Links for 29 December 2008 through 09 January 2009

Stilgherrian’s massive megamix January melange of links from 29 December 2008 through to 09 January 2009.

There’s so many links here that for the blog version I’ll put them all “below the fold”. Happy reading!

• The Recently Deflowered Girl | found_objects: Reproduction of a sweetly funny book from 1965 featuring illustrations by one of my favourite cartoonists, Edward Gorey.
• The “misunderestimated” president? | BBC News: A collection of George W Bush’s “best” mis-speaks.
• Ada Lovelace Day | PledgeBank: On 24 March, celebrate and promote women in technology by publishing an item about an unsung heroine. I’ll be doing something.
• People Who Deserve It: As the tagline says, “socially responsible reasons to punch someone in the face.”
• The internet's undersea world: A map of all the sub-ocean data cables, showing where the recent breaks in the Mediterranean caused problems — and how few links Australia really has.
• All’s fair in battle of ideas | theage.com.au: A nice analysis of the issues surrounding the Quadrant hoax.
• Tools for News: “Don’t be a tool. Use one.” Show this site to your legacy journalists. Then sack them.
• Weather pages, internet banking banned by Queensland employers | Herald Sun: Queensland government employees are finding that over-zealous Internet filters are hampering their ability to do their jobs, blocking email which includes medical terminology an even classifying the weather forecast as “entertainment”.
• Australia’s 20 Worst Cases of Censorship and Moral Outrage in 2008 | Somebody Think Of The Children: Again, what it says.
• 30 Excellent WordPress Video Tutorials | Six Revisions: What it says.
• Do Not Want: Bindi Irwin Doll | The Inquisitr: Poor 10yo Bindi Irwin is being turned into a marketing platform. Yes, dolls. I find this truly disgusting. Maybe we can release her back into the wild soon?
• Teens who pledge virginity just as likely to have sex | theage.com.au: Teens have just as much sex whether they’ve entered into an “abstinence pledge” or not. But if thy haven’t been taught about contraception, they don’t use it. Gosh.
• Business Survival needs good IT People | Wrapt in Web: In the current economic crisis, companies who don’t have the strategic stuff like IT and social media sorted out will be the ones which die, argues Alistair Nicholson.
• US consumer confidence at all-time low | Business Day: They’ve been keeping records of consumer confidence in the US since 1967, and this is the lowest they’ve ever been.
• Australia, the once-and-future wireless king? | CNN Money: A Fortune Tech Daily puff piece on Telstra’s Next G wireless broadband network. Yes, Next G is a world leader, but reading this you’d never know that anyone's ever said a bad word about the company.
• Can The Internet Save The World? | newmatilda.com: “The global economy might be melting faster than Greenland but not all the news is grim. Technological advances mean that democracy and citizen journalism are surging, writes Barry Saunders in a review of the year online.”
• Model for the 21st century newsroom pt.6: new journalists for new information flows | Online Journalism Blog: An interesting model for how a future newsroom might be structured, and the roles for journalists.
• Modbook | Axiotron: Hanging out for a Tabletmac? Can haz one now, with this clever MacBook Pro conversion service.
• Best of the web in 2008 | Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ: The first post in Peter Black’s end-of-year wrap, for some reason he’s listed my website as one of the 5 best for 2008. Mad fool. He does link to some other fascinating stuff though.