Tag: social media

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Talking Heartbleed and social media on ABC 702 Sydney

ABC logoThere’s something rather cool about being introduced with the Mission: Impossible theme, and that’s precisely what happened when I did a spot for ABC 702 Sydney on Friday morning.

The Heartbleed security bug was one topic, obviously, but I also spoke with breakfast presenter Robbie Buck about another story in the news that morning, about radio presenter and activist Vanessa Powell, who’d complained that Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) had been, as she put it, spying on her social media activities.

Or, as I put it, that they’d been reading what she published on the internet — just as, presumably, she’d been reading what they published on the internet. That they’d gathered her comments with some semi-automated process — and, presumably, she hadn’t gathered theirs the same way — to me says “naivety” rather than “victim of sinister conspiracy”.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.5MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Most popular posts of 2013

As we approach the end of 2013, I’m going to do my usual series of blog posts looking back at what actually happened on this little planet. This is the first, being a list of the most-read posts on this website.

There hasn’t been a lot to choose from in the last couple of years, because most of my writing is done elsewhere these days. That means some rather mundane pieces of writing, such as Weekly Wrap posts, end up on the list. That’s possibly an argument for abandoning this little exercise.

  1. Catchup posts within 36 hours was the most popular post of all, which makes no sense whatsoever because it’s routine administrivia. I suspect the visitor count has been artificially inflated somehow, though supposedly the traffic generated by spambots has already been removed.
  2. My tweets from TechEd Australia 2012’s keynote sessions, a post that was linked to from news stories that reported me having been banned from attending Microsoft’s TechEd conference. My own blog post on this issue is coming up at number 5.
  3. Guardian Australia not the droid you’re looking for, being my reaction against all the excitement generated in January 2013 by the announcement that there would soon be an Australian edition of this news masthead.
  4. My fish are dead: the black dog ate them (an explanation?), being my rather idiosyncratic announcement and discussion of the fact that I’d been dealing with a severe depression episode, published in July.
  5. Microsoft has banned me from covering TechEd, which is self-explanatory.
  6. Choosing my next media directions: you’re doing it, OK?, from May.
  7. Vodafone Australia’s new 4G network ain’t bad, being the write-up of my trial of the network which led to that conclusion.
  8. Weekly Wrap 152: LulzSec, Optus, radio and thinking stuff, which I suspect is only in the Top 10 because it mentions LulzSec.
  9. Weekly Wrap 155: Chemtrails, elitism and much thinking, ditto, chemtrails.
  10. Sydney Harbour “giant gambling den” bullshit reportage, from January.

Continue reading “Most popular posts of 2013”

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Talking security and more on ABC Download This Show

ABC logoBack on 13 December I was a guest for the recording of the penultimate episode of Marc Fennell’s Download This Show for 2013.

Data privacy. What a year it’s been: 2013 will be remembered as the year we came to understand just how much our data was not our own. Edward Snowden might not have won Time magazine’s Person of the Year, pipped to the post by Pope Francis, but the former NSA computer specialist has forever changed the way we think about our information security as a result of his world-changing revelations. But has he changed our behaviour?

My fellow panellist was Karalee Evans, head of social for advertising agency DDB Australia, and we had a great time. Here’s the full audio.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (12.4MB)

The audio is ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and it’s served here directly from the ABC website.

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Talking future politics on ABC RN Sunday Extra

ABC logoEarlier this morning I took part in a conversation on ABC Radio National’s Sunday Extra about the future of politics and political campaigning, given new media technologies and suchlike.

Also participating was John McTernan, the British Labour Party political adviser, political strategist and commentator, and latterly the director of communications for Prime Minister Julia Gillard here in Australia. Oddly enough, we seemed to be in furious agreement on many of the issues.

The piece was actually recorded on Friday afternoon. Host Jonathan Green had told us beforehand that he was after a 15-minute chat, but we ended up recording nearly 30 minutes of material. Much editing was done.

Here’s that edited version, as it was broadcast, taken from the full program audio on the item’s web page at the ABC.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (6.2MB)

This audio is of course ©2013 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Fine posts for 2012

AWStats screenshot: click to embiggenAs in previous years, the list of most popular posts for 2012 was rather disappointing, so I’ve hand-curated this list of eight stories for you to consider.

As usual, this does not include the material I wrote elsewhere, for ZDNet Australia, Technology Spectator, CSO Online, Crikey, ABC The Drum and the rest. That’s all listed on my Media Output page.

  1. Two casually racist encounters concerning Auburn, being the most recent of my essay-style posts.
  2. Insulted, ASIO? That’s not really the problem, surely?
  3. ASIO’s got it easy, says terrorism expert
  4. Consilium: Social media is destroying society? Good! This is the recording and transcript of my opening and closing remarks at Consilium, and I think I said some good things.
  5. iSpy: Talking total surveillance at Sydney Writers’ Festival, being the recorded audio of the panel discussion I did.
  6. Why tweeting my movements isn’t a safety risk, which is what it says.
  7. Stilgherrian’s advice to a PR student, uhoh, which is some useful if unconventional material.
  8. Twitter Discourse 1: Fuck off, swearing is my birthright. Because it is.

If you’d like to compare this with previous years, try these:

[Photo: Screenshot of AWStats from this website. It’d make more sense for this image to be on the most-popular story list, but I have my reasons.]

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Weekly Wrap 126: Wattle, sniffle and SCADAgeddon

Monday 29 October to Sunday 4 November 2012 was a busy week, made slightly less busy by the need to recover from the throat infection identified last week and then, because I was run down, fatigue that was probably a mix of a cold and hay fever.

Hence the photograph of the wattle I’ve posted here. It is to blame.

Dear Plant Kingdom, if I spread my genetic material all over you the way you do over me, I’d be arrested! Please behave yourself.

[Update 1545 AEDT: I am reliably informed that the hay fever is unlikely to be caused by wattle pollen.]

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Also, the Sydney Opera House has posted the video of my Festival of Dangerous Ideas panel, I Share Therefore I Am. I’ll write more about that in due course.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday evening I had a few beers with Michael McKinnon from AVG Australia and New Zealand, which they paid for.
  • On Tuesday morning I attended the breakfast launch of Windows Phone 8 at the Blue Bar,level 36 of the Shangri-La Hotel, overlooking Sydney Harbour. Microsoft paid for that, obviously.

The Week Ahead

Next week is pretty much all about Singapore. On Monday I’ll head down to Sydney and get some writing out of the way. Then on Tuesday it’s Singapore Airlines flight SQ212 departing Sydney at 0905 AEDT and arriving in Singapore mid-afternoon local time.

Wednesday is Verizon Business’ APAC Media Day, a five-hour meeting followed by cocktails. On Thursday I’m visiting the hospitality tent at the Barclays Singapore Open golf tournament as Verizon’s guest. Friday through Sunday has yet to be finalised, but there’ll be at least two articles to write and a podcast to produce.

Oh, and a social life.

My flight back to Sydney SQ231 leaves Singapore at 45 minutes past midnight Sunday night — so technically that’s Monday morning.

[Photo: Wattle near Railway Parade, near Wentworth Falls, one of the causes of my hay fever this week.]