information insights

There are always those seminal events in your life.  Those things that you remember.  For me given my apparently long, long life (thanks Norman Thurecht - ‘you’re on the cusp of Gen X aren’t you?’ - hmmm, if making the cut off by at least 5 years is cuspy thank you very much!), I can remember some pretty major things:

• US bombed a Libyan nuclear power plant in 1985 (I think)
• US invaded Iraq Mk1
• Princess Diana’s death in 1997
• September 11
• US invaded Iraq Mk2
• Obama announced who his running mate was going to be (well OK not the major event but the US hasn’t invaded anybody lately).

I think it’s interesting to consider how I found out about these.  I remember I found out about the bombing of Libya (we all thought it meant nuclear war) while playing handball near the science labs at school (we weren’t supposed to but what can I say, we were rebels).  A friend proudly announced that it had happened about 12 hours ago and that she’d read it in the paper.  Source:  chinese whispers (maybe I didn’t have much of a network when I was 15).

I remember the declaration of war in Iraq Mk1 - I was getting my hair cut in a barber shop in 1991 and heard it on the radio they had playing.

For the death of Princess Diana I overheard someone mention it while we were at the Buderim Ginger Factory (my first and only visit thanks very much) who probably heard it on the radio.

September 11 - I was home alone and saw the news the next morning on television.  It took me about half an hour of watching endless replays before I realised both towers had come down.

The Mk2 invasion of Iraq I learned by browsing on WAP from my mobile phone to I think the Optus news site.

And Obama’s announcement of VP?  Although it’s not up there with the most earth-shattering events (the US hasn’t bombed or invaded anybody lately to my knowledge), I found out about this through Twitter (mostly seeing tweets from Shannon Nelson of a Girl’s Gotta Spa), sitting on the lounge while watching the most awful movie ever, ‘The Avengers’.  Well, maybe not the most awful - Weekend at Bernie’s 2 is apparently pretty bad, but I’ve never watched it (footnote: my favourite movie review line ever, I think, by Martin Scribbs of the Low IQ Canadian:  ‘Biting down on the cyanide capsule my editors had provided me, I was bitterly disappointed to find it was a dud. Sweet death, how I have longed for you!’). 

So - it shows how time marches on - Chinese whispers, radio, chinese whispers again, television, WAP and then Twitter.  I keep using Twitter, sometimes it’s annoying and a distraction but I keep getting useful things out of it and it helps me maintain relationships on a fly in/fly out basis.  I can watch someone’s tweets, they don’t have to hear from me, and while I can go back in time, I don’t feel compelled to.

Twitter’s unreliable, it’s inconsistent, it’s brain-dead and silly.  But it does something really valuable - it keeps me connected with many different people, and isn’t demanding of time and thought.  It’s not perfect, and it’s not the ultimate in human to human interaction, but I get more out of it than I ever thought I would.

Way good.  I’ve just discovered that my house must be in a ’secluded pocket’ since it doesn’t appear in Google StreetView.  Which I’m kinda glad about, really.  Even a friend of mine’s house, which was only built in October last year and is in a brand new estate, appears on StreetView. 

Let’s face it though - someone needs to know where you live before StreetView is of real use, although I’m finding it handy for when I go to places I’ve not been before.  Although I do have privacy concerns.  Which is code for the fact that it’s hard enough to have an affair these days - what do the philanderers do if their car is photographed outside their mistress’s house?  It’s bad enough having to deal with ‘you took money out of the ATM at 2pm today at Toowong - what were you doing there?’.  Now you have photographic proof online.  Can we really trust Google any more?

Just as well I’ve never been into stamp collecting all that much…

Definitely in the ‘fun stuff’ category lately for me is the ‘Girl Genius’ webcomic.  There are lots of free webcomics out there, most of which have about zero art, less humour, and zip plot.  Girl Genius, though, I can appreciate (although I’m not a huge fan of the ‘paper dolls’).  Especially since I’m married to a Girl Genius, although perhaps not in a SteamPunk kind of way.

Let’s just say that if a girl with green hair & funny-looking swords wants to buy you coffee, run.  Just - run.

And showing how the new world can work - creative tweeps can follow Othar’s Twitter.  I’m sure none of these jobs existed when I was in High School…

OK well it’s probably no surprise to anyone but I’m a Dr Who fan.  In my defence, I’m a card-carrying geek so it’s kind of an occupational hazard.

