Internet

Take a look at my bookshelf:

Judging from the available space, any books purchased after 2013 will need to be stored in the fridge.

You can see why an electronic book reader might appeal. I’m a serious book lover so have had some resistance to the idea of an e-reader. But I bought an Amazon Kindle late last year and have now been using it – alongside regular books – for about three months. I know the world needs another kindle review like it needs another Britney Spears crotch shot, but I feel obliged because I promised on twitter that I’d share my thoughts after I’d given the kindle a decent workout.

Continue reading "Well readhead: Take a look at my bookshelf" »

When they hear that I don’t have a Facebook account or a Twitter page, some people look at me as if I’ve just announced that I want no part of some fundamental convention of society.

It’s the same reaction that I would get if I told them that I don’t own a pair of underpants or a toothbrush.

They look at me like I am some sort of commando-going, halitosis-suffering maniac who must be stopped for the sake of all mankind.

Continue reading "Surrendering to social media" »

Walking into Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco you’re acutely aware of your existence in the present.

At Twitter, here and now, you are in the heart of a company that is hottest on the internet (and possibly off it) and right now millions of Tweeters are their sending their thoughts via this office. 

This would make Twitter co-founder Biz Stone the man of the moment.

Continue reading "The Punch meets Twitter founder Biz Stone" »

Online memorials have been getting a bad rap lately, and in many ways, rightly so. The cruel comments posted on the Facebook memorial page for murdered Brisbane 12-year-old Elliott Fletcher are nothing short of repulsive.

Even after the furore over the posting of pornographic images on Fletcher’ s site, insensitive and offensive comments persist. Amid good wishes to Elliott and his family, Matt Jackson has written on one Fletcher tribute page, “im famous, im on the world famous post hahahahaha hi mum im on tv lol.”

Scroll down. One of three “fan photos” at that page’s left shows Fletcher in life, grinning under tousled hair, with the words “Woot I’m [sic] dead” written over him in thick red marker.

Continue reading "Don’t kill off online tributes because of bad press" »

Public outrage over the shocking vandalism of internet tribute sites for two young Queenslanders who died in terrible circumstances has again raised questions over freedom online.

The worldwide web next month celebrates its 21st anniversary. It has grown from a single web page to more than a trillion unique pages and is expanding rapidly every day.

Social network sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube transformed the web from largely static pages under a website owner’s control into something more fluid, with people interacting on the websites to create content.

Continue reading "What next for Facebook after its nightmare week?" »

The Punch has just left Facebook’s headquarters in San Francisco where the company sought to address the fallout from the controversy of tribute pages to dead minors being defaced with obscene content.

Following questions earlier this week from The Punch, Facebook’s global communications and policy director, Debbie Frost, told us the company was sending a letter to Queensland Premier Anna Bligh apologising for the incident and addressing the Premier’s letter of concern sent to the social networking giant this week.

Frost said the incident was unprecedented in her time at Facebook, adding it was difficult to fathom how people would decide to attack memorial pages in this way.

Continue reading "Facebook responds: Shock at obscenities, no policy change" »

As a new recruit to Facebook, I admit I was not exactly on the first-wave of the online social networking phenomena. It’s not that I’m a techo-phobe by any measure (my blackberry is a constant companion).

It’s just that I am not entirely convinced that the addition of a Facebook page will enhance either my work or personal lives.  And the thing is, in this job, the two are often inextricably linked. MPs are public figures - albeit very minor ones. And - after sharing weekends, evenings and most waking hours with either my local constituents, my parliamentary colleagues,  Industry groups and stakeholders within my shadow portfolio responsibilities -  I’d kinda like to keep a little bit of me just for my nearest and dearest.

Call me old fashioned (and I’m sure many of you will) but I prefer to share my personal trials, triumphs and trivia with those I am closest to, rather than the-acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance who I met once at a function and who has now requested to be my “friend”.

Continue reading "Online tributes a hollow imitation of genuine grief" »

Update 7am: Despite the company’s statement yesterday, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy say Facebook needs to explain itself. The Punch is still awaiting a response to its questions put to Facebook’s press office.

Update 4.45pm Wednesday: Today there are at least two groups live on Facebook - one of which has over 3400 members - calling for the death of the man accused of Trinity Bates’s murder. If this happened in a newspaper or on a major news website the editor would be at risk of going to jail.

Update Wednesday 2.45pm : Facebook has published a statement about obscene content on the tribute pages to Elliott Fletcher and Trinity Bates on its website. It is printed in full below. We’re yet to hear from them.

Facebook’s statement:

Continue reading "Obscenity on tribute walls: Five questions to Facebook" »

Our website The Punch is banning reader comments which contain words typed in all capitals. Why? Because they’re REALLY ANNOYING.

They not only LOOK HORRIBLE but they’re often a substitute for REASONED ARGUMENT. This is because they are generally employed by people who, rather than fleshing out their point, resort to SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER.

The rise of the internet and the explosion in online discussion on social media and on news and opinion sites has, by and large, been a terrific thing for democracy. For far too long journalists were allowed to fancy their output as being as sacred and unchallengeable as the tablet brought down from upon high.

Continue reading "Why we’re BANNING reader comments in SILLY capitals" »

Unpredictable, addictive and unrestricted. Chatroulette has sparked a cult following, countless YouTube clips, a new genre of shocked screen-grabs, and at last, mainstream coverage.

It could now draw the attention of would-be censors.

John Herrman, from Gizmodo.com calls Chatroulette, “speed-dating the entire Internet”. In an instant, you’re connected bedroom-to-bedroom with one of 20 thousand online strangers, anywhere in the world, be it dorm, cafe or basement lair.

The result is a hybrid of Skype and Peep-Show. If your chat partner is bored, they flick you to another round of spin of the bottle. It’s a return to the Internet’s Wild Wild West, argues NY Magazine - a lawless place for thrill-seekers, voyeurs, artists and freaks.

Continue reading "Is Chatroulette.com playing Russian with the censors?" »

IF you’ve been following the tech media this week, you’ll know that Google is in hot water over one of the most serious privacy breaches in its history.

You’ll likely have heard that Google launched a new product, called Google Buzz,  that was meant to create a social network out of its email users.

And that major privacy flaws in the product led to abusive men getting access to the details of their ex wives, political activists finding their contacts made public for investigators to peruse and journalists having their sources “outed”. I’m one of those journalists.

Continue reading "How Google managed to reveal my sources" »

Another week, another internet service that needs joining to see what the hype’s about. The web was supposed to make life easier, but all it seems to be doing lately is inventing more ways to bombard people with babble.

Google Buzz‘s launch last week was wrapped in an increasingly familiar aura. As with the iPad launch, there was huge excitement from some nerdy types but a resounding verdict from much of the public has been a sigh and a shrug.

Instead of capitalising on excitement, new products have to overcome fatigue. There’s the effort setting up yet another profile, then somehow remembering to check back on it in between reading the news, monitoring tweets, Facebook status updates, doing the footy tipping, watching that Hitler video everyone’s talking about and getting to your reading recommendations all while trying to manage your phone and email inbox.

Continue reading "I’m sorry but the internet is starting to suck" »

Government security sources have told The Punch the attacks on the official Parliament website have also spread to the Attorney-Generals, Communications and the Department of Immigration.

The attack is believed to have been carried out by a loose coalition of hackers known as Anonymous who have previously claimed responsibility for attacks on the Church of Scientology.

A couple of days ago when Communication Minister Stephen Conroy was asked about the possibility of attacks by hacker groups on Government website he basically laughed it off. One wonders whether Mr Conroy is laughing today.

Continue reading "Website attacks spread throughout Government" »

We’re often keen to highlight the democratic benefits of social media, especially in bringing greater openness to a country such as Iran.

But this week, in Australia, we’ve seen a debate over online political censorship, with the banning of Facebook groups such as “KEVIN RUDD = EPIC FAIL”, that it makes you wonder if we’ve forgotten that the power of social media lies in its ability to embrace dissent and criticism.

In the online world, dissent is not just allowed. It is central to social media’s political power.

Continue reading "Bad week for free speech on social media" »

It was the week in which the words “Macquarie Banker” finally became rhyming slang after a member of the millionaire’s factory was caught perving on jpegs of Miranda Kerr during a live cross about interest rates.

The week in which the words “cyberbully” and “tweet” were listed for inclusion in a Macquarie of a different kind.

It was also the week in which one of the most old-fashioned politicians in Australia, a man who seemed puzzled enough by the 20th century and is really struggling with the 21st, blundered into a raging cyber-storm which had the potential to blow away a government seeking re-election in just seven weeks’ time.

Continue reading "How a political luddite got smashed in cyberspace" »

Since my year 12 English teacher said I was not much of a writer, I have always wanted to publish an article, mainly out of spite.

Undeterred by a lack of talent and an underwhelming byline I set about getting published.

My family has a rich literary tradition.

Continue reading "To my English teacher who said I couldn’t write" »

Australians see 26 January as a day to celebrate the diversity and tolerance of Australian society.

So why did hundreds of our favourite websites fade to black this Australia Day?

It’s apparently the Great Australian Internet Blackout.

Continue reading "The Coalition isn’t convinced net filtering will protect kids" »

Here’s a heads up. If you really want to know what Aussies in 2010 think about our country becoming a republic just flip a coin.

According to the odds, there’s a 50-50 chance of turning up the head of Queen Elizabeth.

Eleven years since a referendum was held to settle the republic debate, Australians seem just as divided about cutting their ties to a monarch living on the other side of the world.

Continue reading "Well at least it’s clear we like talking about a republic" »

The hottest story in the Information Security world right now is the much publicised hacking of Google’s corporate network in China.

If you were skimming the headlines, you might think this story is somehow related to Google blocked searches and Chinese Government censorship. That is how it is being presented in much of the mainstream press, both locally and internationally.

For those who missed the initial story: Early last week Google suddenly announced that it may suspend its operations in China due to a highly sophisticated attack against its corporate network. Within days, it was revealed that up to 30 other tech companies (including Adobe) had been targeted by the same attackers.

Continue reading "China vs Google, a thrilling tale of IT espionage" »

Spam. When not moonlighting as a revolting pork-based processed meat encased in a can, it is by definition unsolicited, electronic junk mail.

Or in layman’s terms on an average day at work just a real pain in the backside. Usually containing an unlikely combination of Russian mail order brides, destitute African students or a muddled-up jumble of pornographic type meshed with random rhetorical questions and bad spelling.  All irrevocably destined for the Outlook trashcan.

Except of course when it’s really funny, like this one sent to The Punch this morning:

Continue reading "How stupid do spammers think people are?" »

A friend remarked this morning that being told you can’t use Internet Explorer, as governments around the world are advising, is like being ordered to get to work without using roads.

This would be inconvenient but sufferable as we could all probably do with a good walk. But tortuously, in this situation even starting such a walk involves making a phone call to your IT helpdesk.

With respect to my IT administrator friends I’ll bet many people would rather take their chances with the criminals.

Continue reading "Hello IT helpdesk? I have a problem called the internet" »

Let me begin with a couple of disclaimers.

I’m the first to acknowledge that – unlike the creator of this column Leigh Sales – I don’t have red hair (or even muted tones of burgundy) although I’ve occasionally been a little daring at the hairdressers.

Just a little.

Continue reading "Well read-head: Births, Deaths and Marriages" »

Having survived the recession, swine-flu and my affair with Tiger Woods, it chills me to find out there’s a new threat - airport scanners.

Now, I’m used to scanners. Used to queuing for ages behind people who empty their pockets only when they get to the scanning belt. Used to my (completely non-metallic) shoes setting off the alarms. I’m used to getting through and then being stopped for an explosives scan because I just love being scanned that much.

But these new scanners, recent coverage suggests, are different. A perversion of the metal scanner I know and love.

These scanners emit x-rays that pass through my clothes and then flash up a monochromatic image of me, denuded of clothes and hair, for security officials to leer and peer at my bits.

Continue reading "If it gets me where I’m going, bring on the X-ray scanner" »

“She is DEAD! F*CKING HAVE RESPECT FOR HER!” - Part of Tila Tequila’s tweet stream.

Hollywood has responded to the tragic death of 30-year-old heiress Casey Johnson in the only way that Hollywood can; by turning the attention away from the departed and on to themselves by outpouring their grief and sympathy - in 140 characters on twitter. The celebrity obsession with the micro-blogging site seems to be more addictive than prescriptive medication in LA.

Lindsay Lohan, DJ Samantha Ronson, Paris Hilton and Tila Tequila have all tweeted about the heiress’s death.

Continue reading "Tila Tequila and the end of grieving in private" »

For someone who now works almost solely on the internet I have very little love for the web.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate its applications and implications, I just don’t care about, for lack of a better word, the internet as a culture. My feelings towards the internet are similar to those I have toward my gas stovetop: as long as I have it I don’t really care about what gas stovetop I have and I don’t think about what the gas stove does when I’m not cooking.

Yet when I received the ten year anniversary letter from Hotmail I was filled with an unexpected kind of nostalgia for the free email service.

Continue reading "Oh Hotmail, you are truly the fairest of them all" »

Ten days before Christmas a toddler drowned in a backyard pool somewhere in the US. It was tragic yet unremarkable among other all-too-familiar stories except for one detail: his mother tweeted his death.

You can read the story and other opinions about the tragic drowning here and here.

This week Twitter was once more buzzing as the bizarre death of Johnson & Johnson heiress, Casey Johnson, was announced via the tweets of her fiancée, television personality Tila Tequila.

Continue reading "Tweet and be damned" »

Journalists tend to adopt a natural default position whereby censorship is deemed to be one of the purest forms of evil, and that we should fight any government which tries to curtail the freedom of adults to make up their own minds on what they say, watch and read.

