Weekly Wrap 7

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

  • ‘Open Government’ declared in Australia for Crikey. Buried in the news just before the Australian election was called last weekend, Lindsay Tanner, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, issued the Declaration of Open Government which had been called for by the Government 2.0 Taskforce. Someone ought to tell the Attorney-General’s Department.
  • Two other articles have been written but are still in the production pipeline, one for Crikey and one for ABC Unleashed. And I’ve been researching a 2000-word feature for ZDNet Australia. So I’ve been very busy, you just haven’t seen the output yet.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 49, “The software patent controversy explained” with guest Kimberlee Weatherall. She teaches intellectual property law at the University of Queensland.
  • A Series of Tubes episode 112, in which I chat with Richard Chirgwin about the Declaration of Open Government, the Privacy Commissioner’s findings on the Google Street View Wi-Fi incident, and how the Pirate Party fell at the first hurdle. Also, Internode’s John Lindsay explains the class action they and iiNet are involved with concerning Testra’s wholesale ADSL2+ pricing, and Steve Chung, consultant at Ruckus Wireless, talks about Wi-Fi privacy.

Media Appearances

[Photo: Paddy Maguire’s Hotel“, at the corner of George and Hay Streets, Haymarket, Sydney, taken from a bus window on 23 July 2010.]

Weekly Wrap 6

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 48 in which I chat about “Conroy’s filter masterstroke”. With an election due to be announced today, Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has I think succeeded in taking the toxic topic of ISP-level internet filtering off the table by announcing a comprehensive review of the Refused Classification category. I chat through the implications with Peter Black, who teaches internet law at the Queensland University of Technology.
  • The interview I recorded last week for A Series of Tubes will be scrapped, as events have moved on. There will be an episode next week, ‘cos we’ve booked a recording session for Tuesday morning.

[Photo: Blurry at Museum station“, Sydney, taken on 14 July 2010.]

Weekly Wrap 5

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. I didn’t intend for this to be my only post this week, but that’s how it turns out sometimes.

Articles

Podcasts

Media Appearances

[Photo: Waiting for Conroy“, taken at Senator Stephen Conroy’s ministerial media conference at the offices of NBN Co Ltd, North Sydney, 8 July 2010.]

Weekly Wrap 4

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, posted a day early because I’m about to go off-grid for the weekend.

Articles

  • Inside Microsoft’s Security War Room, my debut for iTnews, along with a photo gallery. During my Microsoft-funded trip to Redmond, Washington, I visited the War Room where they work on critical security patches for all Microsoft products.
  • The political naivety of the digital elites for ABC Unleashed, in which I bemoan the way some people seem to see all politics through the narrow, narrow prism of the Australian government’s mandatory internet censorship policies. The comments are fascinating, especially those who seem to think I’m in favour of Senator Conroy and the government’s internet censorship plans.

Podcasts

[Photo: A sign spotted outside the ZanziBar, Newtown, last night, offering free Snuggies for hire. “Snuggie”? If you haven’t heard of this device before, check their website or watch the infomercial.]

Weekly Wrap 3

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

  • NBN not over the line yet for Crikey, which outlines last weekend’s agreement between Telstra and the National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co). If this non-binding Heads of Agreement makes it all the way to a final deal, NBN Co pays an estimated $9 billion over coming years in exchange for access to Telstra’s “passive network assets” such as cable pits and ducts and exchanges, and to compensate Telstra for losing customers from its copper network to NBN fibre.
  • No wonder the cyber criminals are winning for ABC Unleashed, my commentary on the House of Representatives report on cyber crime, Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 45 is about the future, near and far. The near future of business priorities for the coming financial year — cloud computing, collaboration and mobility — and the further future of the Telstra / NBN Co agreement.

Media Appearances

[Photo: “Samsung Space”, taken at the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S Android-based smartphone at the Royal Hall of Industries, The Entertainment Quarter, Sydney on 23 June 2010. Click to embiggen. As we entered this UV-lit space, Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” played. Of course.]

Weekly Wrap 2

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. It’s all a bit thin in this short Queen’s Birthday week.

Articles

  • #penrithdebate: O’Farrell 1, Democracy 0 for ABC Unleashed, in which I contend that Twitter is completely the wrong medium for political debates. “Great to see the ABC’s standards are now completely in the toilet,” reckons one commenter, who has precisely nothing to say about the arguments being presented.

Podcasts

  • A Series of Tubes podcast #111. Returning after a long break, Tubes includes an interview with James Spenceley and David Spence about the float of Vocus and the changes taking place in the Australian bandwidth market, as well as my ramblings about the Australian government’s discussions with ISPs about archiving data for law enforcement purposes, Google and privacy, and the latest OECD broadband penetration data.
  • No episode of Patch Monday because Monday was a public holiday.

Media Appearances

  • The Fourth Estate, Radio 2SER Sydney. I was interviewed in a follow-up to my Crikey article on hacktivism for the episode of 18 June 2010. The podcast will be available soon. The Fourth Estate is syndicated to other community radio stations around Australia, so do check to see whether your local station carries it.
  • Homepage, Radio 2MCE Bathurst. The episode broadcast 18 June 2010 included an interview with me about the Twitter debate. There’s no podcast as far as I know, but the program is repeated on Monday afternoon at 3.30pm local time on 92.3 and 94.7 FM, and there’s a live audio stream. Homepage is also syndicated to other community radio stations.

[Photo: Circular Quay, Sydney, as seen while walking to the Sydney Opera House yesterday. Click to embiggen.]