Articles

By Stefan Sojka

Isn’t it just like the Internet to spawn yet another trend without anyone ever expecting it?  Microblogging is suddenly exploding out of a few simple lines of code the way SMS sat dormant in our mobile phones until someone looking for the calculator accidentally pressed the wrong button and discovered it.  Microblogging is SMS 2.0.  Texting on steroids.  Musings gone global.

The current beacon of microblogging is Twitter www.twitter.com.  What started as a sideline dabble by San Francisco start-up ‘Obvious’, has grown so fast that its error message when overloaded – the ‘Fail Whale’ – www.failwhale.com – has become a cult hero.  Venture capitalists have been pouring tens of millions into Twitter, while the whale finds its fins and Obvious tries to work out the most obvious ways to convert ‘tweets’ into cash.

The simplicity and ubiquity of microblogging are its drawcards.  You sign up in minutes, start twittering in 140 characters or less, and you’re away.  Before too long you are recruiting a legion of followers, following legions more while the chit-chat starts to build to an almighty racket.  Now it’s being seen as the best way for breaking news to spread, churches to herd their flocks, corporations to leverage their demographics and friends to hook up.

Microblogging is at home on the desktop, laptop, hand-held and phone, which is what makes it so hot.  Trans-platform communications are barely viable yet:  text is king.  In Japan, where the whole population is glued to a tiny screen, Twitter is becoming a national sport.

A cursory glance at www.twitterholic.com will give you an idea of what is happening.  Follow a few links, and discover a community of hyper-connected trend-setters.

Meanwhile, spin-off sites, services and applications are blossoming – as are the Twitter wannabes and candobetters.  Twitterrific – www.iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific/ – and Twhirl – www.twhirl.org – enable easy reading and writing of your microblogs without visiting the site.  Summise, www.summize.com, a microblogging search tool, was recently bought by Twitter in an attempt to attach more value to their service.  www.snaptweet.com is a nifty tool to link your Flickr images to Twitter.

It’s so easy to imitate this stuff, code-wise, the clones are sprouting:  www.identi.ca, www.jaiku.com (snapped up by Google), www.dodgeball.com (snapped up by Google) and the quirky Plurk – www.plurk.com – no doubt soon to be snapped up by Google!  You might want to also check out www.pownce.com, www.tumblr.com and www.spoink.com.

Tweet this:  I can’t wait til they release more top level domains, so this parade of dumb Website names will finally end!

Twitter Glossary

You know you have a phenomenon on your hands when hundreds of words start getting invented.

TwitterBots:  Command-line instructions, issued via Twitter to perform all kinds of actions
Dweet:  A tweet sent while intoxicated
Fail Whale:  The loveable whale that appears when Twitter is overloaded
Fakers:  People who pretend to be celebrity Tweeters
Hashtags:  Using “#” to embed metadata into your posts
Twaggle:  A gaggle of Twitter followers
Tweet:  A blog posting to Twitter
Twitterrhea:  Sending way to many tweets
Twitticisms:  Witty tweets
Twoops:  An accidental private SMS sent to all your followers
Twebay:  To offer something for sale to your followers
Go to twitter.pbwiki.com for more…

By Stefan Sojka

One of my favourite science fiction novels is “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson.  (Go on, buy it with one-click on Amazon!) – a cyber-punk style romp through a not-too-distant future where the author projects we will end up if we carry on business as usual.  Not so much post-apocalyptic, more a toxic mix of organised crime, continent-wide ghettoisation and environmental devastation mixed with the coolest technology imaginable.

One main feature of his ‘Metaverse’ (the future name for the Internet – get used to it) is a real-time virtual 3D version of the entire planet.

It’s pretty mind-bending stuff – yet Stephenson’s fantasy is starting to come true.  Google ‘Earth’, Microsoft ‘Virtual Earth’ and a million spin-off sites and applications are collectively drawing us closer to this self-fulfilling prophecy.

This month I thought I’d check in to see just how far the project has come.  How detailed, in-depth and enlightening is this planet’s virtual reflection?  What does it mean to be able to visualise our planetary home with such new perspective?

First stop – Google Earth www.earth.google.com – if you haven’t already done so, download it now and prepare for awe.  If you have, say no more.  You know.

MS Virtual Earth ( www.microsoft.com/VirtualEarth ) is to Google Earth as Zune to iPod.  Awesome tech, but not as cool.  Google has taken the human high-ground, MS serenades the corporate beast.  Being a hominid like you, dear reader, I gravitate to Google Earth, where a swarm of other bipedal primates have amassed to build this great planet of the apes in our minds.

Millions of users are creating fly-through Contiki tours to prisons, illegally logged forests, war zones, historical sites, sporting venues, holiday destinations… all that is left is to put every Website in there, and you can kiss your Internet browser goodbye! maps.google.com combines GE content with the directory view, making it a bit easier to navigate.

Then there is the street-level stuff. maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview Privacy?  What privacy?  I really wish I hadn’t been scratching my backside the moment that Google camera car drove by!  www.mapjack.com is an independent ‘street view’ start-up, which inevitably, along with all the other ones, will be absorbed by Google or Microsoft.  Try also www.everyscape.com, www.locaview.com (no sub-titles, Japanese friend required) and www.immersivemedia.com

GeoNetwork – geonetwork-opensource.org – is the Open Source global mapping and spatially referenced data application.  It’s promising, but without Google’s billions, the model might not grow legs.

This is all just a glimpse of things to come, I’m sure.  It’s worth getting used to this new perspective on our existence.  A lot is being asked of our feeble minds – to ‘get’ this planet and everything on it, let alone what lies beyond (www.google.com/sky and www.worldwidetelescope.org).  Can our biology keep up with this technical evolution?  Can we cope?  Visual information overload.  Collective mental breakdown.  Or will we finally be humbled into a true sense of place, where the individual reconciles their microscopic insignificance with their stupendously inflated sense of self importance?  Whatever.  Anyone for golf?

By Stefan Sojka

Back in the 80s, there was not much to do at home but watch TV – and my worst fear was becoming a couch potato.  Fortunately the TV was so crap, it didn’t happen.  Fast forward 20 years and thanks to the darned Internet and my addiction to it, I’ve turned into a Chair Pear!  Oh how to end this endless cycle of motionlessness!?  The ever-widening girth of my being!  I know – I’ll check out a few Websites that might help me break this cyber spell… Oh the irony!

Once a place we went to for the sake of being there, the Web has evolved to become the place we go to find more and more excuses to unplug from the global super-cortex and rejoin humanity.

