Category: General

If you haven’t caught the news yet, Big Brother Australia is under a huge amount of fire at the moment following an incident of sexual harassment, or sexual assault depending on which report you read, where Big Brother contestant John pinned Camilla down on her bed whilst contestant Ashley whacked her on the face with his manhood.

Whilst not condoning the incident for one minute, their eviction from the house (the right thing for the producers to do) has caused meltdown amongst the so-called protectors of Australian morals, with calls for the show to be shut down completely.

It’s hard to get a full grasp as to what is happening because the Big Brother website itself is currently displaying this message:

And the biggest of the independent fan forums is also having problems with traffic as well:

What we do know is this:

According to Behind Big Brother, Senator Helen Coonan has spoken to the Australian Communication and Media Authority to determine if Endemol Southen Star have breached broadcast codes of practice for letting the incident be shown on internet streams and Opposition leader Kim Beazley has made a statement recommending Channel 10 make this season of Big Brother the last.

Police are investigating the incident, and naturally the do-gooders of the Family First Party are calling for charges.

Rumors on other sites indicate everything from the show not going to air tonight (eviction night) through to Ash returning to the house Tuesday.

It’s just a shame that the imbecile element of Australian politics is using this as an excuse to bash this style of television once more. At the end of the day it’s time for reasonable people to stand up and say that if we don’t like this style of television we wont watch…and politicians should have no role in it…now if only we had a 1st amendment.

Tags: Big Brother Australia, Big Brother

Update: The Big Brother website now has an official post stating that the show will go on, and reports also indicated that Camilla has been interviewed by police but will not be pressing charges.

There’s been some interesting debate and discussion in the comments here at duncanriley.com in relation to my trips inside the Joel Comm Made for Adsense program. I’m always suspicious when people go on the attack and don’t actually try to defend their products, which has been the case now for several days..however Eric Holmlund has responded in the comments and to be fair to Eric, he has a much different take on what they are doing. I’m not going to pass judgment on his arguments, but as he went to a reasonable effort to explain some of what they are doing, I’ve republished the comments below so Eric’s side is clear for everyone to use in making their own decisions, and thank Eric for at least coherently trying to explain what they are aiming at. Food for thought as they say….

From Eric Holmlund:

As I stated, the purpose of the templates is to help people build their own websites with their own content. My philosophy on PLR content is that it’s a viable media to use in the creation of unique content.

We’re NOT encouraging people to upload the pre-built sites as-is. I knew this would be misinterpreted by some people (who havn’t bought the product), and for that reason, we contemplated not including the PLR content.

(more…)

I’ve been reading with interest over the last couple of months bloggers, particularly in the SEO community, arguing that the link=nofollow attribute, the attribute launched with much fan fare a few years back as a solution to comment spam has been a complete waste of time.

The main argument is that comment spam hasn’t decreased at all, and you know what: they’re right. It’s worse than ever.

I also saw an argument some where (forgive me, I cant remember where…it is was you, let me know) that by using nofollow you are unfairly punishing people who participate in the conversation at your site….that it’s basically anti-community if you like, and in many ways this is a fair call.

Then there’s Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo, who wrote:

Look. Linking is part of what makes the web work. If you’re actually concerned about every link you make being counted in some global database of site endorsements, you’re probably over-thinking just a bit. Life’s too short for that, ya know? Link and be linked to. Let the search engines sort it out.

So hence today, as a bit of an experiment at least, and with comment spam under control here thanks to Akismet, I’ve installed this plugin that removes the nofollow attribute from my comments here at duncanriley.com. It’s only here at duncanriley.com at the moment, it’s not a b5media thing and I won’t be implementing it anywhere else (for the time being) until I see what the effect of this is, but please feel free to comment on the issue…because I’m sharing the link love again in the comments, and I’ll follow this up in a while once I see what happens.

I noticed an incoming link from Paul Short’s old blog network Bloglogic tonight, so I thought I’d check it out given I’d recently read the news that he’d given up Bloglogic to trade under the name of Gomaud Media…and I’ve got to say I was shocked!

Bloglogic lives! as a blog news style site (I’m tempted to say Blog Herald style site, but well…you know, it hard to compare anything to my old baby).

According to the Gomaud blog, Bloglogic has been relaunched as a blogging / tech / Web 2.0 news site.

Best of luck to Paul, although I’m annoyed he didn’t drop me a line earlier to let me know about the changes: Paul, I’m still here! I’ve just added Bloglogic back into Bloglines after a fairly big break and I look forward to reading what Paul has to offer.

