Now... what about the debate and its future direction?

Mark Jones presented a very good edition of his The Scoop radio program on this very topic.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

The response: in one day, 1million calls were made! Skype now has a real competitor.

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.

See CNET video below...

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.

Along with Mining Tax and Immigration, it would have been easy for Gillard to state the net filter will come in, but it will 'opt in' - so those not wanting it did not need to have it in their homes and workplaces. This is something I called for in a previous blog.

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!

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.

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.