Servers all across the world are brimming with code, tailor-made to activate that dormant social ape-like being that rests beneath the Me2.0 cyber-persona I’ve spent the last 10 years perfecting.  The good news?  So has everyone else, so when we do Meet Up (www.meetup.com), surprise, surprise, there is a whole generation of cyber-apes, strangely un-socialised and desperate as I am for the allure and aroma of familiar organic entities.

And they have the same weird-ass special interests to boot.  Humanists, Skeptics, philosophers, hackers, pagans, ninjas and entrepreneurs are forming groups, arranging get-togethers and having a bloody good time.  I’ve just booked in for a ‘Skeptics in the Pub’ MeetUp.  If I’m back next month, you can be sure this ‘getting-a-life’ thing is actually quite safe.

If you are, like, hanging around with, like, nothing to do, www.skobee.com is, like, the most random way to, like, hook up.  It is only in the experimental phase, but the basic concept is ‘fuzzy scheduling’.  You tell the site where you is at, how hip you is and how down you can get with the hood, and faster than you can say “Generation Y” – you’ve got yourself a happenin’ schedule of happenin’ people to get jiggy with.  I hope they add a plug-in ‘dweeb scheduler’ module for un-hip dudes like me.

For the serious party and event organiser, www.eventbrite.com is the perfect service.  A modest, sliding-scale fee, enables them to take care of bookings, ticket payments and event registration, so I can take care of the balloons, name tags and strippers.

When it comes to synchronising lifestyles with our friends – one of the hardest things modern life could possibly challenge us to do – www.renkoo.com has the solution.  From the gregarious imagination of the folks that brought you such mega-million installed FaceBook apps as BoozeMail and HaikooZoo, here is the place to load up my availabilities and spam them out through every available medium to all my friend ‘Lites’ (15% more real friendliness, with only half the commitment).  Guaranteed optimisation of our chill time.

A couple of others worth scoping:  www.planyp.us – the “Wiki for your Social Life” weaves it all together, as does www.socializr.com.  OK, I’ve finished writing this, you’ve finished reading the entire magazine… we are both pumped – let’s get online and hook up somewhere for coffee!

By Stefan Sojka

It’s an old story, the boy who cried wolf.  Today, that wolf is going to wolf down my hard drive, gobble up all my software and gnash through my ADSL cable.  No wolf and all I’m left with is an in-box burgeoning with false alarms.  “Bill Gates is going to eat you”, “Nigeria will remove your right kidney if you don’t click here” and “beware the Mel Gibson virus, it will drink you out of house and home”.  If I let my guard down long enough a real threat might just meander through my firewall and tear my digital world asunder.  It’s time to get wise and realise.

First port of call for any potential fear-mongering rumour, or any rumour at all for that matter, is www.snopes.com.  This site has been around since the Internet was a toddler.  Snopes sifts wheat from chaff and clarifies just what is real and what was dreamed up by some bored yet highly creative ‘netizen’.  Every imaginable hoax and urban legend is documented in conveniently categorised chapters.  Somehow the Snopes folks are able to get to the bottom of it all and determine the truth.  Before you CC the latest baseless rumour to your entire contact list, please, please, please Snope it first.

Those friendly folks from the ACCC have been getting with the times recently, launching www.scamwatch.gov.au – an excellent portal devoted to exposing on, and off-line fraudsters, scammers and spammers.  I wish I had known about this site BEFORE I wired that $5,000 bank transfer fee to King Ngebe’s sole surviving relative!

If you send me a hoax email passed off as a genuine alert, you are really part of the problem, not the solution.  Be careful, one day a scam baiter (www.419eater.com) might get your number.  Hilarious pranks played out on scammers who are as gullible as their victims.  Check out the amazing photos and videos – and think twice before you fall for anything even remotely smelling of seafood.

Other sources of clarity in the seemingly endless fog of Internet codswallop include www.hoax-slayer.com – dedicated almost exclusively to email scams and rumours, www.nonprofit.net/hoax – a community service I really needed prior to sending a hundred bucks off to fund that poor kid’s dying wish, and www.museumofhoaxes.com – a laugh-a-thon of stupendous magnitude.

Making Amends

OK, so I dropped myself right in it.  A few too many tequilas and the bigoted idiot that lives inside all of us rose from the depths of my tortured soul.  In one mad evening chatting with the constabulary I destroyed a lifetime of hard-earned reputation.

What better method to restore the planet’s faith in my character than viral marketing?  Even if I did nothing more than posting a mildly derogatory remark about one of my valuable clients, Google can be a harsh mistress when my name pops up randomly in their search results.  Here are a few excellent places to begin repairing the damage using, of all things, Search Engine Optimisation techniques.  www.networkworld.com/community/node/15081, www.ehow.com/how_116870_fix-reputation.html, www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/10/google-reputation-management.html,
There are now specialists www.brandtitan.com/reputation-juggernaut.html in this kind of thing – proof that it’s not just me desperately trying to mend fences after a whiskey-soaked rant to a national newspaper opinion blog.

By Stefan Sojka

INTRODUCTION

If ever there was a most appropriate time to pull out that much over-used descriptive noun ‘plethora’, the ISP discussion is it.  Australia’s ISP numbers are large (over 600), and their differences vast.  Ever-changing laws, economics, geography, logistics and an eager Aussie population have caused a stampede of operators, large and small to see the offering of a connection to cyberspace as a potentially viable business venture.

From backyard enthusiasts who just love the net so much they wanted all their friends to hook up so they could play MUD games together, to multi-national conglomerates keen on annexing their slice of market share from their competitors and generating a steady revenue stream for their investors, this army of modem-wielding entrepreneurs has switched on this great country of ours and plugged us into virtual reality at an astonishing rate.  In one respect, this is great news for us bandwidth-munching surfers, but the extreme disparity of services available has made it very difficult for anyone to know which dotted line to sign on, when it comes to choosing a provider.

In this feature, we look at a small cross-section of ISPs and compare their respective services, but by no means can we tell you that one is right for you.  Most factors that determine your choice will involve your personal circumstance.  What we can do is give you some parameters to consider, what to look out for, and maybe help you figure out just what it is that you might expect in the way of ‘Internet Service’ from your ‘Provider’.  It’s a buyer’s market with so many providers around, so you need to remember how important it is to shop around for the best deal that gives you everything you need, because it’s definitely out there, somewhere.

