twitter – Page 46 – Stilgherrian

07 March 2009

Links for 03 March 2009 through 07 March 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 03 March 2009 through 07 March 2009, containing traces of nuts:

J-Startup News: Billing itself as the latest on journalism startups and new business models for news
Twitter Nudes: “This art project is designed to reflect the diversity of Twitter through nude photos of users from around the world and is completely anonymous: even we won’t see who sent the picture.”
The Week that Twitter Tipped | Fast Company: If 2009 is the year that Twitter becomes “mainstream”, then perhaps this is the week of that year.
Pauline Hanson Today Tonight 01Mar09 | YouTube: From Monday night, the Today Tonight interview where independent political candidate Pauline Hanson, formerly of One Nation, spits the dummy when asked where her election funding went, exactly.
Skittle Fisting: Memes spread in strange ways. This tasteless “Taste the Failbow” site appeared during the #skittlefisting event last weekend.
Tell Me More About This Australian Thing Called Rooting | PodBlack Cat: Following the Twitter #fisting incident last weekend, someone ran it past a Doctor of Linguistics who specialises in taboo language.
Infringement and Terrorism: Pfft! | Brendan Scott’s Weblog: Arguing against the logic in that RAND report about increasing penalties for copyright infringement. “Does anyone honestly believe that people who are actively planning to commit mass murder are going to be deterred by a jail sentence for copyright infringement?”
Twitter Begins Rolling Out Search and Trends | ReadWriteWeb: The news story itself isn’t that exciting. It’s just that the random Twitter screenshot they used to illustrate the story contains a mention of me via @NickHodge. Yes, this is really low-grade ego surfing. Cope.
Sky News appoints Twitter correspondent… | guardian.co.uk: Jemima Kiss' post makes a few excellent points about using Twitter in journalism, including the observation that a dedicated Twitter correspondent “rather misses the point, which is that Twitter should be a tool that any forward-thinking journalist tries out, learns and then incorporates into their news gathering.” Precisely.
Robots | The Big Picture: 32 fine images of robots, from manufacturing, medicine and remote exploration to entertainment, security and personal assistance.
Taking out the trash | ZDNet Australia: Fake Stephen Conroy pays tribute to Clive Hamilton, amongst other things.
What Are You Doing? (#Skittles) | WSJ.com: The Wall Street Journal‘s rather staid blog post about the #skittlefisting phenomenon.
Video: Jon Stewart explains Twitter (or tries to) | VentureBeat: Some Twitter users have criticised this as a lame attack, and it is. It confused some tweets being inane with all tweets being inane. But there’s a bittersweet moment towards the end where the “reporter” reminds Jon Stewart he’s not immune.
Address to CeBIT Broadband Infrastructure Forum | Senator Stephen Conroy: The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is loose in Hannover.
Social Marketing Bullshit Bingo | raena.net: Need buzzword bingo cards for the next Web 2.0 wankfest? Here you go…
Organized Crime Is Increasingly Active in Film Piracy; Three Cases Link Terrorists to Piracy Profits | RAND: What the headline doesn’t say is that two of the three cases are well and truly in the past, and that the report was “supported by a grant from the Motion Picture Association” with the express aim of investigating the link. Naturally enough, they found one, and the media release provides the spin.
Lily Allen talks Twitter on ROVE (Australia) | YouTube: Rove’s interview with Lily Allen which led to around 1600 Australians joining Twitter in a couple hours.

01 March 200928 February 2021

Fisting Twitter and the birth of “trend fisting”

Oh dear. Where do I start? Last night, on a whim, I challenged the people who follow me on Twitter to make fisting a “trending topic”. It worked. It worked very, very well.

Start at the beginning, I guess.

24 February 2009

Links for 23 February 2009

Here are the web links I’ve found for 23 February 2009, posted with a headache and gin.

Winners gallery 2009 | World Press Photo: What it says. As always, some very fine photojournalism.
Twitter is the new cat poo | First Blog on the Moon: Crikey cartoonist First Dog on the Moon has written a brilliant piece about Twitter and what might be called Twitterwhoring. Something he’s rather good at himself.
Victorian Bushfire Events | Premier of Victoria, Australia: A map of local fundraising events for the Victorian bushfires, the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history, put together with help from a little firm called Google.
Crisis of Credit : clusterflock: A nice animated film by Jonathan Jarvis showing how we got into the Global Financial Crisis. Some people have called is a “visualisation”. It’s not, as the imagery isn’t a proper mapping of the data, but it does help explain.
Where Clive Hamilton accuses me of trying to silence him | Websinthe: A bizarre story, this. Clive Hamilton confuses a call for better accountability with an attempt to silence him. It’d be funny, except that Hamilton gets unfettered access to major media in Australia, wrapping himself in a university’s cloak of respectability as he makes his pronouncements, and then proceeds to ignore the valid criticisms put to him.
‘Sexting’, teen culture, technology, scandal | Salon Life: “What’s more disturbing — that teens are texting each other naked pictures of themselves, or that it could get them branded as sex offenders for life?” Apart from portraying sexually healthy youths as “hormonally haywire teenagers” and a few other tabloid clichÃ©s, this article clearly outlines the problem of current child pornography laws in the context of pervasive digital media.

22 February 200922 March 2009

Crikey: Outclassed Conroy hides in his bedroom

[This article was originally published in Crikey on Tuesday 17 February, but behind the paywall. I think enough time has passed for it to sneak out â€” particularly as one commenter called it “the most unworthy article Crikey has ever published”. Thanks.]

Cool newcomer. Rising talent. Thatâ€™s Greens Senator Scott Ludlam as described by Crikeyâ€™s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane last year. Heâ€™s right, too.

Yesterday [Monday] I explained how Senator Stephen Conroy popped out of his lair, announced (some of) the ISPs in the internet “filtering” trials, and scurried away — leaving everyoneâ€™s questions unanswered. Perhaps he hoped the story would be buried by discussions of bushfires and the stimulus package. But no.

In an op-ed piece for ABC News yesterday, Senator Ludlam nailed why. “The interwebs never sleep,” he reminds us.

Within minutes of Conroyâ€™s 5.25pm media release, Twitter was, well, aâ€™twitter with speculation and then analysis. Within hours, without any central control, a consensus emerged about what the choice of ISPs meant. With its focus on small business-oriented ISPs, the trials wonâ€™t reflect the realities of home internet usage, and the government can string out the process just a little bit longer.

“Senator Conroy is trapped by something akin to a virtual hydra,” writes Ludlam.

Continue reading “Crikey: Outclassed Conroy hides in his bedroom”

16 February 2009

Links for 15 February 2009 through 16 February 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 15 February 2009 through 16 February 2009, gathered with fresh rainwater and love:

What is the biggest problem in your life? | GOP Problem Solver: “Utilizing the latest and greatest of Republican economic thought to improve your life.” Ahem.
Phone call to Minister Conroy’s Office | NOCENSORSHIP.INFO: Steve Johnson has posted his fruitless attempt to get Senator Conroy’s office to answer his question about Internet “filtering”.
Internet filtering and censorship forum | Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre: The first of these workshops at UNSW on 27 November 2008 was excellent. The second will be on Wednesday 4 March 2009 and I’ll definitely be liveblogging it.
Five barriers to journalists using Twitter | Sarah Hartley: What’s stopping journalists using Twitter? Here’s five excuses journalists use, and the rebuttals.
The Prisoner 1960s | AMC: The entire 1967-1968 TV series The Prisoner is available for free streaming viewing here — if you happen to be in the United States or can appear to be so.
Vic Govt limited Google’s bushfire map: News | ZDNet Australia: Google produced a brilliant live map of the tragic Victorian bushfires. However Crown Copyright provisions, which assign copyright over all government-produced information to the government and prevent its use without explicit consent, meant the couldn’t use data from the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE). Crown copyright is well established in Commonwealth law, but runs contrary to data protection provisions in countries like the US, where data produced by government agencies is held to be in the public domain.
Citizen-journalism’s rulebook | guardian.co.uk: It’s nearly a year old, but it’s still an interesting discussion about the “rules” of [cough] Citizen Journalism.

12 February 2009

Links for 11 February 2009

Here are the web links I’ve found for 10 February 2009, posted automatically.

Twinfluence: Twitter Influence Analyzer: Another stupid pseudo-science numerical analysis of people’s Twitter followers which supposedly measures “influence”. It completely fails to consider the quality of communication rather than quantity. Useful for impressing dumb old-school PR and marketing types, maybe, since they seem so obsessed with raw numbers.
Resilient Nation | Demos: A project by UK think tank, Demos, Resilient Nation notes that the government’s power and authority is shifting across to the private and third sectors and down to regional and local government. Our ability to respond to disasters needs to be re-examined in this light. There are noises about starting an Australian version. Stand by.
Exchange Connector POP3 Connector/Downloader for Exchange Server 2007/2003 | Quantum Software Solutions: A third-party (and Australia made!) replacement for Microsoft’s POP3 Connector for Exchange. Apparently more reliable, with better logging and more features — including the ability to download email every minute instead of only every 15 minutes.