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Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was doing a live interview with Howard Sattler on radio station 6PR when the host brought up rumors that Gillard’s partner, a hairdresser by profession, might be gay. (Julia Gillard, Howard Sattler, screenshot: Reuters video)

“That’s absurd…” replied Gillard. “We live together as a couple. You know that. Yes, on the Internet there are lots of what I’ve referred to in the past as nutjobs and I’m happy to use the expression again,” she continued according to QMI Agency.

The station released a statement saying, in part, “Fairfax Radio management has reviewed this interview and considers that the questions posed by Mr Sattler were disrespectful and irrelevant to the political debate.” Shortly after the interview turned into a controversy, Sattler was dismissed from his position.

The radio host says he will sue the station. You can view a portion of the interview here.

Highlights in social medialand this week:

Introducing the “Pier to Pier” Boat Network

A startup called Boatbound is trying to do for boat rentals what sites like HomeAway and Airbnb do for home rentals–create a new marketplace where people can rent their boats directly to other people.

Launched this week, Boatbound’s key innovation seems to be that it offers insurance to protect owners who list their boats for sale on the site from mishaps that may be caused by those who rent them. To rent anything on Boatbound, people must be certified to pilot a boat–or be willing to go through the $30 certification process offered through the rental service.
TechCrunch has a full profile of Boatbound.

Narcissist’s Nirvana: #FollowMe on Twitter

Twitter announced a new self-promotional tool this week that can automatically generate a demo video of material that a user has put on Twitter. What Twitter calls your “highlight reel” is a short video clip showing your most popular tweets, tweeted photos and most loyal followers on Twitter. In a blog post, Twitter said a company called Vizify generates the videos and sets them to music, which the user can edit after the sound track is added.

MySpace Released Free Music App

Myspace released a free streaming music app for iPhones this week, allowing users to program their own streaming radio station on the Internet or listen to streaming music programmed by well known artists and others. The new, free mobile Myspace app is similar to the desktop Web version of Myspace, which was redesigned six months ago as a social network focused on music. The mobile app release is timed to coincide with a major marketing push for the redesigned MySpace.com. Myspace mobile was the second big music release this week. First up was Apple’s preview of its forthcoming iTunes Radio, another Internet radio service that will compete against streaming services like Spotify and Pandora.

Being on the radio certainly brings deejays, talk show hosts, and others on the air a certain degree of fame. And that fame feeds the very voracious human ego. Some handle it well, some not so well. But, it would be hard to imagine radio without the ego-driven people in it because it’s competitive and cut-throat and you need an ego to survive. That said, radio doesn’t offer “pictures” like TV so much of the local fame is sucked up by those egomaniacal television news anchors. Drat! Fame, Anonymity, Ego and more is all part of the Wacky World of Radio. Let’s talk about it. (Graphic Credit: © Corey Deitz)

Here we go again. Myspace is not ready to give up on the Internet. Not now, not yet.

• The struggle to revive Myspace

The Justin Timberlake-endorsed, fully redesigned social networking site for music enthusiasts just exited private beta and officially released a brand new iOS app, so users can take all their Myspace activities with them on the go. Along with some tweaked features on the now fully public web-based version and a new app, the once dominant social network has also forked out $20 million in multimedia ad campaigning to hopefully reinvent its tired brand.

Myspace’s persistent effort is somewhat admirable, and it clearly has the cash to try to move forward (for now), but its place on the web ultimately comes down to music consumers and social networking users that decide to choose it over competing services. The reality is not many people are likely to spend less time using Spotify or Rdio subscriptions to make time for using Myspace instead, and the wide ranging variety of trendy streaming services like SoundCloud, Pandora, Songza, Twitter #Music and the coming iTunes Radio make it all that much harder for Myspace to justify its multimillion-dollar attempt at making a worthwhile comeback.

• 10 popular streaming apps

Sorry Myspace, but a fabulous new design and millions spent in ad campaigns won’t necessarily make you better than the rest of the choices available to us nowadays.

Photo © Myspace

Radio broadcaster, Internet video host, and author, Glenn Beck, will guest on the SiriusXM show “Author Confidential” beginning June 15 at 10 a.m. ET on SiriusXM Patriot (channel 125). Beck will be interviewed by SiriusXM host, Mike Slater, about his new book The Eye of Moloch. (Right: Glenn Beck, Photo: Kris Connor/Getty Images)

Beck’s new book is the follow-up to another best-seller, The Overton Window, and explores themes including self-rule, liberty and advanced surveillance technologies.

Beck’s daily show also airs on the conservative-talk Patriot channel. Beck’s appearance was recorded in front of a live audience and will be replayed several times.

For more information, visit SiriusXM.

Customized
Personalized
Supported by a huge music library

These are some of the buzzwords Apple is tossing out there as it announces its upcoming iTunes Radio service. It should be up and streaming sometime this fall and you’ll be able to get it in two flavors: free with ads or commercial-free for a small annual fee. It will cater to Apple-centric devices but iPhone users will also be able to integrate Siri into their listening experience. Read more. (Screenshot: Apple.com)

Apple might be a little late in joining the music streaming market, but the newly announced iTunes Radio will at least have one little extra feature that the rest of the competition doesn’t: a dedicated “Trending on Twitter” station part of Twitter #Music that will come built right into the iOS Music app.

• What is Twitter #Music?

Twitter launched its new music discovery app back in April, but the excitement was short-lived as the free iOS app continued to drop down the list in the App Store’s top 100 free apps over the weeks following its launch. If iRadio catches on as well as hoped, Apple’s partnership with Twitter will give users the chance to discovery and listen directly to tracks that are currently trending on Twitter (in addition to other curated stations), without needing to access the official Twitter #Music app.