One thing is for sure – no matter what you choose, it won’t be the last time you’ll need to make such a choice.  Most people I know, myself included, have used at least three or four different ISPs over the last few years as the deals changed, their needs changed, and the technology continues to change.

CHOOSING AN ISP

What Do You Want?

Before you start being swayed by the hype and hullabaloo of the big-budget ad campaigns, or the convincing spiels of your sister’s friend’s neighbour’s mate who happens to be a computer boffin with his own server in his bedroom, the first thing you ought to do is ask yourself what it is that you want to get out of your Internet experience.  If you have already spent time on-line you may have a fair idea, but if you are new to the medium, your mind hasn’t even begun to be boggled by what’s out there, so you may not yet know how you might conduct your on-line life.  Sure you’ve read and heard all about it, but your own interests, personality and lifestyle are going to go a long way in determining your Net usage – how long you will spend on-line, how fast you will want to access your information and how many Megabytes (or Gigabytes) your thirst for content is likely to consume.

Between Two Extremes

My mother has been on-line for over 5 years and she has never once used a Web browser!  She is convinced that there is nothing on-line she can’t find in her library in half the time, and she is quite happy sending off a few emails every day to friends and family, and receiving the occasional email newsletter.  A friend of mine has spent the same five years with his brain almost hard-wired to the Net, downloading everything he can get his mouse on, making a nuisance of himself in every imaginable newsgroup, discussion forum, chat channel and his own Website.  My mother is happy logging on for a maximum of about 10 seconds a day (total – 5 minutes a month) to check and send her emails (she composes them off-line), while my friend needs the best damn fast and unlimited deal he can get.  ISPs have to try to cater for these two extremes and everyone in between.  That is why there are so many different package deals, and that is also why you really need to know where you fit in to the spectrum of different customers, to have any hope at all of choosing the right deal.

The Bottom Line – Price

The big factors affecting price are time, speed and bandwidth.  Time, because your provider can generally only allocate so many connections to so many people in a given time, and speed and bandwidth, because the more you download and the faster you download it, the more your ISP gets charged by the actual owners of the telecommunications cables and Internet resources which they rent to allow you access, so the more costs they have to pass on to you.

Most ISPs use formulas to average out expected usage between their subscribers, so some light users may be subsidising the heavier users, but generally the deals are worked out so that heavy users are charged at higher rates, or are offered different deals to help offset the costs.  ISPs may offer unlimited accounts, but cut you off every four hours, or limit your connection speed, to restrict your ability to download too much information.  Other accounts offer limited hours and data transfer per month at cheap rates, with additional hours and Megabytes charged at a much higher rate.  If you think you may be a heavy user, you should think carefully about your chances of going over your quota, as it can get expensive.  Most ISPs should allow you to log into their site and check your usage, and you can also get software that sits on your computer to monitor your on-line activity.  If you are a light user, almost all ISPs have very reasonable deals to cater for your needs, and you won’t have any trouble finding a suitable deal.

Setup Fees

Some ISPs charge a small setup fee to cover the software and time taken getting you up and running.  You should weigh up the charge against exactly what it is they are giving you to set you up.  There is no point paying a setup fee if the whole process is going to be confusing, drawn out and frustrating.

WHAT YOU MIGHT GET FOR YOUR MONEY.

Besides the obvious Internet connection, ISPs generally can offer bonus services as part of their package deal.  You may or may not require some of these, so you should make sure you are getting more of what you want and less of what you don’t need.

Web Space?

ISPs are basically charging for an Internet connection, but you may get free Web space thrown in to the deal, as well as an email address, which is pretty much standard.  If you think you might like to have a Website, then free space at your ISP is a great start.  Basic free Web space is not that functional, but can be useful for basic information, or a few pictures or other files.  You must remember that if you change ISPs, you will lose your Web address, so if you are wanting a Website in the long term, you may want to look at other free Website services, or even getting your own domain name, rather than risk losing loyal visitors to your space.  These days, you can get free Web space at hundreds of locations around the Internet; so free ISP space is not such a valuable asset to your package deal.

Tech Support?

Does the prospective ISP offer tech support by phone or email?  Is it accessible 24/7, into the evening, or just during normal business hours?  Have they taken the time to offer a range of common solutions to problems, on their Website? Go and look at their Website and see how much information is provided.  Before you sign up, you should be able to ask technical questions about setting up, and you might get a good idea of just how helpful they might be.

For smaller ISPs, sometimes the tech support, sales team and management are one and the same person. You may prefer a one-on-one relationship with someone who knows his stuff, and may go out of his way to help you - not only to get connected, but also perhaps to upgrade your computer or set up a web site at a later date.

Staying in Touch

A good ISP will keep in touch with their subscribers with regular emails, or postings to their Website. This enables them to inform customers about service upgrades, outages, technical issues, even cultural info their subscribers may be interested in. It is very reassuring to know that your ISP has taken the time to let you know if there has been a problem and that they are doing their best to rectify it, rather than being forced to sit there wondering what the hell has happened to your supposedly fast connection that is crawling along at 1.5Bytes a minute. The Internet is a technical arena, so technical problems do occur. ISPs should keep their customers informed at all times. Check their Site for evidence of how diligent they might be in this area.

The ISP Portal

Many ISPs have turned their own Web Site into a portal that their subscribers can use to access the Internet. Direct access to search engines, communities, chat groups, categorized sites, humour, news feeds, sport results etc. You don’t have to be a subscriber to visit these sites, but often members will get added benefits, and it is all part of adding value to the actual connection service you have paid for.

Hardware

Some hardware suppliers are ISPs and some ISPs sell hardware, so you may be buying your computer, modem and software from the same place you connect through. Some even have special deals of free access thrown in with every computer sold. This can be helpful when it comes to setting everything up, as they are more obliged to make it all work and can’t blame a third party if it doesn’t, but you should be sure that the connection service they are giving you is the kind of service you will want to pay for once the free honeymoon period expires.

SETTING UP AN ACCOUNT

A good ISP should provide virtually all you need on a CD or floppy disc, and full instructions on their Website, covering issues like email configuration, FTP, newsgroups, billing info and what to do if you get stuck. Once you are sure you have the right hardware (modem, leads, phone line) connecting should be no more difficult than going through a simple set-up process, using either your own computer’s system components, or the software provided by your ISP. So long as all the right information is put in all the right places, the options are selected and the boxes checked, connecting should be a matter of putting in a phone number, user name, password and you’re away! Sounds easy, but there are a lot of variables. Your provider should be quite experienced with the kinds of issues you are likely to encounter and should be able to take care of them very quickly, if not eliminate them altogether by providing accurate instructions and good software. For experienced surfers, setting up a new account may be a breeze, but for beginners, it would be advisable to go for the easiest, most helpful option at first, or at least get a friend to guide you through configuring whatever software and/or hardware your ISP has provided.

Speed and Performance

The faster your connection, the more you are going to download, so the more of a liability you are to your ISP. In general, faster connections have greater restrictions on how much you can download and quite often the deals that sound the best on a dollar for dollar, hour for hour basis, may make up for it by restricting your connection speed, or you may find it hard to get on in busy times because they have oversubscribed their modems. Check out the details and fine print on every deal you are considering. The best thing to do with any provider is to try to get some feedback from current subscribers as to the performance of the service. Every ISP I have used has come from word-of-mouth recommendation by existing users. They can verify whether the performances claimed by the ISP are actually up to standard.

If you think you will be a high-end user, it is definitely worth considering cable modems or ADSL, as the speed is exponentially faster, and with a good unlimited download deal, it can even work out cheaper than a standard phone line connection, because you don’t have to pay for a phone call every time you connect. Unlimited download cable modem deals often have you operating at below maximum potential speed, but when you can download so much, so fast, it can be very risky having to pay for every megabyte over and above your monthly quota.

Regional Services

In regional areas, there are choices between major national providers, who have secured local phone numbers through which to hook up to their system, or smaller local operators. In the ISP listings we give you here you can see the kind of coverage various providers have. www.cynosure.com.au gives quite a comprehensive listing on-line.
The difference between local and national providers is the difference between economy of scale advantages, like more connections, 24/7 support etc, against local operators who might be more friendly, take more time with you, and have a local shop or office you can call into for help or advice, but could be under-resourced in other areas. Naturally the more choices you have in your particular area, the better off you are, since you can switch providers if you are not happy. Some areas have very few choices.

One option for remote and regional areas is Satellite Internet, which might have a higher set-up cost, but will provide a fast connection where you might wait years for cable or other high-speed services. Many providers are beginning to offer this option.

More than Just an ISP?

An ISP, after all, is essentially a plug-in point - a connection to the Internet. Once connected, you are free to roam the world and use all kinds of different services, servers and technologies – you can even configure your own computer as a service provider of sorts. So as the industry evolves and matures, it is becoming more and more important for ISPs to move beyond simple connection points and become more involved in their customers overall Internet experience.

The larger ISPs are opening doors to multi-media content delivery, chat communities, auctions, shopping malls, news feeds, travel agencies, banking and stockbroking services. Smaller ISPs are also doing what they can, within their budgets, to provide services like on-line gaming servers, web design and hosting services, consultation, hardware installation, customized programming.

Us consumers are very fortunate that in our desire to get the most out of the Internet, we are encouraging the entrepreneurship of our ISPs to compete with one another and strive to offer us a whole world of opportunities through their technical facility as a direct link to the Web. The more experienced we get at using the Internet, the more we become aware of the kinds of things we require, and the more able we are to choose the right Service Provider for our needs.

We may be content to surf endlessly into the night, so we might be quite content with a budget-priced fast unlimited connection, but we may have far more sophisticated and ever-evolving requirements, so we will be looking for an ISP who can deliver a whole range of services over and above a cheap, fast connection, particularly if we are using the Internet for business.

So long as we don’t make too many bad decisions along the way, we will find the journey both rewarding and enlightening as we stumble ever onwards towards our unavoidable destiny as interconnected humans. Our ISP is our partner in this journey, so they need to understand us, and we need to understand ourselves enough to know that we are both heading in the right direction – at least for the remainder of our fixed-term contract. Who knows, if they play their cards right, we might even renew.

Questions to ask yourself to help determine what kind of Internet Service you may require:

Do you love music (MP3s)? Film? Animation? Multimedia? Or is plain text really your thing?

Do you like the idea of chatting to strangers for hours, even days on end?

Are you an email junkie or a Web Site surfing maniac?

Is the Internet vital to your income earning capacity?

Will your whole world fall apart if you can’t log on?

How technically proficient are you on a computer? Can you ‘go it alone’ or does the idea of having 24-hour tech support make you feel slightly more secure?

Are you likely to want to create your own personal Web Site?

If you want to connect at your business, how many people are likely to want to use the Net at one time, and for how long, and what for, and how many email addresses might be required?

Will you be looking at getting a domain name and building a serious on-line presence for your business as well as just using the Net for email and surfing?

Do you want to access the Internet while you are travelling the world?

Might you wish to access the Net from numerous Australian locations, say at your place of business in Gosford, your home in Sydney, and your holiday home in Perth?

Are you really only wishing to use the Internet for very specific purposes – eg to trade shares, or to research your favourite subject, or to stay up with current affairs?

Will your whole family want to share your connection? If so, you need to ask everyone these same questions.

Do you want to shop, book travel, do banking, have fun, join clubs, change the world, publish your memoirs, trace your family tree, laugh, cry or just look at lots of funny cartoons?

Asking these questions will help you refine some key aspects of the kind of service you might require and as you investigate the services offered, you will see how your needs might fit into the various package deals –

The amount of time you are likely to want to be connected each month; the amount of data you are likely to be downloading; the speed at which you will be happy to operate; the restriction of questionable content or lack thereof; the ability of the ISP to act as a “tour guide” or offer suggestions of other services you may wish to use, like travel and stockbroking; their ability to offer upgraded solutions as your Internet needs grow and change, and the kind of price range you will be looking at to get what you want.

By Stefan Sojka

Ask not what crimes you might commit, but how many different ways you might get caught.

Opportunity seems to be the key factor in any crime.  Like a seagull raiding a bin-full of leftover lunches at the beach, or a cockroach finding that gap in your kitchen wall to dine on the results of your incompetent cleaning, human beings are driven to commit crimes because:

a) they need more than they have (emotional, physical, whatever)
b) the opportunity arises to get some
c) they honestly believe they will get away with it (except, of course for that hardened minority that really don't care)

Try it – try leaving your car window down and your wallet on the front seat.  Without a hardened crim or prison escapee in site, your wallet will be gone in no time.  An ordinary citizen will see a chance to get something for free, and take it.

Now with the Internet, anyone with a computer and a modem could start to thinking that they can build a crime syndicate and make big bucks, or at least wreak a bit of havoc in the corporate world. Think again buster. In the face of all this new opportunity for crime, a new strategy of law enforcement has been devised to stop you in your tracks.

