internet

The monopoly provider of international bandwidth has dropped their prices now that competition is looming:

The operator of New Zealand’s only international internet cable has cut wholesale prices by 44 per cent as one of its potential competitors announced progress on a rival project.

The Southern Cross Cable Network runs between Auckland, Sydney and the United States and transports all the internet traffic coming in and out of New Zealand.

The company – which is half owned by Telecom New Zealand – said cable upgrades and lower costs had allowed it to almost halve what it charges internet companies for trafficking international data.

But despite a sharp drop in wholesale prices, commentators say it could be a long time before these cuts flow through to consumers.

InternetNZ chief executive Vikram Kumar said the lower wholesale rates apply only to new contracts and consumers will need to wait until internet companies re-sign with Southern Cross before prices change.

That is weasel words and excuses. It isn’t like they are shipping oil and need to deplete existing stocks here. It is light! The new prices are available immediately. This is nothing but feather-bedding and continuing to charge customers far too much.

Here is the thing though, if they can offer these pris now with no changes in existing infrastructure, foor how long then have we been ripped off by Southern Cross charging monopoly rents?

Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Paul Brislen agreed the cuts would take a while to reach the retail market.

“It’ll increase data caps eventually, but because the ISPs are buying capacity on a 10-yearly cycle – the contracts run for quite some time – the odds are you won’t mostly see much of anything in the short-term at all.”

I can’t believe Paul Brislen fell for that crap. The supplier can drop the amount they charge their clients anytime they please. He needs to be a little more strident in representing his clients.

There is a fair bit of commentary around at the moment about the state of blogging. to be fair most of it is in the tech world where there is a sort of consensus that the golden age of blogging, at least from a tech perspective, is over:

The reasons, in brief: many top blogs have sold out; staff turnover saw “star” voices slip off the radar; younger audiences like social networking more; and advertising revenue is increasingly hard to get at.

All the reasons given are true, but they’re not reasons to believe that a golden age has passed. They’re phenomena in their own right, each with its own story, and only the last presenting a barrier to entry for newcomers. Epochal change makes for an epic narrative, but all this adds up to a simpler truth: media is a tough game and you won’t get far by copying what other people did years ago.

I have always said that New Zealand lags about 5 years behind the rest of the world and blogging here is no different. We are just now catching up with the advent of bloggers commentators that has been prevalent int he US and UK for at least 6 years.

Some don’t agree that the golden age is over. I’m with them:

“There are still plenty of people who love to write– not just share, Tweet and comment– for a living, and blogs are still the best platform for that. In many ways, professional blogging is just getting started. It’s a time when new entrants are jumping into the field with bold, fresh ideas, standing on the shoulders of the blogging giants that came before, taking a second stab at reinventing the new media landscape.”

In the 6 years I have been blogging there have been many blogs and bloggers not many of us stick around. There is a reason for that, it is bloody hard work. Your critics are instantaneous and not many can take the constant criticism and especially the nasty hate mail. I keep every email and one day I will publish them all. It will make a book of hate all by itself. This comment at Boing Boing though sums up blogging for me:

There was never a golden age of blogging, just a golden age of mainstream interest in what it all meant. Don’t worry about it; opportunity does not knock but once. You need obsession, a work ethic, and an uncommon voice. That’s tough, but that’s all. The rest is counting the hours, and we’ve all got plenty of those.

So readers what do you think…Has blogging done it’s dash?

With the release of the Law Commission report focussing on blogging and whether or not bloggers are media, as is usual there is a certain amount of deus ex machina that an article about “blogging well” appeared in my feed reader.

Technology writer Dan Frommer  proposes 10 rules for better blogging, which match pretty closely to exactly what the Law Commission are talking about and the direction I have been moving this blog in over the past year.

Dan posts his rules as a reference but also to remind him to try to adhere to them. I will re-post them here too, and see if I can do the same as I think sum up where my thinking is at with the direction the blog needs to take:

1. Above all else, factual accuracy and attention to detail. That’s the easiest and best way to build and maintain trust over the long-term. If a fact is wrong, fix it and don’t be shy about it. If an opinion or prediction is wrong, learn from it and consider explaining how you got it wrong.
2. Write the site that you want to read. That covers story selection, length, frequency, style, vocabulary, attitude, humor, level of sensationalism, and more. Don’t publish anything you’re not proud of. Be yourself.
3. Be more skeptical. Companies and people have no interest in telling any side of the story but their own. Often, that side is flawed, invalid, or incorrect. Let someone else be the gullible one who looks silly later: Always question everything. (But don’t let it turn you into too much of a conspiracy theorist.)
4. Attribute well — the way you’d want to be attributed. Use names, link prominently, never plagiarize. Quote or paraphrase the part of an article that you need to make your point, but always with the goal of sending readers to the original site for the full story. (Some credit here to Henry Blodget, for Business Insider’s original excerpting policy in 2009. And to John Gruber, whose attribution activism is good for the web.) Aim to become as big of a traffic referrer as you possibly can — not only is that good policy, but it’s a great business asset.
5. Add context. Don’t assume people know what you’re talking about, especially if it’s obscure or technical. That doesn’t mean you need to rewrite five paragraphs of back-story for every new update to a news story — that’s usually a waste of time. But at least make sure that a good explanation of what’s going on is a click or two away.
6. Be critical, but don’t be unfair. You’re not a jerk in person. Don’t be one on the Internet. (Unless it’s funny, of course.)
7. Care about your writing. Spell things correctly. Write clearly. Avoid jargon or meaningless business-speak. Learn how to use apostrophes. It really is a reflection of quality.
8. Care about your design. Don’t make your site more complicated than it needs to be. Like editing text, you can often improve design by deleting. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have photos and illustrations, just make sure they’re adding to the experience. Try to keep load times as short as possible, and note that many readers may be using mobile devices (and slow connections) to access your site. Make the right tradeoffs between revenue, flashiness, and clutter.
9. Don’t be the 10th person to write the same thing. Say something that everyone else will wish they’d thought of. It takes longer, and it’s harder, but it’s worth it. When someone beats you to it, share their work if you love it — then they’ll want to share yours.
10. Try new things, all the time. Especially those that are a little outside your comfort zone. This is the Internet — don’t act like you’re writing for Time Magazine in the 80s. Stories can be pictures, charts, lengthy essays, numbered lists, or 140 characters. Measure how your experiments do, and take the results into account for the future.

A court in the US has handed down an interesting decision that says a blogger is not a journalist. I say interesting because though I haven’t yet seen the Law Commission report into the “taming if the wild west” of blogging, I would suggest that the Law Commission may well be making recommendations exactly the opposite of the US court decision:

A United States federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country.

Crystal L Cox, a blogger from Eureka, Montana, was sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick when she posted online that he was a thug and a thief during the handling of bankruptcy proceedings by him and Obsidian Finance Group LLC.

US District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.

I will reserve my comments about where I think we are headed until the Law Commission releases their report. Meanwhile it is an interesting discussion to be had about whether bloggers could conceivably be called journalists.

I certainly think it is valid in some but not all instances, and the some who could would be very few in number.

Apparently most people go online….for no particular reason.

A report from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that about 53% of young adults ages 18 to 29 go online on any given day for no particular reason except for a diversion or just for fun. About 81% of people in this demographic said they have done so at least occasionally.

The study — conducted among 2,260 adults ages 18 and over on landlines and cellphones — has a margin of error of 3.7%.

But it’s not just young web users that turn to the Internet during their down time — about 58% of all adults or 74% of online adults said they use the Internet this way, up from 45% of adults who said they did so in a Pew survey conducted in 2006. Pew noted that the growth of people using the Internet as a “destination for fun” coincides with the rise of broadband connections, social networking and video.

Tom Pullar-Strecker reckons bloggers are waiting nervously:

Bloggers are nervously waiting for the publication of the Law Commission’s report on “new media” next Monday.

Former Commerce Minister Simon Power raised their blood pressure when he ordered the review in October last year, commenting that there was a “wild west out there in cyberspace”.

InternetNZ chief executive Vikram Kumar said at the time that if that was what Power really believed, “we’ve got reasons to be very, very worried”.

Power was concerned about breaches of suppression orders, libel on the internet, and whether bloggers and online publications should be subject to oversight by the Press Council or Broadcasting Standards Authority.

Uhmmm…no we aren’t waiting nervously. Most of us don’t care what the Law Commission has to say or even knew the report was due. I was a contributor to the report and I didn’t know it was coming out.

All credit to the Law Commission though for seeking out the opinions of bloggers for their report,  I spent a half day with them in Wellington giving them some details about how I work, how I operate and my opinions on the Press Council and BSA. I am mildly interested in what suggestions of mine the Law Commission includes but I am far from nervous.

via Mashable

50 Grams is how much the internet weighs:

Daryll Kerrigan needs to have a chat with the Church of England:

The Church of England may withdraw the millions it has invested in internet companies unless they take action to curb internet pornography.

Senior officials are conducting a wide-ranging review of the Church’s holdings in Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which are worth tens of millions.

A Church spokesman told The Daily Telegraph that its Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) was considering new guidelines on pornography, which address the ease in which hardcore sexual images can be viewed through modern media.

The review, which is expected to be concluded in the coming months, will recommend how part of the Church’s £5.3 billion portfolio should be invested in relation to internet companies.

The Church refuses to invest in firms that fuel problems against which Christians campaign.

According to Church documents, the criteria for investing in media companies is that they have a “positive influence on society by educating, entertaining and uplifting individual experience”.

It says that companies should be avoided whose “major part” of their business is “engaged in the production, transmission, publication or distribution of pornography”.

It warns that some companies can “equally” be prurient, invasive and promote lifestyles inconsistent with the Christian message.

It is attitudes like this that really tick me off. They are just putting their fingers in their ears and shouting lalalalalala. Their action won’t make a blind bit of difference.

Instead of putting up walls and fencing off the Anglican Church they should be seeking out sinners. People who are already saved don’t need saving more. It is sinners that need saving and where better to find them?

from Miles Lennon

The home run scenario for blogging is incredibly alluring — thousands of ravenous fans fawning over your next thought-provoking or comedic masterpiece — but time and time again I fail to meet these expectations or manage them more appropriately. I enter the same cycle each time:

Blog Lifecycle

1) Euphoric moment of inspiration
2) Pseudo-maniacal and self-indulgent perusing of domains
3) Careful consideration of theme and design
4) The inaugural post – “Hello world!”
5) The 2-4 post honeymoon phase
6) Waning and changing interests
7) Feelings of desperation and apathy from low engagement
Inevitable abandonment

It turns out that this cycle may not be uncommon. Surveys have shown that 95% of blogs are abandoned within 120 days and 60-80% of them abandoned within the first month. I’m not 100% certain if these statistics are still valid today, but I have a hunch they are or perhaps even worse. Many of us simply don’t have the time, energy, passion and stamina it takes to build an online audience. Worse still, we’ve entered an age of conspicuousness in which blogs gone unnoticed are blogs worth abandoning. Put those two together and you find yourself stuck with massive inertia.

This hasn’t been my experience and certainly as time has gone on I ind I want to post more and more. Sure there have been days where it has been a real struggle to write anything, or even cut and paste something from somewhere else. Most of the time however I find blogging energising, rewarding and mostly fun.