duncanriley.com

Blog

  • To All The Haters

    Timothy Sykes has a brilliant post up, and this video (NSFW), I know how he feels.

  • Live Streaming Test

    Now I finally have a half decent internet connection (it’s only half because it only delivers 11mb/800k not 24mb/1mb as advertised) it means I can stream video. Been playing with a few of the services and I’m just going to leave one running for a while each day and see what happens. First up is Justin.TV. Me sitting in front of a computer isn’t that exciting, but the music is great, least I think so 🙂 My hours only though, the lamp is out in the office so no empty chair streaming 🙂

  • Twitter AFL Footy Comp

    Looking for a Footy tipping comp where you can compete with ppl like you? Join here. I’m a RL man by birth, but one thing I picked up from my nearly 10 years in Western Australia was footy tipping. Every job I had there had a Footy Tipping comp. It’s like religion, and it’s expected that you join. This comp is free, and you get to play with friends without the money 🙂

  • Antedote

    Wendy’s Song from South Park (lyrics NSFW)

  • FriendFeed = More Hyped Yawn

    So I started another bush fire, at least among the growing list of self important so-called A listers who would happily crucify anyone who dare question their favorite startup of the minute.

    I say A-List somewhat lightly, because the guy who’s come after me is someone who’s called Louis Gray. I’ve been blogging a bloody long time and for a lot of that time I’ve been reporting on the movers and shakers in blogging, and until a couple of months ago I’d never heard of this guy. His about page is as useful as tits on a bull: he does PR for a Silicon Valley technology company and found blogging in 2006. He’s talked about now at the same level as Calacanis, Scoble and Arrington, and yet he’s reached the lofty heights of 735 subscribers in Feedburner; probably more than this humble blog but this isn’t my main outlet.

    So this Louis Gray decides that rather than attack my ideas, he needs to take me down a peg like some pious, self important c*nt.

    Duncan Riley checked in with a quasi-analytic comment this morning

    Notice the put down with “quasi-analytic,” lets not fight on ideas, lets denigrate the messenger.

    And to put it bluntly, he missed the entire point. TechCrunch is right a lot of the time, but not today. FriendFeed is not the exact same thing as any service out there, and there’s no way that Duncan could have given the service its full due in his limited exposure to it.

    That’s right, I forgot, I’m a complete retard who is completely unable to come to any conclusion unless I’ve used a service for as long as Gray has. Wanker.

    Now lets get into the service: FriendFeed apparently slices, dices and cleans your kitchen:

    FriendFeed has been described by different folks as a social Web lifestream, by others a Web services aggregator, or as a conversational platform. But it’s not just one of these things – it’s all of these things. There are a definitely a wide number of sites out there that let you share all your activity in one place, or to track friends’ activity, but FriendFeed is the only one that lets you share items directly to the feed, elevate discussions through comments and show “likes” to highlight individual posts.

    OK, for starters a social web lifestream and web services aggregator are essentially the same thing; I think Gray says both of them for padding. “A Conversational Platform” is the key point here, because this is what Gray sees as the amazing thing about it.

    Here’s where it gets completely bizarre:

    Like Twitter, FriendFeed enables users to sift from the best of the blogosphere to find their friends and peers. No two individuals’ FriendFeed is exactly alike. And while I once questioned why anybody who wasn’t a Web services junkie and RSS maven would join, I’ve seen users who want to be consumers of information instead of producers of information enjoy the service, solely for communicating with friends. And while the term “friend” can vary from service to service, FriendFeed has got the formula right. I can see quickly who likes the same items I do, who contributes to FriendFeed conversations that I do, and if in need of new friends, I can use FriendFeed’s recommendation engine to suggest people my friends find interesting.

    Note that in my original post I said that Twitter made up nearly half of the content in my friend feed, and yet Gray argues that FriendFeed is a tool for communicating with friends. Isn’t Twitter a tool for communicating with friends? why do I need separate tool exactly to communicate with friends about communications I’ve had, probably with those same friends on Twitter? Gray doesn’t answer the point, because there’s zero explanation.

