Because I’m getting old….well, at least I think that explains my obsession with the 1980’s (I mostly listen now to 80’s online radio), I’ve been trying to rebuy things from my youth.

About 2 years ago I bought a beautiful original wood grained 1977 model Atari 2600… but ignore the fact that the Atari I had as a kid was the 1981 version with black plastic because it wasn’t nearly as pretty. It’s been in a box ever since we moved to Melbourne, but now I’ll be working from a cave I’m going to break it out.

But next on the list is my very first computer. When all my friends had the Commodore 64, my mother smartly decided that the Amstrad series offered far better graphics (the CPC 6128 had 64 colors, and 128k of Ram.) Of course the sad thing was that at least in Australia, the Amstrad CPC series never really took off. I could go as a kid to Grace Bros (now Myer) and they had a single section (sort of straight up row) dedicated to Amstrad product, but they had 3 for the Commodore.

My mother very sadly gave away that computer, along with all the software I’d programmed for it…and sold. Yes, at the age of 13 I sold about $500 AUD worth of Amstrad software because I’d taught myself Basic to the point that I’d come up with a program that printed fonts…. don’t laugh, fonts were rare back then.

So now I’m trying to find one to buy to add to by collection (I’ll probably buy a C64 afterwards just because I’ve never had one) but I can’t find one to buy. I’ve been monitoring eBay for 3 months, both in Australia and overseas….nothing.

In that time I could have bought a BBC Micro (very rare), a Microbee (even rarer) and the original Sega computer. But no 6128.

If you know someone who has one in the garage, or someone who wants to sell one, pls let me know. The last time I saw one was about a year ago, it went for about $200 with a monitor, I’d be willing to pay a bit more than that to own it.

We’ve floated in the 2-3m page view range now since earlier in the year, and although we were down slightly in June (2.55m from 2.7 May) we’re comfortable now…which means it’s time to push to the next level.

New writer

We’ve expanded our writing team to 4 (5 if you include me) with the addition of Paul Montgomery as our first dedicated sports writer.

Australian readers will know Monty through his previous startup Tinfinger and his leading Australian Rules Football site FanFooty. Paul is a journalist by trade, but I ignored that when I offered him the spot

Paul will be covering the full gauntlet of international sport with a touch of Australian sport (cricket specifically.)

Sport feed/ category

With Paul on board we’ve broken out sport into its own stand alone category + feed. If you’re subscribed to the News + Sport feed you’ll no longer see sport stories. The Media feed is still available if you’re subscribed, but media has been rolled into news.

Sport page here.
Sport feed here.

Celebrity Syndication

We’ve signed a deal with London based celebrity content provider BANG showbiz. Under the deal, we’ll be running up to 10 of their items a day (usually less, but that’s our cap). This will primarily come on top of our existing coverage. The initial deal is for three months with a review at the end. Sort of AP for celeb stories if you like. We’ve never tried syndicated content before, but you never know if you don’t try…or something like that. Because the content comes out of London, you’ll see most of it late night/ early morning US time, or occasionally late afternoon (ie, my morning.)

Picture provider

We’ve also signed up with GumGum, an ad support licensed celebrity picture service. GumGum provides images to b5media and a range of leading celebrity sites so we thought we’d give them a go. I can’t see us using them on every post, but certainly the next time we cover a big opening or similar we’ll have a ready supply of pictures to include in each post, where as today we are mostly limited to single pictures due to copyright law.

Interestingly he gave some data on The Punch

The Punch has taken off like a rocket since it was launched in May – our target was to achieve traffic of 80,000 users in the first month. It’s actually achieved almost 200,000.

Now let me say upfront that I actually like the idea (even if after today I don’t like Hartigan) and I’ve already said I hope the site does well.

But here’s the thing: even with the force of the News Ltd sites backing it (they regularly link in posts as well as other promos) they’ve managed 200,000 something… I say something, because users could mean anything, such as page views, uniques etc… indeed, that Hartigan quotes such a figure shows how detached he is to the online world.

Hartigan is right though, takes a while to establish a site, but likewise when you’ve got the cross-promotional power of News Ltd, 200,000 is surprisingly low.

