Conversations – Page 37

10 February 201330 October 2013

Talking Twitter and TV on ABC Radio’s Media Report

Last week, reportedly, Twitter spent $100 million buying Bluefin Labs, a media analytics company that claims to be able to provide details semantic analysis of Twitter chatter about TV programs.

I ended up talking about this, and about social TV and other things, with Richard Aedy on ABC Radio’s Media Report.

Twitter has just bought a company that trawls social media to find out what people are saying about television programs. Stilgherrian believes Twitter sees itself more and more as a media and analytics company as opposed to a social communication company. So what is Twitter planning to do with information about what people say online about programs they love and hate?

It’s nice that Mr Aedy and his producer trust me to go live on National Radio. Yes, I behaved myself.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:53 — 4.6MB)

03 February 2013

Talking geek stuff on Purser Explores the World

A curious article claiming that We are in the final years of our internet — I disagree — led to a conversation on Twitter which led, in turn, to me appearing on a podcast.

The podcast in question was in James Purser’s series Purser Explores the World, and the episode was entitled Tomorrow’s Geek.

I ended up talking about my path into geekery via an interest in the space program, railways, and the Angle Park Computing Centre; old-school programming styles; my thoughts on how the internet is changing power relationships; my opinion of consumer pseudo-geeks; how future geeks will be hacking DNA and drones, and other stuff.

Also appearing in this episode are network engineer Mark Newton and notable geek Liz Quilty.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:12 — 31.7MB)

That audio is precisely as posted by Mr Purser, i.e. I haven’t turned it into my usual Conversations format.

03 February 2013

Talking cybersecurity bollocks on ABC Radio’s “AM”

ABC logo Following the announcement of a new Australian Cyber Security Centre, to be built by the end of 2013, I ended up being interviewed by ABC Radio’s AM program on 24 January — but it didn’t turn out so flash.

Journalist Peter Lloyd asked me about cybersecurity threats. I think I mentioned that at one end of the spectrum there’s serious nation-state espionage and sabotage, but at the other there’s all manner of low-end crime that probably doesn’t warrant a national centre — and I used ransomware as an example of that.

But in the finished story, somehow that example became the defining crime. Oops.

PETER LLOYD: So far cyber crime in Australia has largely been a new form of stand-over tactic. The online commentator and writer, Stilgherrian:

STILGHERRIAN: We’ve got the low level cyber crime operatives who are just trying to hack into small businesses, encrypt all their data, hold them to ransom. We’ve seen cases of that with victims in Alice Springs and the Gold Coast and elsewhere in Australia, that a business finds that all the data on their computer is unavailable until they send money of some thousands of dollars to have it unlocked for them.

Anyway, for posterity, here’s the audio of the piece.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:30 — 2.1MB)

23 December 2012

Talking Instagram on ABC 666 Canberra

By the time I got to doing my third radio spot about the Instagram saga, the issues were clear in my mind and I had a few well-rehearsed sound bites. So my final spot on ABC 666 Canberra was smooth.

I don’t think I need to provide any more background. My conversation with Louise Maher stands for itself, I think. We didn’t speak for as long as we’d originally intended, but they also had to update their listeners on the progress of some bushfires and that does have priority.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:10 — 3.0MB)

At some point in the next few days I’ll post further thoughts about this Instagram incident. Stay tuned.

23 December 2012

Talking Instagram on ABC Radio’s “PM”

With ABC Radio National Breakfast out of the way, I settled down to write my Crikey story about the Instagram saga.

By that stage my understanding of the story had evolved.

I was becoming increasingly cranky with so many people, including many who should know better, pushing the “Instagram wants to sell your photos” line. Failing to distinguish between selling a license to use a photo in various ways and selling the ownership of the photo itself was a massive failure. The difference is as clear at that between selling a house and renting it out to a tenant.

There was also a clarification from Instagram, making it clear that they weren’t seeking such ownership, admitting that they really hadn’t figured out precisely what it was they wanted to do with users’ photos, and agreeing that the language was open to misinterpretation.

I incorporated this into my Crikey piece, which was given the headline: Users snap over Instagram, but should have seen it coming.

In hindsight, and had I know this was to be the headline, I wouldn’t have been so blunt in my final paragraph.

The core lesson here is that services like Instagram aren’t free. You pay for them by licensing the operator to use your content and other data in various ways. If you don’t like that, well, pay for your goddam internet hosting yourself.

All I meant by this was that internet hosting is pretty cheap these days, and there’s plenty of low-cost providers to choose from. It’s not as if Instagram is a public service that owes you anything.

In any event, I filed the Crikey story before midday as usual. It seemed to me that Instagram was responding appropriately, and I’d always thought they were at the responsible end of social networking. My thoughts were now moving to the future. Would Instagram be able to prove they were worth their billion-dollar price tag? How would they behave if they didn’t start generating revenue?

But on the way to a lunch in the Sydney CBD, I ended up discussing the issue with a journalist for ABC TV’s 7.30 and a producer with ABC 666 Canberra. It was becoming clear to me that for most people in the media this was a brand new issue. Further media spots were being organised.

The next to be recorded, though not the next to go to air, was with ABC Radio’s national current affairs program PM. What pleases me about this piece, I think, is that the “tape ID” — the bit at the front of a recording where you identify who you are so there’s no confusion later — was included as part of the story. Because I used the word “arsehattery”.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:00 — 2.2MB)

This audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is an unedited copy of the original audio posted on their website. There’s a transcript over there too, where they spell arsehattery “ass-hattery”. The journalist was Will Ockenden.

23 December 201223 December 2012

Talking Instagram on ABC Radio National Breakfast

Wednesday was a strange day for me this week, unexpectedly dominated as it was by the public outcry over photo sharing service Instagram changing its terms of use to make it explicit that people’s photographs could be used for promotional purposes.

This is the first of a series of posts that document the media that I was involved with that day — eventually three radio spots and a story for Crikey, plus discussions with a journalist at ABC TV’s 7.30 for a story that ended up not happening — as well as the evolution of my own thoughts on the topic.

I’d gotten up early that morning to work on a Crikey story about the risks of big data, so I was already in media mode when I saw the tweets starting to flood out.

Instagram was claiming the right to sell your photos, they claimed — which I found most unlikely because they can’t sell what they don’t own, and social networks have long since given up trying to claim ownership over their users’ content. At least the ones that intend lasting more than a week online.

Sure enough, I looked at Instagram’s proposed new terms of use, and they actually made it quite explicit that they were not doing that. As I expected, they were seeking the right to use photographs in connection with promotions of unspecified nature — though they’d stated the fact that you wouldn’t be paid for this rather baldly.

To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

Moreover, it looked to me like Instagram’s existing terms of use already gave them this right, though the wording was vague.

… you hereby agree that Instagram may place such advertising and promotions on the Instagram Services or on, about, or in conjunction with your Content. The manner, mode and extent of such advertising and promotions are subject to change without specific notice to you.

In retrospect, I think both are worded rather vaguely, with a phrase like “in connection with” being able to cover a multitude of sins. But “without any compensation to you” is clear enough, and that obviously triggered the fears.

But Instagram’s actions weren’t unusual, they weren’t claiming ownership of your photos, and there was no need to panic — and that’s what I tried to stress in this first media spot, a chat with John Doyle on ABC Radio National Breakfast at around 0840 AEDT.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:57 — 3.7MB)