Technology

On 10 March 1876, Alexander Bell called Thomas Watson.  By today’s standards, unremarkable.  But in 1876, he had made the world’s first telephone call.

Some 130 years later, today’s World Telephone Day celebrates that call, in an environment very different from Alexander Bell’s. Telephones of various types, shapes, colours and sizes are enmeshed in our everyday lives. 

Today’s phones are personal and business necessities.  They can be fashion accessories.  They’re more compact, more mobile, and we rely upon them more than ever before.

Continue reading "A step backwards for the phone on its birthday" »

The one advantage that paper-based magazines have had on their electronic counterparts is usability and look. The ability to turn the page and take in the beauty of a well-designed magazine is something that most web sites can’t match.

Portability is the other area where magazines have had the edge. Carrying them around is lot easier than a standard computer.

As such, many have scoffed at Rupert Murdoch’s aim to get people to pay for digital content. After all, lots of online content is currently free and there’s been nowhere near enough ‘value-add’ to warrant people paying for content. However, the launch of Apple’s iPad tablet could well be the game changer that proves Murdoch right. With their new ultra-portable tablet, Apple can change the publishing industry to the same degree that they’ve changed the music sector.

Continue reading "Why the iPad could be the saviour of paid content" »

A friend remarked this morning that being told you can’t use Internet Explorer, as governments around the world are advising, is like being ordered to get to work without using roads.

This would be inconvenient but sufferable as we could all probably do with a good walk. But tortuously, in this situation even starting such a walk involves making a phone call to your IT helpdesk.

With respect to my IT administrator friends I’ll bet many people would rather take their chances with the criminals.

Continue reading "Hello IT helpdesk? I have a problem called the internet" »

I read today that those wacky zany kids at Channel Seven are rolling out something called “Pump TV”. I thought they’d gone all naughty and were setting up a new digital porn channel, but it turns out they’re wacking in TV screens into petrol pumps.

Well that’s a great leap for mankind. You need to get a bit of Mel and Kochie action while you’re filling up at the servo. Actually Beauty and The Geek will look a whole lot better while you’re topping up the brake fluid.

How’s it going to work? Are they abridged, five-minute episodes of everything – or the time it takes to do your business and screw the cap back on? Or will we be faced with oceans of Shell V90 flooding out over the concrete Zoolander style, as motorists are totally engrossed with the latest love tryst between Dr. Rachel, Alf and Hugo on Home and Away?

Continue reading "Pump it louder: the stupid rise of the servo television" »

“She doesn’t do radio interviews… she says it’s a dead medium”.

A recent conversation with a publicist about an American starlet nearly knocked me for six. According to the publicist the said starlet wasn’t going to waste her time on radio, because she simply didn’t believe anyone would be listening.

While it came as a surprise to me, it wasn’t the first time I’d heard it – particularly from an American.  In the US, radio has really struggled in the wake of internet broadcasting. As listeners switch off in droves, programmers have been forced to look for new ways to reach out to their audience.

Continue reading "Radio kills the radio stars" »

Don’t you just hate it when you’ve bought a new toy and before you’ve even got it out of the box you’re friends are saying you’ve wasted your money?

I know someone who has the new Kindle, which was released in Australia last week.

If he is the same sort of technoholic as I am, he would have been crestfallen when before he’d even unpacked it one of our acquaintances said: “Have you seen the Nook? Bet you’ll regret the Kindle.”

Continue reading "Yes, books are great but we said that about CDs" »

Next Thursday, Microsoft releases Windows 7, the latest update to its flagship product.

So far, the world is finding it pretty easy to ignore, other than its widely-parodied suggestion that you welcome the new product with a party.

You suspect Microsoft almost wants it this way, given the colossal flop that was Windows Vista.

Continue reading "Windows 7: It’s Vista without the dodgy bits" »

Once upon a time, in a 20th century age of ‘things’, people used to make sense of who they were by what they owned – land, house, car etc.

Today, in the age of communication, people are defined by who they know and what they share.

