Are you on Joost yet? It’s the cool new TV-over-the-web application from the guys who brought you Kazaa and Skype.
I’ve got a few invites to give away. To get one just write a blog post promoting G’Day World and email me the link to it. This offer is valid for the next 24 hours only.
I’m cranky as hell about the way the Christian Right is taking over this country. The leaders of both major political parties are kowtowing to them because they are mobilizing politically like never before, taking their cues from their US counterparts.
The latest embarrassment for us as a free, democratic society is they way our Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock has intervened in the matter of Dr Phillip Nitschke’s book on euthanasia, The Peaceful Pill Handbook.
In this episode I discuss why this whole affair is wrong, immoral and why we need to fight against it. I’m also exploring what we, as the “new” media, can do about it.
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.
There is an article in the INFORMATION section on Google Australia’s online advertising revenues and how they are now bigger than Sensis. I noticed the article while skimming the paper in a restaurant at lunch time but, of course, I can’t find it online. I’d love to know the actual numbers though. I think Google’s revenue was something like $206 million vs Sensis at $196 million. “Google Schmoogle“, hey Sol?
UPDATE: a friend IMd me these numbers:
Google Online Advertising Revenue: $206 Million
Sensis Online Advertising Revenue: $192 Million
(figures from BRW, not AFR)
The Channel 7 (Australia) news department must make money for their corporate bosses hand over fist. Otherwise, how else do they survive?
Remember when their former current affairs host, Naomi Robson (now retired), was the laughing stock of the country because members of her crew (allegedly) released a tape of her swearing and calling their audience “dumb”? (link)
Then there was the Channel 7 news story about how lax airport security is in Australia which featured a reporter walking onto a plane supposedly carrying box cutters in her handbag. When her day in court came around (because this is illegal) Channel 7’s defense was “YOU CAN’T PROVE SHE TOOK THE KNIFE ON THE PLANE”, suggesting that perhaps they just pretended and it was a post-production trick. (link)
And today there is the story that reporter Nicholas Boot at Today Tonight has been ‘suspended’ after chaining an old woman in a nursing home to a cupboard to fake a story.
Of course, faking stories isn’t new to Today Tonight. Older viewers might remember when Dave “Sluggo” Richardson made a highly misleading report on Christopher Skase. Richardson was suspended from duty for a month. This episode was fictionalized in the ‘One Rule for One’ episode of Frontline, where Martin di Stasio is suspended for a month for doing exactly the same thing. Of course, in Marty’s case, being ‘suspended’ means a month’s paid vacation. He turns up to work and just sits around reading the paper and drinking beer. He’s actually rewarded by the producer because of the ratings they scored for the fictional show.
Anyone know where Boot is today?
People love bandwagons. One of the popular memes at the moment, re-invigorated by some bloke called Rich Skrenta, the CEO of Topix.net, is about “The Failure of We (the) Media”. Anil Dash jumped on it. Even Ben Barren jumped on it.
Are these people living on the same planet I am? The one with 60 million blogs, squillions of YouTube videos and tens of thousands of podcasts? And it’s still the dawn of time as far as new media is concerned. Talking about the failure of “We Media” in 2007 is like the mental midgets who were talking about the failure of the internet to live up to the hype in 2001.
Thank Darwin Chris Anderson gets it.
Every day I get most of my news from blogs. I don’t visit “news sites” or use a “news aggregator”. I use a generic feedreader (Bloglines) and a totally idiosyncratic RSS subscription list that includes everything from personal posts from friends to parts (but not all) of the WSJ. When it comes to the web, I have no interest in someone else trying to guess what I want to read or “help” me by defining what’s news and what isn’t. My news is not your news; indeed, you probably wouldn’t call most of it news at all. I will probably never visit any of the sites Skrenta mentions, and never did visit the ones that are now defunct. In short, We Media is alive and well. It’s just the would-be We Media institutions that are not. A phenomenon is not necessarily a business. That doesn’t make it any less of a phenomenon.
Paul Montgomery – I see he lists TinFinger as one of the “We Media” businesses that failed? Does he know something I don’t?
I remember going to see a Ben Folds gig in Melbourne a couple of years ago (we go pretty much every time he visits, it’s always an awesome gig) and when he performed his cover version of Dr Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Shit” I nearly wet myself laughing. What a stroke of genius.
Over on Coverville, Brian recently linked to the below video which is an acapella band from U of C Berkley doing a cover of Ben’s cover. Brilliant. But the best part of the story is that Ben Folds is asking people to “Sing It Bitch” – he wants people to make their own videos of the song, post them up to YouTube, and he is then posting the best ones up onto BenFolds.com.
What a great way to get your audience involved, create a community and generate some buzz at zero cost.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjNNxnKVEpQ]