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 May 2008 through 24 May 2008
Stilgherrian’s links for 23 May 2008 through 24 May 2008, collected almost-automatically…
Continue reading “Links for 23 May 2008 through 24 May 2008”
No, this wasn’t me, but close
Thank you, Richard, but no. This article in The Onion is not about me. Close though, eh?
Even in defeat, he haunts us… via our folksonomies
I’ve been working on the tag cloud page, and one of my attempts to clarify things has revealed a disturbing fact.
I decided that the “category cloud” on the left-hand side of the website was already showing that the biggest categories were politics, the Internet, human nature, media and business. I didn’t want the tag cloud to repeat that information. So I decided to remove all the tags which were also the names of categories.
Boy, that certainly changed the emphasis!
Even in the reduced screenshot (right), one name dominates. Yes, out of 944 posts, counting this one, 91 are tagged “john howard”.
My own boyfriend comes in a poor second with just 42.
Is that right?
Continue reading “Even in defeat, he haunts us… via our folksonomies”
Corey Delaney meets Life Streaming (sort of)
With little energy after last night’s massive session of Silent Hunter III, I haven’t written an original essay today. Instead, let me suggest you read two things I’ve commented upon. 1. The redoubtable Laurel Papworth‘s analysis of Corey Delaney’s page being deleted from Wikipedia. 2. Duncan Riley’s polemic on life streaming and whether we should still draw the line on privacy somewhere.
Did the PM’s office edit out “Captain Smirk”?
“On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog,” says a classic New Yorker cartoon. True, perhaps. But we do know who owns you and where your kennel is.
The Prime Minister’s office denies that one of their own edited the Wikipedia article about Peter Costello to remove the nickname “Captain Smirk”. But IP address 210.193.176.115 belongs to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet — at least it did until the reference was changed a few days after the accusation.
If you dig through all IP addresses starting with 210.193.176 you find that most of them for which data is available are front ends for a pile of government agencies — everything from innovation.gov.au and biotechnology.gov.au to coagbushfireenquiry.gov.au and search.investaustralia.gov.au. Sitting right on 210.193.176.19 is the PM’s very own website.
Assigning an IP address in the middle of this block to anyone but another government agency doesn’t make sense — from a network engineering or an administrative point of view. You reckon someone’s telling porkies?
Wikipedia has since nominated the Peter Costello article as their Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight. “Please help improve it to featured article standard,” they ask. Anyone at the PM’s office wanna lend a hand? Woof.
[A more detailed version of this article was originally published in Crikey a couple of days ago.]