If one has been listening to the radio, they will instantly recognize
an incredibly repetitive and aggravating song called ‘Crank That’ by some teenage rapper named ‘Soulja Boy’.

This tune has inexplicably reached over twenty five million hits on
YouTube as of December 15, 2007, and shows no signs of slowing down.

It is difficult to count the number of times brilliant lyrics like
“Youuuuuuu”, “Super Man That Ho”, or “Crank That Soulja
Boy” appears in the ’song’. Enough already!

Everything about this rapper screams one-hit-wonder.

Too expensive, I think so! Online gaming? Not easy. Sony’s PlayStation 3 has not been anywhere near as competitive as everyone would have hoped, and its release was put back time and again too.

The PS3 is a resounding failure by all accounts. Still not sure, watch this promotional video.

Well, not quite promotional, but funny nonetheless. Agree / disagree I’m sure you will, leave a comment underneath…

The other day we received a booklet through the post from John Howard. It provided guidance and advice on how to protect your children from the internet.

I was pleased that Mr Howard had taken the time to explain the dangers of the internet to me because:

(a) I don’t have any children, and;

(b) the booklet was absolute tosh.

Every day there are news stories on the major networks about the dangers of the internet and the different filters and censors available.

To re-word a lyric from a famous Welsh rap-band: “The internet doesn’t kill people, rappers do”.

The internet is simply a medium -like money, felt tips pens and witches’ cats. It is not evil in itself. Holding a position of responsibility, posting letters and owning cars can all be used to the same mal-effect as the internet.

The same applies as has always done, keep an eye on your kids. Don’t go shutting down the post office, scout club and requisitioning every white van just because of an over-reaction.

Scare tactics such as these are used to win votes and control over citizen’s lives. Use your head -not a server-side filter.

Another bane of the e-world we now live in are e-hoaxes or well intentioned warnings that are promulgated to all and sundry in your address book.

An example:

Dear All

If you receive a phone call on your mobile from any person, saying that he or she is a company engineer, or telling that they’re checking your mobile line, and you have to press #90 or #09 or any other number, end this call immediately without pressing any numbers.

There is a fraud company using a device that once you press #90 or #09 they can access your ‘SIM’ card and make calls at your expense.

Forward this message to as many colleagues, relatives and friends as you can, to stop it.

Many thanks for your time regarding this matter, take care and regards.

Phil Corris
Police Constable/Crime Prevention Officer
Ext 496696 (Internal)
01524 596696 (External)

Rubbish. Been around for ever. If you get a message like this, check out Snopes.com (there are other websites available). This particular hoax is located here . Please take care before promulgating these e-mails, they use up bandwidth and create panic in the uninformed.

The internet is fast overtaking the television as the primary source of information for many people. Apparently, in the 16-25 age group, people are now spending more hours online than they do watching television. But this does not stop the TV stations from stealing their ‘news’ from YouTube (and promoting that website in the process!).

I’m sick to death off turning on the television and seeing a ‘report’ about how some kid has been ‘happy slapped’ or a bullying incident that was posted to YouTube being replayed to the TV watching masses.

That is not news, it is gratuitous reproduction of an emotive video. More importantly, it is one your news station didn’t make, so you’re not telling me anything I couldn’t have found for myself.

Politicians are at it now, so it must be bad. They are all posting their campaign and party political bullshit on YouTube, safe in the knowledge that lazy TV journos the world over will rip it off and play it on the news - “look how cool Kevin Rudd is, he put this on YouTube…” Piss off.

You’re a TV news station. By definition, you must have your own cameras. Use them. Stop stealing videos from YouTube. That’s just lazy.

Chain letters are a real shitter. Totally pointless, and a waste of everyone’s time.

These come in various guises:

Chain Emails

They usually say something like “send this on to 10 friends and you’ll feel a little better. Send it to 100 and you’ll get a lot of money tomorrw. Send it to all your contacts and you’ll be showered with wealth.”

Or they say the opposite - “if you don’t send this on to all your friends, an axe wielding marauding barbarian will come to your house and eat you… and your family.”

Chain Comments (on YouTube, or Facebook)

“You have been bitchslapped” or some similar shite “do this to everyone else or you are my bitch forever.

What is the point of them? There is no point. Except with chain emails, generally, you get a huge amount of email addresses in the one message (most of which are current and working) which one could use to send endless spam.

So, if you send these on, you are effectively responsible for all of those Viagra, Cialis and penis enlargement emails you keep receiving. So stop complaining about them - it’s your fault.

Being Emo is very 2005.

Emos are shit because of the contradictions that they represent: “I don’t want to conform, therefore I’ll become part of a group”… and hang around outside a train station, or in a park, looking sad.

Grow up.

Just because you are a teenager, and you have a thousand hormones racing around your body, does not mean that everyone is against you, or that you have a monopoly on being emotional.

This has all been done before - emos would be mortified to realise this - so it is NOT unique, or non-conformist. Becoming emo is, in fact, an action demonstrating a complete lack of individuality.

I can just see it now: “Emo Conference 2025″ where aging emos will meet to discuss the best types of black eyeliners for those entering their 40s, and will all have a cry together, causing their mascara to run.

Super-fast broadband is an amazing step forward in technology. It is not difficult to cast one’s mind back to a time when accessing the internet consisted of a load of screeches, followed by the joyful experience of watching - over a period of minutes - a page slowly crawl onto a web browser. This experience was followed by ludicrously high monthly telephone bills.

Broadband saw an end to all that. Or, rather, it should have done. Companies in Australia are still imposing ridiculously low usage limitations on nearly all of their broadband packages, after which you are either charged heavily for each megabyte over this limit, or your connection slows to a pre-broadband slow speed.

Such behaviour has rightly been finished by competition in most of Europe and America, and should be consigned to the past.

Facebook is one of the better social networks. In fact, it is the only one that I use anymore, as most of my friends are on there.

However, recently, there has been a worrisome trend rearing its ugly head: that of Facebook Applications. Let’s get this straight from the outset, the Video application is good, as are most of the original applications but the number and subject matter of most of the new additions is beyond a joke.

The main problems are as follows:

• The Irritant Factor - OK, so you have succumbed to the Zombie application, but does that entitle you to keep sending me countless invitations to “start biting chumps”?
• Inability to say “no” - I don’t want it. Never did. Never will. Why, therefore, can I only choose to ‘ignore’ an invitation? I’d far rather give an outright ‘no’. Give me a “Never ask me again!” button;
• Stupid Applications - loads of the applications are absolutely ridiculous. Honestly, I don’t even know how they manage to get anyone to use them;
• Cluttered Facebook Profiles - this one is important, take heed.

One of Facebook’s main advantages over Myspace et al was that they didn’t allow their users to fuck up their profile pages by adding loads of irrelevant piffle, or coding that doesn’t work. Unfortunately, with the advent of all these applications, that is no longer the case. I want to write something on the wall, but first must traverse the Super-Wall, the Power-Wall and a load of other pesky walls, not to mention The Fortune Cookie and whatever other crap my friend has decided to infect his or her page with.

It is beyond a joke now, and something must be done before this shitty aspect of Facebook becomes the overweening feature of the site, and leads to the conclusion that Facebook itself is ‘a bit shit.’