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  • iPhone 3G Unboxing

    The full video up on The Inquisitr here (Vimeo, so available in HD). The YouTube version as follows. I haven’t stopped playing with it since I purchased. Never seen people lining up in suburbia before like I did for the iPhone today, Optus Camberwell they were 100-200m up the street. The little phone store on Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, where most people wouldn’t think to line up…I got straight it, but people kept on following me.

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  • On Race

    There’s been a debate/ discussion raging this week around race online. It started with Loren Feldman’s 12 month old “Tech Nigga” video then went in various directions, including an appalling example of racism targeted at SheGeek’s Corvida during a YLive show.

    I’ve not long finished this weeks things you can’t say on the Internet podcast, and the subject came up. I haven’t heard the recording yet, but before it comes out I’d like to clarify my stance on the subject, as bite size chunks in a podcast probably won’t do it justice.

    Loren Feldman

    The one thing that has me beat about the whole Tech Nigga story is that it’s an old one that has come up again. I understand and respect that Loren was trying to make a point about the lack of African American tech bloggers. It offended people, and I believe at the time he apologized for offending people. We all make mistakes, and I’m sure Loren will never make a similar video again.

    As I noted in the podcast though, I don’t understand why this is different from say an Ali-G type send up. The lines are very much blurred. However I respect that people find the video offensive, and as such I believe they have the right to say so.

    But lets be very clear on one thing: Loren Feldman is not a racist. I spent two days with him in New York with 2006, and this was the mix, myself (white, but Australian), Loren (New Yorker + Jewish) and Chatreuse (African-American). The only time I can even remotely recall anything regarding race coming from Loren’s mouth may have been a self-depreciating joke about his Jewishness. By all means, say he lacks taste at time (as do the best of us at times) and someone who makes mistakes, but don’t call him a racist, he’s not, and anyone who knows him knows that he’s not as well.

    American race relations

    I noted in the podcast, as I know I have elsewhere before, that America’s obsession with race has always struck me as being strange as an Australian. The concept of Asian-American, African-American, even Irish-American…I don’t get it, and I never will. In Australia people don’t generally call themselves Asian-Australians, Italian-Australians, English-Australians…I’m not saying that some people don’t, but it’s not a regular thing here. Ask most people of any ethnic background here who they are, and they’ll just tell you they are Australian. My grandparents on my fathers side migrated here from Scotland, I don’t regard myself Scottish-Australian, and I’ve never once referred to myself in that way.

    I respect that people are, and can be proud of their cultural heritage, but I wonder whether this some-what obsession with what makes people different is in part contributing to the continuation of the racism that drives us apart. What’s wrong with American’s simply being American, irrespective of the color of their skin? A society that values its shared nationality today over its divided past will more quickly overcome the evils of racism. We are, after all, all people.

    African-Americans and tech

    One thing we discussed in the podcast was the lack of African-Americans in tech. This was one of the original points Loren was trying to make. It’s real, and that some would suggest that saying so is racist itself is beyond me. It’s true. The only African-American I’ve seen on most of my trips in the last 12 months to the US was MC Hammer. The mix is always white, Asian and Indian.

    I can’t even pretend I have an answer here, or even whether this should be addressed. That debate is for others, but don’t let calls of racism cloud facts.

    Colorblindness and the blogosphere

    Getting back to matters race, I’ll repeat what I said in the podcast: I really don’t care what color, sexuality, gender or nationality you are. I remember someone on FriendFeed the other day asking people to forgive him because English wasn’t his first language. I didn’t even know until he said so. I didn’t know Corvida was an African-American Lesbian until she said so, and I really don’t care that she is. I’ve always judged people as I meet them, online and off, and I’ll judge the value of people through their writings or contribution to the conversation. Despite this current obsession with race, in my experience the majority, but not all people, think along the same lines.

    Glass Ceilings

    If you want to talk about disadvantage, I got to where I was today after spending 10 years in country Western Australia. I might as well have been in timbuktu or the North Pole. The blogosphere has always been in a strong part a meritocracy. Not perfectly, particularly these days at the top and with the power a few people hold, but it still in a large part is. Blogging rewards hard work and a well spoken word, irrespective of race or any other criteria.

