Mark Pesce’s closing keynote from Web Directions South, “This, That and The Other”, is starting to make its way online. So far there’s the text interspersed with the pre-recorded video segments. The full video, which I helped shoot, will doubtless be online once Mark’s finished editing it.
Links for 23 September 2008 through 25 September 2008
Stilgherrian’s links for 23 September 2008 through 25 September 2008, scrubbed up with a wire brush:
- Australia: Twitter statistics | Laurel Papworth: Twitter usage is up 518.12% in Australia, if you believe (1) that website traffic is the relevant metric, and (2) you can possibly measure this stuff to 5 significant figures.
- Wotnews Australian News Search: Wotnews used to be called Plugger, but they’re now associated with Wotif in some way. Wotnews harvests news from over 3500 different sources including mainstream publishers, niche blogs, direct from companies and government bodies as well as from the relentless stream of company announcements coming out of the Australian Stock Exchange.
- Tax Plans (that’s one for you, nineteen for me) | chartjunk: Viveka Weiley’s re-drawing of charts comparing John McCain and Barack Obama’s tax plans. The difference is pretty obvious.
- Text Messages Seen as Dangerously Distracting | NYTimes.com: “The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points” and many other scare-quotes.
Intense fortnight
It’s being a fairly intense fortnight, last week and this, so not much time for lengthy posts here. My Twitter stream has material every day, though.
Sunday Thoughts about Journalism
“Oh no, here we go again!” I can hear you say. “Stilgherrian’s kicking off about ‘the awful journalists’ again.”
No. This is just me pondering five stories about journalism this week. Grab yourself a cuppa and follow the links before tackling my discussion, because this’ll be a long, meandering essay — one in which I’m exploring my thoughts rather than reaching any conclusions. Yet.
- Veteran columnist Frank Devine used the pages of The Australian to attack Crikey publisher Eric Beecher in Keep Beecher from the hack lagoon (yes, every newspaper headline must be a pun, or the sub-editors are whipped), and Beecher responded in Beecher v Devine: The threat to public trust journalism.
- Another veteran journalist Mark Day (interestingly, also in The Australian) regurgitated a variation of the standard journalism versus blogging debate in Blogs can’t match probing reports. Stephen Collins’ excellent response is The Hamster Wheel.
- I was taken to task for my “unbalanced” commentary on Senator Stephen Conroy’s keynote speech at the Digital Economy Forum. Read the comments.
- The Rocky Mountain News was taken to task for (mis-)using Twitter to report a child’s funeral.
- The MEAA held The Future of Journalism conference in Brisbane yesterday, and from first reports the usual journalists vs bloggers “debate” emerged.
OK, back? Cool. Here we go…
Links for 11 September 2008
Here are the web links I’ve found for 11 September 2008, posted with melons and a sprig of parsley.
- What “Battle for Australia”? | Unleashed: Remembering the sacrifices of our WWII servicemen and women is a Good Thing, but do we have to invent a spurious “Battle for Australia” to do so?
- I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You | NYTimes.com: A fine overview of the impact which (especially) Twitter has upon how our social lives work. The term “ambient awareness” is put into context nicely. Robin Dunbar gets a mention, as he should. [This article may now be behind a registration-wall, but registration is free.]
Links for 26 August 2008 through 30 August 2008
Stilgherrian’s links for 26 August 2008 through 30 August 2008, collected using a fine-meshed net and a spoon:
- Interpreting Privacy Principles | Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre: The Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre is holding a 1-day Symposium o 2 October to discuss the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Report on Privacy (August 2008), and to take stock of the NSW Law Reform Commission’s Consultation Paper 3: Privacy Legislation in New South Wales (July 2008). The Symposium is part of the Interpreting Privacy Principles Project, an Australian Research Council Discovery Project.
- Electing a US President in Plain English | YouTube: A quick explanation of the US Presidential voting system from the wonderful people at Common Craft.
- The Grand Twitter Experiment | Widgify: One guy’s experiment to increase his Twitter followers so his “channel” is one of “greater influence”. He seems to miss the two far more important aspects of Twitter: how he’s contributed to the conversation to improve his reputation, and what connections he’s made.
- My current backup strategy | eirikso.com: A nice explanation of how one media producer stores his backups, with other suggestions in the comments.
- 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business | chrisbrogan.com: What it says. The thread through all of it is “be human”.
- The Anatomy of a Successful Music Broadcast Event | The Ustream.TV Blog: Nice set of tips on doing live music stuff on this Internet thing.
- Explanation before information | Made to Stick: A nice little article explaining why explanations need to come before the low-level facts, not the other way around.
- Twitter demystified and debunked | The Fluent Self: Havi Brooks has written a fine, playful piece about Twitter.
- Oedipus (with vegetables) | YouTube: The story of Oedipus in 8 minutes performed by vegetables in the tradition of Ben-Hur. Featuring a Potato, a Tomato, Broccoli, Garlic, and Billy Dee Williams as the Bartender. Official Selection 60+ film festivals including Sundance