Over the past few months I’ve found that my personal default position has been challenged, oddly enough, by the anti-censorship lobby. Lobby is a bit of a loose term - there is no formal lobby as such - it’s a pretty diverse and disorganised conglomeration of humanity, containing authors, artists, journalists, information technology experts, social media enthusiasts, twitterers and the like.

Large - and in my view, largely stupid - sections of this group have had the surprise effect of turning me into a closet fan of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. Not because his internet filtering plan is a work of genius. Far from it.

Continue reading "Vacuous critics give censorship a good name" »

Alcoholics call it a moment of clarity. Oprah calls it an “ah-ha moment”.

Whatever you call it, a penny dropping is a wondrous thing, and yesterday amid the rabid brouhaha of Stephen Conroy’s Clean Feed catastrophe, I banked some vital coin.

Perhaps I’m slow, perhaps I’m a bit thick, but it wasn’t until reading the key findings of Catharine Lumby’s document on the proposed Internet filtering, that I realised I was operating under the false assumption that the web should be subjected to the same scrutiny as any other creative product.

Continue reading "The time has come for an Internet Bill Of Rights" »

On a rainy Autumn afternoon in April 2006, while sitting in the front room of my home, I launched Digital Photography School - a blog about photography to record and share the lessons I was learning in photography.

The first post was on shooting action shots in low light conditions - it wasn’t that great and I’m not sure that anyone ever read it - but it was a start.

Today, 3 and a half years later, that blog is read by over 3 million readers a month and is quickly paying my mortgage - in fact in November it generated more than $100,000, most of that in a week after launching a Portrait Photography Tips E-book.

Continue reading "Seven rules of blogging from a legend of the craft" »

My name is Leslie Nassar, you may remember me from the side-splitting online satire of Fake Stephen Conroy, Today Tonight, and iSnack 2.0. Ah, The Internet, where even the most obvious and mediocre of writers can become a Celebretard.

I’ve been asked to write about the Harold Holtification of Fake Stephen Conroy.  I only have a few hundred words to play with and every article that references Twitter must, by law, contain an excruciatingly detailed history of the author’s use of the service, so let’s not dilly-dally.

When Twitter launched in 2007, I joined the microblogging site thinking I could sate my hunger for telling complete strangers (most of them foreign) about my favourite sandwiches. Disappointingly, it turned out that people were more interested in discussing politics than listening to my opinion on multigrain sourdough breads (I am opposed to them, naturally).  So I deleted my account in disgust.

Continue reading "Why it was time to kill off Fake Stephen Conroy" »

As we expected, there has been considerable online discussion about our announcement to introduce ISP-level filtering.

For those who missed it, the Government announced legislation that will require Australian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block web pages that under the National Classification System are rated RC (Refused Classification). RC-rated material includes child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use.

The Government has always maintained there is no silver-bullet solution to cyber-safety and this new measure is one part of a comprehensive suite to address the range of challenges online. For example, we have funded 91 Australian Federal Police officers to the Child Protection Operations Team, as well as extensive education programs for parents, teachers and children.

Continue reading "The truth about net filtering" »

In “Network”, Sidney Lumet’s groundbreaking 1976 media satire, disgruntled TV anchor Howard Beale successfully urged his viewers to lean out of their windows and scream, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.

In the film, it caused a paradigm shift and Beale’s instant transition to overnight celebrity, a modern day shaman clown, a television messiah.
Today, however, everyone is leaning out their windows, screeching to the heavens and the streets below.


But the verbal diarrhoea spewing forth from their many belching mouths isn’t anywhere near as poignant as Beale’s infamous phrase.
It’s happening right here. It’s happening right now. It’s happening at the bottom of this very page.


Continue reading "Unsocial commentary - the artless art of online abuse" »

In August this year I wrote on this site about the lunacy of the Rudd Government’s proposed mandatory ISP internet filtering.

At that stage it was a trial but on Tuesday this week Minister Conroy announced his intention to proceed with legislation to enact this mad idea.

This is a policy that is based on a fraud so much so the Minister could barely explain it with a straight face yesterday.

Continue reading "Net filtering ‘plan’ is a fraud" »

I once stumbled into a child porn chatroom. I was working at a magazine and having one of those “Hey, does anyone know if…?” conversations beloved of journos where we meander into oddball topics, debate them vigorously and call it work.

On this day, we were trying to remember whether Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of The Boy Scouts, was a confirmed paedo or whether it’s just that the organisation itself has the sour whiff of the kiddy-fiddler about it and we were wrongly maligning him. I Googled (or possibly Yahooed – this was a good seven years ago) something along the lines of ‘scouts, paedophilia, Baden-Powell”.

And before I knew it I’d clicked though to a site flooded with hundreds, possibly thousands of posts and replies from men defending – and describing - their lust (both imagined and enacted) for pre-pubescent children.

Continue reading "Child welfare is more important than net freedom" »

Computer nerds hate Senator Stephen Conroy’s plan to filter the Internet so that material which is refused classification (RC) becomes harder to access. But instead of moaning about how it might slow the Net or limit freedom of speech, they should just build a better filter that actually works.

Don’t doubt that geeks can do it. Napster, the late-90s phenomenon that shocked the music industry by enabling music piracy on a vast scale was written by a lone teenager. BitTorrent, the protocol currently used by millions of people around the world to share illegal copies of films and TV shows, was also created by a lone geek. Twitter was whipped up in few days of frenzied programming.

Sadly, some of the tools that geeks have created are now favourites of the perverts, criminals and hatemongers who want to access the vile material that Senator Conroy wants Internet Service Providers to block. Perverts uses these tools because they are far harder to detect than other methods of finding Internet nasties, leading to entirely justified criticism that the filter is a largely futile exercise that will drive creeps underground.

Continue reading "Hey geeks, stop the whining and build a better filter" »

Australia has an international reputation as visionary for the way we managed the HIV epidemic in the 1980s. While countries like the US were being sidetracked by extremists claiming the virus was a sign God was venting his wrath on homosexuals, Australians acted rationally.

Our governments, our health experts and our media got the message out: HIV was primarily spread through blood and semen. Safer sex and injecting practices could stem the tide.

If you go online today you’ll find countless websites devoted to that message. Many of them are hosted overseas. Many of them give detailed instructions on drug injection and describe, in necessarily explicit language, sexual activity that would be deemed illegal to show in a film made for entertainment purposes under Australian law.

Continue reading "Sex, drugs, and other things you can’t read about" »

Put your hand up if you own a dictionary. How about a thesaurus, book on grammar or an encyclopaedia? 

What do you do with them these days?

My dictionary sits beside the bed and aside from a handful of smug, self-satisfied glances at it, it’s mostly a useful prop for my bedside lamp. 

