I’ll save all the formal stuff for a post at The Inquisitr later this week, but I’m sitting here on a Monday, nearly a week into the process, and thought I’d share some thoughts and numbers.

- I’d forgotten the joy (or pain) of running my own large WP blog. I’ve managed to break the template a number of times, including Sunday night where I thought it would be smart to auto-update the plugins. Big mistake

- Feedburner is still like a Rollercoaster years after launching. I can’t give an accurate subscriber number because it’s up and down, but it’s roughly 1200 subscribers on average one week in (highest count has been 1500+). Not huge, but more than the 300 or 400 I thought the site would get. BTW: why isn’t Feedburner using Google logins yet? have they forgotten about the service?

- All the missing bits are now fixed: about page with full bios, contact page complete with form (3 form plugins later), Twitter account here which auto updates via plugin, but painfully posts on pre-posts.

- The site is averaging around 18,000 page views a day as of yesterday (but including the entire month including pre-launch). The biggest day was Thursday (US time) where a post hit the front page of Digg. If the average holds (it wont) about 750k page views month. I’m betting on 500k, but hope it’s higher. When planning this I thought 100-200k, so I’m more than happy (its nearly hit 200k now)

- Started running some basic affiliate ads to demo the 125×125 spots. I’m not going to actively try to sell them until there’s a month worth of traffic to use, but if anyone is interested and would like to buy one now, I’m certainly open to offers.

- The writing team is working really well, I woke up Saturday to find I didn’t have a post on the front page. It was magical knowing that there was a pile of content up and I wasn’t pressured to add to it. Spent 2 hours playing with my son: it’s been a long time since I’ve felt able to do that without stressing about getting content up. I still worked both days of the weekend, but it was more leasurly and fun…well the Sunday night breaking the template and coding part aside

- slowly working my way through some value adds and partnerships. Couple of small announcements hopefully in the next few week.

- Haven’t had one headline on Techmeme yet, only the odd link in. Reddit and Digg headlines therefore have become easier to obtain. Bizarre.

Aside from the amazing variety of distribution paths, they promise priority uploads and encoding. They promised right.

WTF on every level….

SMH: Labor to deliver Lightnight internet speeds

Most homes will have broadband communication speeds up to 100 times faster than what is currently available, under the Rudd Government’s plan to wire Australia for the 21st century….

…by deploying VDSL, (also known as Very High Speed DSL) technology, Senator Conroy said the new network would be able to carry up to 25 megabits per second.

Most broadband users currently receive only 256 kilobits per second - 100 times less capacity than 25 megabits - using ADSL technology.

As @reana points out on Twitter, many people subscribe to 256kbps services, HOWEVER if they’ve got access to 256k they’ve got access to 1.5mbps, and even up to 8mbps now on many ADSL 1 lines (my folks in Country WA on pair gains miles from the exchange just went to 8mbp on ADSL1). To say that 256kbps is currently what’s available is complete BS (it’s a choice, not a restriction) and nothing more than Government spin, and it’s lazy reporting from the SMH to repeat the line from the Government.

It’s also not a great sign in terms of Government direction. When I saw 100x times I automatically through 100mbps or similar, the sorts of speeds they should be talking about. Instead the Government is spinning old tech while the rest of the world goes to 100mbps, or as we saw in Japan last week, the start of 1.2gbps. So much for a new Government offering new directions.

And the headline: “lightning internet speeds,” there’s nothing lightning about 25mbps. It whole article sounds and reads light a Government press release (and I know from experience).

PO Box 8164 Camberwell North, VIC 3124

With choice strangely comes scarcity. I started at the Camberwell West LPO because it’s easier to get a car park there (despite being further) but they had no boxes, so I ended up at Camberwell North which is within reasonable walking distance but being on Burke Road is a pain for parking…and clearways as well, so it’s not as though I’ll be able to stop briefly in the morning after taking the boy to school. There’s something like 5 post offices just in Camberwell, all but the main one are LPO’s. We use to complain about LPO’s in the West because they never gave as good a service, but I have to say the local Camberwell North was very plesant, husband and wife running it. V. Small, but just sort of country nice in the middle of the chaos that is Melbourne.

I keep seeing people in photos with “famous” people and I realize that I have none, despite having met a reasonable share over the years, both in politics and tech. For some reason I just don’t feel the need to get a picture of myself with that person, and yet I seem to be fairly alone in that. Indeed, I seem to have a habit of avoiding most pictures altogether, which on some levels is a good thing, given the god-awful pictures of me speaking at Perth Podcamp (mental note: always tuck shirt in). The question is: am I alone, and is not desiring to get pictures taken of myself with the rich and famous make me some-what strange?

Given when I first traveled to the United States in November 2006 I came home to a $998 Optus bill, I’ve been really, really shy on subsequent trips about using my mobile for anything. The roaming charges on Optus are insanely expensive, some calls are $2.50 a minute, and for memory it’s $1.30 to receive calls or similar.

