June 2008 Archives

I've spent the last few days in Glasgow, Scotland - almost home-away-from-home I've been there so often over the past couple of years. I do love Scotland. Such a pretty country and the people are always so lovely.  I came for consultancy-oriented meetings and to attend another fabulous session at Urban Learning Space.  Pat Kane spoke about his journey to finding a new business model in a networked age, and the session gave me great food for thought.  My company, Xenial, really must consider cooperating with social networking platforms like ning.com, huddle.com and crowdvine.com in order to continue to remain 'ahead of the game' when it comes to valuable interaction design. 

I also visited Aberdeen - photos up later today - and enjoyed that little town.  I still have only seen about half of Scotland, but I have at least now done most of the east coast and a bit of the west coast.  Maybe next time I will make it out to Skye or up into the far north.  But before then I still want to do Ireland and a bit more of Europe. 

I did have a bit of excitement last night - the fire alarm went off at 1:30am in the hotel where I was staying and we had to evacuate for 20 minutes, standing in the cold outside Queen St Station.  Not fun.  But other than that it's been a beautiful time in Scotland and I very much appreciated the company of my fantastic Glasgow friends, Yvonne, Don and Pat :-) Thanks guys! xoxoxo

So, so sad to hear that Jane, the wife of Australian cricket fast bowler, Glenn McGrath, has passed away. Her battle with breast cancer and her struggle to raise funds and awareness for breast cancer support was tireless, and the affection and care for her family was boundless. I am sincerely sorry for Glenn and the two children Jane leaves behind. It seems that just as Glenn had time to be with his family, he lost the life partner he clearly adored. As a cricket fan I offer Glenn my sincere condolences, and promise to continue to support the McGrath Foundation for the great work it does.

The good news is, all those problems I was having with comments should now be solved.  Now if you want to make a comment my site should have no trouble with remembering your post. 

THIS IS OF COURSE, THE THEORY.

If, in practice, this is all absolute rubbish and you can't make a comment or if the system doesn't post your comment within 12 hours, please email me at joanneATjoannejacobsDOTnet.  We will prevail.  Eventually.  I hope. 

The upgrade to my site has now completed, but unfortunately, I lost the entry which recorded my speech to the Executives Association of Great Britain. Here it is again for the sake of posterity!

I've finally upgraded my blogging software here at joannejacobs.net, so excuse the mess while I work out how to link my old entry archives to the new system.  Might take a while, folks, so I apologise for any delays to your service, but hopefully this might overcome a lot of the comment problems I've been having for the last year or so.

Stay tuned....

Just caught up with Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, and am delighted to say this is probably the best possible filmic adaptation of Sondheim's masterpiece, in spite of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Depp is okay - it's certainly the best I've seen of him in a very long time, but he's probably not quite aggressive enough for me as Todd. Brutal when aroused, but not aggressive enough in his 'normal' demeanor. Similarly, Bonham Carter is probably a bit young and doesn't quite have the comic timing of Angela Lansbury (the original Mrs Lovett), but she is passable and her voice is probaby better than I'd expected. She just needed to crack a smile on occasion and be a bit more cheeky. Along with everyone else, I'm blown away with Sacha Baron Cohen - the man is superb as Pirelli/Barker's apprentice. As the young Antony and Johanna, the two young stars are lovely, and Rickman and Spall are suitably despicable in their parts as Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford. But it's the overall pace, photography and macabre which is magnificent - all thanks to Burton's peculiar sensitivity for gothic horror.

I may say here that I think Sondheim is probably the greatest musical genius of our time. And Sweeney Todd is one of his triumphs. This film is a remarkably good adaptation. Burton, this is your best work since The Corpse Bride and A Nightmare Before Christmas. Well done.

There's a new video up on YouTube from a group of net neutrality activists who are using their prior fame on the net neutrality issue to basically send waves of fear among the poorly educated of netizens. They are saying that "all the major ISPs" are under "the NDA" which surrounds a business move to change the way we access content online, forcing people to go down a subscription model for online content.

Let me make this perfectly clear: THIS CAN'T HAPPEN.

With public sector access to content and private content provision, no ISP will be able to go forward with so insane a plan. This fear mongering is totally unfounded, totally unsupported and totally absurd. As a business person involved in online media I can say with absolute assurance that any business person with a brain would not actually consider such a change in the business model of the internet and telecommunications infrastructure. This is *exactly* what Microsoft tried to do with the original MSN, and found that the business failed, and failed extremely badly. Any syndicate of companies that attempted such a ridiculous move would soon find themselves broke. The information society doesn't tolerate bottlenecks to information access, and these wannabes are suggesting that major companies are stupid enough to be contemplating such a suicidal business decision - to bottleneck access and to charge a premium for full internet access. What absolute rubbish!

This video reminds me strongly of a television 'doco' I used to show my undergrads called, 'You Have No Secrets' which was completely hilarious as a warning program on reduced personal privacy, with talking heads providing harrowing tales of privacy infringement over foreboding music. This is exactly the same thing - so stupid it's funny. Now the reason why I showed the privacy video to my undergrads is because I felt it was handy to inject them with a healthy dose of paranoia, so that they would be aware but not alarmed about the changes taking place. The trouble with this new video is that people are taking it far too seriously. As usual, a bunch of shaggy geeks trying to tell us what decisions businesses are making without providing any sources and indeed with precious little connection to reality is somehow more convincing than sheer business sense. And as a result, the very real issue of net neutrality is being damaged by the simplistic and irrelevant arguments of a minority of business morons.

Net neutrality is NOT at risk from a supposed cadre of ISPs contemplating subscription based access models. It is at risk from improperly maintained networks and inadequate regulation. Don't be fooled by simplistic arguments. Learn about telecommunications policy and understand the issue; don't become a conspiracy theorist for something that has been brewing for nearly 30 years.