wallydownundy

Today I learned the Mother Board of my home PC is fried. Today that means time for a new PC. Why I’m so old I remember Television Repairmen and Microwave Parts Suppliers. With the low cost of technology today it’s a case of recycle and replace. (Sorry, I forgot to add the third - upgrade!)

But the Mother Board led me to wonder - why are so many nasty things called Mother? Former leader of Iraq  Saddam Hussein described the invasion of Kuwait and ensuing Gulf Ware as “the Mother of all Battles.”

In the first Alien movie, Sigourney Weaver and fellow crew members were diverted from their flight home and sent to a hostile planet by an on-board computer called Mother. By the third installment of the film - Aliens - Mother becomes the name of the mega-monster. Weaver, as Ripley, battles this Mother to the end.

Today Mother means the ultimate - the largest, the most expensive, the worst. The bank bail-out was called “the Mother of all Bail-Outs” in 2008. It seems an unfitting way to honour and recognise motherhood.

Unless you’re in a Walt Disney cartoon. Those mothers are usually dead or evil stepmothers. Cinderella wouldn’t brook debate - her stepmother was the mother of all stepmothers. Yes?

Ellen Ripley prepares a Mother’s Day card of her own.

They say a week is a long time in politics. (Just ask Kristina Keneally who one week ago was Premier of NSW.) Yet imagine a year in the world of social media. Special thanks to my newest colleague Rob Irwin (King Under the Mountain blogger extraordinaire) for pointing out this great compilation.

Then: Twitter has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis.

Now: Twitter now officially claims to have 175m registered users, although it’s unclear what percentage regularly user the service.  Then: LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. Now: Officially, Linkedin has grown 100%, now having over 100m professionals who use the platform worldwide.  

Then: Facebook has 350 million active users on global basis. Now: Facebook officially hit the half-billion member mark last year. According to figures from Socialbakers, there are now some 640m Facebook users worldwide.  Then: 50% of active users log into Facebook each day. This means at least 175m users every 24 hours. Now: Still citing the 50% active rate, using the official 500m figure, this means at least 250m users every 24 hours. This is more than a 40% increase in 12 months.  

Then: Flickr hosts more than 4bn images.Now: Flickr continues to grow at a steady rate, having increased by some 25% in the last twelve months. At the end of 2010, it was hosting more than 5bn images.  Then: Wikipedia has 14m articles and 85,000 contributors. Now: Wikipedia now has more 17m articles. The site now has an army of 91,000 active contributors.  

Then: 65m users access Facebook through mobile-based devices. Now: Users accessing the site through mobile devices now tops 200m - an enormous 200% increase in around a twelve-month period.  Then: There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook. Now: Clearly, Facebook is still growing: More than 30bn pieces of content is shared each month, which is an average of 7bn pieces a week.  

Then: There are 11m LinkedIn users across Europe. Now: Go Europe! There are now 20m+ EU Linkedin members.  Then: The average number of tweets per day was over 27m. Now: Twitter now states that 95m tweets are written each day. This is a staggering 250% increase.  Then: The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m. Now: At the new rate of growth, its calculated that there are nearly 4m tweets per hour.

Some extra nuggets… 

• More than 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. 
• Flickr members upload more than 3,000 images every minute.
• More than one million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages (formerly known as company profiles).
• The average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content each month.
• There are more than 2bn video views on YouTube every 24 hours. 
• There were nearly 2bn people searches on Linkedin during 2010.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• People on Facebook install 20m applications every day.

Source: http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/7334-social-media-statistics-one-year-later

Just when you believe you’re technologically savvy….

Two weeks ago my web server was closed and I needed to migrate to a new domain host. Sounds simple enough? Yet for two weeks I’ve struggled to re-build and relocate WallyDownUndy to the new site. What could have been, should have been an easy migration was complicated by technology issues that went just over my head. How do you point your DNS to another name server? How do you migrate five years of content to a new location?

In the end lots of mistakes - and a ten day down time - came together. My blog is back in action and it appears to be working smoothly.

For anyone who arrived to find an error message, my apologies. And if you weren’t here for ten days then that’s fine, too. You didn’t miss anything!

In Queensland the clean-up effort continues. In Victoria townspeople are bracing for the cresting of floods. In the last two years the nation’s gone from record drought to record rainfall. The clean-up and rebuilding is expected to add further force to our already strong economy. The challenge for government is juggling the speeds as different parts of Australia grow at different speeds.

Before the floods talk was rife of a two-speed economy. In mining towns drivers are paid six figure salaries - then spend it on housing, groceries, food and basic services. The remote location and limited infrastructure mean mining towns are booming. Fast food outlets can’t compete with mining wages so even food can be hard to source.

And back in the city fringe, growth was markedly slower. Some suburbs faced decreased housing prices and a drop in employment. Tradespeople and construction workers find it easier to relocate or take “fly in, fly out” jobs where they work in one place and live in another. Hence the two speeds - if the Reserve Bank lifted interest rates to slow spending in fast-growing pockets of the nation, it hurt poorer sections. Treasurer Wayne Swan and Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens have a delicate job.

Then came the floods.

In the aftermath entire towns are being rebuilt. Thousands were left homeless and property prices in flood-affected areas are likely to plummet (one analyst predicts falls of up to 50%). The federal government has promised not to limit spending on rebuilding - and even that won’t keep the budget from being in surplus by 2012-2013.

Today Coface - a leading credit insurer - reported that Australia remains one of the world’s top 10 economies. Annual growth of 3.4% predicted may slow to 2.9% given the setbacks of the floods. Yet it’s still impressive a nation can have an area the size of Germany and France combined inundated with floods and still record strong growth.

Many, many sectors will be hard hit and there are personal stories of desolation and ruinevery day. It will take people years or decades to recover from the financial losses of January. Yet that will be made all the easier in an economy racing to to the tune of three speeds - mining, city fringes and flood zones.

Queen Street in Goodna, Queensland is a great place to shop. The usual assortment of banks and bakeries, grocers and post offices line both sides of the street. Yet with the town being located next to Brisbane River, this week that stretch of retail has been underwater.

And with the fast-moving waters residents have been advised to stay out of the floodwaters. Water treatment plants have been inundated so untreated sewage is discharging into the water. Floating debris and dislocated snakes have also been common sightings.

But in an “only in Australia” moment earlier this week, a bull shark was spotted - swimming along the main street of Goodna (Source: ABC News). Local Councillor Paul Tully said people need to stay out of the water:

“Stay out of the water - you’ve got the problem of the sanitation of the water, but also the possibility of bull sharks and being eaten,” he said. “I never would have thought I would ever have seen a bull shark in the main street of Goodna.” (Source: ABC News).

If you’re not a dedicated follower of elasmobranchology (study of sharks and rays) then you may not know the Bull Shark is renowned for swims upriver. It flourishes in the brackish water between sea and land. You also wouldn’t know it is one of the few species of sharks known to bite first and question later. It is one of the most dangerous sharks known to mankind. According to The Australian Museum:

The Bull Shark is one of the few sharks that are potentially dangerous to people and is probably responsible for most of the shark attacks in and around Sydney Harbour. (Source The Australian Museum)

For the people of Queensland this is the last thing needed. Imagine trying to salvage goods out of your store on Queen Street Goodna then encountering this?

Earlier in the week I wrote about the heated debate around retail giant Bing Lee and their linking Facebook “like” status to flood victim donations. There was a lot of commentary and passion.

Today a new Facebook page was launched. And with the same enthusiasm and support that got Betty White on Saturday Night Live, the goal is to make a change. This one is seeking to stop the fireworks on Australia Day and instead donate the funds to flood clean-up and flood victims.

Now that’s an idea that deserves as much coverage as possible - check it out here.

Relying on digital sources for news updates can only satisfy those with multiple personalities. Either that or I have the wrong news aggregators.

Because I was born and raised in the USA, I still access news sources in the USA. This week the headlines have all been about guns in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gifford. Stories have also drawn in Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin as her fundraising page had cross-hairs over Gifford’s electoral district and the phrase “Don’t Retreat - Reload”. (In her defence Palin today called accusations against her “blood libel” and insisted she retains the right to free speech.)

