Must do better

As someone who gets asked lots of questions about social media it is incredibly slack of me not to maintain my own blog.


So here it is in writing for the world to see (not that I think the world is intersted) but anyhoo I digress. Here it is my committment to blog at least once a week!

I will blog about things techy, geeky and maybe occassionally things that aren't. I will blog about how government uses (and doesn't use) technology and just how frustrating that is for me as someone who works in government.


There it is my committment to the world that I will do better and do more and I hope learn about what it takes to write an interesting blog and fingers crossed share some useful (and occassionally amusing) insights and information.

Let's mash it up!

Apologies for such a vast gap between my last posting and now.

No excuses I just didn't get to it. But now that the Gov 2.0 Taskforce have announced the Mash Up Australia competition opening on 7 October, I have something interesting to say...

Where is all the data??

Federal and State government have lots and lots of data so why are there less than 100 data sets listed on data.australia.gov.au - the website you will find all the datasets for the competition.

Are you telling me that 6 state, 2 territory and 1 federal government have less that 100 data sets they are able to share with the world!! Why are government so unwilling to share??

Are the scared? Do they want to sell it instead of give it away? I don't understand how a government agency can charge the public that the public have already paid for through their taxes.

I look forward to seeing what people do with the data that has been released. I'm sure there will be some very smart people out there who will have some great ideas about what to do - it's just a shame I'm not one of them.

FREE THE DATA and START MASHING

Uncontrolled message

We can't use Facebook - it's an uncontrolled message.

If I hear this one more time - I shall get very very cranky. It is NOT an uncontrolled message, you post information on Facebook, you can remove it, you can restrict who sees it, what they can do with it and how many people can administer said information.

I know Social Networking can be scary for some people but don't they realise that they are saying exactly the same things that were said about the introduction of the telegraph, telephone, individuals telephones at work, email and the internet.

Why does everyone come from a NO point view - rather than a 'that's interesting tell me more' point of view?

If you don't understand it - that's absolutely fine but be brave, honest and smart enough to ask questions and really listen to the answers.

The fact is people are talking about you and your organisation online, in person, in print and on the radio, so you can either listen or ignore it. But if I were you I would be listening because there are some smart people out there and they might just have a great idea you can steal!

Privacy lost

Thanks to those who have commented on my first blog and those who talked to me about it.

Over the weekend the wife of the soon to be head of MI6 got him into a bit of trouble. She posted large amounts of private information about herself, husband, family and friends on Facebook.

Sadly her profile was not very secure, according to UK media reports it was viewable to anyone in the London network. The photos were classic family snapshots, of people being silly and family and friends on holiday, but now they are public they are embarrassing.

So why do we want to share - why would you put family photos on the internet after the now dozens of examples of similar cases where private photos have entered the public domain? Why do people not learn from other people's mistakes?

The internet is not private - it's as simple as that. The ability to copy and paste is just too easy. Recently a parent told me about how she is teaching her children about what is suitable for the internet.

Would you want that photo on show in the local deli window?

If the answer is NO then don't put it on the internet EVER.

You just never know what's going to happen to the photo, someone you don't know or trust might get access to the photos through fair means or foul.

It is sad that this amazing opportunity to share parts of our lives with friends and family around the world is slowly being lost to us.

But I do wander why there are some in the world who are quite happy for their private lives to be open to world while the rest of us value our privacy?

I 'friend' dead people

I have 140 Facebook friends and 2 of them are dead. But what makes it even weirder is that people are still posting on their pages.

Even though I have deleted their phone numbers from my phone and taken their details out of my contacts - I just can't 'unfriend' them.

It is comforting to be able to look at their Facebook pages and to see what they wrote in the past but what I can't work out if it is comforting or weird that others are posting comments on their Facebook page when they know the person is dead.

Even though my friends are not here any more I do find it comforting to know when I want to I can connect with them and remind myself of just how great they were and how much I miss them.

Some say nothing is new - we just have new ways of doing things. So is writing on a dead person's Facebook page any weirder than talking to a headstone in cemetery?