Archive | September, 2010
seo

If you manage your union’s website, this is required reading

Google has updated its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) guide – two years after it first published it. Search engine optimisation is very important for all websites – but union websites are serial offenders when it comes to SEO. Simply put, SEO is about making your website easy for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo [...]

Read full story Comments { 1 }
r131541_436731

Blog Action Day is coming up

This year’s Blog Action Day – on 15 October – focuses on water. There aren’t as many issues that are as important as water. Over a billion people don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. The health of our water systems are essential to human civilization – our coasts, rivers and lakes provide food, [...]

Read full story Comments { 1 }
leapfrog

The technological leapfrog

It’s the nature of politics. Things leapfrog. – Ed Gillespie, GOP strategist and former RNC chair My last post discussed how the US conservatives have taken a leaf from the Left in their online community building and activism development. I’ve also written how opposition parties are often very innovative compared to the party in Government. [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
feature_beck

The rise of the US Right: “learning from the Left”

If you don’t read TechPresident regularly, you are missing out on a daily discussion of top quality political news and updates on the latest tech-trends in elections and political activism. Micah Sifry has written a post asking whether the much-reported “rise of the Tea Party” in America – represented by the surge in Facebook “likes” [...]

Read full story Comments { 2 }
qo9r81

Eight union websites worth checking out

I often get asked about union websites – and what makes a good website. There’s loads of general advice out there about how to get a fantastically designed website, and what goes into making them usable and interactive. Check out Smashing Magazine as a good place to start for general advice. You could also check [...]

Read full story Comments { 3 }
civ5screenshot

My brief review of Civilization 5

If you didn’t know already, I am a big fan of the computer game series Civilization. In the last week or so, the latest version of Civilization – Civ 5 – was released. On the weekend, I bought a copy of the game after playing the limited demo a few times. My laptop does not [...]

Read full story Comments { 2 }
media

No good news for journos in Essential’s latest numbers

The last Essential Report asked about people’s satisfaction with the media reporting on the election. The results are not good news for mainstream media outlets, or the journalists who covered the election. I would say that most consumers of media are not overly concerned at the biases of the person creating the media. In most [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
promises

The broken promise fallacy

I saw on ABC News this morning that apparently “Julia Gillard has already started breaking election promises” and that this would be the main attack point of a speech by Tony Abbott this weekend. (UPDATE: The lead story on ABC News 24 news update is “Julia Gillard breaks election promises”. Incredible.) Good to see our [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
waste

The nuclear energy spectre

A topic of conversation that has recently come up in my social circle is nuclear energy, a debate largely inspired by the attempts by ghost of the Howard Government Nuclear energy lobby (led by Ziggy Switkowski). A fear expressed to me was that the climate change committee that Labor and the Greens Party will set [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }

The Liberals’ “crisis pragmatism”

After Tony Abbott won the Liberal leadership in 2009, the conservative political strategy has been one of reaction, ad hoc decisions and opportunism (“crisis pragmatism”), rather than clear, rational planning and preparation for the 2010 election. I think this has been evident in almost all of Abbott’s policies before the election – paid parental leave, [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
debt-posters

Economic fallacies: debt

Following from the recent election, and all of the Tory hyperventilating about public debt, I thought I’d revisit an old post from another place that debunks some economic fallacies. The University of Newcastle has the excellent Centre of Full Employment and Equity, where William Vickery has an article called “Fifteen Fatal Fallacies Of Financial Fundamentalism” [...]

Read full story Comments { 3 }
eat-teabag

Why are Liberal voters really unhappy?

Crikey today reported on the Essential Report’s recent poll of voter attitudes towards the independents Oakeshott and Windsor’s decision to back Gillard. It found that the Liberal voters disapprove. A lot. Indeed, Liberal voters are profoundly unhappy with the decision of the independents (and presumably Oakeshott and Windsor, specifically). Almost 90% of Liberal voters disapprove [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }