Showing all posts about Australia
Book launch: Futuretainment by Mike Walsh, Sydney, 1 December 2009
2 December 2009
Last night Mike Walsh launched his new book Futuretainment – which looks at the future of media and marketing – at the Hotel CBD in Sydney. He spoke with technology journalist Brad Howarth, and offered a few of his insights into advertising and marketing, particularly in Asia, together with a couple of trend predictions for 2010.
- People born after 1994 are digital “naturals”. They have never lived in a world without web browsers.
- “Naturals” have never known a time when they cannot access decent content somewhere online.
- Content producers and creators (copy-righters) such as musicians are effectively marketers.
- Musicians, for example, encourage “content theft”… they don\’t make revenue from recorded music, that comes from sales of merchandise, live performances, etc.
- Social networks drive TV programming. People increasingly watch what is forwarded to them (videos, links to videos).
- Viewers are deciding what they will watch, not the TV networks.
- How will content producers make money? Become a celebrity… cue Ashton Kutcher and his declaration to become “the next new-media mogul“.
- Japan excels at producing content for mobile phones.
- The Chinese know how to make money with social networks. QQ, a Chinese variation of Facebook, made US$1 billion last year.
- In Korea people watch more TV shows on mobile phones than a television.
- Digital consumers in Asia are generally very tech savvy, have access to unlimited bandwidth, and have little regard for copyright.
- Ninety per cent of Chinese internet users have broadband, which is considerably faster than that available in Australia.
- Augmented reality will put consumers in control by way of real time product and service reviews and critiques.
Originally published Wednesday 2 December 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Australia, books, legacy, Mike Walsh, technology, trends
Tastemakers to get a bite of Star Trek at Sydney Opera House
26 March 2009
The Sydney Opera House will host the world premiere of the new Star Trek movie, on Tuesday 7 April 2009, before an audience of 1600 tastemakers (Internet Archive link):
Director JJ Abrams’ new Star Trek movie will have its world premiere at the Sydney Opera House next month, presented by Aussie star Eric Bana. Abrams, Bana and co-stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban will present the blockbuster to 1,600 tastemakers in art, design, entertainment, fashion, media and politics on April 7. It is only the third time a film has debuted at the Sydney Opera House, and the first time a premiere has been held in the concert hall.
I wonder what it takes to become a Star Trek tastemaker then?
Originally published Thursday 26 March 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Australia, film, legacy, science fiction, Star Trek, Sydney
SPAMVENTDOCUMENT the blog, again, by Justin Fox
11 August 2008
I’ve mentioned Australian Infront founder, and web designer about Sydney, Justin Fox’s latest personal blog before, but in a blogosphere choke full of make-money-online and blogs-about-blogging… blogs, it is refreshing to read something again that is the no-strings-attached real deal.
I feel like I’ve been sitting here all these years watching the world go by, in my “only dead fish go with the flow” sort of way, while Justin is out there doing all sorts of different stuff with hotted-up bikes, hotted-up cars, hotted-up web design, and all sorts of other stuff.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
The Met helmet was awesome, so cool. Nice to see a couple of other riders out there with them on too. The TLD XC gloves, whilst suuper comfy for the first hour, are a bit thin. Might look into thicker gloves. The Joplin seatpost is a miracle which I called on a billion times today on the fly. It gives you power when you need it for the climbs and gives you bucket loads of confidence for the tech downhill stuff.
I don’t what half of that means, but it’s fun to read.
Update: Justin’s blog can now be found here.
Originally published Monday 11 August 2008, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Australia, blogs, legacy, self publishing, Sydney
The Australian Typography Club
1 August 2008
Australian typography enthusiasts are being sought (Internet Archive link) to help establish The Australian Typography Club, an informal group that will “promote choosing, using, and creating great typography”.
The mission of our club will be to promote choosing, using, and creating great typography. On a day-to-day level, the purpose of the club would be to create a real-life community for type enthusiasts to meet, collaborate, and learn. Meetings would be held periodically (in my studio if needed), where Sydney typography enthusiasts of all ages can discuss choosing, using, and creating great typography.
Check out this thread on the Australian INfront forum if you’re interested in being involved.
Update: both the Australian INfront and its discussion forum are no longer online, and links here point to the Internet Archive.
Originally published Friday 1 August 2008, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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OpenAustralia: opening up the Australian Parliament
17 June 2008
OpenAustralia, a new website that allows you to track debate and discussion in the Australian Parliament, launched on Sunday. Nathanael Boehm, who is on the project team (in a post on his no-longer online website purecaffeine.com), describes OpenAustralia far better than I could:
OpenAustralia is a site that aggregates House of Representatives debates with data about the Members of the House of Reps and presents it in a way that makes it easy to see what debates your Member in your electorate is participating, what they’re saying and whether they’re doing a good job of representing you. You can see statistics of how many debates they’ve been involved with. You can comment against any Member’s contribution to a debate and discuss that with other users of the site.
OpenAustralia also lets keep tabs on your local MP, and while learning that my local representative Peter Garrett (he of Midnight Oil fame), is one of the more vocal MPs (is that really a surprise?), I also learnt a few other things:
Has spoken in 50 debates in the last year – well above average amongst MPs. This MP’s speeches are understandable to an average 20 – 21 year old, going by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. Has used three-word alliterative phrases (e.g. “she sells seashells”) 138 times in debates – well above average amongst MPs.