    That’s pretty much my two cents worth. It distresses me to see people like Wayne Sutton, Corvida and others upset in this current debate, and the YLive thing is appalling. However, lets take a deep breath and look for ways everyone can get a fair go in the blogosphere, irrespective of race, religion, sexuality or nationality. We have far more in common than we have which is different. Lets obsess about the positives and moving forward.

  • The TechCrunch Digg Club

    Interesting, I’m no longer loved, but they keep on asking me to vote for them on Digg.

    tc comments 2014 On My Mac (Found 74 matches for search)
    Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

  • Seesmic and video

    I couple of months back I started duncanriley.tv, my experiment in video. I got some great advice from folks like Chris Pirillo, then ignored most of it and started doing stuff. It was great fun, and some of the videos received thousands of views on Youtube. Most didn’t, but using Tubemogul most hit low to mid 3 figures across a range of services.

    And then I sort of stopped.

    It’s not due to any dislike in creating videos. I love doing them. The issue was time. Not the time to do the video, the time to do the video, convert it, upload it to Tubemogul, wait for that to work (at it’s been getting slower and slower lately, free service so I shouldn’t complain, but still…) then post one of them to the site. It became a chore.

    But I haven’t really stopped doing video. I just switched to an easier tool. Despite some of my earlier skepticism, that tool is Seesmic. Although to be fair, I’m also doing the occasional video to Phreadz as well (and I’ll do a lot more once they open it up for anyone to register, Kosso is great value, and it’s a quality site).

    Why Seesmic? It’s easy. It’s easy to jump onto Seesmic and record a video straight to the site. Loic has taken the recording, encoding, uploading etc out of making video. With the new embeds that allow people to respond, Seesmic has become a one stop shop for interactive video.

    Once upon a time I would hate to say this, but I like it as well.

    I did some videos recently with my son. He loves doing Seesmic videos. We started at one. Two days later Loic emails me to tell me that the video was the second most watched video on Seesmic that day. WTF, ROFL, and LOL were some of my initial reactions. Then I went back and did some more. And like a junkie I keep going back. The key thing: easy, quick, not time consuming.

    There is something missing.

    I still need a tool that will give me Seesmic recording functionality with the distribution of Tubemogul. In this day and age you have to be on YouTube, and it helps if you’re on 8 other sites as well. It doesn’t help that YouTube’s quick capture facility completely and utterly sucks arse. I tried to record a video there tonight, it was an unwatchable, pixelated mess. This is an opportunity waiting to happen for a new startup, or existing service: do your video capture locally, but distribute it. Blip.tv is an obvious candidate, great service, but no local recording. But even Seesmic, or Phreadz. Cut you video, have it pumped out to other services.

    So for the few people who subscribed to duncanriley.tv, apologies. I should start putting my Seesmic videos up. It was fun while it lasted. I’ll do something with the site eventually. In the mean time, follow me on Seesmic, or you can watch the latest vids in the sidebar here at duncanriley.com

  • Travel Plans: Seattle, LA in August

    I finally have some dates booked for August.

    I’ll be in Seattle for my first ever Gnomedex from the afternoon of August 18 through to August 25. I’ll be in Los Angeles from the afternoon of August 25 until late night August 27.

    Why the stopoever? Did you know Qantas allows one free stopover if you do a US booking? I’d read it before when making bookings but I could never work out how to book one…now I did. I picked LA because I’ve never been there aside from the airport to and from Vegas. The other two choices were Hawaii or Vancover…I know, LA is an odd choice, but you’ve got to do it once.

    If anyone wants a meet up when I’m in Seattle let me know. I plan on playing tourist for at least 1 day in LA, but I hopefully will get to meet up with a few people (yes Sean Percival, I’m thinking of you) as well for the short time I’m there. I might even have to rock up at Mahalo for a tour! 🙂

    Update: I should have added, tickets are still available for Gnomedex here. Attendees list also on the same page, great list of people, most I’ve never met.

