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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.
Japanese confuse sheep for poodles
What the? From news.com.au: THOUSANDS of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles… The scam was uncovered when Japanese film star Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food. She […]
The Top 100 Australian Blogs: feeds via OPML
Following on from Meg’s great Top 100 Australian Blogs list, my quest to become the Dave Winer of Australian blogging continues, I’m occasionally grumpy, I’m getting older by the day, I haven’t got the beard yet…I guess I can work on it….but on a more serious note, let me present The Top 100 Australian Blogs: […]
Smage downsizing: following US trend
Iconic Australian newspapers the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (The Smage collectively) are downsizing, not only jobs but print size as well, shriking to the tall sheet size I blogged about noticing in North America last November. It’s been 10 years since I read a print version on the SMH regularly, and I remember […]
US online gambling ban to be overturned?
Good news from el Reg: “U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank’s press office has confirmed that Thursday at 10am Frank will introduce legislation to repeal the controversial Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA)” Now if only we could someone in Australia to overturn our ridiculous laws 🙂
The Simpsons meets Google
Compliments of Search Engine Land, The Simpsons meet Google: Full clip as follows:
Nifty Tip: FF search in a new tab
Thanks to Lifehacker (once again) for a very handy tip. If you’re like me, you use the search box in FireFox regularly, and in doing so I usually open a new tab for the results, this hack sets search results to automatically open in a new tab: Type about:config into the address bar, and then […]
OMG, the broke Fark, those….
Fark has a new design. It isn’t pretty, but probably worse still is the loading times, it’s beyond slow to buggery. What in the world were they thinking? Took me over a minute to get to the bottom of the page to leave a comment, and longer again to actually make the comment, and this […]
Where’s Krug?
Thought I might open this one up, given I’m not getting responses to my emails, and I’m hearing all sorts of interesting rumours: where is David Krug? he’s literally MIA? anyone have any ideas? health or something else?
Top 10 George W Bush moments
Worth a laugh:
Lest We Forget, Anzac Day 2007
Something a little more upbeat this year, some Banjo Patterson: We’re All Australians Now; Australia takes her pen in hand, To write a line to you, To let you fellows understand, How proud we are of you. From shearing shed and cattle run, From Broome to Hobsons Bay, Each native-born Australian son, Stands straighter up […]
The Big Brother lie
Just watching Big Brother now (Monday night: WIN WA is actually showing it this year, so I don’t have to pray for TEN coverage from Perth). Gretel Killeen has at least 3 times referred to the entry of the housemates as being “last night” or “24 hours later” in referral to the 2 about to […]
How Many Australian Blogs are there?
Meg asks a question right out of my own past: how many Australian Blogs are there?. I’m going to guess. If we include MySpace blogs as blogs (which we should BTW), I’m going to guess 3-4 million, maybe more. Without MySpace, 1 million. It might be time to do some digging, or even a fully […]
Defamer/ Gizmodo Australia launch
The Australian licensed versions of the Gawker Media blogs, Defamer and Gizmodo have launched. First thoughts: I’ll probably reserve judgment in full for now, to early to make a call on them properly, but naturally a couple of things: 1. They didn’t take lessons from Nick Denton when it comes to launching. Defamer has 4 […]
Getting back to basics, French style
According to the SMH, this is a picture of French Presidential Candidate Nicolas Sarkozy on the campaign trail. Gotta love the tractor:
New Zealand: beautiful one day, photoshopped the next
From the SMH: Tourism New Zealand has admitted it digitally enhanced the latest images of scenic New Zealand spots in its 100 per cent Pure New Zealand campaign. No word yet if it was a matter of just cutting out the sheep 🙂
Jeremy Schoemaker slams Ask, then deletes post
I always find it interesting when people say stuff they shouldn’t, then try to undo the damage by deleting the post, ignoring the fact that RSS leaves a trail. And no, for the record I generally don’t delete stuff, although I do often regret writing some of it, but hey, I’m also smart enough to […]
Is Naomi Robson hot?
OK, so this isn’t usually the forum for sexist comments on the female form, but Channel Seven’s Naomi Robson has never struck me as being overly attractive before, and yet this picture, from news.com.au…well, it puts a different spin on it. In old world parlance, she’s a pretty good looking sort. Now note to female […]
Join the Statsaholic petition
If you’re looking for a good Web 2.0 cause to support, visit Mashable and sign the petition against Amazon’s decision to sue Statsaholic (previously Alexaholic). Lets see: Amazon opens its data saying “use it, please”. Someone does, they get popular, Amazon steals the best bits for Alexa, then sues the people who did nothing more […]
How long to someone games MySpace News
Loren has the details on how you can submit stories to the newly launched MySpace News. Top story there currently has two votes, which begs the question: how long until someone starts gaming it? indeed, a couple of MySpace accounts would do it, and you can pick them up in bunches of 100-1000 cheaply at […]
Some people are just gutless
This isn’t something I’m particularly fond of writing, but it’s just so wrong it cant be left unsaid. The Age covers the Top 100 Australian blogs, and finishes with this: One blogger, who did not want to be named, told The Age that the top blog, Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger site, was outperformed by a lot […]