Unfortunately last week my geek cred was shattered by the revelation that my PVR didn’t properly record the show on Sunday night.  Argh - and this is one of those shows where you really need to see all stories to understand the story arc that’s going on.  It’s not CSI where the same show is replayed each week.  On Dr Who - the writers have to be able to write!

Anyway - I had the pleasure of trying out the ABC’s iView.  They store the show as a downloadable broadcast for up to 11 days later than the original broadcast, so I was able to watch it through the notebook.  Better yet, I hooked the notebook up to the TV through the svideo cable, turned off the screensaver and cranked up the power options and it was - almost - as good as the real thing.  If I had hooked the sound cables up I could probably have had it go through my surround sound.  But, as it was I think I noted one item of pixelation, and no download pause while watching a 50-minute show. 

That in my books is both impressive and fantastic.  It’s still a beta service, but it worked out of the box for me and saved me some geek cred anyway.

Very happy to be invited to post a blog entry for CPA Australia on the Congress 2008 blog.  The post is to be ‘conversational’ - I wonder if they know how conversational I can be? - and will be about the social networking policy and procedure guide I am writing for CPA Australia.

Well, my setup for my mobile life is slowly coming together.  Firstly, I have a Blackberry for when I am out and about - full integration into Exchange server hosted by WebCentral.  It’s an expensive approach by the time Telstra and Webcentral have their cut, but it works well and is my primary mobile device.  Then I have two laptops - a Dell Vostro 1500 (the luggable for power-computing) and an HP Mini-Note 2300 for mobile computing (it’s small, light, and light-powered but does what’s necessary - mostly).  I have an HP Media drive that I use to synch files between the luggable and the HP - I’m currently using SyncToy from evil Microsoft to synchronise the files, although I did try SyncBack as well.  SyncToy is generally easier to use but its reputation is not as solid as SyncBack’s - my trouble with SyncBack is its complete lack of feedback as to what it’s actually synced and what it hasn’t.  I use GMail for my personal email, and it runs on my mobile based upon the Google Apps hosted solution. 

I also use Office Document Imaging to convert all my filenotes to PDF, so that they become part of my backup routine.  Ironically, the only thing I don’t keep electronically like this is my accounting records, as one day I may actually hand them over to an accountant.  And much to my annoyance I continue to use Office 2007 after a run-in with Open Office - it completely lost a major spreadsheet on me by overwriting a filename and annoying me somewhat - also Open Office files (native) don’t seem to be indexed by Copernic, my desktop searching engine.  I use ThinkingRock to manage my tasks and projects and todo lists (I did revert to Outlook tasks, which was good for mobility, but bad for trying to manage projects and generally implement GTD).  The new version of ThinkingRock 2 is much more polished so I am coming back to the TR fold (I was silly for going away, even if I did get mobility out of Outlook tasks). 

Finally, I use Evernote for little snippets of information that I collect and need to refer to, or that I stumble across while I’m researching stuff for papers I’m presenting and so on.  What is fantastic about Evernote is it’s ability to bring a lot of material together in one place, treat it the same, tag it, and bring it back, and do it from multiple vectors (PC, Mac, Internet, mobile phone) and keep it all in synch, for a reasonable price.  If used well, it can be very good.  A major difference from version 2 is the lack of version control.  I also originally came across Evernote while searching for a personal wiki approach, and EverNote doesn’t really support that type of functionality, it keeps it simple stupid.  I now use WikidPad to do that sort of thing.

Overall, Evernote is a great repository for keeping research together, and keeping things in synch between multiple devices (as you can see above, a fair chunk of my setup is devoted to synching stuff between machines.So it’s a great tool for doing what says it does.  Unfortunately it means I no have Yet Another Place with information stored - files (which I index with Copernic), some websites and now Evernote.  I wonder if my stuff in Evernote will convert over in a few years time - hopefully it’s successful and continues to operate, otherwise I will have a lot of information contained in Evernote that can’t be migrated to anything else.

I suppose in some ways it’s not unlike Lotus Notes, ironically, in its original syncing format, although it’s not collaborative I guess.  It is personally focussed.  Still it’s worth my $A47 for a premium subscription, and I’ll think about where it goes from here.  It’s a good tool to add to my suite of stuff I use, but it’s probably not going to be my nirvana for file and information management any time soon. 

Maybe one day I’ll get there.

I seem to be doing an awful lot of work for CPA Australia lately - which is good, I kinda like the place.

On 26 August I am presenting a session entitled ‘Communicating Financials to management:  developing effective reporting mechanisms’.  Apparently this session needs to explain:

• How to develop effective reporting mechanisms that ensures data of high integrity and quality
• Responding to management information needs: how to develop a process that ensures timely response
• Other key reporting and systems issues that affect how information is presented and used

Hmmm.  Should be quite a trick. Ah well, turning my mind to this thought at the moment.  Looking forward to it - apparently I present at the Royal on the Park.

As is my usual practice, I’ve uploaded the brochure here.

We had our ITM CoE meeting on this immediate past Tuesday, where in a case of life imitating social media I got to meet Mick Leyden in-the-flesh, as it were, after meeting on Twitter. 

In the course of discussions around the table, one topic that came up - quite apart from the topic of, somehow, Viagra - was using tag clouds as a way of communicating the big issues to clients from interviews.  One of our members, Shauna, had thought of tag clouds for blogs, but not in the context of using it to show a client and reflect back what they have said.  I recently used the tag cloud, www.wordle.net, to demonstrate to a client what I’d gleaned from my one-on-one interviews with them. 

It was really helpful to just demonstrate what had been said.  Interestingly, the conclusions of priorities after three hours of analysis were just about the same as just running the text through the tag cloud generator.  But of course, less valid.

Anyhoo - if you want a way to brighten up the results of interviews, I would heartily recommend this as a new way to communicate the message.

I presented for CPA Australia on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, firstly in Sydney, and then in Melbourne.  The topic was ‘Optimising your financial reporting systems for long-term value’, and was part of their streamlining finance processes conference.

Overall the presentations went fairly well.  There’s always a conflict between war stories, which are interesting and helpful, and content, which is helpful.  I try not to have a lecture, but I still managed to run out of time both times.  Note to self:  cut down, cut down, cut down.

Anyhoo, I promised that I’d upload an example survey tool and my speaker notes, so they are attached to this blog post.

You can download the Speaker Notes here, and you can download the full presentation here. The speaker notes are just the dot points I intended to cover off in the presentation.

The example survey can be downloaded here.

I stayed at the Sydney Marriott overnight - that was quite nice:

If you attended, please feel free to give feedback.  I hope something was obtained from the presentation, and if there are questions please feel free to give me a call.

Blogging from the back of the taxi, I’m just reminded to blog about the intriguing case I alerted to last night. I am lecturing at QUT for about seven weeks starting in about September on IT Governance. The first half is being presented by Bill Singleton, a senior associate with Allens Arthur Robertson, and he is basically presenting the law to them as it relates to ensuring the good governance of IT.

I attended last night to be introduced to the class, and I stayed for the lecture. One of the interesting cases was to me the Dow Jones v Gutnick case. From what I understood, Dow Jones implied in their newsletter that Gutnick was involved in insider trading. This did not sit well with Mr Gutnick who, even though the newsletter was written in New York and uploaded to the net to a server in New York, sued them in Victoria for defamation.

My first reaction was that the suit would fail for lack of jurisdiction - Victoria is not New York after all.

Apparently Gutnick won on the basis that the defamation occurs where the download took place - Victoria. And the kicker is that, because of the bilateral agreements with the US, Gutnick then had an enforceable court order that he could pursue in the States.

When I mentioned this to my lawyer wife (I’m certainly no lawyer) her reaction was ‘So? That makes sense, otherwise you’d forum shop.’

Technorati Tags: Defamation,law,blogging,download

My view is that it’s rather bad - you write something, put it on the net, and any jurisdiction where there is a bilateral agreement - or where you want to do business - could result in an enforceable court order.

I mean, what if you innocently break the law in another jurisdiction? China, for example? Admittedly this was a defamation case, but even so it scares and annoys me a little.

I suspect there may be implications for corporate bloggers there.

I may misunderstand, after all I was in a lecture late at night. However to me it seems a classic case of, once again, the law getting in the way of progress.