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April 29, 2007
World Cup Final
What a farce of a final!!!
Between the miscommunication on the Duckworth Lewis amended run chase after a break of two overs due to rain, and then the darkness rising and Sri Lanka taking the decision with an ungettable score requirement off two overs to accept the end of play in poor light, to Australia celebrating to the umpires saying the game wasn't over, to the Sri Lankans coming *back* on to the ground and the commentators *unable to see who is playing on the pitch*, it's just been a silly, silly match. Australia may have won the match but I think cricket itsef has been the biggest loser today.
Posted by jj at 9:20 AM | Comments (1)
April 27, 2007
Howard's End: The Fish Was This Big!!!!
As John Howard's tenure as Prime Minister hopefully is drawing to a rapid conclusion, it is appropriate to reflect on his latest gaff - and it seems ironic that it is the collective might of an ignorant global population that will lead to his downfall.
As humanity continues to ignore the evidence of massive climate change, and continues to produce the carbon emissions that intensify the greenhouse gas effect around the planet, John Howard continues to regard the issue with a sense of contempt. Apparently for John Howard, targets for reducing carbon emissions could affect jobs. The fact that failing to address carbon emissions could affect a hell of a lot more jobs doesn't seem to have occurred to him - indeed, Australia's current drought, he argues, is primarily because we have such a large population today.
But it's his recent belittling of the climate change issue which has been his most spectacular blunder. This week, John Howard has rejected the notion that climate change is a profound moral issue, disdainful of both Al Gore's argument in An Inconvenient Truth and that of the current opposition. But whilst it's unsurprising that politicians disagree with one another, it's a very different thing when the population of an entire state so profoundly disagree with John Howard. And this week, that's what has happened. A survey of Queenslanders has demonstrated that over 90% of the state's population think that climate change is the most important issue facing Australia at the moment.
And now, CSIRO scientists are saying that wild fish stocks in Australia are growing faster and bigger due to rising temperatures in the oceans. In fact, they are growing as much as 30% larger. It might help when Johnny wants to exaggerate or ignore the truth about his latest fishing catch, but it is Howard himself who will be caught out at last.
To borrow from Gore's documentary, wake up, John Howard. Or at the very least, retire.
Posted by jj at 7:52 AM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2007
How about that local sporting team, huh?
Weren't they sporting? And aren't they local?
Posted by jj at 9:36 PM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2007
ANZAC Day
On this, Australia's most sombre day of the year, and in the echoing silence following the F-111 jet fighter flyover, I once again pay tribute to my maternal grandfather, Ted Jones, who fought at Gallipoli, and to his wife, Glad Jones, who passed away on this day eleven years ago. Here's to you both, and to all the diggers today.
Lest we forget.
Posted by jj at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2007
Wrong
Reggae Pan-flute. 'Nuff said.
Posted by jj at 4:17 PM | Comments (1)
April 23, 2007
Harry Potter trailer!
For those interested, the new trailer is up on YouTube!
Posted by jj at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2007
What's really happening online? Is this age of Web2.0 really egalitarian?
I've been reading a few articles lately on the nature of the changes in business with the slow embrace of Web2.0 oriented technologies. It's taken a good long while for the value of these technologies to finally be acknowledged in a commercial context and I'm still not sure it's widely understood. But part of the problem is that those who have been evangelising about these new technologies have simply missed the point about why these technologies actually matter. I had lunch with a colleague I very much respect the other day and whilst we shared a passion for the technologies and both were waxing lyrically about the commercial opportunities arising in the technology consultancy marketplace, he said "you know there are very few people actually out there in the commercial sector who actually get this".
He's right. There are very few out there who understand the implications of these technologies.
I've included below an example of same. Tony Hung over at Deep Jive Interests has a post which argues that the world of blogging isn't the egalitarian ideal expressed by the aristocracy of the Web 2.0 culture who wrote The ClueTrain Manifesto. He argues that the currency of attention naturally favours the incumbents and network stars of the Web 2.0 community. What he fails to realise though, is that this isn't the value or the point of the technologies. Chris Anderson's Long Tail philosophy isn't about celebrity status. Just because some blogs are more popular than others this doesn't affect business practice. Hung argues that popular blogs - often written by network stars who advocate or are employed by existing businesses - are not laughing at traditional business practice at all.
Well, no, they aren't. And more importantly The ClueTrain Manifesto never suggested that this would be the result of the diffusion of these technologies.
What the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto instead suggested was that the conversations facilitated by these technologies were going to be more effective in capturing tacit knowledge among workers. They recognised that strategic competitive advantage was now only possible through the use of dominantly free, open source technologies which captured conversations and permitted the kind of informal communication that has always characterised business on some level, but which now has penetrated to all levels of business practice and which is demanded by a more informed consumer base.
