Tagged: australia

Legally stream (almost) all the music you want in Australia – for free.

We all like music, right? I mean, some of us profess to enjoy it more properly, appropriately or adequately than others – this here Superior Hipster for example:

…but when you get down to it, pretty much everybody likes it.

So, we all want more of it, right? Thus the dawn and success of the iPod, and various other MP3 players. We could carry our thousands of tunes with us everywhere we went, beautiful.

Read on through my rambles to find out what I think the best music streaming service available to Australians is (so far). Continue reading →

Power Pinata from Vodafone

Here’s a nice idea for a game. Smash the living daylights out of this Piñata using facebook, a robot connected to the internet and baseball bat. When the Piñata bursts it’s a free for all to grab a prize.

Here it is in action. It’s a little like watching cricket … the difference is the English are actually smashing the Aussies.

Anyone discovered any cheats to make the robot smash the Piñata a bit harder?

Lovely idea though. I’m jealous. @handypearce

Mashable's iPad 3G Review: for Australians and Lazy People

Mashable have a really fantastic review of the 3G incarnation of the iPad – it’s a bit long though, so I’m going to shorten it down to only the necessary information (for lazy people) and throw an Australian perspective in at the end to balance out their US-centric complaints.

Find the review summary, and Australian perspective after the jump. Continue reading →

Earth Journalism Awards

Climate change journalism meets social media

Earth Journalism Awards
It’s expected that 40 world leaders will attend this year’s COP15 climate change talks in Denmark next month to hammer out the details for what is hoped will be the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Fifteen journalists, winners in the Earth Journalism Awards, are being flown to Copenhagen to cover the two week conference.

Voting mechanisms on the EJA siteThe organisers, the Earth Journalism Network, are making great use of social media to plug this event – obviously they’re marketing the awards themselves all over the usual social media, but there is also a final sixteenth award which is determined by user interaction. All fifteen journalists are finalists, and the whole world gets to vote for an overall winner of the Global Public Award using the EJA site, but also on Twitter by retweeting #ejavote and the URL of the story. Additionally, each entry has its own Facebook fan page, for which every fan constitutes a vote.

This is a great mobilisation of social media tools to get what is an environmental/political issue under the noses of the millions of tweeters and Facebook fiends.

Local journo, John Pickrell from Australia’s own Cosmos Magazine (they who brought us HelloFromEarth.net), is one of the fifteen finalists for his piece on ocean acidification and its effects on our very own Great Barrier Reef. You can read his and all the other finalists’ articles on the EJA website and make your voice heard – http://awards.earthjournalism.org/finalists.

Strange Maps

Two of my favourite things are niche blogs and maps. Combine the two and you have Strange Maps.

If this kind of cartographical madness floats your boat, have a look…

dd_litcity_map

Literary map of San Francisco

the-road-to-success

Allegorical map to “success” (I remember this from a print on someone’s wall from my childhood – thanks for the bizarre blast from the past, Strange Maps!)

whiteaustralia

…and this relic from the White Australia era which depicts a racist view of Asian immigrants. Strange map!

Enjoy: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com

@iclazie

HT @dankrause

Censor This? Censordyne

In 2008, the Australian Labor Party introduced a policy of mandatory Internet filtering for all Australians. While the policy has not yet come into force, it has generated substantial opposition, with only a few groups in support. The Labor Party does not have enough votes in the Senate to enact any legislation to support the filter, so that the filter has "effectively been scuttled" unless the government is able to implement the filter by other means.

Get Up – Action for Australia, an independent organisation giving everyday Australians opportunities to get involved and hold politicians accountable on important issues, have come up with their own ad that they want to put on TV to address the issue.

here it is:

YouTube Preview Image

I personally am against Internet censorship and according to multiple surveys I am not the only one. To protect our children, we as parents should take the responsibility and not our ISPs or the government.

vivid

Vivid Sydney, Sydney’s Festival of Music, Light and Ideas

Better late than never – vividsydney.com

Vivid Sydney, developed by Events NSW in partnership with the City Of Sydney, will be the biggest international music and light festival in the Southern Hemisphere. It will showcase the city as a major creative hub in the Asia-Pacific region, celebrating the diversity of Sydney’s creative industries.
Vivid Sydney features four exciting new events:
- Luminous
- Smart Light Sydney
- Creative Sydney
- Fire Water

vivid

best-job-in-the-world

A coincidence an Englishman won 'The Best Job in the World?

Being English myself I’m pleased to see that fellow Englishman Ben won ‘The Best Job in the World’ yesterday and will soon be spending 6 months as a caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Now I’m not one to be cynical, even though I am English, but I’m sure that this little stat may have had something to with it.

best-job-in-the-world
Full tourism stats here

Nothing against the campaign, it’s super awesome and well done Ben I’m sure you are the best man for the job.