As G’Day World is five years old this month (it started life on November 29, 2004), I’ve decided to sort of retire it. A show that started as a tech news podcast has, over the years, become my personal exploration of what’s really going on in the world. Hence the new name: No Illusions. I don’t think the G’Day World name really tells people who have never listened to the show before what to expect. Hopefully the new name is more descriptive. The format for the show is going to stay the same and the old URL will point to the new site, so there shouldn’t be any drop in continuity.

Also you’ll have noticed the new site design. Xminds have been working on this for me for the last few weeks. The No Illusions logo is something I threw together quickly last night and I’ll get a better one designed soon. But I’d love to get any other feedback from you on what you like and don’t like about the design so we can get the template right and roll it out across TPN.

I want to give a huge shout-out to TPN’s new network sponsor – neo.org.

Neo is a team of global volunteers and partners who have powerful Declarations and a wish to have a world that works for everyone. It is a social network with a purpose – to transform the world by enabling people to transform themselves.

One of the people behind neo is Australian entrepreneur Bill Liao. I interviewed Bill early last year and you can hear him talk about neo (which was then called Declare!) and the vision for bringing together people around the world who want to make a positive difference.

Neo proves that social networking can be about more than just talking about the weather. As I’m fond of saying – the Internet is just a tool, like a hammer. And we can use a hammer to hit someone on the head – or to discover the statue of David inside a discarded block of Carrara marble. It’s just a tool. Neo is one way we can use this particular tool for good.

And so – I would like each of you to support TPN’s new sponsor – and figure out how YOU are going to make the world a better place – by visiting neo’s site and signing The Declaration.

Dear friends,

I’ve just been hit with a large hosting bill for TPN’s servers and bandwidth and unfortunately I don’t have the funds to cover it this month. So I have set up a special fund raising exercise via ChipIn which will run for this week. Out of TPN’s hundreds of thousands of listeners, I’m hoping a few hundred will be able to chip in $10 to help us stay on the air. Please click on the widget below if you’re willing to help out.

TPN needs your help. Support indy media by donating a small amount of money towards TPN’s operating costs each month. For the price of a latte you can make the world a better place by supporting original indy media.

Click here for the TPN Pledge.

(Thanks to Bob Seal for the toon!)

By great demand, here’s my new video podcast – A Single Man’s Guide to Cooking Great Shit.

A few weeks ago, Google decided to drop TPN from its index. Why? They apparently think we’re lowly spammers. I need your help.

First, a little history –

As some of you may recall, back in March, on the day I was leaving Melbourne to relocate to Brisbane, I found out that TPN had been massively hacked. We’d parted ways with out IT partner a few months prior and had spent that time waiting for our new IT partner, a large firm in Melbourne, to get their act together and provide us with a contract to begin work. In the meantime, our servers weren’t upgraded with the latest patches, someone got in through a security hole and went to town exploiting the hell out of our backend. Almost every one of TPN’s 100+ sub-domains had hidden pharmaceutical spam all over it, our email server was sending out spam, there were even a couple of banking phishing sites.

So I spent the first week waiting for the new IT partner to help us out. As it turned out, they were useless and did nothing. So I started looking for a NEW partner. As you know, TPN runs on the smell of an oily rag, so finding a new IT partner wasn’t going to be easy. I can’t just call up IBM Global Services and offer them $1 trillion to create miracles.

However, after I called for help on Twitter, the guys from Pollenizer quickly introduced me to a firm in India called XMinds. Xminds jumped straight into our system and started cleaning it up and re-building it. They were Oscar Goldman and TPN’s servers were their Steve Austin (but they didn’t cost anywhere near six million dollars).

We cleaned out our servers (or so we thought) and re-built and re-launched. The process took about 3 weeks.

Fast forward to Nov 5 when I was notified by a few people that TPN wasn’t listed in Google’s index. I jumped into my Google web account where I found a notification from them saying they had discovered pharamaceutical spam on one of our old, long-dead sub-domains and, as a result, had delisted our ENTIRE site from their index. Not just the one sub-domain, our ENTIRE site. No warning. No communication. Just delisted us, a war of shock and awe launched on our site.

I immediately had XMinds delete the old sub-domain completely and then I re-submitted TPN into the Google index. That was 13 days ago. We’re still not listed.

I’ve asked around, trying to find someone at Google to talk to, and I’ve been told that I’m wasting my time, that the process will take 30+ days and even then there will probably be a penalty to our googlerank.

