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.
Today on Radio New Zealand National I talk about the mobile wars – the new Telecom XT Network, the new “Two Degrees” mobile company, and the existing Vodafone network. What are we to make of all the hype, the court cases and the bluster?
Read on for my speaking notes or download the audio as ogg or mp3. (more…)
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…)
Today on Radio New Zealand National I’m going to talk about several different things. One of them is how technology changes our language. Read on for my speaker notes or download the audio as ogg or mp3.(more…)
There’s a wild and beautiful range of mountains in Wales called the Brecon Beacons. Here’s Pen-y-Fan, its highest peak.
It’s an amazing place to go tramping, but you have to be careful because the weather is very changeable. Don’t be put off by Welsh mountains’ apparent small size – the weather on top can approach arctic conditions.
The Beacons are home to a tough breed of farmers. As in most of the Welsh hills, sheep are run all across the bleak hillsides. You can’t blame the farmers for having a little fun, and when some marketing genius came up with this YouTube video, we all chortled.
It was three weeks or so ago that we were discussing this on Twitter, and mainly making bad puns. But now, television has caught up with it. Last night TV3 News carried the video, not even in the ‘Arnold the Singing Turkey’ slot after the weather, but in the second segment before some rather more serious and significant stories.
TV3 edited the video to suit their format – I guess that’s to be expected. They added a voice over explaining what was going on, and a banner to tell you the location. Here’s a screen shot:
This place is called the Brecon Beacons, remember. Check the name at the bottom of the screen. Now, that’s hilarious.
Today on Radio New Zealand National I’ll talk mainly about a free stuff you can use and downoad legally from the Internet. My point is that a huge amount of useful and world-class stuff is just there for the using. No cash required. Who said the best things in life weren’t free?
I put out a call for suggestions for this program by email and on my blog a few days ago. If you were one of the helpful people who replied – thanks. This program’s yours as much as mine. Don’t you love the Internet!
Listen live at 11:05 or download the audio as Ogg or MP3.
This week I’d like to talk about free stuff on the radio. That’s free as in beer – I won’t be worrying about the ideology, just about what sort of software and services that ordinary people can use without paying money.
Please feel free to put suggestions in the comments!
The biggest single thing I wanted MobileMe for, it won’t do – and it’s not clear in advance that it won’t. That thing is using MM email with your own domain name. I was hoping to move my email into it from a another provider, but I won’t be doing that now. So, for my money, the email provided with MM is useless because you can only reply from your @me.com address. Google have got this right – why can’t Apple?
Now I’ve got that off my chest, there are some things to like in MM. I like the way it syncs my calendars and contacts lists wirelessly with the ones on my iPhone. Critics might say that the iPhone should do that anyway, but let’s just accept that it doesn’t. MM is a welcome addition, then, to someone who has a Mac and an iPhone.
The iDisk looks cool. It’s 10-20 Gigs of storage which is always kept replicated onto and Apple server somewhere. In theory, you can recover your files onto a new machine or use it for sharing. I haven’t quite figured out yet how to use it to keep a permanent copy of my favourite document folders in the cloud without manually copying them or setting up an rsync, but there’s probably a way. And it will let you do a photo gallery online, along with various kinds of website. But, then, I am already well-supplied in that department.
There are a few other pieces of goodness I haven’t tried yet, such as getting into my Mac at home when I’m out and about, or getting remote access to my Time Capsule drive. But I already do these things without MM.
All in all, I suppose it’s okay for $140 NZ per annum.
You may have gathered that I’m not taken with MobileMe as much as some other products from the same stable. It strikes me as, well, too little, and surprisingly hard to set up. I expected more. I hope Apple will continue developing it into something a bit less underwhelming.
posted by colin at 5:00 pm
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The NBR is saying that the government has scrapped the appalling S92A of the Copyright Act – the Guilt upon Accusation law. That’s fantastic news! Well done to everyone who has campaigned for this, and particularly well done to John Key and his government for realising just how wrong this was and having the guts to stop it.
Now to work out what should go in its place. Politicians need to talk to people apart from a few organizations that represent some of the rights-holders. There’s a lot more views to consider when trying to figure out the right way to approach copyright in the Internet age.
I’ve been invited to a meeting tomorrow about this by Clare Curran MP of the Labour party. I’m more than happy to talk to any of the other parties as well.
