Redundancy is a bitch
Well, today I found out that I am no longer required at REA Group (realestate.com.au). It doesn't come as a surprise but it is certainly not welcome.
I have a few things in the pipeline, but the most exciting is the partnership with Michael Little in Fliquid Studios which is a web application development company.
We have a lot of applications we are working on and will plan on launching shortly. I will keep everybody up to date with what is going on.
In the meantime, I plan on just relaxing a bit. Its been a busy few years and having a month off is very attractive right now.
Terrorism for sale
Almost an hour ago (or maybe more) one of the worlds most popular blogs, mashable, posted about Google Ads for Terrorism. Basically, Googles automated ad server, which picks up on keywords and displays ads based on those words, seems to advertise a lot of bad stuff.
eBay had this problem for a long time. A Google search for 'live slaves' would bring up eBay ads for 'Cheap Live Slaves!'. Fortunately, they have now been removed and the only ads for 'Live Slaves' now are for women. Phew.
Anyway, so I was thinking to myself, that if one of the worlds largest, most popular blogs posts about something that is very offensive to a lot of people and being perpetrated by the worlds largest and most respected internet behemoth, they are likely to fix it quick smart, right? Wrong. The thing is, this has been happening for a while A quick search on Google reveals hundreds of thousands of results. Interestingly, the first link I clicked on that criticised Google was apparently a malware site.
I continued to the site anyway despite the multiple full page warnings. There were a bunch of great examples of this approach to automated ad campaigns;
I thought I'd try this out for myself. So I went to nytimes.com and did a search for 'terrorism'. Low and behold, look at the ads Google decided to give me;
Surely, in this extreme technological period. The worlds largest online company can come up with an algorithm that would stop this from happening. I personally, having never been directly affected by terrorism, dont find it very offensive, more surprising. Still, I find it very odd.
Greenpeace activists let off after 35k damage to power plant
A judge has let a bunch of Greenpeace activists off the hook after they did 35,000 pounds damage to a coal plant. In their defence, they stated that the plant will do much more damage than that in the future and were all found not guilty.
Sea Shepherd prepare for the whaling season
My hero, Captain Paul Watson has landed in Brisbane and will start preparing the Steve Irwin for the 2008/09 whaling season. He has also said that the current Australian government is weaker than the previous on the grounds of whaling in Australian and International waters.
I'm really upset with this government because they have reneged on every single promise they have made to protect the whales
Japan has reduced is whaling target this year by 20 percent and includes 700 southern Minke whales and 50 Fin whales. Apparently thats 'an encouraging sign' to Peter Garrett.
CEO of Ferrari claims Ferrari’s are greener than a prius.
Thats right folks. Breaking news! Ferrari's are greener than Prius' according to Ferrari's CEO Amedeo Felisa. He states;
"The combined emissions of all Ferraris sold in a year are less than those of all Toyota Prius sold in a year. So the net effect of Ferrari on global warming is less than a Prius."
That means that I can go and buy my GTR back and rest assured that because I don't drive it much, its better than the majority of Prius'.
Ciao Baci
Say hello to the new Biggins family member, Baci!
Baci (meaning 'Kisses' in Italian) is an 8 week old Golden Labrador. She is beautiful and highly destructive. We've already had to buy a new power cable for my wifes Dell Laptop.
I was able to get these rare shots when she was tuckered out after pouncing on Abbey, eating Bec's slippers and slipping over on the wet balcony tiles.
Anyway, welcome Baci.
MI6 gets sloppy
Secret files, photos and plans have been found on a camera bought on eBay in the UK for £17. The files included profiles on al-Qaeda members, weapons plans and even Guantanamo Bay detainee’s. My only explanation can be that an MI6 operative put the wrong memory card in their camera before selling it. Obviously they don’t pay MI6 op’s enough or they wouldn’t need to sell the camera.
Now, this was in the news a week ago. I’ve been slack, I know.
Google Chrome released
After an impatient wait of ohh, say, 24 hrs (that’s when I initially found out about Chrome), Google has released Chrome as a public beta.
My first impressions are; wow!
In the ten minutes I have used this so far, I am already very impressed. You can see the feature list for chrome here. Or, you can view Lifehackers screenshot tour.
I loaded up my site Skylines Australia in Chrome and it loaded like it was a text document. It was so fast. I also especially like the source viewer and the DOM element inspector. Also, its minimal interface and the start page are also huge bonus’. Hell I could keep going, but all the features that I love are on the sites linked above. I’m looking forward to the first stable release.
Thanks Google (even if it is just another way to collect data about me).
Cuts to welfare for parents of truants?
GetUp today has posted to its blog about the Governments plan to cut assistance to the families of truants.
My comment on the blog is the first one and I will copy it here;
Christian
August 26th, 2008
I had a relatively rough childhood. My dad left, my mum had terminal cancer and as a young teen, I was not keen on school and I just didn't go. We had truant offices come around and try to make me go, they threatened us with fines and all sorts of things. I felt stupidly guilty because I wanted to be near my mum who was really sick (and I think she wanted me there too, but would never say that - she urged me to go to school). In the end, it didn't work but surely made our lives so much more stressful. School was never understanding of our situation and I never felt I could delve into my issues with them anyway. Maybe thats what the government should look at improving? Had the government cut the piddly amount of assistance they were giving my mum, it would have been devastating. I can see this causing a lot of issues for a lot of desperate families and I daresay it will cause domestic violence in a lot of those households.
That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the plan. I think that more time, money and effort should be spent trying to give kids a more supportive environment to grow up in.
Surely it would not only cause fewer issues for families in these situations, but provide more jobs if there were to be more community centres and local hands-on assistance. Manly’s Youth Centre has (or, maybe, had) a program called HELP (Helping Early Leavers Program) which was extremely beneficial to me when I was about 14 and this type of thing needs to be more widely available and people need to be aware that these things exist. But, this is the governments response to programs like HELP.
Things need to change, and now.
Stupid Australians
Apparently Australians send, on average, $3M to Nigeria PER MONTH!
These people don’t deserve their money back, let the Nigerians keep it.