Maybe Next Time

admin —  October 16, 2007 — 3 Comments

Just for the record I’ve decided not to run for the DLP at this election. I think when it comes down to it that I’ve enjoyed my time out of politics too much, and certainly becoming political again risks damaging the great relationships I’ve built up in the last 2 years, and @simone comes to mind 🙂

I’m also not time poor at the moment, and running a campaign properly is a full time gig. On one hand I’ve always passionately believed in the civic good, and the individuals ability to make a difference, on the other hand at 32 I’m building my own business, writing for the bible of Web 2.0 and enjoying my working life more than I ever have before…which oddly enough before coincides with my time involved in politics.

I’ve got a podcast lined up this week with an old friend of mine Wade McInerney on the election, and depending on how that goes I’ll look at  forum discussion and/ or podcast the week prior to the election, but aside from the odd observation that’s it for me this year.

My thanks to the many people who encouraged me in considering running, and for your different opinions for and against.

BTW: you should vote for the LDP in the Senate in particular: Australia needs a good libertarian voice to counter the mad socialism of the Greens and the Religious socialism of Family First on the cross benches. If you’re in Queensland vote Democrat in the senate only because Andrew Bartlett gets new media and blogging: I don’t agree with most of the Democrats platform but Bartlett is definitely one of the good guys.

A totally left of centre offer today: I was aksed to consider running for the Liberty and Democracy Party as their candidate in Forrest.

The initial rush of blood to the head was like blood to a vampire for me: it’s hard to ever get away from politics once you’ve been involved at some stage, and particularly so as I was for 12 years of my life in the Liberal Party.

I’m giving it some serious thought, and I’ll probably sleep on it tonight. On one hand when I quit the Liberal Party that was suppose to be it for me in politics, and given what little it gave back over 12 long years of blood, sweat and tears it should have been it. And yet the LDP has a policy platform that is totally in sync with my fundamental political beliefs, beliefs which I’d note where once Liberal beliefs that were forgotten in the orgy of socialism that is the Howard Government.

Obviously I couldn’t win, but I might get enough votes to make a difference, and maybe even help get the LDP senate candidate up.

More soon.

Election Time

admin —  October 14, 2007 — Leave a comment

I’m suffering a strange sense of withdrawal, as this is the first Federal Election since 93 where the calling of an Election has sent me into a complete and utter panic, and the first since 1990 where I have absolutely no involvement (or she who must be obeyed BTW: despite the rumors the local f*ckwits in the Liberal Party might be spreading).

First day of election campaign is to authorize postal votes flyers to go out, presuming that head office isn’t doing them, or in the case of the WA Liberal Party isn’t completely f*cking it up like they did at the last State Election campaign here.

Step two is to order your advertising, presuming that you’ve already pre-recorded and/ or designed the material.

My prediction: ALP by 15, with the surprise result being that they’ll pick up Forrest on preferences from Independent Candidate Noel Brunning. Portlandbet might have Brunning at $3.50 to win but he’ll primarily poach Liberal voters, and the ALP vote can only go up so Brunning won’t get enough to come in second and take it to preferences. Presuming the ALP is smart and runs dummy HTV cards directing Brunning voters to put them second, they will be looking good, even with the 10% margin.

Recommended Viewing: NEWStopia

admin —  October 11, 2007 — 2 Comments

SBS launched a new show last night, a Shaun McCaulife news-style satire by the name of NEWStopia. It’s playing 10pm Wednesdays for an initial 10 week run. I didn’t see it last night, but read about it in Crikey today, you can watch the show (for the next week) here.

It’s actually pretty good, and I’ve never been a McCaulife fan. 297% of voters cant be wrong on the Pakistan election story and the spoof ad on NetAltert in the middle of the show, with Coonan swearing is a classic. Enjoy.

One of the cool things I’m finding with Second Life + voice is its ability to act as a virtual meeting place, not unlike getting together with a few people at a bar and having a chinwag.