    Lets take the next source: blogs. Again, Gray talks about conversations, but we’ve seen all sorts of attempts at third party external commenting before. I can’t name the various browser plugins over the years that promised to allow visitors to chat or comment on a page. Then there was coComment and a number of clones that wanted to provided centralized comment tracking, enabling a conversation across pages and independent of the site. coComment reinvented itself into something primarily different because the idea = FAIL. So now we have a fancy RSS feed with comments. Note that the comments follow from a headline link, no content. [insert drag queen here] oh but you can have a conversation darling [/drag queen], and this appears to be the part Gray thinks I’ve missed because I haven’t participated. Here’s the thing Loiuse, if I want to participate in a conversation about a blog post or similar content, I’ll leave a comment on that blog, not a third party app, because if someone writes something worthy of conversation, they should have first call on the conversation, unless of course the topic is one that requires a blog post in itself.

    Now lets get back to Mr Condescending:

    Looking at Duncan’s stream on FriendFeed (http://friendfeed.com/duncanriley), I can see he imported his service and added friends, but he didn’t participate. He didn’t comment on other items. He didn’t respond to others’ comments. He didn’t “Like” anything. He took a very passive approach and it’s the interactivity of FriendFeed that sets the service apart.

    Correct, I didn’t “like” anything because when I want to comment on an item, I’ll do it at the source, like the vast majority of people would. If it’s a Tweet I’ll reply on Twitter. If it’s a blog post, I’ll leave a comment. Why the fuck would I want to use a third party service? Why the fuck would I want to comment on a Tweet on FriendFeed? Or is it that I should just because he says so? Pass the bong…

    He then continues to quote a couple of his mates then finishes by saying “Maybe Duncan will listen to this one.” Yep, I listened to this buzzword laden, failed to answer any of my key points and decided instead to denigrate me instead take down and personally I think it just makes him sound like a self important pious twat, but hey that’s just me. On the point of FriendFeed, the readers of TechCrunch voted very clearly, only 20% of people like FriendFeed. But hey, those people must be idiots as well, hey Loius, because you know best. FriendFeed is a decent enough service, but it’s not the second coming of christ no matter how much Gray pitches it. FriendFeed = More Hyped Yawn.

  • How Rooted Is The Valley?

    I’m back home, and I’m still seeing people defending the work till you drop and bugger your family and those you love argument put forward by Calacanis + friends.

    So how rooted is the Valley? I found this on Amazon via Google

    DOWN AND OUT IN SILICON VALLEY presents a side of high-tech, dot-com culture never explored by the media. The authors reveal the haunting truths that Silicon Valley and its techno-cloned communities throughout the country have one of the highest divorce rates in the world, more children who are psychologically disturbed than in less-affluent areas, no affordable housing even for those earning $50,000 a year, eighty-hour work weeks, and widespread alcohol and drug use.

    See, normal people would be talking about ways of fixing this in stead of defending it…least where I’m from. Here’s the magic word again: balance. You can be passionate and work hard, but without balance you’re causing all of the above to happen. My question to those parents who never see their kids and are condemning them future issues in pursuit of startup wealth (ie the Calacanis defenders), is it really worth it?

    Remember, no amount of money in the world can buy back the time with your kids as they grow up. Justify it how ever much you want, but you’ll regret it later.

  • Spending Time With Your Family Makes You a Slacker According to Scoble. Scoble Can Get Fucked

    language warning

    Following on from my post on TechCrunch calling out Jason “penny pincher” Calacanis for his call that people who seek balance in their lives should be fired, Robert “I’ve never done a startup of my own in my life” Scoble responds with this bullshit:

    Calacanis is right: startups can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t afford?Ǭ†slackers

    Jason Calacanis has started a big argument where Duncan Riley over at TechCrunch has stood up for slackers everywhere (he couches it in language of ?¢‚Ǩ?ìpro family?¢‚Ǩ¬ù in the family/life balance). The thing is, Duncan might talk to his boss, Mike Arrington. Did Mike get to where he is by slacking off and hanging out with his friends and having a ?¢‚Ǩ?ìreal life??¢‚Ǩ¬ù No. He worked his ass off. I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve caught Mike on several occasions working until 3 a.m. or later. And he still is doing that work ethic. Of course, that hard work pays off: Mike was on the Charlie Rose show this week.

    So apparently if you spend time with your family your a slacker with no work ethic. Scoble can get fucked. I work fucking hard and although I may not get the balance side right, I always try to spend time with my family. That’s balance Scoble. Oh, and taking your son out to Tech events doesn’t count as family time 🙂

    No one is arguing that you shouldn’t expect people you employ to work hard. Calcanis argued that there shouldn’t be balance (balance was the word he used, until he backtracked later). You know what: if succeeding in a startup means turning into a grade A cunt by never seeing your family and treating your employees like shit, you can fuck that right over again.

