Toluu

jonathan nguyen

...what happens when technology and public relations collide

bad for journalism, terrible for prJune 4

it is sometimes joked about in public relations (pr) circles, that the slashing of journalism budgets will be a boon for pr professionals. the truth is the decline in good journalism starts us down a path that neuters one of the most powerful checks and balances in a democratic society.

keeping the bastards honest

if this is the only thing that you remember about the australian democrats, etch it fast.

a democratic society exists in a state of fluid contention. one side can never have too much power, because what we do know about power is that it corrupts. to this end, most of our power structures are such that there is always a counterpoint, hence:

• a bicameral system of parliament
• separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches
• government and opposition
• prosecution and defence
• mcdonalds and kfc (i might be joking here)

if we didn’t have this system, power shifts to one group and then we have a problem.

public opinion

public opinion, and consequently consent, is where all our human institutions derive their power. much of that opinion is informed by the media (old or new). the media is where we tell o

the mini clubman, how virals should be doneApril 13

here’s another example of how virals should be done.

via: http://nguyenduong.tumblr.com/

there will never be an end to printMarch 22

when the photograph came to town i’m sure there were people running around saying that the days of paint were numbered. then digital photography was going to wipe out film. the same was probably said about the pen when the typewriter came along. none of these things have come to pass. photographers are still using film, albeit far less of them, people are still painting, and pens still exist, although i haven’t seen a typewriter in a while.

you see where i’m coming from is…

my father is a newspaper man, i’m a p.r flack, who gets to talk to alot of editors over the course of a working week. sometimes it’s just day to day work stuff, but other times we get to catch up and just chew the fat about where the media business is headed. we talk about where the whole “print thing” is headed and there seems to be a fairly good consensus that print’s never going away. at least not anytime soon.

times they are a changing

the publishing industry is going through a big shakeup. that’s not a bad thing. some publishers are going bust, but others are adapting. others are working how online and print are going to work lockstep.

a conversation with an editor

i had the chance to spend some time with the editor of one of australia’s top tech pubs and he spoke very frankly about how his publication took a massive hit. what it made him do was cut out all of the fat in the business, almost halved his staff and had to look at smarter

“fuck right off” real facebook error messageJanuary 25

i was looking at the attendees to a a facebook event and where i showed up as an attendee the error message was quite explicit:

It’s you! But there’s like six other buttons that go to your profile, so fuck right off. Search

hmmm not sure if the facebook developers had inteded THAT particular message to actually appear, but that’s one hell of an an oops!

***update***
the message has been updated to:

tweetdeck vs. new twhirlJanuary 25

this is a subjective evaluation based on what’s important to me, and how i use twitter.

the short version for those short on time or attention span

twhirl tweetdeck winner multiple panes that can be moved around the screen one big giant windows twhirl no groups has groups tweetdeck keyword tracking no keyword tracking twhirl very clean interface cluttered twhirl

the new twhirl is a fantastic improvement but the winner is still tweetdeck because it has groups. as soon as twhirl gets groups, i will switch. at the time of writing twhirl version 0.8.8f was released and tweetdeck 0.21

if you have a bit more time or attention…

background

i started using twitter some time back as a complement to my blogging. there was a vast pool of interesting thoughts flying around in the twittersphere that were useful to draw inspiration from. i was still working as a systems architect at the time and did not need to be on twitter the whole day.

when i started working as a

full-time flack

i started to use twitter more extensively because it helped me get a feel for what the bi