blog Fascinating video above by Jim Stewart from our favourite Aussie search engine optimisation firm StewArtMedia. In the video, Stewart dissects how news aggregator Google News treated reporting of yesterday’s speech by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

As many of us noted with frustration yesterday afternoon, the mainstream media’s obsessive interest in the fact that Conroy very briefly swore on live television dominated discussion of the speech; despite the fact that the Minister delivered a very polished rebuttal of the Coalition’s rival National Broadband Network policy, making some very sound policy points. The reader discussion of that issue is on fire this morning. And Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has already responded.

Stewart points out that early in Google News’ coverage of the event, articles reporting the content of Conroy’s speech were popular, but as the afternoon wore on, they dropped out of the system as coverage of Conroy’s swearword took precedence — presumably because more links were flooding in about Conroy’s F-bomb, generating more popular interest and so on.

Now, to my mind, this is just another example of the dumbing down of Australia’s political debate. A Minister makes a substantive policy speech in a national forum and drives a national debate forward, but all that most media outlets report is the fact that he accidentally used the F-word when passionately answering a question from a reporter? Give me a break. What happened yesterday truly was a sideshow.

What responsibility does Google News bear? Not much. To be honest, the site’s mathematical ranking algorithm correctly highlighted the fact that the media was going batshit crazy about Conroy’s minor swearword infraction. Because there were so many links going everywhere about that issue, that’s what Google focused on. Google News reflects the best of journalism when it’s popular, and the worst of journalism when it’s popular — but it always reflects what’s popular.

blog Hilarious video above of a segment broadcast recently on Channel 10 news about Australian cloud computing startup OrionVM. Channel 10 rolls out all the stereotypes possible for the team — comparing them to Steve Jobs, discussing the copious amounts of energy drinks they imbibe to keep their hacking skills alive, and even displaying repeated screenshots of what appears to be an Ubuntu terminal prompt. It’s mysterious code! Elite hacking going on here!

In all seriousness, while it’s great that OrionVM is getting coverage like this, we’d find it hard to believe this level of hype isn’t fairly unjustified. I’m sure the company is doing well, but is it worth “millions”? Possible, but not likely. Is it realistic to build a giant cloud computing infrastructure company off a base of just $6,000? Not really. Can the company’s product be conquering the world after it only launched in mid-2011? Nope.

The thing about cloud computing companies like OrionVM is that they’re not fast-moving consumer-facing startups like Spreets or RedBubble. They’re fundamentally business to business companies. And even in today’s hyped cloud computing environment, what this means is long sales cycles. Revenue in cloud computing land (especially in infrastructure as a service) is going to be slow to come by, and I would bet OrionVM has a long path to profitability. I didn’t see any sales guys in the videos of their office — just geeks typing at keyboards.

The other thing is that the company is currently going up against almost every major IT infrastructure company in the book. Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Fujitsu, CSC and more … to say nothing of fellow Australian startups like Ninefold, which is backed by Macquarie Telecom. Is there something special about OrionVM which will allow it to beat a global company like Amazon, or a local company like Fujitsu, at the cloud computing game? No. I do not believe there is. And even Ninefold is going to have the backing, customer contacts and deep pockets of a major player like Macquarie Telecom to draw upon

I like OrionVM and the guys that work there, and I’m cheering for them. I’ve covered the company before. But I really dislike hype, and I’d like to see some more evidence that these guys are world-beaters before I sign on to the level which Channel 10 appears to have done. And in IT circles, that means disclosing happy customers with successful and ongoing technology deployments. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Nice little video produced about Melbourne Cup Day at Australian software company Atlassian. Looks like quite a lot of fun was had by all :)

In this video filmed by the good chaps at StartCastAU, Pollenizer co-founder Phil Morle and staffer Bronwen Clune discuss how the startup incubator works internally, including the concept of ‘cross-pollenization’, which sees the team as a whole discuss issues with the wider team outside the segregated ‘pods’ in which they do their day to day work.

“It’s impossible to be myopic or stubborn inside Pollenizer, because there are so many people working on so many businesses, that you actually have to be successful, you actually have to prove the reason for its existence every single day here,” says Morle.

In addition, check out StartCastAU’s previous video with Pollenizer co-founder Mick Liubinskas, in which he gives us a tour of the company’s new offices and discusses his crazy career history.

In this video filmed by the good chaps at StartCastAU, local tech startup luminary Mick Liubinskas walks us through the new offices of his startup incubator Pollenizer. It’s been a wild ride for Liubinskas and his co-founder Phil Morle.

The company was founded three and a half years ago, and now has 25 Sydney staff and another 55 working in southern India. In the past three and half years, the team has seen more than a thousand businesses, has run bootcamps and workshops for more than 400 businesses, and has helped to found 25 companies as well as raising $12 million in venture capital along the way.

Looks like Mick is keeping busy!

In this video, published by the Australian Labor Party, the Federal Government, Telstra and NBN Co reveal at a press conference in Canberra last Thursday that they have finally inked the $11 billion deal which will see Telstra’s infrastructure made available to NBN Co to speed up the NBN rollout, and Telstra’s fixed-line customers migrated onto the NBN as it is rolled out across Australia over the next decade.

Present at the press conference are Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, Finance Minister Penny Wong, Telstra CEO David Thodey and NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley. The video does not contain the Q&A session of the press conference, but solely the speeches on the day by the politicians and executives attending.

In this video, Telstra gives customers a closer look at the dual-channel HSPA+, 802.11n-capable battery powered 3G Wi-Fi hotspot it launched this morning … along with a few cameos of the Motorola Xoom tablet it’s also selling. Looks like a pretty solid little device — with quite a few more settings and a better management interface than previous Telstra offerings we’ve seen.

Video credit: Telstra

Ever wondered what Telstra spokespeople get up to on their off days? Wonder no more, gentle viewers, but instead watch the video above, where Telstra’s Craig Middleton, a gentleman of our long acquaintance, does his best impression of naturist David Attenborough. Also appearing in the video are a number of other Telstra PR types in amusing situations. We didn’t pay much attention to the actual content, which is associated with an attempt to drum up publicity yesterday; but we found the ‘between the lines’ industry humour here hilarious.

Video credit: Telstra

We couldn’t help but be amused by this video shot at the opening of CA’s new Canberra office. Not only does Senator Kate Lundy wax a little too lyrical about “one of the most exciting projects I’ve seen for a long time” — the implementation of CA performance analysis software for the Brumbies — but we couldn’t help feeling Brumbies player Patrick Phibbs probably wished he was somewhere else during the entire process. Uncomfortable, much?

Check out the video above filmed by ZDNet.com.au, in which retiring Department of Human Services deputy secretary of ICT Infrastructure and long-time Centrelink CIO John Wadeson advises his successor — whoever that winds up being — that IT needs a voice in the department, and it’s not just “a tool, as some people like to call it”.

We found this a compelling interview with one of Australia’s most senior IT leaders.