules would have been negotiated well before the PM approved the idea, wouldn’t they?

I’m still not convinced by this “we crashed Twitter” line either. Al Gore joined Twitter the other day and was getting 2000+ adds an hour. It coped fine then. I don’t see why it wouldn’t cope now. Linkage please, Prime Minister’s Minion!

I’m also surprised that they seem to be stumbling a bit, even by rolling out the account while the PM’s travelling. Surely they’d have hired an expert for such a public activity?

14 November 2008

Conroy’s Cnutful Hat Trick

Photograph of Senator Stephen Conroy labelled Cnut of the Week

Yes, Stephen Stephen Conroy was voted “Cnut of the Week” for the third time running by the audience of last night’s Stilgherrian Live — which you can watch online now. My people do not like his Internet censorship plans, it seems!

We had so many nominations, ranging from “NSW wheat farmers” (who, despite record crops in some areas, are still whingeing because the world economic recession means they can’t get the price they want for their grain) to “the people of Arkansas” (for their medieval attitude to gay couples adopting children).

Still, despite a strong final field including Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (for calling US President-Elect “tanned”), Vitamin D (you’ll have to watch) and NSW Premier Nathan Rees (for recent state budget cuts), Senator Conroy was the clear winner with 66% of the vote.