For my Australian life, I access news sources from Sydney and other capital cities. The news here is almost exclusively flood-related. This morning at 4:00 am the floodwaters peaked in Brisbane and will now take several days to recede. Thousands have been left homeless and scores killed. The economic devastation will rival that of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  

To switch between the two subjects takes a quick mind and a steady nerve. Both are intensely painful subjects that are at the heart of each country’s psyche. As an American I grew up knowing we were all allowed to have guns. I handled them from my teen years even though I didn’t hunt. And as an Australian I know the land is subject to tremendous forces of nature. Our winter storms come from Antarctica. Our nation’s centre is all but inaccessible during summer - people die wandering away from stranded cars in the hot desert clime.

Until I change my news aggregator to “Dear Abby” or Horoscopes or Movie News then I’ll have to live with the torment of catastrophe in today’s news.

Whitegood retail giant Bing Lee decided this week to offer $10,000 to the flood appeal. All in all it is a selfless and noble gesture. It’s been reported on Twitter that Australians are donating $3,000 per minute to the flood appeal. This seemed a good way to make a donation.

Then on-line commentary began - and it was rapid and intense and vitriolic.

On one side was a camp decrying the link between donations and “like” status on Facebook. Seems Bing Lee would donate $1 for every person who clicked “like” on their Facebook page. Prior the page was a way to access discounts.

These commentators said the company should donate regardless. The worst of the negative outcry was Tuesday - the day 9 deaths due to flood were announced, and the day a further 20+ deaths occurred.  This side felt the link between a “like” and a flood donation was a way to increase visibility off the back of a natural disaster. (Author’s Note: My comment on their Facebook page reflects this view.)

On the other side were people in firm support of the program. Their view is that any profile raising was good - and that a dollar donated was a dollar donated. They disagreed that the company was marketing off the back of the flood.

What was astonishing was the passion and the language used by both sides. It wasn’t an on-line debate - it was a digital shouting match. People attacked each other due to their views. It got bitter and personal and mean really, really fast.

And for Bing Lee the last place any company wants to be is in the middle of a shouting match, let alone the instigator. If advising the company I’d recommend a donation and a comment saying the ideal was to raise awareness and get money to flood victims - the intent was never to inflame people’s passions.

It’s good to see debate on-line. It’s bad to see such hatred.

Our business friends working in Brisbane report the city is slowly succumbing to floodwaters. Businesses across town are closing as basements flood and put at risk electricity (and elevator) service. Some key roads like Eagle Street are already cut off. Tomorrow’s high tide is expected to exacerbate the issue. Floodwaters have nowhere to go. According to The Australian, evacuations in Brisbane’s west are underway.

 This comes on top of the flash flood that hit the town of Toowoomba yesterday. The 7 metre high wall of water arrived with no notice. It’s been described as an “instant inland tsunami.”

To everyone in Brisbane and other parts of flood-affected Queensland - please stay safe. Don’t take risks with flooded roads. My thoughts are with you all.

As Australia continues to suffer under “once in a thousand year” floods, the weekend news reported on the potential benefit the disaster holds for Queensland Premier Anna Bligh. She has a maximum of 16 months left to lead - elections can be called any time, but must be held no later than June 2012. Yet in advance of the water-borne devastation Premier Bligh was failing in the polls. She’s not been seen as an effective leader by many.

Flash forward a week and floods have given her an opportunity to shine. Her ability to demonstrate leadership in a crisis may be well remembered by the populace. Call it the “Rudy Giuliani Effect” but any leader who is at the forefront of a widespread crisis is adored. Berlusconi and the Earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy? Check! Bush at Ground Zero? Check! Premier Wen and the earthquake in Yushu County, China? Double check!

So in that spirit NSW Premier Kristina Keneally took to the air to survey flood-damaged property in far north New South Wales. Yet instead of a windfall in ratings, Premier Keneally had her visit overshadowed by news that an investigation into the rushed sale of electricity assets needed to proceed. She’d “underestimated” the strength of the public’s interest in the issue.

Sadly the combination of the demand for an investigation and the photo inside a helicopter didn’t strike the best combination. But maybe that’s the “New Orleans Effect” as then-Presidnet George Bush learned. He said the photograph of him surveying New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina was a low point of his political career.  

For political leaders the lesson is clear - take charge and the electorate will reward you.

“Hey Sarah Palin - I can see Russia too!”