I’d just explained to Bronwen, from PerthNorg a few minutes ago what I thought Twitter was. Jeff explains it well when he says it provides someones “state.”

I explained it to Bronwen by saying it is like real-time, one-liner, blog posts, with the ability to respond instantly. It really is an interesting new networking tool, putting you in touch with people in a slightly new way.

Today I wrote a blog post that I think is fairly important.

YouTube is heading toward creating a model for copyright owners to earn revenue from YouTube. It’s an awesome move, and I think is going to really make a huge difference to the online video world. I realise that others currently share revenue, but we are talking about a market YouTube dominates.

My question, which I think is important, is if YouTube will share revenue with those people referring to the videos. So if you embed a video on your site, shouldn’t you share a little of the money they make from advertising. In a way, it’s a lot like adsense.

Anyway, check out the post, Will YouTube Share Revenue For Referral? over at the Scouta blog, and if you’re a regular or subscriber to Clique, it might be worth subscribing over there if you enjoy more commentary. I’ll be posting there regularly now we’ve made public a little about what Scouta is.

Yesterday we announced a little more about the web service. Dropping more than a little hint. We’re rapidly approaching release, so you’ll start to hear a lot more. If you’re interested, subscribe to the Scouta blog where I will be more active from now on, or add your email to the Scouta private beta list, and we’ll see about a login in the next few weeks.

Jon’s idea is to have a Virtual Meetup, so he’s organised one.

It got me thinking that perhaps we could complement the face-to-face meetups with a virtual one, i.e. via a chatroom-style approach hosted by AustralianBlogs where users can do the meet-and-greet but also break out into user-created rooms for some private chit chat (where appropriate).
Let’s set an informal virtual meetup on AustralianBlogs Chat on the second Wednesday of every month starting on the 10th of January 2007. From 8pm AEDST till late. Users can come and go as they please.

Thank god for Daylight Savings in WA I say :).

A couple of weeks ago we migrated the weblog to blog.scouta.com, we’ve shown off a little bit of the design, and today we’ve launched an email sign-up form for those who might want to be notified of updates, or be invited into the private beta we’ll be running in the next couple of months.

So, if you’re keen, swing over to Scouta and add your email, or just keep an eye on the blog.

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.

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.

Thought I’d share the MP3 here.

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.

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 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.

Damn cool.

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

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?

It’s an interesting read, if only to show just how complex, and clever, a deal can be to protect large media companies interests.

What will be most fascinating to me is how YouTube members will react over time. Is this really a grass-roots web site, or has it turned into a main stream media distribution channel? If it is the later, will members defect to smaller more “indie” sites. Or do most users care little about these battles, and will they continue to use YouTube because of it ease of use and breadth.

It’s fascinating watching the money trail, but I find the social implications, and crowd mentality the real interesting dynamic.

Tonight they won exactly that at the ARIA Awards.

Essentially Steve’s point was that television is dead.

What Steve should have said, and Heather points out, is that “linear” television is dead. Heather calls it “appointment TV, broadcast TV the way we knew it, the type of TV production of the past.” The TV of old, the one we had to schedule our lives around, is dead.

In fact I’d argue, that out of all the major old media/mediums, television and the networks have responded the quickest and in more compelling ways than any other have to the Internet.

Take Ron Moore’s Battlestar Podcasts. Other than the fact that episode four of season three marks a pinnacle in television, the podcast is just so damn good. Who else sits down with a packet of cigarets and glass of scotch and provides a running commentary each of week of the behind the scenes. How transparent and 2.0 is that!

Take Chaser’s War, one of Australia’s best comedy shows in well over a decade. For the later part of the recent season you could subscribe to their RSS feed and have the weekly episode on your iPod within a day of the show airing on the ABC.

Take The OC, a show that’s a little out of my demographic, but according to this panel interviewed by Guy Kawasaki right smack in Gen Y. MySpace just announced it’ll be releasing the show a full week before it airs on Fox.

Just wait for a few innovative ways of shows tapping into the audience in real time. We’ll be seeing some pretty remarkable ways for people to create a series. Imagine a season of Lost that you can control. Maybe we’d know what they hell it all meant by the end, or maybe we’d be more confused.

I’ve only covered a few areas where I think television is excelling in it’s embrace of the Internet. Give me a short time and I’ll continue the list. There is no doubt that just blatting out a weekly show to the airwaves is dead, but it’s rapidly being replaced by a new way of “casting.” iTunes, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, and the “next big thing” are all just extending the reach, not killing television.

I just saw the new Bravia advertisement on television. I heard about this a couple of months ago while appreciating the last one, and couldn’t wait to see the final result. It’s as good, actually probably better, then the last. Check it out here.

70,000 litres of paint
358 single bottle bombs
33 sextuple air cluster bombs
22 Triple hung cluster bombs
268 mortars
33 Triple Mortars
22 Double mortars
358 meters of weld
330 meters of steel pipe
57 km of copper wire

Today I noticed Chris Messina–whose blog is worth reading if only to see examples of great design–mention Tangerine.

Tangerine takes a look at your iTunes library and works out the BPM and Beat Intensity of it’s music. You can then create a playlist that varies in total length, variety of BPM and Intensity, and also pattern (random, single hill, double hill, and single hill alternating). It also allows you to write the BPM to your iTunes library, which allows me to create a few extra Smart Playlists myself.

The application looks sweet, right down to the boxed tangerine with a straw as an icon. It’ll be something that becomes a companion of mine for some time I’d imagine. As soon as Apple launches their Nike+ range of products down here, it’ll be even more valuable.

Those who are interested in funding Aussie startups should check out Randal’s thoughts on the subject (and note that a couple of VCs have their say in his comments). It’s interesting that Mike Zimmerman claims he was misquoted. As I mentioned, I explained I’m sticking to Australia for my funding, and wasn’t mentioned. I also pointed Josh to a local entrepreneur that has two successful businesses–one bootstrapped, the other locally funded–and that to wasn’t mentioned.

What is really good to see is at least two VCs getting involved in blogger conversations. Marc and Mike: nice seeing you in the blogosphere, you guys should get your own weblogs ;) .

Also note that Randal was recently on the cover of BRW, as Cam is now on the cover of Bulletin.