crikey – Page 21 – Stilgherrian

13 June 201113 June 2011

Weekly Wrap 53

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. We’re late this week, posted on Monday rather than Sunday, because I forgot. That and, well, it’s a holiday anyway so the new week doesn’t start until Tuesday.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 91, “Tackling cybersecurity: it’s a start”, being a continuation of my thoughts emerging from National Cyber Security Awareness Week last week.

Articles

Santorum’s presidential hopes face a sticky problem, for Crikey. Santorum may be running for president in the US, but thanks to Dan Savage he’s got a problem.
Less pep talks, more stick on cybersecurity, for ZDNet Australia. I’m quite happy with this op-ed calling for a little bit more aggression from the government against slack corporate security.
Hywood on Fairfaxâ€¦ expectation, hoping, wishingâ€¦, for Crikey. Based on my encounter with the CEO of the Fairfax media empire, Greg Hywood.
The Weiner show: we have no prick of conscience, for Crikey. As editor Sophie Black put it, I’m working blue this week.

Media Appearances

On Friday I spoke with Kate O’Toole on ABC 105.7 Darwin about cloud computing. And here’s the audio.

Corporate Largesse

On Tuesday I attended the Mumbrella360 conference on media and marketing, which involved the usual level of food and drink for such things — first at the Hilton Hotel and then at the Arthouse Hotel.
On Thursday I went to the welcome reception for X|Media|Lab’s current Sydney event, which again involved food and drink, this time at Customs House. I didn’t actually go to the conference itself, for various reasons.
On Monday and Thursday I was taken to lunch by two different people who are interested in having me work on forthcoming projects. I can’t talk about either of them yet — they may not even happen — but this was really just the usual introductions over lunch thing.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: A random photograph of Broadway, Sydney, taken on Saturday.]

05 June 201113 June 2011

Weekly Wrap 52

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week featured a trip to Canberra for the Microsoft Politics and Technology Forum.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 90, “Real issues for cybersecurity awareness”, mostly being an interview with Paul Ducklin, Sophos’ head of technology for Asia-Pacific.
Iain Dale on politics, Twitter, radio and authenticity, the first “real” edition of my Conversations series. As I asked in that post, should I do more like this?

Articles

Political tweets eclipse blogs, but parties still don’t get it, for Crikey, based on my interview with Iain Dale.
Conroy’s blueprint for a digital economy â€¦ that doesn’t need an NBN, for Crikey, being my cranky commentary on the National Digital Economy Strategy. Also published at Technology Spectator as Forget strategy, Conroy needs a reason.
I spy 100Mbps, for Technology Spectator, in which I try to destroy the anti-NBN myth that no-one can think of any uses for 100Mbps broadband speeds.

Media Appearances

The Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum probably counts as one of these, but I’ll post links when there are links to link to.

Corporate Largesse

This doesn’t really count as largesse, because I was actually working on the discussion panel as the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum, but Microsoft paid for my transport to Canberra, accommodation at the Hyatt Canberra Hotel, and a lovely dinner at Mezzalira Ristorante.

Elsewhere

[Photo: Bombardier Q400 aircraft at Sydney airport, the one I took to Canberra on Tuesday.]

29 May 201113 June 2011

Weekly Wrap 51

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week returned to something a little more normal after the crazy fortnight of travel and conference coverage.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 89, “Stuxnet, routing hacks and a seized iPad”, based on material connected with the AusCERT Conference on information security. Security analyst Eric Byers warns of imminent Son of Stuxnet copycat malware. APNIC chief scientist Geoff Huston warns of the security problem in the internet’s routing protocols. And a whole bunch of people talk about the demonstration of a Facebook hack that led, eventually, to the arrest of a journalist.

Articles

NBN: ACCC wet dream, security nightmare, for ZDNet Australia. Network strategist Paul Brooks from Layer 10 reckons that consumers won’t know how to set up a home network in the NBN’s multi-provider world. I reckon he’s right.
Harvey should have stayed at home, for Technology Spectator, being a rather scathing review of Harvey Norman’s BiG BUYS website.
Facebook for under-13s? Whoâ€™s kidding whom here? for Crikey, responding to “outrage” that Facebook want to admit younger kids as users.

Media Appearances

I was part of the first ZDNet Tough Talk panel discussion, recorded on video at the AusCERT information security conference, along with Longhaus and Business Aspect board member Sam Higgins, IBRS analyst James Turner, NetWitness chief security officer Eddie Schwartz and Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky. The moderator was ZDNet Australia’s editorial director Brian Haverty. The topic was: Is cloud secure enough for business? I still haven’t watched it yet. What do you think?
On Wednesday I was interviewed by ABC Radio 891 Adelaide about changes to the internet’s top-level domain names. I can post the audio here should you care.

Corporate Largesse

On Tuesday I attended a briefing on various information security issues hosted by Sourcefire. They served a light breakfast and handed out a notebook and a toy pig.

Elsewhere

15 May 201113 June 2011

Weekly Wrap 49

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week was all about San Francisco — but I arrived back in Sydney this morning and now I’m on the Gold Coast for the AusCERT Conference on information security.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 87, “P2P production transforming business”, an interview with Belgian theorist Michael Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation.
The 9pm Edict episode 13, which is something some people seem to glad to see again. Well there you go. I’ll see what I can do about making it a bit more frequent.

