Online column

This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

What do independent film-maker Jim Jarmusch, Godfather of Punk Iggy Pop, original Aussie emo Nick Cave and Tom Waits — the drinking man’s Billy Joel — have in common? Give up? Well, it seems they belong to a super-duper, top-secret club called The Sons of Lee Marvin, a group with an interesting requirement for entry: the person must bear a reasonably strong resemblance to late actor Lee Marvin.

Other rumoured members of the society include Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth, and Mickey Rourke, the once good-looking actor who discovered plastic surgery and promptly had his face stretched so tight it is now incapable of movement.

You know it’s truly is a super-duper, top-secret society when it doesn’t have a website.

In fact, there are just snippets of information about it scattered around the web. Wikipedia has a little mention of it in the middle of its writeup for Jarmusch, while NNDB manages to muster up one sentence and a list of seven names.

This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

There’s an old saying about people who live in glass houses avoiding the chucking about of stones — probably because it’s the kind of activity that is very likely to come back and bite you on the proverbial bum.

Online communities are havens for those who tut-tut about the behaviour of others as they nod wisely and explain to the world how it is that they manage to be so perfect themselves. I know I had a rant a few weeks ago about message board minefields that are full of loaded questions just waiting to blow up in the face of unsuspecting posters but there’s one grumpy group I forgot to mention — the spelling and grammar police.

Yes, I see the little mistakes that pop up on forums. However, I can usually still understand what’s being said. I’d never think about wandering into a thread and correcting the grammar of another poster but others are happy to.

I must say, it’s always incredibly entertaining when the grumpy poster manages to make an error or two while nitpicking at someone else’s posts. That’s when I temporarily play their game and point out their own shortcomings.

Yesterday, I read a post where Fairfax, which owns Trade Me and a whole bunch of newspapers — including The Southland Times — was blamed for the lack of apostrophes in an auction on Trade Me. The poster’s claim (complete with a couple of confused plurals, a misplaced adjective and a wayward apostrophe) that reading any Fairfax-owned paper was proof that the company doesn’t care about spelling and grammar certainly gave me my giggle for the day.

Guess what? Fairfax cares. So do the people who work for Fairfax. However, I know that no matter how careful I’ve been, and no matter how careful the subeditor who edits this will be, some eagle-eyed reader is going to drop me a line in the next day or two, pointing out with glee something that they will perhaps liken to the end of the world. Have fun with that.

If you want to have a laugh with (not at) those who messed up, knew it and embraced it, check out the creative answers to some testing questions.

This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

There’s a new twist in the ongoing Nigerian scam drama so be on the lookout for an apology e-mail and an offer of compensation.

The delightful Mr Mark Wailers, of the Nigerian Ministry of Finanace no less, e-mailed me last week apologising for all those nasty scammers.

His e-mail says:

“Attention please am Mr. Mark Wailers from the Federal republic of Nigeria, Ministry of finance, we are sending you this mail in Regards to the scam that the citizens of Nigeria has done on the Internet.

We are very sorry for any inconveniency this would have cost to you and your country, the federal government of Nigeria decided to Budget the amount of $Eighty million dollars to compensate some number of lucky people that will receive this email for $50.000.00 each, so if you luckily receive this mail you have to contact us immediately so we can include your name among those to receive the draft.”

Woohoo, it must be my lucky day because I also got an e-mail telling me I’d won 1.3 million euros in a lottery I hadn’t even bought a ticket in and a long-lost distant relative had shuffled off somewhere on the other side of the world and left me all their dosh.

Funny how all these lawyers, finance ministry employees and international lottery people all have throwaway, freebie online e-mail addresses from Yahoo or Hotmail.

The scammers must still be getting a reasonable number of bites to continue with what I would have thought were pretty obvious lines of bull, and I can’t help thinking that perhaps anyone who gets ripped off in this way is perhaps highlighting just why they shouldn’t be allowed to have a computer or an internet connection.

I suppose sometimes greed blinds people to logic but really, if you fall for this then can I interest you in a slightly used Sydney Harbour bridge?

This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

Is it just me, or did the long-awaited PlayStation 3 launch last week lack the online buzz generated by last year’s Xbox 360 debut?

Like Microsoft’s 360 last year, Sony’s PS3 missed the Christmas market this year. However, the 360 wasn’t hitting a market already packed with its main competitor’s whiz bang product.

During the lead-up to the 360 launch, message boards were littered with threads about who was going to queue to buy the beast, what games looked to be the best and what reviewers were saying overseas. This time it’s all been pretty quiet. So quiet I almost forgot it was happening.

The price may well be another factor in the low-key arrival of the PS3. Overall, at just on $1200 it’s okay value for money, taking into account the built-in high-definition Blu-ray optical drive, but it’s still a lot of dosh for most people – especially those who just want a games console.