Continue reading "Did I sleep with Tiger Woods? And other questions of 2009" »

There has been a lot of giddiness and hoopla surrounding the use of Twitter by journalists to cover the leadership ructions in the Liberal Party this past fortnight. It certainly made for high-energy reading – with its rawness and immediacy, it made the readers feel as if they were there as journalists passed on factoids from the mayhem and provided links to news and analysis of running events.

The downside of course was that it also gave tweeting journalists the ability to be 100 per cent wrong in real time – and I include myself among their number – where rumour and conjecture was shot into cyberspace, sending frantic packs of gallery journalists sprinting down corridors searching for a reputed Julie Bishop press conference, to find nothing but a Coke machine.

This real-time dissemination of both fact and fiction is an issue for the political parties head of next year’s election, where any degree of tail-chasing undermines their desire for a stage-managed and risk-averse passage through the campaign.

Continue reading "Web women unleash cyber hell on Holy Tony" »

The people who run my local coffee shop must think I’m a freak.  I fear I’m the only patron who ever shows up with both Who Weekly AND The Australian Financial Review. So that people won’t think less of me, I hide The Fin inside Who Weekly cover.

Even though I have a constant back stack of New Yorkers, Atlantic Monthlies, Economists and Spectators, the damned Who Weekly manages to suck me in every other week it seems.  The reason is that it constantly offers lists: Sexiest People, Most Beautiful People, Skinniest Celebrities, Fattest Celebrities, Best Break-Ups, etc etc etc.

I’ve always been a sucker for a ‘Best Of’ list.  This time of year is heaven because invariably newspapers and magazines rank the year’s top political scandals, celebrities, news events, films, natural disasters, photographs, books – anything you care to name.  Not only do I love to read a good list, I love to write them (as the oeuvre of this blog demonstrates).  And there’s no way I’m going to let the end of 2009 pass without a few ‘best of’ lists of my own.

Continue reading "Well-readhead: I’m a sucker for a “Best Of” list" »

I was a late Twitter convert, only joining up at the behest of a friend who regularly spoke of its virtues in connecting with her fellow poets and Gertrude Stein enthusiasts.

I am a bit ambivalent about contributing to conversations surrounding the latest social networking fads but the other day I had a realisation that I get most of my news from Twitter.

The realisation came to me as a bit of a shock, when I was talking to my housemate about the Liberal Party leadership woes.

Continue reading "Twitter: News at the speed of light" »

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know we all want to change the world ...
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know, we’re doing what we can ...

You read news. So you know there’s a revolution going in the news industry, with much untargeted crossfire, rattling of virtual sabres and foaming at the mouth about paid content.

Rude words have been said. Like “parasite”. And “money”.

Continue reading "You’ve never paid for news, you never will" »

I recently gave an address at the Media 140 Conference in Sydney about the impact of social media on journalism.  I was invited to speak about the ethics and professionalism of the way I use twitter.  Today’s post is adapted from my remarks.

My guiding principle is ‘If in doubt, leave it out’. 

In other words, when it comes to what I put on twitter, I err on the side of caution - as I do with what I write or broadcast generally.

Continue reading "Well-readhead: How and why I use Twitter" »

Don’t you hate Twitter? All those people, twittering away, typing all that rubbish, telling people about their lives as if any of us are interested.

As if anyone cares what they ate for lunch today or what they’re watching on TV or what they think about So You Think You Can Dance. Isn’t it just rubbish?

Of all the modern social trends I find personally offensive, Twitter has the greatest direct negative impact on my day-to-day life. All the banality. All those people being so dull.

Continue reading "A world of twittering fools dizzy on the helium of idiocy" »

Here’s a few things we learned this week: lip-synching and Kevin Rudd are predominately out, keeping university colleges safe is in and we’ve all got something to ask Tiger Woods.

A selection of some of the best writing from this week @ The Punch follow after the jump. And if you’re looking for something else to help pass the afternoon,  watch the video above about a National Geographic photographer.

Continue reading "This week @ The Punch" »

Much like handing out condoms with the tip cut off won’t help fight STDs, the Rudd Government’s plan to filter the internet of Refused Classification material won’t make the internet safe for children.

Before the 2007 election Labor promised they would “ensure that children are protected from harmful and inappropriate online material” by introducing mandatory content filtering of all websites at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level.

One might have thought that they were promising to make the internet safe for children.  It certainly sounded like it.  With the great firewall of Australia in place parents would be able leave their children in the capable hands of Uncle Kevin, net nanny extraordinaire.

Continue reading "Call it an ISP filter Kevin but your logic leaks like a sieve" »

I regularly find myself chairing panels at writers’ festivals or in bookshops and I give a standard spiel at the beginning of every event.

‘We’ll have time for questions at the end,’ I say, ‘And let me emphasise that we want questions, not statements.  If you stand up and make a statement, I will cut you off and publicly humiliate you.’

It usually gets a laugh ... until they realise I’m completely serious.

Continue reading "Well-readhead: Don’t make me publicly humiliate you" »

“She doesn’t do radio interviews… she says it’s a dead medium”.

A recent conversation with a publicist about an American starlet nearly knocked me for six. According to the publicist the said starlet wasn’t going to waste her time on radio, because she simply didn’t believe anyone would be listening.

While it came as a surprise to me, it wasn’t the first time I’d heard it – particularly from an American.  In the US, radio has really struggled in the wake of internet broadcasting. As listeners switch off in droves, programmers have been forced to look for new ways to reach out to their audience.

Continue reading "Radio kills the radio stars" »

There is an old mathematical puzzle about three mathematicians and a bell-hop which is a good lesson in how numbers can be used to deceive as well as inform.

Three mathematicians travelling to a conference out of town decide to save money by sharing a room (clearly these mathematicians are academics rather than mathematicians working on exotic products for investment banks).

At the front desk, they pay $300 for the night for their room.

Continue reading "The bell-hop’s tale: Avoiding getting tricked by numbers" »

IN a country the size of Australia, thinking big comes with the territory.

Not surprisingly Kevin Rudd proudly embraced that concept recently when he proclaimed his belief in a “big Australia” and backed plans for the nation’s population to surge to 35 million by 2049.

The populate or perish policy is nothing new, of course. Under various guises, it has driven growth in Australia for more than 200 years.

Continue reading "Boatpeople factor in debate on population growth" »

I was a bit of a front row nerd at school - it comes with the territory of being State Under 12 Chess Champion in 1983. 

I can clearly remember one occasion at school when I put my hand up to answer the teacher’s question and felt a sharp whack on my head.  Someone from the back of the room had scored a direct hit with a rubber. I looked around but could not identify the culprit.  The teacher didn’t see a thing. 

Needless to say from that moment on I kept my hand down, and my views to myself.  Today I see something similar happening on the Internet, and today’s ‘rubber’ is ‘the anonymous comment’. 

Continue reading "Massive fail - the anti-social world of social media" »

A few highlights from Punch staff and contributors are over the jump. For a bit of fun, check out the #medievalbumperstickers thread on Twitter from today. And here’s a video that’s worth another look.

