I want my Torchwood now

In the UK apparently they have to wait a WHOLE SIX DAYS to see their fix of the next installment of Torchwood.

As I was saying at Digital Citizens tonight: diddums.

I mean FFS, you aren’t entitled to any of this, unless you pay for it. Do you think these Actors and Production companies give their time for free?

Get over yourself, if you want to be the ~5% of the population who torrents – go ahead. If the delay is six bloody days, join me in waiting to see it in broadcast quality without compromising your minuscule download limits.

Fair Use: In the end it’s about how much money you got

As Andy Baio discovered over the last few months, Fair Use of someone else’s “content” is all very well if you can afford to prove said “fair use”.

Matthew Ingram discusses in great detail at GigaOM the challenges which we face if we want to do a transformative version of works by other artists and creators.

I’m pretty sure topics like this will come up at tonight’s Digital Citizens event “The Age of Intellectual Property” so look forward to seeing you there and joining in the discussion.

I think we’ve yet again put on a damn fine Topic with a Panel to match. Come to the Shelbourne Hotel in Sydney and get inspired by experts like Mark Pesce, Keir Winesmith, Matt Moore and Julian Peterson. Then stay to have a drink, a chat and help solve the problems (or otherwise) of copyright in the digital age!

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Gavin Costello

Far be it from me to criticise myself. But I’ve been checking out Clustrmaps to see where people who read this blog are from. Mainly because it appeals to my inner #SMEG.

Whoever you were from Mountain View, California who dropped in at 10.35pm last night, I hope you come back, you missed a new post by 15 minutes.

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Good marketing or trashing your reputation?

The Multi-million dollar real estate agent sent me a letter in the post today. Allegedly they have genuine buyers lined up for my property. Assuming these “buyers” are real, I would’ve thought the most courteous thing to do would be for the Agent to call around and say g’day. Or you know, actually address me by name in the letter.

Instead all I could think of was: “twitter spammer trick.” And just as with twitter, messages like this go in the bin. But unlike twitter, Aussie Post don’t seem to have a way of reporting them for Spam. Now there’s a thought.

I hope other Real Estate Agents aren’t as happy to trash their reputation as the multi-million dollar agent seems to be. Because even if I was willing to sell, I’m 100% certain the multi-million dollar agent won’t be getting my business now. And if asked, I won’t be recommending them either.

Speaking of twitter, I might use this opportunity to remind you of my suggestions to them to help reduce Spam mentions. I think they should be forcing people to create a minimum level of reputation before they can:

• mention people they don’t follow
• include links in more than 20 percent of their Tweets
• add twitter users to more than 5 lists
• (when I remember the other ones I’ve suggested before I’l add them here)

Do you agree that twitter should use reputation filters with accounts to help reduce spam or have you other suggestions?

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Today’s photo is of the sun rising over the Cooks River last Friday morning. Winter colours and skies in Sydney are a joy for me, and inspire me to get my iPhone 4 out as I walk my daughter to school. See more that I share on Instagram.

Gavin Costello

I like to visualise what I talk about on twitter (and perhaps even here). It allows me to reconsider topics.
Here’s my wordle for my tweets up until June 2011.

Words on twitter

Pretty clear I RT a lot.

With thanks to Tweetstats and Wordle

Defamation of character

Often, when I see corrections and clarifications in Newspapers and magazines I wonder how they get away with having a staid single paragraph apologies buried on the classified page.

Heroes are the soundtrack to my life

If you follow my high volume twitter feed, you’ll note I quote lyrics from songs on a regular basis – whether that is standalone or part of the the blaster.fm integration with last.fm.

When I tweeted the lyrics of a David Bowie song tonight, a friend responded and that made me think at length about my relationship with music, books and movies. All of which I consume in spades and intricate quite a bit more than many may realise into my life. But not at all in the same way as so many others I know seem to.

Microsoft doesn’t need a window cleaner, just new Windows

These days it’s impossible to do anything but use iOS as a reference point when discussing new Mobile or Touch based Operating systems. But I’m going to briefly try and share my reactions to Windows 8 as if the iOS never existed.

Parenting tips in the Kings Speech

One of my constant struggles is picking the best way to convince my small children to do something differently.

Much as I’d like to play the positive reinforcement game, I instead