The first edition of the 5at5 email letter, which I announced yesterday, was posted earlier this evening — slightly late thanks to some annoyances with TinyLetter, which I’ll tell you about another time. You can read it here, subscribe here, or even look at a local archive copy.
Announcing 5at5, my new daily email letter
I come across a lot of fascinating stuff in the course of my alleged media work. It’s stuff worth sharing more widely. Back in December, I decided that I’d start sending out a daily email linking to the best. That email launches tomorrow, Monday 3 February.
It’s called 5at5, and it’ll bring you five items every weekday at around 5pm Sydney time.
They’ll be connected to [my] interests in some way — the politics of the internet and how technology is changing power relationships at every level of society, security and surveillance, military technology and history, language, journalism and human nature. And more.
I was amused to see Alexis Madrigal, technology editor at The Atlantic, launch his own daily email recently, 5 Intriguing Things. Five is the magic number, it seems.
I’ve chosen to use the same platform at Madrigal, TinyLetter, which is a subsidiary of email marketing platform MailChimp. Why? Mostly because it’s free. TinyLetter is limited to 3000 subscribers, but I’ll worry about that when it happens.
So now you’re going to click through to subscribe, right? Good puppy. Smart puppy.
Kicking off a better year for my media work, probably
I’m claiming that January presented clear signs that I’m reversing the decline of revenue that I’d been suffering, thanks to depression and arsehattery — something that I’ve become very aware of in recent months.
If you don’t like these personal reflections that I write from time to time, then stop reading now. Read this instead.
I started this planning process at the end of 2012, because I’d noticed that until then I hadn’t actually been planning my media work, let alone taking the next step of having some kind of strategy.
I’d just plodded along doing much the same thing every week. If an income stream died, I did no real work to replace it. When new work was offered, I generally took it on unless the idea was clearly daft.
You can see what happened in my newly-updated “media objects” chart, which counts how many things I did for each masthead, regardless of complexity or income.
Continue reading “Kicking off a better year for my media work, probably”
Talking Bitcoin arrests on ABC The World Today
On Tuesday, news reached us that two men connected with the digital currency Bitcoin had been arrested in the US — one a prominent advocate, the other the operator of a currency exchange.
ABC Radio’s lunchtime current affairs program The World Today did a story about it the same day, in which I made a few brief comments. The reporter was Tom Nightingale. Here’s the audio.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:28 — 1.6MB)
The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, served here directly from their website — where you can also read a full transcript.
Talking passwords on ABC 105.7 Darwin
When the list of the worst passwords for 2013 did the rounds last week, I’m glad that a few media outlets went beyond mocking those who used them and gave some practical advice.
ABC 105.7 Darwin was one of them. On Thursday morning 23 January I spoke with breakfast presenter Richard Margetson.
While it was a light-hearted chat, we also managed to sneak in the advice: use different passwords for everything important; the longer the password, the better it is; email account passwords are particularly important; use password management software to keep track of them all.
Searching the internet for “how to choose a good password” generally delivers reasonable advice, but I reckon Microsoft’s advice and password checker ain’t too bad.
[Update 1510 AEDT: As Nick Andrew points out, the problem with Microsoft’s password checker is that you’re typing your password into Microsoft’s website — which is obviously a Bad Idea. So my recommendation is to use it to explore how different choices for your password affect its strength, and then choose something different again for your real password based on what you’ve learned.]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:42 — 3.1MB)
The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Talking digital privacy and Apple refunds on 1395 FIVEaa
I continue to be pleased that digital privacy issues are getting more and more coverage in the mainstream media — such as the interview I did last Monday 20 January with radio 1395 FIVEaa in Adelaide.
Presenter Will Goodings had spotted the story of Turnstyle Solutions in Toronto, who can track people around town via their smartphones and use that location data for marketing.
Rather stupidly, I talk about Australia’s Privacy Act being “under review” when in fact that review is well over and the new Privacy Act comes into force on 12 March.
We also spoke about the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) forcing Apple to refund $35 million to customers who’d had their kids make what they felt were unauthorised in-app purchases on their iDevices.
It’s something the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been concerned about too, and they have a page to explain how you can block in-app purchases or complain to Apple or Google.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:47 — 5.3MB)
The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia, but here it is ’cos it hasn’t been posted on the radio station’s website. Besides, this is a reasonable plug.