Now, I know TPN isn’t the biggest and most important site in the world. But, on the other hand, we’re not totally small fry either. We’ve got about 400,000 – 500,000 unique visitors a month and over 6 million page views a month. We’ve never done anything illegal or even dubious. I’ve always maintained a clean site. No gambling, no porn, nothing.

And, like many sites, a great deal of our traffic comes from Google. Fortunately, iTunes is probably a bigger referral of traffic, but Google is #2. And being dropped from their index is hurting us.

So… if anyone out there knows of anything we can do, or anyone we can talk to, to get TPN re-listed in Google’s index, I’d appreciate the help.

Cam & Kev (from TPN’s SOUSED podcast) hit a few more Melbourne cocktail bars a couple of weeks ago… it was RESEARCH goddamit!…. to chat with some of the owners and bartenders who have been nominated for the upcoming Melbourne Bar Awards.

I’m excited today to launch the latest podcast to join the TPN family:

I had Katherine Cunningham as a guest on G’Day World back in Oct 2007 and afterwards offered her her own show on TPN. It’s taken a while (all my fault!) to get it up and running but I’m very excited about it.

Katherine sez:

The idea behind, or perhaps between, this show is to open up a conversation, a deep, juicy wet conversation about women, about men, about power, about sex, about passion.

Check out the first show or subscribe to the RSS feed or add it to iTunes.

This week on TPN – discussions about photowalking, the future of social networking, the Bear Stearns financial crisis, nuclear energy, a $3 Billion Man, a reversal of the full mount position, The Wire finale, footy, What To Do When You Become The Boss, box office results, with lots of free music and much, much more!
Don’t miss out – feed your brain by subscribing via RSS or email (fill in the below box) to get a weekly list of all of the new episodes on TPN in one easy-to-read format!

The Atomic Show #087 – Ben Kenney of theWatt Podcast discusses power in Canada

Ben Kenney is the host of theWatt Podcast a well established and popular discussion show about all things energy. We talked about power decisions in Canada, CANDU technology, and New Brunswick’s electricity export plans.(MP3 – 22 MB – 01:03:49 M) Listen to Atomic Show #087 Here! Ben Kenney is…

The 2web Crew #21: Outsourcing and flame wars

Join Norg Media’s Bronwen Clune, Scouta’s Richard Giles, TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley and briefly Tangler’s Mick Lubinskas for a chat on Flame Wars in the week that was (including exclusive comment fromDuncan Riley) Instablogs funding and Citizen Journalism Web 2.0 newspeak and the need for…

Martial Arts Explorer – V3 P9

We’ve had a number of request to see Scot on the mat. Here’s the result. We are not responsible for any injuries or damage that may occur when you fall off your chair laughing. Master Chris…

Today In Music History: March 21, 2008

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right-clicking this link or press play and listen in your browser. Today In Music History: March 21, 2008

G’Day World #320 – Jamais Cascio on “The Chorus”

Jamais Cascio is a San Francisco Bay Area-based writer and ethical futurist. He joins me today to talk about our growing reliance on online social networks and the net in general as forms of identity management. What are some of the consequences of putting your personal information online or -…

The Atomic Show #086 – Howard Shaffer – voluntary nuclear educator

Howard Shaffer is a Rickover selected former Navy nuclear officer, he helped to build and operate several plants in the US and Taiwan, and volunteered throughout his career to share nuclear information with anti-nuclear advocates.(MP3 – 19.8 MB – 00:57:28 M) Listen to Atomic Show #086 Here! Howard…

Box Office Weekly #110

Box Office Weekly #110 (MP3 – 16 MB – 23 min)Listen here: In today’s show, weekend box office figures, TV ratings and these stories: Let the NBC fire sale begin!… Broadway flushes out a new venue… and in this week’s commentary Dan suggests something to watch if you’re sure you don’t want…

Extraordinary Everyday Lives #044 : Al Upton and the miniLegends

EELS44 This edition of the show is Sponsored by Nick Hodge, Professional Geek at Microsoft.The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show #044 – Thursday 20th March 2008 : Al Upton and the miniLegendsDOWNLOAD AND SAVE – Right-click. 1:05:03 22.9MbExtraordinary Everyday Lives show #44 – Al Upton and the…

Today In Music History: March 20, 2008

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right-clicking this link or press play and listen in your browser. Today In Music History: March 20, 2008

The Digital Photography Show #87: HDR, Photowalking and More with Jeff Revell.

The Digital Photography Show #87: HDR, Photowalking and More with Jeff Revell.Download audio file (tpn_digiphoto_20080318_087.mp3)
March 19, 2008 : Today, we talk with uber-enthusiast Jeff Revell about HDR images, photowalking, the newest Nikons, the…

TPN Rock Again – featuring Uncut

Out Of Sight, by Uncut (www.thenewviolence.com). Originally aired in TPN Rock at SXSW 2007. Tags: Uncut.

