I see that Peter Black, lecturer in Internet law at Queensland University of Technology, has listed this website as one of the Best Australian Blogs of 2008. Clearly the man is a dangerous fool and not to be trusted. Pay no attention.
Fine posts for 2008
Given that mere popularity doesn’t reflect quality, here’s my personal selection of my best, timeless posts for 2008. Happy reading!
- Kruddiversary: The internet thanks you for 12 months of achieving nothing, my Crikey article looking at the first year of the Rudd government from an Internet geek’s perspective.
- Thailand’s political crisis: an introduction, though later pieces in The Economist are better than my amateur efforts.
- Journalism in a hyperconnected world.
- @KevinRuddPM stumbles into the Twitterverse, a Crikey article which includes links to the previous three essays I’d written about the PM’s entrance into modern social media.
- Gonzo Twitter 1: Saturday Evening in Newtown, my experiment in live-tweeting a descriptive essay and still one of the best things I’ve written all year.
- How Dell fixed my monitor order, which is being used by clever consultants as an example of how to use social media for quality customer service.
- Sunday Thoughts about Journalism, a rather lengthy essay with many links to background on the Death of Newspapers this year.
- Finally, The Shave, a rather wonderful film we made.
- The Great Firewall of China: how it works, how to bypass it.
- Note to “old media” journalists: adapt, or stfu! This piece triggered an entire wave of discussion and was quoted globally.
- Winter Solstice Meditation.
- Anzac Day Rememberings.
- ABC Playback: so this is the future of television…? Nope! A review of what’s now called ABC iView.
- There ain’t no shortcuts to professionally-managed IT.
- Remembering the Space Age: Arthur C Clarke dead at 90.
- Super Hornets are Go.
- Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up. I don’t really think Jason is evil, but I do worry about the self-centred anti-human attitude of many people connected with Internet start-ups.
- New national anthem: I am So an Aussie, when the Snarky Platypus and I created, yes, a new national anthem. Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!
- Is it really so wrong to mix business and politics (and religion)?
- Leaving room for elephants: a chat with David Attenborough, a personal fave since it harks back to an interesting time in my life. This is still one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve done. Ever.
- Angry geeks: “Don’t waste money on internet filters”, one of many articles I posted about censorship, but which outlined the key issues way back in January.
- Post 801: Kill the Hallucinating Goldfish.
Most popular posts of 2008
Following established mainstream media tradition, my year-in-review pieces will start appearing well before Christmas. He’s a list of the most-read items on this website for (most of) 2008.
- Heath Ledger dead: jokes here please. It’s rather depressing to discover that my tasteless little experiment was this year’s highlight. Maybe I should’ve put advertising on this page.
- So this is human sexuality?
- How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?
- Topic 9 to discuss Australia 2020 Summit’s government topic. This is actually spurious, as most hits are from link-following robots attempting to spam my blog at topic9.com.au (which has been since been abandoned).
- 67 Australian SAS captured airbase defended by 1000, though most of this traffic is to see the photo. The miltech fanboys are incapable of hosting their own photos, it seems, because most of their troll-filled forums don’t allow people to upload photos. Dark Ages.
- About Stilgherrian, which would seem to be a popular second page for people to visit once they’ve arrived here for other reasons.
- Corey Delaney, freedom fighter (for the right to party) — and increasingly I think Mr Corey Worthington Delaney is one of the true heroes of 2008. But not thereafter.
- Spaceport America, designed by Foster+Partners.
- Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up.
- Achtung! Die grosskapitalistischen Hühner kommen!
As with last year’s list, I’m somewhat disappointed with the results. I’ll therefore choose my own selection of “best” posts, just like I did last year.
WordPress 2.7 broke something
I just upgraded this website to WordPress 2.7 and something has gone wrong with the tagging. I couldn’t be bothered figuring it out just now, so tags will have to be broken for a little while. You’ll live. [Update: OK, so it fixed itself. Mysteries abound.]
Testing the CoveritLive live blogging tool
Yesterday Crikey used CoveritLive for their US Election Live Blog and it seemed to work OK, so I’m trying it today.
I’ll use this to blog about whatever’s in front of me at midday today, Sydney time, on this very post. If you’d like to take part, feel free — and do post comments afterwards to let me know what you think.
Continue reading “Testing the CoveritLive live blogging tool”
What’s with the avatars?
If you’ve been wondering why some people now have avatars (personal images) next to their comments, it’s because they have an account at Gravatar.com. Create an account, associate image(s) with your email address(es), and the appropriate image will be used by every blog which uses the Gravatar standard.