by cameron | Nov 27, 2007 | Podcast, singularity, Uncategorized
Yesterday, November 26, was the third anniversary of G’Day World and Australian podcasting. What started off as an experiment to see how to record two Skype calls turned into a full-time job. Check out the first show here. I hope that’s a lesson to all the kids out there. If an idiot like me can make a living out doing something fun like making podcasts, what can smart folks like you do?
That said, I still feel like we’re just starting. I’m frustrated on a daily basis with how little I have achieved in the last three years and the road ahead seems daunting and exciting at the same time. Not a bad way to be actually.
I’d like to thank everyone who has listened, commented, provided advice, support and money to the show over the last three years. I especially want to thank my guests and co-hosts. It’s been great to share the journey with you. I especially want to thank my family to allowing me to piss $500,000 of our life savings into TPN without lopping off my nads. And to my TPN partners (aka the ‘hosts’), Mano , and the guys from AnyWebCam.com who have kept us running over the last couple of months – without your continued support and vision, none of this would be possible.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to review some of the 300+ shows that I think have been significant (in no particular order):
#147 – John Romero – creator of DOOM
#242 – Vint Cerf – co-inventor of TCP/IP and hence the Internet
#42 – Dr Aubrey de Grey – life extension researcher
#56 – Noam Chomsky – world’s leading intellectual and critic of American foreign policy
#57 – Ray Kurzweil – scientist and author, prophet of the Technological Singularity
#60 – David Weinberger – co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”
#61 – Doc Searls – co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”
#264 – Dr Peter Ellyard, Futurist (Part 4) – Australia’s leading futurist
#243 – Dr Peter Ellyard (part 3) – Australia’s leading futurist
#238 – Eliezer Yudkowsky – world leading AI researcher and futurist
#302 – Dr John Demartini on overcoming your fears – inspirational speaker and author
#271 – Vernor Vinge, SF Author Extraordinaire – Award-winning SF author, predicted the cyberspace in 1981
#290 – Julian Burnside QC – one of Australia’s highest profile barristers and human rights advocates
There are heaps more but this is a start.
by cameron | Nov 20, 2007 | Podcast
Well this is the first real show of Season 4 of the G’Day World odyssey with the new focus on answering the question “how can I make the world a better place?”
I’m very lucky to have a big hitter like Dr John Demartini back on the show to kick off the new season. Before any of us can make the world a better place we need to get out of our own way, sort out our shit, cut the victim mentality and stop buying into the manufactured ambivalence.
Dr Demartini is back in Australia running a seminar called “For Love or Money – Financial Fantasy and Relationship Reality” and I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions of my own as well as a few questions submitted to me over Twitter.
What is his seminar “For Love Or Money” about?
What is the difference between inspiration and motivation.
What does he say to people who say ‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life’
Success isn’t all about material wealth…. what about making the world a better place?
How are inspirational speakers different from religious leaders?
Do inspirational speakers have or use political influence?
John was married to the late Athena Starwoman. What are his thoughts about astrology?
Why is it that only a small portion of the population takes action under their own initiative?
What is his quest / mission?
What he personally do on a daily basis to stay authentic?
I like Demartini’s style. As I said the last time he was on the show (G’Day World 276), listening to him is like listening to a much more refined, wealthier, better looking version of myself. He articulates what I think is a terrific attitude towards life.
As I mention at the end of the show, you can get your FREE DVD of the evening event ‘For Love or Money’ with Dr John Demartini by clicking on the image below.
Tokyo Police Club
“Nature Of The Experiment” (mp3)
from “A Lesson In Crime”
(Paper Bag Records)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album
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by cameron | Nov 17, 2007 | Advertisers, Podcast
Russell Buckley from MobHappy, who I respect a lot and who has always provided great, brutal feedback when required, emailed me this morning slapping me around the head regarding a couple of issues I want to air here because I think they deserve a broader forum for discussion, as they touch upon issues I haven’t totally got my head around yet.
The first is regarding a somewhat defamatory entry made in my Wikipedia profile recently by someone who chose to remain anonymous – although, by looking at the IP address, I know who it is. The entry reads:
In 2007 Cameron sold out and excepted cash for comments from Telstra which included running shows about Telstra without owning up to the fact he is accepting money from them. He finally let it slip on the 11th Episode of On The Pod with Duncan Riley.
Now this isn’t the first time people (mostly this same person) has chosen to write shit about me in my Wikipedia entry. I’m not sure what the point of it is. Apparently they either don’t understand that Wikipedia is *supposed* to contain accurate, factual information – or they just want to be a dickhead, annoy me and waste my time. Needless to say, the person who wrote this didn’t ask me anything about what I’m doing for Telstra. He just wrote it up there based on a comment I made on Duncan’s show.
