Australians Online

Okay, I got off my ass and upgraded to a self hosted wordpress to continue my ascent into blogging greatness.

Come see me at my new digs: http://www.ozspeak.com/

Surfing the net [and this wonderful blog I assume!] while traveling is now a reality.


American Airlines started offering in-flight internet access last month, with other airlines including United, Delta, American Airlines and Northwest. They will not restrict content leaving it up to Flight Attendants to monitor content.

Jet Blue and Continental will also filter ‘objectionable’ content along with Australian airline Quantas.

On his online dating site profile John Arthur Edwards aka “"archangel355” seems like a great catch. He promotes himself as a non-smoking, Catholic, university-educated and claims to make a six-figure salary.

Only thing – he neglects to mention that he is a known conman and wanted criminal in Australia.

The online dating site was among the tools Edwards has used to lure his victims.

Using the alias Casey Matthews, he recently talked his way into a Cairns woman's life. The relationship blossomed to the point he proposed to her and signed a contract to buy a $700,000 house at Trinity Beach.

It ended when he cleaned out her savings accounts and fled in her parents' car, leaving a victim shocked and broken-hearted as he had done so many times around Australia.

Edwards remains on the run, having racked up a host of unpaid bills in Cairns, and is wanted on other charges not relating to this incident.

He is wanted in Queensland, WA, NT, New South Wales and South Australia.

Nice.

Ten years ago John Jenkins met his future wife Adria on an online dating website.

Now, ten years later John is 63 and his wife Adria is 53 yrs old and recently became parents of a baby boy.



They married two years ago and decided to try IVF to make her dream come true. They went to Brazil to have the IVF treatment since they were advised that Adria wouldn't be accepted in Australia because of her age.

Freebiesoz is a great blog that will keep you up-to-date on all the free offerings in Australia. It covers every genre you can think of.

News reports say Australian dating site Rural Network apparently lured lonely country men with fake pictures of beautiful young women, then ripped them off sums up to $20,000.


Men e-found beautiful women who seemed perfect matches with the problem being they did not exist, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which tracked the online dating agency for the past three years.

The dating site director Leanne McDonald is also known as Leanne Viney, Lana Viney and Lana McDonald.

The agency was legally ordered to repay 35 of its victims $120,000 and court costs of $60,000 plus write to new customers informing them of the “misleading and deceptive conduct” that it had been involved in.

Justice Jeffrey Spender said at the time that the agency's conduct was “not only serious but calculated and quite callous” — but didn’t order it to be closed merely imposing a seven-year restriction on the way that it advertises and supplies introduction services.

Surprise, surprise in July 2008 the agency was back in court, accused of failing to honour any of the undertakings. The case will return to court in September.

Meanwhile the website is still operational under the name Chances Consulting, which when you click redirects to Ruralnetwork.com

So, the judge ordered them to pay close to $200,000, tells them to tell people they were deceptive, and lets them stay in business?

Great.

Alleged topless photos of Veronicas singer Jess Origliasso are flying around the cyberworld, setting Australian data lines on fire.

All sorts of stories are flurrying around the web; the photo is real, it’s fake, or some even suggest the photo was deliberately leaked for extra publicity as the singing duo are currently struggling to make it big in the US.


The "leaked for publicity" thought is made more credible by the fact that Jess recently had an apparent lesbian romance with openly gay MTV host Ruby Rose, who were reportedly spotted kissing and holding hands in public recently greating a fair amount of publicity in the US with their relationship…which basically is the most press the Veronica’s have probably ever gotten in the USA.

An online Veronicas fan forum had scourges of teenybopper fans planning a “photo in bras assault” where they planned to post photos of themselves in bras online. Much kudos to Jess, who went onto the forum and requested the young girls not do this.

Apparently legal action may be taken against an ex-lover of the singer over the sale of the topless photo – that from her management team, who also seem to be saying the pics aren’t her. Quite the catch 22 there really.

Google searches for "porn" are most popular in Queensland of all areas in Australia.

Click here for a link with some great high quality Australian wallpapers. Includes Great Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock, Dove Lake, Rainbow Valley and so much more..

I honestly miss the entire reasoning behind googling "purple monkey dishwasher".

According the the ARS Technica site websites that orginate in Australia will soon be subject to a rating system designed to 'protect children'.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) announced that it has approved what it's referring to as the "Content Services Code".

That time is upon us...the time when we humilate the rest of the world [well except for the Americans, Russians and perhaps the Chinese] but glossing over those countries.....Australia will conquer the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Need to show your support online? Please do, it is preferable then drunkenly staggering around the streets yelling "Aussie Aussie Aussie oi oi oi".

There is an Australia Olympic Myspace layout here, as well as Australian Olympic Graphics here, and some Aussie Olympic avatars here.

