A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — which actually covers two weeks because of various distractions.
Articles
- Vodafone’s infosec balls-up a symptom of wider problems, for Crikey, all about the telco’s “little security problem” exposed last weekend. Dealers had one login to Vodafone’s systems shared between all staff, it seems!
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 71, “Avoiding Vodafone’s Wikileaks moment”. Paul Ducklin, who is Sophos’ head of technology for the Asia-Pacific region, reckons Vodafone’s problem is much like the US government’s with WikiLeaks: too many people have logins which give them access to too much stuff. Our conversation covered what organisations should be doing to avoid a disaster like Vodafone’s happening to them.
Media Appearances
- On Tuesday my comments on Twitter about Bing Lee’s less-than-generous Facebook-based fundraiser for the Queensland floods were picked up by David Ramli at ARN: Bing Lee uses Queensland floods to boost Facebook fans.
Corporate Largesse
- Donations to the Artemis Medical Fund included $100 from online accounting software provider Saasu and $50 from an elected NSW politician from the Australian Labor Party.
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: Apparently Not, a no-stopping sign demolished by a vehicle that didn’t stop. Stanmore Road, Petersham, on 6 January 2011.]
An eventful week. Heres my own wrap (plus i need to vent).
Mains Power. Southbank Brisbane is currently without power. For the unenlightened Southbank is a parkland alongside the Brisbane river which recently flooded. In their wisdom Energex put the electrical switchgear for the area in the underground carpark! Coincidently, so did our electrical contractors. Loving the time off work!
Telecoms. Both Vodafone and 3 (VHA) networks failed on separate occasions at the height of the qldfloods. In both cases it was due to flooding and totally preventable. On a personal level, how can I advise sending people home to work from home if the network is down.
Social media. Facebook and Twitter became the communications medium of choice. Hell even iTunes released an qldfloods “app for that”. On the downside, i now have more than a few followers I would rather not have to worry about.
Irritant of the week. Toss up between our fearless leader, the red Ginga (who should be disqualified because of lack of interest and failure to make the most of media interest) and Dr Gino Pecoraro the president of QLD AMA with the endless warnings of health hazards when you volunteer to clean up in flood zones. Combined with well meaning official warnings, it’s nearly enough to discourage even this Queenslander!
Shining lights. Channel nines relentless coverage of the QldFloods. Compared to the efforts of Yahoo7 and the likes to try and sensationalize the situation (e.g. , But what about the looting x 3) channel 9 just stuck to the “we want money” message and reported it as it happened.
Recommendations. Do not order a 40KVA generator to supply a 50KVA UPS system. Basic maths. Servers & Telecoms still down.
That will do. off to down cheese and wine, not necessarily in that order. 🙂
@Jim: Sounds like the cheese and wine is much deserved there. Thanks for sharing that story.