it.gen.nz

OK, so I went to the Telecom XT launch in Auckland today. I’ll blog about what went on tomorrow. But for now: Telecom are very proud of the technical quality of their network. Test-drive it for a month, they said. And they showed us some upcoming TV ads of people doing just that. Then they lent me a phone and a SIM to try it out with.

I’m keen to give this thing a blast. I’d love suggestions on what to try. Anything goes provided it doesn’t damage the phone (or me!), and I can do it in and around Wellington. The phone is a Nokia 6120. I’ll post results on the site.

Suggestions, please?

There’s a column by Debbie Mayo Smith in today’s Herald (Business users not getting the text message) extolling the virtues of text messaging for communicating with customers. Debbie’s thesis is that busy people get a lot of email already and she doesn’t want her messages to queue up with them. “Text does not have an IT manager, ISP or company filtering it out”, she says.

Well, yes. That’s rather the point. Most of us have no way of filtering text messages short of ditching our mobiles. We tend to look at our text messages immediately. It’s personal, almost intimate. That’s why I’m concerned about the Herald article. (more…)

I’ve been involved in the campaign against Section 92A of the Copyright Act since before the election. On at least two occasions I’ve heard from journalists that someone they wouldn’t name was trying to plant stories linking anti-S92A activists with, of all things, child pornography. We gritted our teeth and ignored it.

Last weekend this all broke wide open. Video rental shops in the larger chains tried to get their customers to sign a petition demanding that S92A be retained. In one of the United Video shops around Hamilton, at least, video shop staff were telling customers that this petition was all about stopping child pornography. They were told to say that, they said, by their manager. (more…)

Starting today, I’m sharing the Thursday morning Radio New Zealand technology slot with Nathan Torkington. Nat has done it before when I’ve been away, and he’s very good. He’s a kiwi who came back after an illustrious career in the States.

Nat and I will do alternate Thursdays. He’s up today, so be sure to listen!

Here’s a funny to keep you going until 11am:

I’m away from New Zealand for a few weeks, visiting my extended family. Here in this sceptred isle the weather is cold and I’m already missing Wellington. But the company here is great, and I’m actually looking forward to Christmas.

I’m doing some interesting things to stay connected while I’m travelling. There’s no way you want to pay our outrageous data roaming charges, so the iPhone “Data Roaming” option is firmly off. But there are things you can do. The house I’m staying in at the moment, for instance, has wireless broadband but it’s all locked down by my host’s employer. So, I’ve bought a little wireless access point with me – also locked down hard – and connected it directly to his router. That means that the four different wi-fi enabled gadgets I’m carrying can all get online. I bought one of these when I arrived but I haven’t needed it yet.

As to those who might say that I should just leave everything behind and ignore the Net for while – maybe I should. But, then, who would pay my bills while I’m away or keep my business running? And how would I have managed the Skype teleconference I needed to have on my arrival?

For years Apple’s Mac OS X has been making slow inroads into Windows’ installed user base. But it’s slow progress. Windows is still massively dominant on the desktop.

That’s the context for today’s story about Apple’s venture into smartphones, the much-hyped iPhone. The sales of iPhones exceed the sales of every type of Windows Mobile smart phone put together.

The article linked above speculates as to why this might be. It suggest two reasons, both of which come down to developer preference: one is that Windows Mobile runs on a wide variety of hardware and that makes life hard for developers; and the other is that the iPhone is just sooo cool. That’s right, it’s the third party applications developers who are driving the adoption of the iPhone and deserting Windows mobile.

This is significant because we are seeing Microsoft being taken on and beaten handsomely – not just little chips away at a huge installed user base. It must be an unfamiliar feeling for them.

Today on Radio New Zealand National I talked about changing your ISP. The subject was prompted, in part, by yet another failure at Xtra – and by the Consumer magazine survey which says, every year, that Xtra delivers the worst customer satisfaction of all Internet providers.

And these Internet failures hurt New Zealand businesses. I was talking to a business at the weekend which had been prevented from getting their business done for a while. I asked why they don’t change providers and I was told: we don’t know how. Sue, this one’s for you.

I’ve written some instructions on what you do to change ISPs. I’m going to keep them live on the front page of this blog for a while, near the top right. And – it’s easy. Don’t let your ISP get away with bad service – vote with your feet.

Read on for my speaking notes, or download the audio as ogg or mp3. (more…)

Like the roof on my house, the DNS has holes. A really bad DNS hole got patched earlier this year – well, mostly patched. I say “patched”, because the solution isn’t very good, it’s just dried up the worst of the problem, but the fix won’t last.

Kim Davies of IANA has written a very readable account of the problem in DNS security. It makes for scary reading. The bad guys will get control of the Internet unless we deal to this problem.

I have bitten the bullet and agreed to have a new roof on my house. Just patching the old one won’t keep the water out any more – it just comes through another place every time it rains. The DNS needs a new roof as well, and it’s called DNSSEC. It will involve lots of Internet folk in real work, but we need to get on with it.

Great headline, isn’t it – I wish I’d thought of it. It’s from El Reg, a UK online newspaper, decrying the expansion of blog front pages.
It seems that more and blogs – and web pages in general – are putting images and other things on their front pages which serve to slow down the page loading.

I thought I’d measure a few front pages of web sites, using a web based service:

Here are some blogs and other web pages:

This matters because it makes the pages less usable to dial up or mobile users. So, if you have a web site with a big, heavy, front page you are effectively saying that you don’t want people with slow lines or who are using mobiles to surf there. That may be a valid decision for you, but you need to be aware that you are making it. And for many companies, and especially for government departments, it’s just not OK to disenfranchise people by effectively cutting them out of your website. Now, the government is very aware of this issue and has a set of web standards which departments have to conform to – and those standards say that pages mustn’t be too big.

Books are a very old technology which is still going strong. And why shouldn’t it? Today on Radio New Zealand National I take a look at books and their relationship with the Internet. Read on for my notes or download the audio as ogg or mp3. (more…)