Some samples below:

Okay, sure - it appears his blog is doing just a little bit better than mine, but glossing over that fact and onto the news:

I am quite impressed by the owner of Australian car blog site Caradvice.com.au as 12 months ago his blog was reported to be making $30,000 a month which has since grown.

His blog was professionally audited and valued at 5 million dollars.

To truly finish off this mound of greatness, Australian blogger Alborz Fallah achieved all of this while still working a full time job.

Alborz now has many more things going on - a deal with Yahoo! to provide content, expanding his blog market into other nations and he is reported to have flipped off 7 figure buyout offers.

Not many, but this website has up a few Australia Myspace layouts.

Australian, Aboriginal and also an Australian Olympic Myspace layout.

You can also click here to preview one layout live.

The makers of popular Aussie sop opera Neighbours said the series would be made available on a social networking website, although would not say which one.

“We will soon announce the first local partnership that will see Neighbours offered, on an official and authorized basis, via one of the world's leading social networks,” said FremantleMedia’s vice president of licensing Ben Liebmann.

It appears they were, well, basically driven to this as folks kept uploading episodes to Youtube like mad. An episode of Home and Away was watched more than 4,700 times in the first 13 hours it had been on Youtube. An episode of Neighbours was viewed almost 1,200 times within 12 hours of being posted on Youtube.

Australia based eBay had proposed to force all Aussie sellers to only accept paypal which we blogged about here. This inspired a massive backlash among sellers, who would have been hit with extra fees as PayPal charges them for each transaction.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission [ACCC] was set to throw a wrench in eBay's evil plan on the grounds it would deny consumers choice, which appeared to "help" the ebay executives make this decision to drop the 'paypal only' rules.

Here is a small sample of some Australian graphics available on http://www.australia-bodybuilding.com/ for use on Myspace, blogs etc now available:

Some smaller Australian avatars/icons:




Here are the links of the pages where they are available:
Australian GraphicsAustralia Day GraphicsANZAC Day GraphicsAboriginal Graphics

These are not cold hard facts, feel free to research yourself - this is just a quick 20 minute comparison.

I googled Australian hosting providers, here are stats from five separate companies for 1000MB hostings:

-1st - $359
- 2nd - $525
- 3rd - $525
- 4th - $490
- 5th - $792

Average price = $537*

*And this was me being nice, I skipped the host that was charging $1,500 a year! Also, google "free hosting + 1000 MB" and see how many companies offer that amount for free. Alot!

Hostgator is one the most popular hosting sites wordwide, many Aussies use them. They also seem to offer far more features with their hosting plans compared to most Australian hosts.

The smallest package they do is 350,000 MB for $60 a year, which equals an approximate annual price for 1000MB of 17 cents.

17 cents compared to an average of $532!

As Facebook grows in popularity in Australia, it struck me that many seem unaware of some of the aspects that made headline news across the oceans in North America.

The debacle of 2007 is to what I refer. Many people logged on to Facebook to see things they had done elsewhere online posted to their Facebook page, as Facebook employed the use of cookies to track all net activity of their users. Link

Also, there was much ado about some aspects of their terms of service. A main point of contention for many people was the understanding that any photos/text you post on Facebook, even if your account is set to private, are automatically given to Facebook, and can be used. - splashed on the front page of any newspaper or billboard etc. Used for say some nefarious activity or ad. A clipping below:

"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise".

Also from Facebook themself:

"Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service "

When strolling around the blogosphere, one can see all sorts of widgets in sidebars. Out of all widgets I have come across this one from Free Rice is a "must have".

More information is available here, a summary is that the website is a word game and for every correct answer, 20 grains of rice are donated to fight world hunger. Affilated with the United Nations, and having recieved rave reviews from numerous international bodies - this all seems legit.

They offer eleven different banners here, a variety of sizes so that anyone can squeeze one in their blog sidebar. Please consider adding one of their banners to your page.

Being the dedicated blogger that I am, as a form of research I just finished joining "KylieKonnect" - a social networking site specifically made by and about Australian singer Kylie Minogue.

It quickly appeared that I was the only person there over the age of 16, so I quickly departed lest I look like an online predator.

Nevertheless, although lacking any real feature set, it is quite nicely designed overall. Various stats show it peaked quite well at take off in November 2007, and has slowed down dramatically since then with a feeble showing of 721 uniques for March 2008 [graph below]

Just to my laymans's eye the site seemed to have a greater focus on retail [downloadable songs/ringtones/wallpapers etc] than a true social networking feel.

Australian social networking expert Laurel Papworth was featured on "9am with David and Kim" show on Channel Ten. Laurel [website here] resides in Sydney, where she teaches Social Media at the University of Sydney and works as a consultant.


Part 1:


Part 2:

During an internal audit of South Australia's police department, hundreds of officers were found to be breaking federal piracy/copyright laws.

Since last count [here] both Kevin Rudd and John Howard appear to be losing Myspace friends.

Ruddy has dropped 149 friends, as of this moment he is down to 23,844. Howard has dropped 1 friend, down to an excruciating total of 8 friends.

Australian employers seem to be facing a dilemma, block Facebook and Myspace and possibly lose out on up to 50% of employee pool - or don't block the social networking sites and just put up with employees frittering time away on them. From Scopical:

It is with great horror I report that Facebook barred me from making an account.

Well, to be accurate "my name was rejected". My name, my legal name, that I have been called since birth, apparently does not meet Facebook's standards.

With an estimated 70 million people on Facebook I am sure some are complete cretins, and a perfectly upstanding citizen like myself cannot register unless I go in incognito. The shame...

In 2007 16 year old Tom Wood of Melbourne one upped the government with his 30 minute hacking of a $84 million dollar program.

Government then fixed it and obviously did a damn good job as the next time it took Tom a whole 40 minutes to hack it!

Tom Wood is quoted as having said "It was useless, and for $84 million, I would have expected a pretty unbreakable filter."

What is wrong with this kid? Why would any reasonable person think that just because something cost $84 million it should work?

Australian communications Minister Helen Coonan was quoted as saying the government had anticipated kids would find their ways around the NetFilter.

Simply brilliant strategy on Governments behalf, pay $84 million for something they think kids can break in a few minutes. That is just fantastic utilization of the tax payers money!!!

Link

Well, we as in netizens in general, not Australians.

Apparently Bill got sick and tired of friend requests, getting an estimated 8,000 a day as well as being creeped out by "weird fan sites".

I guess the only chance most of us have to be friends with one of the richest men on the world is on a social network so people just lost it and deluged the man with friend requests. Link

Well "Hanny" [who has trademarked her screenname] has won a vital race in Australian netizenrey - she holds the most Myspace friends of any registered Australian.

I just checked her page, where she has exactly 217,586 friends.

She totally kicks ex-pm's John Howards ass with his measly 9 myspace friends.

So does the #2 placer, "Sophbox" a 16 year old from Newcastle with over 200,000 friends. The top 10 list of popular Aussies on Myspace shows they have over 1 million friends combined, are mostly female between the age of 20 - 30.

Apparently Australia is the testing ground for a new paypal only policy for eBay, where they will implement new policies for the first time.

From June 17th onwards Aussies selling on eBay will only be allowed to accept paypal - or cold hard cash. Since I doubt a buyer in Perth will really stroll to Melbourne to pay, that basically leaves paypal as the only realistic payment processor for many.

Some people are not too pleased about it due to higher pricing on paypal transactions from the sellers vantage point.

Wow, surprise surprise - paypal is owned by eBay, who would have guessed?

If you happen to be totally irate over this, and want to tell off some eBay executives you have the chance to do so in person on in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney from May 5 - 8, 2008 where eBay will be holding workshops to address this: link

Okay people, let us try and hop aboard "Confer" and/or Bloggerati Australian specific social media sites.

Most net savvy people are familar with the big social media sites; Digg, Stumble Upon etc, they are both highly similar to digg, but an Australian based and specific site. Give it a look, register and support it!

I have just been informed by someone, and checked it out for myself, that Australia appears to be blocked from watching some of the HBO Boxing youtube clips. See for yourself: Link

Quite a few of the boxing highlights such as 'Miguel Cotto's Greatest Hits' and 'Oscar De la Hoyas Greatest Hits' come up as "video not available in your country".


I can only guesstimate that this has to do with some type of licensing laws?

Fortunately I don't like boxing, but that still blows.

As an internet aficionado myself, I do not know whether to be impressed that the Australian Council had staff cyber-walking around Second Life with 3D avatars, or find it totally creepy.

After great reflection, I decided I am totally and completely impressed.

[For any totally uncool people reading this, Second Life is a 3D virtual world, has practically everything in real life, including currency. People take it all quite serious – virtual property has sold for as much as $100,000 of real world money]

One of the designers Christopher Dodds’s avatar “Mashup Islander” was approached last year by an avatar from the Australia Council who was researching Australian artists working in the Second Life virtual world.

Then Dodds, along with Adam Nash, and Justin Clemens, were awarded a $20,000 artist-in-residence grant from the Australia Council to create a work ‘Babelstorm’ for the online virtual world Second Life.

For those who are totally uncool, or who like me do not want to download the whole Second Life setup - there is a real life gallery show of Babelstorm at Lismore Regional Gallery.