The politicians and crime fighters can finally see the big picture. Rather than running around under-staffed and under-financed chasing criminals down back alleys and following the dust trails they leave behind, the AFP has undergone a systemic revolution to make the whole idea of committing a crime far less appealing. By making the chance of getting caught exponentially higher and encouraging a unified, multi-agency approach to the problem of crime, The Australian Federal Police as a law enforcement agency has become a world leader. Major breakthroughs in levels of cooperation between other enforcement agencies, along with award winning and record-breaking results have set the standard for the future. In case you are sitting there thinking - "yeah but they won't catch me", check out their web page. Read the news. Think again.

The AFP Home Page - www.afp.gov.au , details the extent to which the technological revolution, globalisation and enlightened strategies are changing the playing field irreversibly in favour of the good guys. Organised crime is now up against the biggest organised crime-fighting network in history. It is local and global cooperation on a scale never before seen. Check out the major achievements - record drug busts, smashing international syndicates, a swag full of web site awards! Their Annual Report even won first place at the Institute of Public Administration.

For those of you who might see all this effective law enforcement as a threat to your privacy, you may be surprised to learn that even the cops are recommending alternative approaches to areas such as drug enforcement. The personal freedoms and hopes of rehabilitation for end users have been compromised in the cross-fire with major players. Older strategies have also caused inherently victimless crimes to create victims as addicts rob and steal to pay the exorbitant prices a black market demands. Mr Comrie, the Chief Commissioner of the Victorian Police has commented that that the personal use of illicit drugs is more of an issue for the health system than for the legal system. The AFP is going after the heavy dudes, and leaving a little more lee-way for private, victimless acts of stupidity to be referred to doctors and psychologists.

Meanwhile, the AFP's increasingly trans-juristictional approach to the more universally despised criminal acts such as theft, fraud and violence has meant that slowly but surely our streets, our houses and our bank accounts are becoming safer and safer. 'Crims' used to be able to flee to another state or another country to avoid capture. There was always a chance of "hiding out", and even if found, creating more paperwork than it was worth to be hauled in. The crime-fighting web is now one big trawling net of intelligence that no one stupid enough to challenge it could feel immune from detection.

So, while the temptation to commit a crime in this day and age is becoming infinitesimal, all we have to deal with is the legacy of creating hardened crims who actually like getting caught because they prefer jail to the outside world. Somehow, I think that problem is up to the politicians and the wider community to deal with. Let the AFP carry on their incredibly effective job - "To Fight Crime and Win".

As the devil whispers in your left ear "go on, do it, do it" the long arm of the law is tapping you on the right shoulder, saying "don't bother - it's just not worth it... have you considered counselling?"

Features of the AFP site:
What's new - all the latest major busts, new strategies, awards and job opportunities.
Media releases: news, busts, public interest stories
Publications, Speeches, Links, Client Services
Virtual Tour - takes you through the activities of the AFP, where they operate, how they go about their work.
Crimestoppers

By Stefan Sojka

Born free, as free as a mindless consumer.

What is happening to the Internet? I thought the net was free. When I first got on line in 1995, the whole thing that attracted me to it was that it was pretty much all free. Really free. No one charged for anything. (except the dial up provider) It was real anarchy, real democracy. The mind reigned supreme. Humans with ideas shared them with the world for the sheer pleasure of sharing. Utopian dreams began to crystallise in my mind as I surfed ever on, finding more and more free information, art and ideas and countless friendly nicknames willing to help me find my newbie feet in this strange place. Sure at times I wondered how these kind folks were making a living, but I figured that whatever they did, their web time was after hours and the motivation was pure excitement at participating in the biggest revolution the world has ever seen.

The most common thing I heard back then from people who weren't on line at the time was "you can't make money on the net". How wrong they were eh? Although the net users didn't seem to care whether you could make money or not, the rest of the world, the corporate world particularly, was waiting for the dollar signs to flash before their eyes, before they would even glimpse at a browser, let alone explore the possibilities. Now the Internet is the most talked about phenomenon on the planet and all the big boys are jumping on line and throwing their www's on billboards and TV's everywhere!

Now you don't have to explore the possibilities any more, they are exploring you. You can't help but see opportunity out there. Think of a business, and you have an idea for a web business. Paint? Yeah, a cyber paint shop with virtual colour charts! Pets? A pet product and advice site! Condoms? Why not?! This is virtually an unlimited new market, like a virgin rainforest, rich with potential energy, and resources not even known to us yet. The question is, do you burn it and log it and then turn it into a huge cattle ranch, perhaps destroying rare and endangered opportunities, or do you open it to eco-tourism, making money, yet maintaining the essential beauty and wonder the medium possesses?

It seems the burning and logging road is being taken. After all, it is cyberspace, so you can regrow the original net in no time… or can you? Will the entire concept of the web be permanently altered by the marketing approach. Will new users fail to ever see or feel the same wonder and sense of personal intercommunication the first users felt? Will the corporate demographic-information-reaping consumer-farming turn us all into desperate money hungry fools, addicted to forking out billions on computers and software, whilst dreaming of cashing in big time on an idea that Microsoft or IBM already own?

Enter the freebie phenomenon. A freakish anomaly in the Internet's growth. Small operators, people half basking in the warm glow of anarchy, and half dipped in the thick syrup of monetary need or capitalist greed are seeking out free stuff and offering it for free on their free web sites. All in the hope of earning some free cash somewhere down a long stringy line of HTML that leads to a place where somewhere, someone is actually buying something with money. Well, the net used to be free didn't it? In the last few years, businesses from the real world have jumped on line and dragged with them the old school marketing techniques - which have now fused in a mutated mess with new age network marketing techniques and Internet hit-counting tallies, leading to this very complex web of sites promoting sites promoting sites linking to other sites promoting offers to promote products by promising free stuff, prizes, samples, hosting, even cold hard cash - PHEW!!

This is burning a few old businesses who are getting stung with 20,000 requests for their demo CD or wonder vitamin, booming for others, who are skimming off a bit of postage and packing charges and managing to hook in a few new customers. The ISP's are happy, because they are getting heaps of hits and placing their ads all over the shop. The click through ad sellers are happy, because they get paid anyway, and the little guys - the webmasters - well they get enough money to pay for a dust cover for their PC, and maybe a few jars of coffee to keep updating their links. Is this the way it is supposed to be? How long can this last? What are all these end products that are being given away? Do we need them? Does anybody care?

