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I’m at Foo Camp listening to Ben Goodger of Google and Robert O’Callaghan of Mozilla. Both are deeply technical people who are developing web browsers – Ben is developing Google’s Chrome browser, and Robert is part of the Firefox team. (And he lives in Auckland, along with several other FF team members.)

Ben and Robert telling us what’s coming up in both their browsers, and they are asking the web developers in the room – a couple of dozen – what they want to see in the browser. This is such a great way to develop browser code – there’s a direct feedback loop between the guys who develop the new stuff and the people who exploit it to make cool websites.

Tomorrow I’m going to Warkworth to the third annual Kiwi Foo Camp.

Foo is an amazing experience. It’s so energising to be there with scientists, geeks, and artists. And Nathan, Jenine and Russell do a fine job in organising it.

Part of the deal with Foo is that everyone presents (“no passengers”). I’m going to talk about “Hacking Government”. It seems that the geek community is quite bad at telling government what it wants, in a way that government actually responds to. Perhaps we can start to deal with that.

Immortal Dr Who jellyfish poised to rule Earth

Go on, you know you want to.

Today on Radio New Zealand National I talk about the dreadful piece of copyright that our last government foisted on us, and that, incredibly, the current one – which claims to ‘get’ the Internet to the extent of throwing a lot of our tax money at it – intends to implement regardless.

This really is bad. Nowhere else has implemented law which assumes people are guilty if they are accused. That’s because that’s contrary to natural justice. The UK government, for instance, has just announced that it has dropped consideration of a similar law. But we are gonig ahead. Is this the kind of way we want New Zealand to stand out – unjust law?

You can read on for the script, which I may or may not stick to, or download the audio as ogg or mp3. (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:

Last night I went to the Unlimited Potential event in Wellington at which four bloggers tried to predict the future. The prize is the pink tiara, which the proud winner gets to wear until next year’s event.

The bloggers, who were all great sports, were:

• last year’s winner Philip Fierlinger
• Geek girl and “Kim Hill” star Brenda Wallace
• Geekzone honcho Mauricio Freitas
• Wellington author and blogger Miraz Jordan

Frankly, it wasn’t intended to be very serious – the prize rather signals that, don’t you think – and it wasn’t serious at all. The bloggers had each clearly thought about their stuff, and came out with a range of predictions ranging from things that had already been announced (The Australasian Linux conference will be in Wellington next year) to the likely (Windows 7 will sell better than Vista) to the, well, superficially improbable (Apple will take 75% of the laptop market). The audience lapped it up, with only a modicum of friendly advice and comment to the bloggers, ably abetted by the MC. The winner was chosen by the highly scientific method of seeing who got the loudest applause, whistling, and cat-calls from the audience.

And who won? Well… (more…)

After a break in Europe, then a few days in Abel Tasman National Park to re-connect with summer.

I saw a lot of interesting things:

• Free Wi-Fi is becoming the norm in UK Hotels, it would seem. I wonder when that will happen here?
• Proximity cards make such good ski lift tickets. All you have to do is wave your arm the turnstile and it lets you through. It would be great to see that here, as well.
• The tube is still hell on wheels. I’m glad I live somewhere where mass rapid transport is unnecessary.
• It’s fashionable in the UK to complain about the BBC. Please, please, please can I have a feed of it here?
• Bletchley Park, which I posted about at the time, was just about holy ground.

All in all, I’m convinced that New Zealand is a wonderful place to live.

I was privileged yesterday to visit Bletchley Park, the home of the British WWII codebreaking effort.

As well as the story of Alan Turing and the Enigma, which I’ve talked about many times before, Bletchley Park has many tales to tell. One I didn’t know was the Colossus computer built to crack a later German code. It really was the first programmable digital computer in the world. Twelve were built, but all were destroyed after the war by Churchill’s order. He didn’t want the Russians to know the extent of Britain’s codebreaking abilities.

Today you can see a rebuilt Colossus made out of radio valves and old telephone exchange equipment. It’s about the size of six modern computer racks, and generates over 5kw of heat (nothing changes!). It also has a loop of paper tape running at over 30mph. It’s all part of an intitiave called The National Musueum of Computing.

So, Bletchley Park is the place where the modern computer was invented. And then covered up.

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.