This actually has nothing to do with Australia, but I thought I would post it anyway as youtube is immensly popular here, and everywhere for that matter. If you want to watch youtube videos in full screen mode, instead of that sucky small box here is the trick, and an example:

Regular video URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qr-KA8bxAY *

Make it into this: www.youtube.com/watch/v/1Qr-KA8bxAY

So youtube gives you: /watch?v=whatever video name/numbers are

You change it to : /watch/v/whatever video name/numbers are

Simply replace the ?v= in the normal youtube address with /v/

*Please excuse the creepy puppet video, I just snatched it off the front page to use as an example.

Why, why, why is internet access so outlandishly expensive in Australia?

Unlimited internet access can cost about $10 a month in some nations, I repeat $10 a month. To make it even more sickening, why must I read about other places offering free 3 and 5 months etc with their signups?

In the meantime, we are stuck paying horrific rates 3, 5, 10 and 15 times that with download limits attached no less!

One option to get around this is to lurk at free hotspot places. Buy a cup of coffee, sip it at the speed of a 90 year old snail and abuse the free internet access while you sip the cheapest coffee they serve.

Granted one may not wish to spend their waking hours trolling the streets in search of free internet like a gigabyte-stalker, but at the local rates it seems far more appealing at times.

Here are some links referencing free Australian hotspots:
www.freewifi.com.au/
www.telstra.com.au/mobile/networks/coverage/hotspots/maps.cfm
www.slv.vic.gov.au/about/using/wireless/index.html
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=Wifi_Hotspots

Well, I do not think it will come as any great revelations that females are more popular on dating sites. In order to gain some aspect of empirical evidence for my proclamation, I registered separate profiles on one of Australia’s most popular dating sites. Being cheap, I used the free trial version of course.

All profiles I set up on the Australian dating site had no photos, were single, same age/location and all other general information. One was female, one was male and just for laughs one was listed as transgender.

~ The female was instantly popular, she received over 30 “winks” and quite a few messages in the first two days alone.

~ Interestingly enough, the transgender was the next most popular, with a lowly 3 “winks” for the week.

~ The male profile, well as of one week in, it is “winkless”.

That concluded my high tech research into dating site profile popularity.

So, after looking at former Prime Minister John Howard’s 9 myspace friends debacle I thought to research how this could be prevented in future.

It appears buying Myspace friends is an option.

A quick glance on ebay.com made me aware that one has the following options:

$9 will buy an account with 1,000 friends at the ‘buy it now’ price or one could enter the bidding ‘wars’ for Myspace accounts with 600 - 20,000 friends. It appears a solid $50 will buy well over 10,000 friends

Okay, I have been inspired by the American election where there has been much tallying of the candidates Myspace & Facebook friends, Youtube subscribers & views, Diggs - well tallying of everything online really. The internet has become a much larger medium for politicians worldwide with them appearing on Myspace, Facebook, Youtube just , well……everywhere.

So, please excuse me as I have look at our Australian politicians ever so important online friending ability. Prior to the 2007 election, both Rudd and Howard started Myspace pages, Youtube channels etc.

Facebook

• Kevin Rudd is reported to have 5,000 [the maximum allowed]
• I have no clue about anyone else, so this comparison actually is awful, sorry.

Youtube

• Rudd’s channel has about 50,000 more views, and double the subscribers of John Howard.

Myspace

• Kevin Rudd, as of April 04, 2008 has exactly 23,991 Myspace friends
• John Howard, as of April 04, 2008 has exactly 9 Myspace friends.

And yes, I am quite serious. If you don’t believe me have a cyber walk over to myspace. And in the whole nine friends, that does include “Tom” - the defacto friend that everyone gets.

I am not a political pundit here, but I will go out on a limb and say that combined with these numbers, and the fact that John Howard did in fact lose the election - his attempts to mobilize votes through the online social networking avenues was not a resounding success.

Australia is the top comanding payment nation for “Installs Cash”! We are simply kicking the rest of the worlds ass here!

Price per 1000 computers - Australia is worth a solid $100, England is next behind us at $60, the USA is in at $50 and Asia is bringing up the rear with a lowly $3. These numbers put Australia at double the USA and 30 times more than Asia.

Mind you - I think this is one battle we actually don’t want to be winning. Shame, when I was so pleased by our solid first place position.

Installs Cash is a spyware installation company. A website puts a line of code on their site and then visitors get infected once they visit. The infected computers are then added to a ‘botnet’, which are then sold to unsavory characters. Botnets can be used for a variety of annoying things such as sending mass spam emails, hosting malicious sites and launching mass virus attacks.

Apparently, Australian computers are in high demand and command the highest prices, as there is a percieved lack of awareness and lack of anti-spyware measures so our computers can be part of the botnet longer.

So we apparently are the highest paying and most in demand computers for spyware folks.

How totally uncool.