The free calls to US/Canada deal will continue for the remainder of 2010, after which the only free calls will be available for those with Gmail accounts at either end of the phone.
Those who know me would attest that I would have been following the 2010 Federal Election very closely regardless of what was topical on the policy front. I am a political tragic and a lover of the much-criticised 24 hour news cycle - and my wife is the authority to affirm that fact.
However, regardless of the result this weekend, all of us in the internet industry have to be delighted that for five weeks, our world and our concerns were shared with the masses.
Fibre, wireless, megabits, open internet, filters, etcetera became part of the vernacular of politicians who don't even know how to turn on a computer, let alone Tweet or use Facebook.
Due to the broadband debate, more Australians now know that parts of the world have connection speeds up to 100 times faster than we do here downunder.
Most also understand that this is due to fibre-optic cabling; something no commercial enterprise has decided to build in Australia due to our small population and the unlikelihood that they will ever make a buck from a $43 billion outlay.
Most Australians also now know that an internet filter designed to censor offensive content from the internet (such as child paedophilia and how to join Al Qaeda) sounds nice, but is unlikely to work and could be abused by a group of legislators sooner or later.
If it did miraculously work and wasn't abused, the geek community that rules the online world will not stand for any censorship on the 'open internet'.
Here is my summation of these two topics - National Broadband Network (NBN) and the Internet Filter - which served the internet industry brilliantly by raising internet to the very top of the policy pile, ahead of Health, the Economy, Industrial Relations, Immigration and Climate change...
NBN
The Australian Labor Party (ALP), led controversially by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, has decided it will fork up to $26 billion of taxpayer money to team up with commercial enterprise for a total $43 billion national broadband network to deliver a minimum speed of 100 megabits per second (up to 1000 megabits [or 1 gigabit] per second) to 93% of Australian households.
The Liberal and National Coalition (LIB), led by Tony Abbott, say no. It says Australia is in too great a debt to afford this. It says "we shouldn't put all our eggs in the fibre basket" and "explore wireless, etc", which are more new-fashioned technologies.
The Coalition policy only guarantees speeds of 12 megabits per second (up to 100 megabis per second).
When I asked some industry types on Twitter what they think of the NBN, nobody said they don't want it.
Those who leaned 'no' gave reasons such as they are not sure if it would be deliverable by this government on time and on budget. Or they said the cost is too great and other priorities, such as Health and Education, should be worked on first.
I personally feel while Australia is now more educated on the potential of speeds we could have using fibre, the debate has been a poor one.
Of course we should have fibre! Of course the government should spend since enterprise won't!
I wish the Coalition matched the ALP policy of delivering a NBN, but found its differentiation by providing a more efficient way to deliver it to Australian households.
This would have meant both parties are offering us progress, and the debate will not have focussed on whether we needed progress, but rather on who can deliver progress better.
While former Coalition leader Malcolm Turnbull has obviously towed the party line on this issue, I feel if he were their leader, we would have had the debate I wish we were having.
Abbott's claims that he is "no tech-head" in a community filled with internet users made him seem like a leader going backwards. See below video satirical of this from The Chaser of the ABC:
NET FILTER
Then we come to the net filter. If the ALP and Gillard loses this election, I wonder how many will blame it on this monumental stuff-up.
Some in the community clearly want net filters. Why the ALP did not alter this policy when Gillard took over from Kevin Rudd is beyond me.
Instead the ALP split the internet vote by continuing to send very 'hard-to-like' filter champion Stephen Conroy to keep trying to sell the unsellable.
The Coalition, through one of its more tech-savvy members in Joe Hockey, announced they would abandon the filter.
But it was not lost on the geek community that it wasn't because the Coalition didn't want the net filter. Because they do want it. It was because they felt it couldn't be implemented.
CONCLUSION
As the title of this blog suggests, the 2010 Federal Election will be remembered as the campaign in which the internet crawled up the policy pile.
But it will also be remembered for two major parties who argued the net-related policies - NBN and NET FILTER - very poorly.
It is the election where the internet community feels:
a vote for Labor is a vote for speed;
a vote for Liberal is a vote for open internet; and
a vote for Green ... well ... is a vote for pretty much anything!
Traditional media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and his company News Limited's attacks against every giant in the 'new media' are becoming too obviously cringing to let pass.
Skype has been around for many years - I have been using it for over 5 years - but Murdoch has chosen to wage his war when Skype is about to float on New York's NASDAQ for an estimated US$100 million.
I'm no lawyer. I am an avid user of products and services Murdoch has a hand in (especially Foxtel). But his suggestion that he owns the 'Sky' sounds comical. It sounds desperate.
Rupert should be ashamed and realise that his position as a filthy rich billionaire is safe. It is safe despite the fact that his title of 'media tycoon' is now officially revised to 'traditional media tycoon'.
Enjoy your life and leave Skype, Google and other 'new media tycoons' to be.
We jumped so high that we credited it for what it was - the most revolutionary communications tool since the email was invented all those years ago.
The keyword (forgive the pun Google) in the above sentence is 'was'.
That's right... Google has ditched Google Wave.
On their Blog, Google acknowledges that when it launched at its Google I/O Developer Conference in 2009, "we showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even "playback" the history of changes-all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops".
But Google concedes "Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked".
Google, long considered the company that turns to gold whatever it touches, has now registered numerous consecutive failures with Google Wave and its Nexus One phone the most spectacular so far considering their very popular releases.
Is the failure of Wave a hint to Google to give up on Social?
Google Buzz, which is Google's answer to Twitter and Facebook, could be next for the chopping block as it too has had a disappointing take-up.
Despite being embedded in Google's hugely popular email client Gmail, Buzz has failed to dent Facebook's and Twitter's growing market shares around the world.
What Google must be wary of is that every shutdown in the Social Web arena results in the loss of loyal fans; many of them developers who spruik Google and the coportate torchbearers of their innovations.
If Buzz is headling downhill, I suggest Google pulls the plug as soon as possible to avoid disappointing more people who land on it, begin thinking about developing apps and extensions for it.
Many did this with Google Wave, and their initial "jumping for joy" is now a sombre version of Michael Jackson's moonwalk backwards to place their ideas and developer tools back into the cupboard.
I believe Google released Google Wave too prematurely.
At the time, Microsoft was about to launch its latest in a long line of search engine offerings in Bing; this time with a mass advertised release designed to take market share off Google's online search empire.
Google panicked and shot early with a buggy version of Wave to dominate trending topics on Twitter and Facebook, as well as dominate water cooler discussions among developers.
Next time, I hope Google reconsiders.
Because Google Wave is an outstanding product. Unfortunately, it is just a bit early for mass adoption.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard launched the Google Student Voice initiative from the internet giant's Pyrmont offices, while also taking the opportunity to announce the Australian Labor Party's 'political social network', Labor Connect.
The first video below is Gillard's announcement, while the second is a typical Google introductory video to its new initiative.
Latika Bourke was an up-and-coming journalist in the Canberra press gallery until her combination of youthful energy and knowledge of micro-blogging via Twitter made her lead the nation's coverage of the Liberal Leadership spill in late 2009.
Bourke was a mad Tweeter prior to the spill which saw Tony Abbott win the Australian Opposition leadership battle against incumbent Malcolm Turnbull and fellow challenger Joe Hockey.
Her tweeting took career significance on that day.
Bourke was one of a few Canberra journos that I highlighted in a tweet at the time as "ones to follow" if you want to know what's the latest with regards to the spill.
Her efforts helped the hashtag #spill attract global significance as it rose to "trending topic" status on Twitter.
And Bourke picked up a large chunk of new followers who knew she was the one to follow for the latest on this, and future stories, coming out of Canberra.
Bourke's efforts in using Twitter was described as "pioneering" as she received the Walkley Award for Young Australian Journalist of the Year.
Her video interview is below and you can follow her on Twitter @latikambourke.
On the show, which is Australia's highest-rating morning television program, I revealed that online businesses can be very rewarding but they do require effective planning like any traditional business.
With web businesses, you need a web business strategy that derives from groundwork research you do to identify your target audience, find out how your competitors are attracting them to their website, and plan how you will do it better.
You also need to align yourself with a good web designer, who isn't just going to design you a website that looks good, rather a web designer who understands the web from a business viewpoint.
This will ensure your online business website is designed to give you the best possible opportunity to succeed - to the standards Google expects and with common traits that traditionally attract maximum return on investment (ROI).
Ideally, your website designer will equip your online business with a Content Management System. At KAYWEB, we save clients thousands of dollars per year by allowing them to update their website themselves, with no technical knowledge required at all, using KAYWEB CMS.
Once your website is built and your content is in, you need to market your online business so people attend.
The Morning Show hosts Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies were also interested in the need to integrate social media in an online business marketing campaign, the common mistakes people make in online business, and the defining traits of successful internet entrepreneurs.
An interesting list was released last week, ranking the 1000 most-visited websites on the internet (excluding Google and YouTube). Facebook topped it.
This is hardly surprising considering TIME's cover story on Facebook last week revealed that "1 in 4 people" using the internet not only have a Facebook account, but have visited it in the last 30 days.
This means that 25% of all internet users visited Facebook in the last 30 days!
Others high up in the list include Yahoo, Live and Chinese search engine giant Baidu.
The top 10 included two websites which doesn't have advertising as an option - Wikipedia and Mozilla.
Haig Kayserian is an internet business consultant with clients across Australia, the United States of America and Asia.
The company he founded - KAYWEB - has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, New York and Manila, providing premium websites and apps solutions to businesses, organisations, government and individuals.
