I’ve watched this Sky News Interview a couple of times now and each time cringe at – not just his ignorance about the web and the role of a search engine in delivering traffic to websites – but that this ignorance comes from Rupert Murdoch – one of histories greatest business men who has built a global media empire through his ruthlessness and being able to predict trends.

To claim that Google is robbing him, by bringing visitors to his websites for free – the visitors you need to justify your advertising rates – is like a theme park telling the bus companies that bring visitor to them to “fuck off – we don’t want your people thank you, your making money by bringing people to us and that’s wrong”. WTF!?

Ok – so his argument is that a more viable business model for him would be to charge for all content and not have to rely on volume of visitors for advertising revenue.

He already does that with publications like ‘The Wall street Journal’, and you know what: for that type of site that’s fine. If I want that kind of specialist financial content, or specialist whatever, I’m happy to pay for it.

For everything else though, why would I pay for it when I can get it from a thousand other sites for free?

What I’d like to know is who the hell is going to pay to read ‘The Sun’ or ‘News of The World’ online?!

Not me.

So you’re welcome to put up your pay wall Rupert. And give Microsoft exclusive rights to index your sites, see what it does to your readership numbers.

And while you’re at it, have the courage of your convictions… tell your web managers to put these two lines of code in your robots.txt  files to stop google indexing your sites and “stealing” from you:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

That’s all it takes. Surely someone in your organisation must have let you know… with all the time you’ve been moaning about Search Engines. Why haven’t you done it yet?

Maybe it’s about time for the likes of Rupert Murdoch to accept that it isn’t the 80′s anymore, and that with all the competition in the web, maybe Newscorp needs to content itself with a fraction of the profits it has enjoyed in the old media days.

But Rupert would tell you that if everyone was allowed to have a slice of the pie, the quality of news and content would suffer…

That news reporting should be left to the elite few professional journalists of the newscorp organisation. Because the quality of the news depends on it…

Lets have a look at some examples of the quality of newscorp’s journalism…

This next one was a fake story created as a piece of Buzz content for site money.co.uk by Lyndon Antcliff. Fox news picked up the story and reported it as fact!

You would think the professional reporters at Fox would check the facts of a ’13 year old goes on video game and hooker binge with dad’s credit card’ story  before going on air with it, wouldn’t you?

Would you pay for content on Newscorp websites?

Rupert Murdoch wants you to shut up and pay up, cause he knows best for the internet. is a post from: evenflowdave.com

Cracks me up every time, but jokes aside, that means that a bunch of poncy pop wannabes will be destroying some classics – and in some cases trying to pass off some lame pop anthem with a hint of a guitar through it, as a rock tune.

To the rock fans across the pond, The X-Factor is the same as your American Idol, only shittier. At least some of your guys are moderately talented, and you get a bigger share of hot chicks.

I found myself watching it last night for the laugh, and I’m pleased to report that not too much damage was done. There was one girl that sang “sweet child of mine”, and an interesting rendition of Queen by two identical weasels, but nothing that’s never been destroyed a million times before.

Funniest thing was a Zac Efron lookalike doing Katy Perry’s “I kissed a girl and I like it”….

You don’t say?

Even if I ignore for a moment that Katy Perry is as Rock’n'Roll as Snoopy is a Pit Bull Terrier, the only thing that makes that song interesting is that a girl kisses another girl. Take that out of the equation and you’ve got the lamest bit of TV ever seen.

But nothing was as interesting as watching Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh quarrel over who has the most knowledge/experience in rock music….

The guy responsible for the ‘Telitubbies’ and ‘Power Rangers’ soundtracks and the man that made his fortune from putting baby faced teenage heartthrobs in tail-coats and singing 60′s ballads, arguing about who is the biggest rocker.

The fact that the judges think this guy is a rocker says it all…

Message to Simon Cowell: Real Rockers and Real Musicians don’t go on the X Factor, or American Idol.

The guest on tonight’s programme is Bon Jovi, so logically the contestants will be destroying his songs. But that’s OK, with respect to Bon Jovi, his stuff is a bit too mainstream and girlie for real rockers to care much.

Sorry girls, but it is!

My mission: to put together a spotify playlist of REAL ROCKERS. A list of 18 tracks so removed from the commercial mainstream that the X Factor and American Idol will hopefully never touch.

It wasn’t an easy task. I sampled many great grunge albums to narrow this list to 18 tracks. Through the night and to backing vocals from the missus screaming to “turn that horrible noise down”.  But here its is…

If you have Spotify, you can get the playlist here. If you don’t have Spotify yet, you really should You can get it here (Unfortunately, Spotify is not available outside Europe yet).

The 18 tracks I hope the X Factor and American Idol will never touch.

