We Recommend: Your Friday Freebies

Each Friday, our contributors send in a bunch of (legally) free stuff they’ve come across this week, to help you waste your weekend. You’re welcome.

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App: Mcalc Lite

Recommended by: Eliza Cussen

I never thought there was anything particularly girlie about menstruation. Blood, pain and rage are all pretty hardcore, and it seems that marketing teams behind period paraphernalia are starting to notice. This week an app was launched which helps people keep track of their periods in a non-girlie, blue-liquid-free, nobody’s-up-for-fucking-tennis kind of way.

Mcalc Lite for Android has a sex for fun setting and a baby-making setting, providing helpful alerts like “buy pads” and “you’ll ovulate in 3 days”. It was developed to be gender neutral and trans-friendly. An iOS app is in the works too. Go them.

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Speech: ‘The Rise Of The Reader: Journalism In The Age Of The Open Web’, by Katherine Viner

Recommended by: Steph Harmon

The Guardian have published the AN Smith Lecture given by their Australian editor-in-chief Katherine Viner on Wednesday night. If you’re interested in journalism, the internet, and/or the Australian media landscape, it’s absolutely worth a read.

Viner begins the speech by citing Thomas Pettitt’s “Gutenberg Parenthesis”, which describes the last 500 years of print-dominated information as an exception to the historical rule. “The web, says Pettitt, is returning us to a pre-Gutenberg state in which we are defined by oral traditions: flowing and ephemeral. … So what does that mean for journalism?”

In the discussion that follows, she presents a compelling case for journalists to rethink the way they relate to their audience; it’s not a particularly new argument, but it’s a refreshing one to hear from a major news outlet. “The digital revolution is not just a technological change,” she says. “It’s a shift in power.” Viner argues against churnalism (“not chasing the pack”), against the old heirarchy (“your readers often know more than you”), and, obviously, against paywalls: “How could the future of journalism be safe behind a paywall, when the future of journalism is going on outside them?”

Instead, Viner encourages a full embrace of — or submission to — the digital platform, and all the openness that it demands: listening to the reader, listening to the traffic, and linking out to other sources. Because the internet works best when you use it well.

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Sports: Friday Night A-League

Recommended by: James Wright

After several years behind the closed doors of Foxtel, the Hyundai A-League has thrown off the shackles of pay-television and secured a home on Australia’s home of football and art-house erotica, SBS. Tonight is the first installment of the weekly free-to-air match that will air on SBS2 at 7pm on Fridays throughout the season (the games will also be streamed online throughout the year), with Alessandro Del Piero’s Sydney FC taking on Emile Heskey’s Newcastle Jets.

This match is quite the compelling curtain raiser, with Sydney FC needing a strong season to ensure they are not relegated to clear number two status in the Harbour City, given the incredible debut season of crosstown rivals Western Sydney Wanderers, last year’s minor premiers. With Del Piero at the helm, they remain compelling viewing, regardless of their position on the league table, with the Azzurri legend almost guaranteed to produce two or three inimitable touches of class any time he takes the field.

For more information on tonight’s game and to access the live stream, head here.
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Karaoke: Jackie Chan sings ‘I’ll Make A Man Out Of You’ in Cantonese

Recommended by: Ben Jenkins

You may have already come across this, but if you haven’t… Well, you know that feeling that there’s something missing, as if there’s a hole in your chest — maybe just below the heart — and if you could just find what fits there, you could feel whole and become virtually unstoppable? This is what goes there.

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Music: Sweet Nothings EP, by Plini

Recommended by: Alexander Tulett