I certainly hope my readers have had a safe and happy holiday period. Today, I have decided to take a quick look at back at my popular posts from 2011, with the most read articles for each month, and a little discussion of each.
If 2012 throws up some similar results, it will be another good year! Enjoy!
- January: Single Point of Failure
V/Line commuters on the Geelong line, and Metro Trains commuters on the Werribee and Williamstown lines have endured another year of extensive “track equipment faults” at Newport station – and nothing ever seems to be done about it.
“Now, I’m the first to accept that unexpected things happen all the time, and that running an integrated public transport network is undoubtedly difficult, but the regularity of problems at Newport are becoming monotonous.”
- February: NBN: End User Services Taking Shape
The rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) gathered pace in 2011, and at their February industry forum, the shape of end user services began appearing before our eyes.
“For the market, this means that the providers who innovate and deliver the best products over the network will emerge on top. The competition will be furious.”
- March: Online Piracy Not The Problem
Copyright holders want us to believe that we are killing their business models through online piracy, but is it us or them who are to blame?
“The sooner they adopt digital, storage-format-agnostic distribution of their content, the sooner people will stop downloading material in those formats.”
- April: NBN: Hands On The Hardware
This article was actually paired with the top February article, but reared its head with a lot of page impressions in April.
“I managed to get a few moments with the hardware that end users will receive when their premises are connected to the network progressively over the next nine years.”
- May: Alan Jones And The NBN Fail!
In the midst of another of his on-air anti-government rants, Alan Jones demonstrated for the masses how little knowledge – (or willingness to research) – he has when it comes to the NBN, and this page generated a lot of views thanks to re-tweets from the ABC’s Mark Colvin and Latika Bourke.
“If you are going to jump up and down, Alan Jones, make sure you do a bit of research first, instead of instantaneously jumping at an opportunity to forward your political agenda. Your idiocy will remain on the interwebz forever, Mr Jones.”
- June: New Timetable Improves Little
Back to V/Line and another attempt to “improve services” which appears to have delivered little to long suffering commuters.
“We were promised by V/Line that “these changes follow several months of work with Metro and feedback from our customers“. Oh really? Customers asked for slower trains?”
- July: The Australian FUDs It Again
Rupert Murdoch’s various media interests – (and particularly in Britain) – have taken a hammering this year. In Australia, they’ve fought a long campaign against the government, criticising it in news reporting and editorial position at almost every turn – trying to be the news, rather than report it.
“Stop trying to make news, and actually report the news. Ironic that you are called “News Limited” – since your ability to report “news” seems rather “limited” at times.”
- August: HP Shipping Fail – You Just Have to See This!
This was not the most highly read article on my site for the year, but it was certainly the fastest moving article – at its peak managing several hundred views an hour. Four months later, this one still stuns me!
“If your goal is to be “exemplary global citizens”, I’m sorry HP – you fail.”
- September: A Simple NBN Maths Lesson
The financial critics of the NBN project generally scream blue-murder about where the money to pay for it will come from. Some fairly simple second-grade mathematics is all it really takes – demonstrating some quite astonishing revenues for even a relatively weak uptake of network services.
“That’s where the money is coming from folks! And it will come a lot quicker than many would have you believe.”
- October: Waltrip: Bathurst A “Geological Oddity”
October saw three-time NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip visit Mount Panorama, for the first live broadcast of our Bathurst 1000 into the United States. Interested in what it is like inside the cars on our famous circuit, Jason Bright made sure DW will never forget his first visit!
“It was television gold, and DW seemed genuinely stunned by the experience.”
- November: Opposition “NBN” Plan To Cost More?
Opposition communications spokesperson, Malcolm Turnbull has been spouting for months about the “reckless” cost of the NBN – where it is starting to come to the fore that his alternative plan, though cheaper in the short term, will be far more expensive over time – a few shared by many, including the ACCC.
“Over time, the opposition plan will cost more than the current intention of building a full FTTH (better) network, before we even consider the lost benefits to the economy.”
- December: Screw You, Greedy Music Industry
Copyright protection is a hot topic at the moment, but information that emerged in December showed that the music industry is not suffering as much as they would have us believe – if at all.
“It isn’t downloads that are killing your industry – it is your own overpricing greed and lack of vision that’s doing it.”