Originally published Tuesday 17 June 2008, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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The Aussie Bloggers Forum launches
1 January 2008
A brand new discussion forum for Australian bloggers — which I was invited to help setup — goes into soft launch (I hope: this is the timestamp speaking again…) today: Aussie Bloggers Forum (update: no longer online).
Of course it’s not just for Australians, and everyone, where ever you are, is welcome.
So whether blogging is your major or minor, head along and say hello, network, and strut your stuff.
How’s that for an easy, not too demanding way, to spend New Year’s Day?
Originally published Tuesday 1 January 2008.
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Grow your DVD movie collection each time you visit the supermarket
9 December 2007
Going to the supermarket is increasingly becoming a one-stop-shopping experience. In addition to sourcing groceries, some stores now offer not-half bad coffee, which you can enjoy as you pace the aisles. And for movie fans, a visit to the supermarket is only going to get better, with news that DVD vending machines are being rolled out across Australia:
Instant DVD has installed vending machines in 12 supermarkets throughout Melbourne and Sydney and intends to expand to 500 throughout the country, creating yet more competition for the traditional video shop.
The hire prices are too bad either, and the “late fee” for not returning the title by the due date may not — depending how much you like the film in question — be so terrible either:
All movies cost $2.99 a night to hire and can be returned to any of the service’s vending machines. If you fail to return a movie within two weeks its price is charged to your credit card and it becomes yours to keep.
I’m not really up on the state-of-play when it comes to late fines on hire movies, since returning hires is about the only thing I actually do promptly, but it seems to me someone who’s a little more casual in this regard could end up with quite an impressive DVD collection.
If nothing else it makes for a good way to try before you buy. If you like the movie enough simply keep it, and two weeks later it’s yours. I wonder how the price of the “to keep” hires compares with those on weekly special at the supermarket though?
Originally published Sunday 9 December 2007, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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The changing political landscape in Australia, and the world
30 November 2007
The defeat of the Liberal/National coalition Government in last Saturday’s federal election in Australia could herald an upheaval in the political landscape, not only locally, but globally, says Steve Biddulph, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:
We are so conditioned to the idea that two main parties define politics, we even call them left and right as if they were parts of our body. But parties spring up in response to the primary tensions in a certain time and place. In the 20th century that polarisation was capital versus labour.
A century earlier, before even the idea of power among the working poor, politics was aristocrats versus tradesmen, the growing middle class of shopkeepers and artisans that formed the basis of the Tories.
It’s no longer the workers against the bosses though.
The issue of the future, coming down on us now like a steam train, is of course the environment, the double hammer blows of climate change and peak oil. Energy, weather and human misery are the factors that will define our lives for decades to come. You can cancel your newspaper, those are the only four words you need to know.
But that’s not the end of it.
For two years now the best predictions have been that the subprime meltdown would act as merely the detonator of a much larger explosive charge created long ago by US consumer debt, concealed by Chinese and Arab investment in keeping that great hungry maw that is America sucking in what it could not begin to pay for.
The avalanche-like fall of US house prices will be closely followed by the same in linked economies worldwide, and presage a harsh and very different world than the one we have lived in.
In a nutshell then:
In short, the party is over. We are a civilisation in collapse.
Earlier this year, former Labor leader, Kim Beazley, who incidentally has just been appointed professor of politics and international relations at the University of Western Australia, predicted the party that lost last weekend’s federal election faced political oblivion in Australia.
“If the Labor Party is not able to get in there and change [the current] industrial laws, the whole character of working Australia will change substantially, and to the Labor Party’s detriment.”
The Liberal party’s position being equally as serious.
If Mr Howard lost, “there is a serious question mark over the future of the Liberal Party”. Labor would win the NSW election in March and Mr Howard would remain the only governing Liberal. “After some years of Labor state governments, Liberal oppositions are still struggling to get a third of the seats in state parliaments.”
Mr Beazley noted the state Liberal branches were already in poor shape and if Mr Howard lost the election, the Liberals would not govern anywhere.
The next few years stand to keep political observers on their toes.
Originally published Friday 30 November 2007.
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A late evening visit to the Sacred Heart Monastery, Kensington, Sydney
26 September 2007
Skulking around the darkened grounds of monasteries isn’t exactly my idea of living it up on a Saturday evening, but there I was last weekend, up at the Sacred Heart Monastery in the Sydney suburb of Kensington, armed with my camera, looking for photo opportunities.
I’ve been intrigued for some time by a floodlit building I can see across the racecourse from my living room window, so finally decided to trace the spectacle to its source.
The jaunt had the hallmarks of a c-grade horror movie though. The overly quiet tree lined street the monastery is located on. The ground’s wrought iron gate complete with squeaky hinges. The dark, foreboding, stairs leading up to the front of the building. Who knew what might be lurking there in the deep, gloomy, shadows.
It’s in the name of art, I kept telling myself as I apprehensively ascended the stairs. Yet, I lived to blog about the experience…
Originally published Wednesday 26 September 2007, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Australia, legacy, photography, Sydney
Culture jamming street signs as a means of political protest
7 May 2005
Saw this on the way to work the other morning. Along Epsom Road, in the Sydney suburb of Rosebery. I don’t know how long it has been there, or how long it will remain. I wonder what the exact point is. It could mean a number of different things when you think about it…
Originally published Saturday 7 May 2005.
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