I’ve had a little run in with a US department store, Kohls. It started on April 14 when I received a notification, addressed to ‘Todd Holland’ with account details for my new Kohl’s account, which I didn’t create. At first, I thought it was spam or phishing, but the store is legit and the email […]
This week, I had my first surgical consultation with the team of doctors at Royal North Shore Hospital who will be removing my thyroid, the 8cm tumour attached to it, and the lymph nodes nearby. The head surgeon, a Professor of Surgery at a Sydney university who has reputedly done 14,000 thyroid removals, was first […]
There are a couple of ‘C-words’ that are pretty taboo in society, but one of them in particular has a lot of power to cause ongoing angst, lack of sleep, and some off-the-wall reactions in people. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer on March 25 following a series of tests including an ultrasound, x-rays, a […]
One of the key aspects of my PhD research is the practice and theory of participatory media, which I originally took to be more self-explanatory than it apparently is. For me, the term participatory media has always encompassed and been greater than the term Web 2.0, which I find reflects old paradigms of thinking about […]
Some questions to consider during my PhD project. Why do local governments use social networks? Is it because the councillors think its a good idea? Because the managers do? Is there a push from the ‘citizen’ for social media use? Is it just what everyone else is doing? How do local governments use social networks? […]
Have you heard that Elsevier is buying Mendeley? No? Well, that’s probably because you don’t care. In the hustle of daily start-up takeover news that has been the staple of TechCrunch and Mashable for the last few years, this one is small bikkies. But TechCrunch did report on it, which spurred others to re-report. Then […]
Following completion of my honours year in 2012, I applied for and received admission to a PhD program at the University of Wollongong, and an Australian Postgraduate Award. I’m looking forward to beginning work on the project, but at this stage it is still in the very early developmental phase so I’m finding it hard […]
The promises of new technologies and new ways of using technology seem to matter little in their practical application. Where the much-vaunted Web 2.0 promised to deliver human interaction and collaboration that earlier uses of internet technology did not, we instead got Twitter bots, Facebook privacy hoaxes and cats – lots and lots of cats. […]
Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) have attracted a lot of publicity of late. A uni lecturer I know referred to it as MOOC-mania tonight, in this tweet: https://twitter.com/jason_a_w/status/270777359450382336 The description seems pretty close to the mark and a discussion ensued, with one participant referring to uni administrators as looking very much like the print […]
While buzzing around the University of Wollongong website yesterday, I came across this little news story talking about the role of television in constructing ideas about the nation. The story talked about a seminar at UOW today titled ‘Television, Popular Memory and the Nation’, which is very similar to the topic of my honours thesis. […]