  • Identi.ca proves me wrong, and I’m happy about it

    The big buzz today is around Indenti.ca, a new open source, and open platform microblogging service. That the code is open source is great in itself, but the biggest breakthrough is support for the new OpenMicroBlogging standard, which means that in theory, anyone could host the script and each service would talk to each other, creating a distributed, decentralized Twitter.

    Dave Winer has been talking about something like this for months, and a while back I wrote on another site that while it was a great idea, it wouldn’t happen, because no one would build an open platform like this because the economics of doing so didn’t add up. After all, if you’re a startup, with funding, why would you build something that others could take and use, possibly (and likely) to bypass the startup in the medium to long term. Centralized services are popular for a reason: it keeps people coming back to the destination site.

    I was wrong. Someone has done it. The folks behind Identi.ca have done it, and I couldn’t be happier.

    There’s already a lot of discussion around Identi.ca v Twitter in relation to features and usability, and I get a lot of the negative sentiment. Identi.ca as a stand alone service is basic at best, and perhaps I’d even go as far as calling it fairly lame, as the current version isn’t exactly exciting for the end user. But that’s irrelevant in the bigger picture. Even if Identi.ca and Laconi.ca code that runs it turns out to be complete failures, it has achieved one thing: it proves that open source, decentralized microblogging is possible, and that it can be done.

    It’s way to early to make a call on the code and the OpenMicroBlogging standard at this time, and even then I’m no expert in code so I’m not remotely qualified to make a call on where it is at, although I will be playing with it shortly. But I can call it a start. As I described it in a FriendFeed thread, it’s a freedom seed, the start of something much bigger at a time the market is desperately seeking alternatives as the Twitter train wreck keeps on chugging. The only question now is how quickly will new sites pop up that run this code, providing improved consumer choice and driving the open source project forward so that it may one day fully compete with Twitter, and then eventually pass it.

    More on The Inquisitr here.

  • Guest Posting on Mashable

    Just a quick shout out to Pete Cashmore with thanks for giving me the opportunity to guest post on occasion on Mashable. My first post is up today, covering Melbourne based Copper Project from Element Software.

    If you like, think of this as my community service (I’m not being paid). I’m passionate about Australian startups and although I’m always happy to write about them on The Inquisitr, there are standouts that deserve a bigger audience than I can deliver. Until recently that audience was on another site, but now it’s Mashable, as long as Pete and Adam are happy to have me. I’d note that this doesn’t mean I can write about every Australian startup that comes across my desk (I can’t), but if you’re an Australian startup who has interesting news, or even a story to tell, ping me and I can certainly consider it, for either The Inquisitr or Mashable.

  • Old

    Not as old, or in many ways sad as the jokes at the Tivoli, but I’m still looking a little old. She who must be obeyed however is aging like a fine wine.

    old
    Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

  • Do Not Use RSM Bird Cameron

    A couple of years ago, when we (she who must be obeyed and I) decided that running a business through our personal taxes wasn’t a particularly effective way of dealing with tax and GST, we signed up with the local RSM Bird Cameron, or to be precise RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury (which is also the same RSM Bird Cameron for RSM Bird Cameron Busselton and RSM Bird Cameron Manjimup). She who must be obeyed knew one of the accountants from years before, so we signed up. The first 6 months was great, and then Kingsley tells us that he’s moving on to another business. He tells us that he’ll line us up with someone else at RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury who will take care of us. And that’s when the problems started.

    Even at that first meeting, things were promised to be followed up but never were. In the coming months, phone calls were never returned, let alone made (noting that we are still relative company newbies so if things needed to be done, we appreciated a call or letter, and that’s the service we use to get). I knew that I wasn’t happy with the complete lack of service we were getting, but as RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury had set up the company structure, and had all our information on hand, we thought we’d stick with them, mostly because of a tax event that needed to be settled this year. I might add we’d spent hours with the previous guy working through how we’d approach that tax issue as well, and I wasn’t keen on starting afresh.

    So we sent off our tax in around March, late, but accountants get extensions here in Australia. Weeks later I finally get a call asking questions about the return. Despite having spent hours in the office, they have NO record of my previous conversations, and the tax event that needed to be dealt with. I’m then told that the tax bill is going to be at least $10k more than the last guy told me, but the figure was made with no apparent zest for ways of reducing it….ways that had been discussed with the guy before.

    Eventually it’s done, and I’m told that I have to sign and return the docs, there were so many pages it wasn’t practical to fax them (Aust Post charges $3/ page STD) so I sent them Express. I’m called 2 days later, told that all I had to do was ok the tax return, they needed the signatures but I should have ok’d it anyway. Fine, tell him to send it off.

    Then we get the tax assessment back with a GIC (General Interest Charge) for my tax return of $3500 because it was “overdue” and it was backdated to November 21 (general cut off date for tax is Oct 31, then they give 21 days grace). Ring RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury, told that it’s the ATOs (Australian Taxation Offices) fault and that there is nothing RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury would do about it. Despite them being MY accountant and sending me a decent sized bill for their services, they refused to chase up why I had a GIC charge. So we ring the ATO.

    RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury never included us on their list of clients so we weren’t granted an extension. Yes, we were so important to RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury, a company we spent thousands with setting up a corporate structure and trusting our business with, that they couldn’t be bothered lodging us on the extension list with ALL THEIR OTHER CLIENTS.

    When she who must be obeyed rung me to relate the ATO conversation I was so gobsmacked that I said nothing….for minutes, and I’m not usually the sort of person who remains silent on anything.

    We are lodging an appeal with the ATO (we’ve paid the bill anyway, because the interest was accruing daily) and we are confident we’ll get the money back, but we’ll still have to wait and see.

    In the past I’ve spoken highly of RSM Bird Cameron, RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury and RSM Bird Cameron Bussleton to others, suggesting that they are a firm people should do business with. If you are dealing with RSM Bird Cameron today based on my recommendation I am sincerely sorry. My advice to anyone who reads this: do not do business with RSM Bird Cameron, and I certainly won’t be ever again in the future. From today my business goes elsewhere. I’m not sure whether negligent is the right word legally to describe their actions here, but sloppy, careless, rude, disgusting, appaling all apply in part.

    And if anyone can suggest a reasonably priced and competent accountant in Melbourne let me know.

  • When I run out of quota, what then?

    Massive panic attack today, my peak usage hit 30gb for the month to June 28. Anyone reading this inside the United States will have no idea what I’m talking about but it works this way: you buy broadband on a plan in Australia, even though they claim it’s unlimited (well some companies do,they lie…by unlimited the don’t charge you extra to use), you get X number of GB per month to download. Depending on the ISP and plan your uploads might also count to your quota (mine counts them 🙁 ). When you go over your quota you are “shaped” meaning that I was facing 3 days on an ADSL 2+ connection with a 64k limited speed. This is my phone pipe as well because we only have VOIP, so my phone calls would be screwed until the 28th.

    Cheaper plans at around the $30/ mth mark might come with as low on 200mb a month. Until 5 minutes ago I was paying $89.95/ month for 30GB peak (defined as midday-2am) and 60GB offpeak (the rest of the time). I’m now paying an insane $119.95 for 65GB peak/ 65GB off peak. Usage last month was 30GB peak, 20GB off, but probably my bad because I haven’t been scheduling downloads to watch the usage…well actually I have, we did 5GB peak in 3 days, and it turns out it was my wife AND son. The wife was downloading work related clips, doing online conversions of large files, and the boy has been spending hours on YouTube. Still, this is what the internet if for, we are not the ones in the wrong here, it’s the ISP’s who impose these restrictions in the first place.

    What next? If I look at my online consumption is has grown month after month and continues to grow. HD video online: bonzer, streaming video, you beauty, Podcasts via Apple TV…I never have enough time to watch them all. Australia risks slipping even further behind the rest of the civilized world, and most of the third world as well if it doesn’t start recognizing that true unlimited broadband is a key feature in keeping us competitive.