Links of the day 16 May 2012

China, London’s Olympic bid and quit Facebook or else.

Today’s notable links are a great read with Letters of Note’s stunning letter from Ronald Reagan to his newly engaged son, worrying developments in China and an excellent read on London’s Olympic bid.

Vanity Fair on London’s convoluted, difficult and expensive Olympic bid. This was the basis of today’s blog post.

China’s currency exodus accelerates. Watch how this story affects James Packer and the Macau casino boom.

A stunning letter from Ronald Reagan congratulating his newly engaged son. This is well worth a read.

Entitled apparatchiks never learn. Dominique Strauss-Kahn sues his accuser.

China starts to crack down on foreign workers. Is this part of a bigger trend?

Quit Facebook or be expelled says a Queensland primary school principal.

 Tomorrow we’ll be looking at politicians and online media as well as the age of Facebook users. Be sure to join us tomorrow night on ABC Nightlife.

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ABC Nightlife Computers: The politicians on your homepage

How politicians are using the web and social media to push their message

Politicians around the world have discovered social media and the web. Australia’s political parties are gearing up to copy Barak Obama’s 2008 online campaigns.

Paul, Tony Delroy and Jeff Jarvis – Associate Professor and Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York and the author of “Public Parts: How sharing in the digital age improves the way we work and live discussed how politicians are using social media to get into your inbox.

The program is available from the ABC Nightlife website. If you’d still like to make comments or ask questions, feel free to have your say below.

To show what politicians are doing with online media, here are some examples from the Obama 2008 US Presidential campaign.

  • The Art of The Possible – An overview of the Obama – Biden 2008 campaign that defined modern digital political campaigns.
  • One of the most interesting phenomenons in the 2008 Obama campaign was The Great Schlep (language warning). Can you imagine a campaign like this in Australia?
  • Blue State Digital tools were developed for the campaign. These are now being used in Australia.

Some of the topics we looked at include;

  • Australian politicians don’t seem to have used the web very well. Why is that?
  • What are the ways overseas politicians using social media?
  • How do these integrate with the political parties’ existing databases?
  • Does this fit into the term Big Data we’re hearing about businesses?
  • Doesn’t this all create opportunities for false identities and campaigns?
  • Can you keep the parties off your computer?

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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ABC Sydney Mornings: Explaining the Cloud

What is cloud computing and how can it help you? We explain on 702 ABC Sydney radio.

Paul Wallbank joins Linda Mottram on ABC 702 mornings to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

This week we’re talking cloud computing from 10.40am this Wednesday May 9 on ABC 702 Sydney. A lot of this topic has been covered in my posts on The Connected Business.

During the show we’ll be covering the following topics on cloud computing.

  • What is this? How does this – or how is it meant to – work?
  • What can you put there? Anything?
  • What use is it suited for?  And NOT suited for?
  • Is it meant to be archival storage?  or is it meant to be something more dynamic?
  • Can anybody access it?  Is there substantial technical limitation?
  • Is it secure, safe?  If yes, why do many people seem to be making lots of scary noises?
  • Does it work better for:
    •   individuals?
    •    small business?
    •    large business?

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 222 702 or post a question on ABC702 Sydney’s Facebook page.

If you’re a social media users, you can also follow the show through twitter to @paulwallbank and @702Sydney.

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702 Sydney Weekend computers: April 2012

Join Paul and Simon Marnie to discuss the tech that affects your home and office

On ABC 702 Sydney Weekend computers this Sunday, April 8 from 10.15am Paul Wallbank and Simon Marnie will be looking at the end of innocence for Apple Mac users, the DNS Changer Virus and how political campaigning is coming to a Facebook site near you.

Some of the topics we’ll discuss include;

If you’d like to learn how to protect your Mac or Windows computers from malware, visit our Netsmarts article on the Flashback virus that explains the security settings and suggests some free anti-viruses.

Listeners’ Questions

While we had a great range of calls from listeners, there was only one we promised to get back to. Kay clearly has a virus infection on her Windows computers and we recommend the free MalwareBytes program to clean it up.

Our IT Queries site has more instructions on cleaning up a virus infection if you’re worried about a sick computer.

We love to hear from listeners so feel free call in with your questions or comments on 1300 222 702 or text on 19922702.

If you’re on Twitter you can tweet 702 Sydney on @702sydney and Paul at @paulwallbank.

Should you not be in the Sydney area, you can stream the broadcast through the 702 Sydney website and call in anyway.

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Tony Delroy’s Nightlife: Our digital reputation

How important is our online footprint?

December’s Tony Delroy’s Nightlife looked at the risks of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Along with being a great way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues using online services can have some unexpected effects.

