Doodlebug wins Live Screenplay competition

My screenplay Doodlebug just won the Playmarket Live Screneplay competition in New Zealand. This is very exciting, as the prize is a public reading of the screenplay by professional actors and support from Playmarket in developing the script.

Doodlebug is a script I wrote three years ago and actually just dusted off for this competition, so the win has given me new impetus to develop it. I’ve already had fantastic notes from Jean Betts at Playmarket to give me a steer on writing a new draft. I’ll post a scene from Doodlebug once that new draft is finished.

Black Out campaign - will it be enough?

By now you’ve seen the black banners and the balcked-out Twitter and Facebook profiles. You may even have seen the pictures of the protestors who gathered outside parliament on Thursday with black tape over their mouths (ouch getting that off) and weilding the black signs. “Huh, what’s all that about?” You may of thought. Well click here to see Scoop’s rolling commentary and news wrap on the looming introduction of section 92a of the Copyright Act and how it may affect your activity on the internet.

 

In the meantime, look at the picture below and imagine what it would be like in this connected age to be greeted by this instead of your usual browser start page…

 

Chapter 31 - And Nanowrimo draws to a close

I’m still a couple of thousand words shy of the finish line, but I’ll knock them out this afternoon. It feels good to be hearly finished but oddly unsettling that I’ll stop writing for now without finishing the story. As I said earlier, Junket is an 80,000 word novel, as most full-length novels are, so taking the foot off the gas at 50,000 is a fairly strange sensation. Maybe the Nanowrimo people need to get more ambitious on our behalf and up the wordcount. Still, I’m looking forward to finishing it over the summer and rewriting.

Here’s one that I wrote in the early hours during the week, when I was still stuck at the half-way mark (but sneakily telling people I was further along to keep up the morale!)

THIRTY-ONE

Rome, September 11

For a moment I didn’t know where I was. Everything was glowing green. I felt like I was on a cloud, a porcelain face floated above me. It appeared to be the goddess Venus. Her robe came into focus, the outline of a bare breast beneath it. She walked around me. I looked over to the left. Several people were sitting on white beds eating and drinking, talking and laughing, ignoring me.

There were lots of people like me, lying, watching the psychedelic images that were projected on the domed ceiling. Venus put down a carafe of wine. I followed her jewelled hand down, obsessed by it.

I was high on coke for the first time in over a year. I vaguely remembered standing in the glitzy toilets of the Supper Club, someone chopping out lines on the cistern, three of us squeezed in, taking turns to put our noses to the cool marble.

The images on the roof were of dolphins, darting through the water, appearing to swoop in from the roof, an aura of turquoise around them. I sensed I was on a raised podium. I rolled over and looked down. I was lying on a mezzanine of beds. Below, on the ground floor were more beds, people lying on them, drinking, talking, making out. The robed goddesses walked around topping up drinks. In the corner, a guy stooped over a laptop, controlling a trippy synth soundtrack.

I felt a buzzing in my pocket, not for the first time tonight. I fumbled at it and the cool mirrored phone slid onto my chest, still buzzing. I pressed the answer button.

“Hullo? Morgan is that you? I can’t hear you? Hang on.”

I sat up and shifted onto my hands and knees. I crawled among the couples, tangled limbs, hang bags and disgarded clothes and found the staircase down to the ground floor. I delicately descended the narrow steps, gripping the railing tightly.

Downstairs I headed into the lobby where the music wasn’t as loud.

“Morgan? Rome. What’s wrong? I know I said I was coming back after Germany, but-,”

Morgan sounded edgy, upset. Then he delivered the bad news.

“I lost the Mercedes gear.”

I took it in.

“What do you mean you lost it?” I said.

“I left it on the tube. I forgot it.”

“What the fuck, Morgan? Did you look for it?”

“Someone took it, they can’t find it.”

“They can’t -, How could you be so fucking stupid? Do you know how much that shit is worth?

He stuttered, tried to get his words out failed.

“It’s okay, I’ll get some- I’ll do something. I can get us money.”

“No Morgan, no more credit card scams, you’re finished with them, remember how close they came to finding you last time. None of that shit, they can find you through your computer.”

I looked across the lobby. A man was sitting on a couch with his back to me talking to a woman. I studied the back of his head, he turned slightly, side on. Pearse, or so I thought until he shifted further around. Someone else entirely. I wiped my soar eyes.

Morgan was babbling on over the phone, I was suddenly irritated with it all, these long distance phone calls with nothing but bad news from the slovenly 27 year old, wanting money or merchandise, then losing the merchandise. I flared up.

“That Merc stuff was supposed to keep us going for the next couple of months. What the hell is wrong with you?”

There was an uncharacteristic silence from London.

“Are you completely off your pills?” I asked, remembering the little brown bottle disappearing into the rubbish bin outside the Mater in Belfast.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you think it’s a good idea, like to cut them out so quickly? You’ve been on them 10 years at least,” I said.

“I don’t need them,” he said defiantly. “And I don’t need you!” The phone line disconnected.

“Fuck you too.” I hung up and turned to head back upstairs. I needed another hit of something to get the night back on track. A man was blocking my way, leaning against the wall. I recognised him from the press trip earlier in the day. He wore an outdated brown suit, white hair to his shoulders. He looked like Einstein, minus the moustache. I nodded at him.

“Can you believe this place? Avante garde bullshit!” His voice was heavily accented from somewhere east.

“Why are we here?” He asked.

“I think it’s because it’s the best place in Rome and the people from the shipping company want to impress us.”

He rolled his eyes.

“All I want is some pasta. They say the kitchen is closed. You hungry?”

Now that I thought about it, I was. Ravenous. We’d skipped dinner, headed straight for the club after the cocktail party on the Costa Magica, the largest cruise liner of the Costa group, our sponsor on this particular excursion.

“Yeah,” I said.

“let’s see if the cook is in a good mood.”

We walked towards the kitchen.

“By the way, I’m Simeon Bratov, Kommersant Journal, Moscow.”

“Steven Man, EuroTimes.”

We shook.

“You know I once tried to subscribe to EuroTimes through the website -,” I cut him off.

“Give me your card, we had problems with the sign-up engine. I’ll get subs to look into it.”

At the entrance to the kitchen, a lone sous chef was cleaning up, washing down the benches.

“Can we get two bowls of pasta?” said Simeon.

“The kitchen is closed,” the chef responded. The Russian mumbled under his breath.

“Hang on.”

He disappeared into the lobby and returned trailing Antonio, the head of corporate affairs for the Costa Line.

“Tell this man I’ll cook the spaghetti myself and tip very generously,” he said, pushing Antonio towards the kitchen.

There was a rapid-fire conversation in Italian between the suited shipping executive and the crumpled chef, some money appeared from Antonio’s pocket and was pressed into the cook’s hands. There was more protesting but his will was slipping. Eventually he threw down his towel on the bench and walked out of the kitchen. Antonio gestured us in.

“Don’t take too long.” He said.

Simeon took off his jacket and rubbed his hands together looking around the expansive kitchen. He turned on the gas, a blue hissing flame came to life on one of the hobs. He clattered a pan onto it and reached for a jug of olive oil. Under a table he found a sack of onions and handed them to me.

“You chop them, I’ll make a nice sauce,” he said.

I stood in front of the chopping board and selected a long knife from a rack in front of me. I realised I was slightly drunk. This would take some concentration. I started slicing onions and soon my eyes were stinging.

“What’s your story then Steven?”Asked Simeon bringing a pot of water to the boil, unwrapping some fresh pasta he’d taken from the giant steel fridge.

“You do a lot of these trips?”

“Yeah, it’s the business beat, you know, lots of conferences, press conferences, the beast to be fed and all that.”

“But you didn’t take a note all day,” he said, looking at me sideways.

“Shipping doesn’t interest you?” he enquired. I was sprung and drunk and unable to figure out how to get out of this one. Anyway I felt comfortable with the old guy, a bit like how it used to be with John.

“You know what?” I said. “I don’t know the first thing about shipping. I got an email on my phone, I was about to head back to London, I came here because I didn’t want to go home, simple as that.”

He lowered the pasta into the water.

“I used to do these trips because it was the only way out of the country. I was free, even just for one night, being in a nice hotel in the west, Paris or Vienna or somewhere.”

He shook the pan.

“Where’s the garlic?” He scraped the garlic I’d chopped up into his hand and threw it on the pan. It started to fry with s sizzle, the smell made me all the more hungry.

“I was a scientist, in the Urals, until an experiment went wrong,” said Simeon.

He shook his head.

“I wasn’t allowed in the lab any more so I worked for the science journals, if I couldn’t do it, I’d write about it. By the time it all fell apart, I didn’t know how to do anything else. In Russia, it is one job for life. The Soviet way. Only in the new Russia there’s no room for the journals. So now I write about anything.”

“A flea rancher, just like me.”

“Pardon?” He said, confused.

“On nothing,” I said, backing away from the onions to wipe the tears from my stinging eyes.

“Fuck me.”

“And you,” he continued, probing “what’s your story?”

All the usual scenarios I’d spun before were on the tip of my tongue, I could have rolled any one of them out. But I sensed I wouldn’t be able to get any of them past Simeon. I’d only just met the guy, but he’d already seen through me. Lying was pointless.

“I’m a complete fake. And I don’t know what I’m doing any more.”

He didn’t respond immediately, the sound of sizzling garlic and bubbling water filled the void.

“You think you have gone off the path?” He enquired finally.

“I hardly know what I am. Maybe, maybe I’m a bad person. The worst even. I really don’t know what I am capable of.”

I looked at the dull blade, my blurred reflection in it.

“Good and bad? We all have both in us. All cats are grey at night.” Said Simeon.

“And all those who carry long knives are not cooks,” he said watching me staring at the knife.

“Hurry up with my onions.”

I handed him the chopping board and he scraped them into the pan. The oil welcomed them with a sharp hiss.

I was standing beside him in front of the cooking food. He reached over and put his hand on my chest, directly over my heart.

“Everyone knows here what they are capable of. Don’t try and deceive yourself or let yourself be deceived.”

He took his fist away, held it up in front of my face.

“Otherwise, this is all you have.”

He opened his fist and blew theatrically as though blowing dust from his upturned hand. Dust or ashes.

A few hours later I found myself once again in an airport in that darkest of times before the sun begins to rise. The Alitalia desk was already open and had moved my flight forward. I stood in the departure lounge looking out across the tarmac as a golden glow began to light the eastern sky.

Morgan’s phone went once again to voicemail.

“Morgan I’m coming home. I’m sorry. Sorry for everything. I shouldn’t have gone to Germany, I shouldn’t be here. I’ll set it right. See you soon.”

Day 25 - Chapter 22 An end in sight

Last week was one of the busiest I’d had since starting my new job so the Nanowrimo pace slipped somewhat. Still, 36,000 odd words down, I’m confident of hitting the 50,000 word target by November 30, even if my writing buddies have pulled well ahead of me and will likely finish will well in excess of the 50,000 words expected of us. What I’m discovering is that 50,000 words will be a little less than two-thirds of Junket. It sure would be nice to be finishing the entire 1st draft come Sunday.

Anyway, here’s chapter 22 for you - it’s getting harder to post chapters without giving away important plot spoilers. This one doesn’t give away too much - the next one, chapter 23, is pivotal to the plot explaining what has made Steven the way he is and illuminating Pearse for what he is…

TWENTY-TWO

Budapest, August 5

After that text I’d received from Pearse in Chicago I’d waited for him to get back in touch. A day went past, me sitting on the bed in that dump of a motel room expecting the phone to go, or even a knock on the door.

There had been nothing. I’d texted him again with no response and his phone, predictably, went to voicemail. It seemed to be the fashionable thing to do these days – not answer your phone.

I was at an internet cafe near O’Hare, about to book a flight back to London when the invite to Hungary had come through from the Hungarian Development Agency, an organisation whose press list I’d been on for a couple of years but had so far yielded nothing. With Morgan presumably at Uncle Paul’s, I didn’t fancy heading back to the loft and I still didn’t know how safe it was anyway.

So I took the offer of a business class flight to Budapest and accommodation during the press tour which would focus on Hungary’s economic transformation five years after the country joined Europe’s increasingly less exclusive economic and political club - the European Union.

I paced up and down on the steps outside the convention centre, waiting for Pearse to show. He walked across the concourse slowly, looking around him, taking in the passing convention goers. Finally he was standing in front of me, a step higher.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

Pearse shrugged. “Fifth anniversary of Hungary getting EU status, it’s big news!”

He gestured with his hands, exaggerating.

“Bullshit,” I said sternly. “What happened in Shanghai?”

“Didn’t you get the videos?” he shot back.

He stepped down, level with me now.

“You were impressive in Shanghai. Handling those two beauties. How things turned that night…”

He started walking down the steps, I followed him.

“Look, the videos,” I said. “I don’t remember anything, I can’t even –“

“You’re saying that’s not you on the bed those two gook chicks riding you at the same time? That’s not you in the cellar, with her lying there on those sacks of rice like a -”

“Enough,” I said.

He shrugged. We reached the sidewalk, the entrance to the convention centre was choked with Skodas, taxi drivers waving at us, trying to win our business. Pearse walked through them and out onto the street. I followed.

“What the hell happened that night?” I said.

Pearse stopped abruptly and turned around.

“You came alive Steven.”

“I felt sick.”

“The next day? That’s normal the first time.”

“The first time what?” I said angrily.

A tram rumbled past just them, the concrete vibrating beneath our feet, the screeching of metal on metal.

“In Shanghai you opened a vein, you couldn’t get enough. You’re horrified at what happened, but at the same time you want more.”

He had to shout over the noise of the tram. His words hit me like a brick. I had to stifle a shudder. I felt light-headed, a montage of images from the videos blurring together, running through my head, replaying at speed.

“I’m not like you,” I managed, finally, once the noise had receded.

“Maybe you’re right Steven,” said Pearse. “After all, I’m a journalist, you’re a fraud.”

“What?” I said half-heartedly, knowing what was coming.

“Fake company, fake subscriber base, fake credentials. You fooled that lot back there, but I figured it out,” he said. There was no malice in his voice, just a cool frankness. He was enjoying this, but restraining himself.

“Is that why you tried to break into my apartment? To spy on me?”

He was determined to keep the upper hand.

“Come on Steve, you look like the kid whose mom just found a pile of Playboys underneath his bed. You think I’m going to rat you out, after what we’ve been through together?”

“We haven’t been through anything together,” I hissed.

“Well, the video tape…,” said Pearse, trailing off.

Pearse walked on and I followed him, watching the back of his suit jacket flap in the breeze. We came to a busy intersection and he went to cross, no regard for the cars nosing through. Horns blared at him. I jogged to keep up, scooting around the side of a small but fast-moving Peugeot.

“Bastard!” Someone shouted at me.

We got to the other side of the road and again Pearse stopped. We were in front of a squat, pale blue building. It was freshly-painted and well-maintained by Hungarian standards.

“Sixty Andrassey Avenue,” said Pearse. “The Nazis used it, then the Arrow Cross Party which did Himmler’s dirty work purging the Jews. Then the communists inherited it. How many people went in there and were never seen again?”

He stood squinting up at the building, its tall dark windows revealing little of what was inside.

“People let it happen Steven, again and again. Community, government, liberty? You’re fucking me up the arse.” He touched the smooth stone of the building, the former headquarters of successive secret police regimes.

“See Steven, in a world of supposed order people went into that building believing there was truth, justice, safety, between those walls. What did they get? They got nothing, because deep down we don’t really care. Society? Gimme a break. That’s why men like us Steven are so fucking rare. We understand this, you and I. We go after what we want, we take what we desire because we know it’s all bullshit. We’re all one step away from walking into that building and disappearing forever.”

We stood on the footpath in the afternoon sun, people passing by oblivious, both of us watching the pedestrians march along on their determined paths.

“Say Steven, you like art?” Pearse patted me on the shoulder.

“Come on, I know a good place.” He began walking and once again I found myself following him.

Day 15 - halfway and feeling strangely fine

So I’m 24,000 words into Junket at the halfway point of Nanowrimo, a thousand words shy of the halfway mark in terms of wordcount. I’m pretty happy with this and estimate I’m just over a third of the way through the story.

I was really firing last night, fuelled by a bottle of Johnnie Walker which I took to bed along with my laptop. Before I knew it, it was 3am and I’d written 3000 words. Funny thing was I woke up at 9am feeling better than I have in months.

The story is pretty rough around the edges, but I’m reasonably happy with the 20 chapters I’ve got through so far, there’s definitely something decent to work with there in draft 2. Anyway, here’s chapter 13 of Junket.

THIRTEEN

London, July 22

The minicab braked with almost enough force to throw me off the seat. It certainly woke me up. We were at the entrance to Myers Lane which ran between the dilapidated warehouses on either side. The Iranian driver obviously didn’t want to go any further off the beaten track.

I handed him thirty pounds and climbed out of the cab, taking my bag from the boot. It was the beginning of a beautiful day in London. Overhead, the whine of jet engines signalled planes heading for Heathrow.

The warehouses were silent, locked up. An old Ford Escort sat on the side of the lane, its windows covered in condensation. I put down my roller bag and rattled up the cobbled lane to the flaking, graffiti-ed particle board door with the padlock on it. Next door a sign hung from rusty chains advertising a English language academy.

For years it had been a base for teaching illegals English until it had been raided and shut down. Morgan and I were happy for the peace – the students had smoked and played football in the lane below – but we’d also been tapping free internet access from the language school. That had dried up when the Pakistani owners had been turfed out.

I opened the door and hoisted the bag as I climbed the stairs. Even from here I could hear the chaos of a violent video game – Morgan was obviously still up. I swung the upstairs door open with my foot as a hail of machine gun fire blasted out from the home theatre system dominating one wall of the bare brick room.

Morgan was sitting in the middle of the leather couch, his back to me. He was wearing his holey Megadeth t-shirt – no doubt it hadn’t been washed since I’d been down the Laundromat before I left. On a big screen in front, a soldier was walking through a cathedral holding an oversized machine gun. Mutant creatures swung down at him from all angles, but he blasted them away, gory pulp splattering in every direction.

I gently put down my suitcase and tip-toed over to the table we’d rescued from the skip at the back of the engineering shop across the lane. It was littered with FedEx and UPS boxes, most of them opened and empty. There were electronic gadgets spread across the table, bubble wrap and polystyrene padding thrown to the side.

I walked up behind Morgan. He was seven years younger than me but already he had a bald patch developing. He was sitting there on the couch oblivious, his fingers expertly working the fat Xbox controller. The sound emanating from the borrowed Bose speakers was deafening. You could feel the wind kicking from the bass speaker lying on the dusty floorboards beneath the screen.

I slapped my hands down on Morgan’s shoulders.

“Jesus Christ!”

He leaped off the couch spinning 180 degrees to face me. He threw the controller at me. Luckily I caught it. I threw it on the couch grinning at him. He looked puffy, unshaven, dirty. His droopy right eyelid twitched as he struggled to get over the shock. He put his hands on his head, trying to calm himself.

“What’s that?” I asked, nodding at the flat screen TV.

“That’s your surprise dummy. LG sent it. I said we’d devote a page to it in the summer lifestyle supp, supp –“

“Supplement,” I finished impatiently. “What supplement?”

Morgan grinned at me. He may have been dropped at birth and numerous times afterwards, but he wasn’t stupid.

“They want it back,” I enquired?

“Did I sign anything saying I’d give it back?” He shrugged.

“Got anything for me,” he said looking down at my suitcase expectantly.

I lifted my well-worn suitcase onto the couch and unzipped it. Nestled among the stale shirts was a black box. The case was roomier on the return flight given that I’d ditched the blood-stained tuxedo.

I’d stuffed it into a bin in the service alley behind the Grand Hyatt. I’d waited half an hour until the area had been free of people before ditching the clothes. On the way back I’d noticed the red glow giving away a CCTV camera. That was fine. Someone had to be watching to have spotted me. The chances of that were slim.

I handed the box to Morgan. His eyes lit up.

“So what’s been going on?” I asked examining the discarded takeaway wrappers and pizza boxes stacked on the chipped formica bench that represented our kitchen.

“We lost internet access for a while. I hacked into the wi-fi from the antique car place. They were using WEP, was easy to crack. Astin01 is the access point, oily321 is the access code.”

I nodded. Internet access was our lifeblood. Without it we had to trek down to the internet cafe to update the website. No updates, no snippets on Google News and that meant the people who assembled the lists weren’t being bombarded with tempting headlines from EuroTimes offering exclusive coverage behind the pay wall for a 12 month subscription of only 799 pounds. No place on the list meant no more junkets.

Morgan opened the box and delicately lifted out a big ball of glass engraved with Chinese characters. He frowned, disappointed.

“What do we have on eBay?” I asked.

“Rats and Mice,” he said, mimicking one of my favourite sayings and annoying me in the process.

“I need more stuff to flog.”

He flopped back down on the couch, the soldier frozen on the screen in front in the process of throwing a grenade. I went to the grimy window and looked down. Old Fowler was hauling back the door to his panel shop opposite. Fowler was the one guy in the area who knew of our existence up here but he was a good sort, kept to himself, didn’t ask questions.

I’d been worried when Morgan and I had emerged from the warehouse one night, coming face to face with him. But he’d engaged us as though we were neighbours.

“Alright son?” he’d said to Morgan sensing from the start there wasn’t something right about him.

“Anything you need fellas, let me know. And keep an eye on my place, eh? Had too much stuff ripped off over the years.”

“So all the China stuff went up?” I asked Morgan approaching the iMac sitting hibernating on the bench.

“A bit of it,” he mumbled studying the crystal ball.

“I’ve been busy surviving on nothing,” he said accusingly.

“No kit to flog!”

The empty parcels on the table suggested otherwise. Morgan got off the couch and approached the swivel chair in front of the Mac. He tapped the keyboard and the screen came to life.

“What’s the source?” He asked.

“Search for AP and Jeffrey Ratz, R-A-T-Z. Reuters and Stephen Wang, p-h, not v.

“Not like you Stevie.” He said.

He typed rapidly, his fingers moving quickly on the keyboard, once white, now a grubby cream. He squinted at the screen reading from Google News.

“China’s new power struggle by Jeffrey Ratz of Associated Press,” he announced deliberately.

He clicked on the link and opened the story.

“I’ve got some nice graphics from that free Brookings Institute website,” he added.

“I’ll Google for some generic Shanghai photos.”

I sat down on the couch and took my shoes off, letting the business class socks breathe.

“Cut and paste, but change every second word,” I reminded Morgan.

He had a habit of stealing large slabs of text from other stories. Plagiarism was too easy a way for EuroTimes to get busted. You could change every second word and disguise your tracks in cyberspace.

Sure a story may read pretty much the same as any other one coming across the wires, but in the age of instant dissemination of news and the reliance of reporters on packaged content and press releases, that was pretty much the norm. As long as the language was different, the headlines were uniquely composed, you might be saying the same thing but no one could pin you down as a rip-off merchant.

“Three pars on the front page, the rest behind the firewall,” I said.

“The Great Chinese firewall,” Morgan came back.

I ignored him.

“Gi-, Gimme a new intro,” he said.

I closed my eyes and tried to pull together the random strands I’d picked up from that dinner the first night in Shanghai.

“Okay, try this one, bro. As a modern wave of nationalism sweeps China, driven by the newly assertive middle class –“

“hang on!” Morgan shouted.

I carried on regardless, I knew his touch-typing was 120 words a minute at least.

“- and the politicians pandering to them, Asia’s giant is being pushed into a conflict over geopolitical clout as well as its political history. Steven Man reports from Shanghai.”

He rattled away on the keyboard, then silence.

“You know Stevie, you could just about do this for real.”

I closed my eyes. I was thinking of that hard basketball beneath Michiko’s aqua blue dress in Tokyo and the eight minute video sitting on the fancy phone in my pocket. They were both most definitely for real.

Day 10, Chapter 15 - the sophomore slump

The slog continues as Nanowrimo grinds on. Actually, it hasn’t been too bad, but the famous sophomore slump definitely takes a bit of will power to get over. I’m about 15,500 words in and was about to knock off when I listened to a particularly inspiring podcast on the Naowrimo.org website by an author who has had three novels she wrote during Nanowrimo published.

She said the first draft of her first attention was utter crap too, but from it, following numerous revisions, a worthy manuscript sprung. I’m hoping the same can be said for Junket. For those who know the feeling of waking up somewhere unfamiliar, the previous night’s exploits a complete blank to you, here’s chapter 7.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

SEVEN

The metallic rumble had come and gone an endless number of times but I assumed them to be part of the uneasy dream playing like a loop of grainy video in my head. Finally I sensed the intruding noise existed in the real world. I opened my eyes.

I was lying in a bright, white corridor, on my side, my right cheek against the gritty pavement. It occurred to me for the first time how hard the concrete floor was and how stiff and sore my body was. I tried to move but couldn’t. Straight across from me a man was sitting rocking back and forth, a dirty laundry bag beside him. He was flanked by large backlit advertisements, one for a Samsung TV, the other for HSBC.

He sat looking up the corridor playing with his wispy beard. Feet came into view, people passing by, dozens of them, hurried and determined, ignorant of my presence. I truned my head painfully to see the corridor full with people making their way down it towards me. I was in some sort of public thoroughfare, a subway tunnel, most likely. I scrambled up and lent against the wall as a pulsing wave of pain cross the front of my head. I groaned and closed my eyes. Another rumble from above, a familiar sound, like being in the tube stations in London.

I looked down at my hands. They were filthy, covered in mottled brown, my fingerprints standing out, the lines caked with the filth. I looked down at myself. I licked my left index finger. The unmistakeable rusty taste of blood.

My white shirt was covered in blood, dried blood. I stared at my chest uncomprehending. I touched myself delicately, alarmed. My entire left side was painful to the touch, my shoulder stung as the fabric of my shirt moved against it.

Commuters were beginning to pass by in numbers so I closed by tux jacket, hugging it to myself.

What the fuck is going on?

I summonsed all my energy to drag myself up the subway wall. Again I looked at my hands, splotched brown, the cuffs of my shirt painted with a random pattern of red flecks. There were a pile of DVDs lying on the ground, my souvenirs from the market. I bent down painfully to pick them up and joined the flow of people moving down the tunnel.