One reader insight from this week is from Punch regular Zeta, with a considered position on asylum seekers (also over the jump). Have a great weekend.

Continue reading "If you missed them" »

Twitter just announced “Lists” as its latest feature. Utilising a Steve Jobs tactic, Twitter Lists are not yet available, nor are they being resold on ebay as Google Wave invites are, but they are “Soon to Launch”, says Project Lead Nick Kallen, on the company blog.

When available, Twitter Lists will enable “people to curate lists of Twitter accounts”. What does it mean? Unlike Facebook, whose raison d’etre has evolved from connecting Harvard study buddies to the “people in your life” and ultimately making the “world more open” - Twitter wants you not only to connect with your In Real Life friends - but also to topics of interest - via Lists of People.

Continue reading "Suggestion to Twitter: think Australian, start here" »

The above headline is a Vegemite-free reworking of Men At Work’s “Down Under”, shamelessly pilfered from Twitter as an example of the hundreds of negative and abusive comments being directed at Kraft over the iSnack2.0 debacle.

On current projections the iSnack2.0 disaster will be taught for years to come in marketing courses as a step-by-step example of how to upset everybody - the oldies who are fiercely loyal to Vegemite in its existing incarnation, and the youngsters who regard the internet-driven name of this (woeful) new brand as patronising gimmickry, akin to Sorbent trying to corner the youth market with a “hip and groovy” new toilet tissue called iShit.

AS any student of yeast-based food extracts can attest, the history of sandwich spreads is a volatile one where passions run high and careers, even entire companies, have risen and fallen on the back of their marketing campaigns.

Continue reading "He just smiled and gave me a iSnack2.0 sandwich" »

Not long before Patrick Swayze died, I watched Dirty Dancing, partly for fun and partly searching for an answer to a pretty callous question: why was I oddly upset about Swayze’s terminal cancer when not only was he a stranger, but an average actor whose only real hits, Ghost and Dirty Dancing, were twenty years ago?

Harsh, yes.  But it’s what I thought.

I still recall the day that I first saw Dirty Dancing.  It was 1987.  My three best friends and I were on school holidays and Melissa’s dad dropped us at the cinema at the Toombul Shopping Centre in Brisbane.  We were buzzing with excitement, no doubt wearing acid wash jeans and oversized shirts with our fringes sprayed and teased into concrete boards, like every other fourteen year old girl of the day.

Continue reading "Well read-head: The Time of My Life" »

This simple graphic illustrates one way the internet can be used to get an insight into a person, by analysing publicly available information associated with a name. I’ve chosen, for no particular reason, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull. Through the rest of this post are similar profiles of a range of Australian public identities.

You can enter your own details into the Personas tool here. If you feel uncomfortable watching the process of this tool scouring the web for information about you, that’s the idea. It was designed to show you have a publicly available profile which you cannot control.

Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it’s intended to highlight not just how you are seen on the web, but “for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories.”

Continue reading "What does the web think of you?" »

It was shortly before my wedding. As I assume others do, I spent some time examining my life. Amidst the consideration of my health, my career and my relationship came a question.

What are you doing on Facebook?

There must be people who find Facebook fulfilling, just as there are people who enjoy discussing Kanye West’s latest rant or actually believe the man has a talent for making anything other than a tit of himself. I just happen not to be one of them.

Continue reading "I killed myself on Facebook, and lived to tell the tale" »

130 million.

That’s how many credit card details Miami resident Albert Gonzalez is alleged to have stolen by hacking into US companies over recent years.

Gonzales hasn’t been the only one busy stealing financial credentials from legitimate businesses who have collated data from our online and offline transactions, others have targeted home computers using malicious software (malware) or tricked them out of us via phishing or fraudulent websites.

Continue reading "When it comes to web safety, we’re going nowhere fast" »

Since the first caveman caved in the head of his rival with a sharpened rock, it hasn’t taken us long to use new inventions to be naughty.

And so it is with the internet and every fad it spawns. It seems it’s only a matter of time before some creative crooks find in every new popular website or net gimmick a new way to commit dastardly deeds.

Like Welshman Brian Lewis who was last week jailed for life for murdering his wife (and mother of his four children) because he noticed she had changed her status to “single” on Facebook. Sadly, it’s just the latest in a string of examples of the misuse of new inventions that should be bringing us together.

Here’s our top five:

Continue reading "If there’s a way to be bad, you’ll find it on the Internet" »

A few weeks ago I had one of my worst days as a new MP. A woman came to see me in my office in Caringbah in southern Sydney and told me the appalling story of how her child was being exposed to pornography by the child’s own father.

The child is less than five years old. I won’t go into the other details for risk of identifying the individuals involved, but rest assured it would make the most tolerant and liberal thinking of readers angry and sick.

What is worse is that as we looked to see what remedies were available to help this mum protect her child, we found there were none – and the police confirmed as much to her.

Continue reading "Protect kids from porn in the family home" »

The Punch is moving a little slowly today on account of the site winning Specialist News Site of the Year at last night’s PANPA awards.

Anyway, this is just a note to share it with you and say thanks.

Readers make The Punch what it is. A bit of a risk with the site’s launch three months ago was that it counted on your involvement from the start. The sleeves-up debate on the opinion and analysis from our contributors is just as important as the pieces themselves - the discussion on the various issues is central to the site’s personality and as of this week we have published over 20,000 of your comments.

So cheers. This one’s for you.

We all want our kids to be safe online. Parents can’t be expected to monitor every click and it’s understandable that we’re looking to government for help.

But Mr Rudd’s plan to assemble a government generated list of unacceptable sites then demand Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitor each page we visit is a step in the wrong direction.

ISPs direct internet traffic much like a post office delivers mail. Requiring them to examine the contents of transmitted data is like requiring the post office to read our mail before it’s delivered.

Continue reading "Rudd’s internet nanny plan targets the wrong enemy" »

A few years ago, I worked in a co-working space called Silicon Beach House - it was our play on Silicon Valley - and everyone there was either a developer, a web designer, or running a web start-up. It was a little harem of geeks. And then there was me.

My original MySpace page (yes!) is evidence that I really had no idea what I was doing back then. I still use it in presentations to show people what NOT to do on the web. I am also yet to live down the day I replaced the batteries on my mouse with rechargeable ones and had everyone in the office spend a good 20 minutes giving me tech support, before I sheepishly made the discovery.

It may have happened two years ago, but when I asked my Twitter followers the other day if they had any idea why my second screen wasn’t working, someone still suggested I check the batteries.

Continue reading "How to get along with geeks: A seven-point guide" »

For the sake of marking a slightly unusual date in the calendar tomorrow, 09/09/09, there’s a campaign underway to rid the internet of cats for 24 hours.

If that doesn’t strike you as a perfectly sensible idea, you’re probably reading this on a dial-up connection. Cats are to the web what tomatoes are to Italian cooking. One online magazine said earlier this year declared the internet was made of kittens.