Program podcast

A recording of the program is available from the ABC’s Tony Delroy’s Nightlife webpage. You can listen to it through the site or download it and listen to it as a podcast.

Topics covered

Tony and Paul covered a range of topics including the following questions;

  • Are we living in the social media age?
  • What is social media is?
  • Why people use social media?
  • How some folk have come unstuck using social websites?
  • Can doing the wrong thing hurt your reputation or career?
  • What the risks are during the christmas party season?
  • Are there too many social media services?
  • How businesses can really use them?
  • Where will these services go next?

Listeners’ questions

We had a great range of questions and comments from listeners and those we promised to get back to included how to shut down your Facebook account and the link to report abuse on the service.

Reporting Facebook abuse

If you’re being harassed on Facebook, you can report misuse at Facebook’s Help Centre. Their page includes instructions on dobbing in underage users, blocking irritating people and how to use their privacy settings.

Deleting a Facebook profile

Leaving Facebook is not easy, so on the Netsmarts website we have the detailed instructions on deleting your Facebook account.

Note with these instructions that you need to disable any applications you may have installed on Facebook before deleting the account. When you go to the Applications page you may be shocked at how many things are connecting to your page.

Do we have too many social media services?

Tony asked if we have too many social media platforms.

This is a topic we’ve covered previously on the website and while there’s no doubt many of the services around today won’t survive, some will become increasingly become important.

Next Nightlife tech program

Our next program will be on February 9 next year. We will probably have some spots over the summer break and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know about them as soon as we do.

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Cloud Computing Explained: 702 Sydney Weekends

This month’s 702 Sydney Weekend spot looks at cloud computing.

What on earth is cloud computing? Is it just another IT buzzword or something that you can use in your home and business?

On the November 20 ABC Weekends show, Paul and Lex Marinos discussed what cloud computing is and how it can help you.

We also helped out listeners with various computer and tech questions, including the following;

Malware

Sue was caught out by the DNS Changer Trojan that was recently busted by the FBI. Probably the best fix for this is downloading and running the free Malwarebytes software.

Our IT Queries site has instructions on the somewhat convoluted process for removing this Trojan and other viruses from your computer.

Synchronising an iPhone with iCloud and Google Calendars

One advantage we have with the cloud is that it means you can use devices anywhere, however there is a bug where iPhone calendar functions aren’t synchronising with Google Calendar.

Unfortunately the problem is the iCloud and Google services aren’t compatible on the iphone so one has to be turned off.

If your preference is to use the Google services, then you will have to turn off the iCloud services through the iPhone’s settings app and turning off all of the calendar and contact settings.

You may then want to check your Google services are being synchronised through the iTunes settings.

Sharing data between laptops.

One of the advantages with networking is that you can share data between computers. Sonya wanted to know how she can setup her windows 7 laptops to share data to an external drive.

The best option is to use a Windows 7 compatible Network Area Storage device that sits on the network.

For the setup to work, the network name has to be the same on all three devices, Microsoft has instructions for setting Windows7 network name and the hard drive will have the instructions included for setting it up correctly.

It’s also worthwhile using Microsoft’s Active Sync software to synchronise machines as well so you have files stored on your computer.

If you missed Sunday’s ABC program, there’s more details at Netsmarts’ Cloud Computing explained and The Networked Business, we’ll also be running a Demystifying the Cloud webinar on the Australian Businesswomen’s Network at the end of November.

That will probably be the last ABC 702 Weekends spot for 2011 unless there’s something else that comes up.

Subscribers to our newsletter get early notice of any upcoming programs and other useful information on getting more value online. Don’t miss the next program.

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Technology with Carol Duncan on ABC Newcastle

On ABC 1233 Newcastle with Carol Duncan we discuss privacy and security on social media after Facebook’s privacy changes.

In the occasional tech spot with Carol Duncan, we looked at Facebook’s new changes and what they mean to users.

The immediate changes to Facebook are the News Feed at the top of the page where updates and posts will be ranked according to what Facebook thinks are your interests, to the left of the screen is “the ticker” which will give summaries of updates.

Coming in the next few weeks will be the Timeline feature which will give show the history of all your posts.

A great summary of the changes with a hands on review is Jason Kincaid’s article on the Facebook changes in Tech Crunch. The official Facebook blog goes into the detail of all the new features.

The purpose of these changes is to increase Facebook’s value as an advertising platform and it raises the question of the viability of these networks.

One of the interesting features of these changes is that users will start seeing increased advertising, if you’re not happy with this our Netsmarts site goes through the process of shutting down your Facebook account.

Join us on ABC Newcastle with Carol Duncan to discuss these issues and more.

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