Here is a list of the Top Ten downloaded podcasts on The Podcast Network in Sept 2006:
1 G’Day World
2 Claybourne
3 Digital Photography
4 Media Centre
5 Rock
6 PSP
7 Edinburgh Fringe Festival
8 Martial Arts
9 Gaming
10 Cranky Middle Manager
Congrats to the hosts of those shows for producing outstanding entertainment!
After a scorching performance by me against my opponent Zimowski from the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, I have finally cracked the 1400 ranking on RedHotPawn! I know, I know, you don’t care. But chess is the game of kings, my friends. I’m taking H&T to their first chess club tomorrow morning to celebrate their 6th birthday (which is actually Wednesday but the party is tomorrow afternoon). My Polish grandfather taught me chess when I was six. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give a kid. There is plenty of academic evidence out there now that says it does wonders for cognitive development.
UPDATE: This story has made the front page of News.com.au.
Tom Reynolds rang me this morning to tell me he was available to work on some TPN projects over the next couple of weeks as he’d been sacked from Telstra this morning. Co-incidentally, Tom wrote this blog post only two days ago quoting Robert Scoble’s Corporate Weblog Manifesto and saying from now on he was going to be more open and honest in his blogging. Tom wrote:
… sometimes departments here have allowed a culture of “duck and cover†to rule them. Personally I think the new idea of “One Click, One Touch, One Telstra†is fine- in theory, but there will need to be more than just a fancy jingo and a series of cool new ads. We need to look at what we rate as important and make it happen.
I consider this a huge mistake on behalf of Telstra. I just gave a quote to News.com.au telling them the same thing. About two weeks ago I sat next to Paul Crisp, Corporate Affairs Manager at Telstra, at the Australian Institute of Marketing breakfast and told the audience that companies which allow blogging have to have two policies – one for the bloggers, so they know what they can write about without getting into trouble, and the second for the managers in the company so they know how to treat bloggers if they have concerns about how or what they blog.
It seems to me that Tom is a victim of a manager inside of Telstra who isn’t on the program and has concerns about a member of the team writing openly and honestly about working inside the company. A similar thing happened to me at Microsoft. I jumped ship and started TPN. Just think… Microsoft could have kept this creativity and energy inside the company. Telstra could have kept Tom inside the company but instead they will make him a celebrity. I told Tom this morning to get ready to leverage being "the guy that Telstra sacked for blogging".
Here’s a link to Tom’s personal blog. I know he’s taking it easy today so don’t expect to hear much from him until he clears his head.
Tom Reynolds, Telstra blogger, has started a G’Day World Last.FM group. The idea is that listeners of the show can join and we can start to see what trends emerge around what we are listening to as a group. Interesting social experiment. Now if I can just get Tom to stop giving me shit having Rolf Harris’ "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" with The Beatles on my iPod….
How many times have I heard THAT statement from easily-lead Christian friends who believe everything their Sunday evangelist tells them? Sure. Don’t bother opening a book or anything. That’s be WAY too hard.
Anyhoo… for the benefit of those of you who have friends or family like that, here’s the latest in my series of packaged up responses.
When someone says "But there’s no evidence to support the Big Bang Theory!", you can say:
"Oh yeah, well you better tell that to the Nobel Prize committee, cuz they just awarded the Noble Prize in physics to the guy who proved it", Astrophysicist George Smoot of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. I love the story about Smoot getting notified:
When a member of the Nobel Prize committee called Smoot a little before 3 a.m. Tuesday morning on his unlisted cell phone number, he assumed it was a hoax.
"How did you get my phone number?" was the first thing he asked.
He later discovered the Nobel Prize committee had awakened a neighbor with a listed number who gave them Smoot’s number.
After he hung up with the very serious man with a genuine-sounding Swedish accent, Smoot went online to make sure it was true.
After refreshing the page on the Nobel Prize Web site a couple times, there it was: Smoot and his colleague John Mather of NASA had won the Nobel Prize in physics "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."
Oh yeah, you know you LERVE a good survey. And this is the finest surveying that money can buy. We went into the future to bring this baby back for you. This survey is built by autonomous nano-bots, lubricated with genetically-modified omega-3 oils, and powered by Steorn’s free energy modulator (which finally came out in 2009 and completely destroyed the oil cartels… you had to be there).