I launched this blog in March 2005 as a travel blog. People would flood me with e-mails about my travels, and it made me realise how powerful blogging can be (not to mention fun). I re-started this blog in March 2007 as a "career" blog (whatever that’s supposed to mean). It’s probably best now to describe it as my "passions" blog which evolves as I progress through life and think about things.
What I love about blogging is that it forces me to think; forces me to research and learn; forces me to challenge my ideas by interacting with other people. All the good stuff in life – I hope to give a bit more attention next year.
I also thought it would be good if I summarised what I wrote about this year. Heck – let’s go right back to 2005. This will be the first in a series of three blog posts progressively released – starting with 2008 today, then 2007 tomorrow and finally 2005 two days later. For those that may post comments, bear with me as I have literally 24 hours of New Year’s concerts to attend to (get home at 6am from Shore Thing, ready for Field day at 11am). It may take me some time to recover and get back on a computer!
I’ve given you a brief summary to guide you on whether you should make the great leap and click. I was going to rank my articles with a simple "good, poor, average" and I ended up getting stuck reading some and think 90% are more or less the same style (so I am either consistently crap or consistently good).
Enjoy!
December 2008
- A milestone year in my life: Basically, a mini biography of my career. The decisions I made and the experiences I’ve had that will determine where I will be heading
- The evolution of news and the bootstrapping of the Semantic Web: Highlighting how the New York Times is making available news data in the form of API’s. The significance of this in my eyes is a huge shift in the evolution of the news media, and separately, I mention that this might make the vision of the Semantic Web a reality in an unintended way
- Thank you 2008, you finally gave New Media a name: I indicate how 2008 was the tipping point for the Information Age’s Social Media to finally trump the Industrial Age’s Mass Media. I researched the history of the concept of Social Media, explained what "media" really is, and how the term "Social Media" is the perfect term to describe what we’ve been calling these evolving communication trends.
- The makings of a media mogul: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch: A detailed analysis of how a nobody became one of the most influential men in the world as a New Media pioneer. Mr Arrington even thanked me!
- The future of journalism and media: A look at the Watergate scandal as well as my own personal experience with a university publication, to understand the core dynamic of the media. I argue that what made the mass media tick in the past was a marketplace, and it’s one that can be applied to digital media going forward.
- So open it’s closed: I make an argument that the term "Open" is being abused and has lost its meaning. We need better guidelines on what constitutes an "Open Standard" before it becomes too late.
- Social media and that whole ‚Äúfriend‚Äù thing: A post about how there is pressure to subscribe to peoples content on various services, even when you don’t want to receive their content. The result is an unusable service. I reflect on how Google Readers friends option is a simple but more effective way of social media, as it removes this pressure.
November 2008
- The broken business model of newspapers: An analysis of problems with the newspaper industry – too much detail in articles create extra cost, changes to the news cycle has changed their relevance, and incentives and structures are not aligned with what their strategic goals should be
- Online advertising – a bubble: Long detailed analysis on why advertising is basically screwed in the long term (thanks to the Internet)
- Liako is everywhere…but not here: Some links to content I have been creating elsewhere, as this blog had been neglected!
- The Rudd Filter: I wrote an e-mail to every senator of the Australian parliament on the proposed Internet censorship laws. As a postscript, it made an impact as I got responses from the key people who are the balance of power in the Senate 🙂
- You don‚Äôt nor need to own your data: We live in an economy now where you don’t need "ownership" to live your life. This will certainly make you think!
October 2008
- The mobile 3D future – as clear as mud: Recounting my experience from iPhone 1G to Nokia N96 back to the iPhone (3G). I conclude that the reason we never got the vision of the mobile web in the past, is because the interface has been the missing link for so long
September 2008
- Silicon Beach Australia podcast #1: Link to my first podcast recording, with Mike Cannon-Brookes (CEO of Atlassian)
- Three startups in 24 hours – lessons in the costs of innovation: A post I wrote live from Startup camp Australia about roadblocks that this little Petri dish of innovation showed
- Thoughts on privacy – possibly just a txt file away: A discussion about privacy in our online world and thinking a little outside of the box for easy solutions with existing practices
July 2008
- Silicon Beach Australia – the movie!: An announcement post for the Silicon Beach Australia community which exploded in interest after I created it
- The DataPortability governance framework: a template: An update, history and recognition post of the many months of hard work for the team that created the governance and workflow model for the DataPortability Project. It was a challenge because existing models aren’t designed for an online virtual world that we operate as.
- Internet censorship in Australia: The responses from the Federal government on my letter six months earlier protesting against the proposed Internet censorship regime
June 2008
- Organisations need to be a size 12: A deep think about the problems with Industrial Era organisations and how we need to adapt them to the Information Age
- It’s the experience that matters: How the digital revolution is making us realise content is about an experience. Content is not something you control.
May 2008
- Advertising on the Internet needs innovation: Explaining the problems online and attempts to monetise content. I survey the landscape to explain we need a new approach.
- What is data?: Responding to the chest-beating about the DataPortability Project, I tried to inject a bit more perspective into the debate by explaining the difference between data, information and knowledge – and their implications
- The value chain for information: My proposal for an information value chain. Someone even made a video to explain the concepts, if you don’t feel like reading!
- Emerging trends? Nope – its been a long time coming: I dug up something I wrote several years ago on emerging trends to prove a lot of what we talk about today have been a long time coming.
- Analysing the user experience from two social networking sites: MySpace and Geni both sent me similar e-mails, and I highlight the different approaches and business models at play
April 2008
- It‚Äôs all still alpha in my eyes: Highlighting that the Web 2.0 era is dead, but really that’s a distraction for a bigger thing at play. I write about what I think are the trends at play.
- What is the DataPortability Project: Explaining what the DataPortability Project is doing from a big picture point of view
- The DataPortability Logo competition: Explaining the process we went through to select a new logo for the DataPortability Project (we had hundreds of submissions)
- Information overload: we need a supply side solution: I explain how the business models of current are forcing content creators to create more and more content, despite content consumers not being able to keep up.
- The most important lesson in business: Explaining what an accountant is useful for and that at the end of the day, cashflow is king (you don’t need an accountant to tell you that I argue!)
- How business is done on the Internet: My analysis of how business is done on the internet, split by business model, revenue model, and product models
March 2008
- Facebook users: more and more in just four months: A March 2008 review of the split of Facebook’s users, and the differences by country since November 2007
- How to piss your customers off – a lesson courtesy from eBay: How eBay’s e-mail strategy is something that needs to change
- Here’s a secret: the semantic web is the boring bit: Giving some perspective on the semantic web and companies sprouting now to cater for it.
- February 2008 DataPortability project report: An announcement of the DataPortability Project report
- Net neutrality: A video on net neutrality
- DataPortability is about user value, fool!: Understanding the point of data portability
- Can you answer my question?: I look at "data", "portability" and "ownership"
- Control doesn’t necessarily mean access: An example with health is that controlling the benefits to your data is not the same as getting access to it as it may not be in your best interest
- My presentation at Kickstart forum: I was asked to speak at a conference in front of Australia’s technology journalists on what the DataPortability Project was
February 2008
- An opportunity to make your mark: An announcement post on the logo making competition for the DataPortability Project
- I’m back!: A quick personal note giving an update on things
- Don’t cry for me, Argentina!: I spent a month in South America and wrote a post about it.
