Cameron's Brain

JK Galbraith's best lines

Reading in the news today of the passing of JK Galbraith, one of the 20th century's most famous economists, and I know little about him, so of course I head to Wikipedia. I discovered these quotes and I had to share them with ya:

• "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
• "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

Is it just me, or in this photo does JK look like Ian McKellen's twin?

Warren Kremer Paino Advertising sues small-time blogger

From Boston.com:

The advertising agency is suing Dutson on three counts: copyright infringement, defamation, and trade libel/injurious falsehood. It seeks statutory damages of $150,000 for each of six images it alleges were infringed upon, as well as unspecified punitive damages and legal fees.

What did Dutson do? He criticized Maine's tourism office, which hired New York agency Warren Kremer Paino, on his weblog. What seems to have specifically upset the agency is that he caught them out:

he posted a ''rough draft" advertisement pulled from Maine's Department of Economic and Community Development website showing a collage of iconic images of the Maine seacoast, woodlands, and ski slopes, with a dummy phone number that turned out to connect to a line promoting a phone sex service. The agency had inadvertently placed the phone number on the draft advertisement for a presentation made to state tourism officials.

Is Dutson an A-List blogger? Is he a powerful guy who can bring down a New York ad agency or a state tourism board? No. Check out his Alexa ranking. It hardly rates a mention, except for a spike on the day he linked to the Maine ad. He's small fry.

I personally hope that the EFF helps Dutson defend himself and that Warren Kremer Paino takes it on the chin.

Interestingly, Warren Kremer Paino don't reference their lawsuit on the "In The News" segment of their website. If you, like me, want to express your disappointment in their heavy-handed tactics, you can email Bill Crandall, their Senior Vice President, at wcrandall@wkpadv.com.

Here's the email I sent Bill:

Bill,

I just read about your legal action against Dutson. Take some free advice - retract the charges, admit your mistakes, and get on with business. This is a no win situation for your agency. He doesn't have the money and you will forever tarnish your reputation. Every time someone Googles your agency in the future they are are going read about your sex phone incident and how you sued a small-time blogger. This isn't a winnable situation for you. Bail out now.

Cheers,
Cameron Reilly

UPDATE 5-May-2006: Looks like WKP took our advice. They have "unconditionally surrendered":

Moments ago, lawyers for the advertising agency suing MBA Member Lance Dutson filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal in U.S. District Court in Maine.

now, the lesson here, for those of you paying attention, is that you have to be careful about what you do online. One slip-up can cost you your googlerank.

how do you say KORDAHI

Michael Kordahi continues to crack me up. If you heard yesterday's G'Day World, you'll have heard Michael's 2-year old daughter calling me a "retard" for not being able to correctly pronounce their surname. Well it's not that I couldn't pronounce it, it's that I couldn't REMEMBER it when I was doing the show and I never had it in front of me.

Anyway, Michael has edited out the segments of me trying to say his surname over the three separate shows. Classic.

Ipods do Hurt Time Spent Listening

RADIO ONLINE: "The results of a new web survey from Rock radio consultants Jacobs Media show that of all the new media tested -- satellite radio, online streaming, text messaging, video games -- the sharpest growth belongs to iPods and similar MP3 players.

Jacob's research has also found that there are strong initial indicators that iPods sharply cut into time spent listening to radio. About one-fifth of iPod/MP3 player owners say they listen mostly or exclusively to these devices. Four in ten now split their listening between iPods and radio, while over one-third primarily listen to the radio."   (via Michael Tunn)

There are about 50 million mp3 players in circulation, so one-fifth is about ten million people who aren't listening to radio anymore, while another twenty million are listening to 50% less radio. And we are just getting started.

What's the point of SkypeIn?

okay, you know I'm a Skype junkie. I've had a Skype account for years. My entire business runs because of Skype. If Skype didn't exist, TPN wouldn't exist - it's that simple.

And so today we hear that Skype have finally released Australian SkypeIn numbers, something a lot of us have been waiting for since forever (thanks to Grade A Student for IM'ing me the news). But I went over the buy one and found myself questioning the value. 30 Euro is about $100 Aussie. For a phone number for 12 months. So I've been trying to think about who would use it and why. I've come up with the following scenarios:

1. People who live in Australia who aren't on Skype and don't have my mobile phone number. How would they get my SkypeIn number and not get my mobile?

2. When I'm travelling overseas, and my mobile either doesn't work or I don't want to pay the GNP of a LDC in "roaming" charges (what a frakkin scam that is), I can give people a local Aussie number to call me on, leave voicemail, etc. That's a scenario I can see. But for $100 a year? Perhaps.

3. There's always the option of getting a US/UK number for my many fans who want to call me but, again, aren't on Skype and can't afford to call my mobile internationally. Quite frankly, there aren't many people I want to hear from who fit into those two categories.

So perhaps #2 is worth the spend. Are there other scenarios I'm missing?

iPod repairs in Melbourne?

Okay, bored with Apple, want to get a new hard drive chucked into my iPod. Tried to get the back off it myself over the weekend, too bloody hard. Want someone to do it for me. You guys know of anyone in Melbourne who does iPod mods? Googled it, finding squat.

PC won't start

This has been happening for the last week. If I turn my desktop PC off or hibernate it (which I usually don't do, but have to now otherwise my new mics pick up the fan noise... need to buy a heatsink...), when I try to turn it back on again, the lights come on for about 2 seconds then it boots down again. Pressing the power switch again won't work unless I pull the plug out of the back and then try again. Even then the machine won't boot most of the time. If I leave the power out for several minutes, it sometimes works. Right now though it's sitting there doing nothing, like an Australian Federal Minister with memos about the Iraq Oil-For-Food program.

Any ideas? Is my power supply borked or is it something else?

UPDATE: Got a new PSU, new chip fan and new rear fan and now I can't believe I put up with this box sounding like a Boeing engine for the last 2 years! Holy crap it's quiet. Now... if I can get the wifi on this box to stop dropping out every couple of minutes, I could use this as my primary podcasting box instead of recording on the laptop and then having to MOVE the file over every time....

The Human Rights Campaigns sponsors The Gay Parenting Show

I’d like to thank the Human Rights Campaign for taking out a 12 month sponsorship of The Gay Parenting Show on TPN!

help me make a TPN commercial

Want to help me make a TPN video commercial? Shoot some footage of you destroying a radio in any way you can think of. The nastier the better. Email me when you have some and I'll give you the ftp address to stick it.   

Craiglist Melbourne

Just listening to Rich's recent interview with Craig Newmark, founder of the famous Craigslist site, and heard him mention that Craigslist now has Aussie sections. Here's the link to the Melbourne page. Looks like it is still ramping up. Anyone in Australia using Craigslist?