Today In Music History: March 19, 2008

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right-clicking this link or press play and listen in your browser. Today In Music History: March 19, 2008

Today In Music History: March 18, 2008

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right-clicking this link or press play and listen in your browser. Today In Music History: March 18, 2008

The Cranky Middle Manager Show #136 When You Become the Boss- Bob Selden

Getting that first management job can be exciting- or really tough. Here are some great tips for survival. Wayne Turmel talks to Bob Selden, author of What To Do When You Become The Boss. We also salute two Australian explorers whose first management gig didn’t go so swell. It’s been that kind…

The AFL Show preseason 3

This weeks episode is co-hosted by Daisy Pearce. Daisy is the captain of the Darebin Falcons who are the reigning VWFL premiers. Daisy is a superstar footballer who played her junior footy with the boys until she was 15 before gaining all Australian selection in the womens league at age 16. She’s…

TPN Rock Takeover, with Rowland Cutler

While I’m off having my ears melted from my head at Austin’s SXSW (expect a highlights show at some point!) it’s the monthly…

Today In Music History: March 17, 2008

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right-clicking this link or press play and listen in your browser. Today In Music History: March 17, 2008

Take Two: Australian Business Review: March 17, 2008

Leon Gettler and Garry Barker examine the Bear Stearns financial crisis as it touches world banks and Australia in particular and suggest we ain’t seen nothing yet. They touch on Telstra and the Australian national broadband network, yet to be built, and do a bit of forecasting on interest rates.

Connections #026 – Insights from a $3 Billion Man

David Moore is Director of Enterprise Engagements at Hewlett Packard in Sydney, Australia – and through the course of his career, has been involved in closing deals totaling in excess of $3 Billion.Prior to joining HP, David had a long career at Deloitte Consulting, as Industry Leader in Energy,…

Martial Arts Explorer – V3 P08

This time we cover the differences between sport martial arts and self defense and Michael looks at a reversal of the full mount position.Please subscribe to this version of the podcast in…

The 2 Web Crew #20 – Zuckerberg!!

Join Norg Media’s Bronwen Clune, Scouta’s Richard Giles, and TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley for a chat on The new and old Microsoft Balancing family life and a startup The appeal of Live internet TV Mark Zuckerberg/ Sarah Lacy WordPress vs MovableType Download Stream:

The Productivity Show #37 – David Gray (Global Geek)

I thought it was time to go back to the technology of productivity, and who better than David Gray of the The Global Geek Podcast, to discuss all things geek and beautiful. Patient Admin Systems! – Tony sold ‘em, Dave now uses them. They record things like blood pressure straight into…

This is a new thing I’m staring – a blog post containing links to every TPN episode from the previous week. You can get it via RSS or email.

clipped from tpn.thepodcastnetwork.com TPN Week In Review – March 10 – 16, 2008 In our first TPN Weekly Review, we have more reporting from SXSW, an interview with a visionary, lots of music history, podsafe rock music, digital photography tips, religion, box office news, Napoleon’s abdication, Nine Inch Nails news, footy news and management tips! What more could you ask for…

Once again, TPN’s fearless VP of Stuff, Ewan Spence, has caught the big white bird from his home in Edinburgh to Austin Texas for South By Southwest. Catch his shows from there starting today on TPN’s Tech Conference Show.

Happy Birthday TPN! Three years ago today TPN opened for business. Thanks to the WayBack Machine, we know what it looked like. In 2008 we have lots more shows, half a million friends, and each year is better than the last. My thanks to everyone who has contributed to the story so far – my family, the TPN hosts (past and present), our advertisers and, of course, you nice folks who keep listening to our shit. Oh and I’d like to thank LOTU. Without LOTU, I wouldn’t be here today.

It’s been a while since we’ve launched a new show on TPN so I’m excited to announce The Biography Show starts today! David Markham and I have enjoyed some great feedback from the audience of our Napoleon 101 podcast, so we’re doing another series together. The idea behind The Biography Show is to examine the lives of some of history’s most influential people. We kick off the series with a 90 minute talk about the life of Alexander III of Macedon, otherwise known as Alexander “The Great”.

