How to protect yourself against cyber-abuse

Listening to an excellent seminar from the Guardian's Future of Journalism series on the very depressing experience of women writers on the web.

Not surprisingly, feminist writers get the most extreme harassment, but other writers (remember Kathy Sierra?) are by no means immune.

Guardian journalist Jemima Kiss gives some great tips for protecting yourself against specific cyber-abusers: get a good developer (or yourself) to identify the "troll" that's harassing you and configure your site so that (a) your page appears to them as if their comments are being posted when they aren't or (b) your page loads so unbearably slowly that they get bored and go away.

Tips from other speakers include making sure that comment moderation is switched on (or indeed that comments are switched off entirely) and only accepting comments from people with a genuine identity/ email address.

Women 2.0

Just came across this great site. Misbehaving gives an insight into the minds of digital visionaries like Danah Boyd and Caterina Fake. Read and be inspired!

The best mentoring project in the sector...probably

Yay! Technical Change has received an award for mentoring from Skillset and the UK Film Council. I picked up the award last month at the AVE-DP wrap party, on behalf of Women in Film & Television.

This pic shows me with Radio & TV presenter Andrea Oliver who was there in all her gorgeousness to hand over a kiss and bunch of flowers (no money, sadly).

It's great to see Technical Change recognised as a project that's genuinely moved things forward for women working on the technical side of film, TV and new media.