"Nobody intends to build a wall!" (Walter Ulbricht, Leader of the GDR, June 15th 1961)
The Australian Federal Government is pushing a plan to introduce mandatory internet filtering in Australia. As usual, it is not about censorship: it's about protecting children (and citizens) from the evils of the internet.
Recommended reading: ALIA's Ten questions on censorship for Senator Stephen Conroy, EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia) on Internet Censorship, EFA's nocleenfeed.com site and the Somebody Think Of The Children blog.
Also interesting: Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics published by The Age.
| Research | Teaching | Administration | Media | CV | Conferences of Interest |
"This often happens: you imagine a territory rich in possibilities and try to think of how you might get to it, and then suddenly one day you look around and realise that you have been there for quite a long time." Brian Eno, Ambient 4: On Land. 1982.
Currently I am a Professor of Computing in the School of Computing & Information Systems (YAMM) at the University of Tasmania (UTAS). Founded in 1890, UTAS is one of Australia's oldest universities (sometimes called sandstone universities) and a leading Australian research university.
Tasmania (also known as Intelligent Island but not to be confused with Tanzania or Transilvania) is known for fabulous food, (largely) pristine World Heritage wilderness, and Tasmanian Devils (Taz anyone?). More recently Tasmania has started to be known for princesses and cannibals.
Physically I am situated in Hobart which is Australia's second oldest (and also second driest only second to Adelaide) capital city. Hobart is also Australia's southernmost capital city and gateway to Antarctica. Considering the location it is perhaps not surprising that during summer, Hobart experiences the most daylight hours of any capital city in Australia.
Check the Wrest Point Webcam on top of the Wrest Point tower to get an impression of the Sandy Bay suburb where the university campus is located and this picture to see Hobart and the Derwent River from Mount Wellington (1270m). And here you can see Mount Wellington, downtown Hobart and the Tasman Bridge from the other side of the River Derwent.
Before coming to beautiful Tasmania I was Professor and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) Chair of eBusiness at Charles Darwin University (arguably Australia's youngest university founded in 2004) which is located in Darwin at Australia's tropical top end. Darwin is a relatively small and definitely remote multi-cultural city (some say a 19th century frontier town catapulted into the 21 century) of about 100,000 people (including Palmerston and other nearby settlements). Check here to get an impression of the Territory (especially this one). Despite Darwin's tropical climate I was able to buy this Lebkuchenhaus (gingerbread house) at Bar Espresso on Mitchell Street. Darwin's coziest coffeeshop is The Shed which is hidden away on CDU's Casuarina campus (a Darwin suburb).
Prior to the Darwin stint 2004-2005 I was with the Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. Check the Sydney harbour cam to get an impression of one of the most beautiful cities on this planet (don't forget that we are 10 hours ahead of GMT and compared to the Northern hemisphere the seasons are reversed! Also, you'll need to have java enabled to control the camera).
Before I moved to Sydney in October 2000 I was with the Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Information Technology, University of Zurich, Switzerland (4.5 years as doctoral student and research assistant followed by 12 months as postdoc). The lab just celebrated its 20th Anniversary! I spent the last two of my Zurich years managing the department's participation and conducting the relevant research in a large European research project on information filtering and collaborative filtering (SELECT). Check the NZZ Webcam or the Switch LiveCam to get an impression of "little big city" Zurich.
Please see my research page for information about my research activities, publications and grants.
Feel free to come along for a visit! Past research visitors include Associate Professor Michael Twidale (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Professor Rolf Pfeifer (AI-Lab, University of Zurich) and Professor Gerhard Schwabe (Information Management, University of Zurich). Gerhard also made possible a visit by one of his PhD students Christoph Goeth. Kirsty Boyle, one of the leading English speaking authorities on the Karakuri tradition (ancient Japanese robot culture), visited us in November 2008.
"I am not sure, if you remember me. I was IT student at $university. You were my lecturer/tutor for $subject. You were one of the best teachers I have come across in Australia. I was one of the most active student in your class."
At UTAS I am teaching KXT313 Human-Computer Interaction (3rd year undergraduate unit) in Semester 1, 2008. I updated & taught KXA358 Human-Computer Interaction (3rd year undergraduate unit) in semester 1, 2007; developed & taught KXA435/KXA436/KXA403 Computing in Context (postgraduate HCI/CSCW flavored research unit) in 2005, 2006, 2007.