To a classically Catholic reaction of horror and amusement, I discovered this week there’s even a project underway to rewrite the Bible in kitteh, the imaginary moggie tongue which has some rigid conventions – “can I have” becomes “I can haz” and omnipotence comes in the form of “Ceiling Cat”, a meme stemming from photos of cats looking out of holes in the roof.

Continue reading "List: Things to ban from the web, just for a day" »

A selection of reads from Punch contributors and editors over the course of this extraordinary news week is below the fold, but first it’s worth a close look at this pic, which ran with this piece imagining Sex and the City VI. Enjoy the weekend.

Continue reading "In case you missed them…." »

If you could design your own domestic news service, what would it look like?

Taking off my News Limited hat and speaking as a general reader, mine would involve a few things - plenty of hard news, mostly politics, stacks of AFL, provocative and entertaining opinion pieces, heaps of food, music and cinema journalism.

I’d never read celebrity gossip, clubby or dull business journalism (that is, almost all of it) or another impenetrable word of motoring writing about the latest unaffordable car with a 28 kilowatt, 6.2 litre engine and variable-valve timing control.

Continue reading "Extra, extra - pay for your content" »

Earlier this month I spoke at a social media conference in Melbourne. When you wear a badge that says you work for Rupert Murdoch at these events, it’s like sitting in the middle of the Collingwood cheer squad in a Carlton jumper. With some people the best you can hope for is that their initial horror will eventually subside to a mild hostility.

I was there to speak about strategy for social media, including Twitter, which The Punch has engaged to a fair degree of success. It is second only to the mighty Google in terms of the number of readers it helps the site reach. My presentation was on using social networks to connect with people.

The Social Media Summit 2009 came just days after the announcement that News Corporation planned to charge for access to its websites. It was the hottest topic of conversation in the wings and with the exception of one or two people, the view among the delegates was that it wasn’t going to work.

Continue reading "Psst, Twitter: You might want to help save big media" »

For an open, organic, freedom-loving Utopia, there are a great many wannabe digital dictators on the Internet, vomiting forth mandates on how we must behave, speak, and do business. The Ethos of the Web, they call it; they know what is right, what is wrong, what will work, and what will fail.

So in May, when Rupert Murdoch tabled the idea of paywalling his newspapers, the Glorious Leaders of Twitterstan took to their keyboards, and registered their disdain with an all-caps “FAIL!”

“You can’t charge for content! Information wants to be free! Show your support by donating to my PayPal account!” Every Social Media Expert and Futurist hustling for speaking fees and fat consultancies knows, unequivocally, that newspapers are dinosuars; one edition short of extinction.

Continue reading "Not all media dinosaurs have small brains" »

What will journalism look like in twenty years? Will newspapers still exist? Punch research journalist Kelly Simpson and four of her fellow students from the University of Technology Sydney gaze into the crystal ball…

Kelly Simpson – Postgraduate journalism student, UTS: How did you hear that Michael Jackson had died? That we’d lost the Ashes?

Print is dead, I’ve been assured. I’ve missed the glory days. There’ll be no ink smudged copy for me, no physical front page, no morning AND evening editions of the newspapers.

Continue reading "Degrees of uncertainty for students of journalism" »

My family is under strict instructions that if I’m ever kidnapped by Guatemalan rebels (it could happen), am the first victim in a global pandemic that started with domestic animals or become in anyway incapacitated in a newsworthy way they’re to distribute three flattering photographs of me to any media outlet that wants them as soon as the news breaks.

Its a long standing fact that if you die overseas of something other than natural causes, are part of a public tragedy, or just can’t speak for yourself after something really weird happens, newspapers, websites and TV stations are going to scramble for any picture of you they can get your hands on.

If all that’s on offer is some Facebook pics of you throwing up in a garbage bin at Schoolies Week - well so be it. Five years ago the chances of a picture like this one of Jason Scorer, who died in Rome after falling into the Tiber this week, ever seeing the light of day in the mainstream media were minimal.

Continue reading "Your last photo: how do you want to be remembered?" »

In the past few months we have seen the highs and lows of our relationship with China on display.

Firstly we saw Australia avoid recession largely because of the strong demand by China for Australia’s resources. 

Then we saw a series of diplomatic incidents including the arrest of Australian businessman Stern Hu on grounds which are yet to become clear.  In addition it appears the Chinese Government has taken proactive action to show their displeasure at Australia for granting a visa to Chinese dissident leader Rebiya Kadeer.

Continue reading "Spot the difference between China and Stephen Conroy" »

It was the third day without internet that things really started to go pear-shaped.

We’d tried everything. The modem, the network card, the f—-ing wifi router. All had been plugged in and out, cleaned, hugged and yelled at but still our small sharehouse was stuck in an interweb drought.

Continue reading "Hunger and panic when the internet packs it in" »

A selection of reads from Punch contributors and editors this week is below the fold.

Often some of the best and wisest commentary on the site can be found in the comments. Here’s one of the best this week, from reader Andrew in response to David Penberthy’s piece on forgotten suburbs:

Continue reading "In case you missed them…" »

I am a social media whore. That’s the point of it all right? There’s a lot you can know about me from what music I listen to, what concerts I’ve been to and yes, even occasionally what I just ate.

There’s even a 12 second video somewhere of me dancing in a tutu to What a Feeling by Irene Cara.  All of which I chose to share across a number of social networks I belong to that include Blip.fm, Twitter and 12seconds.tv and I’m comfortable with that.

And then there’s Facebook.

Continue reading "Six million Australians are selling their lives to Facebook" »

July and August have seen a lot of activity around the new National Broadband Network (NBN).  Three Tasmanian towns will be the first linked in the network that will eventually stretch all the way around Australia.  The Prime Minister has likened the NBN project to the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

The plan is for the NBN to bring 100 megabits of data, per second, to 90% of Australian homes - right to the front door - which is very different to today’s broadband experience.  Actually, it’s a bit like trading up from a ride-on lawn mower to a sports car.

Politics and the economic and technical hurdles of building such a national network aside, super-fast broadband will deliver economic and social benefits.  And risks.

Continue reading "Personal security forgotten in Rudd’s rush to broadband" »

The silent epidemic - bullying - is being confronted with screams for help. Incidents of cyber bullying, workplace bullying and violence are being reported like never before.

The emerging pattern of teenage suicides, evidently linked to cyber bullying, marks a new-age epidemic that must be stopped.

In 2003, Melbourne medical experts described bullying as the silent epidemic. But now, it’s loud and clear how bullying is impacting on our generation living in cyberspace. And it’s not just in cyberspace where bullying is rife. It’s in the playground, the workplace and on the streets.

Continue reading "Screams for help - the silent bullying epidemic" »

There’s no way to tell how this appeared in real-time, because it was an invitation-only event, but the transcript of Australia’s first live webchat with Kevin Rudd is strewn with spelling mistakes and errant or non-existent punctuation in the Prime Minister’s messages.