The problem with the anarchist theory propounded by some commentators who are writing about Web2.0 technologies is that it simply isn't supported, and never was the idea articulated by the designers of the technologies. Those technology pundits always expected that these technology solutions would solve communication and process problems. That doesn't make them anarchistic. It tends to make the act of communicating efficient. And that's why they work as much for business as they appear to revolutionise business practice.
Other links which are useful today include:
* The Ten Most Important Attributes of Corporate Websites
* The Ten Golden Rules of Using Open Source
* The Forrester method for measuring blogging effectiveness
* Ten things they never told you about blogging
Posted by jj at 10:20 AM | Comments (1)
April 18, 2007
Thought for the day
Lunch + Food Poisoning + Evening presentation = Bad, hmm'kay?
Posted by jj at 6:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2007
Thank you Mum
Huge thanks to Mum for putting me up and putting up with me the past three nights in Melbourne. I've had a lovely time (however brief!) and was great to see my grnadmother and high school friends before jetting off back to BrisVegas. Am now at the airport en route home and very much hope to be back in time to teach my class at 4pm in Brisbane!!!
Posted by jj at 12:51 PM | Comments (1)
April 15, 2007
GWHS and successful websites
Huge thanks and many hugs to my darling high school girlfriends for meeting me for lunch today at Glen Waverley. Was fabulous to see them all as well as to meet Michelle's 11 week old twins, to catch up with Jane's three kids and to see Kris's baby bump! Next time I see them all (tentatively Christmas 2008) the kids will all be so grown!
In other news, today's links are all about websites.
- At rev2.0.org, a list of the 10 most successful web 2.0 start-ups has been posted with the usual recommendations for alternatives in the comments section.
- A little more scientific but probably equally controversial is Harry Maugan's Most powerful sites on Digg. I'm rather surprised BoingBoing doesn't figure.
- And Andrew Chen has delivered a post on how to "ruthlessly acquire users" as part of a business strategy for a web2.0 startup. The strategies are pretty straight forward but I'll be keen to watch this space on suggestions from the peanut gallery (comments).
- Finally as a bonus link, David Wheeler has actually done the sums on why businesses should consider adopting open source software/free software to save on operating costs. I think the study fails to take into account some intangible costs of training (he regards these as being either low cost or irrelevant, but with regular staff turnover, the trainign costs will accrue to greater than he acknowledges) but generally this is a reasonable analysis.
Posted by jj at 7:02 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2007
Today's gems
Melbourne has stayed warm for me - 28°! YAY! Was great to see my 92 year old grandmother today and tell her about my latest adventures.
In bookmarks today, I've found the following:
* For those of us who just don't need 8 hours of sleep a night, here's evidence at last that those who tell you that you need 8 hours sleep a night are just plain wrong.
* News from the Google camp, that the internet giant has indeed purchased the marketing research company, DoubleClick, for a cool US$3.1 billion.
* In light of that purchase, there maybe those out there who want to opt out of the DoubleClick cookie, in spite of Google's mission to "Do No Evil". So here are the instructions on how to opt out of that cookie.
* There's a nice plain English definition of Web 2.0 that's been composed over at ChinaGuide (of all places!)
* And for those who are struggling with blog software packages, there's a useful comparison of ease of use for blogging packages that's been published at JavaSanity.
Thanks also to Pete Laurie for the link to the excellent article on The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software: Stakeholder Perspectives. This is essential reading for anyone doing research on the practices of open source communities for application development, problem solving or indeed any form of collective action. Great stuff!
Posted by jj at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2007
Melbourne hello and links
Hi to everyone from Melbourne! It's warm and dry here, so I'm remarkably comfortable, even if the place could do with some rain.
Whilst here I'm going to have to do my digging and bookmarking via this blog so I'm afraid the following links may only be of interest to the truly dedicated Web2.0ers, but feel free to enjoy!
* Track your comments. Tired of trying to remember what blog comments you have posted and where? Missing some pearls of wisdom along the way? Try co.mments as a means of keeping track of your conversations in the world of CGC (Consumer Generated Content).
* See through CEO. Wired Magazine have a great story on blogging CEOs and the impact this is having on the way business is developing. A gem from the article: "But if you've got hundreds or thousands of sites linking to you and commenting on you, the law of averages takes over, and odds are the opinion will be accurate: The cranks will be outweighed by cooler heads. Again, the Net rewards the transparent."
* eMarketer is now saying the mobile TV and video market will be worth US$12.7 billion by 2011.