On Saturday, TPN Island hosted about 20 people in a chat on everything ranging to politics, Podcamp, Second Life itself and some other stuff in between.

It was a totally spontaneous meetup as well. I noticed Cam Reilly and Nick Hodge were there so I teleported in and Twittered it, then the crowd grew from there. I can’t put names to everyone who was there, but I know a lot of the folks either via Twitter or through my Web 2.0 + WA connections (or both).

The key was voice. Think a Skype conference call but with virtual visualization and with more ppl: certainly Skype would struggle to handle that many people on a call, where Second Life handled it really, really well.

Pics on Flickr for those interested.

Picture 13

Matt Price Has Brain Tumours

admin —  October 8, 2007 — 1 Comment

Sad, by Tim Blair who has a copy of an email Matt Price sent to News Corp colleagues:

A couple of weeks back I returned from Canberra with low energy levels. Then last week – and this is perverse – I noticed my left side slightly awry writing a story on Chris Mainwaring. A trip to the GP and a CT scan proved devastating. I have several brain tumours and will undergo exploratory brain surgery on Wednesday.

There is no sugar coating this – it?s dangerous and serious. Telling the three kids has been horrific. I am distraught at the prospect of introducing cancer into their innocent teenage lives. We are entering a long dark tunnel with no guarantees.

Wishes to Matt and his family. He’s one of Australia’s better jorno’s, and is certainly one of the few columnists I’ll actively seek out and read on the odd occasion I buy the print edition of The Oz. He’s also a fairly regular guest on ABC 720 Perth as well where he’s always enjoyable to listen to.

I blame Cameron Reilly!

I’ve been spending more and more time in Second Life lately, mostly for researching TechCrunch posts (see coverage here) and then I noticed Cam had set up a HQ for The Podcast Network. I met up with Cam Friday night (still in Brisbane for the Australian Blogging Conference, the Chifley had a fairly decent net connection) in world and he took me for a tour of a design company where we sat in the board room and had a chat, then we teleported across to TPN HQ where we chatted with a couple of other people. It was like tasting blood, I’m hooked again.

So I’ve gone a bought some land, and unlike my 2005 forays this time I bought big, a 19,500 sqm mainland block with dual road frontage and water. Beautiful block. I’ve already started subdividing it to see if I can sell about half and cover my cost of buying the full block, which given the steal of about L$10/ sqm I should. Bought a house and am looking at a skyscraper for corporate space and rentals. I’ve also got an idea for a Second Life business which is sort-of Web 2.0 related: this won’t be my big startup but I can see it being a nice hobby on the side. I’ll send out some requests for permissions I need probably tomorrow. I should be shy at entering retail again after my last experience of socialism gone mad, but I’m a bit more confident on this one.

More as I go along.

I’ve finally got around to doing some personal blogging today, the travel of September and the long weekend behind me, and I just wanted to do a short post congratulating Peter Black on hosting a great conference in Brisbane.

It was hard to work out numbers, maybe 100-150 people turned up to QUT Kelvin Grove for the conference, a thoroughly modern venue which someone said to me was too post-modernist…I liked it.

The sessions were great. I was on stage with Professor John Quiggley and Senator Andrew Bartlett for the opening discussion…on one hand I felt overwhelmed to be on stage with two men with such great backgrounds, yet on the other hand it was a great platform to preach blogging inclusiveness from, and get straight to the point, and as one of the few professional bloggers at the conference I had a different take…which I hope was good 🙂

I spent the next period at the legal session: EFA is still going, which is a surprise for me, given their low to non-existent profile, but it is sort of nice knowing that they are still there. Some interesting feedback on legal exposure for Australian bloggers; they claim I can still be sued in Australia even though I host everything in the US. It’s a worry, but I’m still hosting everything in the States, if I suspect it’s a big risk I’ll set up a US shelf company to own the sites.

