Tag: twitter

Posted on

Weekly Wrap 87: Rain, unseasonable risk and videos

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 30 January to Sunday 5 February 2012.

It was an odd week. It rained. A lot. And the continual greyness felt like it was threatening to trigger seasonal affective disorder unseasonably. I figured it was best to generally ignore the world. I’m amused that this seemed to cause some distress in certain quarters. Thank you for taking an interest.

Well that, and fucking around in the rain caused me to catch a cold. Sort of. I conquered the cold with massive doses of Vitamin C. I am a hero.

I was less of a hero when it came to tackling certain technical problems with my computer. I’ll whinge about that another time.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 123, “Skipping security is human nature”. Chris Wood, regional director for Australia and New Zealand at security vendor Sourcefire, explains how V = EC2 explains everything. Or something. I don’t know. Listen to the podcast.

Articles

Media Appearances

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: Rain clears, momentarily. As I said, I was raining almost the entire week, making Bunjaree Cottages a slightly a dreary place. But when the rain did clear, this was the view from Rosella Cottage.]

Posted on

Talking Twitter and censorship on ABC Local Radio

Twitter has announced that it now has the capability to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis, and naturally there’s been a global outcry about the threat to free speech.

I wrote a piece for Crikey today, explaining the positive spin the company was putting on it all, and pointing out that Twitter does still need to justify its valuation of $8.4 billion when its revenues are a mere $100 million.

But Crikey is suffering “technical issues” right now, and I can’t point to that article just yet.

Until then, here’s an interview I just did on ABC 702 Sydney and ABC Regional Radio around NSW with Dom Knight.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (10.9MB)

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is.

Posted on

Weekly Wrap 83: Ryde, radio and fraudulent moons

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, kicking off with a fraud. Weekly Wrap posts are meant to cover what I did in the Monday-to-Sunday week, but the Full Moon photograph was only taken last night.

Well, the weekend and the start of the new week was a bit more hectic than I expected, and this was the only new photo I’d taken that could be used here. Did you really want to see my photos of taxi receipts?

I’d also intended to write a more reflective introduction, cover what it was like living in the wilds of Ryde for the week. But this post is late enough as it is, so you’ll have to live without it.

Podcasts

None. However the Patch Monday podcast returned yesterday, and I think there might well be an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast some time this week too.

Articles

I know I listed my piece for ABC The Drum on the Anonymous hack of Stratfor in last week’s Weekly Wrap, but it was published in the week covered by this post, so here it is again.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. Again. When will these PR companies actually start work for 2012?

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: Full Moon over Erskineville, photographed last night from Erskineville Road, Sydney. This is the picture as-is using the “night landscape” program setting on the Nikon Coolpix S8100.]

Posted on

Talking more Murdoch and Twitter on ABC Local Radio

I thought we were done with Rupert Murdoch’s venture into the Twitterverse, but apparently not so. I was invited back onto ABC Local Radio earlier this evening — for a much wider conversation about Twitter.

As it happens, it’s worth updating this story. Yes, Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter and we’ve been analysing every single tweet as if it’s being delivered on a stone tablet. But while that was happening, Twitter decided to verify not only Murdoch’s Twitter account but the one belonging to his wife Wendi Deng.

Except they verified the wrong one. @Wendi_Deng was a spoof account set up by a chap in London. Business Insider ran a transcript of the fake Deng coming clean, and questions were asked about Twitter’s still-secret verification process.

It should’ve been @wendideng, without the underscore, although as I write this the real account has been taken offline.

Mathew Ingram’s piece at GigaOM summed it up nicely: Why Twitter’s “verified account” failure matters. It’s about trust.

Anyway the ABC Radio conversation wandered well into other matters and hardly touched upon Rupert and Wendi. The pace of news. The appropriateness of Twitter marketing. Potential revenue streams for Twitter. And so on. And so forth.

The Sundays presenter was Jennifer Fleming, who’s filling in for James O’Loghlin over summer. The producer was Siobhan Moylan.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (10.1MB)

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Apparently Sundays is usually podcast, but I’m going to post my interview here anyway.

Posted on

Twitter screwed up TweetDeck, so here’s the old version

Back in May 2011, Twitter bought TweetDeck for $40 million. Now they’ve taken the power users’ Twitter client of choice and, well, fucked it up.

OK, the fact that the new TweetDeck doesn’t run under Adobe AIR but directly as an OS X program will improve the battery life of my MacBook Pro. Eventually. When the program catches up to what we’d all been used to.

Whenever the heck that’s likely to be.

I’m not holding my breath.

Until then, here’s TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for OS X [2.4MB .zip], the final Adobe AIR version. Enjoy.

[Update 0840: You can download the equivalent TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Windows from OldApps.com. It’ll do you for Windows XP, Vista, or 7.]

[Update 0850: Can we trust that website? I’d better mirror it here. Here’s TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Windows [2.4MB .zip]]

[Update 0900: And now we also have a Linux installer! For your enjoyment, TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Linux. Thank you, sylmobile.]

[Update 17 March 2012: As Wade points out in his comment today, the same Adobe AIR file should work across all platforms. That’s the point of AIR. In my response I explain how the post ended up this way. I’ll fix it in due course.]

Posted on

Talking Rupert Murdoch and Twitter on ABC Local Radio

So the media’s Lizard King opens a Twitter account and it’s major news? Apparently so. Yesterday the world was busy reading the tea leaves of Rupert Murdoch’s new Twitter account, and I was asked to comment.

I’m amazed at how much people wanted to read into the first 18 tweets or so. The Sydney Morning Herald even said:

Joining Twitter would be the strongest sign yet that Mr Murdoch has moved away from what was previously a strongly held antipathy towards the web, which has caused massive profit slumps in traditional media.

Really? That’s like saying that because someone was seen buying a load of bread that they’ve changed their position on whether it’s now better to invest in agriculture rather than mining. Complete arsehattery, trying to tart up a rather routine retelling of what happened on Twitter so that it looks like business analysis.

Anyway, I spoke to Ian Rogerson yesterday on the ABC Local Radio program that went out nationally on the digital transmitters and online while the cricket was broadcast on the analog channels.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (6.7MB)

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it usually isn’t posted on their website and I don’t get paid for these spots, so here it is.