In the week between Christmas and New Year I didn’t write anything for anyone, I didn’t do any podcasts, I didn’t appear in the media anywhere, and I didn’t receive any corporate largesse. I’m just posting this post so the numerical sequence of “Weekly Wrap” posts is consistent.
Weekly Wrap 29
A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — which was another slow week again this week, since it’s the lead-up to Christmas.
Articles
- It’s the NBN Corporate Plan, not a crystal ball, for ABC Unleashed. Ah, the National Broadband Network, political issue of the year! No sooner had the NBN Co Limited Corporate Plan 2010-2013 been released than the critics started whinging that it didn’t answer every single question.
- It’s network neutrality, but it’s neutered, for Crikey, covering initial reaction to the US Federal Communication Commission’s new rules.
- 2010 on the internet: the empire strikes back, for Crikey. Yes, an end-of-year wrap-up.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 70, “2010: IT’s year of domination”. An extended panel discussion reviewing 2010 and making a few predictions for 2011. My guests are: Mick Liubinskas, co-founder of Australian start-up incubator Pollenizer and, back in the day, head of marketing and business development for infamous music sharing site Kazaa; columnist and author Paul Wallbank; and Jeff Waugh, open-source developer, strategist and advocate, and political tragic.
Media Appearances
- On Wednesday I did another brief spot with Paul Turton on ABC Radio Statewide NSW. We spoke about Avatar being the most-pirated movie of 2010 and the UK allowing Twitter in the courtroom, more than a year after Australia did.
Corporate Largesse
None. It all seemed to wrap up last week. It’s going to be a bleak holiday season. Please send packages of food and drink.
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: My Christmas card from 2007, recycled because I didn’t get around to doing anything new this year. I made the tinsel antlers for my good friend the Snarky Platypus, who continues to use them to this day. Photograph by Trinn (’Pong) Suwannapha.]
Weekly Wrap 28
A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — which this week wasn’t very much at all because I lost a couple of days returning from San Francisco.
Articles
None this week.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 69, “Service goes social, but how?”. Based on material recorded at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event in San Francisco, this episode includes a chat with Fergus Griffin, vice president of product marketing for Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud product.
Media Appearances
- On Wednesday I did another brief spot with Paul Turton on ABC Radio Statewide NSW.
Corporate Largesse
- On Friday I had lunch aboard the South Steyne at Darling Harbour, courtesy of Watterson Marketing Communication.
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: Since I didn’t take any photographs this week, here’s one of the rather serious seagulls they have in San Francisco.]
Weekly Wrap 27
A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — very late this week because I just couldn’t be arsed doing blog posts while I was in San Francisco. But here’s the summary of last week. On Wednesday. So I’ll refund your goddam subscription fees.
Articles
- WikiLeaks in the clouds: why attempts to shut down Assange will fail, for Crikey.
- Wikileaks could gag sources: Clinton, for ZDNet.com.au. That’s Bill Clinton, who apparently used to be “president” of some place called “America”.
- Letter from: San Francisco, and Bill Clinton on instability, sustainability … and WikiLeaks, for Crikey. Well, this is what happens when you end up in a room with 15,000 people.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 68, “Wikileaks: the survival lessons”. A panel discussion with network engineer Mark Newton — he described WikiLeaks as “a bespoke cloud-based CDN [content distribution network] that is enabled by the Streisand Effect” — information security specialist Crispin Harris, and platform architect Benno Rice.
Media Appearances
None. What wrong with you people?
Corporate Largesse
Where do you start? This week was all about me travelling to San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.com. So they paid my airfares, accommodation, food and drink throughout the event, and “networking functions” at the W Hotel and the Palace Hotel. Plus they gave me a Flip HD video camera, a scarf, a t-shirt, a universal power plug thingy and a can of whipped cream. Don’t ask.
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 comparison of real American men with the idealised version portrayed in advertising in a storefront on Market St, San Francisco.]
Weekly Wrap 24
A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth.
Articles
- Online privacy dangers: they’re not what you think, for Crikey. The article was based on an interview with Kevin Shaw, president of the International Association of Privacy Professionals – Australia and New Zealand (iappANZ) in the lead-up to their conference on 30 November, Silver Lining: The Privacy Umbrella of Cloud Computing.
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement: not so evil after all, for Crikey. The final text of ACTA was negotiated on Monday. This is my brief news story. It’s behind the paywall for now – you can read it with a free trial of Crikey — but it’ll emerge in two weeks.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 65, “Hello cloud, meet cookies. Goodbye privacy”. My interview with Kevin Shaw from iappANZ.
- A Series of Tubes episode 119. Ruckus Wireless engineer Steve Chung talks 802.11n streaming and I talk about the OECD’s comments on the National Broadband Network, privacy and crowdsourcing.
Media Appearances
- On Thursday I spoke with Paul Turton on ABC Radio’s Statewide Drive about the way hackers capitalise on news stories and the tragedy of people finding out about family deaths on Facebook. Alas, there is no recording.
Corporate Largesse
They have lovely biscuits at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
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 close-up of my eyes, taken by Trinn (‘Pong) Suwannapha, cropped out of the photo he took for my US visa application.]
Weekly Wrap 23
A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth.
Articles
- Fairfax’s hypocritical web ‘spying devices’ beat-up, for Crikey. The “spying devices” in question are tracking cookies. Nothing new there. But the story was on the front page of the dead-tree slices. Why? Apparently politicians’ websites use tracking cookies. Shock! Horror! And Fairfax uses even more of them. Hypocrites.
- Senate to re-open bloggers versus journalists, for Crikey. A lightly-edited version of my blog post on the same topic.
- Indonesian e-commerce held back by uncertain laws, for Crikey. Based on material presented by leading Indonesian legal academic Dr Sinta Dewi.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 64, “The info commissioner’s fight: Govt 2.0”. My interview with the new Australian Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan. The new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner came into being on 1 November and represents a significant change to the way the Australian Government will be handing its information — especially given the Declaration of Open Government earlier this year.
Media Appearances
- On Monday I spoke with Fiona Wyllie on ABC Radio’s Statewide Afternoons and the Fairfax tracking cookie beat-up and a father who installed a radio jammer to kill the internet so his kids wouldn’t spend so much time online. Alas, there is no recording. That’s a shame. It’s not often you’ll hear me giving parenting advice on the radio.
Geekery
- I learned how to use Google Site Search by plugging it into the Fender Australia website. It’s fairly straightforward, but it quickly shows you the problems with how your site is constructed. As an aside, if you’re a web developer visiting that site for the first time you’ll be horrified to see that in many places it uses tables for layout. That’s because the site was originally built in 2001 and has just been re-skinned a couple of times since. It’s also maintained manually, all 950 pages of it. There’s little business case for a major overhaul — the numbers are not compelling — but we’re planning to build a proper modern database-driven site early in 2011.
Corporate Largesse
None.
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: Old bar sign at the Town Hall Hotel, Newtown. Gender roles were a little different back then.]