Postscript: I haven’t posted this post yet as a type, but I wanted to add this: you can subscribe to the Bloglogic feed here. Paul’s a bloke I’ve got a lot of time for and who had a really bad streak of bad luck in 2005…and it’s great to see him back at the blogging game and creating new properties. Best of luck Paul.

Tags: Paul Short, Bloglogic, Gomaud Media

CSS Reboot, an excellent resource of CSS beautifulness is up for sale at Sitepoint. I can’t remember whether this was once a 9rules or Paul Scrivens site…certainly there is mention of Mike Rundle on the main page…

Also if you haven’t checked it out, the sales forums at Sitepoint have had a big makeover with a proper bidding system…very nice indeed, certainly in terms of tracking current bidding and whether a site is sold. It really takes the service from being just another forum (although a bloody good one at that) to being a proper auction site….look out eBay, the SitePoint boys from Melbourne are coming to getcha!

Tags: Sitepoint

The Register reports that Telecom New Zealand has announced plans to create an independent wholesale operation to promote competition in the industry.

These quotes are interesting:

If successful, rival operators should be able to get equal access to Telecom’s wholesale network, giving them greater scope to compete and invest in broadband services.

“The country expects world-class broadband services, and our decision to reorganise our business is one more step towards ensuring healthy competition exists to provide that,” incoming Telecom chairman Wayne Boyd said.

So why can’t we have the same thing here in Australia, where Telstra arguably actually has a stronger market position than Telecom New Zealand does in New Zealand? World class broadband….now that would be nice wouldn’t it…real competition on a level playing field….ahhh, my utopian visions of the Australian telecommunications market, proudly kyboshed by the Australian Government.

Tags: Telecom New Zealand, Telstra

Spotted this one at the Search Engine Journal, Search Status, a Firefox plugin that integrates Alexa rankings (and naturally phones home to Alexa as well to track your page viewing habits) into Firefox, where as Amazon/ Alexa has never gotten around to providing something similar themselves. It also displays Google PageRank, all in the bottom right hand corner of Firefox….very nice indeed.

Tags: Alexa

I’ve been following with interest an up and coming Australian blogger for some time, one Yaro Starak, who writes an interesting blog, Entrepreneur’s Journey. To date, I’ve found Yaro’s content a worth while read… then last week he decided to flog Made for Adsense templates from Joel Comm, a guy who I’ve written about in the past (back on the ol’ Weblog Empire blog, link now dead but reference to it here) who does a lot of promotional work with spam blog creators and others who make bloggers lives hard. I decided not to post a negative review of Yaro’s work at the time, but thought I’d leave a comment on his blog, below the post, expressing my disappointment that Yaro was not only promoting “Made for Adsense” sites that breach the Google Adsense TOS/ Guidelines, but also promoting products from someone like Joel Comm, who’s business relationship aren’t all that flash.

Fast forward to today and I hadn’t read his feed for a couple of days, and I read this post, where Yaro accuses me (without naming me) of making untrue allegations, and totally fails to even attempt to justify his atttempts to profit from a product that pollutes the internet.

Now, as I’ve said in the past, I don’t believe that Joel Comm is, himself, undertaking any illegal activities, and indeed his sites (as far as I’m aware) are all legit. It’s the fact that he does business with people like Rick Butts that I don’t like.

Since Yaro is either too dumb to use Google, or just plain lazy, a quick search finds this page. Indeed, there’s plenty in Google about Joel Comm and Rick Butts.

But is Rick Butts a bad guy? Read this, or this, or this, or this, or how bout the Wall Street Journal Yaro?, and I quote:

BlogBurner’s founder, Rick Butts, denies that his software is used by spammers. He says it is used by business owners to automatically create blogs based on content pulled from their Web sites. He acknowledges that the blogs being created by BlogBurner are often used to help draw attention to a company’s main Web site. “I’m not going to pretend to say we’re altruistically creating blogs for humans to read,” he says, adding that other companies have mimicked his software and sold it to spammers.

Nice chap that. Yaro, as I noted in my comment, which you deleted, I believe your readers would have expected more from you. You trade on your integrity and now you’re flogging (at best grey) made for adsense templates from a guy who does business with the bad guys, and the fact that you’re not even remotely apologetic says it all.

Yaro Starak, so long, and thanks for all the spam.

Tags: Yaro Starak, spam blogs, splogs, comment spam, made for adsense temsplates

Check this video in full, then tell me, what’s wrong with this picture, aside from the obvious reactions 🙂

Got to admit, I love Big Brother’s Camilla. I felt so bad when I read this, she’s a great girl with a great personality….maybe I should jet to the Gold Coast if (and when) she’s evicted and offer her a b5media gig! I’d love to have that voice here!.

Tags: Camilla, Big Brother