At Charles Darwin University I taught HIT243 eBusiness Risk and Security Management (2nd year) in 2005; co-taught HIT161 Computer Systems (1st year) and co-taught HIT322 Enterprise Application Development (3rd year) in 2004.
At the University of Technology, Sydney I was involved in the capstone project Information Technology Project Planning and Design (with Rene Leveaux), 31950 Networked Enterprise Design (lecturer, coordinator), Masters/MBA subjects 32532 Conducting Business Electronically (lecturer, coordinator) and 32531 Global Information Systems (coordinator).
Deputy Research Coordinator, School of Computing & Information
Systems, UTAS (1/2008-); Deputy Head, School of Computing, UTAS (1/2007-EOS), Research Coordinator, School of Computing,
UTAS (1/2006-EOS); Research Program Coordinator
"Enterprise-centric Computing", ARC Research Network in Enterprise
Information Infrastructure; Coordinator (with Dr Jennie Carroll,
University of Sydney) "Mobility & Accessing Information
Infrastructure" taskforce, ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information
Infrastructure. Also at various stages Deputy Honours Coordinator, School
of Computing, UTAS; Research Champion, School of Information Technology,
CDU; Faculty Research Group Convenor, Faculty of Information Technology,
University of Technology, Sydney. And on the more geeky side of life I was
Usenet (Netnews) server administrator approx. 1995-2001. The skills
acquired certainly helped conduct research including this
(a more detailed version can be found in this book
chapter) and this. Participation in various development workshops and courses covering
topics including presentation techniques, people management, graduate
research supervision, leadership. Please email me for detailed CV. Catch us on ABC Hobart
during "Technology
talk" with Louise Saunders (every second Wednesday since 13 Feb 2007).
Live coverage via internet streaming is available here
and here
you can peek into the studio. Our work on the
wider impact of spam filtering was featured on the ABC Science Show
presented by Robyn Williams (24 June 2006); "Faster, funkier" in the
(Attitude section of The
Mercury, 7 April 2006) refers to Hobart-based mobile computing
studies conducted in late 2005 (with Christoph Goeth, University of
Zurich), "Internationales Symposium fur Informationswissenschaft (ISI)
an der HTW Chur" (REVUE
ELECTRONIQUE SUISSE DE SCIENCE DE L'INFORMATION No 1 January 2005, p.
34) mentions our Darwin work on mobile information access in the context
of public transport (with Omer Mahmood, Charles Darwin University); some
of my Sydney-based ubiquitous computing work is discussed in "Forschung
aktuell: Seifenschachteln und intelligente Raeume. Pervasive 2002 in
Zuerich" (c't Magazin fuer Computer
Technik 19/2002),
"Pervasive 2002: Big Brother als Butler und pers?licher Sekret?" (Heise Online August 2002); some of my
Zurich-based work is discussed in "Intelligente Software ist zu dumm"Administration
CV
Media
Other media events: "Moving to hi-tech beat" (The Mercury 13 August 2006); "Remote Control Rage" (The Mercury 20 August 2006); "Computerforscher mit Weitblick" [in German] (academics.de 23 March 2006); "Jetzt ruft Australien. Hattinger nimmt Lehrauftrag in Sydney an (in German)" (Westfaelische Rundschau 5 October 2000), "Ruf fuer Dr. Lueg nach Sydney (in German)" (Ruhr-Nachrichten 26 September 2000).
EOS = End Of School. As of 1/1/2008 the School of
Computing has merged with the School of Information Systems to become the
Never again: Bose charges USD 100 (more precisely: they tried to charge USD 100) for fixing a tiny problem with the USD 299 QuietComfort 2 Noise Cancelling headset. A lot of customers perceive the problem as being caused by the inappropriate use of cheap plastic (see for example comments here). What an unusual way to tell customers to shop elsewhere next time. (1/11/07)
Interesting: a few days ago habbo.de (habbohotel.com) informed me, via email, that my child registered on their web site. The idea seems to be that children have to provide the email address of a parent so that parents are informed about their children's activities. The interesting thing is that, to the best of my knowledge, I don't have any children. habbo.de never replied to my inquiry as to how they verify that an email address belongs to a parent... (23/11/07)
Amazing: In early December I stayed at the Mercure Hotel Sydney. For the past two weeks I am trying to get a proper invoice. The booking was made electronically which means somewhere they must have an electronic record of my (correct) details. First I received an invoice where both name and address were incorrect topped up by an incorrect parking charge (I did not even bring a car). Second, I received an invoice where the address was correct but the name was still incorrect. After phoning(!) them (and talking to four different staff) I received an invoice where -for the first time- my name was correct but the address was reverted to a nonsense address. AAAArgh! (20/12/2007)
t-mobile.de seems to be one of the last companies unable (or unwilling?) to provide vendor-independent web access (sponsored by M$ perhaps?) When visiting their web site to check an MMS message I received I was lectured "You are using another browser that is not Internet Explorer 6.0 [sic] or above. With the browser that you are using we cannot guarantee the full functionality of this website". A bit of functionality would be sufficient but retrieving the MMS message did not work at all when accessing the site using Apple's Safari browser. Firefox triggered the same warning but at least I could check my Chrissie message! (20/12/2007) Update: about nine months later they still haven't fixed the bug (or is it perhaps the shortage of qualified IT staff that is haunting them?) (29/8/2008).
