Ali's Blog

Matthew More reports (from an British perspective) on what we find annoying about the internet. My comments in italics:

‘Worse than the Nazis’
“As an [online] discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.” So states Godwin’s Law, the observation first made in 1990 that still stands today. Many online communities counter this moronic rhetorical device by ruling that the first person to make a Hitler comparison loses the argument by default.

Mmm not something I have experienced much-maybe a British thing?

2) Lazy activism
Joining a Facebook group is the new going on a march, just substantially less effective. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime did not buckle under the onslaught of green-tinted Twitter avatars.

Oh dear I have done this-joined a group and felt virtuous.

3) Messages alerting you to messages
Email inboxes are becoming clogged with non-urgent alerts from Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites. How long before someone invents an app to alert Twitter and Facebook users when they receive an email, creating a never-ending spiral of needless messages?

Wish there was a way to get updates when friends do soemthing interesting, but not when they take endless quizzes- no, I do not need to know what your Hobbit name is!

4) CAPTCHAs
Only the internet asks its users to prove that they are human. CAPTCHAs, the word recognition puzzles designed to prevent robots from accessing protected websites, may be a necessary evil but even their inventor has said that he regrets their drain on human time. Assuming that each one takes ten seconds are solve, it has been estimated that we waste 150,000 hours a day squinting at distorted letters. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that CAPTCHAs are getting harder, with some effectively indecipherable.

Ah- glad it is not only me that struggles with these.

5) Social media gurus
Knowing how to tweet should not be a career in itself.

6) The next big thing(s)
Remember Friends Reunited? Friendster? Faceparty? The shelf life of social networking websites seems to be around two years, forcing members to transplant their internet personas just to keep up speed with their contacts. This would be easier to stomach if it wasn’t so tough to differentiate between next big things and white elephants.

Hard to keep up- what do you put your energy into as don’t want to miss out on great new things

7) Blogs
Not blogs themselves, but the negligence anxieties that come with having one. They just take far too much writing.

Ok I admit- I cut and pasted most of this from Matthew’s report

Pop-up adverts
Websites need to make money and static adverts don’t bring in enough revenue. But that knowledge doesn’t make invasive pop-ups – particularly those that hide their close buttons – any less annoying.

Yes- yahoo xtra-take note.

9) The bedroom invasion
First it was in the living room, then the bedroom and now – thanks to wi-fi and laptops – the internet is in your bed.

Have resisted this one so far- well apart from the occasional iphone excursion to the bedside table

10) Amazon pigeonholing
Years after purchasing a book about self-harm for university research, I still receive emails recommending titles related to suicide and depression. Some straight man with eclectic tastes in fiction have complained that Amazon appears to have convinced itself that they are gay.

Yep would be frightening to find out what the internet gods really think I am like

11) YouTube speech bubbles
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the four year history of YouTube, it’s that literacy cannot presumed. So while the “annotations” feature launched last year should allow filmmakers to produce richer videos, in practice it has led to clips being marred by intrusive gibberish. The equivalent of an excitable child forcing his parents to sit through his favourite cartoon: “Dad, did you see that bit? Did you see it? It was funny, huh? Oh Dad, you weren’t paying attention.”

12) Rickrolling
Hugely over this, now.

OK- no idea what this is

13) Everything has been done before
Had an idea? Well someone in San Jose had it last year, got VC-funding and has already launched Beta testing. Presumably this must also have happened before the internet, but in those days you could remain in happy ignorance.

14) Comment pedantry
If the US Constitution had been published online, you can be sure that the first comments would have picked apart the spelling mistakes, and blamed the slapdash attitude of Adams, Jefferson et al for undermining the prospects of the nation. Some commenters seem blinded to the essence of online offerings by their irresistible urge to mark.

15) It’s always on
If we all agreed to shut down the internet for a few hours a week – perhaps on Sunday evenings – long-suffering parents and grand-parents might get a few more phone calls.

16) MySpace and Bebo
Far too hard on the eyes. Proof, if it were needed, that graphic design should be considered a profession.

Maybe a comment about our age- teenagers still seem to love them

17) Companies wanting us to ‘join the conversation’
A direct result of the ascendancy of No 5 is the insufferable chattiness of previously faceless corporations. But a social media presence is no alternative to swift, helpful customer service.

18) Corporate email signatures
Would anyone have assumed that the jottings of a junior account executive reflected the views of an entire multinational company, or that her winking emoticon sign-off was legally binding?

19) Websites that are too wide for the browser
A less common problem these days, as web design and browsers become more sophisticated.

20) Cross-platform conversations
A very modern communication habit and one for which an etiquette has yet to emerge. If you are speaking to the same person over email, Facebook, MSN Messenger and SMS, is it acceptable to “cross the streams” and discuss work topics on Facebook, or continue an email thread on SMS? Very confusing.

21) Domain/username squatters
To the frustrated latecomer, a “squatter” is anyone with their name who registers with a website first. People left to scrape the bottom of the username barrel – Jane_Brown_77@hotmail.co.uk and JohnSmith555@gmail.com, to give two random examples – will testify to the resulting loss of dignity.

22) Viruses, scams and spam
Obviously.

23) Virus and scam alerts
Hardly a morning goes by without reports of new phishing or malware scams popping up in your RSS reader, complete with exhortations to strengthen passwords and update anti-virus protection. While the threats are real and the warnings well meant, it can’t be healthy to dwell on attacks that almost certainly didn’t affect you. The internet, like life, is best approached with a little derring-do.

You mean I haven’t just won 45m Euro in a lottery I haven’t bought a ticket for?

24) PDFs
The information could usually have been presented much more accessibly on a web page.

But I like PDFs

25) Frame bars
The leash used by recommendation websites like Digg to keep hold of logged-in users while showing them external sites. Ugly, clunky, and of little benefit to the user.

26) This website
(When you start to get angry, hold down the “Esc” button to skip to the end)

27) WrItInG In A MiXtUrE Of UpPEr CaSe AnD LoWeR CaSe
It’s not useful, attractive or funny. How on earth did it take off?

28) Patently absurd abbreviations
While it’s perfectly conceivable that the other person may indeed have LOL’d at your joke, one struggles to picture them ROFLMAOing, given that there was no break in their typing.

29) Comedians on Twitter
Talk about having your illusions crushed. Comedians who join Twitter tend to fall into one of two groups. First, those like Stephen Fry and Eddie Izzard who post the same mix of whimsy, opinion and self-promotion as “non-famous” users. While not laugh-a-minute stuff, it’s generally sincere and charming. Then there are those who see Twitter as an opportunity to spew forth every half-baked joke idea that enters their heads, providing the strongest argument for the continued need for script editors.

Stephen Fry is the only one I follow, but on the whole I enjoy his observations

30) Filth, everywhere
A few years ago the actor Jack Nicholson announced that he was disconnecting his computer from the internet. His reason? “There’s so much porn out there that I never get out of the house”.

31) Websites that don’t support a browser’s back and forward features
We have become so accustomed to navigating with the two buttons, that it’s difficult to manage without them.

32) Hard-to-find login buttons
Some websites are so keen to make themselves appealing to new users that they forget about their existing members, hiding the login buttons in tiny fonts at the extremities of the screen. Only logout buttons are given less prominence.

33) Transport planning websites
Things may be better in other cities, but Transport for London’s website is reluctant to let you go anywhere in the capital without taking at least one bus.

34) Compulsory fields on forms
“You did not fill out these required fields: home phone number, mobile phone number.” The more hoops companies make people jump through, the less willing they are to hand over their money.

Yes how many times have I had to give up because I cannot fill the form in- no I do not live in the US and I don’t have a zip code

35) National restrictions
There are compelling legal reasons why some online content – such as Olympics footage, which is sold on different terms to many national broadcasters – has to be nation-specific. But in an era of free-flowing information, it comes as a shock to be told that you cannot watch a video because of where you live.

No downloads from BBC as not in UK

36 Unwitting disclosure of data
Think that you are in control of your online footprint? The chilling website What the Internet knows about you might throw up some surprises.

37) Lists
Fun to read, easy on the eye, and everywhere.

38) The history function on browsers
Surely the cons outweigh the pros?

39) Try-hard websites
People do not come to websites for an experience, they come for information. Anything that gets in their way, like slow-loading Flash graphics or counter-intuitive navigation tools, just makes them angry.

40) Post-1990 bias
Almost every crappy blog post, news story and website published in the last twenty years can be brought up with a quick Google search. But obtaining contemporaneous information from previous decades remains difficult, despite projects to bring newspaper archives, books and records online. The result is an internet that gives undue weight to modern ephemera.

41) Fake viral clips
They wouldn’t be annoying if they weren’t so effective. Two particularly infuriating examples are the video that purported to show mobile phones popping pop corn, which was subsequently exposed as a stunt by a bluetooth headset retailer Cardo, and another claiming to show an onion charging an iPod.

42) The gradual erosion of your moral boundaries
Tasteless jokes, obscene images and websites devoted to fetishes you’ve never even heard of are only ever a few clicks away. Even if you never indulge, their taboo is diluted by ease of availability.

43) Buffering
Tick, tock.

44) Memorial websites
As almost every social activity moves online it’s to be expected that mourning will take place on the web. Facebook tribute groups are set up within hours of a young person’s death, providing an outlet for their friends’ grief. But anyone who has stumbled across one of these sites can’t help but notice that many of the tributes come from people who have tenuous – or non existent – connections to the deceased. Wouldn’t a private message to the family be more appropriate?

45) Hostility to ‘newbies’
The most successful online communities are united by narrow shared interests, but the boorish insistence that new arrivals adhere to archaic forum rules is self-defeating.

46) Password stipulations
One site demands eight characters, another a mix of letters and numbers, and a third says that the term you’ve been using for years is now too weak. The only way to keep track of all the combinations is to note them down, making your accounts even more vulnerable.

47) Auto-run videos
In fact any audio that plays without the explicit consent of the user. Who hasn’t scrabbled to shut down a browser window as office colleagues look round for the source of the blaring Barbra Streisand?

48) Get-rich-quick schemes
If the foolproof share picking formula actually worked, why are its inventors hawking CDs and books online for £19.99 a pop rather than sunning themselves in Bermuda?

49) Council websites
Local authorities are starting to put significant effort into improving their websites, but they’re starting from a pretty low base. Too many are cluttered and confusing, especially for residents with limited internet expertise.

50) Chris Crocker
He who did this.

October 17th, 2009 | Category: The internet and techie toys | Comments (1)

Thomas got to choose one theme park so we did Warners Bros Movie World. Not quite on the scale of Disneyland, but still enjoyable and more than enough for one day in the heat. Thomas loved the Hollywood Stunt Drivers (we had to see the show twice), and the Road Runner Roller Coaster (3 times). He also enjoyed the parade of characters like Batman, Tweety & Silvester and the Justice League heroes. We also really enjoyed the Shrek 4.0 film in the intercative theatre (but not sure about the feeling of spiders around the legs!). A fun day and we missed the worst of the major dust storm which would have made the beach hard work that day.

October 3rd, 2009 | Category: High days and holidays, Travel | Leave a comment

We had heard about all the theme parks in Aussie but we found a smaller, relatively unknown one just across the New South Wales border, fairly close to where we were staying at Burleigh Heads, which is in the southern part of the Gold Coast. Tropical Fruit World is an agri-tourist destination which (according to them) growing the largest range of tropical and rare fruit in the world. It blends the commercial fruit growing (over 500 varieties) with a native reserve of rain forest trails, landscaped waterways and native animals, which the children really enjoyed.

The plantation is situated on the rim of the largest extinct volcano in the southern hemisphere and after we visited there we drove up towards Mt Warning (Mt Wollumbin)which gave  great views over the Tweed Valley and McPherson Ranges.

Thomas loved the adventure ride on the tractor trailer through the plantation to the rainforest and animal park, the boat ride to the Treasure Island playground, and the mini-train ride around the Water Lilly Lagoon.

We also enjoyed the fruit tasting of things like Star Fruit, Dragon Fruit and Pawpaw.

October 3rd, 2009 | Category: Family stuff, High days and holidays | Leave a comment

Now that the conference is over for another year and I have had time to reflect, these are some of the thoughts and memories I will take from this year’s Tertiary Education Conference held on Darwin.

1. I really like Darwin- I found it a cross between small town New Zealand and Bali- you probably have to visit Darwin to understand that though!
2. I loved the heat and did not find the humidity anywhere near as bad as expected…. and you just walk more slowly if it gets too hot
3. Jo and her team from ATEM did an amazing job of organising a conference in the Northern territories, when most are not even located there, and when even the conference organisers said that no-one would travel that far to attend (550 people proved them wrong)
4. It was nice to finally attend a conference in Australia where the country’s first inhabitants were appropriately acknowledged, not only in the entertainment, but by key speakers who all acknowledged the land’s original people
5. That there were finally a number of sessions about an andragogical approach to tertiary education, and the use of new technology in this teaching- maybe there is hope for unis after all?
6. That there was a lot of talk about how Australian universities and TAFE can work together as a coordinated tertiary education market- once again good to see New Zealand leading the way with sessions on how such collaboration is working well across the ditch
7. That Ted Egan enlightened us to the fact that despite the rhetoric and the vast sums of money poured into the issues, the plight of First Australians is still at a critical phase, with the Aboriginal people being the unhealthiest, the poorest, the least employed, the most illiterate, the worst housed, the least trained, the most imprisoned people in the land.
8. That not all TV presenters are interesting without a script (you had to be there to understand that one!)
9. That I still enjoy the “tertiary education industry” and must continue to look for ways to engage with the sector regularly.
10. That I am disappointed I am going to miss next year’s event in Melbourne as it will clash with Ulearn.

September 20th, 2009 | Category: Educational bits and bobs, Odds & Ends, Travel | Comments (1)

Spent the afternoon on an Adelaide River cruise getting up close to the locals with a cruise by Adelaide River Queen Cruises.

These cruises on the Adelaide River are the best way to see crocodiles in their natural habitat, even if their behaviour is modified a little by hand feeding from the tour boats.

Since crocodile hunting was stoped the crocodile population has returned to something similar to pre-European numbers, however getting close to them in the wild can be both difficult and dangerous, so an organised tour such as this is recommended.

It was amazing to see these creatures in the wild and to experience the power of them as they speed through the water and aim for the food. I was certainly glad to have a sturdy boat around me out there.

September 16th, 2009 | Tags: crocodile, Darwin | Category: The internet and techie toys, Travel | Leave a comment

We ended the day with a trip to the Mindil Beach Sunset Market about 6kms out of town. The market runs on Thursday & Sunday evenings throughout the dry season (April to October), and has been going since 1987 when Darwin locals hit on the idea of bringing a taste of Asia’s night markets to Darwin. Mindil Beach Sunset Market now supports over 300 small businesses, provides employment for more than 1,000 locals and contributes more than $15 million to the Northern Territory economy each year.

The Markets are renowned for the magnificent sunset over Mindil Beach although we got there too late to see the sunset. Locals all talk about the food stalls at the market, and it appears to be a popular place for tourists and locals alike.  The website boats that one can find “the tastes of five continents, with over 1,200 different menu items”. In addition, the market has an extensive array of handmade craft including crocodile products, indigenous art and jewellery, all of which seemed good quality and reasonably priced. Around the place were dotted a variety of live entertainment including bands, street performers, cultural dance, acrobatics and fire shows.

September 14th, 2009 | Tags: Darwin, Mindil | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The TEM conference was launched by a dance performance by “One Mob, Different Country”, a dance group encompasses many different communities and areas from the Barunga region. The dance group are all current inmates of the Darwin Correctional Centre (DCC),and are encouraged to dance to give them the opportunity to connect

back with their culture, thereby increasing their self-confidence before they re-join their communities on release from the prison system.

It has been proved that engaging with the general public and performing their dances, reinstalls a sense of pride in the men. The group has performed around Darwin since 2000 and now undertakes around 100 appearances each year.

To the Larrakia, the traditional owners of Darwin, the harbour is a place of connection where they have welcomed visitors for centuries while trading with other indigenous tribes and Southeast Asian neighbours.

‘You have come by way of the Larrakia Land. You will hear the voice of Larrakia ancestors. When you leave, the Larrakia message will stay with you.’
Reverend Walter Fejo, Larrakia Elder

September 14th, 2009 | Tags: Aboriginal culture | Category: Travel | Leave a comment

I have travelled the 8.5 hours from New Zealand up to Darwin in the Far North of Australia for the Tertiary Education Management Conference, being held at the new convention centre built by the harbour at the edge of the Arafura Sea.

The conference brings together tertiary administrators and facilities managers from across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region, to discuss how the challenges of how the future can best be met. Great to catch up with old tertiary colleagues from both sides of the Tasman.

Check out the blog as the week goes on.

September 14th, 2009 | Tags: ATEM, education, TEM | Category: Educational bits and bobs, Travel | Leave a comment

Due to the time difference Christchurch today led one of the first public tributes this year to the victims of the 9/11 tragedy.

The American Club of Christchurch organised the event which took place at the Firefighters Reserve in central Christchurch at 11am today. The central city fire brigade whose station is next door to the reserve were out early preparing the site and blocking the car parking off with their engines. It was ironic that at 10.55am there was a fire shout and the firemen (and women) had to dash off once more to handle an emergency.

The Mayor, Bob Parker made a brief speech, before a statement of remembrance was read for the New York firefighters and others who lost their lives when the World Trade Centre was destroyed on September 11, 2001.

Fifty white doves were then set free in Christchurch as part of the release of over 4,000 doves in cities and towns across the world.

I visited the “Ground Zero” site when in New York last in 2007 and found the experience very sobering. Looking at the site it was hard to imagine the atrocities that happened there, it truly seemed unbelievable that such huge towers, buildings that I had visited on past trips to NY, were just no longer there. We also the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, a place where members of the September 11th community could connect with the thousands of visitors who come to the site daily by offering exhibits and walking tours. It is scheduled to remain open until the permanent WTC Memorial and Museum are completed. Any tributes left at the WTC site are removed daily (for safety reasons as it is now a working building site) and some are rehoused in this centre. I found this an incredibly moving place- it documents the events of Sept 11th from the perspective of both emergency workers and people who worked in the area. The wall of “Missing” posters and then Gallery 4, where photos of the victims are displayed, really brought home to me the enormity of the event. Before it had been about a place, the Twin Towers, but seeing this memorial personalised it, this was not about buildings, it was about the 3,000+ people who lost their lives that day. I must admit that a few tears were shed there, as I looked at the photos and saw the lives and families of those victims.

Each day on my way to work I drive past the Firefighters’ Reserve and look at the amazing “Tribute to Firefighters”, which was fashioned by NZ sculptor Graham Bennett, out of girders from the WTC and which was commissioned to mark the opening of the World Firefighters’ Memorial Games, held in Christchurch in 2002.

After seeing the site and visiting the centre I feel deeply proud that New Zealand was gifted this piece, and that a memorial has been created where every day people can honour firefighters around the world who risk their lives daily for our safety and security.

To live is to suffer,
to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering

(Roberta Flack)

September 11th, 2009 | Tags: 9/11, World Trade Centre, WTC | Category: Aotearoa, High days and holidays | Comments (1)

September 4th, 2009 | Category: CORE life | Leave a comment

3 September 1939- 8 May 1945 (in Europe at least)

Lest we forget

September 4th, 2009 | Category: High days and holidays, UK | Leave a comment

Reading in Wired that there are plans to improve the reliability of information on Wikipedia: To be launched in the (Northern Hemisphere) Autumn, an optional feature called “WikiTrust” will colour code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page.

More than 60 million people visit the site each month, however despite this popularity, Wikipedia has long suffered criticism from those who say it’s not reliable. Because anyone  can contribute, the site has often been subject to vandalism, bias and misinformation.

To help counter this, researchers from the Wiki Lab at the University of California have created a system to help users know when to trust the information on Wikipedia. The new programme assigns a colour code to newly edited text using an algorithm that calculates the author’s reputation from the lifespan of their past contributions. It’s based on a simple concept: The longer information persists on the page, the more accurate it’s likely to be. Text from questionable sources starts out with a bright orange background, while text from trusted authors gets a lighter shade. As more people view and edit the new text, it gradually gains more “trust” and turns from orange to white.

Registered Wikipedia users will be able to click on a “trust info” tab and view the color-coded text, and the researchers expect the gadget to be ready sometime this fall.

The Wiki Lab built its trust tool around the principle that Wikipedia pages tend to improve over time, or at least to move toward consensus. You can measure an author’s trustworthiness by looking at how long his or her edits persist over time, said UCSC graduate student Bo Adler, who developed WikiTrust with de Alfaro and graduate student Ian Pye. “When you add something to Wikipedia and it lasts a long time, you did a good job,” Adler said. “If it gets erased right away, you did a bad job.” Based on an person’s past contributions, WikiTrust computes a reputation score between zero and nine. When someone makes an edit, the background behind the new text gets shaded orange depending on their reputation: the brighter the orange, the less “trust” the text has. Then when another author edits the page, they essentially vote on the new text. If they like the edit, they’ll keep it, and if not, they’ll revert it. Text that persists will become less orange over time, as more editors give their votes of approval.

“The Wiki Lab researchers have been worried about their product detracting from the Wikipedia experience, so they designed it to be as unobtrusive as possible. Because too much orange text would turn people off, they balanced the need to flag questionable text with the need to keep the page readable. They also hid the gadget in a tab at the top of the screen, so if you don’t want to bother with trust ratings, you don’t have to click on the “trust info” tab.

WikiTrust can detect most types of questionable content. But when asked whether his gadget measures “truth” on Wikipedia, de Alfaro hesitated. WikiTrust determines trustworthiness based on how many people agree with a particular passage of text, he said, but majority approval doesn’t guarantee truth. “If 20 people are all biased in one way, our tool does not know it,” de Alfaro said. “Our tool can simply measure consensus.”

At this stage the extension will be optional and will undergo extensive community testing and evaluation, as part of Wikiepedia’s overall drive to improve the reliability its content. It is likely that it will develop over time based on feedback and usability.

September 2nd, 2009 | Category: The internet and techie toys, Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Seen recently in Wired.com

In his new book, Total Recall, Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell reports o how his life is managed by data. Since 2001, Bell has been compulsively scanning, capturing, and logging each and every bit of personal data he generates in his daily life.

This trove includes Web sites he’s visited (221,173), photos taken (56,282), emails sent and received (156,041), docs written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by the SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164). To collect all this information, he uses a staggering assortment of hardware: desktop scanner, digicam, heart rate monitor, voice recorder, GPS logger, pedometer, smartphone, e-reader.

In Total Recall, which Bell published with research partner Jim Gemmell, the 75-year-old describes how his archive has worked for him. After the disappearance and presumed death of a friend, computer scientist Jim Gray, Bell combed through thousands of files to find forgotten photos and stories he was then able to arrange into a powerful slide show for Gray’s memorial.

Bell’s data dump is more than just a glorified photo album. Over the course of a lifetime, humans take in more information and memories than their brains can handle, and Bell argues by using e-memory as a surrogate for meat-based memory, we free our minds to engage in more creativity, learning, and innovation (sort of like Getting Things Done without all those darn Post-its).

But perhaps there’s some virtue in truly forgetting—and not storing memories anywhere at all. Maybe our innate lack of RAM serves some evolutionary purpose. We all have unwanted bits we should be free to discard. “If you think you should forget, you should,” Bell concedes. “But for God’s sake, keep all the papers you’ve written and the photos you take. Sometime down the road you might be looking for something and you won’t even give yourself the chance of finding it.”

August 29th, 2009 | Category: The internet and techie toys | Leave a comment

21 degrees, daffodils appearing everywhere, blossom on the trees, a nor’wester blowing and whitebaiters in the River Avon (very different from British whitebait)- Spring looks like it has arrived!

August 28th, 2009 | Category: Aotearoa, City Life | Leave a comment