The central platform at Shanghai Central Train Station was already teeming with early morning commuters. A digital sign read 6.13.AM. A public address squawked a babble of mandarin, massive signs flicked up rows of Chinese characters. People zigzagged across the platform, some eyeing me for a second before moving on. Nothing made sense. There was nothing to orientate myself, nothing to hold onto.

I shuffled away from the platform out of the rush. A sign in the shape of a stick man caught my eye. I cut back across the platform and entered a sour-smelling block of toilets. I entered a booth, unzipped my fly and took a piss into the steel bowl. My cock hurt. There was a crusty film of blood over it. I made a conscious effort not to examine my hands again, my shirt, the rest of me. I just focused on the relief of emptying my bladder. Maybe seeing myself in the mirror would help me better understand the state I was in.

I walked out of the booth. A Chinese businessman was standing at the wash basins, combing thin grey hair across his liver-spotted scalp. I walked to a basin two away from him and ran the water. I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was no worse than usual for a big night out – a thin coating of stubble, bloodshot eyes. It was the stains on the shirt that alarmed me. I took off the tux jacket. The entire front of the shirt was soaked in blood. The arms remained pristine white. Whatever had happened the previous night, it had happened with my tux jacket on, even if my pants had somehow been off.

The Chinese man was looking at me. I glanced again at the mirror and realised what a disturbing sight I must look. But he just kept combing his hair. Finally he ran the water over his comb wiped it on a handkerchief and walked out of the toilets.

I took off the shirt and threw it in a bin mounted in the wall. There was a V-shaped stain in the hollow of my neck and other red smears on my chest where blood had settled. On my left shoulder were some razor-line scabs that ended in welts of torn flesh. The whole of my left side was bruised. I prodded myself carefully. No broken ribs at least. I turned around and craned my neck to look at my back. More of the thin scratches on my back had drawn blood. The discolouration of bruising.

I felt the pockets of the tux and found my wallet and the phone were still there. Suddenly I had an urgent desire to get out of there, to get back to the hotel and the relative familiarity of the Grand Hyatt. I put on the tux jacket, stuffed the DVDs into the jacket pocket and headed for the door. I stopped halfway, came back and scrubbed my hands. The water swirled a murky brown against the porcelain sink.

Outside, Shanghai was already alive, the constant cacophony of two-stroke bike engines, taxis, trucks, air-conditioning vents and machinery creating a constant high-pitched roar that hurt my ears. I headed straight for the first veedub I could find and climbed in the back.

“Grand Hyatt,” I said and collapsed back in the seat as a wave of nausea washed over me.

Day 2, Chapter 2 of NaNoWriMo

Slower progress today - it didn’t help that the weather was stunning and my old man had come to visit for the weekend, but managed to grind out chapter 2 - just shy of 4000 words.But I’m feeling confident. I’ve got a pretty solid outline and I’ve already figured out how the first major set-piece will go down, probably in chapter 4.

My favourite books usually have impact from the beginning, something that draws you in, gives you a taste of the world you’ll be inhabiting for the next little period. George Orwell came up with the best opening line ever: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking Thirteen…”

Immediately you know something isn’t right and that first chapter hooks you in magnificent fashion. The first chapter of Stephen King’s latest novel, Duma Key is another example of compelling scene setting - pity the rest of the book doesn’t live up to it.

Anyway, more writing tonight, which is when I love writing best. I’m aiming for 5000 words or 10 per cent of the target total in the first weekend… that’d be a reasonable start…

Novel writing month - day 1 and Chapter 1 of Junket

Boy, well we’ve begun and it wasn’t quite as difficult as I expected it to be. Many times I’ve sat down at my computer over the last ten years to start writing a novel and never got further than a page in before giving in, deleting what I’d written and moving on to something else.

But when you’ve a deadline of November 30 to write 50,000 words of a novel, you tend to get over the agonising quickly and start banging out words. I just finished chapter 1 of my globe-trotting hi-tech thriller Junket, which is in the vein of Joseph Finder’s Paranoia. That’s what National Novel Writing Month is all about and I’ll be grinding out words the rest of the month along with tens of thousands of people around the world who just want to write (and finish) a novel.

I’m also going to be publishing the occasional chapter here on Griffin’s Gadgets as I go. Excuse them being a little rough around the edges - this is a first draft and they’re written at breakneck speed. Nevertheless, here’s chapter one of Junket…

ONE

______________________________________________________________________________________

Shanghai, July 7

For the first time in months, I wasn’t jet lagged. In the back of the black limo, cool air blew out of vents in the roof. Through the tinted window a lumbering Emirates jet descended on its way into Pudong, an oily haze of avgas in its wake.

For the first time in months everything was okay. Morgan was well fed and happy, taking his medication, putting his computer programming skills to good use. We had a regular supply of packages turning up to the Pimlico drop box, so the eBay listings were mounting up, a few big ticket items too, so they’d be some serious Sterling sitting in the PayPal account for Morgan to draw on as he needed.

The London joint was secure again now that the language school below had been vacated, leaving the Isle of Dogs hideaway isolated and forgotten once again. I had enough airpoints to circle the world a half dozen times and as far as the myriad collection of PR flacks, marketing jocks, spin merchants and conference organisers keeping me afloat knew, EuroTimes Business was still among the most respected, subscription-based online news magazines covering European business affairs.

Most importantly, I was still on the list, still on the junket trail, still riding the gravy train and no one was any the wiser. Yes, for the first time in months, there wasn’t anything to worry about.

The Chinese chauffeur looked at me in the rear view mirror, a wireless mobile headset pulsing blue in his ear. He murmured to himself, humming along to the wispy Chinese folk music playing low on the stereo. Out on the six lane highway, a fleet of Volkswagen taxis, all the same boxy model in dark navy, glided along, past slower trucks and vans – Toyotas and Nissans, Japanese hand-me-downs.

I finally opened the press pack I’d carried from London – a thin dossier of paper embossed with the logo for Shanghai Bell Telecom. It was another itinerary prepared especially for Steven Man, managing editor of the EuroTimes business journal, written in that stilted PR speak layered with English as a second language awkwardness.

The pages were loaded with formal meetings, factory visits and tourism excursions. I scanned them looking for something that might bear fruit. In Asia, there was usually a decent present, the thinly-veiled bribe. In Shenzhen a couple of years back, it had come in the form of two hookers a couple of low-level, local Government officials lined up. It would have been insulting to turn them down.

A journalist’s code of ethics dictates that freebies are out, but I’d seen the most experienced reporters, big names working for Reuters, Bloomberg, the WSJ, discretely take their goodie bag back to their hotel room. Some things are just too good to pass up.

This gig was being hosted by a telephone company, so surely there’d be some nice expensive gadget or other on offer. When would the little felt, gift-wrapped boxes appear? On the first night after the welcome banquet, or later in the piece, once the Chinese executives had extracted some value from the western guests?

The restaurants listed for the formal dinner sounded expensive. I’d never had a taste for real Chinese food – too bland, insipid.. Give me a plate of crisp wontons and some fried rice over a hundred dollar bowl of shark fin soup any day.

Then there was the accommodation – the Grand Hyatt, one of the finest hotels in the sprawling city. I’d had lunch there once before and had always been determined to come back and check in. The lodgings were what had hooked me on this trip. I just needed a day or two in luxury, between thick sheets, a mini bar at my disposal, a high room overlooking the city. It was time for some much needed R&R after months of hard graft, Morgan’s meltdown and a couple of disasters that had nearly blown the lid off the EuroTimes scam.

I opened the zip bag containing my collection of press credentials, all professionally put together by Morgan in Photoshop and printed to plastic using a fancy printer Kodak had “lent” us for a product review to go in the Boys Toys section of the website. We should have held onto it, but the money had dried up, so we flicked it on Trader Bin for 400 pounds.

Ironically, the National Union of Journals press card was still paper and a passport photo covered in adhesive plastic, a dawdle to forge. Morgan had lasered off the paperwork before I left the warehouse for Heathrow - in a manic rush as usual. I shuffled a set of four passport photos out of the bag and onto my lap and tore one off. I positioned it carefully on the green press pass and pealed off the adhesive backing. I coated the whole think in plastic thumbing over the picture I’d had taken at the end of a drunken week spent in Bangkok which resulted in my passport being stolen.

I looked slightly frazzled in that photo, which betrayed the fact I’d been up for 36 hours straight before it was taken. But it would do fine. I slipped the press pass into my suit pocket and put the paperwork back in its folder. Through the window loomed the city, dominated by a hulking tower – the Grand Hyatt herself. I pressed a button on the arm rest and the tinted window rolled down. The sound of car horns, truck engines, the blast of clammy air, a mumble of disapproval from the driver. I did a quick survey of the towering glass structure I was bound for and put the window up.

The Blackberry in my breast pocket buzzed, delivering some message from a different timezone, a different continent. I ignored it, lying back against the cool leather, breathing slow and deep, dozing off, thinking of the friendly brunette in the jacuzi in Houston last month. She was an analyst for Conaco Philips. A crazy night at the Swan, the gaudy centrepiece of Disney World’s hotel complex. I’d definitely be taking a side trip through Texas on the next US excursion for some more analysis.

The car slowed as we left the highway and entered a tunnel. We emerged into a grey haze of inner-city smog, towering office blocks, building sites covering in bamboo scaffolding, mid afternoon traffic choking every piece of tarmac in sight. Finally we rolled up into the sweeping entrance to the Grand Hyatt. The driver was out quickly, opening the door for me, shattering the cocoon of silence.

I stood gazing up at the 150 floors above me as the driver took my bags into the lobby, which featured a massive mosaic of a dragon on its curved roof. I smiled at the receptionist as I approached the counter.

“Checking in, Steven man, guest of Shanghai Bell.” I kept it businesslike, clipped, just short of impatience.

She tapped away on her computer silently, scrolling through screens, taking longer than these things should. I looked around the lobby, Asian business men with comb-overs and grey suits, bell boys in crisp black waist coats, a woman playing a soft jazz number on a grand piano on a raised platform. She had a split in her dress that went all the way to her waist, exposing her slender thigh.

“There’s no record of…”

I frowned, leant over the desk, irritation stirring. Booking mistakes went with the junket territory – there are a lot of vacuous people in PR and booking a hotel room, rental car, airplane ticket often proves too much for some of them. It was usually sorted out quickly, but a messed-up booking had on occasion meant me covering the bill on my own credit card until I could be reimbursed. That wasn’t an option since the Amex limit had been knocked back to 1000 pounds.

Äh, here it is. Mr Man.”

I exhaled slowly, showing nothing. She slid a card key and letter across the counter. I banged the counter lightly, pleased.

“Incidentals?” I asked.

“They are all on the Shanghai Bell account.”

“You’ve just made my day, luv.”

The Sweeny Vesty spin treatment

Having seen the news on the wires that Telecom shareholder Elliot International had failed in its bid to install two directors on the Telecom board, I was surprised to receive the following short press release from Sweeny Vesty, the local PR firm acting for Elliot:

“Elliott welcomes the support from shareholders who voted for independent director nominees Mark Tume and Mark Cross at today’s Telecom AGM.

“We believe the vote sent a clear signal that Telecom needs to focus on enhancing shareholder value, and we look forward to continuing our dialogue with the Board and management.

“We would like to thank shareholders for the support they have shown towards our efforts.”

Hang on, Mark Cross and Mark Tume, the nominees put forward by Elliot were resoundingly rejected by Telecom shareholders. Rival nominees Rod McGeoch and newcomer, Saatchi bigwig Kevin Roberts were voted onto the board with 96 per cent and 99 per cent support respectively.

I think Elliot, miffed at having badly mistimed its investment in Telecom has no option but to retreat with its tail between its legs and wait for Telecom’s share price to creep back up over the $3 mark before offloading its sorry New Zealand investment…

Is the BNZ nuts?

You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not a BNZ customer and never have been, but the bank bearing the country’s name always had a certain amount of conservative cred ($380 million early nineties bail-out aside).

It’s an old and respected institution and its branding to date has reflected that - until now. Check out the new BNZ logo, which as NZPA points out today, simply has the BNZ letters “in blue, toothpaste style”. It’s horrible. Which ad agency dreamt up this photoshop effort?

All I watch these days is Fox

Now that I have a fulltime job I don’t get to watch Good Morning and all the other shows that brighten up the daytime TV schedule for stay at home moms and freelance (flea ranch?) writers. There’s precious little to watch in the evenings since my Sky dish went slightly out of alignment during a storm reducing the History Channel to a pixelated mess.

 No longer can I flop exhausted onto the couch and watch a decent black and white documentary about Operation Barbarossa or the Battle of Jutland.

 

With local TV a waste land of weather presenters, nanny state adverts and Colleen’s Real Women, I’ve taken to watching the Fox News channel - every night. The advantage is that being in an awkward time zone compared to the east coast of the US, I get to see classy infotainment programmes like the breakfast show Fox and Friends. I’m watching right now, Steve Doocy is doing a live cross:

“It’s not a plane, it’s a man flying with a wing!” He just said. 

 At least I think it’s a breakfast show. It’s all flashy grins and white teeth, digs at liberal actors and cutaways to Sarah Palin on the campaign trail. All of that could reasonably be shown at any time of the day.

Often I’ll be treated to a dose of Greta van Susteren, that lantern-jawed current affairs show anchor who can move effortlessly from crusty homicide scene to GOP convention.

 

Good ol’ Shepard “Shep” Smith will sometimes make an appearance. According to the Fox website, Shep’s “fast-paced and jam-packed anchoring is a glimpse into the future of television news”. Bring it on Shep! I love his round the world in 80 seconds segment, though I reckon he could cut it down to 60 seconds by tightening up the cutaways to Sarah Palin on the campaign trail. Anyway, the Washington Post was right when it described him as a NASCAR driver “racing through the news at breakneck speed”.

 If I’m really lucky I get to spend time staring at the well-cultivated moustache of Geraldo Rivera. Sainsbury’s mo has nothing on Geraldo, who I was staggered to learn is 65! The old bugger must have had some work done! The way he clambered along the top of those levies as Hurricane Gustav pounded New Orleans was inspiring, even if he really did screw up when he mistook a workman retrieving a gas cylinder from the tide for a drowning ghetto-dweller.

Hardcore politics usually follows with the Special Report with Brit Hume, featuring the deadened eyes and rumbling drawl of Brit ( also 65), Fox’s managing editor and political reporting pack horse. Brit adds a touch of gravity to the Fox line-up though he cracks the odd joke or two. I was saddened to learn his son Sandy, also a politcal reporter, killed himself - with a hunting rifle.

 

Appearing on Brit’s panel are a host of conservative “Fox News contributors” including the scarily serious Charles Krauthammer, who resembles (in appearance only) the Joker (first Batman movie, not Heath’s version). The Pullitzer Prize-winner newspaper columnist may have whole-heartedly supported the war in Iraq but he’s not a true conservative because he supports legalised abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Adding to the panelists are washed up neocons like Karl Rove weighing in with expert commentary, double chins and suits as stale as Bush’s presidency.

But my favourite show on Fox is the one and only The O’Reilly Factor. I hope when Paul Henry kicks Sainsbury’s butt from the Close Up chair, he sets out to become the O’Reilly of New Zealand. Bill must be very good, because he keeps me watching even though his show is the same every day. I love it when he charitably reads out letters from viewers that are critical of him and addresses the readers as sir or ma’am. How polite. I don’t even mind it when he plugs his latest book, because “the spin stops here because we’re looking out for you”.

His Patriots and Pinheads segement usually eviscerates Tim Robbins or some other bleeding heart, liberal actor while the patriot is usually some liquor store clerk who stopped a robbery or the mother of a soldier blown apart in Iraq.

 

Then there’s the Miller Time segment during where Bill riffs playfully with one-time Saturday Night Live cast member Dennis Miller. You need to Youtube some of their performances. Miller is so rabidly right-wing he doesn’t need much prodding from Bill. Out it comes. His pet subject is climate change and he loves winding up the “angst-ridden world is flat and hot society” - his description for people who believe climate change is real and man-made.

Said Miller recently as oil soared past US$120 a barrel: “Relax, we’ll replace oil when we need to. We need to run out of oil first which is why I drive an SUV.”

 

You gotta love this crew and the Fox format - the endless informercials that “may be important to your health”, the bombastic drums and rock music every 90 seconds, the unashamed liberal hate, the shout outs to those watching Fox on Austar down in Australia. I haven’t heard us loyal Sky NZ viewers mentioned yet though I have seen kiwi reporter Anita McNaught pop up on Fox from time to time. She looks so much better with hair and without that stupid camera man who got himself kidnapped in Palestine. 

 

Yep Fox is my staple diet these days - you just can’t beat the wall to wall election coverage, as tainted red as it is. New Zealand television doesn’t have a patch on Fox and I haven’t even mentioned that gem of a show, The Red Eye with Greg Gutfield. If you don’t have Sky, don’t worry. Greg helpfully draws the news events of the day. Take the picture and caption below - truly inspiring…

 

 

Greg has started cloning unicorns at

the Magical Science Playland located

in a crusty sock under his bed! 

 

 

The TVNZ7 Internet debate

I was in the audience at Avalon last night to watch the TVNZ7 Internet debate, which was effectively the first of many political debates we’ll be subjected to in the run-up to the election.

Ostensibly, it was a good idea and the format worked well enough, though it was unfortunate that the debate only really warmed up in the second part, after the TV audience had checked out and the debate continued online. Rodney Hide won the lion’s share of approval in a live online poll that ran throughout the show and for good reason. He’s got a sharp wit but not of the nasty Winston Peters variety. There’s a certain warmth in Hide even if his grasp of the issues around ICT are sketchy at best.

Here’s how the four participants, Cunliffe, Hide, Greens ICT spokeswoman Metiria Turei and National ICT spokesman Maurice Williamson performed in my eyes…

Maurice Williamson: Admitted at one stage that National had no idea of the details of its broadband plan and that the party didn’t have the resources to back up the plan with solid figures. Hardly something that inspires confidence when we are talking about an investment of up to $1.5 billion of tax payer dollars.

He was adamant that fibre can be delivered to 75 per cent of New Zealand homes at a price of $2500 per home, based on well-known case studies he has examined in places like Amsterdam (which I’ve personally seen) and San Diego. His arguments about the returns expected of utility-type investments as he envisages the broadband fund to be, are simplistic and fanciful.

Williamson’s fumbling around with his iPhone and jaded analogies about ones and zeros and shifting servers to Kazakhstan to avoid the arm of the law in cyberspace were cringe-worthy. He showed a lack of real knowledge of what’s going on in the ICT space today and it’s a scary prospect that he may soon be the ICT minister (though word here in Wellington is that he almost certainly won’t be should National win).

Rating: D

 

David Cunliffe: If not the most politically astute here (that award goes to Hide) Cunliffe takes top marks from me for actually knowing his beat. He understands the issues in ICT, is well-versed on what’s going on from a regulatory point of view. If his plans for broadband are less than visionary, at least they look like having a reasonable chance of being followed through to completion. Cunliffe has always been one to listen - to listen to industry and ICT users. There’s a pragmatism about him I’ve seen many times first hand. He came across as a credible, confident politician in this debate, shredding Williamson by pointing out the lack of references to “convergence” in National’s ICT policy. Williamson’s lame answer: “It’s already happening”.

Rating: A

Rodney Hide: Engaged energetically in the debate despite his lack of ICT knowledge (”Exactly what he said” he responded at one stage after Williamson had finished an answer on a technical topic). Came across as no-nonsense, full of common sense - drew every ICT issue back to his wider fixations on economic development and lowering taxes. But Hide had audience members shaking their heads when he took the bait from Russell Brown and suggested unbundling of the local loop was a mistake because it trampled on Telecom’s property rights. “Those investors should have been compensated,” he whined. Was particularly interested in copyright and cyber-security issues.

Rating: B

Metiria Turei: Knows very little about the burning ICT topics and does a very bad job at hiding the fact. Still, Turei’s naivety and her preoccupation with the social issues of technology - the open source software

movement, making sure the disabled don’t get left behind in the digital revolution, the digital divide etc, give her an endearing quality. But Green idealogy obviously drives all of her viewpoints and some of them were just way off the mark. Not interested a jot in ICT from an economic development point of view, but likely to prove useful in discussions during the term of the next parliament around the US free trade agreement and the digital repercussions of the concessions we may have to make to nail the deal down.

Rating: c

 

Overall, an interesting example of how political ideology can see pragmatism evaporate. But most interesting is the contradictory nature of National’s public-service like approach to broadband with the proposal to step into a market already crowded with players. It’s like the two major parties have swapped the assumed roles on this issue, which suggests just how little there is separating them these days. The minor parties constituted an interesting sideshow, but the reality is that a change of Government will usher in an era of uncertainty in ICT policy and National hasn’t made a convincing case that it can competently handle the portfolio. As for the young Labourites clustered in the audience nodding furiously at every remark uttered by Cunliffe, that was just creepy.

 

 

REVIEW: Connecting the Clouds

Veteran telecommunications reporter Keith Newman’s epic history of the internet in New Zealand is in bookshops now and in a particularly progressive move is being made available online for free in wiki form.

At 700 pages, Connecting the Clouds is a substantial piece of work and in fact was extended massively beyond its original intended length of around 100,000 words.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced yarn in the style of the multitude of books outlining Silicon Valley’s pioneering personalities and companies, you won’t find it here. Connecting the Clouds is a fairly dry and earnest historical record those with a casual interest in technology and the internet will find hard to digest.Telecoms industry insiders on the other hand will bask in nostalgia as they are reminded of the clunky network boxes that first ran the internet from Victoria University’s machine room or the ealry days of the Xtra ISP service.

Newman dedicates the book to “New Zealand’s number 8 wire communications pioneers and entrepreneurs” and it is those early engineers, academics and entrepreneurs responsible for the development of the internet in New Zealand in the 1980s and early 1990s that the book pays most attention to.

Before that however, he starts out with a brief but interesting history lesson about the first telegraph cables laid in the 1860s. Who would have known that the first copper cable across Cook Strait was insulated with “coagulated latex” derived from trees grown in Malaya?

Fairly swiftly he moves on to the 70s, the development of university IT networks, the DSIR’s scientific computing efforts and the Post Office’s dragging of the chain when it came to upgrading its infrastructure to meet the changing communications needs of the country.

The personalities who played leading roles during this period, the likes of John Hine at Victoria University, and Frank March who also ended up at the university following a long stint at the DSIR, get a lot of play before Newman focuses on the disasterous deregulation of the telecoms market in the aptly titled chapter Selling the family jewels.

Telecom’s presence looms large in the book with later chapters pre-occupied with the monopoly provider’s attempts to squash competition as innovative rivals like ihug began to emerge and the country crawled towards local loop unbundling.

While the early commercial pioneers of internet services, the likes of Isocnz, Actrix and Voyager, feature in Connecting the Clouds, the later set of entrepreneurs we currently associate with the New Zealand internet get surprisingly little mention. The Trademe story is dealt with fleetingly and New Zealand’s pioneering web 2.0 cottage industry hardly gets a look-in.

But Newman can’t be faulted in his methodical research methods which chart the key technical, regulatory and commercial developments that determined the shape of the internet. The detail is extraordinary and I’m glad someone has put it all on the record for the first time.

All up, I look at Connecting the Clouds the same way I do the old clippings in my scrapbooks covering years of telecoms and IT reporting I did on the Herald. It all seemed like frightfully important stuff at the time but in hindsight really just amounted to a bunch of logistical decisions, regulatory pressures and technical undertakings that allowed us to get to a place where we can connect to the world and each other the way we do today. Hardly the makings of a gripping read then, but a worthy reference for those with an eye for the detail.

Newman’s interview with Simon Morton on Radio New Zealand.

Rudd and Clark cosy up on climate change

One thing struck me about the discussion between Aussie PM Kein Rudd and Helen Clark at the climate change conference in Auckland yesterday. Clark is a far more articulate, concise speaker. She choses her words carefully and for effect. Rudd rambles a bit, uses more PR speak but comes across as warmer, more relaxed and humorous. Bottom line is that Rudd and Clark are on the same pages when it comes to climate change - they berlieve it is real and we need to reduce emissions asap. Now they are turning their attention to the laggards of the world when  it comes to reducing GHGs with the US firmly in both of their sights…

Listen to the podcast on the Science Media Centre website.

Gutmann strikes again

Auckland University computer science researcher Peter Gutmann is in the Sunday Star Times today for his work as part of a team that has cracked chip-based passports.

According to the SST, Gutmann and two other scientists (British computer expert Adam Laurie and Amsterdam academic Jeroen van Beek) “successfully copied the contents of a British boy’s electronic passport to another chip and replaced his digital photograph with one of Osama bin Laden”.

“The altered chip was reprogrammed with a signature key and recognised as genuine by the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s passport reading software, UK’s The Times newspaper reported.”

If you’ve received a new passport recently it will be one of the chip-based versions that holds a small amount of memory containing a digital picture of you and your personal details. I’ve only got a few months on my old NZ passport (issued in 1999) and my Irish passport was hand-written in the same year - you should see the looks I get when I hand that over at EU passport control!

Soon however I’ll have a chipped passport too. Ultimately these chips will carry biometric data too - like when you have to have your index fingers scanned at US airports - that will be used to cross-reference the passport holders finger and photo with the passport itself and compare both to a computer record in Washington.

A fairly robust system for ensuring you are letting the right people through your borders you would think. But Gutmann and his colleagues have shown that the system can be hacked - revealing, Gutmann claims, the flawed approach to border security being foisted on the world by the US administration. Anyway, it becomes more alarming when you consider that a couple of weeks ago, thousands of blank British passports were stolen when a security van was hijacked in Manchester. All of those passports have chips in them and presumably someone else out there knows how to load them up.

“Our hi-tech security features mean that these passports are unusable,” claim the British authorities. We’ll see about that!

Actually, the passport exploit is probably even more useful for tampering with existing passports. Sophisticated forgers can easily play with the physical aspects of the passport - it has been the digital equivalent of that information that has so far been hard to play with. Better off stealing an exisiting passport with a suitable identity than a new blank passport that may have a serial number that’s been flagged in computers as STOLEN.