Always expect the unexpected (when dealing with banks). Australian bank ANZ introduced a new pre-paid looks-like-a-credit-card VISA-branded "gift card". The fine print reveals that businesses may apply "tolerance factors" (what the heck is that supposed to mean?) that can be as high as 20%(sic) of the bill. In the case of restaurants it's only 10% but watch out (again): "For example, if using the Visa Gift Card at a restaurant where your bill is $100 dollars, your Visa Gift Card balance must be $110 otherwise the transaction will be declined." You couldn't use the card even if you decided not to tip or to tip using other means as this requires that "the transaction has been settled by the merchant (sometimes a few days later)".
"Panda Security" recently started to spam one of my accounts. Genuine spam--I never requested their services. You know there are people out there who can help you understand why spamming is a bad thing...
amazon.co.uk just offered an amazing shopping experience. When ordering a DVD (Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa) the site told me "*** Unfortunately the item cannot be delivered to your selected destination." (keep in mind I tried to order a DVD not a rocket launcher). Trying the option "E-mail to Amazon.co.uk Customer Service" the site insists that I provide more information as "The order ID you entered doesn't look correct". Well, amazon.co.uk did not provide an order ID in the first place which means I can't provide an order ID which means the whole process is stuffed which means I am annoyed which means amazon.co.uk drops off my list of preferred suppliers. Easy isn't it. And now I'll check if ebay is offering the item :-) (4/8/2008)
HSBC again. In early August 2008 ACNielsen sent an email informing me that "As a valued customer, we(sic) at HSBC are really interested in your opinion of our customer service. I emailed back saying that HSBC communications delivered the worst experience I ever had in the banking sector and suggested they just check the paper trail left behind. Presumably ACNielsen don't bother reading replies to their emails because they sent the same email 3 times (and I relied 3 times). On the last occasion I cc:ed my reply to research@hsbc.com.au as suggested by HSBC ("If you have any questions about the aims of the study email HSBC at Research@hsbc.com.au").
I couldn't believe it: I got a reply within seconds. Just not what you'd expect:
From: Postmaster@hsbc.com.au
Subject: DELIVERY
FAILURE: User research (research@hsbc.com.au) not listed in Domino
Directory.
Weird. The German web site schuelerprofile.de ("student profiles") has started (without my approval!) to introduce German female under-age students to me (Stefanie, 15; Vanessa, 13). schuelerprofile.de appears to be a genuine student community web site but the email address they are sending these offers to isn't related to my job in any way! Presumably, they are sending these unsolicted messages because a) some student registered using one of my email addresses (it is not one of my uni addresses) and b) they obviously don't verify email addresses provided to them which I find a bit disturbing. (29/8/2008) By now they are spamming my account fairly regularly. Do you think they track who's linking to their site? (16/9/2008)
The Australian's Exclusive Poll page still features a fairly Exclusive Bug. The poll mechanisms refuses to accept my vote telling me "You must enable cookies to vote in this poll" even though my browser does accept cookies... it's just that my browser does not accept third-party cookies. Months ago I emailed The Australian in regards to this bug but they don't see to care... is it deliberate perhaps? (16/9/2008) I just tried to vote in the Bill Henson vote but the bug hasn't been fixed yet.(6/10/2008) I just tried to vote on bailing out ABC learning but the bug still hasn't been fixed.(7/11/2008).
