Just thought I would update you on my writing progress...

Done about 90,000 words for a first draft so far, and edited the first quarter I would say. I think that the latter part really falls apart at the moment. But that will change once I get stuck into it.

I am giving the edited part to Robyn and the girls in the next day or so to see what their thoughts are...

I will post a bit of it here in a few weeks and see if there are any comments.

Back in 1968 I was in London and was a guitarist and songwriter in a band called Kate.

We were signed to CBS Records.

Our first single was called "Strange Girl" and it was almost a hit. Got great reviews including Record of the Week in Melody Maker (thank you, Chris Welch) and got a reasonable amount of airplay.

But it wasn't a hit. So no cigar. We recorded a couple of other singles and had an abortive tour of Germany and then the band broke up. These things happen!

I am now writing a book about those times...

And I decided to google Strange Girl and Kate. I was totally blown away to find that the single had been on a compliation album of post psychedelic tracks from the UK from that era and to hear the song on a podcast from someone in the UK. Wonderful. Have a listen to it. It sounds pretty good!

What single issue would most affect your vote decision in the election?
	Pull out of Iraq
	Reduce taxation
	Increase hospital services
	Improve education
	Stop pulp mill in Tassie
	Promise to tell the truth
	Just get rid of Howard
pollcode.com free polls

A tip of the hat to Laurel Papworth for pointing out LOL POLs in her blog...

Here are a couple to whet your appetite. Many more here.

I have just started reading the new Naomi Klein book. What a tour de force this is!

The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

We all need to wake up and realize that that news as it happens on the front page of the newspaper each day has been re-defined. Some stories happened by accident. Most stories happen on purpose. And most of the latter kind took time, research, stage-management, etc to see the light of day. This is not about conspiracy theories. This is about marketing.

Politics is marketed just like any other product. And like products, brands and businesses, some visions are massive and take a long time to pull off. I urge you to read the book.

There is also a video promo for the book at YouTube which I have embedded here...

I just came across a really interesting observation.

Someone has compared the amount of name frequency in Google searches and the amount of money spent in candidate marketing in the US Presidential campaign.

The answers are quite astonishing. The whole article and a graph are here.

What it indicates is first that Ron Paul and Hilary Clinton are pretty much tied at #1 in search. Not surprising is that Ron Paul has spent almost nothing and Clinton has spent a huge amount already.

Obama has a much lower level of brand interest, it appears.

And on the Republican side, Mitt Romney has outspent them all.

Check out the article.

Its a pity that Facebook has fallen foul of so many crappy applications.

It seems to be moving from being a place where you could gather and communicate with people, to an only slightly upmarket version of MySpace....

I met with the Chairman of an ad agency a couple of weeks ago who told me that he thought that social networking sites like Facebook needed to go through the cycle of bust as they couldn't by their very nature sustain commercial endeavor. After a bust a new kind of social network would rise from the ashes that would become a stable place established as a commercial marketplace. I am starting to think that he was absolutely right.

And when you look for instance at recruitment online as one niche market, how much real change has there been in the last ten years? Essentially recruitment sites are classified lists with a bit of nice graphics to pretty them up - nothing inherently new, and nothing that resembles a visionary marketplace for the future.

Time for social networking and niche online markets to merge. May the disruption begin!

Went down to Kangaroo Valley yesterday and looked at real estate.

Talked to a realtor down there who told me that in the last 4 - 6 weeks the market has just started to move after about 12 months of being flat. He thought that the changes to superannuation legislation have finally worked their way through the system and now people have their personally managed funds in order and are starting to spend.

I thought that people were supposed to sit on their hands with an election about to take place and wait until after the election to see what economic changes would take place.

So what is different this time?

Is it that people are totally inured to the whole election process, and think that both major parties are now so alike that it doesn't matter?