Bush Telegraph and Picutre Australia

Well today I was on Radio National on the Bush Telegraph radio show. It is an hour long show and I was second last with Fiona Hooton from Picture Australia.

It was quite an interesting event. Fiona contacted me a few weeks ago about it. Last Friday a woman from the show called and spoke with me for about half an hour. They pencilled me in for today depending on Fiona's availability. However, I never did get a confirming email. So I was sitting in my office, wondering if I would be on air. Of course, I got several phone calls just as the time was approaching and missed the land line call from the radio station. So I ended up doing the call on my mobile. This was good as I could go to an unused meeting room as Matthew was being very loud on his phone call. I was very nervous as I waited for the call to start and stumbled a few times with my words in the broadcast. By the end I was shaking like a leaf and had to talk to another work colleague for five minutes to calm down. But I think it went well.

The segment was about Picture Australia - Our Town, a collaboration between Picture Australia and Flickr. This surprised me a little as I expect it to be about people places and events as I had recently won the photographer of the month for this site. Fiona described the site and I described the input I have had into the content of the site.

"Rainbow" by yewenyi [?]


"Beer Garden" by yewenyi [?]

Taiwan Earthquake

I quipped before about the lack of coverage of the impact on Telecommunications of the Taiwan earth quake. All that was available was a poor report by Reuters. Then there was a better report in wikipedia. Now there is a good report in Bloomberg. This one is actually informative (like the wikipedia one) and provides good coverage of the effects and outcomes. I am impressed. I have just looked at the wikipedia one again, and it is also much improved.

Other cables affected include C2C Group Ltd.'s C2C cable which connects Korea through to Singapore, Reliance Communication Ltd.'s Flag North Asia Loop connecting Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China, as well as Reach's North Asian Loop connecting Japan through to Hong Kong, according to the operators.

Taiwan Earthquake

Well I spent most of today working on the effects of the four Taiwan earthquakes. I work in international telecommunications and there were several cable breaks on the cables around Taiwan. When I had some time, I looked on the net to see what the media were saying. I was surprised that only one news article mentioned the broken cables. What is even more unusual is that article was in Hemel Hempstead in the UK, which as far as I can tell is just a local rag. Here is their copy:

While a tsunami warning came to nothing, the quake damaged at least six undersea telecommunication cables, affecting users in Taiwan and South Korea, and was felt in China and Hong Kong.

So I say, bravo Hemel Today.