Net culture
The other day I retired one of my oldest web pages, an FAQ on Melbourne public transport. It started life (I think around 1993, before the Web was around) as a Usenet FAQ for the misc.transport.urban-transit group. In 1994 it was posted (with an incomplete attempt to convert it to HTML) on Railpage — where ... [More]
Pondering the fact that I’d browsed both dstore.com.au and estore.com.au, I was curious as to what others exist… astore.com.au — watches and jewellery bstore.com.au — Birkenstock shoes cstore.com.au — forwards to Codagenic, selling an ecommerce platform dstore.com.au — all sorts of stuff; been around for years estore.com.au — geeky stuff; a division of City Software ... [More]
I’m not having a go at anybody in particular here, but making a point. I tweeted what I thought was an amusing comment from someone I don’t always find myself in thorough agreement with, Roads Minister Tim Pallas: Tim Pallas’s pledge: “I will never, ever, wear lycra in public.” http://j.mp/9Z9zlB #vicvotes — danielbowen A couple ... [More]
If you have your own internet domain name, you may have come across the Domain Registry of America (DROA), also known as the Domain Renewal Group. They’re a bunch of scammers who regularly and repeatedly send out letters which look like an invoice for a domain name, but are in fact custom advertisements for overpriced ... [More]
The ANZ-sponsored free wifi at Southern Cross Station is a nice idea, and would be quite useful… if it worked. I tried for several minutes one day the other week to get it working, and couldn’t. My mobile could detect both an ANZ Wifi and a “Free public Wifi” network, but neither seemed to actually ... [More]
Twenty years ago today, I posted my first online writing
Twitter and Facebook have some similarities. Both offer a micro-blogging feature via status updates. Of the two, I think I prefer Twitter. Why Twitter’s better Twitter’s public. You don’t need a logon to see my Twitter feed. (It can also be made private, if one prefers.) Twitter’s open. You don’t need to log onto a ... [More]
Have disabled the “Like” comments feature, after previously trying it with Like/Dislike, then disabling Dislike. Few were using it; bit of a waste of time for a site like this I suspect. Like or dislike a comment? Leave an actual response instead!
Trivia for you: Back in prehistoric times, when most of you had never heard of the Internet and barely anybody used the Web, and way before Twitter and Facebook, I blogged the 1996 Federal election campaign. Several times a week I’d add something new, including a spoof leader debate transcript, a Hippy Party manifesto, Ron ... [More]
A day off today. Rather clear out junk from the house, I’ve tried installing a comments rating system. If you like a comment, you can click the green Thumbs Up; if you dislike it, you can click the red Thumbs Down. Looks like it won’t let you vote on a comment posted from the same ... [More]
Working on the server. If you have a comment, hold that thought. Update 3:40pm. OK, that was easy. WordPress upgraded, and switched to a different server. Re-delegating now… if you can see this message, it’s worked.
In 2007, a week or so after Kevin Rudd became PM, I took a look at a bunch of online reference works, some free, some corporate, to see how many had updated their articles on Australia. The score was 2/5 getting it right, with Wikipedia and Britannica having been updated, and Citizendium, Encyclopedia.com and CIA ... [More]
The curse of the Internet and the short attention span — there’s too much stuff to look at. So I check my email. Then I have a look in Google Reader. What’s Twitter doing? Okay. Facebook? My turn in Scrabble yet? Might check a couple of the news sites and see what’s happening. And the ... [More]
An update on my ISP shopping post from a couple of weeks ago: Netspace rang me up to discuss my concerns (they found the post themselves), and to let me know there was some progress on resolving them: Advice of network outages — they said there is already a project underway to advise of outages ... [More]
This is what appeared on The Age’s home page this morning (with my additions). They explained that thereâs a new video tab, which youâll see when the lead story is best told in video. Eh? How is Ultimate Fighting in any way to be regarded as the lead story? Unless Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott ... [More]
A few years ago I did a comparison of the results from online trip planners. Here’s an update of sorts. I tested 247 Flinders Lane (which is an address on a one-way street, in an area with lots of turn restrictions and pedestrian streets) to see what the various navigators would do. For the destination ... [More]