In the afternoon I led The Building a Better Blog session and I roped in Yaro Starak to help. Personable bloke who speaks well and is a credit to his industry. After that I sat in on Des Walsh and Yaro for the Business Blogging session. Again, interesting stuff, different perspectives on things which I found personally interesting.

Best thing about the conference all up was the face to face conversations and feedback: as a networking session alone it kicked ass, but I’d like to think that at least some of those in attendance learnt stuff as well.

My only negative was the split into the various sessions; I would have liked to sit in on more of them but the concurrent format made that impossible. Maybe the trick is to do shorter sessions, or hold less at the same time.

According to Peter the next conference will be held in Sydney or Melbourne next year, which I’d suggest would mean a bigger audience and more possibilities. Where ever it is I’ll be back for more; brining Australian bloggers together in the great Dave Winer style unconference format is a worthwhile thing.

Was TechCrunch 40 Good?

admin —  September 21, 2007 — 3 Comments

Shel Israel makes an interesting point: would I have said TechCrunch 40 was great if I wasn’t reporting it for TechCrunch (or words to that effect: read the post, like most of Shel’s stuff its far better put forward that I can summise it here).

Simple answer is no. If it sucked big time I’d be selling my sole for lying and Arrington doesn’t pay me enough.

The truth of the matter is that I thought it was bloody brilliant. Sure, there were some hiccups, mostly with presentations from companies with the AV setup on the first day; I’ve got no idea who is to blame for that, but it was interesting that one company would come out and deliver their spiel badly, the next was brilliant, the following poor, the next great again…I get the feeling fault may lie more with some of the presenting companies.

On the completely personal level I loved the expert panels with the VC’s covering raising VC, the middle one (can’t remember the title) and exit strategies. If I had to pay to attend I would have paid to listen to what they had to say because you don’t get advice from firms like Sequoia at that level every day…if ever at all. The startups themselves were a mixed bag, some really, really great ideas and others I wondered why they were picked to present; end of the day my likes are different to your likes are different to the next person or even Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis, it’s subjective decision making and you can never please everyone…it’s just unfortunate that some people seem to forget the rule of subjectivity.

Just for the record I did sh*tcan a couple of companies in my live blogging; sure, I was trying to be kind but one startup in particular had the worse business model I’ve seen for a long time with a worse presentation, and even the panel of experts said so as well. If the money was talking every single one of them would have received praise…but that’s not me, full stop.

On Shel’s client: I still love Cubic Telecom, brilliant idea that seemed to be lost on the Americans on the panel, probably because they don’t travel enough. Anyone who travels internationally will immediately get Cubic Telecom’s idea. The lack of mobile number portability was the only bad thing I can say about it, but for those sorts of savings, and presuming I’ll be traveling abroad regularly next year I’ll be signing up some time after they launch in October.

I Finally got an iPhone

admin —  September 20, 2007 — 1 Comment

Visited the Palo Alto Apple store today and took the plunge on a 8GB iPhone; TechCrunch’s Nick Gonzales and I bought one each at the same time. Phone unlocked and app installer on (thanks John) and the phone is working with the Optus sim. It won’t work on the AT&T Edge data network, which given the roaming fees for Optus is probably a good thing, and there is Wifi everywhere here so using it to get online is a sinch…except for the hotel where the Wifi is spotty.

First impressions as an owner are the same as the first time I played with one. Wow. There is nothing else like it, it’s beautiful in every single way. YouTube doesn’t work with the unlock unfortunately, and of course there is no visual voice mail, but hey: email and web surfing is amazing. Camera is just as good as my old Nokia. iPod is brilliant, cover flow is even better again and it pumps out a decent sound on speaker. The typing gets easier with time, and I always sucked at txting anyway, so I’m already quicker on this. Call quality is excellent and most importantly it’s got a stronger antenna in it: where as I can’t get AT&T coverage at all at TC central on the Nokia, I get?Ǭ† 3-4 bars on the iPhone.

More soon…perhaps when I stop constantly picking it up and playing with it 🙂