I'm really no fan of American politics… I think it's overly money-driven and I think it's revolting that it's basically impossible for a candidate to get anywhere unless they profess a deep and fervent commitment to almighty God. But this video produced for the Obama camp is pretty amazing, and worth watching. It's a refreshing difference to the "we're gonna bomb the world, y'all, and stand up for America, heee-haw" rhetoric of the Bush administration.

I encourage you not to watch the below video, which pokes fun at Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo, calls him an "Ass Sol" and other childish barbs. It is not funny and is an abomination.
No really, do not click play. Move right along to someone else's web page. I dare you.

Why don't tech companies just say what they mean? As a journalist, I'm sick of receiving essentially dishonest announcements from big tech companies.

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Wow, loved this piece in the SMH today looking at where Peter Garrett has come from to where he is now.

Perhaps a comparison might serve to illuminate. First some of the lyrics from "Blue Sky Mine", written by Garrett:

"The candy store paupers lie to the share holders / They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers / The balance sheet is breaking up the sky".

And then today's rather less impulsive lyrical achievement:

"I am very proud of the comprehensive set of policies and proposed actions we put to the people of Australia in the election campaign, and I am very pleased and proud to be involved in implementing them."

Strewth.

Still, I'm nonetheless impressed to have the Midnight Oil lead singer as the environment minister. Wish he'd do a Midnight Oil redux though. Arny the Governator still throws Terminator lines into his speeches in California, after all.

Listen to this demented, distorted, dying "Nokia tune" ringtone. MP3 of the "dying Nokia" ringtone

With the latest version of Google's toolbar for Firefox and IE, you can set it to create new messages in GMail when you click an email address on a web page. But, confoundingly, it only works with Gmail — not the premium, $50-per-account-per-year Google Apps version of Gmail.

Fortunately the following blogs have instructions on how to hack the Toolbar very easily to point to your Google Apps account rather than Gmail.

Tokyo Genki Blog — Google Apps Gmail + Google Toolbar

RedPrimary — customise Google Toolbar for Google Apps Gmail (make sure you read the first comment posted as well — and follow the tip there.)

Just listen to this wonderful song from NZ group The Flight of the Conchords… speaks directly to generation Barry White…

Like the headline says.

One of the people who commented on my post of last week about how the PR industry engages with journalists was David from Webmenu.com.au. If I don't know a commenter I like to check out their website, and I was amazed and delighted at what I found — a website that's like Digg for Australian restaurants, which allows restaurants to upload their menus and users to rate and comment on them.

One of the nicest features, which made me laugh out loud, is the concept of "your fridge" — if you like the menu of a particular restaurant you can "stick it to your fridge". That is gold.

The site also has opening hours of restaurants and integrated Google Maps so it's always easy to see exactly where they are in relation to you. It looks like Webmenu might be using the old version of Google embeddable maps, as they don't have satellite view or directions integrated into the map view, unlike the new embeddable maps.

You can also join up "in less than 60 seconds" using an extremely streamlined sign-up form, and the site will remember your home suburb for future restaurant searches.

According to an article in The Australian, republished on Webmenu's blog, the website is the brainchild of restauranteur Kristian Livolsi, who is 29 years old. (Drats, yet another entrepreneur who has done something more impressive than me by my age… must hurry up and have a brilliant idea that will make me rich.)

Well after my venting post of last week (which certainly threw the cat among the pigeons and prompted many PRs to email me saying they hoped that they were of non fawning, cajoling type and would somebody please shoot them if they ever start being like that) here's something entirely lighter and more fun… this is just a magical TV moment. I can't believe the press beat it up to be a serious fight between Branson and Colbert — there's quite obviously no bad blood between them!

Hello to colleagues from ITJ/Mediaconnect… before reading this, bear in mind that although it's an impassioned diatribe (written after perhaps one too many late evening coffees), it was really intended to simply be a statement about how it is to be a journalist engaging with PR. I wasn't intending to criticise or moralise — I've benefited from trips and I enjoy a robust engagement with PRs and vendors. But I still think the central thesis of the post is valid — that it can be quite an odd feeling to be the recipient of intense outpourings of butter-uppery from PRs. Is it a bad thing? No. Is it odd to experience? Yes.

I've been doing journalism long enough now to no longer feel like a new starter… professionally since 2003, and for Whirlpool.net.au from 1999.

Sometimes, though, I sit back and have a moment of stunning realisation what a bizarre world journalism is — not bizarre because of the journalism itself, but bizarre because of the intense fawning, cajoling flattery from the staggeringly vast army of PR professionals that spend their days sucking up as hard as they possibly can to journalists.

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Stuart Corner at ITwire has written a great opinion piece that succinctly explains why Telstra's whiney politicking is so unconvincing.

Stuart is responding to Sol Trujillo's recent propaganda-laden speech to the AIIA luncheon, where the theme was an "inconvenient truth" for the current conservative government. "You cannot regulate your way to the future — you must let the market work," said Trujillo.

Rational words on face value, but Corner points out that Telstra has a highly selective view of what is actually a "free market".

Corner responds calmly. "Another inconvenient truth is that the market cannot work without regulation when one dominant player controls key bottleneck infrastructure on which that market depends, or is simply so dominant that significant competition cannot emerge without regulatory protection."

Great reading.