1. Mayonnaise   –  The Smashing Pumpkins
2. Fell on black days  -  Soundgarden
3. Would?  - Alice in Chains
4. No end in sight  - Mudhoney
5. Smells like Teen Spirit  - Nirvana
6. Bullet with butterfly wings – The Smashing Pumpkins
7. Alive – Pearl Jam
8. Come as You are – Nirvana
9. Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden
10. No excuses  - Alice in chains
11. Like a Stone  - Audioslave
12. Do the Evolution  - Pearl Jam
13. Plush  - Stone Temple Pilots
14. Nutshell  - Alice in Chains
15. Tonight Tonight  - The Smashing Pumpkins
16. Hunger Strike  - Temple of the Dog
17. Black  - Pearl Jam
18. Where did you sleep last night  -  Nirvana (MTV unplugged)

The more educated rockers will notice a Grunge flavour to this list.  Best musical era – ever. Unrepeatable.

There are a lot of really great songs that didn’t make it into the list, but I had to keep it to a reasonable length and wanted to give some of the bands on it a mention. Some of the tracks are also there for what they symbolise. I can think of many better Nirvana songs than ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’, but how could I have a Grunge list without the anthem that swept across the world announcing the breakthrough of all this great music.

You might be thinking that this is a very arbitrary selection, based on the authors personal taste, and you’d be spot on. This is my list and my blog. If you don’t like it, you can piss off  and make your own.

And once you’re done please share it in the comments

18 rock songs you will never see on the X-Factor or American Idol is a post from: evenflowdave.com

You know the time… the time you and yours huddle round boob tube and laugh at some poor deluded fools who want  to be the next Britney Spears or Justin Gingerprick.

twitter trending topics on Saturday morning confirmed it. X Factor was ranking.

For me that means two things…

1. Having to endure the endless “ohh, I think X will win it, he’s a great singer. He’s cute too. hehe” (Not to mention getting made to watch the damn thing by the missus)

2. Arguing with every fan I come across about the “merits” and evils of the programme.

First thing first, look, I’m not saying there aren’t talented singers on the x-factor, but what I do say is that being a good Karaoke singer doesn’t make you a musician.

Like any decent profession, that should be something you achieve through hard work, study , practice, writing, gigging, marketing.

These people want to go from Karaoke to International top selling artist in less than a year – that’s an insult to all the many bands who struggle for years gigging and gradually building up local support and a fan base, until they are popular enough to get the attention of the record industry.

It rarely lasts long for the get famous quick crowd anyway. Apart for a one or two, what’s happened to all the other reality TV “stars”?

Chewed up by Simon Cowell’s money press and out the other end completely flat. But the money machine keeps rolling – just keep the suckers coming.

But that’s not even the worst part, here’s the biggest X-Factor evil…

The format of the programme is simple. The good singers make it through and that bad ones don’t. Right? Wrong…

It turns out that there is a screening process that all entrants go through before going through to the televised auditions in front of the judges.

That means that the best singers are let through and while other good - just not the best –  singers are sent home, all the nutters (the ones that everyone watches the first few programmes for, the ones that get people watching, then hooked on the series) that have no chance are allowed through for the “entertainment factor”.

In other words, the less fortunate are handpicked to be made a fool of  on TV and laughed at by the whole world.

Have you seen the way some of them get laughed at by Simon Cowell and Loui  Walsh? I have no problem with calling a spade a spade and if someone is crap, they should know it. But publicly humiliating someone on TV? I’m sure I wouldn’t see that level of unkindness in the most unkind school playground.

But the worst part, the part I hate the most is that for all I despise the X Factor, I end up watching those first few programmes along with everyone else.

It’s like driving past a car crash. I don’t want to look, but it’s just so compelling.

People keep watching and so the show goes on. It’s a vicious circle.

Simon Cowell and his evil empire must be stopped.

Who’s with me?

X Factor should be cancelled for crimes against humanity! is a post from: evenflowdave.com

If you have been anywhere in the middle east, Egypt or Turkey recently and watched any TV (Fox Movies), you will probably have seen this advert for for a Window Coverings retailer. A lot! I was in Egypt 2 weeks, watched only a few movies on TV, but I know all the words to this ad.

Classic dubbing!

Actually, the voice dubbing is probably the best thing about it. I reckon I could do a better production job with my flip and windows movie maker.

And the copy-writing… If it wasn’t one of the store managers that wrote this script on a napkin, under pressure and 60 seconds before shoot – me and my flip are moving to the middle east to shoot TV commercials.

Made me think of all the crappy adverts…

Home Decor retailers aren’t the only ones to make crap ads. How about this one for Microsoft’s Songsmith? Has me in stitches every time.

What is the crappiest advert you’ve ever seen? Do you have a link to a video? Let me know in the comments where you can embed youtube vids…

If I get enough suggestions, I will follow-up with a top 10 crappiest ads ever. Make sure to subscribe my email so you don’t miss it. Just put your email address in here…

Probably the crappiest advert in the World is a post from: evenflowdave.com