Curiosity kills the cat? I just munched on some Deli-style POTATO CHIPS Honey Soy Chicken made by Red Rock Deli. I did not expect to find a chicken in there (after all it's just a tiny 28g satchel) but it might have been a mistake to read the list of ingredients. The only ingredient that includes the word 'chicken' (and it's a bloody long list of ingredients considering it's just -youknow- chips) is [did you guess it?] chicken fat. Urps. At least the trans fat content is 0.0g. (25/09/2008)
Bad design certainly kills passion. In the spur of the moment I thought it would be nice to spend a night or two at the Henry Jones Art Hotel (just around the corner really). I've been there a few times for business and leisure and it's a really nice place. Went to their web site (nice to look at), tried to find rates (must be somewhere) & got bounced off to a somewhat overloaded www.puretasmania.com.au web site. Once you detect and click the TINY "Prices" link they advise you to "use the drop-downs below to view rates and availabilities at all Henry Jones Art Hotel room types over a 10 day period." Well it seems rooms are never ever available. Table Hobart_2 (Hello? I am not a programmer trying to trace bugs in the web site, I am a prospective customer) lists dates but no rooms. Neither rooms that are available nor rooms that are unavailable. Oops: "To view rates and availability for this location, please click on the (+) icon to expand the appropriate group." Well, clicking on the (+) doesn't do anything either. Whatever. Idea shelved, money saved. (01/10/2008)
YouTube also shows some strange behavior. The site puts up the following information: "You appear to be viewing YouTube from this country: Australia." Well, I am certainly using an Australian IP address. But then: "We have highlighted videos from this country and selected the following language for viewing the website: English (US)". So why don't they offer English (AU) if they actually identified that I am from Australia? Ignorance? Another go at world domination? And finally: "Click "OK" to accept this change, or click "Cancel" to view the site in English." Are they trying to say that "English (US)" isn't English? They even offer a link "Show message in English"... (03/10/2008)
I just tried to check rates for Stamford rooms in Melbourne. After entering location and dates (for some strange reason they show only the 1st digit of 1-2 digit days and only the first 2.5 digits of 4-digits years) and clicking on Search I am directed to a page that asks me again for the information I just provided. Ok, patient as I am I re-enter location and dates, click Search and... get rewarded by an empty page. Not quite actually: the Stamford logo is in the top left corner of that otherwise empty page (trying the same using some other browser I was presented a somewhat boring Please wait while your rates are loaded... animation). Would the quality of the room service also depend on the shoes I am wearing or the car I am driving? [sadly, the answer may be 'yes'] Or is there some secret plan to push people to fairly reliable last-minute sites? Why don't they just provide a link if they can't bother serving customers properly? (03/10/2008)
Barracuda Spam Firewall has emerged as a major spam source. In a recent incident of a spammer abusing one of my email addresses, a considerable number of Barracuda Spam Firewall messages alleged that "Your message to: $address was blocked by our Spam Firewall." I did not send any of those messages. You'd think Spam Firewall developers would know by now that spammers abuse email addresses? Is every organisation using Barracuda Spam Firewall now going to be black-listed by SpamCop? Our own university was blacklisted in 2006 allegedly because we adhered to agreed-upon internet protocols (RFCs) recommending to bounce back messages sent to email addresses that do not exist (anymore) at this university. (22/10/2008)
I was just looking into some flight bookings and noticed that QANTAS (an acronym explained here) offers a "Qantas Toolbar [that] enables you to search for flights directly from your browser no matter what website you are on." Excellent I thought. I clicked Download the Firefox Toolbar now! and... Incompatible Extension: "Qantas Airways Toolbar 1.25 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.0.3." (the most recent version). AAARGH. (22/10/2008)
I just contributed some information to the "Easing the pain of a day on a plane: how to make the flight to Europe more bearable" blog entry on ninemsn.com.au. I've done that trip way too many times but regardless, I don't think it's "horror" as they call it. Entered my details, entered the text, clicked "submit" and... nothing happens. Oh I forgot it's ninemsn and I am not using Internet Explorer. Funny how often Microsoft-related web sites feature such bugs... I used Firefox because it's superior. BAD BAD BAD BOY.
Just on this note. ninemsn.com.au actually appears to have a problem with quality contributions in general. If you don't manage to finish writing your contribution within 30 seconds or so the web site's automatic re-load feature ensures you have to start all over again. Just happened to me. I give up!!! No, I won't. Watch this space!
| Research | Teaching | Administration | Media | CV | Conferences of Interest |
Last major update July 2007. Accesses since $date: 
