This week has been a big one in the mobile phone world. Debate about the iPhone and the plans available to use here in Australia has been everywhere. At the same time, however, Telstra has been heavily pushing its venture into barcodes with the introduction of QRcodes to the Australian market. I say introduction because …
Author Archives: woowoowoo
the appstore door is open
Not officially launched yet, but if you search for likely keywords (try ‘photo’) in iTunes Music Store, your results might include some applications. Click through to “see all” and you’ll be presented with a heap of apps you can download and install – yay! I’ve only been getting the free ones, but there’s loads in …
your mileage may vary
Watched a very interesting documentary on SBS the other night: Car of the Future, where two charismatic brothers – one a host of a radio car show, explore future trends in car design in a lighthearted, but well informed way. It was certainly entertaining, but I want to share the two big points that came …
make your maps open maps
This week Google announced (yet) another new feature of it’s mapping toolset. For a little while now, we’ve been able to ‘submit’ alterations via the maps interface – moving things here and there – a quick look at Google Maps Recent Edits shows that it’s quite popular. The latest thing is Map Maker, which is …
watching the wheels of government turn…
The web keeps popping up interesting experiences all the time – today I had another. I subscribe to Get Up!. They are an activist group. I have to admit, I don’t really know who is behind them, but they don’t seem to be directly affiliated with any mainstream political group. Get Up harness the power …
petrol addicts, go cold turkey!
Does anyone else find the recent debate over petrol tax just a little bit pathetic? 4 cents, 5 cents, myopic politicians taking cheap shots, pretending they can do anything about fuel prices. It’s all such a load of crap. Firstly, I’m no economist, but as I understand it, the price is high because of the …
Apple’s iTunes rip-off
I remember waiting with huge anticipation for Apple to launch iTunes in Australia – the rumours got thicker and faster until it finally arrived. The store finally launched with tracks selling at $1.69 each. At the time, as I recall, the aussie dollar was about $us0.65ยข so we were effectively paying about $us1.10 while the …
A week in touch
I’ve had the pleasure of using an iPod Touch for the last week. As much as I like my music, I’ve never really felt the need to upgrade from my old ‘gumstick’ 1Gb shuffle, but we’ve got one at work with the intention mainly of testing podcasts and public facing services. Yes, the multi touch …
resilient
News reports tonight are describing the people of Burma as ‘resilient‘. Certainly they are resilient. When we visited, we saw these people living in pretty ordinary circumstances – poverty, lack of basic services, poor to non-existent infrastucture, all against a constant undercurrent of oppression. Despite their obvious hardships, they were friendly and open, with a …
the old sou’wester
Am I imagining things? Perhaps there’s someone out there that can help me with this. As a kid, (many years ago!) I remember all the bad weather came from the south west. Cold, rainy days, cold fronts, storms – you name it, they all came out of the south west… as I remember, anyway. These …
a bullbar for my bicycle…
Dear reader: Take the first couple of paragraphs with a grain of salt as they are based on comments as reported in the Moreland Leader. Seems there is a possibility that this wasn’t exactly what was said. All the same, the stuff I said isn’t all suddenly wrong either, so I’ll leave it here. Breathtaking …
overcrowding on melbourne’s trains? problem solved!
Got a laugh out of this one: