"Nobody intends to build a wall!" (Walter Ulbricht, Leader of the GDR, June 15th 1961)
The Australian Federal Labor Government is pushing to introduce mandatory internet filtering in Australia. As usual, it is not about censorship: it's about protecting children from the evils of the internet.
"Internet filtering laws outdated before they are passed." Read the full CORE statement that A/Prof. Bjorn Landfeldt, University of Sydney and I published on behalf of the Computer Research and Education Association (CORE) representing Australasian Computer Science lecturers and professors. To quote: "CORE sees at best limited benefits from the proposed filtering scheme, and high potential risks if the scheme were to be implemented without proper investigation of the possible side effects."
More frankly: Net filtering a $33m waste: child groups (The Australian)
Learn about Filtering. Recommended reading: ALIA's Ten questions on censorship for Senator Stephen Conroy, EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia) on Internet Censorship, EFA's nocleenfeed.com site and the Somebody Think Of The Children blog.
Check out Rette Deine Freiheit (in German)
| Research | Teaching | Administration | Media | CV | Conferences of Interest |
Alpha 60: I shall calculate so that failure is impossible.
Lemmy Caution: I shall fight so that failure is possible.
Jean-Luc Godard, Alphaville.
1965.
"This often happens: you imagine a territory rich in
possibilities and try to think of how you might get to it, and
then suddenly one day you look around and realise that you have
been there for quite a long time."
Brian Eno, Ambient 4: On Land.
1982.
"Ich habe keine besondere Begabung, sondern bin nur leidenschaftlich neugierig."
Albert Einstein.
Currently I am a Professor of Computing in the School of Computing & Information Systems (YAMM) at the University of Tasmania (UTAS). Founded in 1890, UTAS is one of Australia's oldest universities (sometimes called sandstone universities). I am a research fellow with the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) for the 2009-2011 period. I am also Interim Co-Director (Development) of the recently established Human Interface Technology Lab (HITlab Australia) which is linked to the original HITlab at the University of Washington, Seattle, U.S.A. and the HITlab N.Z. in Christchurch, N.Z.
Wooooo We in Hobart and HITlab Australia in Launceston are (again!) fortunate to be able to participate in the global ShanghAI Lectures about Natural and Artificial Intelligence. This time the lectures are held at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and broadcast via videoconference to Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and a number of universities across the planet. The lectures are complemented by 3D collaborative virtual environments and other community-building activities to promote interaction and cooperation among the participants. Check out some impressions from the first lecture on 30 Sept 2010 here, here and here.
| A few of us explore joint research interests in the Information
and Interaction Research Group ('official' site). Check out current and former members of the I2 group
and also some of our research.
Congratulations to the UTAS Team for scoring the 1st price in the 24h Student Design Challenge (the conference challenge that was held in Melbourne VIC) that was one of many memorable events at OzCHI 2009. As a matter of fact the UTAS team scored again the 1st price in the OzCHI 24h Student Design Challenge (the conference challenge that was held in Brisbane QLD). Congratulations! Another UTAS team scored the 3rd price in the OzCHI 24h Student Design Online Challenge with their Lighting Up Salamanca design project. Congratulations! |
 |
Tasmania (marketed as Intelligent Island and not to be confused with Tanzania or Transilvania) is known for fabulous food, (largely) pristine World Heritage wilderness, Errol Flynn and Tasmanian Devils (Taz anyone?). More recently Tasmania (originally known as Van Diemen's Land) has started to be known for princesses and cannibals.
Tasmania is developing a reputation for consumer backlash changing corporate rollercoasting. Hobart based Cascade Brewery just had to reverse their decision to reduce beer bottle sizes from 375ml to 333ml while keeping the price the same. Apparently this was done to match the bottle sizes of imported 'premium' beers typically sold in 333ml bottles, not to disguise a hefty price increase. Nearby Cadbury Chocolate Factory just announced they will reverse their decision to reduce the amount of cocoa butter in their products by adding cheaper vegetable fat. Apparently it was all done in the consumer's best interests but interestingly, Cadbury's answer to the question "You have changed the taste of Cadbury chocolate. Why have you done this?" does not not even mention vegetable fat or palm oil, and neither does the rest of their web site providing answers to Frequently Asked Questions.
Physically I am situated in Hobart which is Australia's second oldest (and also second driest only second to Adelaide) capital city. Hobart is also Australia's southernmost capital city and gateway to Antarctica. Considering the location it is perhaps not surprising that during summer, Hobart experiences the most daylight hours of any capital city in Australia.
Check the Wrest Point Webcam on top of the Wrest Point tower to get an impression of the Sandy Bay suburb where the university campus is located and this picture to see Hobart and the Derwent River from Mount Wellington (1270m). And here you can see Mount Wellington, downtown Hobart and the Tasman Bridge from the other side of the River Derwent.
Before coming to beautiful Tasmania I was Professor and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) Chair of eBusiness at Charles Darwin University (arguably Australia's youngest university founded in 2004) which is located in Darwin at Australia's tropical top end. Darwin is a relatively small and definitely remote multi-cultural city (some say a 19th century frontier town catapulted into the 21 century) of about 100,000 people (including Palmerston and other nearby settlements). Check here to get an impression of the Territory (especially this one). Despite Darwin's tropical climate I was able to buy this Lebkuchenhaus (gingerbread house) at Bar Espresso on Mitchell Street. Darwin's coziest coffeeshop is (was?) The Shed hidden away on CDU's Casuarina campus (Casuarina a Darwin suburb). The Student Union link is broken but I've got a couple of pictures here and here (yes it's tropical climate).
Prior to the Darwin stint 2004-2005 I was with the Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. Check the Sydney harbour cam to get an impression of one of the most beautiful cities on this planet (don't forget that we are 10 hours ahead of GMT and compared to the Northern hemisphere the seasons are reversed! Also, you'll need to have java enabled to control the camera).
Before I moved to Sydney in October 2000 I was with the Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Information Technology, University of Zurich, Switzerland (4.5 years as doctoral student and research assistant followed by 12 months as postdoc). The lab just celebrated its 20th Anniversary! I spent the last two of my Zurich years managing the department's participation and conducting the relevant research in a large European research project on information filtering and collaborative filtering (SELECT). Check the NZZ Webcam or the Switch LiveCam to get an impression of "little big city" Zurich.
Please see my research page for more detailed information about my research activities, publications and grants.
On Monday, November 30, 2009 we organized Interacting with Information Technologies a workshop co-sponsored by ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII) Taskforce on "Understanding and Extracting Value from IT Investments" and CSIRO ICT Centre (Hobart, TAS). Invited speakers were Professor Michael B. Twidale, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Associate Professor Marcus Foth, QUT.
Feel free to come along for a visit! Past research visitors include Professor Michael Twidale (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Professor Rolf Pfeifer (AI-Lab, University of Zurich) and Professor Gerhard Schwabe (Information Management, University of Zurich). Gerhard also made possible a visit by one of his PhD students Christoph Goeth. Artist Kirsty Boyle, one of the leading English speaking authorities on the Karakuri tradition (ancient Japanese robot culture), visited us in November 2008. More recently we welcomed Associate Professor Marcus Foth who is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia and Associate Professor Doug Oard (College of Information Studies and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park which is just around the corner from Washington, DC).
Congratulations (as of 2009) to the many of my research students that scored Apple University Consortium (AUC) scholarships (yes, that's where they went). Last year Paris Buttfield-Addison (then Honours student, now working on his PhD in personal information management) scored a prestigious national Student Developer Scholarship. [Jon] Manning (then just finishing his Honours thesis on the role of mobile HCI in organizing car sharing) scored another this year (and so did Andrew Bennett who I hope to lure into HCI research as well). The three of them run Secret Lab (they say their office is located in a coffee shop but I reckon it's a different universe). Matthew D'Orazio, Tim Nugent and Peter Lyle scored Honours scholarships worth $5000 each. We are all grateful to Tony Gray our AUC Development Fund Coordinator for his engagement and enthusiasm.
Check out Thomas Grayston's PhD research on Augmented Reality as a Training Tool for Wound Field Management (with the School of Nursing).
"I am not sure, if you remember me. I was IT student at $university. You were my lecturer/tutor for $subject. You were one of the best teachers I have come across in Australia. I was one of the most active student in your class."
At UTAS I am teaching Computing in Context (a postgraduate HCI/CSCW flavored research seminar unit) and Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design(3rd year undergraduate unit).
Feel free to have a look at my 2009 HCI SETL scores (Student Evaluation of Teaching and Learning) in the Unit Evaluation Report and Teaching Evaluation Report.
Just recently I've been nominated for Vice-Chancellor's Awards for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching and Learning in the categories "Individual Award for Teaching Excellence" and "Individual Citation". The Pro Vice-Chancellor (Students & Education)'s office got so excited they sent the news in four separate letters (watch out it's a 1.3M PDF file).
UTAS is one of the 20+ universities from across the globe that are participating simultanously in the ShanghAI Lectures on embodied intelligence that are broadcast by videoconference from Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, complemented by 3D collaborative virtual environments and other community-building activities to promote interaction and cooperation among the participants. All lectures (including invited talks) are available on the ShanghAI site. On Dec 3, 2009 we had the pleasure of contributing to the ShanghAI Lectures. Check out the video stream here.
At Charles Darwin University I taught HIT243 eBusiness Risk and Security Management (2nd year) in 2005; co-taught HIT161 (Introduction to) Computer Systems (1st year) and co-taught HIT322 Enterprise Application Development (3rd year) in 2004.
At the University of Technology, Sydney I was involved in the capstone project Information Technology Project Planning and Design (with Rene Leveaux), 31950 Networked Enterprise Design (lecturer, coordinator), Masters/MBA subjects 32532 Conducting Business Electronically (lecturer, coordinator) and 32531 Global Information Systems (coordinator).
Research Coordinator (Computing), School of Computing & Information
Systems, UTAS (1/2008-); Deputy Head, School of Computing, UTAS (1/2007-EOS), Research Coordinator, School of Computing,
UTAS (1/2006-EOS); Research Program Coordinator
"Enterprise-centric Computing", ARC Research Network in Enterprise
Information Infrastructure; Coordinator (with Dr Jennie Carroll,
University of Sydney) "Mobility & Accessing Information
Infrastructure" taskforce, ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information
Infrastructure. Also at various stages Deputy Honours Coordinator, School
of Computing, UTAS; Research Champion, School of Information Technology,
CDU; Faculty Research Group Convenor, Faculty of Information Technology,
University of Technology, Sydney. And on the more geeky side of life I was
Usenet (Netnews) server administrator approx. 1995-2001. The skills
acquired certainly helped conduct research including this (a more detailed
version can be found in this book chapter) and this. Participation in various development workshops and courses covering
topics including presentation techniques, people management, graduate
research supervision, leadership. Please email me for detailed CV. Check out 90
Seconds of Fame (Jon on 'Carpooling while avoiding creepy people' at
0:45, Paris on 'The Pile High Club' at 4:30) Until recently you could catch me on ABC Hobart during "Technology
talk" with Louise Saunders (every second Wednesday since 13 Feb 2007).
Live coverage via internet streaming is available here
and here
you can peek into the studio. Our work on the
wider impact of spam filtering was featured on the ABC Science Show
presented by Robyn Williams (24 June 2006); "Faster, funkier" in the
(Attitude section of The
Mercury, 7 April 2006) refers to Hobart-based mobile computing
studies conducted in late 2005 (with Christoph Goeth, University of
Zurich), "Internationales Symposium fur Informationswissenschaft (ISI)
an der HTW Chur" (REVUE
ELECTRONIQUE SUISSE DE SCIENCE DE L'INFORMATION No 1 January 2005, p.
34) mentions our Darwin work on mobile information access in the context
of public transport (with Omer Mahmood, Charles Darwin University); some
of my Sydney-based ubiquitous computing work is discussed in "Forschung
aktuell: Seifenschachteln und intelligente Raeume. Pervasive 2002 in
Zuerich" (c't Magazin fuer Computer
Technik 19/2002),
"Pervasive 2002: Big Brother als Butler und pers?licher Sekret?" (Heise Online August 2002); some of my
Zurich-based work is discussed in "Intelligente Software ist zu dumm"Administration
CV
Media
Other media events: "Moving to hi-tech beat" (The Mercury 13 August 2006); "Remote Control Rage" (The Mercury 20 August 2006); "Computerforscher mit Weitblick" [in German] (academics.de 23 March 2006); "Jetzt ruft Australien. Hattinger nimmt Lehrauftrag in Sydney an (in German)" (Westfaelische Rundschau 5 October 2000), "Ruf fuer Dr. Lueg nach Sydney (in German)" (Ruhr-Nachrichten 26 September 2000).
EOS = End Of School. As of 1/1/2008 the School of
Computing has merged with the School of Information Systems to become the
(surprise, surprise)
Note: following numerous "complaints" from my students I commenced posting further updates on life's wonders on twitter.
Never again: Bose charges USD 100 (more precisely: they attempt to) for fixing a tiny problem with the USD 299 QuietComfort 2 Noise Cancelling headset. A lot of customers perceive the problem as being caused by the inappropriate use of cheap plastic (see for example comments here). What an unusual way to tell customers to shop elsewhere next time. (1/11/07)
Interesting: a few days ago habbo.de (habbohotel.com) informed me, via email, that my child registered on their web site. The idea seems to be that children have to provide the email address of a parent so that parents are informed about their children's activities. The interesting thing is that, to the best of my knowledge, I don't have any children. habbo.de never replied to my inquiry as to how they verify that an email address belongs to a parent... (23/11/07)
Amazing: In early December I stayed at the Mercure Hotel Sydney. For the past two weeks I am trying to get a proper invoice. The booking was made electronically which means somewhere they must have an electronic record of my (correct) details. First I received an invoice where both name and address were incorrect topped up by an incorrect parking charge (I did not even bring a car). Second, I received an invoice where the address was correct but the name was still incorrect. After phoning(!) them (and talking to four different staff) I received an invoice where -for the first time- my name was correct but the address was reverted to a nonsense address. AAAArgh! (20/12/2007) It seems to be a chain-wide problem as the invoice I got from the Mercure hotel in Launceston a few months ago was just as messy (I also remember a fairly impolite receptionist who had all kinds of things to do--serving the customer standing in front of her was not among them though) (20/1/2009)
t-mobile.de seems to be one of the last companies unable (or unwilling?) to provide vendor-independent web access (sponsored by M$ perhaps?) When visiting their web site to check an MMS message I received I was lectured "You are using another browser that is not Internet Explorer 6.0 [sic] or above. With the browser that you are using we cannot guarantee the full functionality of this website". A bit of functionality would be sufficient but retrieving the MMS message did not work at all when accessing the site using Apple's Safari browser. Firefox triggered the same warning but at least I could check my Chrissie message! (20/12/2007) Update: about nine months later they still haven't fixed the bug (or is it perhaps the shortage of qualified IT staff that is haunting them?) (29/8/2008).
Always expect the unexpected (when dealing with banks). Australian bank ANZ introduced a new pre-paid looks-like-a-credit-card VISA-branded "gift card". The fine print reveals that businesses may apply "tolerance factors" (what the heck is that supposed to mean?) that can be as high as 20%(sic) of the bill. In the case of restaurants it's only 10% but watch out (again): "For example, if using the Visa Gift Card at a restaurant where your bill is $100 dollars, your Visa Gift Card balance must be $110 otherwise the transaction will be declined." You couldn't use the card even if you decided not to tip or to tip using other means as this requires that "the transaction has been settled by the merchant (sometimes a few days later)".
