Interesting, I’m no longer loved, but they keep on asking me to vote for them on Digg.

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I’ve been asked repeatedly this last week about how it is I fell out with Michael Arrington. Not helped by this post at Valleywag. I know Owen is on holidays, because if he was there I would have received an email asking me about it (and for the record, I would have replied). I’m still waiting for that email. Also, I don’t think I’m a nerd. My degree was in Marketing (well ecommerce as well), and until I started blogging for a living I was for all intents and purposes a PR hack. I cope with geek better

I don’t want to rehash the whole thing. Suffice to say Michael wasn’t happy with my deal with Tradevibes. It was a business deal, nothing more, nothing less. Tradevibes approached me with a great deal that delivered a co-branded company database site for The Inquisitr. I’ve always thought that the notion of having a site like this was a solid idea, but starting one from scratch was, in my current situation, which is self funded from savings, tight budget, and very much revenue negative at just shy of 2 months, something that I couldn’t do. Arrington and Cruchbase dealt only in loyalty, but with no real incentive. They even link condomed the links back out to those who used the Crunchbase embeds. I respect the avoid spam argument, but there was no actual incentive there.

Michael wasn’t happy. I received an email from him a week ago, after getting in very late from Pubcamp saying as such. It was personal. He made it personal, but it never was. It’s not as though I’d stopped linking to TechCrunch. Tradevibes copied Crunchbase no more that Crunchbase copied Killerstartups, and the idea of Wiki’s is hardly new. To this day I don’t believe that the deal was an affront to TechCrunch, and I asked myself whether if Michael was me if he’d have done the deal. I actually thought about it, he would have. It made sense, from a business perspective, and I still believe today that it’s a great value add for The Inquisitr.

Michael dislikes the fact that Tradevibes does deals with Mashable, but that has always been a dislike of his I’ve never understood. Besides, investors in Tradevibes include Ron Conway, a co-investor in Seesmic with Michael, and Dave McLure, one of the smartest guys I’ve had the privilege of meeting…and both times I’ve met the guy were at Arringtons house!

This will be my final word on the matter. It will probably make no difference, but I will say publicly that the fallout has deeply saddened me. For all of Michael’s interesting ways with people, I’ve always spoken extremely highly of him in private, and I think of a Calacanis adage about those who work the hardest achieve, because till the day I die I’ll probably never see anyone again who works as hard as Michael.

I couple of months back I started duncanriley.tv, my experiment in video. I got some great advice from folks like Chris Pirillo, then ignored most of it and started doing stuff. It was great fun, and some of the videos received thousands of views on Youtube. Most didn’t, but using Tubemogul most hit low to mid 3 figures across a range of services.

And then I sort of stopped.

It’s not due to any dislike in creating videos. I love doing them. The issue was time. Not the time to do the video, the time to do the video, convert it, upload it to Tubemogul, wait for that to work (at it’s been getting slower and slower lately, free service so I shouldn’t complain, but still…) then post one of them to the site. It became a chore.

But I haven’t really stopped doing video. I just switched to an easier tool. Despite some of my earlier skepticism, that tool is Seesmic. Although to be fair, I’m also doing the occasional video to Phreadz as well (and I’ll do a lot more once they open it up for anyone to register, Kosso is great value, and it’s a quality site).

Why Seesmic? It’s easy. It’s easy to jump onto Seesmic and record a video straight to the site. Loic has taken the recording, encoding, uploading etc out of making video. With the new embeds that allow people to respond, Seesmic has become a one stop shop for interactive video.

Once upon a time I would hate to say this, but I like it as well.

I did some videos recently with my son. He loves doing Seesmic videos. We started at one. Two days later Loic emails me to tell me that the video was the second most watched video on Seesmic that day. WTF, ROFL, and LOL were some of my initial reactions. Then I went back and did some more. And like a junkie I keep going back. The key thing: easy, quick, not time consuming.

There is something missing.

I still need a tool that will give me Seesmic recording functionality with the distribution of Tubemogul. In this day and age you have to be on YouTube, and it helps if you’re on 8 other sites as well. It doesn’t help that YouTube’s quick capture facility completely and utterly sucks arse. I tried to record a video there tonight, it was an unwatchable, pixelated mess. This is an opportunity waiting to happen for a new startup, or existing service: do your video capture locally, but distribute it. Blip.tv is an obvious candidate, great service, but no local recording. But even Seesmic, or Phreadz. Cut you video, have it pumped out to other services.

So for the few people who subscribed to duncanriley.tv, apologies. I should start putting my Seesmic videos up. It was fun while it lasted. I’ll do something with the site eventually. In the mean time, follow me on Seesmic, or you can watch the latest vids in the sidebar here at duncanriley.com

I finally have some dates booked for August.

I’ll be in Seattle for my first ever Gnomedex from the afternoon of August 18 through to August 25. I’ll be in Los Angeles from the afternoon of August 25 until late night August 27.