Given I’m State side for 2 weeks this trip (I’ve been here a week as I write this) I ventured down the pre-paid local sim card route. T-Mobile offered the best deal…but has no coverage at TC central in Atherton, which left me with AT&T only (of the 4 major telcos in the US, 2 offer GSM, 2 offer CDMA, the iPhone is GSM).

First the travelers tip. I needed a way to divert my phone to a US number without the massive expense of Optus international. So this is what I did.

1. Buy a Skype-in number for Australia. In my case it was an 03 Melbourne number as the wife is already there and I’ll be based there soon (we’re half the way through moving to Melbourne).

2. Divert Optus mobile number to the 03 number. I think it was something like 25c/ min or less.

3. Divert the Skype-in number to the AT&T sim. Skype charges about 3c a minute for the diverted call.

Now the AT&T pre-paid card charges 25c USD a minute to receive calls, expensive, but it works out at about 50-60c a minute to take a call made to my original number, as opposed to $1.25 / minute or more if I just used the Optus sim on global roaming. Most importantly, the diverted call counts again my plan, where as internation roaming would be extra, so that 60c might be less that 35c/ minute in actual costs to me.

Now back to AT&T. I’d been in one of their stores previously with Marty Wells of Tangler, so I knew it was going to be bad. It still was. Whereas a Telstra shop is always busy (at least the one in Bunbury is) and you often have to wait, but you queue for that, AT&T works on a door greater/ take your name basis. So you enter the store and the store greater puts your name on a list and you wait to be called. My trip this time took 20 minutes to be called despite the store not being that busy, it’s that slow. Buying the SIM card wasn’t that hard when I was eventually called, and I had a number.

Nearly a week later and the pre-paid SIM has run out. I only bought $25 worth of credit and you pay 25c/ min for incoming and outgoing calls, that and data at 1c a kb…and of course with an iPhone it’s hard to avoid data.

So I went to the AT&T Palo Alto store today. There’s a machine that looks like an ATM that allows you to top up your credit. I swipe my Australian Visa (debit) and nothing, wont work. Try again, nothing. I’ve just got enough for the min $15 USD top up so I feed the money into the machine, then wait…and wait…and wait. “Communications error” and a printed receipt saying I should dial through the number on the receipt for a credit. I didn’t want to wait 30 minutes to talk to someone directly  (this time it was really busy) so I left. Got back, dialed the number, entered the number on the receipt. “This is an invalid number”. Try two more times, same response.

So I call AT&T customer service. I can’t emphasise enough how much further call centre “voice recognition” has advanced in the US as compared to Australia. 5 minutes of telling the machine what I wanted. Told the wait is 60 seconds, then 10 minutes later I speak to someone. After repeating myself 5 times (apparently my Australian accent is difficult to understand) I’m told that I’ve got the wrong department, and I’d be transfered. Get transfered to a message that says you’ve called out of hours, please call a special after hours number if you still need help. Called that number…it wasn’t AT&T’s number, unless I wrote it down wrong.

So despite already having a credit I decide to try the website because I want a working mobile. Type my details into the website, they want the billing address for the Visa, I put it in and get an error message telling me I have to select a state, despite the drop down only offering “Australia -other” and trying to select it over and over and over again.

End of the day I’ve got a useless phone until I call AT&T in the morning, so don’t try and ring me. I’ll also promise to never criticize Telstra customer service again. Despite there many failings, I’ve always been able to speak to a real person who could help me when I’ve needed it with Telstra (our home landline is with Telstra), AT&T on the other hand makes them look brilliant. I guess anything like this should always be in context, and now I’ve seen the worst.

I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT

6.8mb download, under 3 seconds. 1mb, so quick I didn’t see the download bar. 30mb ftp upload, minutes

I feel bad about writing a personal attack post, but when someone attacks you, you have some obligation to defend yourself, particularly when it’s soo bad it deserves derision. I defend anyones right to disagree, but I don’t when it comes to their right to suggest that I shouldn’t have the right to disagree, that somehow free speech should be stifled. If there is one thing that should bind us all in free societies, it’s free speech. Whether left, right, green, gay, whatever, we should all have the right to say as we please. Those that suggest otherwise are the enemies of us all.

Deborah Robinson, someone who most of you have never heard of but is probably seeking attention, thinks that the Great Firewall of Australia is a great idea. (link).

Here’s some highlights

One popular blog, TechCrunch went so far as to suggest a conspiracy between our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and the Chinese. And what did Duncan Riley from TechCrunch offer as proof of this conspiracy? A satirical video downloaded from YouTube. What an idiot!

The video was for fun, as were the Chinese references…called for I think given the context, but let us digress to the Minister himself Deborah:

“Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation on the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” Conroy said.

That’s right Deborah, the Minister himself compares the ALP’s plan to China. Idiot.

then she attacks Scoble

Robert Scoble of Scobleizer said on his blog post, “I have two children and I’d rather raise them with freedom of speech than some government deciding what they can and can’t see, thank you very much.” I wonder if he would still hold this view if his kids had unrestricted access to porn and violent material offline? I’m sure he wouldn’t want them passing out porn at the supermarket or on the street. So why should it be any different on the world wide web? How many times have we all inadvertently stumbled on something offensive or just unwelcome online? And he says he isn’t worried about his kids on the web.