"Panda Security" recently started to spam one of my accounts. Genuine spam--I never requested their services. You know there are people out there who can help you understand why spamming is a bad thing...
amazon.co.uk just offered an amazing shopping experience. When ordering a DVD (Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa) the site told me "*** Unfortunately the item cannot be delivered to your selected destination." (keep in mind I tried to order a DVD not a rocket launcher). Trying the option "E-mail to Amazon.co.uk Customer Service" the site insists that I provide further details as "The order ID you entered doesn't look correct". Well, the problem is that amazon.co.uk did not provide an order ID in the first place which means I can't provide them with an order ID which means the whole process is stuffed which means I am annoyed which means amazon.co.uk drops off my list of preferred suppliers. Easy isn't it. And now I'll check if ebay is offering the item :-) (4/8/2008)
HSBC again. In early August 2008 ACNielsen sent an email informing me that "As a valued customer, we(sic) at HSBC are really interested in your opinion of our customer service. I emailed back saying that HSBC communications delivered the worst experience I ever had in the banking sector and suggested they just check the paper trail left behind. Presumably ACNielsen don't bother reading replies to their emails because they sent the same email 3 times (and I relied 3 times). On the last occasion I cc:ed my reply to research@hsbc.com.au as suggested by HSBC ("If you have any questions about the aims of the study email HSBC at Research@hsbc.com.au").
I couldn't believe it: I got a reply within seconds. Just not what you'd expect:
From: Postmaster@hsbc.com.au
Subject: DELIVERY
FAILURE: User research (research@hsbc.com.au) not listed in Domino
Directory.
Weird. The German web site schuelerprofile.de ("student profiles") has started (without my approval!) to introduce German female under-age students to me (Stefanie, 15; Vanessa, 13). schuelerprofile.de appears to be a genuine student community web site but the email address they are sending these offers to isn't related to my job in any way! Presumably, they are sending these unsolicted messages because a) some student registered using one of my email addresses (it is not one of my uni addresses) and b) they obviously don't verify email addresses provided to them which I find a bit disturbing. (29/8/2008) By now they are spamming my account fairly regularly. Do you think they track who's linking to their site? (16/9/2008)
The Australian's Exclusive Poll page still features a fairly Exclusive Bug. The poll mechanisms refuses to accept my vote telling me "You must enable cookies to vote in this poll" even though my browser does accept cookies... it's just that my browser does not accept third-party cookies. Months ago I emailed The Australian in regards to this bug but they don't see to care... is it deliberate perhaps? (16/9/2008) I just tried to vote in the Bill Henson vote but the bug hasn't been fixed yet.(6/10/2008) I just tried to vote on bailing out ABC learning but the bug still hasn't been fixed.(7/11/2008). Now I tried to vote on Labour flagging tax increases but but the bug still hasn't been fixed (24/4/2009).
Curiosity kills the cat? I just munched on some Deli-style POTATO CHIPS Honey Soy Chicken made by Red Rock Deli. I did not expect to find a chicken in there (after all it's just a tiny 28g satchel) but it might have been a mistake to read the list of ingredients. The only ingredient that includes the word 'chicken' (and it's a bloody long list of ingredients considering it's just -youknow- chips) is [did you guess it?] chicken fat. Urps. At least the trans fat content is 0.0g. (25/09/2008)
Bad design certainly kills passion. In the spur of the moment I thought it would be nice to spend a night or two at the Henry Jones Art Hotel (just around the corner really). I've been there a few times for business and leisure and it's a really nice place. Went to their web site (nice to look at), tried to find rates (must be somewhere) & got bounced off to a somewhat overloaded www.puretasmania.com.au web site. Once you detect and click the TINY "Prices" link they advise you to "use the drop-downs below to view rates and availabilities at all Henry Jones Art Hotel room types over a 10 day period." Well it seems rooms are never ever available. Table Hobart_2 (Hello? I am not a programmer trying to trace bugs in the web site, I am a prospective customer) lists dates but no rooms. Neither rooms that are available nor rooms that are unavailable. Oops: "To view rates and availability for this location, please click on the (+) icon to expand the appropriate group." Well, clicking on the (+) doesn't do anything either. Whatever. Idea shelved, money saved. (01/10/2008)
YouTube also shows some strange behavior. The site puts up the following information: "You appear to be viewing YouTube from this country: Australia." Well, I am certainly using an Australian IP address. But then: "We have highlighted videos from this country and selected the following language for viewing the website: English (US)". So why don't they offer English (AU) if they actually identified that I am from Australia? Ignorance? Another go at world domination? And finally: "Click "OK" to accept this change, or click "Cancel" to view the site in English." Are they trying to say that "English (US)" isn't English? They even offer a link "Show message in English"... (03/10/2008)
I just tried to check rates for Stamford rooms in Melbourne. After entering location and dates (for some strange reason they show only the 1st digit of 1-2 digit days and only the first 2.5 digits of 4-digits years) and clicking on Search I am directed to a page that asks me again for the information I just provided. Ok, patient as I am I re-enter location and dates, click Search and... get rewarded by an empty page. Not quite actually: the Stamford logo is in the top left corner of that otherwise empty page (trying the same using some other browser I was presented a somewhat boring Please wait while your rates are loaded... animation). Would the quality of the room service also depend on the shoes I am wearing or the car I am driving? [sadly, the answer may be 'yes'] Or is there some secret plan to push people to fairly reliable last-minute sites? Why don't they just provide a link if they can't bother serving customers properly? (03/10/2008)
Barracuda Spam Firewall has emerged as a major spam source. In a recent incident of a spammer abusing one of my email addresses, a considerable number of Barracuda Spam Firewall messages alleged that "Your message to: $address was blocked by our Spam Firewall." HELLO? I did not send any of those messages. You'd think Spam Firewall developers would know by now that spammers abuse email addresses? Is every organisation using Barracuda Spam Firewall now going to be black-listed by SpamCop? Our own university was blacklisted in 2006 allegedly because we adhered to agreed-upon internet protocols (RFCs) recommending to bounce back messages sent to email addresses that do not exist (anymore) at this university. (22/10/2008)
I was just looking into some flight bookings and noticed that QANTAS (an acronym explained here) offers a "Qantas Toolbar [that] enables you to search for flights directly from your browser no matter what website you are on." Excellent I thought. I clicked Download the Firefox Toolbar now! and... Incompatible Extension: "Qantas Airways Toolbar 1.25 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.0.3." (the most recent version at that time). AAARGH. (22/10/2008)
I just contributed some information to the "Easing the pain of a day on a plane: how to make the flight to Europe more bearable" blog entry on ninemsn.com.au. I've done that trip way too many times but regardless, I don't think it's "horror" as they call it. Entered my details, entered the text, clicked "submit" and... nothing happens. Oh I forgot it's ninemsn and I am not using Internet Explorer. Funny how often Microsoft-related web sites feature such bugs... I used Firefox because it's superior. BAD BAD BAD BOY.
Just on this note. ninemsn.com.au actually appears to have a problem with quality contributions in general. If you don't manage to finish writing your contribution within 30 seconds or so the web site's automatic re-load feature ensures you have to start all over again. Just happened to me. I give up!!! No, I won't. Watch this space!
Something academic for a change. Does anyone know if this Dec 10, 2008 CDU press release ("New research reveals nurses and midwives staying in the Territory") reporting on a Northern Territory Department of Health and Families (DHF) commissioned study and this Dec 11, 2008 NTNews article ("Nurses on the run") talk about the same study? To quote from the newspaper article: "NURSES are fleeing the Territory because they are feeling 'burned out', 'bullied' and mistreated by management, according to a new report. And the Territory's shortage is about to get worse with hundreds of nurses with more than 20 years' experience about to retire. The nurses and midwives mobility study was released yesterday and listed stressful work environment and lack of support from management as two of the top reasons to leave the Territory."
