Chris Betcher

One of the runaway success stories of Australian television is a subversive comedy show called The Chaser's War on Everything . This very funny show takes constant potshots at every conceivable social and political norm, often drawing attention to the many stupid and inconsistent things we do. During 2007 the show aired every Wednesday night on ABC TV, and was also podcast via www.abc.net.au/chaser My son Alex is a huge fan of the Chaser, and one of his favourite sketches was one in which the show's host, Chris Taylor, rants about how annoying those waiters are that interrupt your meal to ask you if you'd like any cracked pepper. The sketch goes on to look at a variety of interesting situations in which a pepper-toting waiter might interrupt to offer his wares... if you've not seen it, here is the clip... [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/n1rxixtXt8A" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] So the other da...

[kml_flashembed movie="http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=37147" width="480" height="360" wmode="transparent" /] It's Voicethread.  It's live. It's interactive. Don't be shy.  ;-)

I love this photo... Unless you've been walking around with your fingers in your ears and loudly singing "lalalala!" it's been hard to avoid noticing Apple's amazing renaissance. Not so many years ago it was hard to imagine that Apple had any real long term future at all, but things have certainly turned around since Steve came back. Apple's growth is quite phenomenal at the moment. It's hard to know exactly why this is happening, but it undeniably is. Whether you attribute it to the iPod's viral " halo effect ", the effective and very funny " I'm a Mac, I'm a PC " advertisements, the sheer style and beauty of the new Macs , the frenzy that was whipped up by the release of the iPhone , the drawcard success of Leopard , or just the exodus away from Windows following the disaster of Vista , there is no denying that the Mac platform is enjoying enormous growth at the moment. Recent statistics claim that Mac sales are grow...

Last night Linda and I went in to the Sydney Carols in the Domain Christmas concert.  All this southern hemisphere Christmas-without-snow was causing some mental disconnect for Linda so she was having a bit of trouble getting into the spirit ot the season... seems that the carols has gone some way to helping alleviate that.  (And Sydney really does know how to throw a great outdoor event.) For those that live on the top half of the planet, here are a few photos to show you what an Aussie Christmas looks like... [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/JU_C2cb255w" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

My friend Anne Baird blogged today about her insights regarding the use of Creative Commons as a form of managing the usage rights to creative works such as music, pictures, video or writing. For many people, the only law they have ever heard of in regard to using the work of others is copyright law, and this is usually interpreted as "you cannot use this!" That's not exactly correct of course... copyright means "you cannot use this without asking my permission". Unfortunately the process of getting that permission is usually not so simple, so for most people the choice is to not use the work at all, or to use it illegally. Enter the world of Creative Commons. Creative Commons, or CC for short, was launched in 2001 and is a licensing model for defining how an artistic or intellectual work may (or may not) be used. It sits in that void between the restrictive copyright model and the free-for-all that is the Public Domain. Too often people assume that ...

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Dp4qe3Ishhw#" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] Coming soon. This little girl. And millions more like her. Curious. Smart. And not afraid of technology. Let me rephrase that... Not only is she just "not afraid" of technology, she will expect to grow up in a world where technology comes in the form of easy-to-use devices that just work seamlessly to let her do things. She represents a generation of children for whom access to such technology is as basic as access to air, food and water. Look at her as she plays with this device... she didn't read an instruction manual, she isn't waiting for a training session in how to use it. As she grows up she won't necessarily know or care how these things works, only that they lets her do the things she wants to do. She interacts with technology but probably doesn't even think of it as interacting with technology. ...

Is this an example of a world gone mad, or what? A 10-year-old Florida girl faces felony weapons charges after bringing a small steak knife to school to cut up her lunch, according to a report on WFTV.com. School officials say the Ocala 5th grader had brought a piece of steak for her lunch, and had brought a steak knife. According to the report, a couple of teachers took the utensil and called authorities, who arrested the girl and took her to the county’s juvenile assessment center. "She did not use it inappropriately. She did not threaten anyone with it. She didn't pull it out and brandish it. Nothing of that nature," explained Marion County School Spokesman Kevin Christian, who added that it made no difference what the knife was being used for, they had no choice but to call police." Anytime there's a weapon on campus, yes, we have to report it and we aggressively report it because we don't want to take any chances, regardless," Christian said.The gi...

A few posts ago I mentioned that both Betchablog and The Virtual Staffroom had been nominated for Eddies, or Edublog Awards . As the voting processes started for the awards, there was apparently quite a bit of blog-love being shown for certain nominees in the form of multiple votes, automated voting, group voting, etc. It got to the point where the organisers had to first of all manually delete suspicious voting activity such as in the form of huge numbers of votes all coming from the same network address in a short period of time, and eventually had to completely limit the voting system to a single vote per IP address. No doubt this was the result of some very enthusiastic voting by students in class ("OK kids, your teacher has been nominated for an award so go to this url and click the button for me"). Finally, the opportunity to see the progress of the results was shut off completely as well. It's a shame the voting had to be nobbled in this way as it really rui...

Just in case you've not seen it, you might like to check out the latest "in plain English" video just released by Lee Lefever from the Commoncraft Show .  Simply called "Blogs in Plain English", this is another excellent short video presentation explaining in very straightforward and easy to understand terms exactly what a blog is, what makes them special, and how to use one.  Good stuff! [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/NN2I1pWXjXI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] Lee is gaining quite a reputation for his videos, including Wikis in Plain English , RSS in Plain English ,  Social Networking in Plain English and Social Bookmarking in Plain English .  The guy has a knack for taking concepts that are generally poorly understood by most people and making them easy to understand by explaining them in, well, plain English.