Compete’s TPN ranking

Originally uploaded by cameronreilly

While we can’t compete with PodShow’s 14000% growth over 2007 (and we also haven’t raised $20 million from investors), Compete.com says TPN grew by 430% during 2007. I don’t think Compete’s numbers are accurate – my own logs say we only doubled in size – but hey, Adam seems to accept their view of things, so who am I to argue? Although they also say only 20,000 people visited TPN in December which is obviously a completely bogus number. It was more like 500,000 according to our logs. They claim to calculate only US traffic but still, that’s most of TPN’s traffic. Compete strikes me like Alexa – pretty flaky.

As you can see, according to Alexa we actually went backwards in 2007. So Compete says we grew by 430%, Alexa says we went backwards, our own server logs say we grew by about 200%.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age re-ran Andrew Bock’s article on podcasting which first appeared on December 20, 2007 only this time they used a photo of me they took in February 2005 (!). This is the same article I complained about here because I felt it was, deliberately or not, unbalanced. Still – I won’t deny it’s always strangely exciting to see a photo of yourself in the mainstream press. It’s happened to me a lot over the last few years but I still get a thrill out of it, even though logically I’m aware that it means little. TPN’s traffic won’t significantly increase. No worthy investors will ring me up. Old colleagues and bosses who used to give me a hard time probably won’t see it and squirm. I did like Mick Liubinskas’ analysis of the photo though:

        Analyse the Pic;

1. He’s wearing glasses – He’s hip!
2. He’s wearing a suit – He’s professional.
3. He’s surrounded by books – He’s smart.
4. He’s leaning on a laptop – He knows tech, but he runs it, it doesn’t run him.

Very insightful, Mick. I pointed out to him that Fairfax took this photo back in Feb 05 when we were just getting started. I remember the sunnies were sitting on a coffee table and the photographer said “Are those yours? Put them on.” Greatest piece of advice I ever got from a photographer.

2007 was a big year for TPN in lots of ways. We grew; we stumbled; we struggled; we survived. Bootstrapping a start-up isn’t glamorous. Trying to keep a fast-growing business alive when revenues are still small and you are funding it organically can be frustrating. Every day brings new challenges. Things you survive by telling yourself “one day it won’t be like this”.

We started off the year with a re-design of the homepage and lots of fast growth. Around the middle of year our server admin quit and I had to put a stop to adding new shows. Then a couple of months later our webdev quit. For the last couple of months we’ve been getting by with favours from friends whenever we need IT support. So it’s been frustrating on lots of levels. In March I thought we would finish the year with a million listeners a month. We missed that goal. Since March we’ve been hovering between 450,000 – 500,000 listeners a month. Now – when I compare that to some of the radio stations in Melbourne or Sydney, I feel pretty good. TPN, currently, one full-time employee. Me. No funding. No sales team. No IT team. Just me and a team of excellent, dedicated and PATIENT podcast producers who have tolerated our bumps over the last couple of years. I want to thank them all for their sense of humour when things go awry (like they did again over the last couple of days when out FTP server flaked on us) and their continued support for the TPN vision.

However, despite the struggles, it was a pretty good year. As you can see from the numbers below, we served nearly 5.5 million listeners during the year (okay, that number is slightly bullshit – it’s our monthly unique visitor numbers added together – but it sounds good so I’m sticking with it), who listened to nearly 7 million TPN podcasts (that number is legit). That’s a HUGE number, especially when you consider that since we launched in early 2005 we’ve only delivered a little over 11 million podcasts. Thinking about that 7 million number for a second – if we assume that each podcast is an average of 30 minutes long, that means you listened to us for 3.5 million hours (145, 833 days or 400 years non-stop) in 2007. No wonder your brain is hurting.

Of course I also want to thank our listeners and supporters. Those of you who listen to our shows, interact with us on the blogs, in Facebook, at MODM, Twitter, Second Life, etc. Without you we really would be what the cynics in the mainstream media think we are – people sitting in our undies, talking to ourselves.

Duncan Riley, TechCrunch writer, entrepreneur, and host of TPN’s On The Pod, has been nominated in the Performancing Awards 2007. Give him your vote!
The Best Blog Podcast – Performancing Awards 2007 Reader’s Choice Poll | Performancing.com

Blogged with Flock

Last month I recorded a couple of pilot episodes of a new podcast series where I walk around Melbourne with one of the City of Melbourne’s “greeters”, Jill. This is a project cooked up between myself, Tourism Victoria and the City of Melbourne. We’ve recorded two pilots and I’d really appreciate it if a few of you in Melbourne would grab these and do the walk while you listen to the podcast and then give me feedback on how well it works.

The first tour takes us through Melbourne’s seedy past and is called “Politics, Prostitutes and Poverty”. The second, “Lingering in Laneways” takes us down some of Melbourne’s hidden laneways to discover some of the best kept secret bars, shops and restaurants.

Get both of them at TPN’s Melbourne Confidential site.

There are a couple of stories about podcasting in Australia in The Age today. I chatted with both journalists at length over the last month for the stories but ended up with two lines out of a 2+ page story. Go figure. All of my journo and ex-journo friends (including Mrs R) this morning counseled me to just wear it on the chin. And perhaps they are right. But I’m pissed off about it anyway. And here’s why.

In the main story, by Andrew Bock, the ABC, Austereo (owner of Triple M and Fox FM) and even Salty Dog (congrats Dennis!) get their download figures trumpeted. Where are TPN’s figures? Omitted. Deliberate? I don’t know.

What I do know is that Fairfax, the owners of The Age, have a commercial relationship with Austereo. Fairfax hosts Austereo’s websites. Was that disclosed in the article? No, it was not. Accidental? Perhaps. According to the article, Austereo is doing more than 850,000 podcast downloads a month across all its stations. TPN is doing about the same (we spiked a few months back and hit about 800k, last month it was about 650K, which is where Austereo’s last annual report in July 2007 said they were at). TPN is a one-man, self-funded, three-year-old operation. Austereo is decades-old, publicly-listed company with revenues in excess of $255 million pa which has some of the biggest names in radio working on their shows.

Now if *you* were writing the story about podcasting, don’t you think this would have been an interesting comparison? Apparently someone at Fairfax didn’t think so.

Fairfax also now owns Southern Cross Broadcasting, owners of top radio stations 3AW and 2UE. Was that disclosed in the article? No, it wasn’t. If you take TPN’s listener numbers (450 – 500k per month) and compare those to, say, 3AW, I think we’re about the same size, perhaps even bigger.

Does Fairfax have a conflict of interest when it covers stories about radio and podcasting? What do you think?

By the way, I don’t blame the journo’s involved. They are both swell guys. I’m sure if their stories are being edited after they submit them, and important conflict of interest disclosures aren’t being made, then they would both be concerned. Is the paper interested in reporting news or in promoting a company they have a commercial interest in?

Luckily we now have alternative places we can get our news from, such as NORG. If you aren’t contributing to that already, I encourage you to. We have the tools now to report our own news. Of course, I’ll need to get my backside out of this chair so I know what’s going on the world before I’ll have much to contribute…

The Age of TPN’s Audience

Originally uploaded by cameronreilly

From our 2007 survey. I’m rather surprised at how old you all are. I wonder how much of this is a reflection of our content versus the general age of podcast listeners?

It’s that time of the year again when we ask you, our most loyal and lovable audience, to spend ten minutes of your life answering a bunch of questions about what makes you tick. We do this in the hope that this information (all anonymous of course) will encourage advertisers to increase their interest in advertising on our podcasts. We love producing these shows for you and we love the fact that they are freely available. However it takes a lot of work, time and energy and the costs of the infrastructure grow every year. We need to generate some revenue to allow us to keep building and getting better. You can help once a year by filling out our survey.

Click Here to take survey

Stan Relihan had me back on his very popular Connections podcast today to discuss the results of our Digg contest as well as discuss his learnings from his first couple of months podcasting. We talk about LinkedIn, Twitter, and how to use podcasting to build your personal brand.

We decided we were running out of room in the old place, so TPN SL HQ has moved! This time we have an entire island to play in. Visit TPN SL HQ!

The big press release went out today announcing that John Cleese (yes, THAT John Cleese) will be producing a new series of podcasts which will be hosted on TPN. Read the full announcement here.

What a coup, huh? This is something we’ve been working on for a year. Well, actually, Dean from Funk first started talking to me about doing this a LONG time ago, early 2005 I think. Anyway, it’s finally happened and the video which you can see in the full release I linked to above was played on the big screen today at the Podcast Expo in California. Ewan Spence, Scott Sherman and Brian Ibbott from TPN are all there reprezentin’.

As a child of the 70s I grew up watching Monty Python and Fawlty Towers and was a huge fan of John’s. And then when I got into the corporate video space in 1993, John’s video training series was something we all admired as being state of the art.

And of course his work in films such as “A Fish Called Wanda” was also completely genius.

So having the chance to help promote his new work in the era of podcasting is a complete thrill.

I have to thank Dean Whitebread from Funk for bringing the deal to us in the first place and really championing TPN to John and his people. And it wouldn’t have happened without Ewan Spence continually working away behind the scenes as he always does as TPN’s official VP of STUFF to keep the wheels turning.

This week has had it’s share of ups and downs but it’s great to finish it on a high!