How bizarre. Australian Cambridge University Press does not like email from Australian universities? I emailed them using my UTAS account re a book order they took so long to process that the credit card expired in the meantime. Their fully automated response: "Your message [to info@cambridge.edu.au] was not delivered because it was rejected by Spamphibian Gateway". Did they select their spam filter because of the funny name perhaps? In the meantime I'll check abebooks.com for a used copy of the book (at half the price). (19/1/2009)
Feedback truly appreciated. ratestogo.com.au is a last minute hotel booking web site. I was surprised to see they gave their special "recommendation" tick to a centrally located 4-star Melbourne hotel I stayed at a couple of years ago and where I enjoyed a "Chancellor" room featuring coin-size holes in the bed cover, paint falling off the bathroom walls, aircon either noisy of dead (tried a number of rooms) and a coffee-table size balcony with views against a nearby wall (photos available upon request). I went to ratestogo's feedback site, described my experience, asked how their special ticks are allocated and got told: "Please limit your message to 200 characters. You have used 441 characters." Characters, not words. Guess what? lastminute.com.au has similar offers (and got a fair share of my bookings already) and in terms of documenting consumer experiences tripadvisor.com rulez. (20/1/2009)
Another dinosaur? gotalk seems to be another company unable (or unwilling?) to provide vendor-independent web access. When visiting their web site to alert them to a childish grammar mistake in the headline of their online advertisement ("Take one of these top selling combo's and get almost $200 of extra added value") the General Inquiry form lectured me: "Please note: the best internet browser to view the gotalk site is Internet Explorer 7 or below. If you are using Firefox or Safari internet browsers, you will not be able to view the full functionality available on the site and in the My Account area." I am not sure what "full functionality" is supposed to mean when using a simple feedback form for submitting an inquiry but acknowledging that my inquiry was received is not a functionality (assuming that the form works but I doubt it).(09/02/2009)
Do they know something we don't? One of my favorite DVD online shops, DeVoteD, offers the HDD version of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey alerting customers to the fact that "This title Available on Tuesday 01 January, 2019. ORDER TODAY!" (12/06/2009) (there is also a note in the top right corner saying that this item is NO LONGER AVAILABLE but I don't want to spoil it)
Thinking firmly inside the box: the latest exclusive poll (literally exclusive as they are still sporting the cookie bug reported about a year ago) by the Australian daily The Australian asks "Who was the most influential music genius of the modern era?" The options are Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon. I'd think a newspaper should be able to list a few names that are not male Western pop musicians. You probably think the exclusive selection says something about the paper but it might be worse: it might say something about the paper's target audience. A scary thought considering that many think The Australian is the only Australia-wide paper that is worth being called a newspaper. (29/06/2009)
Care-full? I am checking out Medibank Private (UTAS staff enjoy corporate benefits) and hit "Page could not be displayed... To go back to the Homepage click here. To join online click here... To search for the page you are looking for click here... To view our site map, click here.." TWICE within 10 minutes when clicking "Customize application" and "Save application" (!). The best bit so far: "%%control:ControlLink?~\Client\UserControls\SetResponseStatus.ascx%%". Hopefully their service quality does not ressemble this mess. (29/06/2009)
So you (still) think IT is provided to make life easier? The other day I received a message informing me that "[d]uring the change to the [university's] new webmail system, [my] address book contacts were exported from the old web mail system in preparation for importation into the new system." and also that "[t]he exported contacts are contained in the file attached to this email." One thing is that I haven't actually used the system for the past few years because it was woefully inadequate (total space for emails received was up to 10MB or so the last time I checked). Another is that binary email attachments are kind of unpleasant and not well received these days (especially among disadvantaged Windows users). Leaving the exported contacts on the web server for download using a specifically prepared URL (eg by using TinyURL) might have been a more elegant solution. The best bit is that I was provided with instructions as to how to import my address book contacts into the new web mail system. Don't hold your breath while doing so: it is a list of eleven (11) steps to follow with the last one being the most important one: "11. Verify all the addresses have loaded properly." (08/07/2009)
The web site of the local paper The Australian does not only sport cookie problems that make their "online polls" unusable. Their programmers also seem to suffer from some sort of confusion. I clicked on a link about "Moon landing video released: The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago" expecting they would show some of the original footage. Instead I was shown footage of some teenager movie (Harry Panther? Harry POM?). I closed the window within seconds hoping that I can find the footage elsewhere. (17/07/2009)
Participating in the 2009 Staff Survey of Student Engagement by filling in a web form I came across the most bizarre way to "Unsubscribe" that I ever came across: "Please write your email in this box if you would like to be REMOVED from follow-up emails. Your email will only be used to manage the survey."
| Research | Teaching | Administration | Media | CV | Conferences of Interest |
Last major update July 2007. Accesses since $date: 