    You only live once. Having a balance is a good thing. You can have balance and work fucking hard, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I know one thing for sure: no startup is worth losing my family over.

  • Australian Media = Corporate Tools Again

    I was hard on the SMH the other day, now it’s time for News Corp, who are running shots of Qantas’ new Premium Economy service. See if you can spot what’s wrong with EVERY photo.

    Did you guess that every shot shows premium economy seats WITHOUT seats in front in the sample shots, giving a false picture that Premium Economy is heaps roomy where as in real life you get an extra 20-30cm or similar. No comment from News, just the pics, just the freebie ad x 15 shots for Qantas. Worse thing from a traveling perspective, I’ve heard that with Premium Economy upgrading to Business Class with FF points is now going to be that much harder, as Premium Economy will be the old Business Class upgrade.

  • SMH Spins Government Propaganda?

    WTF on every level….

    SMH: Labor to deliver Lightnight internet speeds

    Most homes will have broadband communication speeds up to 100 times faster than what is currently available, under the Rudd Government’s plan to wire Australia for the 21st century….

    …by deploying VDSL, (also known as Very High Speed DSL) technology, Senator Conroy said the new network would be able to carry up to 25 megabits per second.

    Most broadband users currently receive only 256 kilobits per second – 100 times less capacity than 25 megabits – using ADSL technology.

    As @reana points out on Twitter, many people subscribe to 256kbps services, HOWEVER if they’ve got access to 256k they’ve got access to 1.5mbps, and even up to 8mbps now on many ADSL 1 lines (my folks in Country WA on pair gains miles from the exchange just went to 8mbp on ADSL1). To say that 256kbps is currently what’s available is complete BS (it’s a choice, not a restriction) and nothing more than Government spin, and it’s lazy reporting from the SMH to repeat the line from the Government.

    It’s also not a great sign in terms of Government direction. When I saw 100x times I automatically through 100mbps or similar, the sorts of speeds they should be talking about. Instead the Government is spinning old tech while the rest of the world goes to 100mbps, or as we saw in Japan last week, the start of 1.2gbps. So much for a new Government offering new directions.

    And the headline: “lightning internet speeds,” there’s nothing lightning about 25mbps. It whole article sounds and reads light a Government press release (and I know from experience).

  • City Living

    Finally moved into the new house. Removalist came yesterday but it took me (and occasionally she who must be obeyed) a day and a half to unpack to living standards. There are still plenty of boxes and I haven’t set up my office yet. Desk is there, but there’s a stray bed (one that we have no room for) in the room. Hopefully going to set it up tomorrow so I’ll have one night of dedicated work space before leaving for Vegas Monday.

    So far there’s a number of points for and against for city living.

    For is sheer convenience. We can walk to the Camberwell shopping strip, although it helps that it’s downhill, when I eventually do the whole strip I’ll be catching a tram back due to the hill + the strip is very, very long. You know you’re in a decent suburb when there’s a BMW dealership and Bang and Olufsen store. Boys school is exactly 4km away, but as I discovered Friday if you don’t go the right way this can take 30+ minutes. Apparently turning right at major intersections (ie Camberwell Junction) is not on. It should take less than 10 minutes once I work it out.

    Transport is cool, except I guess for being able to hear the trams go past in every part of the house…and the cars. Clearway twice a day at the front door, not that it stopped the removalists. They weren’t cheap but a big shout out to Chess, great folks on both end, nothing damaged aside from the odd very minor scratch (on one item that we’ve notice, brilliant for a shipping container and some minor overflow).

    Negatives: the traffic is grating. People are beyond impatient and awareness and courtesy to those around you is completely non existent. Be it in the supermarket, or the carpark, where I was nearly run over Thursday by a speeding Commodore. Driving: Jeezus. Who can be first and impose themselves every time. There’s no friendly let someone out, it’s force your way without a wave. It sounds corny, but 10 years mostly in regional and country areas has meant my Sydney driving experience was replaced by something slower and more friendly.

    Overall I’m not complaining too much. I have thought more than once about going back to WA, and as I drive around Melbourne in my Dardanup plated Toyota Echo I sometimes long for home. That I’d call it home to me is something I never thought I would. I’m not a Westralian by birth, but after nearly 10 years there (it would have been 10 yrs November) it became my home, and even today I still feel WA proud. On some levels that’s scary, but it will always have fond memories for me. It will probably take me another 10 years until I feel at home in Melbourne. Just need to learn a second, third and maybe fourth language and I’ll fit right in 😉