Nathan Cochrane
Nathan "Nate" Cochrane (born 1970) is an Australian technology journalist, photographer and media consultant who contributes to the Sydney Morning Herald, a Fairfax Media broadsheet newspaper, among other publications. He was previously editor-in-chief for IT publications CRN Australia, SC Magazine and iTNews, published by Haymarket Group. Prior to that, Cochrane edited the NEXT IT section in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers and edited the IT section of The West Australian newspaper in Perth. He was Australia's first journalist on the web with the GameWave website.
His 2002 story on exploding CD-ROMs featured in the second episode of the first season of MythBusters. A story the previous year, Melbourne Man Patents the Wheel, on Australia's patent system featured on Slashdot and led to MIT awarding jointly an Ig Nobel Prize to the patent applicant and IP Australia. Cochrane also broke the story on the video compression scandal surrounding Adams Platform and its founder Adam Clark, and first brought to light the plight of Adam Hinkley ("Hinks") the young creator of the first modern peer-to-peer application, Hotline, and its company Hotline Communications. Cochrane was among the first journalists to sound warning bells about emerging music and video filesharing applications in 1996 and 2000, respectively.
He is one of the world's biggest TV gameshow cash prize winners, winning A$515,000 in a single episode of Deal or No Deal.