I think it gives some insights into why we do Web Directions, and why we continue to get even more excited about the conference as time goes on.

If you’re in the business of sending out newsletters, you’re probably already using HTML email, but stay in touch with the thoughts of the guys from Campaign Monitor , and in particular check out Mat Patterson’s excellent notes from his recent presentation at the Future of Web Design in New York. Campaign Monitor really have done an excellent job in helping people follow best practices in this area.

It has some really strong arguments about how destructive the injection of cash could be into a commons based peer production environment like this could be. Because I must admit that when I read they operate on an annual budget of $US5 million, my first thought was “but couldn’t they achieve their goals so much more quickly if they were operating under Youtube or Myspace-esque conditions?”. But the article points out the nightmare challenge of deciding what to do with that advertising revenue, which would no doubt lead to bitter divisions in the community.

Wikipedia is also very aware of the perception of advertising as a form of censorship, and how destructive it could be to the credibility readers give their content.

Maybe Wikipedia is another example of the same principle that makes Craiglist work: being just perfect at exactly the size budget you are.

Mobile locative games are an extension of online gaming into the physical world. They make use of technologies such as bluetooth, SMS and VOIP to create a context in which we can explore and understand our urban environments in unexpected ways.

In Ghost Town, you’ll uncover clues and solve puzzles with the help of messages, pictures and even voice calls. You’ll search the CBD for special stickers that unlock the game’s challenges, all the while unraveling a mysterious storyline. You can explore the game at your own pace, giving you a chance to appreciate some of Perth’s most interesting spaces. By taking the game from the screen to the streets, Ghost Town promotes active and healthy gaming.

Best of all Ghost Town is free — all you need to do is rock up to the Ghost Town booth at the Perth Town Hall between 10am and 5pm, Dec 2 to Dec 9, with your Bluetooth enabled phone.

An obsessive fascination that leads to this fine bit of work by Myles Eftos, an unholy alliance between cricinfo and twitter. Follow

http://twitter.com/baggygreen

to get ball by ball commentary of any game involving Australia.

And go here to see how, Warney-like, Myles weaves his magic.

I guess this whole exercise goes some way toward answering a question I ponder every night while standing in line at the supermarket: why is Ricky Ponting on the cover of Alpha magazine?

I had a great time checking out Perth and Margaret River back in August when the good people from Western Australian Web Awards were kind enough to ask me to be a judge, and then fly me over for the awards night.

I definitely wanted to get back and check out the city a bit more, but hadn’t thought the opportunity would present itself so soon. Then via Nick Cowie’s blog, I read about Byte Me! — a very cool looking festival of digital content happening in Perth from December 2–9. I’m always interested in art on the digital frontiers, and have been thinking a bit about the intersection of what we still call “new media” (though that term always gives me a wry grin) and what we in the web world call Web 2.0. And I’m an impulsive person, so I booked a flight.

I’m especially excited about seeing Solu — who’s going to be doing a free Live Cinema performance at a yet to be disclosed CBD location at dusk on Saturday December 1. Keep an eye on the blog for details. If you’ve never seen any live cinema (I haven’t), I think it sounds like something to check out. From Solu’s site:

Live Cinema today stands for the simultaneous creation of sound and image in real time by sonic and visual artists who collaborate on equal terms and with elaborate concepts. The traditional parameters of narrative cinema are expanded by a much broader conception of cinematographic space, the focus of which is no longer the photographic construction of reality as seen by the camera’s eye, or linear forms of narration. The term “Cinema” is now to be understood as embracing all forms of configuring moving images, beginning with the animation of painted or synthetic images.

There’s a whole heap of great free and paid for events on the program — good old Perth, punching above it’s weight yet again :)

But something new and supercool has just come online: Scott Gledhill has gone the extra mile and used Slideshare to turn his presentation into a Slidecast, so now you can see the slides, and listen to presentation, just as if you were there.

So, if you didn’t make it along to Web Directions South, or you were at another session while Scott was answering the questions Is SEO Evil?, or you just want to relive what was a very good presentation indeed, then check out the Slidecast here.

This is a great little system to easily funnel micropayments from any online store’s customers to genuinely needy organisations the world over.

There’s an approval process to join the network, but then you get an API that you can integrate with your payment system to allow customers to add on a microdonation when they purchase something from your online store. So you can simply have a checkbox for example that says “Add $1 for orphan care in Zimbabwe”.

Definitely plan to implement this for Web Directions next time around, but you know what I’m thinking? People like us could have a powerful network effect in spreading this amongst the organisations we do work for, and encouraging them to use it in their ecommerce projects. OK, I don’t know how tricky it is to actually work with their API, but I’m thinking developers could get into the habit of at least running this by their clients in any new projects, and of course including any extra development work it involved gratis.

Just a thought: would love to hear from anyone who has already joined up.

Congratulations to Atlassian who go from strength to strength — and inspiration for young Aussie tech companies.