by cameron | Aug 21, 2007 | Australian media, Melbourne
Newspapers, a 19th century global social networking craze, could cost employers up to $5 billion a year in productivity.
The persistence of the “offline internet” in workplaces has resulted in more time-wasting by employees.
It could also open businesses to criminals and legal liability, analysis by internet security firm TPN says.
The data found if one employee spent an hour a day of company time reading newspapers, it could cost their employer more than $6200 a year.
Projected across the 800,000 businesses with one or more employees in Australia, this one wasted hour a day equalled productivity losses of more than $5 billion a year.
There are more than 2 million newspaper readers across the country, with reportedly more than 100 Australians joining the phenomenon each hour.
With many readers reading during work hours, productivity loss was not the only drawback, TPN CEO Cameron Reilly said.
“Criminals will no doubt be targeting newspaper readers as an attack mechanism because of (its) popularity and power as a platform,” Reilly said.
“It’s only a matter of time before a security loophole is discovered and exploited.”
Many companies were placing blanket bans on newspapers, created by some old rich white guy in 1786.
But account director Joan Smith from marketing communications agency Haypizzle, whose employees were reading newspapers, said the phenomena had reshaped the media landscape and was now regarded as a powerful business tool.
“It’s important for a marketing communications agency to be on the pulse with new and emerging social media platforms such as The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The New York Times,” Ms Smith said.
“Newspapers like The New York Times enable us to connect with our clients, media representatives and our 40 plus staff in our Sydney and Melbourne offices.”
Despite newspaper’s negative side, Reilly said it could also be a boon for business.
“A lot of enlightened employers are encouraging newspaper reading as part of the working experience because it makes people want to be at work longer,” he said.
“There needs to be awareness and education on the part of the employer as to what is the appropriate level of use.”
(This is a satirical post pointing out the level of bullshit being spread about Facebook by sites like News.com.au – link)
by cameron | Aug 16, 2007 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
Hey folks! It’s been an interesting week as those of you following my Twitter feed already know. I just thought I’d give you a few updates.
I know I haven’t put out a show since last week and that’s mostly because I’ve been trying to focus on selling some advertising this month. However, I do have a few interviews in the can and I will get them up over the next week or so. They include video interviews with some folks I met at the X MEDIA LABS event in Melbourne last week (including UK film director Shekhar Kapur) and Ryan Trainor, one of Australia’s youngest serial entrepreneurs.
And over the next couple of days I’ve got interviews scheduled with Dr John Demartini, an American motivational speaker and author (who was one of the people featured in the film “The Secret”), and a special edition I am producing on the state of broadband in Australia which will feature interviews with senior executives from a number of leading Aussie ISPs.
So stick around.
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For those of you who were following my Twitter posts last night about my borked PC, I managed to fix it at 2am after FIVE HOURS working on it. It started crashing repeatedly yesterday morning after Windows Update installed somethings. I did a System Restore around midday which seemed to fix it, but then Windows Update ran again (!) and the 2nd time System Restore wouldn’t fix it. So last night I spoke to IBM support, they were clueless, and I had to nut it out myself. After five hours spent upgrading the BIOS, drivers, and everything else I could think of, I finally had a brainwave to unplug all of my USB hubs and try booting. HURRAH! It worked. Turns out, Windows was crashing due to a problem Windows Update caused with an external USB soundcard which had been working JUST FINE for the last six months thank you very much Microsoft.
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Could a couple of jets crashing into the WTC in NYC on 9/11 bring them down? No, said Frank Demartini. Who was he? Only the Manager, WTC Construction and Project Management. Watch this video interview he did in Jan 2001 where he says he thinks a couple of jets could fly into WTC and they would still stand. The great irony? Demartini died on 9/11.
by cameron | Aug 4, 2007 | Christianity, Podcast, science vs religion
Aaron Heath sent me this image:
Reminds me of the Point of Inquiry podcast I listened to this morning with Peter Irons. Irons is “a noted constitutional scholar, historian, and lawyer, he is the author of the bestselling May It Please the Court; The Battle for the Constitution; War Powers: How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution; and A People’s History of the Supreme Court. His newest book is God on Trial: Dispatches from America’s Religious Battlefields.” In the podcast he mentions that the “Founding Fathers” of the US were very clear that the country was NOT based on Christianity or any other religion. They were fighting FOR separation of church and state and yet, somehow, many Americans seem to have turned that on its head.
For all our problems (and, having just watched BLOOD DIAMONDS, we don’t have many), Australia is at least not run by the religious right. Not yet, anyway.
Aaron also has this video on his blog. Nicely done.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OruQy-X32O0]
by cameron | Jul 31, 2007 | Uncategorized
It’s currently 7.50pm in Australia, 1.50am US PDT. Facebook has been down for the last ten minutes. According to an entry in the Wikipedia profile for Facebook:
IT WAS RECENTLY HACKED BY CHRIS DOHERTY ON TUESDAY 31ST JULY. MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN AFFECTED, ESPECIALLY THOSE IN THE UK. CHRIS DOHERTY PROCLAIMED, “NOW PEOPLE MAY SEE THAT I AM THE TRUE CREATOR!”
by cameron | Jul 30, 2007 | environment, Gloria Jeans, Hillsong, Melbourne, Uncategorized
Shoe-lovin’ Telstran CathyE has created a Twitter profile purely for announcing Melbourne tech events. Very handy. Don’t forget MODM this Thursday night! We’ve got our biggest registrations to date and a new venue.
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I’m writing an article on Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 for MARKETING magazine. If anyone has any good examples of how Aussie companies are using Web2.0 in a respectable fashion, let me know so I can include them.
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Speaking of Enterprise 2.0, I had lunch today with Tony Clement, one of the guys behind AEGEON, a young Melbourne-based services company focused 100% on helping corporate clients adopt Web2.0 technologies. I’ve known Tony for a few years, he was a CTO client of mine back in my MSFT days, and it’s great to see him taking the stuff we were doing back then around web services and helping other companies adopt them. Tony ran one of the first significant Microsoft.Net-based projects in Australia back in 2001/2 and had a bold vision even back then for how to use web services in an enterprise environment to innovate and engineer value. Keep an eye on Aegeon. They are the first services firm I’ve heard of in Australia that is really throwing serious effort behind Web2.0.
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I’m back on my weight-loss regimen. Listened to The Health & Fitness Show #058 – Easily Identify Low Fat + Low Sugar + High Nutritional Value Food this morning. Lots of great tips from Beti on how to tell what you are putting into your body. I was thinking we should run a competition for G’Day World listeners to see who can lose the most about of weight over the next 90 days. Get a sponsor to put up a prize. Who’s in?
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McDonald’s just don’t get blogging, do they?
Some of you will remember the fake blog they put up in early 2005.
Now some hired PR guy in Perth is blogging on PerthNorg under the alias “cookie2”. He’s pushing the “Name the Burger” campaign that McDonald’s is running in Australia at the moment.
Cookie2 writes: “Burger naming legend Ken Thomas, renowned for his creativity in naming the Cheeseburger, Double Cheeseburger, McChicken and the Hot Apple Pie, has retired from the senior ranks of McDonald’s Australia, giving the company the opportunity to throw the job open to the Australian public.”
Unfortunately, Cookie2 (aka John Cooke a PR consultant working for McDonald’s Australia) has just broken Rule #1 of Corporate Blogging – Be Honest.
“Ken Thomas” is (perhaps obviously) a fictional character, created by advertising agency Leo Burnett.
So why can’t McDonald’s just tell the truth? Why not just start a campaign about naming a burger? Why do they have to make up some bullshit story? I don’t get the rationale. Do you? Can someone explain it to me?
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Watching this amazing “Russian Scam” video (aka “How To Take Someone’s Wallet Just By Asking Them”) by Derren Brown. Amazing.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIIz2FAgwcw]
After you’ve watched that, watch this guy’s attempt at explaining it using NLP.
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Just been watching Tanya Levin, author of a soon-to-be-released book about the very scary Hillsong Church, on Denton’s Enough Rope. My old mate Phil McCreddan has an article about Hillsong, which includes an interview with Tanya, on his Signposts blog. Interestingly, publisher Allen & Unwin were going to publish her book (“People In Glass Houses”) but pulled out of it, apparently because of a perceived risk of defamation. The book was picked up by Black Inc which is owned by Morrie Schwartz, who also published Monthly magazine. This is the church that has links to Gloria Jeans (see my earlier posts on that here and here and why I don’t drink Gloria Jeans anymore), has received a bunch of government grants, and where the founder’s father, who held senior positions in the church, but was forced to resign in 2000 following exposure of his homosexual paedophile activities whilst ministering in New Zealand some thirty years earlier.
I’m looking forward to reading her book.