• 10 popular music streaming services

iTunes Radio is scheduled to launch in the fall for U.S. users to start, offering both free and paid subscription plans. You can find out more about it on the Apple website.

Photo © Apple, Inc.

A lot of new and exciting things are on the way for Apple users, and they were all revealed to us earlier today during the company’s massive annual WWDC keynote.

Tech enthusiasts were somewhat skeptical about what would be announced at today’s event, considering Google did so well at its annual I/O conference just a few weeks ago.

“Can’t innovate anymore, my ass,” said Apple Senior Vice President Phill Schiller during today’s keynote, in response to the critics.

Here are some the main web-based features announced today that will change and improve the way you access and interact on the Internet (using Apple products, of course).

Safari Browser Improvements

• Safari has fallen behind the user-preferred Google Chrome browser, but Apple is stepping up its game with a refreshed Safari interface, social browsing via shared links, a brand new sidebar featuring a reading list and a redesign for Top Sites.
• Apple users who eventually decide to upgrade to the coming OS X Mavericks will also get a new feature called App Naps — a nifty tool for helping you conserve power.

iOS 7 Revamp

• iWork for iCloud will let users work with any files for Pages. Numbers or Keynote right in the desktop or iOS browsers, as a way to take on Google Docs and Microsoft Office Web Apps.
• You’ll soon be able to swipe between any camera app when accessing the camera, like Instagram, Snapseed, the native camera app or anything else.
• AirDrop, Apple’s P2P file-sharing feature, will allow you to see a sharing sheet whenever you need to send a video, photo or other file with one or multiple friends nearby.
• Microsoft’s Bing search has been integrated into Siri, and users will be able to use it to control a range of things like Bluetooth, brightness, Twitter, Wikipedia, your car and much more.
• Apps that require updates will update automatically in iOS 7 without asking you for permission first.
• iOS 7 will be out later this fall.

iTunes Radio (iRadio)

• Apple is launching its very own music streaming service, called iTunes Radio, which will compete with services like Pandora/Spotify/Rdio and will come built directly into iTunes on both mobile and the desktop.
• It’s only launching in the U.S. to start and will be free for all users.
• A premium subscription option will be available to users who don’t want to see ads.
• With iRadio, users will be able to create their own playlists, share music on social media and have it all synched up across all Apple devices.

Other Cool Hardware and OS Stuff

If you want to know anything about the new Mac Pros or Macbook Airs or the new OS X Mavericks, I recommend checking out our Apple experts’ columns for Macs, iPods/iPhones and iPads.

I also really enjoyed the live coverage done by The Verge today. Their team is extraordinary, and they’ve got a whole bunch of in-depth articles and first looks at what was announced today all over their homepage.

Photo © Bloomberg via Getty Images

Margaret Larkin assumes the identity of “RadioGirl” in her popular podcast about radio and the people who work in it. Margaret and are acquaintances from several years back. One day my inbox had an email from her asking for advice on how to get into radio. I told her my thoughts but it was her hard work that helped her break into Chicago radio and stay employed.

When she’s not freelancing in the Second City, she’s hosting the RadioGirl podcast which has featured many Chicago radio names and others from around the country. The RadioGirl podcast draws thousands of listeners each month and shows are archived for your on-demand listening. I am complimented that RadioGirl is featuring an interview with me in her most recent podcast but there is quite an impressive archive on her site. Check out the RadioGirl podcast. (Graphic: podcast.radiogirl.us)

Living for the past decade in one of the hottest regions of the American mid-South, I don’t often launch into celebrations of the summer season. In fact, normally I just hunker down under the gauzy comfort of air conditioning and wait for autumn to arrive. Nevertheless, when I happened to hear a snippet of this week’s spotlight track in a local radio bumper last week, I became momentarily inspired to make an exception. Back during the summer of 1986, Van Halen’s 5150 quickly gained prominence as one of the two primary hard rock cassettes I was listening to repeatedly. This was just before I started to get into rock music on a more serious level, but it turned out that the two albums in question (the other being Judas Priest’s rather underrated Turbo) did a decent job of foreshadowing my general listening preferences for the next couple of years, for better or for worse.

Looking back, I still feel that several tracks on that Van Halen album – the first recorded with Sammy Hagar on lead vocals following the high-profile departure of David Lee Roth – qualify as solid arena rock and guitar-centric classics of the ’80s. In the case of “Summer Nights,” we may better speak in terms of a minor classic, but the fact remains that the chorus of that deep track remains a celebratory, unabashedly feel-good rock and roll moment. As for the rest of the song, it’s probably most accurate to categorize the verses as the sonic equivalent of liquor being poured down the front of  a busty, scantily clad female during a beach-bonfire night of debauchery. Surely that comment would probably be interpreted even by aging rockers like Hagar as more of a compliment than a criticism, and I suppose that makes sense. Nevertheless, the testosterone-heavy, melodically bereft portion of the song overindulges in bravado and macho posing to say the least. But ultimately that’s a minor complaint, as the harmony vocals of bassist Michael Anthony and Eddie Van Halen help transform the pure, visceral joy of a lyric full of simple pleasures into something more: “Summer nights and my radio, That’s all we need, baby, don’tcha know.” You forgot to mention air conditioning, Sammy.

• Sample or download “Summer Nights” here.
• Top Van Halen Songs of the ’80s
• Compare prices on Hagar-era Van Halen CDs here.
• Top 10 Arena Rock Artists of the ’80s

Album Cover Image Courtesy of Warner Bros.