I’m currently away at Baa Camp, the New Zealand Foo Camp and really enjoying the conversations, discussions and networking here. It’s great to be around other talented and inspiring Kiwis working in the online space, along with people like Lars Rasmussen (Google Maps) and Ben Goodger (Google/Firefox).

The event kicked off last night with a great discussion about the broadband problems (and, more importantly, possible solutions) led by Minister of Communications/Minister for Information Technology David Cunliffe (possibly a distant relative). I came away really impressed by the way he listened to the concerns and ideas the group had and how he has now put the issue of peering on his agenda.

Rod Drury is the only one I’ve discovered so far who is blogging about the event, but I’m sure there will be others here doing the same.

A great (and clever) introduction to what Web 2.0 is and how it’s changing our world.

It’s been an eventful week in New Zealand with the publishing of an anonymous blog on Blogger about CYFS, our government agency for children and family social services. The blog is highly critical of social workers, naming specific cases and people and has some rather personal comments about some of them. The media has focussed on this side of the story, while the heart-wrenching stories on it, under the hurt and angry tone, are somewhat disturbing. Of course, it’s merely one side of the story and I have no dealings or personal knowledge of CYFS.

The story became big, however, when the head of CYFS said he was doing everything in his power and getting lawyers to work 24/7 to take down the blog. Instead of the blog getting a handful of hits, like many other “watchdog” or “name and shame” sites, it skyrocketed to headline news with the country debating whether or not it should be taken down. Incidentally, a non-scientific TVNZ poll had approximately 80% of respondents not wanting it gone.

In today’s Sunday papers, media personality Kerre Woodham (radio and TV host, newspaper columnist) says she wants all sites which allow anonymous comments or content to be shut down! Rather ironic, given that radio and TV do allow anonymous callers or protect the identity of interviewees when the need arises.

In addition to Kerre Woodham calling for all anonymous blogs to be shut down, today’s Herald on Sunday’s editorial hits out at bloggers:

Operated the right way, blogsites offer and generate intelligent debate and insight. The likes of kiwiblog and publicaddress are worthwhile reads, maintained by a dedicated group of talented writers and thinks. But most bloggers - and we’re talking 95 per cent - are fly-by-night, gutless wonders who prefer to spit inarticulate venom under inarticulate pseudonyms. These bloggers, operating under their own misguided belief of self-freedom rarely research any offerings…

Making up statistics (”95%”) and creating wild claims about bloggers, just because there has been a controversial case in the media this week, is hardly fair. There are plenty of insightful, articulate, intelligent, informative and successful blogs apart from those two which are listed and seem to get almost all the blog press coverage here in New Zealand.

It’s sad that traditional media needs to bash the bloggers when there’s a rich world of blogging out there.

I received a very bizarre email this morning notifying me that their old blog appeared to have been hacked and some of my blog’s template was appearing at the top of another person’s blog.

Check it out » (it still appears to be there as of writing this post). I’ve never seen the blog before and it seems the most bizarre type of hacking that someone has done.

I’ve had people stealing my site’s design before a couple of times, but never seen something like this. Have any of you come across a similar scenario? Any plausible reason for it?

I’ve asked the site owner to remove my content as soon as possible.

Late last year I had the pleasure of working with the Participate Media team on helping re-design BuzzTracker, a news site which aggregates news from the blogosphere on numerous topics. The relaunched beta site is now live!

For more info, Alan posts about the redesign on their blog.