* And the issue of blog promotion just generated a tool for blog promotion - bloggst
Posted by jj at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2007
A hero, gone: Vonnegut
Some of you may know that my first post-graduate thesis was called 'Representations of Reality in the Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut: A post-modernist critique'. Yes it sounds extremely literary and it was, but it was essentially a model of reading reality as guided by the canon of Vonnegut's literature, arguing during the course of the dissertation that Vonnegut created a space for play which wasn't quite real, yet wasn't entirely fictional. He was a flawed writer in many respects, but his works assisted me in my engagement with the great literary theorists, from Baudrillard to Barthes. But now he's gone.
This is a rather poignant event for me. The first of my true academic subjects has gone. Vale Vonnegut. I will miss you.
Posted by jj at 6:47 PM | Comments (3)
April 10, 2007
For the Brisbanites
I think I'm on Brisbane Extra tonight, speaking on a new way to watch your favourite television programs. Enjoy :)
EDIT: *chuckles* I'm such a political media tart. Yes it went to air and my two tiny quotes made me again look like an activist!
Posted by jj at 6:19 PM | Comments (0)
Grammar Nazi
Thank goodness there are some people left who still remember how to construct a sentence. ZdNet in the UK have just published a list of the 10 most flagrant errors of grammar that are commonly committed in prose, and that make the offending authors look stupid. Regardless of whether you believe yourself to be a competent linguist, please read this list. It never hurts to brush up on old principles.
I would also add to this list, misappropriation of a preposition with the use of the word "compare". You compare some aspect of a person or an object to an idea or an experience (e.g., 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'), whilst you compare most objects with one another (e.g., 'I need to compare the figures for last month with those of this month'). An easy way to remember this rule is to ask yourself whether you are speaking metaphorically (i.e., comparing to) or whether you are comparing similar entities (i.e., comparing with).
Posted by jj at 12:40 PM | Comments (1)
April 8, 2007
Umm... sorry? (Quotes that shouldn't have been)
Watching a rerun of The Gadget Show on tv, I was listening in the background to a review of various keyboards on the market and did a double take on a quote. Specifically the quote was:
... in terms of sheer sexiness, it's untouchable
Oooooh. Kaaaaay.
Posted by jj at 8:15 PM | Comments (0)
April 7, 2007
What to do over Easter: JJ-style
Having more than one day off work in a row makes me nervous. However, using those extra days to clean out my house is both exhausting and satisfying. So far I've cleaned out my wardrobe and drawers and gone through several of my archives - so far filling 5 large garbage bags. And I see another 5 or 6 bags yet to come. Well it's one way to spend Easter, and it had to happen anyway as I need to slim down my posessions before committing them to a storage centre when I move overseas. Right now I'm hot and sweay and need a cool drink before I get back to attacking the shelves in my study. Now where were those dust masks???
Posted by jj at 4:49 PM | Comments (2)
April 3, 2007
Blogging and Web 2.0 Business Updates
Much of the work I've been doing lately has been on deploying social networking technologies and Content Management Systems in corporate contexts, so I thought I'd share a few links on the subject with the readership (and for my own convenience in my research!).
- Movable Type now has a small business option for blog deployment which is finally going to address the horrid websites of so many small businesses. Good to see Six Apart marketing to this group.
- And even if small business isn't ready yet, business-to-business industries are taking up blogging in a big way. The Marketing, Strategy and Innovation blog has a list of the latest B2B blogs on the market.
- Technorati has some cute new widgets that visually represent tags and searches for content - useful if you're looking at getting a zeitgeist on an topic area. Should get Google to generate one of these for news searches.
- On the issue of tech companies, over at B2B Marketing Strategists journal there's an article on how tech companies are turning to Web 2.0 technologies in droves because suddenly businesses are recognising that they need to invest in stakeholder engagement
- And finally, Tim O'Reilly is calling for a bloggers' code of conduct. Just as well I'm writing Acceptable Use Policies and Blogger Practices and Manuals every day now, huh?
EDIT: Thanks also to Pete for the alert to the Dion Hinchcliffe article on ZDNet focused on the the leading Web 2.0 trends in business. Great article and useful background research.
Posted by jj at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)
April 1, 2007
1 April Picks
News items I love today:
1. Scratch and sniff computers - BBC
2. Tech crunch new acquisition - Techcrunch
3. Ryan Air announces new flights to moon - RyanAir
4. Wikipedia's featured article on 'inventor', George Washington - Wikipedia (also Wikipedia launching credit card payments for editor status).
5. dbFMRadio shutdown due to massive copyright violations
This list will grow. I am still waiting for the traditional ThinkGeek April goodness.
EDIT: And indeed ThinkGeek is superb. The fingers-in-the-socket plug is divine!
Posted by jj at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)