Comment spam

How do you know if the WordPress blog you have just launched and have been slaving over is going to be successful? You get picked up by the comment spammers. I love WordPress. And I love that it needs to be upgraded quite often to prevent nasty code insertions in …

Neanderthal web, man

Scientists in the US will soon be able to do the unthinkable and regenerate extinct species like Neanderthals and Mammoths. This is done by building a map of the DNA and then re-engineering the DNA in an embryo or egg. Crazy stuff! Ethically I’m not sure where I stand so …

Ecommerce sales

I have been watching the reports about ecommerce sales with a strange sense of foreboding and opportunistic delight. The reports are mixed, but it seems that growth is softening – in some cases dramatically. Whilst Cyber Monday, the Monday after the US Thanksgiving holiday, recorded the second highest online sales …

Web Analytics Wednesday

Last night I went to the first Melbourne Web Analytics Wednesday in the sweltering back room at Loop Bar. The discussion was a little stilted at first but there was a strong turn out from Sensis, CoreMetric and other analytics and search folks. There was some discussion alluding to the …

Content, bloody content

A website is kinda boring without content. The semantic web has no meaning without meaningful content. So why is content the last thing people think about when they are planning a website? It may be because people assume that the web is a visual medium and think visually about what …

The perfect 10

In the eighties film 10, Dudley Moore, a middle-aged musician lusts after Bo Derek, a young and beautiful woman. I don’t think her career was ever made obvious. In an iconic scene, Bo Derek runs down the beach in slow motion her body glistening with the sea and coconut oil. …

The blog easy

When I first discovered the web I found a site called Digital Diaries which allowed for creative expression online. I signed up and was soon publishing sarcastic poetry about my life and receiving the odd freakish email from someone in Ohio. I often think it’s a shame that the Digital …

The big screen

Senator Conroy, our new Minister of Communications has proven that the Labor Party still do not understand the Internet. Mark Latham in his wonderfully vindictive apologia, The Latham Diaries, writes that in the dying days of the Keating government the then Minister of Communications was terrified of Telstra and virtually …

The rise of the left

When I was 18 years old and just starting at University I sought out, amongst other things, the socialist club and paid my $5 fee to join up. I had some knowledge of socialism and a vague idea about communism, Lenin and a love of the great design of post …

Telling stories

I am not a maths nerd. Never have been. Words have always been more appealing to me. They can inspire, terrify and antagonise in ways that numbers never can, at least for me. With this in mind I’ve been thinking about how important it is to tell a story when …