What I have noticed now is that a whole lot of those people are popping up on Facebook and adding me as their friend, when clearly we are not. I am uncertain how I am supposed to proceed with this I don’t like to offend people and rejecting their friend request might seem like this, but the chances that we will have a conversation is highly unlikely but more over I don’t like them enough for them to view what I am up to on a daily or weekly basis.

So I do what I always do, I sit on it, keeping their friend request pending until I can decide what I feel about them and what I should do, you see I’m not one of those people who have 400+ friends, what I mean by that is I just don’t add people that I have met once or casually know through someone else, that isn’t a friend that’s an acquaintance, in face people like that annoy me, I don’t see why I should be included in such a friend list where all these other people are as well.

Being the noconfrontational person that I am, I suppose that I’ll just add them and throw them the every boring – Hey how’s it going, what are you up to these days. A few messages will pass and then it will all be over for now.

Google warns Aust copyright laws could cripple Internet

He says rather than adopting the narrow “fair use” definitions contained in the legislation, Australia should adopt a US-style open-ended fair-use defence to ensure a flow of and access to information.

“In the past when Google has been sued… one of the things it did is take down its links and content,” Dr Rimmer said.

“Google could very well become more reluctant to provide such comprehensive image and news services… and with geo-identification technology you can also offer certain content in some countries and not others.”

I’m probably running my mouth off here again, but it is this kind of stuff that well relegate us even further into the backwaters of the digital age and Internet access.

Flickr

Digg

coComment & commentful
last.fm

del.icio.us

scuttle

No doubt that you are familiar with the above technologies but maybe not scuttle (mentioned in a previous post), what I am finding is that I am enjoying more and more the community behind these services, finding friends on last.fm who listen to the same music that I listen to and then discovering music through them. Finding links to sites that I would have never found otherwise through del.icio.us again through friends and searching. I can get lost for hours on Flickr combing through photos from groups, looking at photo streams of people how have commented on my photos and learning more and more. As a dedicated slashdot visitor I was a bit cautious about digg but after I tried gave it a go I couldn’t stop it’s now on daily list. The comment services I am still reviewing as per here, so far I have had some good results which I will report back on later.

I am conscious that I do need to experience real life, going out, spending time with friends etc… but this isn’t always possible for one reason or another this has had a few effects so far, not only my boredom but the lack of content that I am able to put up on this site I will try to change that in the coming weeks but for now it’s a rather exciting way for me to gather information about topics that I really enjoy and world I couldn’t have imagined years ago.

I had seen del.icio.us and how it managed bookmarks but I had also seen scuttle and it had the same sort of concept even though it was a little bit late into the game, but the attractive thing to me about scuttle was that it allowed you to download the source and run it on your own servers, which I have done of course. So I have been tracking the comments and conversations through there, but as is the case I always forget to check them and time passes.

So I discovered commentful which again is and online way to track comments, what I liked was that you were able to install a FireFox plugin that put a little orb in the corner of the window and when ever a new comment appeared in a post that you were tracking it would blink. Clicking on the flashing orb would take you to your page and it would highlight the post that had been recently commented since you last checked or chosen to track. You don’t have to be a blogger to use it, and you don’t have to had commented on your chosen post. Simple, easy to use and exactly what I wanted.

Since becoming a blogger my web 2.0 world has slowly expanded (more on that later in another post) so it was through surfing some blogs (paulstamatiou.com) that I discovered cocomment being curious I decided to try it along side commentful to see how they compare. So far so good, they give you a bookmarklet and a FireFox extension to use when making or tracking comments and posts. Along with all there there is a bit of a community you can observe as well, they have a list of most commented sites as well as users.

I have also added some javascript that makes it easier for those how use cocomment to comment on this blog, to see if that helps with the tracking for both myself as well as others.
I will soon put up a link to my personal comment page so that you can see the places that I go and what I say – that is if you find it useful.
What I would like to know is what do you use to track comments or post on sites that you visit?
Do you find what I have done with cocomment on this site useful or a annoying?
Do you use cocomment yourself, why do you find it useful?

I’m rather cynical about most things, it’s the reason that I mainly concern my self with abc radio particularly Triple J and why I love Media Watch, the main thing that irks me about the new cross media ownership legislation is that fact that in the beginning there will be a raft of takeovers and attempted take overs and current big players in the market try to get a foot hold, while this won’t concern the the consumers of the media market it will eventually effect them.

I don’t think that foreign ownership/investment is always bad, business is after all about making money and if there is a market making money, investment will soon follow. What does concern me is the fact that media has proven its self time and again to be such a powerful medium, both with the ability to make certain individuals powerful, a recent occurrence is the event surrounding Jonestown, and to influence opinions, which can be seen around election time when media outlets with ties to certain political parties try to push their own interests and I’m am sure that there are cases around the world where this also holds true. But I do have a problem with foreign ownership in the fact that I am afraid that they might push their own agenda or show reports that they only want us to hear, since we are not really connected to their world it does allow only a few channels for news and media to flow through. Obviously I’m thinking of Rupert Murdoch, Head of News Corp. and former (or current) Australian will be at the forefront trying to buy up some media outlets at least.

It’s the dilution of truth that I worry about, it’s about vested interests that most concern me, of those that are in charge only promoting what they think is news worthy, it’s about non disclosure of relationships to companies or people. Cross promotion that doesn’t benefit its audience, it’s sad but I think that is this the sort of media that we might be looking forward to in the future.

Competition is what promotes growth, it keeps people and companies on their toes making sure that they improve and deliver better products and services to consumers and clients, and with a minimum of 5 major media outlets in most cities there is too much convenience for collusion within themselves.

technological changes and the rise of digital have resulted in a regulatory system that could become unworkable. Source

If the government really do believe that the Internet has given them just cause to pursue this course of action then we should be supporting those mediums even more, sites such as http://www.crikey.com.au/ should be getting more and more readers who like their reporting and proper journalism without sugar and salt to taste.

