Entries for April, 2009

The "morning-after rape": A taint on the legal system

Last week Gary Taylor was probably thanking his lucky stars that he was sleazy enough to video tape a one night stand he had with a woman. The video footage he took was the only thing that kept him out of jail after a woman played the old ‘he raped me!’ card the morning after. [...]

Social Search: Human answers to human searches

The idea behind a social search engine is tapping into the knowledge of web users in a non-obtrusive yet effective way. If you’ve ever typed in a “human” question into google for example, often times the web results can drift off topic exponentially the more specialised your search query becomes. Social searching is a relatively [...]

Social Search: Testing Mechanical Zoo’s Aardvark

In a nutshell the idea behind a social search engine is tapping into the knowledge of web users in a non-obtrusive yet effective way. If you’ve ever typed in a “human” question into google for example, often times the web results can drift off topic exponentially the more specialised your search query becomes. Aardvark is [...]

Steve Irwin statue for $85,000 – you’re joking?

Mitch Mitchell and his agent would have you believe the reason they haven’t found a buyer in Melbourne for their Steve Irwin statue is because nobody wants to buy it. Whilst this is partly true, the far more dominant reason they haven’t found a buyer in 12 months of looking is that the statue is [...]

Let the Australian real estate market go bust!

I’m a twenty something year old male without kids. I just missed the boat for generation X and was too premature to be classified as whiny dependant generation Y. I sit somewhere in those awkward first few years of the 80s before the decade had culturally identified itself. Thousands like me have never experienced affordable [...]

The National Broadband Network plan is a waste of money

With the announcement today of the Australian government deciding to totally scrap the last 18 months and go back to the drawing board in regards to the National Broadband Network, you’d be forgiven for thinking the sun shone out of Rudd’s arse. Once the confetti has settled and people get over the fact that they [...]

ACMA chief Chris Chapman scapegoats media

Recently Chris Chapman, head of the ACMA, sent out an email to his staff which has subsequently been leaked to the media. Whilst the entire contents of the email haven’t been publicly released, most likely due to condifentiality concerns, News.com.au have quoted some snippets from the leaked email. “I write to you because you cannot [...]

What happens if Google adwords goes bust?

742,000 jobs were cut by US companies in March 2009, 200 of which were from Google’s advertising department. Today we have informed Googlers that we plan to reduce the number of roles within our sales and marketing organizations by just under 200 globally. Cuts to sales and marketing tells me one thing, that online advertising [...]

10 Aussie stimulus package spending ideas

k, so the high court of Australia has laid the smack down and decided that Bryan Pape’s argument that the government stimulus payment is a gift and not a tax measure. Honestly, me and 99.9% of Australian’s don’t really care. Gift or tax measure whatever, JUST SHOW US THE FREAKING MONEY! I know we’re being [...]

Is big business behind Conroy’s filter?

I can’t remember the last time a member of parliament publicly commented on the defense of a defendant in a law suit. Can you? Earlier this week Stephen Conroy (geez I’m starting to think I need a dedicated blog for all the articles I’ve written about this guy), publicly had a go at iiNet’s defense [...]