Articles

IT: ritual shenanigans, but hey, this is government, for Crikey, all about the federal budget. Kind of.
NetSuite big fish push to cut mid-sized Oz? for ZDNet Australia. NetSuite has announced that’ll be gunning for serious enterprise customers, so could that risk their established relationship with their existing mid-sized customers?

Media Appearances

I was interviewed by enterprise software commentator Dennis Howlett on video, and it’s at NetSuite in Australia – the @stilgherrian view. He also does the Irregular Enterprise blog over at ZDNet.

Corporate Largesse

I was a guest of NetSuite for their SuiteWorld event in San Francisco. Their largesse included a return flight to San Francisco; a limousine to and from San Francisco airport; four nights of accommodation at the Marriott Marquis; a cocktail party one night, dinner at Larry Ellison’s house the next catered by celebrity chef and top US restaurateur for 2011 Michael Mina, and then the gala dinner at City View at the Metreon followed by more cocktails at the Marriott; breakfast and lunch each day; a Flip Video camera 4GB, which I’m giving to a friend; the books Engage! by Brian Solis and CRM at the Speed of Light by Paul Greenberg; NOD32 Antivirus 4 software from ESET; chocolates by Romanicos Chocolate and TCHO; $40 of Starbucks vouchers; energy drink mixes from EnergyFirst; a beverage shaker container thing; mints and a notepad by Ecoswag; a 40%-off discount voucher for Mountain Khakis; and a t-shirt. Some of these items were probably provided by NetSuite’s customers. This amount of stuff is fairly typical for events like this.
While as a journalist I have free entry to the AusCERT Conference and will doubtless be fed and watered most adequately, my air fares and accommodation are being covered by CBS Interactive, ZDNet Australiaâ€™s parent company.

Elsewhere

[Photo: The view from Larry Ellison’s house in San Francisco overlooking what I think is the Presidio district and out across the bay to Alcatraz. Ellison founded Oracle, and he’s now the fifth richest person in the world,with a personal wealth of $39.5 billion.]

24 April 201113 June 2011

Weekly Wrap 46

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. I didn’t bother including a photo this week because I didn’t take any interesting photos. Suffer. Besides, it’s a short working week thanks to Easter.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 85, “Geek culture takes over the world”. Triggered by Pia Waugh’s tweet noting that some folks enthuse about social media and online communications without understanding their geek-culture roots, I have a yarn with geeks Nick Hodge and Silvia Pfeiffer.

Articles

Facebook regulation, for ABC Drum Opinion, the new branding for ABC Unleashed. The piece points out the risk to freedom of expression as we move our conversations from public spaces to privately-owned ones, triggered by Facebook’s most recent silliness, deleting a photo of two men kissing.
Apple’s answer to Android: confidence â€¦ and shiny big numbers, for Crikey, following Apple announcing yet more record earnings for a March quarter but with little in the way of facts about their strategy.

Media Appearances

On Tuesday I was interviewed for Panorama on SYN Radio in Melbourne about Facebook regulation. While the do post some items as podcasts, they haven’t done so yet, so I’ve posted the audio on this website.
I would’ve also been on ABC News 24’s discussion show The Drum, had I not been in Katoomba for the day and unable to make it to Sydney in time. Geography is not quite dead yet.

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

17 April 201113 June 2011

Weekly Wrap 44 and 45

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. As has happened several annoying times before, we’re covering two weeks at once here, and the National Broadband Network seems to have dominated.

For some reason I usually have an unproductive spot of poor health in the first half of April. It seems 2011 is no exception. For two weeks of work this all looks a bit thin, and I daresay that’s going to make a mess of my cashflows in a couple of weeks.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 83, “Web development: fast, loose and cheap”. We hear from web developers Grant Newton from Morgan Creative, a small digital agency in Sydney that specialises in agile development, and Lachlan Hardy from Australian cloud computing provider Ninefold, as well as the founder and CEO of Freelancer.com, Matt Barrie.
Patch Monday episode 84, “Don’t get caught in NBN ‘hysteria’: Conroy”. NBN Co suspended the entire construction tender process and their head of construction resigned, but communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy reckons we should wait and see what the “Plan B” tender process delivers. And network strategist Dr Paul Brooks explains why Wi-Fi won’t necessarily be the answer for distributing high-speed data around the home.

Articles

The ‘hysteria’ around NBN cost blowouts, for Crikey, covering what was discussed with Senator Conroy in Patch Monday.

Media Appearances

On Monday 4 April I was one of the guests on an episode of ABC Radio National’s Australia Talks on the NBN. The audio is available via that link just there, the one you just read past.

Corporate Largesse

When the Australian Communications Consumers Action Network (ACCAN) and the Internet Society of Australia (ISOC-AU) launched their booklet National Broadband Network: A Guide for Consumers, I was given food and drink. That was on Friday 8 April.
LinkedIn recently clocked up their two millionth Australian user and, I daresay like many others, I was given champagne.

Elsewhere

[Photo: Wentworth Falls railway station, photographed yesterday during some light rain.]