Cameron's Brain

Aussie tech journalists want to game tech.memeorandum

I'm sitting in the "media room" at Phil Sim's MediaConnect Forum in QLD (mostly because it has aircon and wireless). Around the table are a variety of Aussie tech journos, including Phil Sim, Mark Jones and Charles Wright and I'm listening to them talk about how all of the tech journos who blog should get together to game tech.memeorandum by writing posts and linking to each other. God they are a desperate bunch. This is how you KNOW they are worried about the rise of the blogosphere, despite their "the brand! the brand!" hyperbole. Now they are trying to get me involved in the game, claiming that because I am in the room I am also an honorary journalist. I assure them that I am no such thing. It's bad enough being married to a journalist and include some as my friends.... don't you know journalists are considered less trustworthy than car salesmen and politicians in most polls?

So anyway... if you see these guys popping up on tech.memeorandum, you know it's part of a grand scheme to flatter their already inflated egos. Uh oh, they are including Ben Barren, Darren Rowse, Duncan Riley, and Paul "I'm going to launch something someday" Montgomery.

Oh now they are ganging up on my buddy and the nicest guy in the world, Frank Arrigo. Watch our Frank. Charles is after you. What did you do to piss him off?

UPDATE: Charles and Mark posted that I "didnt get the joke" BUT I would like to point out that this post made it onto the front page of tech.memeorandum, as did their links to it, so I helped them achieve their objective. :-)

TPN finally gets AdSensed

We've finally switched our Google AdSense ads back on across many of the TPN sites this morning and I'd love to get your feedback on how they appear. You'll see them mostly on the WordPress 2.0 sites, which are the newer shows (eg The All American Podcast) and the older shows that have been upgraded (eg G'DAY WORLD). We'll work on upgrading all of the old shows in the next week to the new look. This is version 1.0 of our AdSense deployment and we'll do several revisions of it over the next few weeks. There's a few things that aren't quite working properly yet today (like the little boxes near the masthead that is designed to cross-promote other TPN shows) and will get fixed tonight.

I'd like to thank Mano and his team of dev ninjas for working on this round the clock over the last few days as well as Dazza Rowse for his words of wisdom to me over the last few days on how we should be structuring it.

And today's office is...

  Hyatt Coolum 
  Originally uploaded by cameronreilly.

Hyatt Coolum. I know you folks are all working hard in your sterile little cubicles, enjoying your Dilbert-style life, telling yourself you love what you do, telling yourself it ain't so bad... meanwhile, I'm sitting by the pool in Coolum, drinking something cold and icy, and chatting with my mates Des, Darren, Mark, etc.

Kaspersky AV

Update: The software they gave us to try was in SPANISH! I can't understand a thing. So I'm fraggin' it. Grrrr.

The first presentation today was from a Russian malware detection company called Kaspersky. Cool Russian accents from their presenters. Makes me feel like I'm in a Cold War spy film. Why don't I hear more Russian accents on a daily basis. These folks have just flown in from Moscow... to QLD in Summer. That's gotta be a culture shock. They have lots of stats to show they update more often and faster than the other AV companies. They also run a site called www.viruslist.com which sounds like a good resource for keeping up to date with the latest viruses, malware, etc. Not that I ever bother tracking that stuff. I just hope to hell my virus signature is up to date. At the end of the presentation they put up a Q&A list assuring us that their founder didn't work for the KGB, that the company isn't a front for the Russian Government, that their HQ isn't in an old bomb silo, etc. Cool. They gave us a freebie version of their consumer version, so I'll play with it for a month and let you know what I think.

MediaConnect Forum, Coolum, QLD

I'm up in Queensland for a few days at the MediaConnect Forum at the Hyatt Coolum. Here with Darren Rowse, Des Paroz, Mark Jones, and others. There are a bunch of IT journos and PR types here. I'm talking on a podcasting panel tomorrow and Darren's talking on a blogging panel in about half an hour. Not sure what Des' role is yet. Haven't tracked him down.

Just arrived after a fun flight up with Darren. We talked about Adsense, how b5Media is going, and how new media companies should join together to raise money to help common causes we believe in. Watch this space.

The wireless situation here is pretty dim at the moment. I'm in the "media room" which has some wireless but the rest of the place has nothing yet. My 3G NetConnect card from "3" isn't finding any reception... BASTARDS!

So anyway... don't know how much I'll be online over the next few days....

Iraqi Civil War & Syriana

What kind of moron does US General Rick Lynch think we are? I'm watching News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Lynch was holding a press conference trying to tell us we are not seeing the emergence of an Iraqi civil war, it's just the Iraq security forces putting down insurgents.... thousands and thousands of insurgents. Yeah and black isn't black, it's now "non-white".

Speaking of the middle east, I saw Syriana today. Powerful film, easily the best film I have seen in the last year. I had a headache and felt sick as I left the cinema. Another Section Eight hit run, their strongest yet. This is an amazing year for Hollywood. A small group of film-makers are on the front foot in presenting to the general public some of the things that are wrong with western imperialism and demonstrating why the short-sighted policies of the last 60 years, and our continued addiction to middle-eastern oil, is coming back to bite us on the arse. Go see it, tell your friends to go see it, then come tell me what we are going to do about it.

Host our Jazz Show!

Here's the deal... TPN's Jazz Show hasn't had a host for months. AND YET... it is still one of our top rating downloads each month! Imagine how good it could be if YOU were hosting it! There is obviously a huge appetite for podsafe jazz and I'm part of that crowd. Will anyone out there pick up the challenge? Email Cameron if you think you're up to the challenge!

Richard Giles coming to San Fran

Richard Giles, host of TPN's Gadget Show and my recent co-host on G'Day World, is going heading to E-Tech shortly and then will be in San Francisco for a few days from March 10 to 14. He'd love to tell some off-colour Aussie jokes and throw some shrimp on some barbies, so if  anyone's interested in catching up with him, shoot him an email. He's also setup a Geek Dinner for March 11 in San Fran. Spread the word, as the more the merrier:
http://upcoming.org/event/56990/

Hugo Kelly (ex-Crikey) on G'Day World

We were talking here the other day about Hugo Kelly's sudden departure from Crikey. He sounded like such a fun bloke that I wanted to chat with him, so I shot him a quick email and we had coffee this morning in South Melbourne. Here's the show. I really enjoyed it.

Ryanair

Have you heard about this European low-cost airline Ryanair? I ran into my mate Louis Nonis from Microsoft today in a café and he told me about it. Check out their website - they are selling one-way fares for 79 cents. Apparently they get some form of kickback from their destination sites which they use to discount the actual fares. You travel to City A, City A knows you are going to spend money, so they invest to get you there by contributing towards you fare. Brilliant idea. Why don't we get more that in this country? I'll have to ask David Clarke, CEO of Webjet. Did you listen to my interview with him this week? He's a very interesting guy, good speaker, clever businessman.