New Stuff Launching…
Firstly, the Google blog announced this morning that Google Maps is now live in Australia. Its been working for a while, but it seems now they have added a heap of new features
Many Australians have used our maps and satellite images, so today we’re especially excited to launch Google Maps Australia. We’ve expanded service to include Australian business listings, driving directions, and support for Google Mobile Maps in Australia.
The next time you’re looking for an address, tiger meat pie in Sydney, cafes in Melbourne, or how to get to the beach, Google Maps can help you find the answer. If you’re at your computer, go to http://maps.google.com.au and start searching — you can type addresses or business searches like [cricket near melbourne] all into the same search box. If you want to access Google Maps on your mobile device, go to http://www.google.com/gmm from your Java- enabled phone or Palm device to get started.
James, an avid sandstorming reader, also wrote to tell us of his new magazine launching:
Wireless Bollinger is a new Australian based music site focusing mainly on the indie genre both locally and overseas. Updated weekly, Wireless Bollinger provides comprehensive music news, breaking album reviews and all the charm that can be possibly squeezed into a pixelated world. So far they have reviewed The Shins, !!!, Clay Your Hands Say Yeah, of Montreal and more. Also part one of an interview with James Mercer from The Shins is up with part two being published soon!
Work and Play
An Aussie sitcom pilot based around a sole female worker in a games development office.
Linking Now Illegal In Australia
Linking to copyright music posted elsewhere online without permission can be illegal, an Australian appeals court ruled Monday.
The issue before a three-judge panel at the Federal Court of Australia was whether Stephen Cooper, a retired policeman who ran the now-defunct site MP3s4free.net, was legally allowed to post links to mostly copyright MP3 files hosted on other servers. Cooper does not appear to have hosted any copyright music on MP3s4free.net.
Upholding a single judge’s ruling from last summer, the appeals panel agreed that linking runs afoul of Australia’s copyright laws, handing a victory to Universal Music Australia and the other major labels that brought the suit in 2004.
“A principal purpose of the Web site was to enable infringing copies of the downloaded sound recordings to be made,” Judge Susan Kenny wrote in her opinion. “The fact that the Web site also carried a warning that some downloading could be illegal did not lessen the force of the invitation.”
Cooper, a resident of the state of Queensland, had argued that he had no power to prevent illegal copying because users could “automatically” add links to the site without his control. He likened his site to Google’s search engine as a mechanism for pointing users to other sites–an analogy that one judge deemed “unhelpful,” in part because Google was not designed exclusively to facilitate music downloads. The opinion also noted that even the search giant is not always free to link to everything it wishes.
Furthermore, Cooper’s “deliberate choice” to set up the site in such a way that he couldn’t restrict access to copyright files when he could have designed it otherwise rendered him guilty of authorising copyright infringement, the judges said in a multipart opinion.
This is not the first time that linking to illicit material has been deemed illegal. In 2001, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that a news organization could be prohibited from linking to software that can decrypt DVDs. “The injunction’s linking prohibition validly regulates (2600 Magazine’s) opportunity instantly to enable anyone anywhere to gain unauthorized access to copyrighted movies on DVDs,” the appeals court said. A Dutch court in 1999 reached a similar conclusion.
The Australian judges also agreed with an earlier court ruling determining that E-Talk, the company that hosted the MP3s4free site, and Comcen Internet Services, E-Talk’s parent company, had also broken the law because they did not do enough to stop Cooper from committing copyright violations.
Steve Irwin on South Park
This is the clip the Media has been getting all up tight about. Offensive? Your call
MySpace Pages of Werribee Teens
These are the sick ****s that have been all over Australian news for the past week for filming a DVD involving a huge number of disgusting and illegal acts.
Well we’d love to bring you an inside view. We present the MySpace pages of the boys themselves:
http://www.myspace.com/stefanporto
http://www.myspace.com/retro_paku
http://www.myspace.com/magnawoo
http://www.myspace.com/dr_porto
http://www.myspace.com/boofaloveslivvy
http://www.myspace.com/35129496 - Deleted but comments remain
The comments reveal all of them aren’t going to school any more. If you still have no idea what this is all about, check out one of the Today Tonight segments here
P.S. I hope they all rot in jail.
Johnsee Launches a Mag
I’m going to do a little personal pimpage today. I’m involved with a group that’s just launched a brand new Australian weather website. It’s far superior to anything else in Australia and all the weather is provided free of charge.
So how am I involved? I’m producing one of the emags with OG. Its high quality, both in design and content… and I’m asking for sandstorming readers support. For only AU$22 you get the mag and personalised weather for a year. If you want a sample of the sort of quality of what we’re releasing, check out the free windsurfing mag on of the other guys has done on the site.
So check out Ask Huey
And subscribe to the Live Sail Die sailing magazine
Sportsgirl Stole A Threadless Design
As a follow-up to Johnsee’s article “Sportsgirl Stealing Designs or about to sell Threadless?“, I decided to go and get photos of one of the stores, tell my side of the story, and give my thoughts on what happened.
The Situation
My girlfriend and I were shopping at a particular shopping centre in Brisbane last week. She and I have become avid Threadless browsers and buyers over the past year, so we’ve become pretty familiar with all the designs that have been printed. As we went past a Sportsgirl store (a popular young women’s clothing franchise here in Australia) she noticed in the display window a “kissing birds” sticker that looked strangely familar:
The last picture is from a Threadless shirt called For The Birds, and, like all Threadless prints, was designed by a member of the Threadless.com community. It was created by Travis Matthew Stearns and submitted on 25 July 2005, so there’s definitely no confusion as to which one came first. Read the rest of this entry »
Sportsgirl Stealing Designs or about to sell Threadless?
Sportsgirl is a huge clothing chain in Australia. Threadless is a huge online clothing store who I love to buy shirts off (and have them shipped to oz). Doc mentioned to me that Sportsgirl have a sticker on their front windows at the moment that features two kissing birds very similar to that on threadless.
Checking out the sportsgirl website, there is only two possibilities.
a) Sportsgirl is about to start selling threadless clothing.
b) Sportsgirl have been stealing designs.
The colours are almost identical (within one hex value on a few), the shape is very similar, the pose identical. I suspect in the storefront version the wing decoration could also be the same. The image I have below was is a zoomed in copy of an image less then fifty by fifty pixels.
Thoughts? Anyone want to get me a picture of a store?
The shirt on Threadless
A screen dump of a flash animation on the sportsgirl website
Chaser’s War on Everything, Everywhere
Okay, I obviously missed this announcement, and everyone else probably found out weeks ago… but The Chaser’s War on Everything is now online FOR FREE. ABC, you may put it on at crazy times on a Friday night, but this is just awesome.
