Martin Well, from Tangler, flicked me an email the other day.

On a recent trip to the valley I attended a STIRR Mixer. It was a fantastic; great people and a fun format. I’ve known the organizer, Sanford Barr, for a while and really like the spirit of what he’s trying to do - help entrepreneurs - so rather than reinvent the wheel, Sanford and I decided it would be better for us to just host a STIRR event in Sydney (the first outside the valley).

So STIRR Sydney will be held on Wednesday 6th of December starting at 7pm. It’ll be standup, with finger food supplied, and a whole bunch of interesting and entertaining ’startup games’ for the night.

We’re also inviting 3 to 5 startups to show off their stuff. If you have a startup, or know of one who would like to get involved, please let me know.

What you need to do:

1. Go to the wiki page (http://stirr.dinner20.com) and register yourself (it’s first come first served so hurry up)

2. Pass this email on to people you think would be good to have at the event.

3. Think of an aussie internet startup that would like to demo and have them contact me.

4. Send me a web 2.0 joke. (Or simply provide an answer to “How many web 2.0 startups does it take to change a light bulb?”)

Also, a big thanks to the event sponsors:
· Tech Venture Partners (http://www.tvp.com.au)
· Atlassian (http://www.atlassian.com)
· Tangler (http://www.tangler.com)

I’d like to go, but we’re still to early to be showing of our project.

Boing Boing has picked up the story that Australian cricket supporters, The Fanatics, are being threatened by EMI because they say they “breached copyright because it included altered lyrics to songs such as Go West by the Village People and Daydream Believer by The Monkees.” (quote from an ABC article)

I found a copy by hunting through Google. If you want to see how ridiculous such a move by EMI is, then you can grab it here.

I suggest everyone download a copy, print it out, share it, post it to your blog or website.

UPDATE: Here is a torrent of the PDF.

UPDATE: The Fanatics have announced that EMI have retracted the threat of legal action.

After a slight misunderstanding with our good friends at EMI, we’ve been reliably informed that the songbook isn’t in breach of any copyright laws and in turn the songbook is once ahead downloadable and fully legal.

I was interviewed this afternoon by Singapore’s 938 Live radio station about Microsoft’s Zune media player. We chatted about the negative reaction, and the future of media players merging with mobile phones.

Thought I’d share the MP3 here.

OK, so I’m getting good at making calls about things that will happen :). I’ve always wanted to be a futurist, and I think I’m almost there.

I’ve been saying for years (a couple of recent references here and here) that Xbox should/would release television/movies via the Xbox.

Well, today they made just that announcement.

Beginning on its first anniversary, November 22, Xbox 360 will become the first gaming console in history to provide HD TV shows and movies directly to gamers in their own living rooms. Xbox 360 gamers will be able to download full-length TV shows to own, and will be able to rent movies via download from the Xbox Live® network, the world leader in online distribution of high-definition gaming and entertainment content.

It’ll be interesting to see if this is available in Australia.

Amongst all the horse racing today, that Japan obviously excels at, I received delivery of a Nike+ iPod Kit.

I’ve been waiting for this since their announcement at the beginning of the year. I tried to grab one when I was last in the US, but I missed it’s availability by a week.

Now I love running, but I lack motivation, and there is no better way than convincing me to slap on the (almost rotted) running shoes by providing a gadget, and an online community–two of my favourite things.

This evening I strapped the transmitter to my old Nike shoe, and headed out with a bunch of motivational tracks on my wife’s iPod Nano. It didn’t take long before I hit my stride and I plugged away for 43 minutes–probably a very stupid decision which I’ll regret for the next few days, given I haven’t run for a few months.

So there are several things that make the Nike+ kit fantastic. Firstly you can track your run while on the road. Having said that, I need to buy a pair of Nike+ shoes, because strapped to the lace it wasn’t registering my pace correctly. I was running at about 5 minute 30 per kilometer, but it lost track and at points wasn’t recording my pace at all.

The second great feature is being able to plug the unit into my Mac when I get home, and it transfers the data of the run to the Nike+ web site. I can then track each run, how I’m progressing each week or month, and even create goals and team challenges. And the user interface is a nice flash site that has all the right round boxes and drop shadows. It even shows my pace through the whole run (you can see from the screen grab that it lost track of me at about 1 km in).

The important feature for me though, is I’m hanging out to run again. There’s nothing more addictive than feeding a database with a bunch of data that I feel compelled to improve.

I’m also looking forward to buying a few PowerSongs or Workouts from the iTunes Music Store.

Anyone else using the Nike+ kit? Maybe we can team up and do a few challenges.

I picked up the same point that Mark Jones did: that commercial television in Australia is concerned with online video. They’re so concerned that they’re now showing some of the popular series (Jericho and The OC) within only a few days of the US, and claiming you can “See it at the same time as the US!” Up until recently some shows would be broadcasts, months or years, after US release.

Jericho is an interesting pick, but The OC makes complete sense given it’s appeal to Generation Y.

Mark makes the point that this wouldn’t be happening if there was no commercial driver, “the loss of audience attention to the internet.”

I noticed tonight that Google have announced a Gmail mobile client. If you go to gmail.com/app from your mobile phone, then you can download the client.

I note that it says “It is currently compatible with all J2ME-enabled phones in the U.S. and works with a variety of carrier service plans,” but figured that as long as I had an Internet connection from my phone, through WAP or similar, then it’d work.

It failed miserably on a Nokia N93 I’m currently using. Which sucks. I’d like to access my mail from my mobile. Though on Aussie mobile data pricing, I’d probably only be able to afford a couple of emails a month.

Update: Given a few people have tried and succeeded, I did another install and it worked fine. I’ll be testing it out today and see what the cost is on a B Digital/Optus plan.

Jeremy Keith has a Flickr set of Sydney Matrix locations. It’s an “attempt to recreate some outdoor shots from The Matrix at the locations where they were filmed.”

Damn cool.

Yes, I thought you already knew I was a geek.

I’m just watching the Zune advertisements on YouTube.

Are they aiming for BabyBoomers with these? I’m lost, as there’s nothing hip at all about the adverts. It’s certainly not informative, so they’re just a branding exercise, which isn’t aimed at Gen Y, and in my opinion misses Gen X as well.

It’s obviously a play on the ability to share tunes with the Zune, but I only know that because I’m aware of Zune’s features. I’m not sure anyone else would get that, and it just comes across as another MP3 player. In fact, I’m not even sure if that comes across. I wonder if the majority of people will end up saying, “What’s a zune?”

The Zune: Concert comes the closest, but still is wide of the mark.

“Welcome to the social.” What?