Richard Giles Blog

Read the rest of this entry »

I’d just like to point out that I did make the call, 52 days ago, that Eskimo Joe would win Single of the Year, for “Black Fingernails, Red Wine.”

Tonight they won exactly that at the ARIA Awards.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just saw the new Bravia advertisement on television. I heard about this a couple of months ago while appreciating the last one, and couldn’t wait to see the final result. It’s as good, actually probably better, then the last. Check it out here.

70,000 litres of paint
358 single bottle bombs
33 sextuple air cluster bombs
22 Triple hung cluster bombs
268 mortars
33 Triple Mortars
22 Double mortars
358 meters of weld
330 meters of steel pipe
57 km of copper wire

A year or two ago (I can’t remember exactly), I went hunting for an application for OS X that would analyze my iTunes library and give me the beats per minute (BPM). I’m a fan of very high tempo tracks, especially while working or running. Unfortunately I only found one application, and it didn’t work too well, and only catalogued a small portion of my collection.

Today I noticed Chris Messina–whose blog is worth reading if only to see examples of great design–mention Tangerine.

Tangerine takes a look at your iTunes library and works out the BPM and Beat Intensity of it’s music. You can then create a playlist that varies in total length, variety of BPM and Intensity, and also pattern (random, single hill, double hill, and single hill alternating). It also allows you to write the BPM to your iTunes library, which allows me to create a few extra Smart Playlists myself.

The application looks sweet, right down to the boxed tangerine with a straw as an icon. It’ll be something that becomes a companion of mine for some time I’d imagine. As soon as Apple launches their Nike+ range of products down here, it’ll be even more valuable.

A couple of days ago I pointed to the Bulletin article about Cam’s move to the US.

Those who are interested in funding Aussie startups should check out Randal’s thoughts on the subject (and note that a couple of VCs have their say in his comments). It’s interesting that Mike Zimmerman claims he was misquoted. As I mentioned, I explained I’m sticking to Australia for my funding, and wasn’t mentioned. I also pointed Josh to a local entrepreneur that has two successful businesses–one bootstrapped, the other locally funded–and that to wasn’t mentioned.

What is really good to see is at least two VCs getting involved in blogger conversations. Marc and Mike: nice seeing you in the blogosphere, you guys should get your own weblogs .

Also note that Randal was recently on the cover of BRW, as Cam is now on the cover of Bulletin.

I’d like to congratulate my Perth Entrepreneurs cofounder Viveca Trader for launching her new business, Fruit-Express. Well done!

If you’re in Perth, working for a company that needs a little fruit injection, then you can place an order with Fruit-Express and they’ll deliver a fruit basket (of varying sizes) to your office each Monday.

I thought it was a great idea. Quite often near the end of a work day I’d find myself getting hungry, and usually the only thing available was a chocolate bar or biscuit. So having easily available fruit means I grab a healthy snack, rather than get into a habit of grabbing a sugar fix.

My wife, Kilee, is even considering getting one for the home.

The Bulletin Magazine has a good piece on “web 2.0″ and funding in Australia, The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth. It highlights the difficulty in gaining attention and the right valuations as an Aussie Internet entrepreneur (note how the Bulletin uses an “i” for Internet).

Josh Gliddon chatted with me the other day for the article, though I don’t get a mention probably because I’m currently sticking to Aussie turf to find funding. My buddies Cameron, Marty, Nik, and Ben get some great coverage. Good one guys!

My only question of Josh is, WTF do you mean no “business model at all.”

And nowhere is that better illustrated than with YouTube. Despite its 100 million streams per day, it didn’t appear to have any business model at all. It’s the same dilemma that News Corp must have faced when it purchased the social networking site MySpace for what now looks like a bargain price of $US580m just over a year ago.

That’s like saying the Bulletin magazine has 100 millions views a day, but I’m not sure what it’s business model is. How about 100 million views per day. How about distribution deals with media companies. How about sponsorship for firms looking to find a bunch of potential customers. I’m sure if you gave me a few more minutes I’d come up with at least another half a dozen potential revenue streams that are open to MySpace and YouTube, and several more I don’t want to share because I’ve got some in my business model for Web2Thing.

Josh, on the one hand you’ve told us that VCs aren’t funding smart Aussie entrepreneurs, and on the other you’re saying it’s hard to find a “web 2.0″ company with a business model.

Cameron Reilly and I chatted with Thomas Reynolds the other day on G’Day World. Thomas was, until recently, a contractor to Telstra.

Thomas was told several days ago that his services were no longer required, and that it was related to blog posts he’d filed on Telstra’s corporate blog, nowwearetalking. Since then Cameron has reported a little more on his weblog, and so has Mark Jones. In fact, Mark wrote a great article for the AFR digging in to the situation.

It’s fairly obvious that Telstra had an issue with Thomas’ weblog. They’ve removed it from their site, and deleted the contents of Google’s Cache (anyone know how to get it back?). Mark’s article seems to sum the situation up nicely, that Telstra just aren’t ready for blog culture: that is, being open and honest about their business.

Orwellian control in our own backyard it seems.

A few years ago a friend recommended a domain registration service called RegisterFly. I used it for a few years, even though the site itself was dog-slow (I assumed it was because of its popularity).

Over the last year I’ve switched to using GoDaddy. Mostly because RegisterFly became a lot more difficult to register domains, and eventually I had major issues registering a .com.au address. I’d pumped some money into the account as part of the process, and its sat there since.

Over the months I tried to use the money on various domains, but recently, when I tried to register another .com.au it failed, again.

So I applied for a refund in their help system. After several days I still don’t have a response. I also noticed that for a short period their web site wasn’t reachable. Any one have similar issues?