Anyway, you’ll remember Gutmann’s controversial paper, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection which created a bit of a stir around the time of the launch of Microsoft’s new operating system. I remember being in Seattle at Microsoft when a German reporter challenged Microsoft executive and Vista champion Jim Allchin about the paper’s slamming analysis of Vista’s DRM features. Allchin said he’d never heard of the paper - yeah right! You should have seen the PR people move into hyperdrive in the wake of that discussion - they all knew exactly what the German was referring to and I suspect so did Allchin.

Gutmann became tangled in a bitter feud with a couple of ZDNet writers on the DRM issue one I stupidly attempted to wade into when I was writing for the Herald. I asked everyone concerned if they’d answer some questions in a public forum to clear up all the confusion over the issue, which was debated ad finitum in geek forums but had left mainstream Windows users baffled:

Here was the response I got from ZDNet’s Ed Bott: “Sorry, but I’m not interested in participating in a ‘debate’ with someone who has such low regard for the truth or the facts. Unfortunately, the format you propose doesn’t appear to allow a direct response to any additional factual errors that he might include in his answers, so I would be competing on an uneven playing field and I don’t believe your readers would benefit.”

So that was that. Haven’t seen Vista DRM emerge as a major inhibiting aspect of the operating system yet. What will be interesting to see if Microsoft changes their approach to DRM for the architecture of the upcoming Windows 7.

The Slingshot caching debacle

It has to go down as one of the more bizarre and worrying tech glitches of the year, and I’m still yet to read a good explanation of what went wrong with Slingshot’s caching configuration that allowed customers to see into the Trademe and email accounts of fellow customers.

Stuff reader David makes a very good point at the bottom of the article linked to above:

“Am I missing something here? Are we saying that the security of TradeMe relies on third parties configuring their proxy caching correctly?

“I work professionally with Internet security and this article completely misses the point.

“Slingshot may have screwed up, but there is no way in the world that a Slingshot configuration fault can be blamed for a breach in TradeMe’s security.

“If this issue really exists as represented in this article then ANYONE could set up a “misconfigured” proxy and recreate the same issue. Obviously you would have to get people to use a particlur proxy, but any hotel, motel, cyber cafe, school, business, etc., could do this easily. Sensitive data should be encrypted using HTTPS which would completely avoid this issue.”

Geekzone has been surprisingly quiet on the issue, though there’s a thread here which quotes a rather miffed Throng.co.nz co-founder Regan Cunliffe:

“When I informed Google that their users inboxes were being made freely viewable, they were livid - as they should be. Any service provider that provides assurances that their information is private and then finds an ISP “accidently” [sic] enabling others to view said information is going to be pretty angry.

“I understand that caching saves you money but your rules are far too strict and make usabilty [sic] a real difficulty for people like us who work on international servers doing web development.? Regularly we find old cached versions of sites appearing and have to wait long periods of time before new images/pages to finally be updated.? Even using CTRL-F5 does nothing.? And don’t get me started on how long it takes for domain names to propogate [sic] on your DNS!”

More on the problem here on Regan’s blog. Now so far, luckily, this caching issue hasn’t been very widespread, though it has happened in the past. ISPs cache our data to allow them to deliver up pages more quickly (and to save themselves money on bandwidth costs). But how would you feel if some random person, related to you only in the fact that they also have a Slingshot account is suddenly staring at your Gmail inbox!

David’s right - how can Trade Me and Google allow themselves to be at the mercy of ISPs when it comes to the security of their users’ private information. How big an issue is this? Why aren’t they encrypting the data? Is this likely to happen more regularly?

Our digital future…when?

The American Chamber of Commerce “Digital Future Now” conference held in Auckland yesterday was a fairly thought provoking event.

The minister of communications and information technology, David Cunliffe, kicked proceedings off with a keynote which is available to listen to on the Science Media Centre website. It was a slightly lacklustre showing for a politician staring an election in the face and you could tell it didn’t go down well with the audience.

Animation Research’s Ian Taylor took issue with the minister’s apparent pre-occupation with the outcomes of broadband development - the applications and services we are going to use broadband to access.

“Just focus on getting the infrastructure in place” was Taylor’s view, which was mirrored by Bernard Hickey of Interest.co.nz and others. With the looming release of the Digital Strategy 2.0, it appears the Government is already looking past the infrastructure issue to try and figure out how it will kickstart content generation over highspeed networks.

Some reason that this shouldn’t be the Government’s job - the classic “build it and they will come” argument. Either way, the Government has clearly lost momentum ahead of the election in the area of broadband even though it has tangible results to show from the unbundling of Telecom - Cunliffe pointed out that investment levels in the telco space are almost double what they were before the last round of regulation of the telco.

There seems to bew a doscinnect between the Government’s view that broadband is coming right (therefore we only need patch up areas of poor performance) and the more ambitious view espoused by National that we need a sweeping (and expensive) plan to build fibre infrastructure nationwide.

The question, which currently has no clear answer, is what is going to get us the digital future we need to remain globally competitive, in the quickest fashion?

Lots of other interesting material from the conference, which I’ll get up as podcasts in the next few days. Mario Wynands of Sidhe Interactive gave an interesting speech about the commercial realities of the videogames market and there were interesting panel discussions about social media and mobile applications. Richard MacManus outlined how he has taken Readwriteweb.com (the 9th most linked to blog in the world) global from Wellington.  Now that’s a success story worth listening to!

  

The conversation

A great overview of the current social media web space and all its elements (via Andy Lark’s blog). Click on image for a detailed view.

Did you spot the New Zealand web start-up in there??

The blogosphere and Chocolate Fish…

I’m glad Deidre Mussen writing in the Sunday Star Times on the weekend has, after an appropriate period of time, gone back to look at the bizarre final chapter of the saga of the Chocolate Fish cafe.

As a post-Lord of the Rings arrival in Wellington, I never really understood the fondness cafe-conscious locals had for Chocolate Fish, the Scorching Bay eatery Peter Jackson and his film maker buddies used to hang out at.

So when I finally ventured out there one day a couple of years ago for a big breakfast hang-over cure, I was slightly bemused to see waitresses in fluorescent safety vests walking across the road delivering plates of food to diners sitting in the sun across from the cafe itself. The food wasn’t that memorable but it was a great spot to sit in the sun and the place was packed - though not with PJ’s film buddies as far as I could tell.

Then last year I started hearing friends, Wellington-bred friends, talking about how outrageous it was that Chocolate Fish might have to close because “the landlord was shafting the owners on the rent” or “the landlord wanted a piece of the Fish for himself” - things along those lines.

I never visited it, but I remember people on blogs linking to the Save the Chocolate Fish Cafe group on Facebook (two forums in fact, with out 3000 members, according to Mussen). All sorts of people with an emotional attachment to the little green weatherboard cafe were writing about its looming demise.

Every now and then I’d hear someone from the Wellington creative or tech scene grumble about how Chocolate Fish was being forced out of business by a greedy landlord and an officious council. Where would people now go to combine a Sunday drive and a fry-up by the beach?

I never really thought much about the whole thing until Ari Vlug, the landlord who owned the premises the Chocolate Fish operated out of, was found dead from knife wounds last November in what was first reported as a suspected murder. It all seemed to have shades of the botched murder that culminated in a handless body being thrown into the tide further along the coast at Red Rocks over a year earlier.

When it emerged that Vlug had committed suicide, the whole Chocolate Fish story I’d been catching snatches of started to look a bit fishy indeed. What would drive a man to end his life in such gruesome fashion? What frame of mind was Vlug in, and more importantly, why was he in that frame of mind?

Was the stress of being labelled a greedy old man, the criticism from faceless strangers on Facebook forums and blogs, the overflow of this vitriol into the mainstream media, simply too much for Vlug?

Did the 69 year-old man, who had health problems, kill himself in depressed anguish at an online smear campaign waged against him online and based on inaccurate information? Wellington coroner Ian Smith seems to think so as do Vlug’s family.

“People should think before they start doing these sort of things. They don’t realise the damage they’re doing,” said Ari Vlug’s surviving wife Heather of the people who posted what she claims to be inaccurate, biased information online.

There certainly seems to have been a bit of groupthink at work in the online indignation about the close of the cafe and the reasons for its closure. While many were just expressing their fondness for the cafe, I got a distinct impression from numerous people in the months leading up to Vlug’s death that he was nothing more than a greedy landlord who wanted the success of this Wellington institution for himself. The comments from bloggers at the end of Mussen’s piece are telling. Said one: “Crazy how much more important it is now to ensure you get your facts straight so rumours don’t spread out of control. What an awful ending”.

Awful indeed. So what do we learn from all this? What we already know, which as Mark Twain put it:

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

The web is great for mobilising people, mounting campaigns, harnessing the power of the crowd. That can do great good, but it can be devastatingly bad as well. Maybe people piling into partisan discussions on forums and blogs should keep in mind another quote from Twain as well:

“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

Herceptin, smog and engineering the future…

The Week in Science Part 2:

It was a big week for heath-related science news with Thursday proving to be D-day for the release of Pharmac’s decision on funding of the breast cancer treatment drug Herceptin. There was widespread condemnation of the drug funding body as it decided to maintain its subsidised nine week treatment of the extremely expensive drug rather than extend it to 12 months for women suffering from early-stage breast cancer.

At the Science Media Centre we wrapped up reaction to the decision. Since then there has been some more in-depth analysis of the decision which on the face of it seems rather nonsensical - after all, 32 other countries subsidise longer treatments of Herceptin. But, as Pharmac has been saying this week, Herceptin funding is a very complicated issue. Stuff links to this Panorama documentary from 2006 which questioned data on the effectiveness of Herceptin and suggested politicians had buckled to pressure from constituents to fund the drug.

Will Herceptin funding become an election issue? I doubt it, though John Key is doing his best to make it so…

Health research crisis?

Also in health-related news, a report this week reveals the dire state of publicly funded health research compared to other countries. The Science Media Centre has the report for download. The table below illustrates the problem:

Per capita funding for health research is trailing the rest of the world. As a result it is going to be increasingly difficult to come up with good answers to the big health issues facing the country and to retain talent in the health sector.

ESR in the gun

Today’s Herald editorial slams crown research institute ESR for refusing to accept that visiting scientist Dr Adu-Bodie, probably contracted a strain of meningococcal disease due to working at an Environmental Science and Research laboratory (as the Department of Labour investigation has concluded).

The Herald editorial writer concludes:

“Besides Dr Adu-Bobie, there is now another victim - the ESR’s credibility. Deservedly, it has attracted public opprobrium, and in far greater volume than would have been the case if it had admitted the obvious three years ago. Therein lies a lesson for officialdom.”

Watching the horribly disfigured Dr Adu-Bobie on TV this week filled me with sadness but admiration for the woman, who has had to endure so much and has taken it all so stoically. A lesson for officialdom indeed.

Smog over Beijing

The foolish and childish actions of the US Olympic cycling team in exiting the plane at Beijing with air masks on highlights some of the confusion and bad information about the state of the smog over Beijing and the impacts it may or may not have on the health and performance of athletes.

New Zealand scientists weighed in this week with some pertinent, science-based comments which we collated on the Science Media Centre website.

Engine for growth

On Monday I paid my first visit to the Wellington Club on The Terrace to listen to the executives of IPENZ, the body that represents engineers in this country.

The report and the associated presentation are available for download from the SMC website. The presentation in particular makes for compelling reading, especially when you look at some of the graphs comparing us to the rest of the world. I thoroughly agree with what the engineers are saying - New Zealand needs to transform itself based on greater adoption of and investment in technology and improved infrastructure. I don’t necessarily agree however that we need to throw off our number 8 wire mentality. It’s that deeply  ingrained DIY approach to innovation that has lead to some of our greatest achievements. The US manages to balance the garage inventor approach to innovation with the methodical infrastructure based approach. Why can’t we?

On the way to the forum…

As Techsploder has pointed out, Vodafone New Zealand has gone live with its own customer forums where you can post items asking for help with a technical query or just rant about the iphone if you really want to.

It’s a good move on the part of Vodafone - few corporates are doing this locally and mobile phone support is well suited to this type of treatment, where “power users” of devices are more likely to be able to lend help than the guy behind the counter at the local Vodafone store.

I caught up with Kiwi ex-pat and Dell executive Andy Lark on a recent visit back home and he gave me the rundown on how successful the company-hosted forums have been for the Texan computer maker. There’s a bit of risk in letting consumers have virtually free reign to comment about your products and services in a public forum, especially when you implement unpopular policies like being charging prepay customers $1to start accessing helpdesk support.

But as Lark explained to me, that risk is more than mitigated by the intensely valuable market research you are able to effortless gather on those forums.

On the Dell Community Forums, which host a staggeringly large number of posts on a vast range of subjects, Dell can do keyword searches to see exactly what its users are talking about.

This not only gives them clues as to what products are catching the attention of computer users but enables them to head off problems with faulty goods before they become big public issues. You can bet all sorts of Dell people are tasked with watching those forums like hawks.

Here in New Zealand, Geekzone has done a pretty good job of providing a relatively independent forum for people to discuss technical issues. But the ongoing feud between head geek Mauricio Freitas and Vodafone comms manager Paul Brislen has led to some pretty petty and bizarre exchanges in the forums that frankly give geeks in general a bad name.

The Australians have the Whirlpool forums which have a broadband focus but act as a rich source of news tips for tech hacks on the Sydney Morning Herald, ZDNet and other Aussie publications. Forums are a great place to gauge sentiment on an issue and to hear about service outages, hardware faults and the like. I doubt Vodafone’s forum will ever be as well-trafficked as Geekzone’s. But if Dell is anything to go by, the corporate-owned nature of the forum may not be as big a turn-off with consumers as you might expect.

I hope Brislen and company try and skew the forums more towards the average punter needing a query sorted out rather than the hardcore geek fraternity. Average Kiwi users of technology have few places to turn for advice when something goes wrong. I used to get deluged with email from readers at the Herald asking for advice on how to fix their router/mobile/printer.

I used to send a lot of them to Geekzone to try and suck information out of the ubergeeks who police that forum like East German border guards. Sometimes it was like sending a lamb to its slaughter…

The Week in Science

In a week where the only news dominating the headlines was to do with Winston Peters and his political donation woes, science managed to push its way onto the front page of the New Zealand Herald.

Cancer breakthrough

News of promising early trials in the UK of a drug treating men with late-stage prostate cancer broke on Monday and attracted worldwide coverage. We did a news-wrap of some of the early coverage on the Science Media Centre website.

I’m always dubious of wonder drug stories and the trials of Abiraterone as its called are in their early stages. However in this case, the small trial, initially of 21 people whose cancer had not responded to treatment, seems to have been very successful.

As New Scientist reported: “In eight men with measurable tumours, five shrank, while blood concentrations of prostate-specific antigen, which is produced by growing cancers, fell by at least 30 per cent in most men.”

Results of a larger trial - 251 people are still to be published and a worldwide trial of 1200 people is now

Still, the slow news agenda probably elevated the status of the research here and abroad. Those involved with the research seemed to be doing their best to talk down the research when interview on Radio New Zealand on Tuesday morning. Check out the New Scientist special section on cancer - it’s a great resource on the disease that begins with the following ominous line: “One in three of us will get cancer at some point in our lives. Once so feared its name was whispered, the disease is no longer an inevitable death sentence.”

CFL bulbs and mercury poisoning

Considering it was Investigate magazine’s “biggest investigation in seven years” the 20 page expose on the potential dangers of using (and breaking) energy efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) got surprisingly little play in the press this week. The magazine hit the shelves on Sunday with a series of articles based on research published in the US in February.

The Science Media Centre has a list of links to the research, the Investigate article and some of the press around the issue.

That research, completed by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, suggested that the mercury vapour left present in the air after a CFL bulb is broken greatly exceeds recommended safe levels for mercury in the air. Investigate paints the story as a serious failing on behalf of the Government to point out the dangers of CFL bulbs. The unflattering close-ups of Prime Minister Helen Clark point to the bigger target of the article. Stil, Wishart makes a valid point - if these bulbs are to be more widely used from next year, why hasn’t there been an official local study into the safety of them? The Maine report raised some questions but more independent studies into the list of mercury poisoning needs to be done.

According to a statement released to the Science Media Centre this week from the Ministry of Health, a review of CFLs and the information the Government is currently publishing about them, is underway and will be concluded by the middle of next month.

New research on the safety of SUVs

Otago University researcher Dr Michael Keall has published in conjunction with experts from Monash University in Melbourne was published this week and suggests SUVs aren’t the death traps they’ve been painted as.

Find links to the report abstract and media coverage on the SMC website.

The crux of the research, which looked at 17,245 injury-related crashes involving passenger vehicles in New Zealand in 2005 and 2006, is this: SUVs are less likely to be involved in crashes because of the way they are driven and the type of people who are driving them.

But there are a number of factors that make SUVs less safe than the average car:

- They are more likely to roll over in a crash.

- SUVs are dangerous in the hands of young, inexperienced drivers.

- These types of vehciles are more dangerous to pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. No further explanation needed there…

Still, there’s a bigger safety problem looming when it comes to vehicles and it is being driven by the soaring price of oil. The big US car makers are adjusting their supply chains to make more smaller cars. But small cars don’t fare well in crashes. More small cars means more deaths in car crashes - some 40,000 people are killed in the US in car crashes each year. The public health liability is massive.

Louise Brown at 30

Finally, a real milestone on Friday for British woman Louise Brown and anyone who has ever had children thanks to in vitro fertilisation. The technology has evolved greatly over the years and improved in its effectiveness.

“Our success rate has doubled in the past 10 years and I see it hitting 50 per cent within another five,” the director of IVF Australia, Michael Chapman, told the Sydney Morning Herald. About 41,000 cycles of IVF are performed in Australia each year, resulting in about 10,000 babies - one in every 33 children.

The Science Media Centre wrapped up comment from local IVF experts on the technology’s legacy.

Blog fatigue settles in

I was surprised and disheartened to read that local tech entrepreneur Rod Drury is chucking in his well-read and respected blog.

Rod has consistently churned out thought-provoking and insightful pieces for several years and gained a large following in the tech and business communities. The blog also served his company Xero well - it lent credibility and gave Rod an outlet in the run-up to the IPO of Xero. In terms of PR and marketing, Rod’s investment in time writing his blogs was worth more than any ad campaign he could have done. But blogging continuously over a long period of time is hard work.

I lasted almost a year to the day on the Herald Online as APN’s first regular (and modestly paid) blogger after starting my own blog in 2005 at Griffin’s Gadgets. While the Herald gig was great fun most of the time it was also pretty draining when I was grinding out thousands of other words to make a living. I soon came to favour the blogging over the opinion stuff I was writing for the paper.

Write a decent piece in the paper and you get 12 emails and a couple of letters delivered via the paper dribbling in over the next couple of weeks. Write a ripper of a blog post and by noon you have 30 comments and 15 emails. Suddenly writing for the paper loses its appeal even though you are likely to reach a much larger audience than you will online.

As the well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jason Calacanis points out in his sign-off blog (Rod links to it in outlining his own decision to quit):

“Today the blogosphere is so charged, so polarized, and so filled with haters hating that it’s simply not worth it. I’d rather watch from the sidelines and be involved in a smaller, more personal, conversation.”

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with blogging. I loved the rush when a blog post took off and got heaps of comments. But half the time it was crazy nutters ranting on and it very quickly became predictable. I grew to hate that.

Write a column bitching about Apple and you’d draw heaps of comments, positive and negative (just look at my successor’s blog on the Herald). The editors were quite good about it, I never got any pressure to be provocative just to get comments and therefore more clicks through to the tech section of the Herald website. But it becomes a bit of a trap - the more comments, generally, the better and you learn pretty quickly to your surprise that its not the well though-out, reflective pieces that draw the comments, its the highly-charged polarising stuff.

I was supposed to write a sign-off blog for the Herald and they kept my blog live for a good three weeks waiting for me to come up with one. I couldn’t do it in the end. I was completely over it, relieved to be finished with it. I actually did write a sign-off blog, which will never see the light of day. Let’s just say I’d been re-reading Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur:”How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and was a lot more sympathetic on my second pass.

It’s funny to hear people like Rod talking about the goals they had for their blogging. I never had any. I just saw it as a great outlet for writing and that one day I’d get burnt out or find a better paying job and quit. Maybe that’s because I was a writer first and foremost, rather than a businessman writing on the side.

Anyway, the local tech blogging scene is looking the worse for wear thanks to Rod’s departure. Juha Saarinen never really got going on Stuff after shifting his Techsploder blog there (soon after which Juha split with Fairfax). Chris Keall dabbles over at PC World, Mauricio’s blog is these days just advertorial for the next printer giveaway or Geekzone pizza evening and the forums are full of angry young ubergeeks.

Aardvark at least is regularly thought-provoking even if his columns show him up as the man who let it all slip through his fingers and deeply regrets the fact. Who else is there blogging for mainstream publications or with an independent profile of their own in the tech space? Russell Brown is the only real answer though there are new arrivals on the scene which are worth keeping an eye on.

The old iPhone is better

As numerous people have pointed out, none as grumpily as the chief Geek himself, last week’s iPhone launch by Vodafone was a major disappointment. The phone itself is fantastic (though I’m still in love with the old version’s brushed metal case).

All the ihype wasn’t able to disguise the fact that the iPhone plans are horrendously expensive. I mean come on, the entry level $80 a month plan gets you the 8GB iPhone at a cost of $549. So much for getting a decent subsidy on the phone upfront for committing to 24 months, or a bare minimum of $1920 in monthly connection fees.

I’m pretty happy I invested in the original iPhone. Hacked for the New Zealand network there’s no contract obligations - I use it on prepay and pop my work SIM in when I get sick of the Blackberry. I generally surf the web using Wi-fi, which tends to suck the battery life out of the iPhone but is a fast, cheap way to check your email or check out Google Maps if you’re within range of a Wi-fi hotspot.

I find 8GB to be plenty of storage for music given how easy it is to transfer a new playlist in iTunes. From July 28, I’ll be able to get mobile data on a casual basis for $1 a day for 10MB of usage. That’s fine by me, I can keep myself within 10MB. I can still use the App Store to download add-on applications for the phone.

By the way, we are starting to see the first of the local applications for the iPhone appear. Joe Raeburn, Kiwibank’s mobile channel manager pointed me towards the Kiwibank internet banking interface for the iPhone. It’s pretty slick, though I’m not a Kiwibank customer so haven’t had a chance to see it in full. I hope the ASB, one of the more progressive banks when it comes to the internet, also comes to the iPhone party.

I suspect once the receipts were added up over the weekend, Vodafone was pretty happy with the early spend-up on the iPhone, especially given the squeeze on discretionary spending going on with the downturn in the economy. But Vodafone, I think, will struggle to get real momentum out of the iPhone long term given the pricing structure. I know numerous people who were ready to slap down money on a new iPhone but have backed out due to the heavy monthly commitment (and the fact it isn’t available to pre-pay users, though I’m told its fairly easy to change the access point name to allow a pre-pay SIM to be slotted in).

Meanwhile, another reminder of how expensive mobile roaming continues to be. I logged onto the web on my Blackberry in London to check an address - 1.4MB of data cost me $45. Mobile data is coming down in price, but nowhere near enough yet that people can avoid the worry of running up big bills when they surf the web on their mobile, especially when they are overseas.

Worth checking out is the Canadian response to the iPhone pricing. So annoyed are the Canadians at the plans on offer, 60,000 of them have signed a petition to get the plans on the Rogers mobile network lowered. Former New Zealand Herald technology editor Peter Nowak has been climbing into the argument as a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The iPhone pricing index put together by the CBC, Canada is the second most expensive country in the world for the iPhone. No surprises that we come out as one of the most expensive countries, though you can’t beat the Canadians, they are getting totally screwed! Pete, however reports that Rogers has caved on pricing temporarily, offering a discounted deal available for sign-up by August 31. A win for the consumer but what a debacle! Speaking of which, the fact that the iPhone won’t work on Vodafone’s shiny new 900MHz spectrum network is a major drawback too. If Telecom get’s the iPhone (which will operate on the 850MHz network it is going live with in November) and gets serious about mobile data, it may just be able to undo Vodafone’s headstart.

Telecom’s “reversal of logic”

TUANZ boss Ernie Newman gives Telecom a serve in the letter published in the business section of the Sunday Star Times today and rightly so.

The burly telecoms watchdog was responding to the comments of Ferrit boss Ralph Brayham in this piece published in the Sunday Star TImes last week. Bryham signed off with the following comment:

“People love fibre… but just now people really can’t figure out what to do with it.”

Telecom is obviously pouring cold water on the plans laid out by National and Labour to boost fibre network infrastructure in the country by claiming that there’s little real need for fibre. This is a line trotted out by Telecom spin doctors all the time: “all fibre will do is allow people to surf porn and download pirated movies more quickly” is a line I’ve heard often repeated by Telecom middle managers.

But Ernie has them figured out: “Challenging the promises of both major political parties to accelerate development of New Zealand’s communications infrastructure is the classic defensive reaction of an incumbent wishing to eke out the return from outdated technology before committing to reinvest.”

Telecom appears completely devoid of inspiration currently. It has had no answer to a wave of momentum in the mobile space from Vodafone, its being kicked in the broadband performance stakes by rivals such as TelstraClear. It’s marketing is in a mess - witness the lame fake advert its been running depicting an office party being recorded on a camera phone.

The irony is that Telecom completely missed the boat when it comes to video phones and camera phones because its hardware choices have been limited by its CDMA network technology. A couple of years after Vodafone realised no one wants to make video calls on their mobile in New Zealand, Telecom puts up billboards advertising video calling. The company still has a major add covering a wall at Wellington Airport showing a woman talking on the Ojo home video phone.  The Ojo has to go down as one of Telecom’s biggest white elephants of recent years.

So when Telecom goes against the current international thinking on the importance of broadband to a country’s economic development it just reinforces how out of touch and short-sighted this company really is.

For a glimpse of what better broadband delivered via fibre can do for the rural sector alone read Rod Oram’s column in the SST that ran above Ernie’s indignant letter.

Science reporting and the state of the media

I just had a great couple of days down in Dunedin for the Science Communicators Association of New Zealand (SCANZ) conference which was held at John McGlashan College, a Dunedin boys school with fantastic facilities.

For a couple of days a group of us talked science, how best to communicate science and the media’s coverage of science (which most attendees considered to be lacking).

Highlights of the conference for me included:

- the cocktail function head in the Animal Attic atop Otago Museum (which the new Science Media Centre sponsored) and the dinner that followed and was held amid cases of stuffed animals and reconstructed skeletons. It made some of the diners queasy but I loved it!

- Chairing the panel discussion on science in the media and hearing what scientists, science comms managers and journlists think of the treatment of science in the NZ media - the verdict: the science community has a fairly dim view of the media but understand the need to engage more effectively with journalists.

- Getting a preview of Natural History documentary maker Max Quinn’s documentary on an expedition he joined to the Ross Sea Antarctica to examine life on the sea floor down there.

- The briefing on the work going on to engage Maori in consultation on various scientific projects going on around the country, notably the work forestry crown research institute Scion did with Maori during its trials of genetically modified Pinus radiata.

- The discussion about the state of public broadcasting in New Zealand that emerged as a slightly disorientated science minister Pete Hodgson arrived for an engaging and revealing chat with conference-goers.

The whole event convinced me of the valuable role the Science Media Centre can serve as a go-between for the media and the scientific community. Here’s the SMC’s terms of references if you want to know exactly what we will do But it won’t be an easy task, for the following reasons:

- Many scientists and their comms managers feel the media is in such a bad way it’s just too difficult to engage. They complain about the entertainment-driven news agenda and the lack of coverage of pure science stories.

- Some scientists feel muzzled by their organisations which are fearful of them revealing sensitive information, straying into dangerous territory on controversial issues, or giving away company intellectual property.

- There’s resentment that seemingly good, worthy stories don’t get a run or are often held back and spiked by news editors. The resentment is not aimed so much at reporters - there’s an understanding of the fact that general reporters are doing their best to cover science. It’s more aimed at the people setting the news agenda - editors and publishers, who aren’t taking science seriously enough.

The question floated during the conference really seemed to be whether as a scientist or a science communicator you adapt to the news media’s agenda, package stories in a way that takes their fancy according to their news values or actively try and change the media, engage in a better way with journalists to try and help them produce better stories.

Maybe it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Pure science stories don’t get a run in the way they did ten years ago. Now science is an element of a wider range of stories, especially as climate change, energy issues and sustainability are topical issues. Is it such a bad thing that science gets less of a run in its own right but has more of a presence in stories of wider interest to consumers? Scientists obviously have a view on that.

Anyway, it was interesting hearing the views of the people working at the coalface or scientific research and development. Over the next few weeks I’ll be canvassing editors and journalists to see what their perspective is. I’ll keep you posted.

Good times, bad times in Queensland

I was sitting in Cairns Airport waiting for a flight back to Sydney after a fantastic week spent in Port Douglas when the front page of the Cairns Post caught my eye. “Gutted” read the headline, in 46 type bold san serif.

The details of the Qantas cut-back of flights on the Japan-Cairns route paint a pretty grim picture for the Queensland tourism industry whose hospitality I’ve been enjoying for the last week. Qantas will cut by 60 per cent the flights into Cairns from Japanese cities, a move driven by the airline’s needs to cut back on international flights in the face of soaring oil prices.

What it means for Queensland is a 60 per cent reduction in the number of seats available to Japanese toursits looking to fly directly into Cairns, a reduction of around 100,000 seats a year. The move is expected to cost Cairns around A$125 million a year while Qantas claims it will lose A$100 million a year by keeping its current schedule of flights out of Cairns and other Australian cities.

The Qantas bombshell was dropped in Cairns as I floated over the Agincourt reef in the Coral Sea off the Queensland coast, mingling with turtles, reef sharks and thousands of tropical fish. The Great Barrier Reef is not only the biggest series of coral reefs in the world and a treasured resource for the planet. It contributes A$6 billion a year to Australian GDP and employees 63,000 people, mainly in the tourism industry. That industry is now reeling from the strangling of a direct link to one of its most lucrative market - Japanese tourists.

We can expect this sort of disruption all over the world as airlines seek to cut less than profitable routes as the high price of oils erodes margins. It is yet to be seen what the flow-on effects for our tourism industry will be, but it’s going to be ugly whatever way you look at it. After all, tourists burn more gas getting here than to your average holiday destination.

Anyway, as an early winter holiday destination, I’d highly recommend Port Douglas, a town on a sandy point about an hour’s drive from Cairns. There are very few tourists around at this time of the year - we’d have had the Rydges Sabaya resort pretty much to ourselves were it not for the fact that a conference for mental health workers was being held there for part of the week.

The weather this time of year is great, Port Douglas is a fantastic little town, Four Mile Beach is free of lethally-stinging jellyfish this time of year and you’ve got the reef on your doorstep. Everyone visiting the reef pays a $12 “reef tax”. I was happy to pay up, the reef is stunning and the Australian Government has a A$200 million “rescue plan” to protect the reef as it suffers from the effects of pollution. Land run-off in particular is hurting the reef as is “coral bleaching” which has been attributed to climate change.

My top picks for a Port Douglas holiday include:

Poseidon Outer Reef tour - A$165 per adult (kids $125) Divers pay $220 for three dives. Great boat, fantastic crew headed by a Richard, the Kiwi skipper. Took us to three spots on the Agincourt reef - plenty of wildlife to see at all three just snorkeling. Banquet lunch was great, around 35 people on the trip - not at all crowded. Crew incredibly knowledgeable about the reef and its wildlife.

Daintree Forest Tour - A$160 plus $30 for the kayaking trip which I’d highly recommend tacking on. Grant is a fantastic tour guide - you can ask him anything about the area and get an honest, informed answer - there’s no bullshit from him, he knows his stuff and he’s a great host. Highlights were kayaking near Cape Tribulation, swimming in a river in the Daintree rainforest and getting close to some huge salt water crocodiles.

Cane Toad racing at the Iron Bar It costs A$5 to watch cane toad racing which is competitive in Queensland. They also auction off the racing toads for a final race the winner of which walks away with an impressive line-up of prizes. The only reason I didn’t bid for Mini-me, the pint-sized cane toad is that I’d have had to kiss him before the racing started. Thems the rules! The bar is also great for some reasonably-priced food.

Good places to eat: Mango Jam (fantastic pizzas), 2 Fish (pricey but quality seafood), Nautilus (as high-end as it gets in Port Douglas. If the menu is a little rich for you at least have a cocktail there).

Moving on from the Herald

After nearly eight fantastic years on the New Zealand Herald covering the technology beat, I’m leaving to set up an exciting new project — the Science Media Centre.

I’ll still do the odd media gig — a radio slot here and there, a column from time to time, but for me the next couple of years are about building up a resource for journalists who are seeking to cover science and technology. I’ve been in their shoes and know what they need. That will be reflected in how the SMC, which will be based in Wellington, will operate.

Here’s the official word from the Royal Society of New Zealand:

29.5.08

The Royal Society of New Zealand recently won a contract from the Ministry of Research Science and Technology to establish and operate an independent science and technology media centre.The centre will be media-focused with online resources backed up by a news-savvy team available by phone and email.

I am delighted to advise that Peter Griffin has been appointed as the Centre’s founding manager. Peter is the former technology editor of the New Zealand Herald. As an award-winning journalist who has covered the technology beat for a decade in print, on TV and radio, and as the Herald’s first daily blogger, Peter understands the pressures of the newsroom and the needs of busy reporters.

Upon accepting his position, Peter comments that: “The science media centre will be a first stop for journalists when they are working on breaking stories that have a scientific element. But it will be more than that, a resource for general reporters and broadcasters through to specialist writers and freelancers to gather background information and ideas for science-related stories.

“Ultimately we want journalists and scientists talking to each other more so that there’s greater coverage of science in the media that is balanced, accurate and relevant to the public.”

The Centre will launch at the beginning of July.

Released by: Dr Dianne McCarthy, chief executive of the Royal Society of New Zealand

A strange machine

If there really ever was any support for the notion that British artist Paul St. George was using a long-lost Victorian tunnel beneath the Atlantic to allow modern-day Londoners and New Yorkers to communicate with each other, it should have been snuffed when St. George’s sponsor, Tiscali, was named.

Tiscali, of course, is a major telecoms operator with an IP backbone between London and New York. St. George’s remarkable piece of installation art relies on fibre optics.

Still, the project has been creatively put together and conjures up memories of Jules Verne stories of science and adventure.

St. George’s “Telectroscope” straddles at one end, the bank of the Thames and a ferry landing in Brooklyn at the New York end. People at either end can write messages to each other in real-time on an electronic message board.

The Scotsman has a good article on the Telectroscope, including some interesting tidbits on Charles Babbage a man ahead of his time who in 1822 came up with the concept of the “difference engine”, in effect an plan for a mechanical computer.

The Telectroscope will be in place until June 15 — shame it’s not longer, I’ll be in London two days later, by which stage the mysterious tunnel under the Atlantic will be closed forever.

A 19th century drawing of the Telectroscope:

Dusting out Griffin’s Gadgets

When I started blogging every day for the Herald technology website back in May, I thought I’d still have enough time to blog here too on a regular basis. But with all of my other media commitments and with a number of plays and a documentary project on the go, Griffin’s Gadget was the weakest link.

Still, I’ll be paying more attention to the blog in the near future as I post longer features I’ve completed in the last few month’s that otherwise wouldn’t have a place on the web. Keep an eye out for them. In the meantime, check out some of the stories below and keep an eye on Griffin’s Tech Blog, where you’ll find fresh tech news and commentary each day.

The 1st Writer’s Workshop

A major highlight of 2007 was having my script selected for the Ist Writer’s Initiative. That’s a programme where the New Zealand Film Commission calls for scripts from new screenwriters - they select six from around a hundred submissions and mine was one of the six this time.

The six of us spent a fantastic couple of days working with mentors like Duncan Sarkies and Gaylene Preston. It was an invaluable experience. Here’s the first couple of pages of the untitled script that was selected for the workshop…

INT. THE CHESTNUT TREE CAFE - DAY
The Camera travels along the barrel of a rifle to reveal the grubby solider holding it, squinting through the sight. POV: through the sight — a landscape magnified, the scope lingers over Spanish-style buildings, a barricaded street, sandbags and barbed wire.

Super: MADRID, NOVEMBER 1936

Over all of this:

POLISH SOLDIER (V.O.)
(Polish accent)
You been here long comrade?

JOHNSON (O.S.)
(soft English accent)
Not long.

POLISH SOLDIER (O.S.)
You joined the brigade in Paris?

JOHNSON (O.S.)
Yes.

On the Polish soldier now, squinting his eye shut, scoping and talking.

POLISH SOLDIER
Just like me. I love Paris. So big, modern. Not like Warsaw.

On Johnson for the first time, he sits amid upturned chairs and tables in the gloom peering through a shutter, a crack of sunlight across his face. He’s bearded, late thirties, sunburnt, wearing a uniform of sorts, the numerals IX on a patch on his shoulder.

JOHNSON
You can shoot and talk at the same time?

POLISH SOLDIER
There’s no Fascists to shoot, yet. You seen much of this war here, friend?

On the Pole, he’s seen something. Through the POV of the scope: a grey uniformed figure running behind a wall, occasionally exposed to us. We pan along with the figure, scurrying like a rabbit. On Johnson, leaning back.

JOHNSON
I’ve seen a lot of war. This is no different.

POLISH SOLDIER
You were in the Great War?

Silence from Johnson.

POLISH SOLDIER (CONT’D)
Tell me about it.

JOHNSON
I was in the war but I couldn’t tell you about it.

Through the scope again. On the running figure, a shot rings out, a puff of brick dust shoots out from the wall, the figure disappears. On the Pole’s face, he looks disappointed. He looks at Johnson.

POLISH SOLDIER
You won’t talk about it?

JOHNSON
I couldn’t tell you anything even if I did. You wouldn’t understand it ‘less you were there. And if you were there you still wouldn’t understand it. I could tell you worse things about the peace.

CUT TO:

EXT. RUAPEHU - AFTERNOON
Johnson standing at the top of Mt Ruapehu, the afternoon sun ebbing away, the world below him. He closes his eyes in the sun.

POLISH SOLDIER (V.O.)
Worse things?

A beat.

JOHNSON (V.O.)
Truer things.

From behind Johnson, silhouetted against a golden sky.

INT. THE CHESTNUT TREE CAFE - DAY
Back on the Pole. He cocks his gun, a spent shell clatters away. He squints through the gun sight again.

POLISH SOLDIER
Well brother, while we wait for Franco to show his face. Tell me about the peace.

On Johnson, the bar of sun across his face, staring at the ceiling. The sound of a ship’s bow slicing through water as we
CUT TO… a ship’s bow cutting through the water.

In the valley I roam

One of the highlights of my year was a visit in September to Silicon Valley, which was basically a drunked tour of Napa Valley with side trips to Apple, Google, Craigslist thrown in. It all culminated in the Pole Blacks Segwway Polo match against the Silicon Valley After Shocks. Unfortunately we came out of that one worse off.

Here are limks to the Silicon Valley diary I kept during the tour and published on Griffin’s Tech Blog

Napa Valley and the wonders of GPS
Apple and the Infinite Loop
The Pole Blacks hit San Fran
The king of Mountain View

(left: the solar panels atop Google’s Mountain View campus)

In search of a happy ending

I caught up with Luke Buda of the Phoenix Foundation as the band was putting the finishing touches on Happy Ending, its latest album and what’s widely considered its best yet. The Herald voted it album of the year. I’d met Luke a few times when he used to call into Wellington’s fringe installation art gallery Show, where I used to live.

The feature’s not on the Idealog website, so here it is in its entirety…

While Flight of the Conchords and Eagle vs Shark play on American screens, the final member of the Wellington creative triumvirate currently chipping away at the US market is aware of the mighty task it faces.

“It’s a huge fucker of a country and there is much, much, much to see,” says Luke Buda, a founding member of six-piece The Phoenix Foundation, which has won critical acclaim and modest sales success with its Eno-ish soundscapes and infectious pop/rock tunes.

With two successful equine-themed albums under its belt, Horsepower and Pegasus, the band is now trying to make its mark in America with the help of New York-based indie label Young American Recordings. That has meant revisiting Horsepower, which was released here in 2004 but debuted in the US just this March.

The Americans, unable to resist a patronising jibe or two, nevertheless seem to like what they hear.

“There aren’t many success stories from New Zealand, so when a band from the land of more-sheep-than-people gains a cult following in the States based on some old-fashioned pavement pounding, it’s a notable event,” wrote a reviewer for Big Shot magazine.

VMan proclaimed Horsepower “one of the most gorgeously unexpected surprises of the year … proving once and for all that movies about hobbits aren’t the only good thing happening in New Zealand”.

There have been numerous gigs in support of Horsepower at festivals and in sweaty underground clubs across America, most recently on a self-funded tour in June. Did the band make its money back?

“No way,” says Buda. “Six in the band, manager, sound engineer. No, no—no way.”

But there’s also the soundtrack to Eagle vs Shark, which the band was primarily responsible for, contributing some original compositions and previously released songs such as the sublime instrumental Hitchcock. More than just providing a soundtrack, the Phoenix Foundation played a part in the film’s creation.

“In a way they deserve some credit for the screenplay,” says director Taika Waititi. “Some of the tracks I was inspired by when I was writing Eagle vs Shark are used in the same places in the movie.”

Buda, who counts famed Greek soundtrack composer Vangelis among his biggest influences, said the band took a completely different approach with the music it composed for Eagle vs Shark. “With an album, you want the music to be totally engaging and you don’t hold back,” he says. “With the music for a film you really are just trying to add to, or help the movement, action, emotion on the screen. So there is a lot of space you can leave that you might not when making music for its own sake.”

The band came on board reasonably late in the piece, but enjoyed a good working relationship with Waititi.

“Taika did a rough cut with temporary score, and we got all the scenes we did music to with that temporary score there as a sort of guide,” says Buda, who also has a cameo in the film. “He was very specific and full of input. I guess in the future I would probably want to be involved earlier, or to try and do some demos for the temporary score.”

Many of the reviews accompanying the June release of Eagle vs Shark in the US made mention of the great soundtrack, which also features Buda’s solo work and the music of other local artists such as Age Pryor and The Reduction Agents.

“We receive album royalties for our own albums whereas the soundtrack is not all our music so we won’t be getting as much for that side of things,” says Buda. But there will be royalties from the theatrical release of the film and should the soundtrack sell well, it will ultimately help Young American shift more copies of Horsepower, which was repackaged with bonus tracks for the US market.

The soundtrack is released through Hollywood Records which, like Miramax, is a Disney subsidiary, but Buda says the band’s dealings with the studio, by choice, were minimal. “A couple of us went and had a meeting with someone in Los Angeles at the Disney studios. Ha! She was very nice.”

Idealog caught up with Buda as the band neared the end of its recording sessions on new album Happy Ending at Wellington’s The Surgery studio. The band line-up is the same as for Pegasus: Buda on guitars, keyboards and vocals, Samuel Flynn Scott on guitars and vocals, Conrad Wedde handling guitars and keyboards, Warner Emery on bass, Richie Singleton on drums and Will Ricketts providing percussion. Lee Prebble again assumed producing duties.

“We came in with the idea of recording great band takes and then just touching them up a wee bit,” says Buda. “But with the last two we weren’t quite good enough to pull it off so we had to deconstruct everything and rebuild it. It was quite an angsty process!”

The band, he believes, is now sounding better than ever in the studio, something he puts down to the extensive touring they’ve done in the last year. “We could just concentrate on making what we already had, sound better, rather than destroying it to make it work at all.”

The results will get a public airing with the album’s release here scheduled for September. Meanwhile, the Americans will get their introduction to the Phoenix Foundation album that went gold on its local release.

“After we release Pegasus over there we will shop around our new improved album to some bigger labels that hopefully may have actually heard of us.”

For the rest of the year, says Buda, the grand plan for The Phoenix Foundation has three equal parts.

“Tour the album. Chill out. Look after children.”

Idealog: the Taika Waititi interview

One of my most pleasant interviews of 2007 was with Oscar nominated Wellington director Taika Waititi who did the media rounds as his feature debut Eagle vs. Shark was released. We spent a couple of hours talking at Wellington’s Deluxe cafe. His movie was opening at the Embassy Theatre next door that afternoon. Here’s a link to the complete interview on the Idealog website, which is formatted in much nicer way.

Stuff of nonsense

What a surprise it was to log onto the Stuff website today and see the headline pictured to the left “Peter Griffin is God”. One of the better headlines the subs have come up with, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately it was that other Peter Griffin again, the one who would get all the chicks if he was real…

The wireless jukebox

In the same vein as the HS1 is the horribly titled WACS7500 from rival Philips. Many devices designed to shift your music around the home wirelessly depend on you already having a Hi-Fi system. Not so the 7500. It consists of  two devices, a central console, which is effectively a stereo with speakers, subwoofer and amplifier, an 80GB hard drive and a top-loading CD player, which can be used to rip CDs to the hard drive. The second device is a stripped down unit, designed to receive music wirelessly from the central console. But it still acts as a fully functioning stereo so you’re not compromising on audio quality in the second room you choose to place the satellite unit. A nice black finish and digital display graces both units.

Price: 700 pounds (released in Europe this month)

The lessons from Morgo

Lesson number one: Don’t eat at the Thai restaurant at Paihia. I did on the evening of Morgo’s second day after just about everyone else had dispersed south and my stomach has only just come right. The Thai beef tasted a little funny when I was eating it but I just assumed that was the tang of MSG or something. Boy did I pay for that mistake!

Anyway, Morgo was a great event once again. I hope the feature below, which ran in The Business gives the impression of a tight-knit group of entrepreneurs getting together to discuss some of the issues their businesses are facing, because that’s what Morgo is. Without any proper representation for the IT sector at an industry level it’s sort of a defacto event for setting the agenda, examining the issues of importance. In addition to the feature, I also blogged from Morgo for the Herald:

MORGO: A tale of two tech listings
MORGO: Going global from NZ

MORGO 2007 — highlights from the tech talkfest

Jenny Morel knows how to get a good crowd together. The venture capitalist’s invite-only retreats have, for five years straight, drawn the top ranks of the tech sector.

Last week’s Morgo summit in Waitangi was no different.

The seeds of business deals have been planted at Morgo, stock exchange listings quietly planned. A sense of kinship pervades the proceedings. The competitive spirit may have come out during the haphazard games of Segway polo held on the manicured lawn of the Copthorne Hotel, but Waitangi was full last week of innovative people united in the goal of growing their technology businesses quickly.

If anyone knows a thing or two about that, its Trademe founder Sam Morgan, who in the space of seven years built his tiny internet auction business into the country’s most popular website before selling it last year to Fairfax in an unprecedented $700 million deal.

Morgan also knows the value of Morgo – he met entrepreneur Craig Meek at last year’s conference and went on to invest in his data visualization company, iVistra. It was Morgo that put him in touch with DeviceWorks, which recently won worldwide attention with its Lomak light-operated mouse and keyboard, which is designed to help the disabled use computers. Morgan is now an investor in the business and is casting the net wide for new opportunities to plough his share of the Trademe sale proceeds into. Morgan’s investment adviser accompanied him to Morgo in the hope of finding some leads.

“I’ve made a few start-up investments and I’ve made a few social investments,” says Morgan.

“I don’t invest in stem cell research, just because I don’t get it,” he says.

He has underwritten the formation of a micro-finance scheme in Samoa and in addition to iVistra and Lomak, has put money into people management software maker Sonar6. Morgan spent much of his talk at Morgo outlining how little his life has changed since the Trademe sale. He has earn-out targets to meet, so is still preoccupied with Trademe.

“I’m planning on being there in some capacity for quite a while yet,” he says.

But he recognizes succession planning is underway and that involves building a team he trusts – then leaving them to get on with their work. His “Don’t be a dick” mantra, the equivalent of Google’s “Don’t be evil”, became a bit of a catchphrase at Morgo.

“Moving out of the picture means making sure everyone has the ‘Don’t be a dick’ certificate,” says Morgan, who sits on the board of listed accounting software Xero, the creation of another Morgo regular, Rod Drury.

“I really hope it’s the Nokia of New Zealand,” Drury said of Xero towards the end of his speech at Morgo.

“This is a ten year play. I plan to work until I’m at least 50,” he added.

After last year selling his mail archiving company Aftermail to US software company Quest, Drury could have retired. That wasn’t an option. Drury says the aim was always to sell Aftermail so he could fund his next venture, which he always anticipated would be a public company, listed on the NXZ.

“I thought if we want to be here in the long term, we’ve got to do it as a public company,” he said.

For Drury, preparing Xero for going global has meant investing heavily in getting top talent onboard and designing a software platform that can easily be tweaked for bigger markets.

“The breadth of the wall chart was built from day one,” he said.

“We did a lot of R&D so… we could have one system across the world.”

Sysdoc founder and director Katherine Corich faced a different challenge trying to scale her document management company in Britain – negotiating the old boy’s network that pervades business over there.

“It’s definitely a land of old boy networks,” she told Morgo. No more obvious was that than in the Government sector, where Korich says seven IT providers claim over two-thirds of the budgeted IT spend.

“You have to align yourself with one of ten providers. I’ve focused on getting non-executive directors with extensive UK government experience,” she said.

If those who spoke at Morgo honed in on some specific examples of how they have refined their businesses for global expansion, it was left to Endace-founder Selwyn Pellet to issue a rallying cry for the tech sector in general.

“As New Zealanders, we don’t have to be second class citizens. We are good,” Pellett reminded his fellow entrepreneurs.

But reeling off a list of similarly small countries that have grown thriving technology sectors – Ireland, Israel and Finland among them, he reminded them that New Zealand is “outgunned and outnumbered” and needs some visionary thinking to stay competitive.

“If you stick with five – ten per cent growth a year, it’s not going to happen,” said Pellett.

“The business plan needs to be a hairy-arsed audacious goal.”

Endace, a maker of networking management technology with a global blue chip client base, was the first New Zealand registered company to list on the London stock exchange’s alternative investment market.

“If you want to get out of the trenches and start charging, list your company,” Pellet advised. But for those considering a public listing, and there were several at Morgo, we told them to “look beyond the listing”, to have a long term goal for success.

“We listed Endace. The end goal was the listing. Suddenly we had to pump really hard to get going again.”

Endace had created seven New Zealand-based millionaires who have gone on to reinvest.

“Instead of us being bought, we’re going around the world buying companies.”

“The entrepreneurs in the room have to do more and more companies. They’re not allowed to retire,” he added.

Andy Lark, a Silicon Valley-based marketing guru, who heads NZTE’s technology beachhead in the US and is a director of Morel’s No. 8 Ventures, likewise encouraged kiwi entrepreneurs to think big.

The real model for me is Israel. These guys are building more hi-tech companies than any small nation on earth,” he said.

“It’s because they’ve differentiated between what’s a good business model and what allows them to succeed outside of their market.”

Later, in a small session devoted to using the internet to overcome the tyranny of distance, he explained how much New Zealand companies can do with blogs, wikis and search engines to cheaply market their companies.

“People are breaking down the barriers between themselves and the customer using the web,” he said.

“Information is a commodity and it doesn’t cost too much to share it.”

Apple & Google phone in the news

Griffin’s Gadgets has been quiet for an unacceptably long period of time by blogging standards - over a month! I’ve nevertheless been busy on some creative projects, at least one of which will hopefully bear fruit in the coming months. In the meantime here’s a wrap of some of the stuff I’ve been writing in the “mainstream media”. Ironically, my last post was on the eve of the iPhone’s debut in the US. So much has happened since then…

The gPhone is in the works

Tomorrow’s World in the Herald on Sunday
If there was any doubt that internet search giant Google has its heart set on dominating the mobile phone industry the way it has the internet, it was well and truly snuffed out last week.

Not only was Google instrumental in winning concessions in the rules of an upcoming auction in the US of radio spectrum that will guarantee that any device or service can be used on that spectrum, but Google has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into developing mobile phone designs.

Whether Google will, in the next few years, go head to head with AT and T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile to construct a mobile network in the US is far from clear. To do so would be horrendously expensive, even for a cash-rich behemoth like Google. It would need to be successful in grabbing a slice of the airwaves in the upcoming auction, and it hasn’t indicated yet whether it will participate.

Last week I reviewed Apple’s iPhone which, with its touch screen and intuitive user interface, is a game-changing device. By as early as next year, if rumours of Google’s tie-ups with Taiwanese hardware makers are correct, the gPhone could be on the market, offering even more compelling functionality.