Why the stopoever? Did you know Qantas allows one free stopover if you do a US booking? I’d read it before when making bookings but I could never work out how to book one…now I did. I picked LA because I’ve never been there aside from the airport to and from Vegas. The other two choices were Hawaii or Vancover…I know, LA is an odd choice, but you’ve got to do it once.

If anyone wants a meet up when I’m in Seattle let me know. I plan on playing tourist for at least 1 day in LA, but I hopefully will get to meet up with a few people (yes Sean Percival, I’m thinking of you) as well for the short time I’m there. I might even have to rock up at Mahalo for a tour!

Update: I should have added, tickets are still available for Gnomedex here. Attendees list also on the same page, great list of people, most I’ve never met.

The big buzz today is around Indenti.ca, a new open source, and open platform microblogging service. That the code is open source is great in itself, but the biggest breakthrough is support for the new OpenMicroBlogging standard, which means that in theory, anyone could host the script and each service would talk to each other, creating a distributed, decentralized Twitter.

Dave Winer has been talking about something like this for months, and a while back I wrote on another site that while it was a great idea, it wouldn’t happen, because no one would build an open platform like this because the economics of doing so didn’t add up. After all, if you’re a startup, with funding, why would you build something that others could take and use, possibly (and likely) to bypass the startup in the medium to long term. Centralized services are popular for a reason: it keeps people coming back to the destination site.

I was wrong. Someone has done it. The folks behind Identi.ca have done it, and I couldn’t be happier.

There’s already a lot of discussion around Identi.ca v Twitter in relation to features and usability, and I get a lot of the negative sentiment. Identi.ca as a stand alone service is basic at best, and perhaps I’d even go as far as calling it fairly lame, as the current version isn’t exactly exciting for the end user. But that’s irrelevant in the bigger picture. Even if Identi.ca and Laconi.ca code that runs it turns out to be complete failures, it has achieved one thing: it proves that open source, decentralized microblogging is possible, and that it can be done.

It’s way to early to make a call on the code and the OpenMicroBlogging standard at this time, and even then I’m no expert in code so I’m not remotely qualified to make a call on where it is at, although I will be playing with it shortly. But I can call it a start. As I described it in a FriendFeed thread, it’s a freedom seed, the start of something much bigger at a time the market is desperately seeking alternatives as the Twitter train wreck keeps on chugging. The only question now is how quickly will new sites pop up that run this code, providing improved consumer choice and driving the open source project forward so that it may one day fully compete with Twitter, and then eventually pass it.

More on The Inquisitr here.

Just a quick shout out to Pete Cashmore with thanks for giving me the opportunity to guest post on occasion on Mashable. My first post is up today, covering Melbourne based Copper Project from Element Software.

If you like, think of this as my community service (I’m not being paid). I’m passionate about Australian startups and although I’m always happy to write about them on The Inquisitr, there are standouts that deserve a bigger audience than I can deliver. Until recently that audience was on another site, but now it’s Mashable, as long as Pete and Adam are happy to have me. I’d note that this doesn’t mean I can write about every Australian startup that comes across my desk (I can’t), but if you’re an Australian startup who has interesting news, or even a story to tell, ping me and I can certainly consider it, for either The Inquisitr or Mashable.

Not as old, or in many ways sad as the jokes at the Tivoli, but I’m still looking a little old. She who must be obeyed however is aging like a fine wine.

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A couple of years ago, when we (she who must be obeyed and I) decided that running a business through our personal taxes wasn’t a particularly effective way of dealing with tax and GST, we signed up with the local RSM Bird Cameron, or to be precise RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury (which is also the same RSM Bird Cameron for RSM Bird Cameron Busselton and RSM Bird Cameron Manjimup). She who must be obeyed knew one of the accountants from years before, so we signed up. The first 6 months was great, and then Kingsley tells us that he’s moving on to another business. He tells us that he’ll line us up with someone else at RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury who will take care of us. And that’s when the problems started.

Even at that first meeting, things were promised to be followed up but never were. In the coming months, phone calls were never returned, let alone made (noting that we are still relative company newbies so if things needed to be done, we appreciated a call or letter, and that’s the service we use to get). I knew that I wasn’t happy with the complete lack of service we were getting, but as RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury had set up the company structure, and had all our information on hand, we thought we’d stick with them, mostly because of a tax event that needed to be settled this year. I might add we’d spent hours with the previous guy working through how we’d approach that tax issue as well, and I wasn’t keen on starting afresh.

So we sent off our tax in around March, late, but accountants get extensions here in Australia. Weeks later I finally get a call asking questions about the return. Despite having spent hours in the office, they have NO record of my previous conversations, and the tax event that needed to be dealt with. I’m then told that the tax bill is going to be at least $10k more than the last guy told me, but the figure was made with no apparent zest for ways of reducing it….ways that had been discussed with the guy before.