Mumbrella did a story earlier in the week comparing The Punch to Crikey, but let me stretch that out a bit.

oh wait, I’m just a lowly blogger with no qualifications to run a site (apparently a Commerce Degree in Marketing and ECommerce doesn’t count.)

For the record, I’ve actually held conversations on adding to our content with official wire-like content in the last few weeks. Nothing to announce yet, but we may be expanding our celebrity coverage, and our use of images… more soon

So I finally conceded that the only way I’d jump to the first position was to get a phone line connected. We take possession on the 2nd (July, it’s the 29th June as I type this) and it turns out that Telstra can connect a physical line on the 3rd.

So once you’ve got an actual line (with days notice) getting ADSL2+ is easy, although getting ADSL2+ Naked is still hard. Spoke to Internode, who resell Telstra ports for ADSL2+. 5-10 days, guaranteed, because Telstra does it. If it was their own Naked ADSL…limited to no ports, 20+ days (like iiNet and more).

The key to get ADSL2+ connected at a new place is to connect the phone line with Telstra, and then connect the ADSL2+ with a Telstra reseller. You can switch to others later, but you can’t match 5-10 days

Mind you, this is all sorts of wrong, but to some degree it’s always been the case. Telstra connections have always had priority in an exchange over non-Telstra connections. I might be connecting with Internode, but it’s a Telstra wholesale connection.

First I tried to transfer my Naked ADSL2+ with iiNet to the new place. I’m told that the cost is $450 ($300 supposedly because the place is new) and that they can’t tell me whether there’s room at the exchange anyway. If I did apply, I’d find out in 10-20 days (presumably working days) if there was space for me (there’s limited or no space according to a couple of online services). I move next week. Even better: I can’t keep my iiNet VOIP number or my user name….that’s BS, given the number isn’t based on the exchange.

I’m pissed about the $300/ $450, but I’ll cop to it if it means that I’ll definitely have a connection…which they can’t tell me.

So then I start the hunt. Internode, a company that is probably the most loved ISP in Australia at least admitted that if I read online that there are no or limited availability in the exchange (iiNet wouldn’t admit to this…despite me looking at it on the screen) that this means there’s really no ports. They said I could try, but were honest and upfront about the chances. As soon as I get the opportunity in the future, they have my business.

Next stop Netspace. Limited of No availability listed. Didn’t bother ringing.

TPG and Primus: availability, but they won’t connect a Naked plan unless there’s a pre-existing phone connection…which sort of defeats the purpose of not getting a phone connection on a naked ADSL plan.

So now I’m back to square one. It seems that the only safe route at this stage is to get the phone connected with Telstra, get a standard ADSL2+ with someone (god knows who) then eventually churn to a Naked ADSL2+ plan. So much for living a life online without a landline phone.

It proves to me, as Chris Were pointed out on Twitter, that we need an NBN. Fuck the cost, we need it any which way but blue.

It’s complete bullshit that in 2009 I cant get a high speed internet connection put on in less than 2 weeks, or even as the case is so far, in 4 weeks, if it all. And it’s not as though we’re moving to the country, the exchange is Box Hill in Melbourne. Middle Urban Melbourne (although we live a little closer in, just at the end of Zone 1 on transport).

The NBN can’t come fast enough.

It takes an awful lot of specialness to completely fuck up Utegate, and yet Malcolm Turnbull has. Instead of Rudd and Co being on the ropes, it looks like Turnbull is history now. The alternatives to Turnbull aren’t clear, but Hockey looks like he’s the short price favorite.

Welcome to the thousand year Rudd Reich.

It’s actually a little sad to see Turnbull go. His complete cock-up of Utegate aside, here’s a man who could have made a great Prime Minister. I was never a fan in the past (particularly when he headed ARM) but there’s no doubt that he understands money and unlike the current mob may have been able to balance the national books.

Hockey on the other hand…. well, I guess the positive there in a political sense is that he’s a lot like Rudd so he’ll be a small target, but that’s not enough to win elections.

I might have voted for Turnbull at the next election, but I won’t be voting for Hockey, but I can also remember him well from his younger days, and he’s representative of what was, and still is wrong with the Liberal Party.

