G’DAY WORLD #291 – Three ISPs Talk Broadband In Australia

IN G’Day World #291 I feature three interviews I have completed over recent weeks with senior executives from three of Australia’s top ISPs:

    Ravi Bhatia, CEO of Primus
    Simon Hackett, CEO of Internode
    Ben Dunscombe, Regulatory Affairs Manager, Netspace

In a way, these interviews are a response to the show I did with Dr Phil Burgess from Telstra a few months ago (G’Day World #211).

You’ve all heard various people, including Telstra and Senator Coonan, state that Australia is lagging the world in broadband. So I asked these gents for their perspective.

I’ll be interested to know what you think of their answers.

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    G’DAY WORLD #290 – Julian Burnside QC

    My guest today is one of Australia’s highest profile barristers and human rights advocates – Julian Burnside QC. He is also the current President of Liberty Victoria, also known as the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties Inc, an independent non-government organisation committed to the defence and extension of human rights and civil liberties.

    I have been appalled by the way Australia’s Government has acted over the last decade in the Tampa crises, the situation with refugee internment and the recent Haneef case. The legislation which enshrines these acts in law is extremely disturbing. So I invited Julian onto the show in order to help me understand how we got here, to affirm why we should all be very concerned, and to ask him if he thinks Australia, the only country among advanced liberal democracies which doesn’t have a Bill Of Rights, needs one.

    In answer to the question about why we need a Bill Of Rights, Burnside points to the case of Al-Kateb v Godwin. I had never heard of it before and I’m guessing many of you won’t have either. It relates to a finding by The High Court, in 2004, that unsuccessful asylum seekers who could not be removed to another country despite their wish to leave Australia could be held in immigration detention indefinitely. As Burnside puts it “someone who has not committed a crime and has no charges against them, can be held in jail permanently”.

    Is this the country we want to have?

    You can find Julian Burnside’s website here and Liberty Victoria’s e-membership programme here.

    Become part of the G’Day World conversation.

    I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:

  • Friends Of G’Day World
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  • If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.

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    The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.

    G’DAY WORLD #289 – Nick Johnstone, Education 2.0

    Today my guest is Nick Johnstone, science teacher and education innovator.

    Nick and I go WAY WAY BACK. This photo is from our last day of high school in 1987.
    Cam and Nick 1987

    Anyway, these days Nick is Head of Science at St Lukes School in Bundaberg and he’s talking to me tonight about one of his favourite subjects: Information, Communication and Learning Technologies in Science Education. Nick is using Smartboards, mobile phones, wikis, podcasts and blogs in this classes and explains the educational benefits of using the latest technology in the classroom.

    If you’re interested in learning more about the use of ICT in education, check out Nick’s site and TPN’s Education Transformation podcast.

    Become part of the G’Day World conversation.

    I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:

  • Friends Of G’Day World
  • MODM
  • The Podcast Network
  • If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.

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    You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.

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    The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.

    2Clix suing Whirlpool is a VERY BAD IDEA

    Sigh… here we go again… it seems the people from 2Clix haven’t attended any of my talks over the last couple of years where I have explained why jumping the gun and suing a blog/forum/podcast for a couple of negative comments about your company/product/people is just plain STUPID.

    I heard about this via Daniel Bowen’s GEEK RANT blog (well via his Twitter post actually) but the original story is up here on Whirlpool.

    Here is the substance of the blog post on Whirlpool:

    Whirlpool founder Simon Wright is being sued by accounting software firm 2Clix Australia Pty Ltd (ACN 118 044 198) for alleged “injurious falsehood”.

    The Statement of Claim from the company alleges that Simon Wright allowed statements “relating to the Plaintiff and its software product that are both false and malicious” to be published on the Whirlpool forums.

    2Clix is suing for at least $150,000 (plus costs), and is demanding that two forum threads be removed from the site.

    Whirlpool believes the action has no merit and will defend the matter vigorously, despite being a community website with little resources.

    Does anyone remember Warren Kremer Paino Advertising? The same thing I said to them back in April 2006 I say now to the folks at 2Clix:

    Take some free advice – retract the charges and get on with business. This is a no win situation for your company. You will forever tarnish your reputation. Every time someone Googles your company in the future all they are going to read about is how you sued a small-time online forum over a couple of negative comments. This isn’t a winnable situation for you. Your Googlerank will be screwed FOREVER. No amount of money can buy it back. Bail out now.

    You’ve got two choices:

    1. You can pursue this matter and try suing the entire blogosphere who will comment on it. It won’t even matter if you win against Whirlpool – there will be ten thousand blogs talking about the case.

    2. You can accept that negative feedback is a part of doing business and learn how to manage the online process effectively. Call me (+61 400455334). I can advise you.

    Oh and everyone else – you can digg the original Whirlpool post here.

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    G’DAY WORLD #288 – Matt Marks, Politics and New Media

    My guest today, to talk Australian politics and new media, is Matt Marks. We discuss KEVIN07, what’s wrong with the Liberal Party, and why political parties in this country need to engage with new media.

    Matt has recently written a chapter for the Crikey Guide to the 2007 Federal Election on the campaigning process and use of new media in the election campaign. Matt’s chapter is called ‘ My opponent suxs.com’ and explores new media and digital campaigning.

    To quote a section: “The 2007 election campaign will see the beginning of this revolution… but any political party, journalist, commentator or activist group that fails to adequately develop a new media strategy is simply going to be left behind.”

    Matt’s background lie in financial and business markets. He is a former staffer to a senior Australian Senator, a past Federal President of the Australian Federal Young Liberal movements, a Merrill Lynch Investment Banker and Wall Street broker.

    Matt is currently founder and managing director of political consultancy, Marks Strategies, and is the founder of the Rightthinker blog.

    Become part of the G’Day World conversation.

    I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:

  • Friends Of G’Day World
  • MODM
  • The Podcast Network
  • If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.

    If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.

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    Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.

    You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.

    If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!

    The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me” by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.

    Totally blown away by CamStudio

    Today I’ve been testing a FREE product called CamStudio (no, this isn’t a product named after me… would be cool though if it was). Many of you might have heard of a product called Camtasia. Well CamStudio is just like that – only free.

    From their website:

    CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

    Want to save that cool trailer on Apple’s website to your hard drive but don’t want to fork out for Quicktime Pro? Use this.
    Want to save that podcast to your hard drive? Use this.
    Want to capture a Skype video call striptease with you girlfriend for… whatever nefarious purposes you have later? Use this.
    Want to record yourself demo’ing your software app to upload to your website? Use this.
    Want to record what you’re up to in SL when you should be sleeping? Use this.

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