Eventually it’s done, and I’m told that I have to sign and return the docs, there were so many pages it wasn’t practical to fax them (Aust Post charges $3/ page STD) so I sent them Express. I’m called 2 days later, told that all I had to do was ok the tax return, they needed the signatures but I should have ok’d it anyway. Fine, tell him to send it off.

Then we get the tax assessment back with a GIC (General Interest Charge) for my tax return of $3500 because it was “overdue” and it was backdated to November 21 (general cut off date for tax is Oct 31, then they give 21 days grace). Ring RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury, told that it’s the ATOs (Australian Taxation Offices) fault and that there is nothing RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury would do about it. Despite them being MY accountant and sending me a decent sized bill for their services, they refused to chase up why I had a GIC charge. So we ring the ATO.

RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury never included us on their list of clients so we weren’t granted an extension. Yes, we were so important to RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury, a company we spent thousands with setting up a corporate structure and trusting our business with, that they couldn’t be bothered lodging us on the extension list with ALL THEIR OTHER CLIENTS.

When she who must be obeyed rung me to relate the ATO conversation I was so gobsmacked that I said nothing….for minutes, and I’m not usually the sort of person who remains silent on anything.

We are lodging an appeal with the ATO (we’ve paid the bill anyway, because the interest was accruing daily) and we are confident we’ll get the money back, but we’ll still have to wait and see.

In the past I’ve spoken highly of RSM Bird Cameron, RSM Bird Cameron Bunbury and RSM Bird Cameron Bussleton to others, suggesting that they are a firm people should do business with. If you are dealing with RSM Bird Cameron today based on my recommendation I am sincerely sorry. My advice to anyone who reads this: do not do business with RSM Bird Cameron, and I certainly won’t be ever again in the future. From today my business goes elsewhere. I’m not sure whether negligent is the right word legally to describe their actions here, but sloppy, careless, rude, disgusting, appaling all apply in part.

And if anyone can suggest a reasonably priced and competent accountant in Melbourne let me know.

Massive panic attack today, my peak usage hit 30gb for the month to June 28. Anyone reading this inside the United States will have no idea what I’m talking about but it works this way: you buy broadband on a plan in Australia, even though they claim it’s unlimited (well some companies do,they lie…by unlimited the don’t charge you extra to use), you get X number of GB per month to download. Depending on the ISP and plan your uploads might also count to your quota (mine counts them ). When you go over your quota you are “shaped” meaning that I was facing 3 days on an ADSL 2+ connection with a 64k limited speed. This is my phone pipe as well because we only have VOIP, so my phone calls would be screwed until the 28th.

Cheaper plans at around the $30/ mth mark might come with as low on 200mb a month. Until 5 minutes ago I was paying $89.95/ month for 30GB peak (defined as midday-2am) and 60GB offpeak (the rest of the time). I’m now paying an insane $119.95 for 65GB peak/ 65GB off peak. Usage last month was 30GB peak, 20GB off, but probably my bad because I haven’t been scheduling downloads to watch the usage…well actually I have, we did 5GB peak in 3 days, and it turns out it was my wife AND son. The wife was downloading work related clips, doing online conversions of large files, and the boy has been spending hours on YouTube. Still, this is what the internet if for, we are not the ones in the wrong here, it’s the ISP’s who impose these restrictions in the first place.

What next? If I look at my online consumption is has grown month after month and continues to grow. HD video online: bonzer, streaming video, you beauty, Podcasts via Apple TV…I never have enough time to watch them all. Australia risks slipping even further behind the rest of the civilized world, and most of the third world as well if it doesn’t start recognizing that true unlimited broadband is a key feature in keeping us competitive.

A bit of a bleg: I’ve been looking at hiring a virtual assistant. It’s Sunday as I write this and there are over 200 unread emails in my inbox, and that’s with over 50 rules putting most emails into other folders, of which there is thousands of unread emails.What I’m looking at is someone to process my inbox, follow up on Friend requests mostly (74 FriendFeed follows in the last 2 days for example), delete the junk and tag the stuff that is urgent/ needs immediate attention. I figure maybe 2 hours a day, and the cost works: I’d be looking at around $3-5/ hr according to a couple of the outsourcing sites I’ve looked at as I won’t require a highly skilled top level VA, really just someone who can follow a set of instructions, process that list daily, and give me an extra hour or sometimes more every day.

What’s holding me back: what’s the best way to get a VA to process their work? I use a GTD program that isn’t web compatible so that’s out, I download my email so Gmail won’t completely work, although it could be tweaked to do so I guess. I’m just wondering how other people do the management side of a VA, perhaps there might be some dedicated software or web package to make it easier/ facilitate the process?

Any thoughts you’d care to share are welcome.