The first sentence from the most powerful man in the country, guardian of our trillion-dollar economy: Hi PM here lets get going with this Nearly a thousand people contributed ton the climate change

Which makes you wonder: will live blogging exercise be extended ton other ministers?

Continue reading "Why expect kids to punctuate when the PM can’t?" »

Over to you.

Kyle and Jackie O have been taken off air indefinitely as a result of the massive backlash against last Wednesday’s rape debacle, where a 14-year-old girl revealed on air that she had been the victim of sexual assault. And Sandilands has said through his management that he is “unable to perform his duties on-air at this time”, without elaborating.

The announcement follows five days’ condemnation of the program and Austereo for even airing a segment where an underage girl was fitted to a lie detector machine in front of her mother and quizzed on her sexual habits - let alone with the horrifying consequence of revealing that she had been raped when she was 12, and that her Mum knew all about it.

The network’s decision is an extraordinary demonstration of the power of public opinion, with websites, talkback radio and Twitter being consumed with the issue over this past few day. The comments ran overwhelmingly against Kyle and Jackie O and Austereo, not to mention the girl’s mother, who is being investigated by the Department of Community Services.  The Austereo statement says:

Continue reading "How people power and the web took Kyle off the air" »

This is on news.com.au today:

If you spent just one minute reading every website in existence, you’d be kept busy for 31,000 years.

This is based on information from Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine. It adds that to actually read the entire internet, you would need six hundred thousand decades - six million years - of nonstop reading to read through the information. I guess that’s before you start watching stuff like this or this.

So, Punchers, let’s help each other out. In the comments below post links to the pages you think are the absolute must-sees of the web. I’ll kick it off with this, just because it’s top-of-mind: Joe Hildebrand’s review of Tango & Cash.

Continue reading "If you could share one page on web, what would it be?" »

There is an online revolution occurring with women taking to the blogsphere at a phenomenal rate.

They are connecting, supporting, sharing, creating and doing business with people they probably have never met.

It is a new wave of feminism.

Continue reading "Rise of the mummy blogger" »

The bullying epidemic has claimed yet another victim: 14-year-old bubbly, fresh-faced Chanelle Rae.

Rae’s funeral took place in Geelong on Friday, exactly one week after the high school student took her own life hours after reading a message on the internet.

We will never know what that message said, but we can guess at the kind of person that sent it.

Continue reading "To tackle cyber bullies, start with teen self esteem" »

So, as much as I hate admitting it, I’m the kind of guy who watches DVDs with the audio commentary on.

Turns out, some audio commentaries are actually pretty interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff, and I thought I’d share with you something I picked up when watching an episode of Family Guy the other day.

Seth MacFarlane, producer and actor on the show, stated that Family Guy was one of the first television series to reference an internet joke, something which had never before been done on a mainstream medium.

Continue reading "What do medicated kids and Rick Astley have in common?" »

These things I remember.

I’m in a car, bumping along a stony track in the mountains, when suddenly, to the right, a big, sand-coloured helicopter rises up out of a valley. It’s close - close enough to see the eyes of the heavy-machine-gun operator flick contemptuously my way, before dismissing me as a potential target as the aircraft banks and flies off.

I’m in a sub-tropical rainforest in the rain. Suddenly, from my left, I see a flash of movement: a wolf, its fangs bared, charging towards me. I pull out a sword and defend myself.

Continue reading "Second Life? I’ve got enough on my plate with the first" »

Recently, a stranger walked up to me in a café.

‘Is that The Sydney Morning Herald you’re reading?’ she asked.  She looked about 30 and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. I told her it was and she immediately drew closer to take a look.

‘I just need to see yesterday’s word,’ she said.

Continue reading "AMARKEEGO spells GEEK-O-RAMA: Well read-head" »

People behave better online than in real life, moderating their language, respecting the views of others and being selective in their choice of invective.

That’s my conclusion after completing what I am claiming is the first definitive study on the language of building workers in a confined space, otherwise known as an online discussion board.

Thinking ourselves prudent, we decided to vet online messages of support for Ark Tribe, the Adelaide building worker facing jail for refusing to answer questions to the Building Commission , before we posted them online.

Continue reading "In cyberspace everyone can hear you swear" »

The King of Pop may be dead, but the controversy surrounding his untimely exit is far from buried.

The dust has barely settled since his globally-televised public memorial service last week, yet every day more pieces seem to be missing in the Jacko jigsaw about his life, his death, his final resting place and those he left behind.

The case has transcended from the mysterious to the macabre, with reports that his ghost has been seen walking the halls of his Neverland ranch to questions over who has possession of his brain. 

Continue reading "The web is alive with wacko theories on Jacko" »

The Punch is now one month old. We would like to thank our readers for getting us off to such a strong start. We would also like to engage you in conversation as to what more you would like out of this website - what’s working, what isn’t, what more we could do to make your reading experience more illuminating and entertaining.

The Punch had expected to get about 80,000 readers (unique browsers) in its first month. The official figures show we ended up with 206,281 readers. This compares to Crikey, which is five years older than us, and had 179,069 readers in the same period.

This funny little niche website run out of Melbourne has been obsessing about us since we launched, and it’s something we regard as proof positive of the navel-gazy bullshit which blights the media landscape, where journos both from the independent blogosphere and big media would much rather talk about each other than the readers.

It’s a fact demonstrated by the coverage of Wednesday’s Press Club address by News Limited chairman and CEO John Hartigan, which was a characteristically blunt and thought-provoking bomb-throwing exercise where Hartigan questioned the quality of Australia’s newspapers, including those owned by News Limited, challenged the work practices of his own staff in the Canberra Press Gallery, and bemoaned the fact that the readers were often the farthest thing from the media’s mind as it went about its journalism.

Continue reading "The Punch thanks its readers and extends an invitation" »

My husband and I have a running gag about trying to find our ‘peeps’ (as in people).  We’re from Queensland so Sydney’s segregation has always bemused us.  When you meet somebody from Brisbane, and you’re also from Brisbane, the opening question is always the same: ‘North side or south side?’  And really, there’s not that much difference.

In Sydney, the options are endless.  You can be a beach person, but there’s a difference between an eastern suburbs beach person and a northern beaches person.  You can live at Newtown and be urban grunge.  You can live at Paddington and be urban sophisticate.  The North shore is foreign to the Inner West.  The Inner West bears little relationship to greater Western Sydney.  Balmain, Chatswood and Double Bay are all affluent but they’re as varied as espresso, green tea and French champagne. 

Somebody who lives at Kings Cross is not the same as somebody who lives at Potts Point, even though they can probably spy on each other through their curtains.  It’s overwhelming.  Finding your peeps in Sydney takes a lot of searching.

Continue reading "Well read-head: my peeps are pensioners in ponchos" »

On Wednesday night China’s censors temporarily blocked Google and Gmail, an essential part of my communication with friends and family in Australia and used more than 20 million Chinese.

It was perhaps naive and even a little old fashioned of me to rely on just one e-mail account in Beijing. I know that the country’s net nanny is unpredictable and have been watching the escalating feud between the government and the world’s most popular search engine, which is being accused of containing excessive links to pornography.

The outage happened at about 9.30pm. A friend telephoned me and said that Google had been blocked. I tried several times to open Google.com and Gmail but the pages either timed out or I received a message that the connection was interrupted. China-based site Google.cn was also down.

Continue reading "When China pulls the plug on the Internet" »

Darth Vader probably hasn’t has as much work done on his appearance as Michael Jackson, but he does the Thriller dance just as well. Enjoy.

Why is it that some people obviously consider reading to be “doing nothing”?  Many a time I’ve been on a plane or a train, reading, and the person next to me will strike up a conversation as if I were doing nothing.  It happens in my own home too. 

When I open a book in the living room, it’s apparently a signal to members of my family to sit down and start chatting.  In fact, so often am I pestered while reading that I’ve built up an arsenal of manoeuvres to deflect interrupters.

The first step is to ignore.  The interrupter will usually assume you’ve not heard them because you’re so absorbed in what you’re reading.  While this is often enough to deter a stranger, it won’t stop a family member.  Relatives – and the bold - will certainly blunder forward.

Continue reading "Well read-head: back off or I’ll throw the book at you" »

A recent edition of the New Yorker carried a cartoon that depicts a man about to be executed by firing squad. Beside him an executioner holds out a mobile phone and asks: “Last tweet?” (You can see it here)

This is an incisive analysis of the wild variance of the content on Twitter. Suspected previous tweets for our cartoon hero: “Just about to go through security.” Or: “Putting on my hood now.” It’s the Twitter rollercoaster. One moment you can be reading about someone eating an egg sandwich. The next, you can be reading first-hand news of one of the stories of the year and looking at a photo like this:

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s creator, says the service will be a success “when it’s not talked about so much”, and when people just use and accept it “like electricity”. Amen. The incessant hype and stream of stories has become a bore. Yes, it breaks news in ways traditional big media outlets cannot. Yes, it’s yet another challenge for big media companies to get to grips with. Yes, it’s a valuable search tool. Twitter’s success is proof, though, of something much more unsettling - or exciting, depending on your point of view.

Continue reading "Yeah, Twitter’s great. But what’s the next big thing?" »

My nine-year-old has been waging a campaign to see the South Park movie for six months now. I’ve said ‘No’. It’s a funny movie but there’s a scene in it, featured below, where Saddam Hussein has sex with Satan. I figure you have to be at least ten years old to process that joke.

Naturally, my son did what all well-raised and obedient children do when their parents ban something. He waited until I was cooking dinner and he YouTubed it. It was a smart move – he got to watch all the rude bits without any of the annoying political satire.

As I write this column, I’m in London attending a conference on children and cybersafety. I have no doubt that my son is reveling in my absence. My exhausted partner will surely fall asleep early at some point and my son will sneak upstairs to type naughty words into Google.

Continue reading "Kids’ healthy curiosity more powerful than censorship" »

AS Australians, we have a reputation for our offbeat sense of humour. But is the joke now on us? Or are we just losing our sense of humour, or more to the point, the art of satire?

Humour - or rather the lack of it ­ has occupied more bloggers’ bytes on news sites over the past fortnight than any other topic.

Asked by news reporters for their view, everyone, right up to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, seems to have an opinion about what’s funny and what’s not.

Continue reading "Even the blogosphere has turned against satire" »

There are new kids on the celebrity block. New sheriffs in the town of fame. They’re not captains of industry or masters of any particular discipline. They’re not even particularly good at anything. They are the people who are famous for no other reason but that they were fortunate enough to exist at a time where minute details travel faster and further than large-scale ideals, and there ain’t a damn thing any of us can or seem to want to do about it.

These new celebrities are your Paris Hiltons. Your Corey Worthingtons. Your Axel Whiteheads. Anyone who decided that there was a future in the media after being evicted from the Big Brother house. Their fame is fame, and they want to live forever.

But until now these rampant fame whores have almost been taking the piss out of the famous-for-nothing genre. Even though their accomplishments and hills of beans are pretty much of equal proportion, they still possess even the slightest trace of talent for something. They’re not truly connected to the source of nothingness, and like devout disciples of insignificance, have been waiting for their mundane Messiah to return and show them all the bland, dim light. Well, Hosanna in the lowest has arrived, and the saviour’s name is Arthur Kade.

Continue reading "Touching the void - the new celebrities of nothing" »

So the other night a friend and I were trying to suss out some directions using Google.  My aim was to get from my home, in Erskineville, in Sydney, to Orange, NSW.

So I typed in From: Erskineville. To: Orange.

Seems Google thought I meant directions to Orange, California.

Continue reading "Google, you are amazing" »

On the campaign trail in 2007, the ALP promised to make cyberspace a safer place for children.  Strangely, this is one election promise that has fiercely stuck its ground. 

Australia may soon enjoy the dubious honour of being the world’s first liberal democracy to legislatively mandate internet filtering.

The original proposal creates a mandatory ISP-level filter.  Recent debate suggests a ‘voluntary’ scheme, whereby ISP licensing agreements include a filtering clause.  The ALP has not updated its original documentation. Significantly, this change removes the process from legislative scrutiny (read: goodbye transparency and accountability).

In terms of what content the filter will allow end users to access, however, the difference is rhetorical: either way, ISPs will filter what users can access.

Continue reading "No web filter will stop child pornography" »

Alongside PowerPoint slide design, I think I have a fetish for iPhone applications. Last week I was doing my usual browse through iTunes looking at some of the latest apps when I excitedly discovered one recently released by Tic Tac. I vaguely recalled reading an article about it and how they were apparently one of the leading brands in the digital space.

So I quickly downloaded it, synced it and opened it. And it was shit. So much so that I actually wanted to punch somebody. For those who haven’t seen it, which apparently isn’t many of you because it was downloaded a whole 3000 times in the first week, it’s perhaps the most useless app of all time.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with a useless iPhone app. Or even a gimmicky one. Perhaps my favourite app of all time falls into both those categories; iPint (see above video). Released by beer brand Carling, the app appears as a glass full of beer that as you tilt slowly it empties, as though you are drinking it. Yes it’s gimmicky and yes it’s useless. But it’s awesome.

Continue reading "It’s not just a mint - it’s a really bad campaign" »

Invent a silly catchphrase. Take to ridiculous extremes. Publish on internet. Watch as it becomes a minor sensation.

This is doing the rounds today.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s a bit meow meow meow.

Some people are obsessive about cleanliness.  Others can’t leave the house without checking the stove twenty eight times. 

My compulsion is reading.  Lost pet posters, religious tracts, magazines, junk mail, children’s books, fashion websites, coffee shop noticeboards, blogs: if it has words on it, I can’t help myself reading it.

The extent of my addiction struck me once when I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room.

Continue reading "Well read-head: Three cheers for the world wide web" »