Take Sandy Kreutter and her web site www.thefreemall.net . She started her site a year ago. She builds it and maintains it herself. Six months of work programming and researching to get it up and running, and a few complete overhauls since.

"When I first started the site I spent about 8 hours a day building it and looking for legitimate free offers to add. I find most free offers in search engines and by going to different 'name brand products' web sites".

Like all the other free site owners, they are all scrambling for the same free offers. An office supply store offers a free pencil for subscribing to their catalogue, and you've got hot news in a thousand free sites all offering that pencil. This puts pressure on the webmasters to stay up to date, just to keep with the pack, and allows smart larger companies to devise strategies to utilise this situation to advantage.

"I definitely do not make a living at this." Insists Sandy. "I make approx US$150 a month from advertisers. I haven't been spending as much time lately as I used to with the site due to lack of time."

"I also added the 'get paid to shop' page, because I was seeing a lot of web sites selling this information, and it bothered me that people would have to pay for the info, when it's right out there on the web, so I started a list of companies that do that." ….Sandy's anarchic, socialist streak is beginning to show.

"I try to check the free offers I list once every 2 weeks and remove the expired ones." The task gets bigger and bigger. "I do send for free offers myself and have received lots of things as far as product samples etc..and I do enter some of the contests..no big win yet though for me."

"I started the site as a hobby and when I started getting advertisers I put more time into it. I have a 5 yr old daughter so I don't work full time outside the house. I would love to continue the site for as long as I can. It's time consuming to look for free offers and I wish I had more time to update my site more frequently."

Being a mum, Sandy doesn't want her child to grow up thinking mummy is a back that makes tapping sounds and has a funny glow coming from a squarish zone behind her.

"I try to only add offers that are completely free (no shipping charges) and it is important to me to keep my site family oriented."

So there you have it. US$130.00 a month. Is it worth it? Quite possibly. How long will it last? Who knows? How much are the people who pay her $130 making? Well, if you read the net scams chapter, you'll know that it must be a lot more than Sandy, otherwise she wouldn't be getting anything.

Meanwhile the freebie phenomenon continues. Newbies get on line, and send away excitedly for free t-shirts or rubber gloves. Where are all the anarchists? Well, they don't have any more free time. They are getting paid bucket loads to build the commercial sites now.

Where will this all lead us? It's up to you dear reader. You must choose the fate of your web. Jump in and cash in, or take your time and smell the flowers, whilst examining ways to make money on the net with value added activities. In anarchy, you vote with your actions. Help somebody, get people together, encourage healthy living, join some interest groups. The best outcome of the free site phenomenon is the number of charity and activist groups that are getting exposure by offering free on-line literature about their cause, to people who were really looking for key rings, mouse pads and beer coolers. Christians have always done this by handing out bibles etc. Now anyone who wants to affect change can do it and reach a fairly wide audience.

Birds don't pay rent on their nests or buy their food. Dogs can live in penthouses for free. What is wrong with us humans, eh? The planet is abundant with everything, and it's all tied up in stocks, bonds, real estate and super funds while everyone desperately chases a dollar. The best way to get stuff for free is to free your mind first. Sure if you want a new mouse pad, of course it's yours for the taking! That's what the Internet is all about! ;-)

By Stefan Sojka

I am just old enough to remember when the first personal computers were rolled out of Bill’s Garage. We were told how they’d be such time-savers and that we’d be sunning ourselves in the Maldives while our dot-matrix printers plotted out our utopian dreams: ascii head-shots, primary school arithmetic and DOS commands to c:>defrag [the future] and d:>format [life].

All computers have managed is to give us more things to do in even less time. In a nightmarish glimpse into a Matrix-like future, when machines dominate humanity, our laptops freeload their way to the Maldives, fooling us into believing they are indispensable – while we spend our entire vacation reinstalling everything.

This month, I am going to attempt the seemingly impossible and use the ultimate time-waster – the Internet – to increase my personal productivity. If this column hits the editor’s desk before deadline – I’ll have succeeded!

The glamour façade of Web 2.0 is all FaceBook and YouTube. Yet, this Ajax-enhanced incarnation of interactive computing shines in many unsung and under-utilized arenas. Personal productivity, or GTD (getting things done, for the acronym addicted), is one area where finally technology might give back some of those slices of life it spent the last 10 years stealing. David Allen, www.davidco.com/ , is the father of GTD, so a good place to get started. Get your workflow in place and set those goals… it’s time for some seriously proactive prioritized actioning!

Joe - www.joesgoals.com – figures if his system is good enough for him, it’s good enough for everyone. He has built a life of success on regular flossing, water consumption and meditation. With his timetable app. and a screen full of smiley faces, a perfectly balanced life awaits me. Note to self – thank Joe for providing a great ‘note to self’ facility.

Mac users are generally so right-brained their lives are sheer chaos, so Chronos - www.chronosnet.com/ - have been hammering away since 1993, trying to rehabilitate us artistic types to a life that verges on the barely manageable. I was going to download the software, I really was, but I got this great idea to redesign their home page.

www.tadalist.com , from 37 signals, is a to-do list manager that is now on my to-do list to use. A 10 second set up (15 if you mistype your password) promises to see me join 4,000,000 other desperate GTD wannabes. I just hope it has the storage space for my lifetime collection of unfinished business.

When I finally get round to getting anything done, I must try getharvest.com the online time tracking application. As my productivity increases, I am bound to find time to double my workload by logging everything that I do at 15 minute intervals.

www.near-time.net/ is an enterprise level productivity suite, taking GTD to the boardroom. Way too many features and benefits to cover on this little back page – just put it in your diary to log on, check the feature list and sign up for success.

www.zoho.com - Zoho’s creators have been around since 1996 and what a Swiss army knife of productivity apps they have amassed! This is a classic case of information management information overload. So many tools, so much productivity, so many log-ins, forms, features, functions, alerts… I need a Zoho management application just to run it all!

Well, the deadline has passed, the editor is ropeable, my stress levels are off the dial – GTD Web 2.0 style has helped me, alright – helped me realise how badly I need all these tools! Tomorrow, 9.00am – turn over a new leaf, revisit all these sites and get things done!

By Stefan Sojka

It only seems like yesterday, when the first dot com boom was here – that carnival of crazy ideas that beckoned cowboys, used car salesmen, media moguls’ offspring and PHP-primed pre-twenty-something start-up upstarts to come up with the next big thing. The information super-hype-way was here to stay. Fortunately for us weary web wanderers the bubble burst, sending a million big ideas and a few billion dollars down the drain.