However, it’s early days yet and things move fast in the world of gaming so who knows, maybe the buzz is about to happen.
Speaking of message boards, here are some hints for anyone pondering the use of these online minefields:

• If you see a thread titled how much do you spend on your child for Christmas, don’t respond. The title is simply a ploy to get you to name a figure so you can be ridiculed. Whatever you spend it will be too much and you’ll be labelled a show-off fascist with spoiled children.
• If you see a thread titled how much do you spend on groceries, don’t respond. Again, it’s simply a method of gathering prey for ridicule. Whatever figure you name will be far too much and you’ll get to feel the wrath of some other poster who manages to feed a family of 23, including their dairy-intolerant triplets who have ADHD, on a budget of $10.
• If you see a thread titled advice, please don’t respond. No advice is being sought, it’s simply another poster who requires you to agree with them. Failure to do so may well result in an online slanging match.
• If you see a thread titled is your 4-year-old doing this, don’t respond. Whatever your 4-year-old child is doing or not doing will become ammunition for the perfect parent brigade who will tell you all about their 3-year-olds who can recite Shakespeare and split atoms. They will also remind you what a terrible parent you are.
• If you see a thread with the word nappy in the title, don’t respond. This one is two-fold tricky. If you use disposable nappies you’ll get slammed for killing the environment but if you use cloth nappies you’ll be made to feel inadequate by members of the aforementioned perfect parent brigade who now spend every waking minute making what they call modern cloth nappies, or MCNs. There are even websites dedicated to the things with instructions on how to make and wash them and choosing the nappy system that works for you. My mother dealt with good, old-fashioned cloth nappies eight times without needing a nappy system.

Come on guys, they’re nappies, do you want a medal?

(Note: This column won me the 2008 Qantas Award for best internet and communications technology columnist. Woohoo!)

This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

With all this hoo-ha about Helen Clark’s latest piece of artwork to hit the market I was beginning to wonder if our great leader had a career with a paintbrush looming on her horizon.

However, after seeing the doodle in question, I’m thinking she made the right choice when she set her sights on the Beehive.

I occasionally chuck a bit of paint around a canvas in the hope the result will be something recognisable, but while I think I’m every bit as good as the lovely Helen I don’t even come close to the talent of Denny Dent, a very rock ‘n’ roll painter who didn’t simply paint a painting, he performed it.

YouTube has a whole bunch of videos of him in action and they are incredible.

Dent died in 2004.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so ignore all the debate in the comments section and just enjoy this show.

Let’s not forget what the internet is all about though — it’s not about art, it’s not about downloading music and it’s certainly not about checking your stock portfolio.

No, according to the song, the internet is for porn. And dammit, the song is so catchy you’ll be humming it for days. Let’s hope you’re not the type to break out into song in public.

Okay, so there’s one other important use for the internet: online auctions. Trade Me has made some pretty useful changes to its DVD and movies category to make it easier for both buyers and sellers.

To sell a DVD, the trader now just needs to enter the title and if it’s in Trade Me’s catalogue, the auction will automatically be populated with the cover art, genre, synopsis, director, cast and classifications. And with a catalogue of more than 10,000 titles, odds are it will be.

This means buyers can now browse via categories such as genre, new releases, top 100 and more.

That’s the good news but there’s also a warning for Trade Me users. Beware the phishing scams. Yes, they’re still happening and will carry on as long as traders allow themselves to be duped. Trade Me has some useful information on phishing and safe computing in general and Scambusters is a good port of call for anyone concerned about keeping themselves safe while trading online.

This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

A Nelson mum’s outrage at the prospect of her 12-year-old daughter being sent porn via her Bebo profile probably serves as atimely reminder to parents that it’s up to us to make sure our kids are safe online.

The girl was sent dodgy text messages and photos after setting up a profile on social networking site Bebo.

There’s absolutely no excuse for the bahaviour of the scumbags who sent disgusting photos of themselves and I firmly believe those who try to groom children online for illicit offline activities should have their dangly bits removed. That said, we also need to make sure our kids know the rules for what they should and shouldn’t be posting online (phone numbers fall into the ‘’shouldn’t post online” category) and we also need to take responsibility for knowing what our kids are up to and what sites they are surfing.

At the age of 12, my son knew that posting his phone number, or any personal details, online was the type of thing that would mean he’d be banned from using the computer until he was somewhere in his mid-30s. And before anyone tells me it’s different for boys, take a look at one of the most frightening sites on the internet, Perverted Justice.

These guys go online posing as kids, young teens and pre-teens. With depressing regularity both male and female are approached online by adults who want sex. The people who run this site do what they can to stop these mongrels but, sadly,what they see is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

The internet is a double edged sword. The benefits it offers are huge but so are the dangers. Letting a child loose on the net without full supervision is like letting them go on an uncensored viewing spree in your local video shop — you know there’s good, safe stuff they can look at but there’s also plenty of smut lurking on the shelves out the back.

Make sure you tell your kids the rules for using the internet and, more importantly, monitor their activity online so you know they are following those rules.

You can use a net nanny type of software to control where you children can go online but it’s worth remembering that computer-savvy kids can often find ways around this so it doesn’t pay to rely heavily on the software doing what is essentially your job — protecting your child.

Some parents opt for keylogging software, which keeps a record of everything typed. While this smacks of spying, I guess I can understand why keyloggers are used when weighing up the safety risk.

At the very least, have your computer in a living area where you can be around when the younger members of your household are using it. Having mum or dad lurking in the background is likely to make them think twice about logging on to unsavoury sites or starting up a chat with someone they shouldn’t.

If you want to know more about online safety, try the Internet Safety Group.

This is part of the Online column, written for The Southland Times)

If you’re wondering why, in the print edition of my column, you regularly see that funny looking “TinyURL” website address, wonder no more.

TinyURL is a little site where you can copy and paste long website addresses and have them converted to something a little easier to type. If you’re sick of posting website addresses _ also known as universal resource locater, or URLs — in e-mails, only to have them break when sent, then this is the site for you. The URL created for your site of choice will never expire.

This, dear reader, is my way of protecting you from straining your typing muscles.