For the record – Telstra engaged my services recently to produce a series of podcast pilots for them which will be run off of their website, not TPN, starting in the new year. I haven’t mentioned it in detail because they have asked me not to – they want to “launch it” in the usual Telstra way with a full PR process. Fair enough. Since they have engaged my services, I think you’ll find I have kept my blogging and podcasting about Telstra agnostic as always – I wrote something as recently as this week saying their NextG wireless card didn’t seem to perform as well as Three’s NetConnect card on my testing. If this is “cash for comments”, then they are getting the raw end of the deal. The ironic thing is that they actually engaged my services, I believe, because they knew I would be an agnostic voice coming in and doing these shows, not somebody who is on the Telstra payroll. I make enough money from TPN that I don’t *need* to take corporate work. If anything, it cuts into the time I have to do TPN work. I take it, though, when interesting projects come my way and when I think the client genuinely shares the same vision I have for what podcasting should be about. In this case, the Telstra team I am working with share my vision. So I’m excited about it.
Anyway, here are the two questions I have about defamatory comments in Wikipedia:
1) What do you think the acceptable procedure is when people write shit about you? Should you a) amend it yourself (making sure, of course, that you log in and therefore put your changes on the record, not like this person or Adam Curry would do) or b) alert the Wikipedia editors about the issue or c) blog about it and hope somebody fixes it for you?
2) At what stage do you think people will realize they can be sued for writing defamatory comments in Wikipedia? I know back in February 2007 a pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller sued a the owner of an IP address after allegedly defamatory comments were left on his Wikipedia entry. Personally I’m not a big fan of legal alternatives until you’ve tried all other possible avenues, and when I read this thing about me I just though “dickhead” and meant to blog about it but didn’t get around to it until Russell slapped me over it.
The other issue Russell asked me about is my sponsorship recently from Global1Training and the interview I did with Dr John Demartini. I won’t go into details about Russell’s concerns (he can do that here in the comments section if he thinks it’s appropriate) but I did want to mention that I’m doing a follow-up interview with Dr Demartini this Tuesday and would welcome your input into my questions for him. For the record – when I did my first interview with him, I had never heard of Global1Training and they approached me a few weeks later about sponsorship ideas. So if you have any concerns about my interview questions with John the first time around, know that there wasn’t even the suggestion of a commercial relationship until weeks later. And if you listen to that first episode I actually talked with Dr Demartini about getting him back on the show during his next trip to Australia, which happens to be this week. Just in case you were wondering….
The bottom line here is this: I think I’ve been doing this show long enough for regular listeners to know my attitudes towards transparency and integrity when it comes to advertising and commercial relationships. I genuinely value people like Russell calling me out when they are unsure of what’s going on – it makes me realize I need to be constantly vigilant about revealing my commercial interests as early as possible. There is a balance though between revealing them and keeping my mouth shut when I am working on projects for clients who want to reveal them in their own time and way. That’s just business. If I had been writing or podcasting really positive stories about Telstra lately I would feel obliged to reveal that money had changed hands but as I haven’t been doing that, I can sleep at night.
Any questions?
by cameron | Nov 12, 2007 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
Although I’ve been impressed with Telstra’s NextG card (the 7.2 Mobile Card Sierra AirCard 880E), including spending my lunch in a cafe today watching Henry Rollins interview Michael Chiklis on YouTube, running it full screen, it doesn’t seem to always work that well.
The NextG service is called “7.2” which you might think (as I did) means that it runs at 7.2 mbps but apparently not for the BigPond site states:
BigPond Wireless Broadband now covers a massive 98% of the population, making it Australia’s largest wireless network. It’s also faster, with average speeds of 550kbps to 1.5Mbps, and a peak network downlink speed of 3.6Mbps.
Maybe 7.2 is the version number?
As I started to write this post, I decided to test it using a broadband speed test while I sit in the Powell Hotel in Footscray, Melbourne (here’s a link to a map to see how far I am from Melbourne’s CBD) in case you think I’m sitting near Uluru.
Here are the results of the first test:
Telstra Test One
Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 05:39 PM
Mirror: Telstra Bigpond
Data: 600 KB
Test Time: 48.4 secs
Your line speed is 101 kbps (0.1 Mbps).
Your download speed is 13 KB/s (0.01 MB/s).
OUCH!
A quick look at the network monitor shows that the card’s signal isn’t great. See image below for a screenshot.
So I ran a second test and it just got worse:
Telstra Test Two
Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 05:51 PM
Mirror: Telstra Bigpond
Data: 3 MB
Test Time: 339.42 secs
Your line speed is 72 kbps (0.07 Mbps).
Your download speed is 9 KB/s (0.01 MB/s).
Hmmm… getting worse. My third and final test for today was slightly better:
Telstra Test Three
Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 06:00 PM
Mirror: Telstra Bigpond
Data: 3 MB
Test Time: 71.87 secs
Your line speed is 341 kbps (0.34 Mbps).
Your download speed is 43 KB/s (0.04 MB/s).
For a comparison, I plugged in my NetConnect card from Three and got these results:
Three Test One
Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 06:05 PM
Mirror: OptusNet
Data: 600 KB
Test Time: 5.68 secs
Your line speed is 860 kbps (0.86 Mbps).
Your download speed is 107 KB/s (0.1 MB/s).
Three Test Two
Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 06:06 PM
Mirror: OptusNet
Data: 3 MB
Test Time: 14.96 secs
Your line speed is 1.64 Mbps (1637 kbps).
Your download speed is 205 KB/s (0.2 MB/s).
Whilst I’m not going to give up on the Telstra NextG card just yet, this afternoon’s tests haven’t been positive.
The NextG card is available for $349 plus $114.95 per month for 1Gb data (see all pricing plans here).
Three’s NetConnect card is free on a 24 month plan and costs $29 per month for 1Gb data (see full pricing plans here).
UPDATE:
I’m sitting this morning at 35 Collins Street, downstairs from the Telstra offices, and the speed is much more acceptable, although still only a third of the speed I was getting on Three last night:
Test run on 13/11/2007 @ 09:48 AM
Mirror: Telstra Bigpond
Data: 600 KB
Test Time: 7.2 secs
Your line speed is 679 kbps (0.68 Mbps).
Your download speed is 85 KB/s (0.08 MB/s).
by cameron | Nov 1, 2007 | Australian politics
I have been hearing a bit lately about “Senator On-Line“, Australia’s first internet based political party. The way it works is this: is a SOL candidate gets elected to the Senate, they will put up a website for every Bill being presented to the Senate, covering the arguments for and against the Bill, and then we all get to vote on it. They commit to voting in the Senate in line with how the majority vote on their site.
Can it work? Are we ready for this kind of participatory democracy? How much time would you be willing to spend each week learning about Bills in front of the Senate? I think it’s a huge step for democracy and something that should be completely supported. This could be the beginning of the end of “voting along party lines” and politicians promising one thing during the campaign and then reversing their position once they are elected. The public are truly in control of how SOL votes, Bill by Bill.
I’ll be fascinated to see how this works and how many people are really willing to participate in how their country is run. I wonder if SOL have a candidate running in my electorate?
They have a Facebook group as well.
The founder of SOL is Berge Der Sarkissian. A quick search on BDS brings up his less-than-perfect track record.
From ASIC’s site October 16 2002
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has accepted an enforceable undertaking from Mr Berge Anthony Der Sarkissian, a former proper authority holder.
Mr Der Sarkissian offered the enforceable undertaking following an ASIC investigation into suspected breaches of the Corporations Act relating to the Telstra 2 Public Share Offer.
As a result of ASIC’s investigation, ASIC formed a view that between August 1999 and October 1999, Mr Der Sarkissian was involved in making 420 applications for Telstra 2 Instalment Receipts (T2IR) using names that may have been contrived.
Further, ASIC was concerned that Mr Der Sarkissian caused 26 transfers of T2IR’s from names that may have been contrived to another person who was associated with DB Management Pty Ltd, in order for these T2IR’s to be sold in the future for the benefit of the company.
ASIC was concerned that Mr Der Sarkissian had engaged in conduct that was misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive, in respect of his dealings in the T2IR’s. ASIC was concerned that Mr Der Sarkissian may not in the future, perform his duties as a representative of a dealer or an investment adviser, efficiently, honestly and fairly.
To his credit (and very Web 2.0 of him), BDS seems to be up-front about the incident, for on his personal website he says:
I was wrong to have made multiple applications in order to get a better allocation in T2 than I otherwise might have got. This poor decision had significant costs and embarrassment. More than the personal humiliation was the shame I felt for causing embarrassment to my wife and children.
I regret the decision I made, I remain embarrassed about it and I am sorry for it.
Throwing out a mea culpa once you’ve been caught and punished isn’t really a great act of contrition though. And while I don’t expect politicians to be saints, you have to question whether we need another political party run by someone who has deliberately tried to mislead and deceive in the past.
The other concern I have is one of whether or not SOL truly “get” the net or not. Check out their website. Wouldn’t you think an outfit positioning themselves as “Australia’s first internet based political party” would have email addresses, IM details, Skype addresses, blog details… ANYTHING… so you could talk with their candidates? Their site has the mandatory “Contact Us” form, but nothing that makes them truly available. I think that’s a sign of how much they really get the idea of openness and transparency.