It wasn’t the ideas fault. It was the Internet. Too soon. Too young. Fast forward to now – mega-broadband, mega-infrastructure, a burgeoning netizenry – perhaps it’s time for a new, burst-resistant bubble. All those great ideas might just get enough eyeballs and click-throughs to reap the intended ROI.

Here begins virtual gold-rush part II:

What better way to enhance your narcissistic lifestyle than chalking up a few dares and bets with your peers? www.bragster.com throws down the gauntlet to the entire world. Fun and frivolous (I dare xXxSaRaHxXx to Wash her face with mushy peas.") to philanthropic (I dare Simon Cowell to do something for charity before he dies), this addictive point scoring portal is destined to be bigger than Google within weeks… uh, maybe...
Q. What is French for Entrepreneur? A. Löic LeMeur. A serial ideas homme, LeMeur has blogged himself filthy rich so many times, he’s addicted to it. Look out for Seesmic – www.seesmic.com an evolving video “conversation”. $6 million of venture capital says it’s an awesome idea. Only time will tell if this frog-spawn will grow legs.
In the music business those on the cutting edge never make it big. It’s only when Madonna drops into your back-alley night club and steals all your ideas that ‘vogueing” becomes a household word. Ditto perhaps with web ideas. www.revver.com pioneered paying video-bloggers a slice of the ad revenue, but never quite got the traction to take off. A $5 million sale of the site after $12.5 million of investment is nothing to write home about. Let’s hope the new owners can get Revver revived and revved up again.
Notice anything about the latest dot com ventures? They all have silly names. Domain name scarcity forces dumb spelling, lame puns and made-up words to worm their way into our vernacular. Case in point, www.pownce.com Nice idea, though. “Send stuff to your friends” is the concept. Incubated out of the Digg hatchery and with similar genetic code, it is simple, powerful, flexible and cool.
I know – how about a new social net­working site! As if your mailboxes aren’t full enough with your FaceBook, MySpace and YouTube notifications. www.tangodiva.com is for wanderlust affected females. All you need now is a site that manages all the sites you’ve joined – a multiple social net­working site management site – complete with its own social network site management net­working tools. Sheesh! I’m going to go and watch TV for a while…

By Stefan Sojka

We are the robots.  A computer is messing with the electrical signals in our collective brain.  If we all become one whipped-up sweat drop then this is our heart calling... punters and players alike enjoying the binary finery of computer pulse orgies.

Out on the dance floor we're more wired than we think – while the DJs with their slick slabs of vinyl are widely celebrated as the lords of the dance, the difference between a good night out and a mind expanding experience is often in the hands of the (mostly) unseen wizards at the controls of some very serious light and sound technology.

Geoffrey Rose – Laser Special Events, Sydney

If the technical crews who work to create high energy at dance parties and raves around Australia were to select a Grand Master they would probably choose Geoffrey Rose of Laser Special Events.  A degree in Physics (UNSW) opened his mind to the magical properties of precisely filtered light and its potential to create eye dazzling art.

While his international reputation as a laser artist has been established at mainstream events such as the World Expo in Portugal, Rose gained underground credibility for his art with a very different audience in the rising dance party scene of Australia over the last decade.

His performances with the Laser Goddess (choreographer and dancer) Tracey Burke at numerous events such as Prodigy (State Sport Centre, Sydney), Eclipse (Illicit, Melbourne) and Red Raw (Metro, Melbourne) were about "Elevating of spirits and an appreciation for technical perfection – by taking technology out of the box of the computer and into real space."

Rose has used up to four technicolour lasers in these performances to hit 3" mirrors a hundred metres away on Burke's elaborate RoboGirl costumes and spin a web of light fantastic over mesmerised crowds: "(It's) the purity, the wrap-around effect encompassing the audience," he says, "And with Tracey, the perfection is humanised and reworked with fluid and organic elements."

The future of precise light according to Rose is a collision between lighting and laser technology: "Using lenses on lights like magnifying glasses to intensify it, rather than wasting light to create shapes and colours; creating structures in space with a control on intensity that normal lights allow -- a system with the control of a laser without the fragility and cost. Lasers are really laboratory instruments."

Favourite tech: Aquarius 2 laser system - English + scanning system with computer (worth $100,000) "It has live keyboard control so the operator can interact live and in total sync with the music rather than have preset programs."

Paul Chambers - Beyond the Brain, North Coast NSW

Paul Chambers has a techfetish: "My favourite technology is like my favourite techno music - the latest, freshest and juiciest gear I can find or afford to get my hands on. A lot of lasers, lights and sound are totally great but it's integrating them with other elements in unique combinations that I find exciting."
Chambers is at the leading edge of psycho-spiritual party production through bush trance events in the lush environs of Byron Bay, northern NSW. But it's not all psychedelic doof music and trippy lights up north. Chambers talks with equal enthusiasm about culture jam happenings like Thursday Plantation's Homecoming Ball, which will feature a string quartet before charging into full-blown techno, or the planned Industrial fashion show set to take place during Byron Bay's official New Year's Eve celebration this year.
Whether they're dancing to Vivaldi or DJ Visceral, Chambers hopes his productions "help people have a great time -- and that they can see and feel the connections between all the music and creative expression. The aim is to produce events that are both going-off parties and genuine works of art."
Travellers and locals in Northern NSW can look forward to more electrically-charged celebrations this summer which continue the mystical legend of the internationally famous Beyond the Brain parties.
Mention Beyond the Brain to any trance-traveller and you're likely to hear a passionate manifesto for the global community and the technology which makes it happen. Chambers can't stop smiling when he recounts his epiphany at a recent Beyond the Brain party which starred ethnobotanical guru Terence McKenna: "The event took on a life of its own -- it brought a dance party crew and much of the wider community together in a truly multi-dimensional, multi-media happening. I feel proud to have been a part of it."

Club profile: ARQ, Sydney
Recently opened on Flinders Street (just off Sydney's gay strip Oxford Street) ARQ is a testament to what an almost religious dedication to hi-tech and massive amounts of money can score. A spokesperson for ARQ said the mega-million investment was aimed at "Enhancing the enjoyment of the music -- with a good operator and the best gear you can SEE the energy level. We use colour and varying tempos and key to control the intensity of the crowd." According to ARQ management, the moving head and mirror luminaires, strobes, pinspots, colour washes, lasers and the huge (7 1/2 tonne) hydraulic lighting sculpture will certainly give the crowd something to look at - "but the operator is the crucial element for optimising the energy".

Club profile: QBH, Melbourne

Melbourne's biggest nightclub is committed to mind-expansion through carefully controlled technology. Marcus Johns, General Manager, says you can have the best tools in the world, but they're useless if not used properly. "It's all in the operation," says Johns, "We can have people come here totally straight and just enjoy the lighting and the music and feel great. The show evolves over the night and from week to week -- so each time you come you get another presentation."
Johns believes the public's expected standard for sound has gone through the roof over the last five years with home stereos now featuring surround and mega bass. "They (dance audience) are now very sound aware, and understand the difference between good and bad acoustics.
QBH keeps its crowd pumping with high quality bass orientation through eight double woofer bass cabinets (1,600 watts each), clear Mids and Highs, an EV X-Array System with compressors and processors and Yamaha Equalisers. The whole system was designed in a CAD Architectural application with acoustic properties of the room mapped and speaker positions plotted to maximise efficiency and minimise dead spots and booming areas. Speakers were then hung exactly to spec.
Eye-candy is served up in super doses: Genesis 16 colour laser with Pentium computer control and Intelligent lighting running off another computer. Plus a 5 metre truss lighting ball (1.8 tonnes), Future Lights with 360 degree rotation, Ambient Lighting, dance mirrors. and miles of optical fibre lighting throughout the venue. "It's DMX compatible," explains Johns, "Meaning that the DJ and lighting guy can control it via computer and change the mood of the room. Starts off Red and moves through the spectrum throughout the night".

Oz - Squiffy Vision, NSW
Squiffy Vision creates melting moments with sound and vision at large events throughout Australia including Beyond the Brain, Earthcore and Thursday Plantation's Homecoming Ball. " We create environments that help people get past the drudgery of their ordinary mindstates by relaxing them or shocking them into being open to new mind states," says Squiffy Vision's Production Manager Oz, "Freedom means taking full responsibility for your life. The events we do are a communal vibe."
Oz works with 1970s gear mostly and Digital Video Animators Strobes, Quasars and lasers plus a subliminal neural trigger -- smell: "We use cold fan-forced smells to enhance different colour/sound harmonics," says Oz, "And oil on hot coals to take the audience on a journey."
Colour is an important ingredient too. Oz explains that colour light can balance the harmonics in a room: "Every note has a harmonic in beat, pitch and colour." It's all about deep pulse, binaural coding. Red = Lust or anger, "It depends which way you go especially the vocal and musical content," says Oz, "Shapes harmonise with colour, sound and our chakras. Subliminal and obvious effects are created to induce relaxed states in the audience. Part of the evolution of body/mind/spirit. Mass self organisation evolves to the point of sustainability -- and once people become self organised the mass self organises."

Di James - 4th Dimension Vision Mixing
4di@hypergeek.com.au

Di James mixes vision -- video and still images -- in synergy with the music booming out of soundsystems at underground events such as ODD at Centrepoint in Sydney, Koxbox at Sydney Uni's Wentworth Building and numerous events on the north coast.
What is the 4th Dimension? Imagine a DJ cutting and fading several tracks to create new patterns -- but instead of dropping vinyl or CDs James blends vision live alongside the DJs: "For me, it's a synchronisation of sound and vision to create a space where people feel free to cut loose and immerse themselves in the environment", she says.
Working with a base (bass) of VHS videos she develops in preproduction, James delivers lush 3D animations and a live video feed of the crowd into her mixing desk then out to a projector and its huge screens above the dance floor.
Right now she owns a couple of monitors, a VCR and a VHS video camera -- down from the 4 VCRs and an MX-12 mixer she worked with in Byron Bay. According to Di, vision mixing at parties is still an under-used medium and thus promoters rarely budget for its worth in creating the vibe. "I have to hire most of my equipment when I perform in Sydney," says James, "and the repairs and servicing of this equipment is expensive due to its hitech nature. But, on my big wish list there is a DLP projector, an MX-50 vision mixer, DVD players instead of VCR players, small LCD monitors, a digital video camera and a Non Linear Editing system with a firewire card for pre- and post- production. AND a sponsor!"
Drawn to her art as a means of directly enhancing party goers' moods in real time (rather than the static nature of paintings or the linear flow of film), James believes many of her images mightn't be immediately registered in the audience's mind during the event "but may provide a trigger for a later response to viewing similar imagery. Ultimately the aim is to broaden the person's perceptions of themselves and the universe. People from many indigenous cultures have had traditions of shamanic dancing. And hell, dancing's good exercise."

Urs -- Happy People Productions, Mullumbimby, NSW
www.millenni-yum.com

Whether he's dancing and trancing on the beaches of Goa (India) and Kho Phangan (Thailand) or in Mother Nature's finest playgrounds in Switzerland and Byron Bay, Urs believes the Happy People need powerful bass for a smiling face: "I wouldn't mind a couple more bass bins (sub woofers) so we make even more sound -- the louder we play the better god can hear us!"
You can imagine the dancing in Heaven when the Happy System starts pumping: 16 JBL 15 inch bass bins , 8 AT C 10inch drivers, 8 JBL horns , and 8 JBL bullets --- a compact system by club standards, but powerful all the same. Urs smiles as he explains his list of other toys: "This shows you that we are running this rig with active 4 way crossovers powered with 2 x 3K and 2 x 2K QSCs, 2 x 0.5K Jeils for the tops, a Klark 40 channel graphic mixer and a DBX 1066 compressor gate -- they're all there to make sure we have best HIFY STEREO."
Urs' passion for powerful technology began at formative full moon parties on the beaches of Goa, where he tuned in with up to 5000 "drunken, stoned and tripping hippies and Indians partying together on the beach in South Anjuna". Inspired by these wild beach frolics Urs developed his DJ and promoting skills in Switzerland before landing back on Goan beaches in the early 80s with new sounds to help the hippies and Indians find joy through dance. "(I played at) India's first night club Flying Dragon Jungle Express -- the disco fever was on in Europe and so we disturbed the hippies with their reggae and salsa but in no time they adapted to the new trend and Goa was on the way to becoming the Mecca for experimental dance music." During the last two decades Urs and his Happy People have played for all kinds of crowds, from 100 to 200 in Boracay, several thousands at Australian events such as Green Magiq and Trance-Zen-Dance, right up to 20,000 at the Zoom parties in Switzerland. This New Year you'll find the Happy People in Byron for the Millenni-Yum Clockbuster Groove: "Hope to meet you some time on a rocking dance floor for Happy People Productions and the Millenni-Yum crew, love URS."