Rupert Murdoch, and when he was alive, Kerry Packer, had both wanted these laws overturned, and have spent huge money and effort in lobbying for the changes. Source

Too much power in one place will cause problems, we have already seen it in our government with the liberal party having the majority and the ability to push through reforms as it sees fit even though it is opposed. What happens when there is major news about James Packer who now runs Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) will the subsidiaries report or give factual evidence about this, we have seen how Channel Nine and Seven try to push the limits of their power and for their efforts get in trouble with the courts.

The uptake of digital or lack there of I believe can be somewhat blamed on the Communications minister her self – Helan Coonan – for not pushing the companies to do more about it and even the federally funded ABC had to cut back their digital channel to nothing when it did not have the funds to meet the demand. There are a lot of shows on the ABC that I love the watch but sometimes miss, the ability to record these shows on digital boxes affords me the flexibility that I want to be able to watch them on the weekend. If our own government funded media outlet can’t lead the way, why do commercial enterprises see the point of doing so, but what I can’t seem to figure out is what they will loose by going digital, why aren’t they supplying more incentive to go digital rather than just clearer images and better sound. That’s hardly enough to get the average Aussie to buy into the idea, and extending the cut off date for the analogue transmission doesn’t exactly make it more viable for more people to pick up digital set top boxes it just gives the commercial channels more time to do nothing.

I don’t see Helen Coonan as someone who will benefit the communications industry with her ministerial position, she has already shown weakness in terms of the sale of Sky TV, and other issues such the debacle of the Internet Porn Censorship. She seems to show a considerable amount of weakness when facing commercial entities with interests in her area. I think that she could do more to push better Internet access to more parts of Australia, if she believes that the Internet has been a cause of the dissolving of the cross-media ownership change.

I’m not certain what the future holds for media and media distribution in Australia, there are probably examples from around the world that have shown that it works, things will certainly be different, the funny thing is that we might never know which way the pendulum will swing the good or bad way.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1686218.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1591574.htm

It took my quite some time to migrate all the data across and make sure that it worked the same and waiting a couple of days for the DNS to propagate across the Internet so I could actually access it and make the necessary changes.

But now that has happened I hope to be posting a few more things.

The Debate over Net Neutrality

I think that it would be pointless to explain my feelings about this topic considering how obious it is that I am totally against what the congress is trying to do.

I will try to expand later on once there has been a decision has been made.

I don’t think that there is anything special and great about it now, except for a few things that I want to try out, such as being about attach email addresses to events so that people can be reminded if something is coming up, allowing other people to see your calendar and being able to include other people’s calendar into yours, the other big thing that I like is the fact that it’s iCal complient, which means that I be able to view it from my ibook.

I have to say that it does have a few problems at the moment, for some reason sometimes it doesn’t reneder propery with IE but then again I don’t really use IE and normally use firefox which is works for both in windows and apple. Also there is the fact that I’m not located in the U.K or U.S.A so I won’t be able to access the best features such as using the local search for maps, mobile phone notification and such…

Google Calendar

I have yet to compare it to yahoo calendar, but since I am such a google fanboy I don’t think I will have to.

I have added my playlist to the bottom on this front page of this blog, it will probably take a little while for it to populate, but hopefully I will be able to discover some new music through this.

Either way there isn’t much more to say about it, besides watching the the presentation.

EPIC

I am a bit of a google fan, and I would like to believe that google are one of the those companies that make you believe that corporations are capable of the greater good.
Sure they are profit driven but they also put out good products.

Either way I will let you decide.

After reading that It lead me to the RoundCube
Basically it’s a Web based IMAP client and unlike Squirrlemail it has a fantastic interface.
In terms of web IMAP clients there is little choice out there and kudos to Squirrlemail, they do have a good product but something needed to be done about the interface it just didn’t hold up.

I think that we might have Google to thank but probably more specifically Gmail with it’s AJAX interface and then Yahoo following suit with it’s interface and the Yahoo Photo Mail (need internet explorer)

I’m just happy that there is something else out there to try, and considering that it’s still in alpha release i’m estatic with it, i think that it’s fantastic.

There is one more webmail client that i will try out, ilohamail seems promising but we will see how it goes.

The internet has been a buzz about RoundCubeMail as well and rightly so, I think that this is defiently one opensource product to keep and eye on. I certainly will be.

Main HowTo
Alternative HowTo

…there are three things that we need to understand about the web. First, it is more amazing than we think. Second, the conjunction of technologies that made the web successful was extremely unlikely. Third, we probably would not create it, or any technology like it, today. In fact, we would be more likely to cripple it, or declare it illegal.

and

…The lawyers have learnt their lesson now. The regulation of technological development proceeds apace. When the next disruptive communications technology – the next worldwide web – is thought up, the lawyers and the logic of control will be much more evident. That is not a happy thought.

The Internet is augubly the greatest engineering feat we have created to date, it has and will continue to change lives in ways that we are yet to imagine as it did 15 years ago.

We can only be greatful that 15 or 20 years ago corporations did not have the control that they do today.

iTunes Music Store comes to Australia

and

iTunes Store

It took forever, and still Sony BMG isn’t on board, from stories a few months back Apple have been saying that Australia have been the hardest to deal with in terms of getting iTunes online.

What else could google come up with, I hadn’t expected this at all, but then it makes sense.
Considering what else is on offer, you email list could sync with your google IM list and send email while searching and locating them on google earth.
Then there is google sms, which is only available in the US and UK, but being able to send or recieve and SMS through you IM.

But wait there is more
gogle video search

I just keep thinking…..what will they come up with next?????

I can’t wait to see