After all, applications like Google Search, Maps, Talk, Gmail and Documents have been adopted by millions of web users around the world. While many of those people are using Google on their mobile phones, a handset designed to deliver the best Google experience would be very powerful. (The image left is a leaked pic of what is reported to be a mobile phone user interface designed by Google engineers).

If the risk of over-extending itself in the mobile space is a real one for Google, the rewards for going mobile are also very real. The US mobile phone advertising market was worth US$1.5 billion last year and is expected to reach US$14 billion by 2011, says research company eMarketer.

I very rarely click on adverts displayed on the Google search engine or to the right of my messages in Gmail, Google’s free email service. But I’d be much more likely to click on an advertising link on my mobile phone that throws up results based not only on what I punch into Google’s search engine, but also on my physical location. Maybe I could type in “movie sessions” and a group of links to movies showing in the next few hours at inner-city Auckland theatres would appear, because I am standing on Queen St. That would be very useful.

I use Gmail on my Harrier smartphone, but if I could use a phone to have Google Talk chat sessions and to access Google Documents in a nice way, I’d consider switching.

While Google has prototypes of its own phones in the works, it also appears that it is developing software and hardware standards that it will encourage mobile handset makers to adopt. If early reports are accurate, the standards have a heavy weighting towards mobile internet access, with recommendations that handset makers build Wi-fi and 3G high-speed data access into their phones. Google is also said to be working on an internet browser for mobile phones.

Google’s business model has always rested on free services, but supporting them with advertising is a highly lucrative strategy. Would a “gPhone” allow free calling and internet access but require you to listen to or watch adverts? It’s not out of the question and would turn the existing mobile billing model on its ear. Will Google and Apple steamroller the traditional mobile heavyweights Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson? Unlikely, but they’ll certainly get a run for their money in the next couple of years if the gPhone comes to life.

Apple iPhone first look review - 8/10

Tomorrow’s World in the Herald on Sunday

I’ve finally had some decent hands-on time with the Apple iPhone, the music player cum phone released on June 29 in one of the most anticipated product debuts in history.

Much of the hype has turned out to be true. The iPhone is simply a fantastic little gadget. I probably wouldn’t be inclined to buy one myself, having recently acquired a stand-alone iPod, but I’m excited about what the gadget, selling for NZ$653-$818 depending on storage allowance, means for the mobile phone design of other companies now clambering to catch up.

My reservations about the iPhone’s touch-screen, the only form of interaction with the phone (there being very few buttons to push) began to evaporate as I started tapping icons and punching in web addresses on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard. I’ve been a keen user of touch screens for years, from the Palm Pilot, to a range of Windows-based smart phones, to the likes of Sony Ericsson’s P800.

All those phones required a little plastic pen to tap on the screen with precision. Not so the iPhone. The icons on the menu screen are big enough to be tapped with your finger and the keys on the virtual keyboard enlarge as your finger hovers over them allowing for surprisingly easy typing.

The iPhone is really an entertainment device first and foremost. It will appeal to people who want good messaging options, the ability to do some light web browsing, listen to music on the move and make phone calls.

You can’t now use the iPhone with a Vodafone or Telecom mobile account as American network operator AT and T stitched up an exclusive deal for the iPhone’s release in the US. Instead, people have hacked the iPod to unlock all of its functions bar the mobile calling. That means you can surf the web on the iPhone using its wi-fi connection, if you are in range of a wireless hotspot. That’s a surprisingly seamless experience.

The iPhone uses the Safari browser Apple Mac owners will be familiar with and has a couple of great features that make surfing the web on the iPhone better than on any other phone I’ve used. You can navigate full-sized web pages simply by dragging your finger around the screen and by pinching your fingers together or spreading them out, zoom in and out. The iPhone senses when you tilt it on its side, so will change the layout of the screen to landscape, automatically giving you a better view of web pages and pictures.

The email suite is pretty smart, allowing you to set up inboxes for multiple email accounts. The fonts and icons look crisp on the large screen and the camera takes reasonable-quality digital photos as long as there is good light.

Then there’s the music player function, which has been cleverly adapted for the phone. Again, your finger does the navigating. You can skip through your songs and albums quickly, just by tapping the screen.

The real test of the iPhone will be how it ages, how, after constant fingering over months or years, that touch screen holds up. I know people who are still happily using first and second generation iPods. Will the iPhone have that staying power and, therefore, the value for money?

What I’m looking forward to is the response from the traditional mobile heavyweights to the iPhone. Apple has proven that the touch screen can act effectively as the sole form of interaction with a phone. The mobile phone makers are sure to follow.

I should point out my Herald blog posting on the iPhone which I wrote in the lead-up to the iPhone launch and suggested that people should forget about the iPhone and look at some of the other decent smartphones on the market. That piece, which sparked a pretty big mailbag of responses from readers (which is always good) was in response to the unbelievable hype that had built up around the phone and was meant to be slightly antagonistic. Still, my advice remains the same, given the iPhone’s absence from our market.

Google muscles in on mobile

from New Zealand Herald

We have a little Government radio spectrum auction coming up in December that will sell access to some highly sought-after radio frequencies so new services such as wireless broadband can be offered.That will raise a reasonable sum for the Government, maybe tens of millions of dollars.

But just wait for the frenzy the auction of 700Mhz radio spectrum in the US will generate.Payments for that spectrum - seen as the “last beachfront property” in the US wireless space, as most of the other appropriate frequencies are already in use - are expected to total upwards of US$15 billion ($19.9 billion).

We haven’t seen that sort of money on the table since the European 3G auctions, which sent more than one mobile player bankrupt.

And if there wasn’t enough competition for the airwaves from traditional US mobile players such as Verizon and Sprint, internet giant Google has also given a strong indication that it will join the bidding.

That has no doubt struck fear into the mobile industry, whose collective pockets are nowhere near as deep as Google’s, with its US$160 billion market capitalisation.

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday bowed to the lobbying of Google, which was demanding that a good portion of the spectrum sold in the auction be used to support any device or service desired by the consumer.

Traditionally, the successful bidders in spectrum auctions have been able to tightly control what their customers can use.

This has largely determined over the past 15 years what mobile operator a customer chooses to sign up to.

Now Google, whose allegiances lie not with the network operators but with the consumers who use its search engine, wants mobile phone networks to be treated with the flexibility the internet offers. Bring along any compatible mobile phone and, in theory, you’ll be able to use any service on offer.
On the web, you can pretty much do this now.

Internet providers sell access to the pipe that connects you to the internet but unless you’re illegally downloading thousands of movies or albums, making you what’s known in the industry as a “bandwidth leech”, you are generally left to your own devices.

Contrast this with the mobile operators, which do their best to keep you in a walled-garden of content offerings.

Vodafone Live is the best example of this approach.While most mobile operators now sell straight internet access, they also package up services to make it more attractive to buy what they decide to offer - whether that be ringtone downloads, streaming TV feeds or news alerts.

Google is trying to offer better access to the services its business relies on, and in this area it sees the wireless providers and their walled gardens as the enemy.

The hostility between Google and the mobile industry was no more obvious than at the 3GSM mobile industry show in Barcelona this year, where several mobile operators said they’d rather work together to build their own alternative search engine for mobile phones than use Google’s.

The tension springs from the fact that everyone knows that mobile search is the next major form of advertising revenue.

The location-sensing power of mobile phones mean search engine results can be tailored to your actual location, giving more targeted results than you would get from using the Google search engine on your home computer.

With those location-based services in mind, Google has been building a free city-wide Wi-Fi networks in San Francisco and Mountain View, California, to give people in those areas better, unimpeded access to the internet.

It also struck a deal with mobile operator Sprint to offer Google applications on Sprint’s WiMAX wireless broadband service.

With its acquisition of the YouTube video-sharing website, and already the biggest search engine provider in the world, Google’s success depends on its customers being able to gain access to enough bandwidth to use its services, and preferably from mobile devices.

For that reason, an increasingly realistic scenario would see Google buy radio spectrum and build its own mobile network.

On the other hand, it may be a bluff to extract better co-operation from the mobile industry. Either way, the mobile landscape is irreversibly shifting and Google, with its desire to take internet search mobile, is driving the change.

Kiwi businessmen sum up the iPhone

from the New Zealand Herald

New Zealand’s first iPhone owners are globe-trotting technology entrepreneurs who see business opportunities for themselves in Apple’s sought-after gadget.

Tech sector veterans and regular visitors to the US, Steve Simms and Derek and Geoffrey Handley, picked up iPhones after the combined phone and music player was launched last week.

While the three share an interest in gadgets, their iPhone purchases also fall into the category of market research - they may soon be tailoring services to meet the new gadget’s requirements.

The three will not be able to use their phones on the local Telecom or Vodafone networks as they signed up to exclusive contacts with US operator AT&T.

Hackers are already working on ways to bypass the exclusivity deal so that the iPhone can be used on any GSM network.Simms is the founder of Wi-Fi hotspot service provider Tomizone, which allows you to turn your wireless internet connection into a commercial service, selling access to others with Tomizone providing the back-end billing functions.

The iPhone has Wi-Fi connectivity built into it, allowing users to surf the web from wireless hotspots.

Derek Handley’s (pictured left) company, The Hyperfactory, designs and hosts internet-based advertising and branding campaigns for companies with a focus on the mobile internet delivered to phones.

If his clients take an interest in the iPhone, Handley will have to adapt services to suit its format and the Safari web browser that is used by iPhone owners to access the internet.

Still in their honeymoon phase with the most desired of gadgets, Simms and Handley suggest the iPhone lives up to much of the hype.

“It has a really slick interface, beautifully silky,” said Handley, who was also impressed with the iPhone’s suite of applications.

“There’s a nice Google Maps function, you can get directions to go places. There’s a very cool YouTube widget for streaming YouTube videos.

“It’s not some old stylus thing or one-touch wonder. I’m talking Minority Report styling. Touch the screen with one or more fingers, pinch or expand photos and websites. It’s cool,” said Simms, who was given his iPhone by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The pair share a passion for the geeky sport of Segway Polo.

But it’s not all praise from New Zealand’s first iPhone owners.

Simms (pictured left) picked out Apple’s “dumb exclusivity deal” with AT and T which limits use of the iPhone to one mobile network in the US. The model is likely to be replicated around the world, with Apple rumoured to be in the final stages of negotiating a worldwide deal for the iPhone with Vodafone.

“The keypad is crap, it will never replace the Blackberry,” said Handley.

“The browsing experience is designed for Wi-Fi and Edge, not 3G.

“Handley admits that Hyperfactory’s philosophy for how the mobile internet should be presented to users differs from that of Apple boss Steve Jobs.”He thinks that the [regular] internet 100 per cent on the go is the way forward, but no one goes from Wi-Fi spot to Wi-Fi spot. Things need to be designed for the mobile internet,” said Handley.

“When you get to a mobile internet site on [the iPhone], it treats it like a web page, which is completely unworkable,” he added.

With his business case resting on the availability of Wi-Fi internet hotspots and devices that can connect to them, Simms naturally has a different view.

“Wi-Fi is massive on this, a great call by Apple not to get painted into a corner with the 3G argument,” he said.

“The ease of use for Wi-Fi in the iPhone is a dream and in the field its faster and cheaper than 3G any day.

“Both Simms and Handley saw plenty of opportunity to develop their offerings for the iPhone.

“Our opportunity is to take advantage of their stubbornness and their view of the mobile world and render content in a much smarter way, recognising the Safari operating system,” said Handley.

“We are looking for a widget for the iPhone that will auto-detect and log in to a Tomizone hotspot or any other hotspot you are registered with,”said Simms. “My guys will be figuring that out shortly.”

Locked out

• Apple’s iPhone cannot be used on the Vodafone or Telecom networks, but can be used outside the US where AT and T has roaming coverage. International charges apply.
• iPhone owners have to sign up to mobile plans starting at US$60 ($76) a month, locking them into a service contract for two years or more.
• Hackers are working to crack the lock-in technology that prevents the phones from working with sim cards from other mobile network operators.
• No date has been given for the iPhone’s arrival on the market here, however Apple is rumoured to be in discussions with Vodafone for a worldwide partnership to launch the iPhone where Vodafone has subsidiaries.

Reviews: The official Freeview receivers

by Peter Griffin | from the New Zealand Herald

Digital satellite TV operator Freeview admits a “stuff-up” with its flagship brand of set-top boxes marred the service’s launch, but says the technical glitches are now behind it.

Freeview general manager Steve Browning said it was too early to give accurate Freeview sales figures and that a clear picture of usage patterns would not emerge until ratings company ACNielsen began collecting viewer-trend information for the platform.

Technical problems with one of the two Freeview-approved set-top boxes led to many having to be returned by customers, while other glitches were able to be fixed with an over-the-air software update from the Optus D1 satellite.

Browning said new channels, such as the family and 24-hour news channels in the works at TVNZ, would make the Freeview proposition more attractive. He had also been talking with radio-station operators who were struggling to find sufficient FM radio frequencies to expand their services and were considering Freeview as an alternative platform.

Despite issues with the Zinwell set-top box, Browning said it was the more popular of the two currently selling in stores. He put that down to the presence of an RF (radio frequency) connector on the back of the Zinwell box, which gives users the option of plugging it directly into the aerial socket on their TV sets.

However, most users are connecting their set-top boxes via AV (audio-visual) cables as they offer a better signal. AV connections are standard on all but the oldest of TV sets.

The Business Herald took a look at the two official digital set-top boxes on the market.

Hills Satellite Receiver

Price: $299

Herald rating: 7/10 What strikes you about the Hills set-top box is how small it is compared to its Zinwell rival.

The Hills receiver has a profile similar to that of the slim-line PlayStation 2 console and like the PS2 can be positioned vertically to save space. Hills uses a European Scart connection to link the receiver to the TV’s AV (audio-visual) inputs.

There are two Scart connections, one for the TV and one to feed the signal to a VCR or digital recorder. I’m not a big fan of Scart cables, but they seem to work fine here. Set-up was a breeze - I simply plugged the satellite lead coming from the wall into the Hills box, connected the Scart cable to my TV, plugged in the power cable and was away.

The Hills logo pops up on your TV screen when you first boot up the receiver and set the TV to an AV channel. An online menu then appears and asks you to set your geographical region.

Tuning of the channels is automatic. A screen showed me the signal strength of the satellite feed - virtually 100 per cent on the Hills bar graph. I exited the menu and was greeted by a crystal-clear TV One. The channels were listed in order, one through five, the latter being Maori TV and channel 20 reserved for V8 Supercar coverage.

A basic four-digit display on the front of the Hills box tells you what channel you are on. Button functionality on the receiver itself is minimal, with the remote control and electronic menu system favoured for adjusting settings.

The menu and eight-day electronic programming guide are simply laid out and straightforward to use.

While the Hills box does everything advertised well, it’s slightly lacking in the aesthetics department. The box is made of standard silver and white plastic, and the remote control has a gaudy, plastic feel to it.

Again, the comparison with the PS2 comes in handy. That is a device that with a DVD drive and computer processor, is much more sophisticated than the Hills receiver. Yet it looks much better and sells for $220.

At least you can tuck the Hills receiver away out of sight.

Zinwell Satellite Receiver

Price: $299

Herald rating: 5/10

The Zinwell receiver has a larger form factor than its Hills rival, although it performs almost the exact same set of functions.

The most obvious differences between the two are discovered when you look at the rear of the Zinwell box - it has more options when it comes to connectivity, notably the RF connector mentioned above. The presence of standard composite video and component connectors give you better options when it comes to cabling.

Again, set-up was simple. The menu screen asked me to set my region and then automatically found the channels for me.

That is where things started to go wrong: the Zinwell box failed to pick up channels 3 and 4. After repeating the process several times I gave up and rang Zinwell service agent Next Electronics. I was sent an email with instructions on how to manually tune the channels. However, following those instructions failed to produce anything.

“If you still cannot receive the missing channels, after manual tuning, then your antenna dish and LNB most likely needs professional alignment by an accredited installer,” an email from Next stated.

That was despite the Hills receiver and my Sky receiver, which connect to the same Optus D1 satellite, picking up all channels. It seems my Zinwell receiver hadn’t picked up the over-the-air software upgrade that was issued to fix the initial glitches with the box.

The Zinwell receiver does have the additional options of programmable timers and favourite channel lists.

But again, the box seems pricey for its basic functionality and the average quality of the hardware and remote. Hardware this common around the world should be cheaper and glitch-free right from the start.

The Webstock special

I didn’t get a chance to post these last week as I was tied up posting on another blog. Webstock Mini was a great event and credit to Natasha Hall and the others on the team who continue to put on some worthwhile internet events in Wellington.

The new Internet: All fizz and no substance?

by Peter Griffin | from New Zealand Herald

It was with great anticipation that I settled into a seat at the Paramount Theatre in Wellington this week to listen to a bunch of internet experts debate a very live topic - whether the new wave of websites gathered under the Web 2.0 banner is “all fizz and no substance”.

The debate could have gone anywhere and indeed it ranged widely.

“People just aren’t that technology savvy,” argued Radio New Zealand producer and head of the “fizz” team, Mark Cubey.

“Second Life? It’s that versus House on a Tuesday night. Yeah, Second Life just doesn’t have the dialogue. We’re talking about stuff that is real and you can’t tell me Web 2.0 is real,” he concluded.

Cubey’s opponent, Philip Fierlinger, a former dotcom entrepreneur and now developer at accounting software maker Xero, said the money paid for Web 2.0 ventures such as MySpace and YouTube, spoke for itself - essentially, there was substance where there was money.

“Is US$500 million [$658 million] substantial? Is US$1.5 billion substantial?” he asked.

Austrian database architect Sandy Mamoli cleverly worked away at Web 2.0’s biggest weakness - its ability to create online worlds for its users that are detached from reality.

“We don’t share our tacky tastes or our boring personalities,” she said.

“Web 2.0 creates a huge gap between the online persona and who we really are. Web 2.0 makes it much easier to be fake.”

Brenda Leeuwenberg, online producer at NZ On Air, saw it differently.

“Sometimes there are moments of pure joy in what people put out there on the web,” she said. They are both, of course, quite right.

Web developer Mike Brown sees the rise of Web 2.0 as a giant conspiracy to advance the cause of the letter “R”, which indeed defines a fair number of Web 2.0 website names - Twitter and Flickr being just two on Brown’s list. “You might think it’s just a case of letter jealousy, but R wants to be an A-lister,” said Brown.

And so the arguments bounced backwards and forwards for an hour or so mirroring the global debate about the value of Web 2.0 services and intensifying as web sceptics hone their argument.

The anti-Web 2.0 arguments have perhaps been best articulated by the British web entrepreneur and author Andrew Keen who in his new book The Cult of the Amateur suggests that the proliferation of user-generated content that’s central to the Web 2.0 way of doing things is killing culture.

Others are saying similar things. Take US technology commentator John C. Dvorak’s dismissive take on the newest of the Web 2.0 players Twitter, a “micro-blogging” service that allows you to post short updates during a day to keep everyone abreast of your activities - no matter how mundane. Dvorak sees no substance in that, other than to provide a record for the sociologists of the future.

“All of these sorts of networks should provide a trove of insights into society - if the entire system is archived and turned over to the sociology departments of some major universities,” he wrote recently in a PC Magazine column about Twitter.

“I’m afraid that the people who implement stuff like this never think in these terms.”

Dvorak admits he was also dismissive of podcasting and blogging when they were introduced yet he himself has since become a podcaster and a blogger.

Which just goes to show how hard it is to pick where the Web 2.0 movement will lead us.

For the record, the team pushing the argument that there really is substance in Web 2.0 won the Webstock debate by a slim majority. That wasn’t surprising given Webstock’s audience, which text messaged in votes for the teams and was filled with web developers.

There are 140 web development companies in Wellington alone. The industry has rapidly geared up for the local impact of this new phase of internet development. There’s plenty of fizz on the local scene in everything from online retailing to insurance, but there’s also a fair bit of money floating around.

I think the debate came out how it should have, despite the “fizzers” presenting a more compelling and humorous argument than those with substance.

Above all the inane chatter on Twitter, the annoying music blaring at you from MySpace pages and the flying penises in Second Life, there’s something powerful going on in these new web communities.

Whether they will all live on remains a moot point, but one thing is for sure, the new makeup of the internet is seriously changing our approach to information use and social interaction. Whatever price you put on that, such transformation in a few short years has been nothing but substantial.

On The Web
www.myspace.com
www.secondlife.com
www.twitter.com
www.webstock.org.nz

Virtual beers with Darth Vader

by Peter Griffin | from New Zealand Herald

It’s the place where virtual friendships are made and digital real estate is bought and sold, but educators say the fast-growing Second Life community is also a powerful tool for collaborative learning.

On first appearances it doesn’t seem very productive: a group of digital avatars - the online creations of real people - sit around a campfire in a pleasant park, chatting away.

“This experience can be a lot of fun,” says Leigh Blackall, an education development manager for Otago Polytechnic.

“We drink around the campfire and the beers are programmed to make us tipsy.”

Blackall conducted a Second Life meeting of education professionals from around the world during his speech to the Webstock internet conference in Wellington on Tuesday, and
says that such virtual meetings could be the future of long-distance learning.

“It wasn’t until I had my first encounter with a purpose in Second Life, like a meeting, that I realised what it’s all about. There are a lot of people in education trying to get into this.”

build their own world is seen by networked learning experts like Blackall as an ideal forum for students to collaborate and share ideas.

Its potential has already been recognised by Second Life’s creators, Linden Lab, who have set up Campus: Second Life, which allows a free grant of land in the virtual Second Life world to an educational organisation for the duration of a semester.

Discounted land plots are also on offer for schools and universities - something of tangible value in a world where an island will set you back US$1600 and US$100 a month in upkeep.

Whole islands can be bought by educational institutions where entry is restricted to their real-life students.

Educational professionals collaborate on a Second Life wiki - a type of online database - to standardise virtual education tools.

Blackall says the potential for development of educational resources in Second Life is huge, but that the tightly funded education sector is hesitant to invest in the online community, which has 7.2 million members and can turn over the equivalent of US$1 million a day in virtual currency.

“So far, no takers,” he says ofprojects he has suggested. “It’s quite difficult to get things going in education.”

Blackall says the real-time aspect of Second Life makes it “bandwidth hungry” and suitable only for high-speed internet connections. But Second Life is becoming increasingly sophisticated - he is particularly looking forward to Second Life users being able to display websites within the online environment.

Students could, for example, sit in a virtual meeting collectively editing a wiki document.

COMMENTS:

Hi Peter,
Wanted to thank you for your article on Leigh Blackall’s Second Life presentation and also to let you know that there is already a small but thriving NZ education community in Second Life.
Here at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) in Nelson, we are investing in an island in Second Life to explore its potential for enhancing our students learning.
In fact NMIT already has a presence in Second Life - we have been renting space on EduIsland alongside places such as the University of Cincinatti and Universtiy of Hawaii! Our space is called the NMIT Garden of Learning, and apart from being a space for some of my students to explore Second Life, it is also the venue for the informal meeting of the Kiwi Educators group at 2pm (NZ time) every Sunday afternoon.
If you are interested there is more information on our Second Life Interest Group website (www.nmit.ac.nz/research/2ndlife) and also at https://eduforge.org/blog/blog.php?/categories/140-NZ-Education-in-a-Virtual-World which is run by Aaron Griffiths.
We are now planning several projects which will be undertaken once the island is operational and have received some funding from the government’s e-Capability Fund to help us get going! The exploration of NZ education in a virtual world is very definitely underway.
Many thanks

Dr Clare Atkins
School of Business and Computer Technology
NMIT

The Kiwi Firefox connection

by Peter Griffin | from Griffin’s Tech Blog Herald Online

Aucklander Robert O’Callahan, who as a contractor to the Mozilla Corporation has been working on some of the new features that will be built into the upcoming Firefox 3.0 web browser, gave an interesting Webstock presentation on where browser development is going.

O’Callahan demoed some new Firefox features, such as the updated Gecko rendering engine and offline web browsing functionality that will be available in Firefox 3.0, but he used the bulk of his presentation to explain the philosophy around open source web development.

O’Callahan seems wary of the growing focus in web content development on Adobe’s Flash player. That’s because Flash and its new rival, Microsoft-developed Silverlight, operate on a different model to the web tools the open source community comes up with. They’re essentially privately owned and controlled.

“We want to avoid people getting a monopoly on web clients. If you can control who can render web content, you control the platform,” says O’Callahan, who has contributed to Mozilla since 1999.

He believes there’s plenty of life left in HTML, the standard language of the web and that focus should be put on fixing the bugs in existing web pages and doing smarter things with HTML than trying to “supercede the web with shiny new design”.

“You can add things to HTML that are harder to do if you don’t control the platform,” he added.

O’Callahan believes the dominant browser vendor, Microsoft “isn’t so interested in the web at the moment “.

“We have to unseat their dominance and gain market share with browsers interested in pursuing our mission,” says O’Callahan.

The mission of course is to keep development of the web open so that no one company or technology can control its evolution. O’Callahan seems pretty ambivalent about Apple’s move to release its Safari web browser for Windows computers.

“We’d like Safari to take all of Internet Explorer’s market share and none of ours,” he says.

“I wouldn’t trust Apple any more than Microsoft necessarily if they got the monopoly.”

O’Callahan said developing open source alternatives to more sophisticated web tools was essential to keep browsers like Firefox competitive. One set of functionality that’s viewed as being particularly important is offline browser capability.

The idea is that when you type a URL into the web address bar when you’re not connected to the internet, the browser will search local storage for a cached copy of the page and allow a certain amount of functionality and data back-up. When you go back online, the local version of the application syncs with the version stored on the web and updates it.

“It’s similar to cookies, but with more grunt and more storage,” says O’Callahan. Google has developed similar technology to allow its applications to be used offline with the open source development tools, Google Gears.

New Zealand’s association with the Firefox browser, which has rapidly gained market share at the expense of Microsoft’s dominant internet Explore browser, is very strong. Ben Goodger, a lead Firefox developer who also works for Google is a kiwi and O’Callahan said there are three paid Firefox developers based in Auckland, with scope for the team to be expanded if people with the right skills can be found.

O’Callahan’s blog can be found here.

COMMENTS

Barnacle
You might want to check out Robert’s presentation at the Auckland Web Meetup. He covers the offline stuff, new video formats and font rendering in FF 3. It can be found here - http://www.meetup.co.nz/2007/06/21/video-june-meetup-robert-ocallahan-

(Manned) mission to Mars

by Peter Griffin | from the Herald on Sunday

Photos courtesy of my friend Ellie who visited Nasa in 2003 and got up close and personal with the Mars Rover!

It has to be one of the more unusual job descriptions ever advertised: spend 18 months locked in a metal tank with five other people, eating vacuum-packed food, with only radio contact with the outside world.

But that’s exactly what the European Space Agency is looking for people to do, and it’s all in the name of space exploration.

The agency and the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems want to simulate a manned mission to Mars, including the 520-day trip to and from the Red Planet, the landing of a space craft and the scientific testing such a trip would involve.

Why undertake such a time-consuming experiment? Because space agencies have their hearts set on landing people on Mars. As the ESA explains: “To go to Mars is still a dream and one of the last gigantic challenges. But one day, some of us will be on precisely that journey to the Red Planet.”

To give any such mission a chance of succeeding, it needs to be simulated first, in part to determine whether astronauts would be able to psychologically cope with being cooped up together for such an extended time.

The agency admits the whole thing has the feel of a reality TV show. I could imagine it turning into one massive episode of Big Brother, with bed-hopping astronauts, territorial arguments and emotional meltdowns.

But the agency says the volunteers on the simulated mission will be kept busy carrying out the activities Mars-bound astronauts would be given. So it wants candidates with scientific, engineering and medical backgrounds.

The six participants will live in a series of metal compartments about 200sq m in size - roughly the space of four studio apartments stuck together. There will be living quarters, a kitchen, a research area and medical room. They’ll be able to talk to the equivalent of ground control and presumably their families, but once the hatch is closed and the astronauts start their journey, they will be on their own, having to fend for themselves if anything goes wrong.

The experiment could produce a treasure trove of information for psychologists and the agency is working out what scientific tests it will carry out on the participants.

Key will be exploring the group dynamic that develops, the effects of the confinement on things like sleep, mood and the ability to perform complicated tasks. The agency also plans to look at medical procedures that could be performed.

As the months pass, scientists will no doubt be peering into the tanks via closed-circuit TV cameras, to scrutinise everything that goes on.

Mars is about 1 1/2 times as far from the Sun as the Earth is, though the distance between the two planets fluctuates wildly from around 56 million kilometres in 2003, when they were at their closest in tens of thousands of years to 380 million kilometres at their farthest apart.

As epic as any manned trip to Mars will be, many countries - the US, China, and the members of the European Space Agency included - are investigating the potential.

There have been several unmanned trips and another will begin in early August when the US$414 million ($542 million) Phoenix Mars Lander will be launched. Phoenix will land on the northern Martian plains, on top of ancient fields of ice which lie below the planet’s surface. The plan is for Phoenix to scoop up some ice and analyse it, beaming the results back to Earth.

As much as the Mars Rover’s exploits on the Red Planet caught the world’s attention, that will be nothing compared with the buzz a manned mission would generate. So who wants to be the first Kiwi to pretend to go to Mars? The hyperactive and claustrophobic need not apply.

A few robotic Mars discovery vehicles from the Nasa colection. Remember when Rover’s wheel got stuck on a rock? Easy to dislodge on the floor at Nasa, not so easy when you’re using a joystick to control a robot that’s tens of millions of kilometres away…

The problem with "P"

The stories in the Sunday papers about Millie Holmes’ problems with pure methamphetamine reminded me of Cyan Sunday, a feature screenplay I wrote very quickly a couple of years ago. The story is about an intelligent young woman, Charlotte White, who is also a very good P cook who has created a lucrative little business in Auckland supplying the gangs with high grade merchandise for their street drug trade.

Charlotte likes to deal to her favour customers from the rear pew of St. Patrick’s and when leaving church one Sunday she is knocked unconscious and kidnapped by Thomas Schumacher and his colleague Keith. The two are middle aged bankers whose children’s lives have been ruined by the P Charlotte sells. Frustrated at the pace of the police investigation into Charlotte’s activities, Schumacher decides to take matters into his own hands leading to the following scene…

INT. SCHUMACKER’S GARAGE — MORNING
The garage door closes behind Thomas’ car. He and Keith climb out and slide Charlotte across the backseat. She is limp within their arms but begins to revive and fight.

THOMAS
Get the chain and lock!

He holds Charlotte while Keith grabs a chain off a workbench that runs the length of one side of the garage. Thomas slaps Charlotte across the face twice and she stops struggling. He drags her to a steel chair that sits with its back hard against a boat trailer which holds a large red speed boat. Taking her arms he holds them together behind the chair while Keith wraps the chain tightly around them and loops the chain through the safety latch of the trailer.
Charlotte looks up at Thomas groggily. He leans against the workbench tired form the exertion. He points at her.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
There she is. Doesn’t look like a drug baron
does she? With a broken nose, chained up. It’s
not like the movies. No henchmen, no weapons?

He flicks a look at Keith who pants away wearing a Balaclava.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
You did check her for weapons?

MR GREY
I checked, just a mobile phone and
some keys.

A shot of the phone and keys sitting on the workbench.

THOMAS
Good.

The three of them regard each other. Charlotte spits onto the garage floor. The spit is red, laced with blood.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
Be my guest. And scream away if you want.
We’re pretty private here.

CHARLOTTE
(clears her throat)
What is this, you want me to cook for you?

Thomas bursts out with forced laughter. Keith joins him from behind his mask. The laughter carries on, echoing in the garage. Charlotte studies the two men and looks around the garage. A series of shots with the men’s laughter over the top: Tubs of paint on a shelf, a ride-on lawn mower parked in the corner, fishing rods hung from the rafters of the garage.

THOMAS
I think you’ve done enough of that for one
career, madam. Think of this as the Spanish
Inquisition but it doesn’t matter if you truly
do believe in God, which you obviously do
because you deal drugs in church!

Schumacher breaks out laughing again. Charlotte scans the room, looking for an out. A shot of her hands exploring the chain and the safety latch of the boat trailer.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
No, this is a confessional in which you are
going to tell us every detail of your operation,
who supplies you with the cold pills, where
you make it and how your dealer network
functions. Understand?

CHARLOTTE
You’re wasting your time, I’m just a dealer, I
get given the stuff and sell it on the streets, I
don’t know whose above or below me.

THOMAS
Bullshit! We’ve been watching you for weeks.
You’re not some curb-crawling drug pusher.
You’re a major player in Auckland, below the
radar. Till now.

Thomas walks up to Charlotte and looks down at her.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
Now the game is over. It’s confession time
and you better not leave out any details.

CHARLOTTE
Or what?

THOMAS
Or what? Or what?

Thomas goes back to the workbench and opens a drawer full of tools. He begins taking them out and placing them on the table during the next piece of his dialogue.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
Well it’s your industry Miss White, you
know what the thugs running it are capable of.
What was that I read in the paper the other
day?

He slams down a hammer on the workbench.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
About that guy working for the Head Hunters?
He was stealing from the gang apparently,
skimming off his own cut of the merchandise
and selling it. Under the table, so to speak. They
cut his head off. A farmer found it in his sewage
pond. They never found the rest of him! Identified
him by his crowns!

He takes a long MACHETE out of the drawer and holds it up for Charlotte to see.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
I can’t claim to be an expert in the use of this thing,
but I’ll give it a go.

He throws the machete on the workbench and nods to Keith. They walk towards Charlotte who retracts against the boat trailer. Schumacher produces a tape recorder, presses the record button and balances it on the speed boat.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
Who supplies you with the pills?

Silence from Charlotte. Thomas produces a smaller knife from his pocket and points it at Charlotte.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
(irritated)
I’m serious, you mess around and I’ll cut
flesh, I swear I will. Where are the pills
coming from!

Silence from Charlotte who sits defiantly. Thomas looks at her annoyed, trying to look staunch. Then he nods to Keith and they walk into the corridor leading to the garage, out of view of Charlotte.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
(whispered)
The bitch is going to be difficult.

He paces around the plush corridor - designer lights, expensive tiles and artwork on the walls.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
I was serious when I said I was prepared to
hurt her, to make her talk.

KEITH
Hurt her? How much?

THOMAS
It depends how difficult she is. I can’t say
she’s got off to a great start. I’m going to ask
her about the source again and if she doesn’t
talk I’m going to cut her?

KEITH
Cut her? You could kill her?

THOMAS
I’m not going to kill her, just a flesh wound. I’m
not going to stab her!

Keith is sweating profusely. He wipes his face with a handkerchief.

KEITH
You could hit an artery or something. What then?
We turn up at the hospital with some girl bleeding to
death? How do we explain that?

THOMAS
I’ll cut her on the ear, cut a piece out of her ear. See
how she handles that.

KEITH
Are you serious?

INT. SCHUMACHER’S GARAGE — MORNING

Charlotte is sitting on the steel chair, the blood drying on her face. She strains to hear the conversation in the hallway and can make out the gist of it. She runs her fingers over a NUT on the trailer’s safety latch, worrying it.

INT. SCHUMACHER’S HALLWAY — MORNING

THOMAS
(angry)

I’m dead serious. What the hell are we doing here? I’m completely serious. I’m not going to cut her ear off I’m going to stick the end of this knife into her eye ball!
He goes to go back into the garage, worked up. Keith grabs him and pulls him back.

KEITH
Wait, wait. Calm down. Okay? Cut her
on the face, away from her neck. If she
doesn’t talk!

They look gravely at each other. Thomas nods resolutely and looks at the knife. Keith puts his Balaclava back on. They walk out of screen and we hold on a thermometer on the wall of the garage. The temperature is 32 degrees.

Rise of the robots

by Peter Griffin | Herald on Sunday

A pasty looking child was the centre of attention in Japan last week. He made faces, rolled around on the floor and barked out words. None of that would be too special were if not for the fact that CB2, as he’s called, is a robot.

CB2 has a biomimetic body, which includes dozens of actuators to replicate muscles and sensors to simulate touch and hearing. Tiny cameras substitute for eyes.

When CB2 stands up, he needs the support of an adult and his legs shake just as those of a child who is learning to walk would.

CB2’s creators hope the robot can be used to improve understanding of how children develop human relation skills – learn language, recognize objects, interact with other people.

The Japanese have been fascinated by robots for decades, but biomimesis, the imitation of biological functions, is seen by many scientists worldwide as the key to building robots that can operate in unstructured environments. That science is in its early days, but

think of the Terminator or the hordes of sleek androids in I Robot as the ultimate biomimetric robots.

Robots already man the assembly lines of car and electronics factories the world over. It’s a different story when it comes to consumer uses for robots. We’ve been told for years that robots will be infiltrating the household, but the only one to successfully do so has been the Roomba vacuum cleaner, which motors around your floors sucking up dust, mapping out your home in its memory so it knows where it has already cleaned.

Sony last year ditched its much loved Aibo robotic dog and the Qrio humanoid robot because the robots, while impressive, simply didn’t have commercial appeal.

But while the home may remain robot free for a good few years yet while models that can cope in non-structured environments are developed, there is plenty of robotic progress being made in other fields.

The US military, for example, is taking to robots as it seeks to lessen the risk of its soldiers being killed or injured.

The Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot (BEAR) from US robotics company Vecna, is designed to rescue an injured soldier, scooping the body into its arms so that other soldiers aren’t put at risk retrieving their wounded comrades.

The six-foot tall BEAR can cross unstable ground and stay upright thanks to the use of gyroscopes and motors controlled by computer. It can carry over 200kg in its arms and kneel down to gently scoop up a wounded soldier. It even has a teddy bear face to put wounded soldiers at ease. It’s expected to be ready for testing within five years.

Built on a much smaller scale, but potentially as useful in the war zone, are LANdroids, tiny robots that can be dispersed to form a wireless radio network to maintain communications.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing LANdroids to overcome the problem of patchy radio communications in the field. The idea is that the robots are light enough to be carried by soldiers so they can be dropped at regular intervals to collectively form a wireless network for voice and data communications. Mounted on wheels, The LANdroids will also be self-adjusting, so that they can change position to ensure the best signal strength of the network. DARPA wants to get the average cost of a LANdroid down to around US$100 which will be a tall order given the sophisticated work they will be expected to perform.

The robots are coming in all shapes and sizes, but are unlikely to appear any more humanlike for some time to come.

On the web:

http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/solicitations/open/07-46_PIP.pdf

http://vecnarobotics.com/robotics/

NEW WALKMAN PHONES

Ahead of the iPhone’s arrival Sony Ericsson has announced two new music phones with similar memory storage to Apple’s music phone. The Sony Ericsson W960 has 8GB (gigabytes) of internal storage, Wi-fi networking, a first for a Sony Ericsson phone and high-speed data access. There’s a 3.2 megapixel camera and the W960 has smartphone capability syncing Windows email and documents. The slimmer W910 also has the digital camera but not the hefty onboard flash memory allowance. It’s unique feature is “Shake Control” which lets the user shake the handset to turn the playlist to random. You can see the Nintendo Wii’s influence there. The new phones will debut before Christmas.

www.sonyericsson.com

The Newton factor

Philip Baker, who worked on Apple’s Newton PDA device back in the early 1990s has an interesting blog post about the iPhone. The hype surrounding the new device which will be released on June 29, is reminiscent of that which greeted the Newton, says Baker. The Newton was killed by poor handwriting recognition. Ironically, Baker points out, its touch screen data entry that is again the make or break point for the iPhone. An interesting perspective from someone who has been deep within the Apple development camp.

Seeby Woodhouse on his $24.3 million sale

Below is a Q&A interview with Orcon founder Seeby Woodhouse who this week sold his business to state-owned broadcasting network operator Kordia. Read what Seeby has to say about nuclear power, local loop unbundling and taking Orcon to $100 million in revenue…

PG: Congratulations on the sale to Kordia.

SW: Yeah, it’s the end of an era but the beginning of the next phase.

PG: Any sadness losing ownership?

SW: A little bit. Anyone gets attached to things, whether its spouses, companies or dogs. I’m the sort of person that believes in branding. That’s why I chose Kordia, they have absolutely no intention of re-branding the business and they want to keep it running largely as a separate entity. Hopefully I’ll be able to look back in a few years and say, wow, now it’s New Zealand’s second largest or even largest telecoms company.

PG: You said at the press conference you had something like 50 offers for Orcon over the last couple of years.

SW: It was more like 50 offers since people started getting more interested, which is more like over six or seven years. Once every couple of months, someone would come along.

PG: Did Vodafone have a sniff around Orcon?

SW: It was more that Ihug was for sale. There was a bidding war for Ihug. They got it and probably wanted to bed it down. I was aware they were potentially interested in additional acquisitions but I felt if we were going to be acquired by them, they probably wouldn’t want multiple brands. The company would have been rolled into Ihug and that wasn’t something I wanted.

PG: Why was it so important to you that Orcon maintained its identity and structure?

SW: It’s basically my baby. It would be a different story if someone was to buy it and suddenly Orcon no longer existed. I’ll still have involvement in the business for a couple of years as consulting director. I’m able to take my money off the table now, relax a little bit, but still have the upside of the business, the challenge and the things that I enjoy.

PG: Is that a fulltime position?

SW: No, it’s a consulting directorship. The time is variable.

PG: What will you do next?

SW: I don’t want to make any hasty moves. If I did that, I could potentially get drawn into something I don’t understand as well. There’s a temptation when you’re cashed up to invest in silly things and fritter it away. The thing about Orcon, since I was 15 I’ve been passionate about business and it was the business opportunity I was initially excited about. Telecommunications came second. I had a burning passion in the early days of Orcon for a good five years, working 16 hours a day solid. If I do anything in the future, I want something that’s going to get me that excited.

PG: I looked back at the TV3 interview you did in 2004 which was very interesting. You weren’t a networking guy, but you were trained as an electrical engineer?

SW: That doesn’t teach you much about computers. I didn’t really use any of my degree. I was also pretty computer illiterate when I started the company so I had to learn fast. These days I’m tech savvy, I didn’t even have a computer when I started the company.

PG: You’ve made some moves at Orcon in the area of content, the deal with Digirama, plans for IPTV, as this Web 2.0 thing takes off, do you want to get into the content side of the internet?

SW: Yeah, in some ways content is easier than access, because you don’t have to have a load of boxes that physically exist. The advantage Sam [Morgan] had with Trademe, was that if something grows really fast, you just stick in more servers. With Orcon, if you want to grow something fast you need infrastructure. Telecom’s got a worse problem with that than we do. I’m probably going to sit tight for six months to a year, take some long holidays, do some travel and not worry about things. If I have any interest at all, it’s in things like sustainability and biofuels. Global warming is a big concern of mine. Maybe there’s an opportunity to make some money but do some good at the same time. Maybe introduce something like solar energy to New Zealand that’s actually going to help. It’s something I’m investigating. Alternatively, if I enjoy being retired a lit too much, I may not do anything.

PG: You’re 30 now right?

SW: YES, 30.

PG: It’s interesting how goal orientated you’ve been throughout your life from when you got your first bank book as a kid through to wanting to take Orcon to $100 million in revenue by the age of 30. Did you get there?

SW: No, the turnover is a bit lower than that, but I think it will only be a year or two off target. I’ll still be involved with the company by the time it hits $100 million. But the real issue has been our margins being squeezed having to resell Telecom’s broadband and LLU happening a lot slower than was thought. There have been some unexpected difficulties. Our revenue is still growing pretty fast.

PG: Looking back to 2003 – 2004, it seemed that Orcon was more willing to embrace the Telecom wholesale regime than some of the other ISPs who were a lot more vocal in their criticism of Telecom. Do you think that gave you an advantage, that you were more willing to play ball with Telecom than your competitors?

SW: I don’t think it gave us a huge advantage, but we weren’t so distracted by regulatory arguments. My attitude is you should make the best of the situation you have. At that time it didn’t look like we’d end up with local loop unbundling. Theresa didn’t expect it was going to happen, let alone myself. I don’t think we got any concessions from them, but the working relationship was the most amicable and productive of any of the ISPs. That assisted us a bit, even on small things like fault resolution. The Telecom guys were happy to work with our guys. We weren’t going to report faults that weren’t true, we weren’t going to bitch and moan.

PG: You talk about margins being squeezed. Have the economics of reselling Telecom’s wholesale products deteriorated?

SW: They’ve always been bad. The issue is that there are less and less dial-up customers sustaining the ISPs. It’s a global problem. Telecom has issues with making money out of broadband as well. I’m sure dial-up is more profitable for telcos than broadband. Someone like Telecom with toll calling and fixed line rentals, those things are declining. Broadband revenue is going up to replace those, but Telecom has one set of revenues going down and another set going up. ISPs have internet revenue that is profitable being r
eplaced by internet revenue that isn’t profitable. With LLU telcos like Orcon will get access to the physical phone lines as well as additional services like IPTV. That will be fine in the future. The issue at the moment for ISPs is if a consumer spends $40 a month on a phone line, $20 on tolls and $40 on broadband, traditional ISPs don’t get to attack much of that and even if they do, most of the money goes to Telecom in the form of a wholesale arrangement. Under LLU you might buy the line for $15 and whack on as many services as you can. Then it sorts to become more profitable.

PG: You’re getting out at a time which for New Zealand is the most uncertain. Some of your competitors like CallPlus and Woosh are banking on WiMax to expand their networks, then there’s the big investment needed in unbundling. Is that why you chose to exit now with all that uncertainty ahead?

SW: The uncertainty was one reason that I chose to exit, but I’d been doing the same thing for ten years, I need to slow my life down a bit and have a bit of a change. Also I’ve started to become more interested in things like global warming. With the uncertainty there’s also huge opportunity, around unbundling. I’m sure Kordia will do extremely well out of their purchase. I may not have done so well by not selling because without sufficient funding you can fall flat on your face. I was concerned that if the capital started drying up, because Orcon was always self funding, my wealth forms the company. If the company was going to do anything it would have to make a profit so we could reinvest it. That’s been the strategy all along.

PG: So everything was funded out of revenue at Orcon throughout?

SW: Everything at Orcon from day one was funded out of cash flow. It was started with $100

PG: During the first dotcom boom, did you feel a sense of urgency that you had to get capital to take advantage of it?

SW: At that stage I didn’t understand how a venture capital relationship might work and the issue is they may only ask for 20 per cent of the company but not be prepared to pay what you want. They always want a good chunk of the business and then there are usually effective control clauses, so even if they only own 30 per cent, effectively they can remove you as a director. I’ve always been opinionated about what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to have the risk of bowing down to someone else and be depressed about it. Whenever a proposal was presented to me, I was reluctant. I said to myself, I’ll just try and grow the business as fast as I can, if it grows a bit slower, I don’t care.

PG: Orcon always had a reputation for very good service. How did you instill that culture?

SW: It comes from all those cheesy sayings, the customer being king, that type of thing. But it was important for Orcon to differentiate and the piece of copper you’re selling is largely the same thing, like petrol stations all sell the same gasoline but they all charge different prices. They differentiate through branding. I always thought we had to differentiate in as many different areas as we could and a lot of the time, ISPs were doing a pretty poor job on service. We made it one of the things we were going to differentiate on. One technique I employed early on was that we hired non-technical people like myself for the call centre rather than geeks. You can’t teach a geek customer service. There are only a hundred questions that will ever be asked at a help desk and you can teach someone the answers to those. We got happy, bouncy customer services people and taught them what they needed to know.

PG: Did you have any mentors?

SW: people come and go. There are people who will say, I helped Seeby out. But not really, I’ve always had a strong vision about where things should go. Most of the mentors’ advice I’ve had over the years, I’ve ended up disregarding.

PG: Was there anyone in the telecoms industry you admired as a young businessman?

SW: The Wood brothers were an early inspiration, because they were in game a year ahead of me. It was always a case of me having to catch up to Tim and Nick. They did really well exiting a few years ago and got more money than Ihug sold for (to Vodafone).

PG: And the successful exit at the peak is the real sign you’ve made it, isn’t it?

SW: It was certainly planned, choosing Kordia was planned as well. It was important to be Kiwi owned, there’s no risk of Kordia being taken over by an Australian outfit. I’m proud of the Kiwi heritage. Obviously, getting what I thought was a fair price was important. Ultimately I didn’t necessarily expect, even a year ago, to sell. But I started thinking, what does this business need? All internet companies are becoming phone companies and all phone companies are becoming internet companies. Then they’re all becoming converged media network companies. Looking at the regulatory environment after the Government’s announcement after LLU, we did the Siemens deal so we had vendor finance, but what we were lacking was media expertise and a network. We were going to have to build the network and invest in media technologies. Kordia as a network and broadcast type company, had the two pieces of the puzzle that we lacked.

I thought either I’m going to have to get a venture capitalist onboard or load the company up with heaps of debt. Take on a whole lot more risk where potentially it could fall flat on its face or sell it to someone who can extract the value. There was the risk that I could try and do all the stuff Kordia is trying to do, by myself.

PG: CallPlus has secured US$450 million for its WiMax plans. Maybe there’d have been an appetite for investment if you’d wanted to go that route.

SW: I was surprised by the CallPlus thing. I think it’s a real figure, but it’s probably a line of credit, so it will have to be drawn down over time and they’ll have to build the network. And its debt funding. If you borrow $450 million, you’re paying 40 – 50 million a year in interest. Just because they have $450 million, doesn’t mean they’re won’t be saddled with debt and crippled by it, in much the same way Woosh is. They’ve spent $100 million plus building a network and don’t yet have the customers to sustain it. If CallPlus goes and spends the US$450 million and only gets 100,000 customers, it will be a bit of a disaster.

PG: What’s your view on wireless technologies. Are you optimistic that some of these alternative models may work?

SW: There are a lot of variables. There’s a lot of uncertainty around the Government’s spectrum auctions. CallPlus has the same concerns. Wireless technology rests on having the right spectrum available at the right price. If it goes for a horrendous price and Vodafone and Telecom pay to block out competitors, it could be a moot point. One technology doesn’t tend to replace another. When email came along it didn’t replace the fax machine, when the fax came along it didn’t replace postal mail. Now we’ve got postal mail and couriers and FedEx, faxes, email and instant messaging.

The biggest success will be the company that can offer a seamless solution, wireless and wired technology, TV and phone calling together. I
’m not just talking about multiple things on one bill, but being able to use your internet service wherever you are and pay in a consistent manner. We’re a long way away from that.

PG: Where you nervous when Vodafone bought Ihug, seeing as Vodafone @ Home is aiming for one converged device that acts as fixed line and mobile with seamless switch over?

SW: I saw it as an advantage but I wasn’t threatened by it. Orcon’s got an MVNO agreement with Vodafone anyway. We’ll be doing the same type of services, just in a different way. It just depends what pieces of the puzzle you have control over and which pieces you don’t.

PG: Did you benchmark the sale of Orcon against the $41 million sale of Ihug in terms of what you were looking for?

SW: It’s difficult to compare the two. Certainly, in terms of customer numbers, we’re 80 per cent the size of Ihug. It would have been nice to get more but I’m not unhappy with the sale price. We have different ebitda figures and more customers have multiple services with Ihug. They’ve a more established voice base. I got a fair deal and Kordia paid a good price.

PG: How do you feel about the fact that your staff is effectively now public servants?

SW: They’re not really. The Government has very little input into how Kordia is run apart from maybe appointing the board of directors. It’s certainly not the case that the Government wanted to do this to create a competitor to Telecom. They’ve some great products they want to sell like DVB-H (mobile TV). They haven’t had a lot of interest from the ISPs in terms of taking some of these services up.

PG: What’s been the reaction to the sale from staff.

SW: It’s been good, there’s been no tears. People have said it’s the end of an area, but once they realized there’s no change in job descriptions, they’re not suddenly Kordia employees, they’ll still be managed by the same people, there’s no redundancies, they’re okay with it. I’ll still be popping into the office, I’ll still be around for at least two years in an advisory capacity.

PG: And Scott Bartlett, your lieutenant, will be the CEO?

SW: Yeah, essentially I’d already stepped back a bit anyway. With a company the size of Orcon it’s important to spend a lot of time thinking about what’s next. You can’t get too caught up in the day to day issues or you can wake up and find you’ve been going in the wrong direction for two years.

PG: So the future, alternative energy technologies, are there good opportunities to invest here?

SW: I’m passionate about business, that’s number one, New Zealand is number two. The thing I’m concerned about is basically if we’re already past peak oil [production] and some of the wells start to dry up and the price goes to US$120 a barrel, then New Zealand is at serious risk of collapse because we haven’t got the densely populated cities. If you had a global price shock like the 1970s, the countries that do well will be the ones that have all their population gathered in one place. With New Zealand, everything in this country is run on gasoline, you have to have a car, and public transport is not good enough. We have to stop this urban sprawl. People need to get into more densely populated areas where there’s a subway infrastructure. We’re obviously not going to be able to build that infrastructure in the next five to ten years. If there is a serious oil shock, New Zealand will be at its mercy, particularly for things like exports.

The only country that will do well is Brazil, because 60 – 70 per cent of their cars run on ethanol produced by sugar cane, which is six times more effective at producing ethanol than corn.

New Zealand should be able to produce ethanol technologies and the Maui gas fields.

We should be working on complete energy independence.

PG: You’re moving out of a field that’s complicated enough and into one even more so. Are you going to go on a fact-finding mission to some of these places using alternative fuel sources.

SW: I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I’ll try and work my contacts, ask government officials. If a light bulb switches on in my head and I decide the best thing to do is buy a heap of land in the South Island and start growing sugar cane, that’s what I’ll do.

Solar generation or green homes.

If I can start a company that provides green technology to homes, it’s a way to start.

PG: How’s Orcon Racing going?

SW: It hasn’t been in operation this season.

PG: What happened?

SW: We didn’t sponsor the car this reason for two reasons – Orcon is focusing on call to action marketing rather than branding. Potentially motor racing is going to become a bit un-PC. Because I have environmental concerns I started thinking gasoline is in short supply, there’s all this concern about global warming, we don’t necessarily want to be involved in a sport that in two years time everyone is up in arms about.

PG: You did a sabbatical a while back right?

SW: Yeah I’ve seen a good portion of the planet. I’ll do some more.

PG: That’s the plan, take some time and explore?

SW: Yeah, I just came back from China so I’m a bit tired. But there are a lot of things I want to see. If I’m interested in environmental things, it may give me a better perspective while I’m traveling. One of the huge un-harnessed technologies is wave power. The ocean is always moving. If we can have submerged power generators creating power by the motion of the sea, that would be ideal.

I get the feeling we need to keep our nuclear material for use in the future. I don’t think it’s a smart idea to go burning it all up. We may need it for exploring the stars or powering space ships. It would be really sad if we saved the planet but in 500 years time we’ve got these ambitious plans to colonise the stars but were 20 pounds short of uranium or something.

Palm’s big fumble?

by Peter Griffin | from the Herald on Sunday

Remember the little gadget that seemingly started the whole mobile computing craze, the Palm Pilot?

It came out in 1996, had a grayscale screen, a measly 128KB of memory and no wireless connections.

But it had Graffiti - a clever handwriting recognition system that was very easy to use. It meant you could use the Palm Pilot’s pen to scribble notes into the device - no need for a keyboard.

I got my first Palm Pilot, the Vx, in 2000, and with the collapsible keyboard I bought with it, I was able to tap out stories and emails wherever I was, sending them over the mobile network via a cable linked to my Nokia mobile. By this stage, Palm had sold truckloads of its little Pilots.

But then Palm started to lose the plot. There were organisational changes; its founders became frustrated with new owner 3Com and went off to start the rival Handspring. They returned, but Palm got left behind with the rise of Windows-based mobile PDAs (personal digital assistants) such as the Compaq iPaq.

ch combined the PDA and the phone, and that has been the dominant model ever since. The PDA is in decline, while Research In Motion’s Blackberry, the Nokia Communicator, Sony Ericsson’s P900 and Palm’s own Treo have been the devices of choice for busy, email-obsessed executives.

Which makes the arrival of Palm’s latest gadget, the Foleo, very surprising indeed. It is basically a stripped-down computer - it has no hard drive, just 128MB of read-only memory and 256MB for storing data. It’s based on the Linux operating system, uses the Opera web browser, weighs 1.1kg and provides up to five hours battery life. It’s designed to be instantly turned on - no booting up, as you’d expect with Microsoft Windows.

In effect, it’s an under-powered, if lightweight, laptop. The peculiar thing is that it has been designed to be used in tandem with a smartphone. Bluetooth wireless networking links the Foleo to a Treo or a Blackberry and syncs all programs, updating them on the smartphone as you type on the Foleo.

The only advantages seem to be the full-sized keyboard and a decent screen - you still have to carry a smartphone.

Coming from Jeff Hawkins, who kicked off the revolution when he invented the Palm Pilot, is the Foleo another stroke of genius? The industry doesn’t seem to think so.

“We believe the Foleo offers too little functionality to justify the burden of carrying around another device,” analyst group Gartner concluded.

In fact, most people seem to be scratching their heads over the Foleo, which seems to go against the trends - multi-function smartphones and ever-smaller laptops.

Numerous technology companies have focused on building scale-down laptops that run on Windows and offer all the functions of a regular laptop in a smaller format, with less memory and hard drive resources. Hawkins thinks that approach is failing.

“There is no initial customer for ultra-mobile PCs. It’s like a little broken PC. Who wants that? Very few people. Just miniaturising something isn’t the right solution,” he told tech website CNet.com.

Technology observers are always intrigued when someone goes against the flow, because that someone may be the next Steve Jobs, who in the 1980s pushed on with his Apple Macintosh despite crushing competition from the Windows-based personal computer. But Hawkins may have miscalculated this time. After all, debuting in the US at US$499 ($660) - with a current US$100 ($130) cash rebate - the Foleo isn’t that cheap, and it doesn’t replace your primary computer, anyway. I think Hawkins had the right idea with Palm’s foldable keyboard all those years ago - a highly functional smartphone with a decent screen and an expandable keyboard for those who need to type up lengthy documents.

But Palm believes the Foleo will form the third pillar of its business - the Treo Smartphone and its sagging PDA business being the other two. How successful the likes of Sony and Samsung will be with their ultra-mobile computers will determine whether the Foleo turns out to be Palm’s crowning glory or its biggest folly.

Mobile vs WiMax for 2.5GHZ spectrum

CONNECT | from the New Zealand Herald

Mobile phone operators are set to claim a larger share of the broadband market in the next couple of years, but one factor may hold these services back – a lack of radio spectrum to deliver them over the air.

Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson estimates the current European mobile operators will have run out of radio spectrum by 2010. That makes the looming auctions of 2.5GHZ (gigahertz) spectrum across Europe highly contentious to mobile operators who just six years ago shelled out billions for licences in the first wave of “3G” spectrum auctions.

The mobile industry sees the radio spectrum as crucial to maintaining the flat-rate charging model that has emerged in Europe for mobile data services.

“In Europe we have 3.6 [megabits per second] service, no data cap, and I mean no cap, for 20 euros a month,” said Mikael Halen, Ericsson’s director for government and industry.

Halen met with Government officials this week, urging them to ensure December’s state auction for 2.5Ghz (gigahertz) radio spectrum be structured to make it attractive for mobile operators to obtain spectrum.

“It’s an extremely important band for providing mobile services and it’s critical for the introduction of Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology which will come to market in 2009,” he said.

By 2009, Ericsson claims that LTE, an evolution of the system currently used by Vodafone and other many other operators, will offer download speeds of up to 100Mbps. That is sufficient for most voice and data services, bar high-definition TV which is better delivered via satellite, ground broadcast or fixed-line connections.

Communications minister David Cunliffe last week revealed a December auction would see two blocks of spectrum put up for sale, in the 2.3Ghz and 2.5GHz bands.

“The new auction can allow for up to six nationwide users and a generous managed park of at least 30 MHz and potentially up to or exceeding 50 MHz. This will ensure plenty of space for smaller and regional providers, including those with a focus on delivering services to Maori,” Cunliffe said.

Both bands are suitable for the provision of wireless broadband services based on the WiMax service and operators CallPlus and Woosh have expressed interest in obtaining spectrum to develop national networks.

But Halen believes CallPlus and Woosh are unlikely to ever offer mass-market services based on WiMax.

“They have an uphill struggle. They’re smaller and they have spectrum in the higher bands which makes it more difficult to penetrate buildings and build coverage.”

But the biggest problem they face, says Halen is also inherent in the CDMA technology

Telecom is now about to replace – a lack of global scale.

That means higher technology development costs, less choice in handsets and an inability to match the mobile operators on pricing plans.

“Generally mobile operators aren’t at all interested in WiMax,” said Halen.

“Their enthusiasm has diminished considerably in the last half year.”

While Halen believes WiMaz services can be delivered using the 2.3GHz spectrum, bidding for the 2.5Ghz block between established mobile operators and fledgling WiMax start-ups is likely to be fierce.

Ironically Ericsson, which built Telecom’s now-decommissioned 025 mobile network, may be left out of local mobile developments for some time to come.

As the Herald reported last week, Telecom is understood to be finalizing a $300 - $400 million deal with its existing outsourcing partner Alcatel Lucent to build a new network based on the same GSM/UMTS standards commonly used around the world.

Ericsson had begun building TelstraClear’s Tauranga-based “Unplugged” network before the project was last month canceled and the network dismantled.

Aspiring new entrant, New Zealand Communications is using Chinese vendor Huawei to build its mobile network and Nokia is well entrenched in the Vodafone camp.

But Halen’s message seems relatively non-partisan and advocates mobile operators in general having the first bite at 2.5GHz spectrum.

“Our suggestion is that when you do the [radio frequency] band allocation, make sure they have access to technologies that are available with huge scale advantage,” said Halen.

The Government will release a discussion paper by August which will outline the technicalities of how it expects to carve up spectrum in the auction. Ultimately, said Halen, broadband was being viewed as essential infrastructure in most countries, hence the growing interest in partial or full government funding of broadband networks.

“It’s like electricity or water. It’s essential everyone in the country gets access to it,” he said.

“That’s the way it will go around the world, including New Zealand.”

Running out of spectrum

• Mobile operators are running out of radio spectrum making the 2.5GHz (gigahertz) spectrum auctions happening around the world crucial to expanding their services.
• The Government will auction two lots of spectrum in December, which will likely see mobile operators and new WiMax players competing for licences.
• Mobile broadband is increasingly seen as an alternative to fixed line services as its reliable data speeds increase.

The view from the street

WEBWALK | from the New Zealand Herald
by Peter Griffin

Google’s new Street View service is pretty symbolic of where the web is going. First we had Google Maps which game geographical information, then Google Earth which added satellite maps to the mix. Then the maps were mashed-up to include everything from holiday photos to Wal-Mart outlets. Now Google takes us to street level and confronts us with the reality we’ve only seen before from a bird’s eye view.

It’s all about adding more detail, more clarity, going deeper into the data, re-using the same underlying technology to layer on yet more useful services. That’s the new internet for you.

But how much information is too much information? That’s the debate raging over Street View at the moment, touching on important issues such as privacy, copyright and human rights.

But first the technology – Street View is very impressive. It’s only available for a handful of US cities at the moment but the potential is obvious. It gives you the ability to stand at a busy intersection in New York and pan around 360 degrees to see the lie of the land in full colour.

It’s great to be able to get a street-level feel for a place rather than depending on blurry web cameras or the photo-shopped images the tourism industry wants you to see. Once the maps are fleshed out with more Street View locations from around the world, it will be really useful.

How is it put together? Google uses images from a company called Immersive Media which for the last couple of years has sent people driving around the US and Canada in grey Volkswagen Beetles with multi-lens cameras attached to them. The special cameras capture images as they go and those images are then plotted on streets on Google Maps, matched up using GPS co-ordinates. What is impressive is that you can get down to street level and then follow an arrow to travel along at street level.

Using Street View reminded me of the overlooked New Zealand service Roadworks Street Scroll which features photographs of the main streets of Auckland from street level, giving you one big panorama of the likes of Queen Street, Ponsonby Road and the Viaduct Basin.

Street Scroll was ahead of its time when its creator Matthew Hart started putting it together back in 2000.

“It was a New Zealand first. Now we see everyone else trying to bite at our ankles,” says Hart, who was in the process of negotiating a deal to license the street-scrolling technology to a US company when the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center occurred.

“We were going to get $25,000 per state,” says Hart. “We spent a year on the deal and it was almost ready to happen.” Post 9-11 jitters killed the deal, though Roadworks had started photography in the US – you can see both sides of the Las Vegas strip on its website.

Hart has a New Zealand patent for the street-scrolling imaging technology and is going through the patent application process in the US. He realises that even if he secured it, enforcing the patent would be difficult given the size of rivals like Google and Microsoft, which is developing its own service, Street-Side.

“I don’t know if I’d be in a position to fight them,” says Hart. “It costs a hell of a lot of money to do that.”

Roadworks has photographed a few overseas locations, notably, both sides of the Las Vegas strip and version three will include Flash video and the ability for shop keepers to dynamically update their shop fronts to keep things fresh. Hart also wants to photograph the entire New Zealand coast – one giant scroll around the Queen’s Chain. Good luck to him, it’s a fantastic idea.

As for the privacy concerns around Street View, I think they are being over-played. After all, a newspaper photographer can stand in the middle of a public place and take photos legally and have them published to be viewed by a massive audience. Why shouldn’t a company or a member of the public be allowed to?

I’m perfectly happy for someone to take a photo of the front of my house, as long as they do so from the road and stay off my property.

Obviously there has to be some policing. Street View needs to steer clear of all the things the mainstream media currently has to avoid - like nudity, violence, photos of school playgrounds, that sort of stuff. There also needs to be scope for take down requests so people who are offended at appearing in random shots can have them removed.

Still, Street View may run into trouble in places like the European Union, which has strong laws around publishing photos of people without their consent. It’s one thing to take a photo of someone in public, it’s another to publish that photo without their consent, especially if it could cause them distress. I’m sure the woman showing off her G-string to the world on Street View wasn’t too impressed about being snapped for the world to see. But where should the line be drawn?

I’m comfortable with Street View as it is. Anything I do in public I do assuming that everyone can see me anyway. I hope the service flourishes, but what’s the next step? Web cameras covering every street and constantly updating as feeds in Google Maps? High magnification zoom cameras that let people peek between your blinds?

That’s a little voyeuristic for me. Being photographed at a point in time at a reasonably low resolution is one thing, being digitally stalked via web camera, as happened to some unfortunate sunbathers at Mt Maunganui beach a couple of years ago, is another. There are already thousands of web cameras covering public places.

But there needs to be provisions preventing someone on the other side of the world from watching me without my knowledge, when I’m in my home. I think they’d find the view of the street far more interesting anyway.

On the web:
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview
http://preview.local.live.com/
www.roadworks.co.nz
www.immersivemedia.com

The Vast long tail

Below is my Webwalk column from last week’s Herald about how one of my favorite bands, Vast, has managed to harness the long tail to stay independent in the music industry. There are thousands of stories like this but Vast’s example is one I’ve followed closely as a fan and someone who has downloaded their music.

By the way, Vast is a fantastic, highly under-rated band. They’re hard to put in a box, but there’s a bit of Nine Inch Nails in there, some Garbage, echoes of U2 and New Order. It’s melodic, luscious sounding hard-edged rock and Jon Crosby is a great vocalist who pens thoughtful lyrics. A good starting point with Vast is their first album Visual Audio Sensory Theater. Music For People was a terrific follow-up to that. Once you’ve tried those two, there’s a Vast world to explore.

Webwalk
The New Zealand music chart began counting songs downloaded via the internet this week and already the change is noticeable.

As the Recording Industry Association pointed out yesterday, hip hop and R&B songs are climbing higher up the Top 40 chart, largely due to the fact that music downloads to mobile phones are now counted.

And Regina Spektor’s catchy single Fidelity debuted at number 16 thanks to digital downloads. It wasn’t released as a CD single here, only as a digital download and on the album Begin To Hope.

The changing shape of the charts illustrate how the internet is being used to get music to a diverse range of niche audiences, something known as the “long tail” effect. It means that in future, the charts may not be full of only those acts that are receiving the most airplay and industry promotion, but also acts that have successfully captured the attention of the online community.

It made me think of one little music industry story of the long tail I’ve been following closely.

One of my favourite bands is an inventive rock outfit appropriately called Vast (Visual Audio Sensory Theater). It’s the creation of American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jon Crosby, who much like Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, likes to twiddle away in the studio on his own, comfortable working in the digital medium.

Vast flirted with big label success at the turn of the century after its song Touched appeared on the soundtrack to the Leo DiCaprio movie The Beach.

There were a lot of rave reviews.

“VAST will appropriately be huge,” proclaimed Kerrang magazine in 1999.

But Vast was dropped by Elektra when its sophomore album Music for People failed to make an impact on the charts.

So Crosby signed with small, independent label 456 Entertainment to release his third album Nude.

“There were so many problems dealing with them on every level,” says Crosby in an interview on Realvast.com.

“I feel we made a big mistake not believing in ourselves enough and doing it on our own.”

For every album since, Vast has gone it alone and gone digital, releasing its music primarily via the internet.

It was an acknowledgement by Crosby that maybe his music isn’t really for the mass market after all. But in the era of the long tail that doesn’t matter, because numerous lucrative niches can be reached via the internet.

Crosby set up his own label and media company 2Blossom.com.

As a Vast fan its great for me. Getting hold of the band’s albums even in specialist music stores like Real Groovy has always been tricky. After all, why would retailers devote shelf space to an album that isn’t a hot seller?

Now I can just download the albums through the website. The music is free of digital rights management, the files are mp3s encoded at 320Kbps (kilobits per second), which is CD quality. I can pay with my credit card via PayPal.

Best of all the music is very good value, too good really. I just downloaded Vast’s new album April, which cost me an embarrassingly paltry US$5.

But because Crosby owns the music and the record label, he’s not getting a mere slice of album sales, he’s now getting every cent.

Artists signed to major labels receive as little as US$1 per full-priced album they sell Cutting out the music industry middlemen means more money goes directly into the artist’s pocket. Without the marketing muscle of a record company which can hold great sway over which artists get radio play, which in turn influences music sales, an artist is unlikely to sell as much music.

But bypassing the traditional music industry business model has become viable, thanks to the rise of digital music download services and social networking websites that act as a digital hub for an artist’s fan base. The most notable examples are Myspace.com and Facebook.com. Vast has fan communities on both sites.

“The days of the aloof rock star are over,” says Crosby.

“Now more than ever doing new things is important, and if you can’t keep up with what’s going on, you’re left in the dust.”

In addition, since 2005, he has been selling annual subscriptions to the Vast fan club for $36 which includes a greatest hits compilation, audio commentaries on Vast albums and the chance to buy VIP ticket to shows. There have been 745 downloads of those – worth around US$27,000.

It’s not the big money usually associated with the music industry, but with music sales, touring and merchandise, it may be enough for a Crosby and his band mates to earn a living – and keep control of their destiny.

Crosby seems to like the model: “I feel like for the first time I have found my niche and my voice.”

This way of doing business will become the norm for all sorts of industries, but especially the creative, publishing and technology sectors which are most comfortable dealing in the digital medium.

For New Zealand entrepreneurs located far from our key markets, the opportunity that lies in the long tail is, well, vast.

A crack at the record books

My Herald on Sunday column about the Earthrace team abandoning their bid to circumnavigate the globe in their bio-diesel powered boat. The boat cracked after receiving a battering in the Mediterranean but it looks like the team may make a fresh attempt next year. Here’s hoping it’s smoother sailing second time around …

Tomorrow’s world

They had a futuristic-looking boat, the noble intention of powering it with clean-burning biodiesel and the goal of motoring around the world in record time.

But the Earthrace expedition, its largely New Zealand crew headed by former oil exploration engineer Peter Bethune, on Friday abandoned its circumnavigation of the world.

The Earthrace boat cracked after receiving a major pounding in the Mediterranean and the time it would take to haul it out of the water and repair it would have made it impossible for the team to make the dash to San Diego and beat the 75 day circumnavigation record set by British boat Cable & Wireless in 1998.

Following the race on the internet, I was relieved when the boat successfully passed through the Suez Canal and into what I thought would be the relative safety of the Mediterranean. After all, the racers had endured so much. A week after setting out on its voyage on March 10, Earthrace was involved in a night-time collision with a fishing skiff off the coast of Guatemala which resulted in one of the fishing boat’s crew being killed.

If that wasn’t enough, it was also dogged by funding shortfalls and engine and propeller problems.

Reading the blog postings on the Earthrace website gives you an appreciation for the courage Bethune displayed in carrying on despite all these set backs.

On March 28 he writes of meeting the family of the fisherman killed in the crash with the skiff: “All were there except for Gonzalez, the man still in hospital. I start to speak to the group and there’s already a sore ache in my throat. Thirty seconds later and I start to cry, and that just sets of a chain reaction amongst almost everyone there.”

A few weeks later, with Earthrace plagued with technical problems, he ponders: “What if the crash hadn’t occurred? What if the original propellers had been OK? A whole series of incidents, that sees us in a difficult situation on a tiny Pacific island.”

It would have been nice to see Earthrace complete the 24,000 nautical mile trip and slip into San Diego in enough time to claim the world record. That won’t happen now, but what of the expedition’s real mission – to raise awareness of biodiesel fuels?

Well, the crew was interviewed wherever they touched land and pushed the biodiesel message. I saw Bethune on CNN late one night with a reporter from Singapore who went up to the Malaysian fields where the crops that made the fuel filling Earthrace’s tanks were harvested.

It wasn’t the biodiesel that held back Earthrace, though getting a regular supply of it, particularly in the Pacific ocean proved difficult at times and Bethune reluctantly had to fall back on conventional diesel at one point. The biofuel came from a wide range of suppliers and was derived from various cash crops.

Biodiesel production and usage is growing quickly around the world and new methods of biodiesel production are constantly appearing.

Marlborough company Aquaflow Bionomic last year produced what it claimed to be the world’s first samples of biodiesel fuel made from algae in sewage ponds.

But in the US, the fledgling industry faces major channels with the rising price of soybeans, a primary crop used for biodiesel there.

According to a study by economists at Iowa State University, US biodiesel production will double this year to 500 million, which accounts for around one per cent of US diesel consumption.

Corn-based ethanol production could grow to 15 billion gallons per year over the next 10 years according to the study which argues that further Government subsidies will have to be made available to encourage investment in biodiesel refineries.

In general, the business model for producing biodiesel still has plenty of kinks in it and will do until government policies to promote its production are widespread and crop growers and biodiesel makers alike are able to make a reasonable rate of return from their alternative fuel investments. The buy-in of the consumers of oil is also crucial.

The trials and tribulations of Earthrace are synonymous to those of the biodiesel industry itself. But like Earthrace’s goal to get around the world in less than 75 days was ultimately achievable, so too is a viable, global industry in cleaner fuels. It won’t be easy to get there, but as Bethune can attest to, its one goal worth making a considerable effort to meet.

Sgt. Pepper vs. Floyd’s Piper

A flood of news stories arrived over the weekend to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the June 1, 1967 release of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I’ve seen plenty of superlatives used to describe the album, which some reviewers have hailed as the best rock and roll album ever. One went as far as labeling Sgt. Pepper “a decisive moment in the history of Western civilisation”.

I agree with Ringo Starr, who believes The White Album and Revolver are better than Sgt. Pepper.

Overall, Sgt. Pepper is not an album that’s enjoyable to listen to from beginning to end. It doesn’t get much play time on my stereo. That’s in sharp contrast to Pink Floyd’s masterpiece Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which was recorded at the very same time in the studio next to the one occupied by the Beatles at Abbey Road. The Beatles were fully aware of what the Floyd were recording next door and the influence Syd Barrett’s work on Piper had on McCartney and Lennon seems pretty obvious. Piper At The Gates of Dawn was released in August 1967 and did extremely well in its own right. But songs like Interstellar Overdrive and Astronomy Domine weren’t particularly radio friendly.

In my book, Piper is far more memorable and significant an album that Sgt. Pepper. I hope there’s some recognition of that when the album hits 40 in August!

Meanwhile, the Floyd fan website, Brain-damage.co.uk, has some great photos from the Syd Barrett tribute concert held last month in London and featuring Roger Waters (and the rest of the band performing separately to him).

Telecom changes tack on mobile

UPDATE: A more in-depth Herald piece looking at the implications of Telecom’s shift in mobile strategy and my cHerald comment piece here. The Sunday Star Times business editor Tim Hunter explains the mobile roaming revenue Telecom can expect to tap into when it has a foot in the GSM/UMTS camp.

Juha’s scoop gives some interesting details of Telecom’s decision to spend $300 - $400 million on a GSM/UMTS network, confirming rumours that Telecom has been looking to extricate itself from CDMA.

I blogged about it in detail my Herald blog early this morning. So far, no official confirmation of the leak from Telecom and its shares are not on a trading halt, which is unusual given a development that is so material to Telecom’s business has been revealed. There’ll be lots of angles to this story. For instance:
- What will it mean for the newly flush New Zealand Communications which is set to build a GSM network itself? Maybe it’s a good thing as it will open up GSM roaming options.
- What about TelstrsClear? Will it exit the 029 arrangement with Vodafone in favour of some wholesale deal with Telecom?
- What about the hybrid network model Juha talks of, where CDMA is kept for high-speed data. How will this work for customers? Will they need dual-mode handsets to talk and use data? Will
EV-DO be restructed to PC data cards?
- What will Telecom do with its Hutchison 3G partnership? How will it leverage H3G services over here?

A few comments via the Herald:

From Keith:
Interesting comments about Telecom going GSM. I have been a Telecom mobile customer since 1989. I take a bit of an exception to your comment about CDMA being a bad choice. I have found call clarity and connections generally to be better with 025/027. In the early days 025/027 was far superior. Admittedly that may have changed in more recent times. Equally, my reading of the mobile data situation was that the Telecom products have offered better speed. Perhaps the only bad part of the decision is that the rest of the world went with a different standard. Had they gone CDMA then Telecom’s choice would have looked inspired!

As for a better selection of handsets. So what! It may be important for geeks and fashionistas but the rest of us get by with the Telecom selection (currently I have a Treo 600). I also have a work 021, a very nice and expensive Nokia, which I like. As for the Motorola RAZR phones, my previous experience with Motorola phones and modems including cable modems is that they are hopelessly unreliable. This was confirmed very recently when the boss “upgraded” to a Motorola RAZR which managed to die just prior to his overseas trip. I wouldn’t touch Motorola gear, no matter how nice it looks. I’ve also managed to persuade my kids to avoid it as well.

Telecom didn’t really have much choice by the looks of it, but for most of us it comes down to price and service, not technology.

Of course, with number portability maybe none of it matters. Not that the networks are saying much about that. Where is it at?

From Mark:
Interesting story on Telecom NZ move to GSM. I left NZ in April 1996 and went to work in Vietnam, where GSM mobile phone connections outnumber landlines by a considerable amount. I quickly realised (as you do when you work outside NZ) that a good proportion of the rest of the world also used it, and on my first trip back six weeks later gave my 027 phone to my wife and have been a Vodafone customer ever since. Interestingly, at the same time a good friend of mine owned (and still does) a Telecom franchise in New Plymouth and had no qualms telling me that CDMA would take over the world and texting would never take off. I could never convince him at the time that I thought Telecoms was a poor choice and that the rest of the world was moving in a different direction. I now own a triband Smartphone and use it in the US, Europe, the Middle East and SE Asia, roaming all of the time on Vodafone. It even worked in Brazil!

From Olga:
Your article is interesting but to share another aspect with you, as it happens Vodafone are erecting a tower & base outside my house today. This is despite my cries to Auckland City and Vodafone to move over it over the road where there are no houses.

So possibly this explains their hard stance with me.
There are bigger more powerful reasons, e.g. Telecom using the same facilities? Who cares about the safety (traffic concerns as base box obscures road & frequencies of units etc) of people when theres more profit to be made. Maybe the next time we read the glowing reports in the business section of the papers, you can highlight that the real price is being paid by a handful of affected people sacrificed for the sake of profit. What do you think??

Zinwell moves to fix Freeview glitches

Here’s the deal: New Zealand rolls out digital TV, claiming that being years behind the rest of the world in doing so means we’ll do it better, learn from the mistakes of others.

So our Freeview consortium goes and accredits only two suppliers of satellite receivers, to the outrage of set-top box importers who want their own various boxes accredited. One of those “official” suppliers, Zinwell, then delivers dodgy, faulty set-top boxes to the New Zealand public. How exactly did boxes causing serious radio frequency interference get C-tick certified? Bizarre. This is Zinwell’s business, it sells set-top boxes around the world. What’s its quality control processes like if it can’t handle something that basic?

Next Electronics, which acts as the service agent for the Zinwell boxes, put the below press release out last night, the first official acknowledgement from it and Zinwell that there is an issue with the Freeview receivers:Zinwell ZMX-7500 Freeview Digital Receiver

Since the launch of Freeview on 2^nd May and the retail sale of a significant number of Zinwell set-top-boxes we have had a 4.0% warranty return rate.

In introducing any new broadcasting technology into a country minor interference and or interface problems can be experienced due to varying standards of TV and audio systems’ interconnections.

Prior to the launch of the service both Zinwell and Freeview tested many units over an extended period and did not find the faults which have subsequently come to light.

These minor manufacturing defects have been investigated and will all be rectified shortly.

We are pleased to say that the experience of most installers with the Zinwell unit has been positive and they have had no problems installing them.

A new shipment of the product has arrived in NZ and will be used to replace units for customers who are experiencing any faults. This will be done on a case-by-case by basis by NEXT Electronics.

The warranty process is as follows:

1. Warranty card in each box
2. 12 months warranty
3. Total replacement
4. Contact NEXT Electronics on 0800 GO NEXT (0800 466 398)

No answer to the "man drought" here

TOMORROW’S WORLD

My Herald on Sunday column (not online yet but published below)

It’s taken six years to find out, but the zookeepers at Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska finally know how the female hammerhead shark that was in their care managed to get pregnant on her own.

Scientists revealed last week that DNA profiling showed the shark’s baby contained no paternal DNA. That means no dad and the first recorded example of a shark reproducing on its own.

(Graphic: Phil Welch Herald on Sunday)

Such an occurrence is known as parthenogenesis, virtually translated from Greek as “virgin birth” and is reasonably common in nature. A number of species are able to reproduce without fertilization by a male. Several species of insects, bony fish, reptiles like the whiptail gecko and the Komodo dragon can reproduce asexually.

It is virtually unknown in mammals however in 2004 a team at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, were able to produce a mouse that was the daughter of two females.

Kaguya the mouse, as she became known, was created from the genetic material of two egg cells – not a male sperm in sight. Scientists have baulked at the idea of applying the method to humans. There’s no guarantee it would work anyway as Kaguya was pretty much a fluke, the only success in hundreds of delicate attempts to reconstruct eggs. But the experiment has proven valuable in researching fertility techniques for normal conception in female humans.

While parthenogenesis helps several species reproduce, it doesn’t allow for as great genetic diversity as when a male impregnates a female.

Bees are a good example of this. While the queen bee is the only bee that gives birth, replenishing the entire population of the hive, female bees will often resort to laying their own eggs if their queen happens to die. This is a “non-viable” version of parthenogenesis, because the female worker bees can only produce male “drone” bees which in turn can only mate with the queen. With no queen in the hive, the population starts to die off.

It is for this reason that confirmation of parthenogenesis in the hammer head shark has been met with dismay from some quarters. For many scientists, it’s a sign that the world shark population is adapting to meet its own population shortage, one caused by over-fishing. Female sharks may be resorting to parthenogenesis when they can’t find a mate. If more of this is to happen, the genetic diversity of sharks will be diluted, lessening the species’ ability to adapt to environmental changes.

That’s a bad thing given the importance of sharks to the marine food chain. At least now we know what got the hammerhead pregnant and can start to look at whether the same process is happening among sharks in the wild. Such research is essential. It’s the only way we can really gauge the impact on procreation the world’s environmental changes are having.

Freeview headaches

This story I wrote for the Herald this week about problems with one of the Freeview satellite receivers sparked a big email response. Interestingly, the email isn’t really coming from consumers who are having problems with the new Zinwell set-top box. It is coming from people in the industry who actually want to sell and install the box but fear a backlash because they know it is faulty. Usually the tech industry covers things up until consumers get so annoyed with dodgy products that they go to the press, then you have try and extract the truth from the industry while it scrambles to fix the problem, while playing it down to the media. I like the inversion of things in this case. Take the letter below that was written by an installer to the managing director of Zinwell.

Also included is another email which claims the radio frequency interference is “just the tip of the ice berg”. I’m interested in hearing the experiences of consumers who have been early into Freeview. Anyone bought the Zinwell box? Any problem encountered?

UPDATE: Sam has written to me saying: I had your NZ Herald article pointed out to me by a friend who I’d been discussing my Zinwell set top box decoder issues with. I picked mine up from Harvey Norman a few weeks back - I think it was the weekend they became available. It picks up 3 and C4 with no issues, but I haven’t been able to get 1 or 2. I went back to Harvey Norman today and they said that Freeview are going to be pushing out an update over the air in the next few days which should address some of the problems. Hopefully that’ll get me (and others) working - dunno … I’ll see what happens I guess.

Dear Peter — I write to ask if you were aware of all the problems with the Freeview platform. As someone involved I can tell you that there have been a lot of mistakes and the “scene” at the moment is deathly quiet.

Below is a copy of an Email I sent yest to the CEO of Zinwell Aust. They are having major problems but the real story is that we have cracked it all - completely - offered a solution for a cost and have had zero response. Things are not good. Was wondering if you had any new info or would like to discuss the problems further. Yours sincerely …..

TO: Whaddon Selby-Adams

Dear Whaddon - I am compelled to write and ask if you have any idea of the damage currently being done to the name “Zinwell.”? Daily, we are almost beseiged by frustrated Techs unable to get boxes to function correctly and swearing to never try a Zinwell product again. Same goes for store managers. I understand you are continuing with software updates but, as at 3pm, boxes were not functioning correctly. Late this afternoon I had a call from a frustrated lawyer without 3, 4 etc. He quoted the Fair Trading Act and wanted to know why a recall had not been announced.

This is affecting all of us in the industry and I hear comments like “Freeview is a dog.” I fear the damage done to the Zinwell name is almost irretrievable with NEXT running a very HOT second, but there is an immediate solution. As you know, we can tell you precisely how to fix all known issues and I would strongly, strenuously urge you to phone Alf and negotiate something with him. He has my total backing and support.

An immediate solution could recover lost ground handled the right way and, be done before Hills have boxes for sale late this week.

I cannot stress how urgent all this from the view out here in the field. It is compromising the whole initiation of the Freeview platform.

Check all the sales figures! The cheap Chinese boxes with a poor picture will take over.

This is a time when immediate action is needed before the Press get hold of what is happening. Questions are being asked.

I urge you to contact Alf.

I hate writing this ———- Yours sincerely …

____________________________________________________________________

Dear Peter, I read your article on the Zinwell box and I feel that you have been hoodwinked by Freeview and Zinwell.

The problems that you have pointed out are only the tip of the iceberg. There has been two major problems since the launch date 2nd May, and they are:

1. The receiver will not tune into transponder freq 12456 which is the Canwest/National Radio carrier. Next Electronics (Zinwell Distributor) has been telling installers, retailers and customers that it is a transmission problem, that is a load of bunkum. Every other receiver on the market is working fine, even on so called Old Sky dishes. There is no issue with dish alignment as you have been lead to believe. 2. There is also a problem with picture freezing which can only be remedied by disconnecting the power from the box for thirty seconds and they will tell you that it is a result of the remote buttons being pushed too fast, another load of rubbish as they will freeze up without going anywhere near the remote. With some customers it is regularly happening every half hour or so.

The RF problem is one of the minor problems that are not mentioned above. the frustrating part of it all is the denial from Next Electronics and Zinwell. They have continued to allow these boxes to be sold knowing that there are many problems with the box.

A full product recall is still not out of the question as I firmly believe that they have not got any further in a result from when the problems were discovered. They need to stop selling the boxes immediately, they are just a very inferior product.

I am an experienced installer of many years and like others in the industry will not attend a job where it involves a Zinwell box.

They need to take ownership of the problem and sort it out.

The case for Trade Me having an API

Evan from Auctionitis sent me the following email in response to my Webwalk column about Trade Me’s lack of an API. This discussion has been going on at www.rowansimpson.com. Rowan has just left Trade Me to join on a part time basis, accounting software start-up Xero.
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It won’t come as any surprise at all that I would fall into the camp of those that think an API would be a useful thing for TradeMe to provide. Some thoughts that I feel are relevent to the idea follow.

The point a number of people made in various guises about providing an API for your sellers is important. Providing an API so sellers can use a tool, or tie their own software to Trademe allows them to reap the efficiency of a user interface optimised towards selling and how they want to do things and away from the standard browser interface which while ubiquitous is a terrible data entry tool. It also reduces the barrier to entry that the current labour intensive model raises for existing businesses that want to use TradeMe as a genuine alternative to their existing sales channels. An API binds these people and businesses more tightly to TradeMe.

As to the dynamic nature of the changes on TradeMe, my assessment would be that the majority of these changes are at the presentation layer rather than the data layer, although I’m open to correction on this point. Even the most basic API would be insulated from these changes in the majority of cases, as the API would bypass the presentation layer. This would probably have the neat side-effect of reducing bandwith thereby indirectly benfitting the other users,most especially the buyers - the real TradeMe audience. When data changes occur it is a simple matter of communication.

If you control the API, you also have the option to impose standards and conditions on it’s use - you gain more control not less. eBay allow endorsement of third party products after a QA review - what better way to ensure the quality of what third parties do and therefore the experience of your users ?

There are also unexpected benefits that can accrue from the use of an API might, for example, in the case of Auctionitis the number of pictures stored on the Trademe servers was reduced by (in some cases) a factor of 10. In a couple of cases sellers storing 4,000 or 5,000 pictures on the TradeMe servers reduced that number to 400 or 500. This came about because we provided a mechanism to assist sellers in not having to load the same picture over and over again each time an auction was loaded. They saved bandwidth, they loaded more product, TradeMe reduced storage. It’s likely that the reduction was minimal in the scheme of things, but it demonstrates what might happen.

It’s pretty reasonable to look for a return on the effort, but the most obvious return would be the number of listings that established businesses could/might throw Trademe’s way - especially businesses that currently DON’T sell on TradeMe. At the moment, third party tool makers are largely confined to trying to capture existing TradeMe sellers who understand the effort involved in listing items and are looking for a more efficient system. They largely accept the risk of using an unofficial interface because they are able to quantify it against the effort and expense of entering data through a browser.

Imagine if those third parties were actively recruiting businesses to sell on TradeMe - effectively a free saes force extolling the benefits of TradeMe.

Most of the technical questions are easily answered or solved; I think it’s more a case of TradeMe seeing the benefits that could accrue for TradeMe and going after them.

Interview: Malcolm Dick of CallPlus

Here’s my Weekend Herald interview with Malcolm Dick, the telecoms industry veteran who founded CallPlus. Dick is a real pioneer in the local telecoms industry. His understated style has also won him a lot of respect. He’s managed to beat Telecom over the head on many occasions without it coming across as grandstanding. That sort of thing was left to his estranged wife Annette Presley and was more her style. I hope Dick’s WiMax plans come off because we need an alternative access provider in this country and it doesn’t look like anyone has the appetite for laying fibre to the home.

Mike Patton on Peeping Tom

UPDATE: News just through that Mike Patton has canceled his Auckland gig due to an “unforeseen scheduling conflict”. What a disappointment. Tickets will be refunded but it doesn’t look like Peeping Tom are going to set a new date for a gig at a later date. That’s a great shame, I was looking forward to that gig. Still, Tomahawk is more my cup of tea and I like the sound of the forthcoming album Anonymous Patton talks of in the interview. I hope that band does make it down here later this year. Tour info at www.ipecac.com.

Here’s my Herald interview with Mike Patton who, while best known as the former front man of Faith No More, has a massive body of music outside of the FNM sphere. He still has the best voice in rock, despite his best efforts to shred it on his Fantomas records. If you’re a Faith No More fan looking to delve into Patton’s other work, here’s five albums that will get you started:

Mit Gas (2003) - Tomahawk: The second album from Tomahawk, Patton’s hard rock/metal collaboration with Duane Denison (ex-The Jesus Lizard) John Stanier (ex-Helmet) and Kevin Rutmanis (Melvins). It’s aggressive and dark but intelligent hard rock. The opening track Birdsong is unnerving. Full of Patton’s cinematic mash-ups, sound effects and with some great guitar and drum work, one of his best post-FNM efforts.

California (1999) - Mr Bungle: Patton’s last recording with his Mr Bungle band mates is my favourite. Every musical style imaginable is crammed onto this eclectic, innovative record, which manages to build nicely on previous Bungle efforts like Disco Volante while keeping things fresh. Patton’s voice is fantastic and with song tiltes like The Airconditioned Nightmare (a tip of the hat to Henry Miller) and Retrovertigo, you can’t lose.

The Director’s Cut (2001) - Fantomas: Patton’s take on classic movie scores from the likes of
Cape Fear, Der Golum and Rosemary’s Baby. A slick, subversive collection of covers that have forever changed my impression of the original music. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is spine tingling, while Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is one of my favourite Patton tracks full stop. Intelligent arrangements and interpretations form start to finish.

General Patton vs. The X-ecutioners (2005) : Patton teams up with New York hip hop trio the X-ecutioners on this schizophrenic collection of war-themed songs. Sampling heavily from numerous films, Patton’s hard rock meets the X-ecutioners hip hop beats with interesting results. The 22 songs are short and energetic. A departure from Patton’s previous more instrument-driven work, but strangely catchy and as creative as anything he’s done.

Romances (2004) - Kaada Patton: A bunch of quiet, delicate tracks featuring Patton’s lyrics and soundscapes inspired by classical compositions by the likes of Chopin and Brahms. Some lovely atmospheric moments even if Romances seems stuck in one gear for the length of the album. Has shades of Sigur Ros throughout thanks to Patton’s high-pitched, effeminate singing.

PATTON’S PRIVATE UNIVERSE

After all the noisy experimental albums and genre-bending collaborations, Mike Patton should know his place in the world.

That place, you’d think, would not be in the opening act slot for dinosaur rockers The Who, which Patton’s latest act Peeping Tom supported during a US tour last year.

The former Faith No More front man and his cohorts were booed off the stage at several Who gigs.

“Who listens to the Who?” asks Patton, in explanation. The cross-over audience, it seems, wasn’t there.

“I mean, when you’re opening, it never really ever works. It’s like going to war in some sense,” he says down the phone from San Francisco, where General Patton as he’s known in another musical incarnation, is trying to figure out what Peeping Tom members will accompany him on his own headline tour down under.

If the Who tie-up seems as ill-matched as Faith No More’s fraught tour with Guns and Roses in the early nineties, it also
shows Patton’s unwillingness to be put in one box musically.

Peeping Tom is about as mainstream as Patton has gone since the FNM days, but the music, if more accessible than his other current projects, reflects the diverse range of collaborators on the album – hip hop star Kool Keith through to Massive Attack, rapper Razhel and hip hop producer Dan “the Automator” Nakamura among them.

“A lot of people think it should be top 40, a lot think its bullshit. I really can’t be too concerned,” says Patton.

“I’m glad anybody likes it [but] it’s nice to be thought off even in a negative way.”

A tribute to Michael Powell’s 1960 psychological thriller of the same name, Peeping Tom

is a seedy, noirish affair, as musically diverse as Faith No More’s experimental masterpiece Angel Dust.

“This is my version of pop music,” says Patton who hadn’t even met some of his Peeping Tom collaborators prior to sending them demo tracks in the mail. He simply contacted their agents or asked music industry friends to put him in touch.

That started back in 2000. Peeping Tom for years was a virtual album created by a virtual band, with Patton pulling together the samples between recording sessions and tours for his key projects, experimental group Fantomas and the electronic-tinged hard rock outfit Tomahawk.

It’s a style of music making Patton, a versatile musician and programmer, has long been comfortable with.

“It’s nothing new really. You want to work with as many people who share your vision. I don’t think it is ground breaking,” he says.

He didn’t get his dream Peeping Tom guest line-up – there’ll be another chance at that with Peeping Tom 2 which is already in the works. But the man known for breaking up his thrash metal live performances with Britney Spears and Karen Carpenter covers, again reached out to his softer musical sensibilities.

Such was the case with silky-voiced songstress Norah Jones, who took a real risk entering Patton’s musical lair, given the lyrics he penned for her Peeping Tom track.

“What makes you think you’re my only lover? The truth kinda hurts don’t it motherf**ker,” she whispers on Sucker.

The risqué lyrics have attracted much attention for the pop singer-songwriter, but the brief track is one of the less impressive on Peeping Tom, which is at its best on the electro-pop rock of Don’t Even Trip and Mojo.

The music video for the latter feature’s Patton’s friend Danny DeVito slouched in front of a TV set watching late night infomercials, one of which features Kiwi model, Rachel Hunter.

“The director pulled her in,” says Patton of Hunter’s appearance in the music video. He has no idea who she is, so I give him some background on Glenfield’s greatest export.

“Congratulations!” he shouts down the line with all the mock enthusiasm he can muster.

Where Patton’s inspiration for Peeping Tom comes from is hard to tell. He admits that musically, he lives in his own “own little universe”.

It’s a phrase he has used in several interviews. While you can interweave tracks from Patton’s now defunct side project Mr Bungle with Faith No More and Tomahawk songs to uniform effect, it’s hard to know what’s at the centre of Patton’s creative universe – and what inspires his more unusual Fantomas and solo voice projects.

“In terms of the over all concept… I take it as it comes,” is all he will say.

After numerous Peeping Tom gigs, he’s even unsure of who is listening to the album. “It’s hard to tell whether they’re meat heads or hipsters.”

If Patton was mischievously hoping to find himself in the Top 40 with Peeping Tom, which was released a full year ago, he’ll have been disappointed. It hovered around the 100 mark on the Billboard albums chart though the single Mojo briefly claimed fortieth spot on the Billboard rock chart.

Still, the album has been the biggest commercial success so far for Patton’s independent music label Ipecac, which since 1999 has developed an impressive roster of quirky and experimental artists and cut through the big label red tape for Patton’s numerous projects and collaborations.

Patton will follow up his tour down under with the release in July of Anonymous, the highly anticipated new album from Tomahawk, Patton’s collaboration with Duane Denison and John Stanier.

“The album is basically Duane’s baby. He had the idea of doing original arrangements of native American public domain material,” says Patton.

Six Litanies for Heliogabalus, a new collaboration with the prolific avant-garde instrumentalist John Zorn was released in March.

“It’s some of his best work,” says Patton, who is squeezing in two short European tours prior to bringing Peeping Tom down here. One is with experimental Austrian musician Christian Fennesz, the other Mondo Cane, features “Italian golden-era pop tunes” re-arranged by Patton with chorus singers and orchestra.

“I took them and arranged them and put them into my language,” says Patton.

Touring Peeping Tom is a logistical nightmare.

“The people involved?” Patton sighs.

“I
t’s very hard to guess. The band has varied every single time on tour. Everything with Peeping Tom is kind of a guessing game. It’s constantly exhilarating, but also exhausting.” Don’t expect Norah to appear.

While the musical collaborations continue at a furious pace, Patton seems as laid back and unwilling to take himself or the world too seriously as he’s ever been throughout his varied musical career.

An unedited interview with MTV filmed in 1992 during the making of Angel Dust is doing the rounds on YouTube and shows a bored looking Patton cracking jokes and eating junk food as his band mate Roddy Bottum tries to coax the right sound out of his keyboard. You wouldn’t think one of the most influential rock albums of the nineties came out of those sessions.

If he has repeatedly come across in the press as dismissive of his achievements with Faith No More, Patton says it’s because he was always uncomfortable being the focus of the media’s attention.

“The Faith No More stuff isn’t about me. It was a band. Maybe that’s where a lot of journalists got the wrong idea,” says Patton.

“You don’t just pluck a song off a tree and put vocals on it. It takes a lot of work to put this shit to life.”

While he’s showing no signs of shaking his workaholic music making habits, Patton, a 20 year resident of San Francisco, wants to keeps expanding his musical universe – but spend more time at home.

“I’m a little tired of traveling the world, jaded as that may sound.”

Check out Griffin’s (other) Gadgets

I’ve just started blogging for the Herald which is a great development as it gives me the chance to update the tech section with local content during the day without us having to rely totally on wire stories from the agencies. We really want to make the Herald Tech section a better resource for those interested in technology. The blog is aimed at a general audience - those who wouldn’t really visit Geekzone, but want to keep abreast of general developments in IT and telecoms.

There’s RSS available and room for comments. It’s early days and the blog is sort of in soft launch as we tweak it according to the needs of readers and the people updating it every day. It’s quite strange feeding blog postings into the newspaper editorial system rather than posting straight to the web as I do here. That’s something I’ll have to get my head around, but it’s great to have that layer of editorial integrity in place.

So check it out! I’ll still be updating Griffin’s Gadgets regularly so keep an eye out here too…

Can ICT-NZ get its act together?

A story I wrote in today’s Herald about the Computer Society’s decision not to join ICT-NZ, the body hoping to represent the IT industry. The formation of ICT-NZ has been fraught with problems and delay, but Garth Biggs, who is currently heading the organisation, says progress has been made and is likely to be launched soon.

Just as well, we need a unified voice for the IT industry since ITANZ decided to shut up shop and do nothing for its members.

It looks like ICT-NZ missed out on getting any funding in Budget 07 which means they’ll have to struggle along on contributions from members and its founding partners. That will ahrdly allow them to kick things off with a bang, but maybe the Government will chip in later down the track, if it liked what it sees in ICT-NZ.

Telecom will go the BT way

Here’s my Webwalk column from the Herald about the lack of interest the NZ telco industry and politicians have expressed in Telecom’s alternative plan to structurally separate its business division to avoid a more complex and intrusive form of regulation.

The main sticking point with Telecom’s competitors is that the telco’s proposal falls outside the scope of current legislation and would therefore require a change to legislation, which could take a year or more. If Telecom had proposed a structural separation plan a couple of years ago, we could today be looking at a separate “Netco” organisation opening for business and willing to treat Telecom the same as any other customer in the market.

The great leveller of learning

My Tomorrow’s World column from the Herald on Sunday about the Encyclopedia of Life project.

It’s a project the great species collectors of history, from Pliny the elder to Darwin to globetrotting microbiologist Craig Venter, would well appreciate.

It’s one big book that documents every known living species of plant and animal in the world, some 1.8 million species - a map of life as we know it (read on).

Update: new Google Analytics active

The revamped version of Google Analytics has gone live and the deeper level of detail it gives you when it comes to website statistics is pretty amazing.

The interface has had a decent overhaul, a mch richer look and a better layout. Most importantly, you can view sets of data you never had access to below - check out this report on the screen reolution of monitors people use to view this blog.
It’s staggering detail, you’d have had to pay serious money for a suite of analysis tools like this a few years ago. Analytics also lets you set goals for your website and tracks how close you are coming to achieving them. If your goal, for instance is to get most visitors to click through to the purchase order page of your website, Analytics will track how successful you are at getting people there. A great resource and a worthy improvement on Google Analytics version one.

Stuff, Slingshot, Gameplanet In Netguide Awards

An interesting mix of winners in last night’s NetGuide Web Awards.

The full list of winners is on Scoop. I’m glad the Herald picked up the award for best website relaunch, but it missed out in the big award to Stuff, which won best media website (probably deservedly, just) and best homepage (undeservedly so, seeing as they’ve hived off much of the useful stuff to Trademe).

Trademe has a smattering of wins, including not surprisingly, best trading website, and was a finalist all over the place, but lost out in the People’s Choice award to Smilecity.co.nz.

Slingshot was, I think, a surprise win as best ISP. Publicaddress.net deservedly picked up best blog award and TVNZ’s OnDemand video streaming service won it the best high-bandwidth website award.

Good to see GPstore.co.nz, the gaming website, picking up best retailer (Ferrit and Ascent were the finalists). GPStore is a great website and the Gameplanet site backs it up well with a good community forum.

Overall, the awards show the diversification of the NZ interweb in some categories (social networking, trading, employment), but its immaturity in others (online shopping).

Shackleton on success and steering blind

I was lucky enough to yesterday sit in on a lunchtime SmartNet seminar led by motivational speaker and sports psychologist John Shac