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jacques_chester

"we sort of present you with the information that you need to immediately action on it."

Really? Really?

I expect better from my fellow Australians, even if they are Sydney-siders.

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Fwiw, that's the SMH reporter misquoting us from an in-person interview.

However, we'll try to live up to Australian standards better in the future =)

Then I retract my slur on Sydney and all her works.

Except for the journalists.

(What did you actually say, in your recollection?)

FWIW, it was the original quote http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26309/action.m4a

Regards, Ben Grubb (the journalist)

I want to give you a free pass, really, but my irrational hatred of journalists in general is a matter of public record. I'm just too damn lazy to start a whitelist, I hope you can forgive me.

Yep. Audio matches written quote.

Kudos Ben on your quick rebuttal of the misquote claim. And for an article full of links to all the companies and technologies you're writing about.

As an Australian (who hasn't lived there for decades) nothing gives me a case of cultural-cringe more than these sorts of articles from the Australian tech scene, which appear to be intended solely to pitch the "Australian"-ness of the individuals involved to the world.

Did they really have to editorialize and verb 'action' to make you sound cool? I think not. But, we have to 'sell the cool', right, SMH? I think this was a fail - it really makes you appear idiotic to say things like "action that email". Cringe++.

Besides that tender point, the idea of presenting ones email as a stream is an interesting - but not new - idea. I'd be rather more happy to see this idea, which in my opinion ought to be implemented as a GUI control for all mail clients possible, evolve into Mail.app and other mail clients.

The 'cultural cringe' isn't cringing at ocker culture, it refers to the ocker culture's fear of high culture. You see it in a more general sense when you hear Australians rabbit on about how people are 'so much more cultured' over in Europe... when people have pretty much the same values. It's like there's this mythological European utopia which we measure ourselves against. Interestingly, whenever you question someone exhibiting the cringe, they can never tell you which countries are better in -foo-.

Naturally the exception to this is an accessible human history, which Australia doesn't really have much of.

wikipedia puts it better: "Cultural cringe ... is an internalized inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe

Well, an interesting diversion from the point of this thread, but I consider myself an Australian with tinges of cultural cringe whenever I look back at the Beloved Country and see articles like this. I know the guys are no ockers, but nevertheless the "action"'ing thing is really sour.

Ah, I see what you're talking about now - it's the appeal to nervous patriotism: "Look, Aussies can perform on the world stage, too!", in an article that really has nothing to do with the nationality of the folks involved. I agree, the editors should be shot for letting such a crap heading through.

Check out the wikipedia link - it also has this gem: The cultural cringe can be expressed in the almost obsessive curiosity of Australians to know what foreigners think of Australia and its culture. A quick way to most Australians' hearts (unless they're counterculture hipsters) is to compliment the country... just make sure you sound sincere when you do it :)

(clarification: You're right to cringe at that, but it's the article displaying the concept known as "cultural cringe", not yourself)

That sounds so much like American corpspeak that if I didn't know better I'd accuse these guys of being what you guys call "yank-offs".

Granted, you'd still be branded a corporate douche for actually talking like that straight-facedly here in the US; but "actionable" is live jargon and actually used by even savvy manager-types.

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