Look, we all know the 3G iPhone is coming to Australia. The writing is on the wall; it’s inevitable. It’s been confirmed by multiple carriers. It’s happening at WWDC 2008 with almost 100% certainty. However, in the midst of all of the iPhone 3G rumors, I think that a very important point has been missed. I think there’s something big happening behind the scenes, something that might shake-up the Australian broadband & carrier landscape in a huge way. Let me explain.

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I’m using a customized k2 module at the moment, which does all kinds of nice stuff, like the sidebar modules (letting me link into my del.icio.us + last.fm account), the ajax commenting, search and archive slider bar. It’s really nice! My only complaint? It’s a bit of a dog to load! My page is topping out at 240kb-250kb to download, which makes it kind of slow. Coming soon; I will be jumping into the k2 module and try to trim the fat down and get that load time under 150kb. I’ve also just discovered the new jQuery 1.1.3 which I’m dying to get into and integrate here in some way. k2 runs off the script.aculo.us framework though, so it’s not really practical to have both. Decisions decisions.

In the meantime, take a look and let me know what you think of the new cosmetic changes!

Even though this is still coming soon, and it’s acutally split into 40gb “peak time” (typically 10am till around 1am) and 110gb “off peak” (1am - 10am), it could be the type of plan which would actually work for Australian digital media distribution which requires a large download quota. Coming straight off the back of Internode (a traditionally high-quota-friendly ISP) unexpectedly raising their price points on high quota plans, TPG is obviously looking to capitalise and capture some of those power-user customers who are looking to jump ship from Internode. I sincerely hope that other competitors follow this kind of lead, and try and aim for this kind of usage and price point. I’m not a huge fan of the peak/off-peak strategy, but if it can help ISPs raise quota limits, then that’s fine with me; I’d rather schedule my downloads for early morning than not have them at all.

I’ve been looking to churn from Bigpond cable for ages now, but just haven’t found a plan that was right for me. This could be my answer. GG TPG. More info can be found at the discussion on Whirlpool’s forums.

It’s tough being a Mac user in Australia sometimes. Especially this year; it just seems like sometimes we are a country that Apple says “Oh, we have a market in Australia? Alright, I s’pose we’d better send something their way.” We get products that are geared for an American market (Apple TV, Video iPod are two great examples) which with our video-less iTunes, are laughable as a ’seamless’ way to load and enjoy media. Is this entirely their fault that they have a neglected market in Australia? Not really, but let’s examine some of the issues at play here.

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Keep up the good work Japan!

I’m not sure if any of you loyal readers follow this kind of internet dramabomb, but today digg.com just got slaughtered by it’s own dedicated fanbase. Basically, what happened is that a user posted a 16 digit hexadecimal key, which when used (on linux, and in the right bit of software) can crack the encryption on a HD-DVD.

Digg admins got to this initial post when it reached around 1500 diggs, and it was deleted. No big deal right? I mean, it’s kind of interesting, but decryption cracks for HD-DVD have been out for a while now, and who out of the hundreds of thousands of people who visit digg use linux, and can acutally make use of this? Not many, I’d wager. Digg has lawyers, and the lawyers would have surely seen that posting and said to the digg lads “uh, you’d better get rid of that before you get served with a takedown notice from the HD-DVD camp.” So, down it goes. What happened next though, was almost completely unexpected.

The story was resubmitted, and in the space of a few hours rocketed to over 15,000 diggs! This was even quicker than the iPhone at the peak of it’s popularity! This submission surely broke a few records for speed and popularity within digg. What happened next? Poof! Admins strike again! Submission gone!

Now the digg community starts to get pissed. Comments start appearing in threads, spamming the key and the tale of the deleted stories. Jay Adelson posts on the digg blog about the issue, stating “…Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law…” This is when the shit really hits the fan.

Hundreds of stories, and thousands of comments start to invade every facet of digg, all posting the key. The front page, typically a diverse mix of all kinds of news, has 3 pages solid of nothing but key-related stories, each reaching thousands of diggs. Comments start dissappearing, and fearing further censorship, this makes people even angrier (this is later attributed to the digg servers going wobbly because of the immense pounding they were taking). This carried on for the rest of the day until finally, Kevin Rose, founder and frontman of digg, makes a post on the digg blog stating that diggers have made their intentions clear, and they’re listening.

“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.”

Things start to subside, and the story and comment spam begin to lessen. Within 12 hours of Kevin’s post, things are more or less back to normal at digg, with the exception of a few stories dealing with the aftermath (which I suppose this very post is), and what this all means.

The story, less than a day old, has made massive waves in the online community, particularly in the (I loathe to call it this) web2.0 community. The story makes slashdot, boingboing, gizmodo, the consumerist, cnet.com and a whole bunch of other blogs. Most notably, this story swept right out of the little navel-gazing bubble that most internet-drama resides in, and was covered at BBC news and Forbes as well.

So what does this all mean?

Basically, it means that the people who participate in these user-driven sites cannot abide censorship of information within a system like this. Digg, which has always professed to be a ‘by the people, for the people’; a truly democratic site, threw away this principle at the risk of being in legal trouble. They felt the backlash. The people will not be silenced. Information (in this case, a hex key), cannot be contained, or repressed, or censored on the internet if the people truly wish it to be so.

Personally, I can’t wait for the next diggnation; it’s going to be a cracker.

Go check it out at: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/events/smashthedrum/

However, as I was browsing through the shortlisted entries on the frontpage of the site, I came upon this one:

Now, I thought to myself, “Where the hell have I seen that smoke before??” Turns out that it was from iStockPhoto.com, and the pic that’s been used is virtually unaltered. Here’s a comparision:

I really really hope that this isn’t a list of finalists, and Sue-Ann doesn’t get this work displayed. Nicking stuff from around the net is pretty common (especially for image-editing), but that seems pretty dodge to me.