The 9pm Edict #12

The 9pm Edict Australia’s federal election campaign kicks off in a flurry of cliché. And the instant-continuous news media battle to be relevant.

Given that we’ve got a federal election campaign on our hands, I figured I’d resurrect The 9pm Edict podcast. And here it is.

You can listen below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission. Responsibility for election commentary is taken by Stilgherrian, Enmore, New South Wales.]

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.]

Podcast masterclass at Walkley Media Conference

I’m doing a one-hour masterclass on producing podcasts at this year’s Walkley Media Conference in Sydney on Wednesday 11 August 2010. Well, more a tutorial, really.

According to the conference program I’m covering: “Recording and editing audio — and putting it out there in a podcast. What software/tools do you need?” In reality, we’ll look at the needs of the people who register and structure the session around that.

Next week I’ll post details of my own Mac-based toolkit and workflows for producing the Patch Monday podcast. Does anyone know of a good listing of Windows options?

There’s some great-looking sessions, and plenty of people I want to meet or catch up with again, so I’ll be staying around for as much of the event as I can. It runs for four days, from 9 to 12 August.

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.]

Alastair MacGibbon on the Cyber Crime report

While I’ve already given my opinion of the federal parliament’s Cyber Crime report, why not listen to an actual expert opinion?

Last night I spoke with Alastair MacGibbon (pictured) for today’s Patch Monday podcast. We recorded way too much material for the podcast, so here’s the full conversation.

MacGibbon was the founding Director of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre, was with the Australian Federal Police for 15 years, he graduated from the FBI’s National Academy in the US, was Head of Trust, Safety & Customer Support for eBay Asia Pacific for four years — in short, he knows his way around this stuff.

We talk through some of the recommendations of the report Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime released last Monday — including MacGibbon’s own somewhat controversial view that we should actively block people’s computers from accessing the internet if their security software isn’t up to scratch.

If you’d like to grab all of these Conversations in the future, subscribe to the RSS feed.

[Photo: Alastair MacGibbon speaking at the recent Intelligence Squared debate, Governments should not censor the internet, in a frame grab taken from the ABC TV broadcast.]