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Making change and taking action are personal. Always has been. Now I find my commitment to sustainability has gone to another level as I like millions of parents before me have seen my worldview expand dramatically with the news that Sasha is modelling in London and Gabbie is studying acting at Fox Studio ...
As Virginia invaded our place from Bristol, Mal and I talked over Kofi with Gabbie about her future at the Studio and on Sunday ice cream against the sunset of at Watson Bay tastes the most nostalgic ... After achieving so much at swimming Gabbie passed the audition for the Brent Street Studio of Talent Development High School at Moore Park Brent Street is far more than a performing arts school. It is the energy centre of a much larger organisation, specialising in various facets of the entertainment industry. Students from an early age mix and mingle with professional performers. They watch actual rehearsals and are exposed to the real industry. This is unique and part of the culture that produces high caliber graduates year after year. When will I be famous? ELLE Macpherson's brother says he is fast expanding his child talent company to meet demand from active youngsters. Ben Macpherson's publicly-listed talent agency Artist and Entertainment Group acquired Sydney's Brent Street theatre and dance school in October and is now looking to take the brand national. Gabriella first Rich and now Famous ;-)

The Lives of Others 'Entering the blogosphere': some strategies for using blogs in social research … Since 1999 Media Dragon and other blogs have become a significant feature of online culture. They have been heralded as the new guardians of democracy, a revolutionary form of bottom-up news production and a new way of constructing self and doing community in late-modern times. This article highlights the significance of the blogosphere as a new addition to the qualitative researcher's toolkit and some of the practical, theoretical and methodological issues that arise from this. Some of the key ethical issues involved in blog data collection are also considered. The research context is a project on everyday understandings and experiences of morality

Jay Rosen The limitations of the crowd
On Creative Economy, MARGARET SIMONS looks at the results of an experiment in online reporting launched by Jay Rosen

Just when you think you’ve got a handle on what the internet is or might be, it shifts. Those of us who have in middle life familiarised ourselves with Google and email while dismissing social networking as a passing fad for teenagers should be thinking again. The data suggest that social networking may turn out to be what the Internet is all about – its killer application – and that our children will think us stupid for not seeing this at first glance.

Last month’s issue of Computer magazine made a bold claim – that social networking internet sites were not merely time wasters or means for teens to organise parties and share music. Rather they were “an evolution in human social interaction.” Professors Alfred Weaver and Benjamin Morrison – both researchers in computer science – claimed that the use of social networking sites is causing a major shift in the internet’s function and design...

• WANDER the mahogany-veneer rows of most Australian newsrooms over the last five years and you would have heard from various old farts that the internet was nothing to get too excited about. At first it was said to be a passing fad. Once that line ceased to be credible, it was said that it didn’t really matter. What mattered was content, and the credibility of the brand, and most of all good journalism. The method of delivery made no essential difference.
• · The internet looks like becoming a single social networking platform Catching up ; Slavic Village has street after empty street of boarded-up houses, their roofs caving in, collapsed balconies hanging from the fronts of buildings. Subprime people in Sydney all living in the streets …
• · Michael Fullilove of Lowy Institute for International Policy:
This paper argues that diasporas (communities which live outside, but retain their connections with, their homelands) are getting larger, thicker and stronger – with important implications for global economics, identity, politics and security. World wide webs: Diasporas and the international system ; Effective protection against insider trading is critical to market confidence and, over time, liquidity. This paper deals with the key company and market risks associated with poorly governed director and executive security trading. Director and executive security trading
• · · It remains something newspapers are embracing as the 2008 presidential campaign hits its stride and the primaries loom Political Bloggers at Newspaper Sites in Drivers Seat for 2008 Campaign Coverage ; Today I heard Raintown by Deacon Blue for the first time in about 20 years Artistic coverage - Nostalgia for Beginners: Raintown
• · · · Analytics is like writing, or art. There isn't a single "analytics" to learn, rather it's a state of mind paired with a set of skills. You need to love exploration and discovery, solving puzzles, shaping data like clay, proving yourself wrong. Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved. We Feel Fine ; Ingram chairman John Ingram issued a brief statement on Amazon's recent move to drive POD publishers to use Booksurge if they want their books sold directly by the e-tailer, noting it clearly is alarming many of our publisher partners. At the same time, Ingram reports that so far we've been unable to get a response directly from Amazon.com. He says, We all live in a world where decisions are made about insourcing and outsourcing, and free choice is important. At Ingram Book and Lightning Source, we are going to work really hard to continue to be the compelling choice as publishers make their outsourcing decisions.... At Lightning Source, we produce a great product and thus do justice to our publishers' valuable titles. There is no question that we provide the highest print quality, the fastest turnaround speeds, and the most comprehensive portfolio of channels for a publisher's books. Amazon changes rules for print-on-demand publisher
• · · · · Bank bailouts: corporate success is the success of a few individual executives; but when the company fails, we must all fail with it. Socialism for the rich: the unwise free market; ON MY 50th birthday I've officially become a happily grumpy old man. Here for the record is what makes me grumpy.
People who talk and read during the pre take-off airline safety demonstration - especially the federal minister who chatted through the life jacket instructions on her way from Adelaide to Sydney the other day.
Wires under my desk that become entangled without being touched. Politicians and bureaucrats who fail to recognise they are the employees and we are the employers. People who take forever to say goodbye when leaving one's home. Back-office types who request the "original" death certificate when sorting out an estate. Marx and Engels
• · · · · · Graeme Wood, the founder of one of this country's most successful online destinations, actually took "making money while you sleep" to a logical conclusion by creating a site that effectively sells beds at hotels to a world virtually addicted to travel. ONE of the greatest pay-offs for the new-age online entrepreneurs is that as soon as they create a website that eyes want to surf to on the internet, on a regular basis, and the marketing campaign has some traction, it's just a matter of making money while they sleep. What If Wotif; Here’s a cool demonstration of pure engagement. No, it’s not an innovative new media idea or the hottest viral on YouTube. It’s a “How tall are you?” measuring stick. On its own, knowing Arnold Schwarzenegger is 187 cm tall doesn’t grab me, but the knowledge that Maria Sharapova and Jozef Imrich is as well ;-)

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We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc
-Acceptance Speech, Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature

According to a famous Cold River philosopher, there are three types of people: those who make things happen; those who things happen to; and those who say, what happened? In cyberspace, 15 minutes of fame becomes 15 certain seconds ... But the Guardian Newspaper in London ok, even if they do misquote! It's a Darwinian process - About 99 percent of these ideas are going to die. But some will emerge and spread. Warhola of 15 - 15 seconds and my Brissie connection Baden ;-)

If God made us who made God? In the end, the web is about connections
Websites link to resources, resources recommend articles, articles refer to experts.

Without links, websites are invisible. Social networks create links between people, forming connections based on interests, expertise, past employment or education, and friendships. Law librarians, while remaining aware of their pitfalls, can use social networks such as LinkedIn, Ning, Facebook, and even MySpace to promote useful websites and legal resources as well their own expertise and interests. "A survey of U.S. journalists by Brodeur, a unit of Omnicom Group suggests that blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news, but also influence the tone and editorial direction of reporting. The survey is part of an ongoing research project by Brodeur in conjunction with Marketwire to dissect and understand the impact that social media and blogs are having on traditional news delivery. The online survey was conducted among a random sample of North American reporters and editors, and was focused on understanding how social media and blogs influence their work."

• Head Report; [Tail Report has launched with the goal to map out how money is made in the blogosphere. Tail Report works by asking users to anonymously submit information about their site's traffic, rank and monthly revenue. In return, the user receives a custom report detailing what other websites are making and how their revenue compares based a number of factors, such as traffic, rank, number of RSS subscribers, age, number of employees, content, and ad networks. Tail Report ; ]
• · It's well known that kids influence family decisions. The Economist calls them Trillion Dollar kids, but the gist is that kids under 14 influenced almost half of American household spending in 2005. That's around $700 billion. Now imagine all that persuasive energy put behind sustainable enterprises and you've got a revolution underway... Dillhons: Out Of The Mouths Of Children;
• · What is it about tattoos? When I was young, having your skin marked with 'Mom' in a heart, a skull and cross bones, or a loved one's name was left to sailors and others tough enough to take the pain and the consequences when they changed girlfriends. Today, tattoos are fashionably mainstream... like Cold River Tattoos: More Than Skin Deep ; In Ezra Harel's first interview to the Israeli press, he declared that if bond-holders of Rogosin (TASE:ROGO), the company he controlled under Sunday, had been "rational, not greedy an arrangement could have been reached". Lessons in Greed
• · ·, By Charles Babcock, Thomas Claburn, John Foley, W. David Gardner, Antone Gonsalves, Nicholas J. Hoover, K.C. Jones, Elena Malykhina, Richard Martin, Paul McDougall, Marianne McGee, Chris Murphy, Cora Nucci, Art Wittman, and Serdar Yegulalp, InformationWeek, January 26, 2008
"Our guide to great blogs and Web sites worth adding to your bookmarks. The selection ranges from obvious picks like Technabob and Search Engine Watch to more obscure destinations such as Location One, istartedsomething, and GottaBeMobile Top 60 Little-Known Technology Web Sites; Once upon a time, in the great city of Milwaukee, lived a brilliant legal professional named Bella. Bella was part of the litigation practice group at Big, Bold & Smith, s.c. Every Monday the group met to discuss current issues. One Monday, a colleague named Greg informed everyone of a recent decision that could affect the outcome of a large case the firm was handling. After the meeting, Bella asked, "How did you hear about that case?" Greg answered, - I saw it on a blog I monitor. Bella is Bewildered About Blogs
• · · · Scientific American: Wikis, blogs and other collaborative web technologies could usher in a new era of science. Or not. By M. Mitchell Waldrop: "The explosively growing World Wide Web has rapidly transformed retailing, publishing, personal communication and much more. Innovations such as e-commerce, blogging, downloading and open-source software have forced old-line institutions to adopt whole new ways of thinking, working and doing business. Science could be next. A small but growing number of researchers--and not just the younger ones--have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open blogs, wikis and social networks of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement--yet--their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based "Science 2.0" is not only more collegial than the traditional variety, but considerably more productive. It's a Darwinian process = About 99 percent of these ideas are going to die. But some will emerge and spread ; French women d’un certain âge tend not to get fat and to stay lucky. They don’t see sex as a privilege for the young and beautiful...Women of France; It’s not just fads and fashions in the likes of shoes or music that spread through social networks. There are also states of mind – happiness, loneliness, altriusm... ; Show me a woman with a good three inches of cleavage on display, and I’ll show you a woman with little faith in her powers of conversation... Truth
• · · · · “Where is home?” asks George Konrád in his memoir of life under totalitarianism. We know the answer: Memory is home... WHERE?; Melancholia is a miraculous invitation to rise above the contented status quo and imagine untapped possibilities. We need sorrow to make us human, alive... Ask any soul-baring 40-year-old exile what he most longs for, and he likely won’t tell you it’s a better career or a more money: he wants freedom to search for meaning of death ;-) Sadness ; Yet another faked memoir: this one from a “mixed-race former child drug-runner” from South-Central
Fake memoirs are once again hitting the headlines. Only last week, Margaret B Jones’ ‘autobiographical’ account of growing up as a mixed-race foster child on the wrong side of the tracks in Los Angeles, Love and Consequences, was celebrated as a work of inspiration. One of America’s leading literary critics, Michiko Kakutani, said it was a ‘humane and deeply affecting memoir’. Now, however, the author has been unveiled as a very white Margaret Seltzer, and her story has been exposed as pure fiction. Auto lies; Memoirs ; Crying Wolf
• · · · · · Not only does Wikipedia need its vandals, the vandals need an orderly Wikipedia, too. Without order, their culture-jamming lacks a context... With Cold River, whatever the rest is, it isn’t silence. The Cold War streams still dominate Central European literature and heart ; Terrorists: often sour, lazy nobodies, ugly, of febrile imagination and small talent, who can only become somebody by murdering others... Terror