With no effective opposition going into the next election, how the hell do we stop internet censorship now?

We’ve been trialling on and off short url’s on links in posts for the better part of the last 6 weeks. The primary purpose was to track outgoing clicks, and in that regard the trial has gone very well.

But likewise the intent has never been to steal link juice to those we are linking to, and I’d be the last person to do that. I only need to note at this point the evidence: our own internal links in posts get the same treatment. We input the actual URL in the post, and it gets a short URL on publication, we don’t manually do it.

My experience so far is that Google has zero problem in following the short URL to the end page. I obviously don’t know for external sites, but I know following internal linking that those links react as they always have, that is, as if there was no short URL on the page.

We’ll continue on, with a note that we mean no harm to external sites and that we hope, and believe, that when we link out that although you may not see the raw link, the link is there, and counted, in Google and others.

Oddly we also have the option of framing links. I won’t say that we never will, but I’ll need a far stearner set of balls to do so

When I say house I use the term loosely, because it’s technically a townhouse, but it has separate title, so you could argue both sides.

House hunting in Melbourne requires stamina, and a strong volition not to attack real estate agents, who are in the most part lying scum sucking vampires. The short story: if it’s listed at auction for $540-$580k, it will sell for between $630 at $780k, and I’m not exaggerating on the last figure.

End of the day we needed to live within a reasonable circle from the golden child’s school in Hawthorn, because we had no interest in changing schools. After nearly two months of looking, we ended up buying a brand new town house in Mont Albert. It’s a little further out than we’d wanted, but likewise I can probably do the school in a solid 20 minutes (in peak traffic.)

Buying a brand new place helps, for example we have A/C, garage and more… something you really can’t get at our price bracket, and we also have ducted vacuuming…. I hope the cleaners know how to use it (don’t judge me there, it’s the only service we have done once a week, but we both work)

There is a little catch though: the townhouse is only 2 bedrooms…and I work from home, hence introducing the bat cave.

The garage is sunken under the two story townhouse (so it’s really sort of 3 stories) but it is 2 cars deep, and a huge alcove off to the side.

Pics as follows. If I need relief from the bat cave, the complex has an indoor heated pool, sauna and gym, so there is some balance

So I clicked through, and ended up on this page which reports on price drops by Optus and Virgin (note Virgin is a fully owned subsidiary of Singtel Optus.)

Then I scrolled down the page….and I found this

Note the circled bit. The first three results are for Optus iPhones, the 4th is a Virgin Mobile deal, and the 5th is a Telstra iPhone (after that point it seems to switch between the three in the top 20.)

But look at the Telstra mobile result (circled bit)

No telephone number… but the Optus result does.

Clicking through the link takes you to a more detailed page about the phone.

Here’s the contact details on the Telstra iPhone pages

Yet here’s the similar page for an Optus iPhone

But it’s not a one off: all the Singtel companies get a full sales spiel, Telstra doesn’t. Here’s the Virgin spiel:

Now I don’t disagree that Optus phones offer better value; Telstra’s deals are blue murder, and I’m surprised they even featured once in the top five. But there’s also clearly a commercial relationship between the editorial and Singtel, because the Optus/ Virgin phones get extra details, and I’m sure Fairfax hasn’t offered that out of the goodness of their heart.

But here’s where it gets dodgy, because out of the full top 20 list (or out to 22 in an extended view) the number of Vodaphone iPhone deals mentioned is 0.

If this was actually fair consumer advice, there would absolutely have to be a Vodafone iPhone listed there somewhere, and although I’m not a Vodafone customer (I’m with Optus) I’ve seen their plans and they’re competitive with Optus, and leave Telstra’s plans for dead.

So why have they been excluded? Could Telstra have been included sans contact details because they are an occasional Fairfax advertiser (the Bigpond page takeovers a couple of months back come to mind) and Vodafone isn’t?

Either way: this would appear to be advertising content masquerading as editorial consumer advice with zero disclosure from Fairfax.

Update: just noticed that although Vodafone’s logo is offered as an option in “filter mobile plans by carrier” you get this result