Deborah, no one is suggesting that. We are simply suggesting that the Government shouldn’t dictate what we should be able to access online, unless of course its your idiotic writings.

What has gotten lost in all this hysteria is the ‘real’ objective of introducing a clean feed in Australia and that is to protect our kids from being bombarded by inappropriate material.

Firstly, who dictates what is appropriate and not, and where does it stop, because once it starts, mark my words IT WONT STOP. Now on the other hand, OK, I’m calling child services Deborah because if you have kids (and god help them) you’re obviously letting them view hard core porn because you’re too irresponsible to supervise them, or god forbid block access with NetNanny or similar. Ultimately we can block what we deem inappropriate ourselves, that is our choice in a free society, not that of the Government, unless the act is of course illegal (which with kiddy porn it is…and that’s the important fact here, it’s already illegal).

The problem of unrestricted access to adult material is not unique to this country and I applaud the Australian government for having the guts to clean up the ’anything goes on the Internet’ mentality, which has dominated the world wide web for far too long. After all, we wouldn’t tolerate it offline, so why should we tolerate it on the Internet.

Deborah, again, you’re a Grade A idiot. This isn’t just about porn, despite what the Government is saying. This is about “pornography and inappropriate material” and depending on some reports “illegal and violent” material as well. Lets take a look at the Governments net. Ignore porn for a second (since you seem to be obsessed with it) and look at what else this takes in. For starters anything “illegal” online is anything R rated and above. At the basic level this is porn, but it also includes some types of video games as well, because we don’t have a R rating for those (anything above MA is banned). Virtual worlds that are changing how we do things online such as Second Life have seedy areas, they could well be banned as well, completely and not in part because it’s difficult to filter part of Second Life (if not impossible). Speech: it’s illegal to advocate “hate” speech in some states and under certain circumstances Federally as well; if someone were to question Governments policy relating to Aboriginal people could that be deemed racist, illegal then blocked? Blogs and forums allow for a free and open discourse…if someone started spamming your blog with “dirty words” should you be automatically blocked? Indeed, if I said you’re a fucking idiot enough times this site would be blocked as well, but I’m sure you’d be happy about that.

Here’s a choice quote from todays coverage at the OZ:

There are genuine concerns that the Government - backed by morals groups like Family First - will in time extend the powers outside of their intended target area.

And lets not forget about the economic cost of this as well

A 2005 pilot study carried out by the former Howard government found a clean feed approach could cut down speed of accessing the internet by between 18 to 78 per cent depending on what was being blocked.

Deborah, stop looking at porn online for one minute and consider that free speech online isn’t about porn but defending the right for idiots like you to say your crap without Government censorship. Would you like to live in a world where what you say online could be censored because the Government deems it so? because this is what you are supporting today. As much as I’m tempted to suggest (as I have elsewhere) that you should be censorsed because you are an idiot, I must always defer to the quote wrongly attributed to Voltaire, because despite our differences this is the key to our freedom and democracy in the 21st century

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Perhaps Deborah, if you had any fairness and belief in freedom you’d extend those words to others as well.

PS: I was joking on Twitter about those twats from the Guardians being Commies. They got it totally wrong anyway; the UK censors child porn only on opt-in feeds, the Australian Government is talking 2 million sites + on an opt out basis. They probably a commies, but hey, lets ban them, that’s your solution, right?

The results are in and it’s wall to wall Labor for Australia. On one hand I’m deeply disturbed; the thought of returning to the days of Hawke and Keating with high interest rates and high unemployment scare me, and yet the Howard Government bought this on themselves. Work choices was bad politics, the legislation went too far, and beyond all else it’s what cost the Government votes; the irony of course being that Australia has chucked out its Government at a time when Australia has never looked so good.

Moving forward we need to demand an ICT policy from the Rudd Labor Government. The Liberals never had one so I guess Rudd couldn’t Me-too it, but there is hope. The Libs were lost in the woods when it came to tech, I’m hoping that Labor wont be. Secondly we need to stop the Great Firewall of Australia. Mandatory internet censorship is not acceptable, neither is the increased costs such a scheme will force onto Australian internet users when we already have the most expensive and crap broadband in the developed world.

Overall I’m hoping that the Rudd Government is a glass half full at the moment, and despite being a former Liberal Party Member (2 years cured) I’m looking forward to seeing what’s ahead, and seeing whether they’ve cured themselves of their past follys and really are a party for the 21st century.

Voted. Senate paper went to U with 54 boxes to fill out. Polls close at 6pm AEST so first results from around 6:30pm AEST (or 4:30pm my time).

One observation: old people suck at setting up signs and bunting. The Liberal setup at the Riverlinks Community Centre Australind was beyond embarrassing for them. The Independent didn’t have a thing there though, which isn’t a good sign. A couple of half decent shots via my iPhone below.