I’ve been in the US for the last two weeks. Before I left I purchased a Telstra 14 Day Travel Pass. It worked out well, because it ran out when I was at the airport about to head home. Here’s the text message I got (the second message is the item of interest): Basically, since I was a Travel Pass customer I was going to now pay 3c per MB. At this price I’m assuming Telstra still...
You should read this post from Eugene Wei (no really, go read it) and consider it in terms of inefficiency. Think back to when Twitter first started. By the time you and I were getting involved, it’s likely the need for the SMS limited character limitation was long gone. Only the earliest of early adopters would have actually been around when it was in fact needed. But the character...
I’ve resisted using an ad blocker for years, since: I don’t mind ads Especially if they are personalised (as most ads are now). And I’m happy for ads to track me all over the web if it means I get a better ‘ad experience’ I realise many sites rely on ads as their business model If it weren’t for them showing ads I wouldn’t get access to many of the...
As part of an art exhibition in Zurich, an automated online shopping bot is tasked with buying a random item each week on the deep web to the value of $100 in bitcoins. Along the way it purchases ecstasy pills and a fake passport. If this bot was shipping to the U.S., asks Forbes contributor and University of Washington law professor contributor Ryan Calo, who would be legally responsible for...
Hopefully you’ve already seen this wonderful interview with Bill Gates in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. If not, then it’s well worth a read. Top marks to the interviewer – a great bunch of questions (and so much better than the cringe-worthy questions Bill’s had to endure in the past). As always Bill is such a clear and useful thinker who answers so eloquently...
I’m pretty excited, I gotta say, about this month’s Sydney Business & Technology User Group meeting – we’re having a Virtualisation Smackdown! It’s this coming Wednesday, starting at 6pm. Here’s the details: Date: Wed 26 August 2009 Time: 6pm – 9pm Location: Microsoft, North Ryde (map) Web: www.sbtug.com Phone: 0413 489 388 (call me if you get there after 6pm and need to get it)...
As Mashable and TechCrunch report, Microsoft is testing the waters with the iPhone App market, releasing a a little app: Seadragon Mobile (here’s the official announcement on the Live Labs blog). The app (available for free on iTunes App Store, allows you to browse Deep Zoom images effortlessly. Check out the simple 42 second demo on the blog. And for more on Seadragon itself, check this out...
Boring history prologue I started playing with ‘computers’ back in the days when they came with 3K of memory (Vic 20 anyone?). And thank goodness I was too young to have experienced the punch card era… They quickly scaled up so that by the time I was at uni, 16MB of RAM was becoming standard. Fast forward to today and we can buy consumer notebooks with 16GB of RAM. Never in our wildest uni...
Easily the best TechEd lock note I’ve seen (but then again I’ve only been to TechEd 4 times). Miha Kralj talked us through the technology changes we’ll be seeing over the next few years. If you get a chance to see his presentation (I’m sure it will be repeated at other events, or put up on a video site somewhere) make sure you do – it is well worth it. It’s difficult to do the session...
I’m not really one for writing critical posts – frankly I just don’t have the energy… But I’m also not really one for saying thank you either – and this is something I really should be doing more of. Sure, there’s heaps of minor irritations every day, but in the scheme of things I think I’ve got it pretty good. And on top of all the big good things...