Net culture
If you’re wondering, yes, the Lasoo.com.au banner advert is due to a sponsorship deal. I was quite pleased to see they produced a graphic that fits in well with the blog — in a similar vein to my post last week on contextual advertising. Lasoo is a web site that compiles and indexes retail catalogues ... [More]
I think I might have out-done myself this time. Last month I represented the PTUA at a senate hearing into Commonwealth investment in public transport. During questions, the topic of public transport for special events came up, and as I had the night before been to such an event, I drew on that personal experience ... [More]
Flashback to a post I wrote about personal branding, in particular your name. I suspect it’s something that happens as you get older, but sometimes I roll my eyes at people who persist in using nicknames on the Interwebs. If it’s a nickname you’ve had In Real Life, then fair enough. But otherwise? Why use ... [More]
Thanks in part to Google Reader and the miracle of RSS feeds, I read way more blogs than I post comments on. I do leave some comments, but I just don’t have the time to properly have a blog.conversation on all the posts I read. I try to bear in mind the XKCD cartoon: “Someone ... [More]
Facebook wants to know if I speak “English (UK)”. And they want to know if I want to be an interpreter for them. You what? What a strange question. Since when do non-US-English speakers need to have translations from the Americans? Anyway, why isn’t it asking me if I speak English (AU) ? And if ... [More]
1. Superparma is gone… but parma.com.au has arrived to take its place. 2. I’ve talked before about how kids inherit traits and behaviour and interests from their parents. I was struck by this clever alcohol awareness advert which shows it well. 3. To the self-confessed lurker lady in the red raincoat yesterday in Collins Street: ... [More]
Plenty has been written about this before, but I’ll put my oar in. Facebook knows lots about you. Most users key in a bunch of stuff about their hobbies, favourite music, TV shows, all that kind of stuff. They know (roughly) where you live, how old you are, often your marital status, your interests. So ... [More]
The top ten Daniels, according to Google Australia (which shows pages from worldwide, but skews slightly in favour of Aussies): 1. The biblical Daniel. 2. The accompanying Book of Daniel. 3. Daniel Boulud’s Restaurant Daniel in New York City. 4. The Daniel Morcombe Foundation, working for protection of children from abduction. 5. Daniel Measurement and ... [More]
Damn. Superparma.com is no more. And they built the site in such a way that it seems to be impossible to get at anything except the splash page via archive.org, so the ratings they compiled may be lost forever. Groan. WarGames 2: The Dead Code now in pre-production, and aimed at direct-to-DVD. OK. I was ... [More]
I have a profile on Facebook. I don’t spend a lot of time there; mostly playing the Scrabble clone Scrabulous, actually. (I’m winning one game thanks to “zit” on a triple word score; the other is heading for a photo-finish.) And seeing what my friends are up to. I’m not doing the free-for-all friends thing. ... [More]
Sometimes my brain doesn’t join the dots. Context in particular can throw me. I’ve had numerous emails over the years contributing to my Weird News page, most of them from a fairly small number of dedicated contributors. A few weeks ago at the Walk Against Warming, one of those contributors came up and said hello, ... [More]
I’ve seen Google and Yahoo put out reports on the top search terms of the year, and we’re only a week into December. (Happy Hannukah by the way.) Seems a bit odd to do that before the actual end of the year, but what the hell, I’ll jump on that bandwagon. Here are some stats ... [More]