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Oh, I’m a heavy user of Twitter

Hugh MacLeod stylised cartoon of a twittering bird

TechCrunch has some figures on Twitter usage. It seems my own Twitterings at 16+ a day makes me a “heavy” user.

March 2008
Total Users: 1+ million
Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/day

What’s most interesting is the rabid Twitter usage by active users — they send an average of 15 Twitter message per day.

My Twitter stats show that my usage is spread across my waking hours right across the week. Yes, Twitter has become a core communication tool — though I’ve said that before [1, 2]. Maybe you should follow me.

[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh’s cartoons published online, it’s free to use.]

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So how will this podcast actually work?

Photograph of Sennheiser 825S microphone

My podcast thoughts are rapidly congealing into a nice creamy chocolate custard pudding filled with cocaine: edgy and invigorating, but still appealing to traditionalists. And deeply, deeply satisfying.

Conversations on Twitter this morning helped provide focus for the evolving plan… and raised some questions. I’m determined to make this program “live”, or at least “recorded live”. But how will it actually work?

I have the technology and experience to produce full “broadcast quality” audio material — see the pretty Sennheiser microphone? However I really want to explore the program format(s) and production techniques needed to produce micro-radio and micro-TV using whatever can be carried in my backpack. While audio quality may not be perfect yet, it’ll eventually catch up. For the time being the novelty value means the audience will endure it. Especially if I can keep the content fresh.

As I said perhaps a little too cruelly this morning, podcasts sound either like ABC Radio National (people talking to themselves), or the worst of community radio (ditto). Being able to interact with people while the program is happening is important. I admit my opinion is coloured by having produced (endured?) 4000+ hours of live talk and talkback radio.

Continue reading “So how will this podcast actually work?”

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CeBIT Australia just FOAD, OK?

CeBIT Australia logo

Hannover Fairs, the organisers of the CeBIT Australia IT trade show, must be shitting themselves about poor ticket sales or something. They certainly seem desperate.

These guys are spammy at the best of times, sending at least one email a week every week. But this year I’ve received three “Exclusive Limited Offer: Free Exhibition Entry” emails this month alone, plus today another one via the Australian Computer Society — yeah, that’s fuckin’ exclusive, eh? They’ve emailed a “Dear Bloggers” media release and phoned. Gawd!

I was underwhelmed last year and annoyed with the marketing wank-words.

Do these shows actually achieve anything any more? I mean, if you’ve got a new IT product you just tell TechCrunch and the geek world’s blogosphere of feral goldfish do the rest, right? Why herd everyone into a room, except to fuel an industry of hangers-on who make t-shirts and lame promotional giveaways?

[P.S. I am actually going. If nothing else I can collect some high-grade sarcasm for my podcast. But enough with the spam already, Hannover!]

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Drop that goddam Citizenship Test, Senator Evans!

I agree with Tim Dunlop: “Just dump the stupid, politically motivated, shallow, ill-conceived thing.”

Today The Age reports that fear of failure is turning away potential citizens in droves.

Some migrants were too frightened to apply to become Australians because they feared they would be deported if they failed the controversial citizenship test, Immigration Minister Chris Evans has admitted…

Just 16,024 migrants applied to be citizens between January and March, compared with 38,850 at the same time last year.

I’ve written about this before, of course, both to point out how the whole concept is teh FAIL (to use current lingo), and how it was just pre-election dog-whistle politics anyway.

It’s pointless. I’m assuming there’s already a black market in the answers — though they’re in the book anyway. As one soon-to-be-citizen told me, “It’s all easy enough: 1. Barton. 2. Bradman. 3. Wattle.” And exactly how does that arcane knowledge prove you’re not a “bad person” in a way that isn’t covered by the police and other checks already in place?

Senator Evans, ruling out scrapping the test but setting up a committee to analyse its impact is just wasting taxpayers’ money. Just make a cup of tea, get yourself an Iced Vo-Vo or two, and work through the logic yourself. If you can, that is.

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Three Moments of Software Joy

I like it when software-writers pay attention to the little things.

  1. When changing credit card details in my Basecamp account, the system noticed that I also had a Highrise account and offered to update that at the same time. Thank you, 37signals.
  2. When I installed the new version of OmniFocus, it pre-selected the option to delete the installer files once it was completed. Thank you.
  3. When Miro TV updated itself to a new version, it re-started and continued playing the last video I watched from where we left off.

If I listed “Moments of Software Unjoy”, it’d go for pages…