/ blog · 2009
Archive
Posts from 2004 to 2017. This was a personal blog during a fairly chaotic decade in independent publishing — some of it tech commentary, some of it Australia, some of it ephemera. It’s kept here in full for anyone who arrives via an old link.
Current writing lives at SiliconANGLE.
2nd, 6th… got to try harder
The queen of Australian blogging lists Meg updated her Top 100/ 250 Australian blog list over Easter, the first time since Australia Day. The Inquisitr came second for the 2nd time running. My old business partner Darren Rowse beat me out with Problogger. He wasn’t there last time: in Jan it was Gizmodo Australia, the […]
Wnning line: “I’d trust Mr Bolton like I’d trust a rabbit with a lettuce leaf.”
I still don’t know what this bloke is playing at: I mean seriously, all the media attention and sucking in investors only to sell out at the 11th hour, but I love this line in response The Age: Stunned investors vent fury at chairman “He’s not going to get (the $4.5 million), I can promise […]
Blue Moon: NBN waited for you….
Oz: Telstra open to break-up TELSTRA will consider a voluntary separation of its wholesale and retail arms as well as the sale of some assets to the federal Government’s proposed $43 billion broadband network in a spectacular about-face that effectively dumps the aggressive four-year strategy championed by chairman Donald McGauchie and chief executive Sol Trujillo. […]
NBN as a TV killer? Unlikely
Mark Day in the OZ (via Mumbrella) IF we look through the increasingly clouded questions surrounding the Rudd Government?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s plans for a fibre-to-the-home high-speed broadband network, how it will be designed, who will build it, who will own it and what it will cost end users, one thing is crystal clear: this is a game-changer […]
Holy Smokes Batman: Telstra might be broken up!
Age:?Ǭ†Telstra set to abandon major cable upgrade In the aftermath of the Government’s decision last week, Telstra’s immediate task will be to rethink its investment in cable after it emerged that regulatory changes could include forcing the telco to divest the network which passes 2.5 million homes and businesses. Wow. Just wow. Should the Government […]
Whoops, NBN might not be feasible. The devil is in the detail
Steve Murphy in the Business Spectator: The 21st Century infrastructure equivalent of the Snowy Hydro is what K-Rudd says of his new Broadband plan, but will we end up flushing as much money down the fibre optic drain as we do water down the Hydro. The problem is we don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t know and the Government can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t […]
NBN Questions: debt + international connections
Two questions 1. Does the $43billion include the cost of repayment of debt, or is it simply the cost of the actual rollout? Whether the Government directly borrows, or offers infrastructure bonds, both come with interest that needs to be repaid. The official release says “will invest” which could suggest that the $43 billion figure […]
Conroy’s internet filter ‘won’t stop child porn’
Courier Mail: Stephen Conroy’s internet filter ‘won’t stop child porn’ Question then, if it won’t stop child porn, why do it at all? After all, it was Conroy who continually said that the filter was all about child porn. “Black lists are needed to combat child pornography” Conroy (The West) On the overall policy: “It […]
How the RBA f&*ked over the non-bank banking sector
On March 3, the Reserve Bank in Australia (RBA) abolished bank intercharge fees on ATM’s in favor of a pay to use system where consumers pay a rate determined by the owner of the ATM. This was allegedly about reducing charges for consumers, and providing a more transparent charging regime. SMH March 24 Reserve Bank […]
Culture wars and Stephen Conroy
Australian Minister for Censorship Stephen Conroy appeared on the ABC’s Q&A Thursday night. Transcript and video here (I’m not sure if the video is available outside of Australia). I won’t rehash it all, but some interesting takeaways: Political Content STEPHEN CONROY: But that is not what is being proposed. I mean we believe that there […]
10 million page views
It must be milestone week. First, 5000 posts for The Inquisitr, now 10 million page views. We snuck past the 10m mark some time on March 23 US time, or morning March 24 AEDT. The funny stat: if we take a line from Oct 5 (US time) our 5th month anniversary, we’ve done 9 million […]
5000
The comment count is a little strange. Disqus 17,300 odd, and I don’t think there was 7000 in the time before Disqus and after. The 5000 came Friday US time (March 20). So 5,000 posts in 319 days at an average of 15.7 posts a day.
Sydney Airport, where fruit is banned, but being beaten to death is OK
SMH: Bikie killed in Sydney Airport brawl The man was beaten to death INSIDE the Qantas Domestic Terminal. Where in the world was security? I know, it was too busy looking for forbidden fruit (like Apples from Victoria) in the baggage collection area, or making sure the pram going through X-ray wasn’t carrying a bomb. […]
ACMA Prohibited Links: where does the liability fall?
Is it illegal for Australians to link to the alleged ACMA blacklist on Wikileaks? Here’s ACMA quoted at news.com.au ACMA threatens fines of up to $11,000 a day for linking to sites on its secret censorship blacklist I’m not a lawyer, so I could be wrong, but is it actually illegal for individuals to link […]
Some days I wish there was a way we could do more Australian news
We get a really good run on GNews with Australian stories, but I don’t know how to monetize Australian news, well to the point where we can afford a sales team to make it worth while. The bad side is that while we get good treatment on Australian stories, GNews labels The Inquisitr as “The […]
Telstra channels Yes Minister
Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud: Last night I said that Telstra hadn’t shut down Leslie’s Twitter account. This was based on the advice of my colleagues. It’s factually correct, though it’s also true that Leslie’s senior managers independently told him last night to stop. So it’s factually correct that Telstra did not ask that […]
Freeview spoof response
Margaret Simons wrote about the now infamous Freeview spoof in Crikey Tuesday. She left something out. This was my response to Crikey, although it wasn’t published. Margaret Simons’ otherwise excellent coverage of the Freeview spoof video saga was somewhat sullied by a last line that reads “At the time of publishing, you can view the […]
The numbers recession we’re not having
Just a short(ish) note to anyone who is following our numbers at the moment. Over the weekend (Friday US time to be precise) I upgraded to WP 2.7.1 and we started having problems with our stats. At first, I thought that OMG our unique visitor count was crashing. Indeed, if you look at the data, […]
Job ad reporting: you’re doing it right
Latest job figures out today show more bad news for the Australian economy. Notable though was how they were reported. News.com.au grouped newspaper ads (5-6% of the total) with online, and didn’t offer split figures: The ANZ survey found total job advertisements slipped 10.4 per cent in February, the largest recorded monthly fall since the […]
Pacific Brands lynching
As is not unusual when backed by a media that likes nothing more than pitting company owners against a presumed proletariat, the Pacific Brands lynching continues. For those outside of Australia, Pacific Brands announced recently it was shutting down its Australian manufacturing plants. The company owns brands such as Bonds, Hard-Yakka and more. It was […]