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NO ONE has ever accused Media Dragon of being shy when it comes to making its pitch for Cold River :-) Radio dreams come alive in the blog PR whistles a different tune

I am an optimist. I believe in our ability to shape the future, right wrongs, make life better and create new opportunities. That's why I am a huge believer in little people who pay taxes and who do make a difference … Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk ;-)

Jogging through the websites Waning influence
Media Dragons came across a recent US survey which notes that 90% of American leaders say dysfunctional behaviours have become acceptable in the workplace. Shifting blame, gossiping and harbouring territorial attitudes are three of the most destructive behaviours. Equally discouraging is the finding that 64% of leaders do little or nothing to change the pattern.

And then there is this - Engage. If you’re going to get the benefits of the Edge you have to spend time there, not just pop in for a quick visit. Anything that starts with “E” is always good by me. Energy, Education, Emotion, Experience and, yes, Edge.

• My wise friend June overcomes all her difficulty in life by imagining that she is like a cork on a huge wave ... Living on the Edge; [In our and/and world, definitions of all sorts are becoming blurred and no more so than the roles of writer and artist, filmmaker and ideas person. To me many people in advertising are stuck in the past, worrying about their ideas being taken seriously as creative contributions. Write STUFF;
As with word-processed files, a lot of metadata may hide in a digital photo. A.J. Levy highlights this fact and provides information about some tools that can help you find it. Finding Data Hidden in Digital Photos ]
• · Blogging the brand | Australian IT ; Hiring blogger ...
• · Blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face, new Australian research has found. News Corp Has Big Plans for MySpace.com; Blogging boosts your social life: research
• · · Mark Bahnisch deploys years of experience to doubting research showing that blogging boosts your social life, while Peter Black looks at Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ apparent dumping of his girlfriend on Wikipedia itself, and also contemplates the death of email. Missing Link Daily; Via Club Troppo and courtesy of Blogpond comes word of a Nielsen survey claiming that 2.3 million Australians have Media Dragons Media Dragons: How many Australian bloggers are there, anyway?
• · · · HAVING an onlife life revolving around sites such as MySpace, Facebook or Youtube does not lead to less time in front of the telly, according to a study. But it does cut face-to-face communication. Diggers Everywhere; Australians DO Blog - number of Australian bloggers
• · · · · It’s not what other people think of you that matters. It’s what they can find out about you on the Web that will affect your ability to get a job or promotion, rent an apartment, buy a house, be accepted into the school of your choice or find the love of your life. How to defend your online reputation: five tips ; Ian McPhee PDF The ANAO’s contribution to improving public sector administration
• · · · · · Gregg Keizer: Corporate executives should think twice about the information they disclose on social networking sites such as Facebook, a Hong Kong-based security company warned today after duping gullible CEOs and finance directors into revealing personal details that could be used for so-called spear-phishing attacks. CEOs on Facebook easy to dupe says researcher, ; Stephanie Overby: There are things you can do in just one third of an hour that can have a meaningful and, yes, even a long-term, positive effect on your life, your job and your enterprise. 20 things you can do in 20 minutes to be more successful at work