The phenomenal success of Web 2.0 vehicles such as Facebook and now Twitter (which I was told by a reliable source this week has seen 6,500 per cent growth in users in the last financial year), has demonstrated an astonishing need for people to connect and interact as the basis of their identity and wellbeing.

Continue reading "When names hurt as much as sticks and stones" »

A few years ago, I worked in a co-working space called Silicon Beach House - it was our play on Silicon Valley - and everyone there was either a developer, a web designer, or running a web start-up. It was a little harem of geeks. And then there was me.

My original MySpace page (yes!) is evidence that I really had no idea what I was doing back then. I still use it in presentations to show people what NOT to do on the web. I am also yet to live down the day I replaced the batteries on my mouse with rechargeable ones and had everyone in the office spend a good 20 minutes giving me tech support, before I sheepishly made the discovery.

It may have happened two years ago, but when I asked my Twitter followers the other day if they had any idea why my second screen wasn’t working, someone still suggested I check the batteries.

Continue reading "How to get along with geeks: A seven-point guide" »

I am a social media whore. That’s the point of it all right? There’s a lot you can know about me from what music I listen to, what concerts I’ve been to and yes, even occasionally what I just ate.

There’s even a 12 second video somewhere of me dancing in a tutu to What a Feeling by Irene Cara.  All of which I chose to share across a number of social networks I belong to that include Blip.fm, Twitter and 12seconds.tv and I’m comfortable with that.

And then there’s Facebook.

Continue reading "Six million Australians are selling their lives to Facebook" »

An American company has announced that it will now make available in Australia kits that will let parents test their children for drug use.

The drug testing kits use samples of hair to test what drugs and how often kids could be using them.

The company, Confirm Biosciences, has circulated a statement claiming that the new kits will put “control back in parents’’ hands

Continue reading "Should parents be testing kids for drugs in the home?" »

Like most people the only mail I enjoy getting are personal letters, invitations and birthday cards. Like most people I also hate getting bills.

They’re inefficient, a waste of paper, postage and labour. I also hate lining up to pay them, and don’t hang out for “personal interaction” with the lady at the Post Office.

I also never remember to find a post box and when I have something to send by mail usually find it in the bottom of my hand bag ten days after it was due.

Continue reading "Bring on the death of paper billing and paying in person" »

“Real transformative change never begins in Washington.” (Pause for quacks.)

You’ll need to turn up the volume but the quacking is audible early in the video.

Got a story about a mortifying mobile moment? Share it in the comments.

So the other night a friend and I were trying to suss out some directions using Google.  My aim was to get from my home, in Erskineville, in Sydney, to Orange, NSW.

So I typed in From: Erskineville. To: Orange.

Seems Google thought I meant directions to Orange, California.

Continue reading "Google, you are amazing" »

Are we becoming so jaded by Photographic forgeries that we now question every image?

“Amazing picture is the real deal-no porkies”  this was the headline on the page 5 picture story in last Tuesday’s Sydney Daily Telegraph.

The news content in this story about a giant feral pig shot some years back in Western Australia was that it was indeed a genuine picture and not forged. It had been written off as an internet hoax and even the WA ‘s own Department of Environment and Conservation had dismissed it as a forgery.

How have we reached this point where it is now news when a picture is in fact genuine and does it matter?

Continue reading "Stop the presses: this photograph is real" »

Alongside PowerPoint slide design, I think I have a fetish for iPhone applications. Last week I was doing my usual browse through iTunes looking at some of the latest apps when I excitedly discovered one recently released by Tic Tac. I vaguely recalled reading an article about it and how they were apparently one of the leading brands in the digital space.

So I quickly downloaded it, synced it and opened it. And it was shit. So much so that I actually wanted to punch somebody. For those who haven’t seen it, which apparently isn’t many of you because it was downloaded a whole 3000 times in the first week, it’s perhaps the most useless app of all time.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with a useless iPhone app. Or even a gimmicky one. Perhaps my favourite app of all time falls into both those categories; iPint (see above video). Released by beer brand Carling, the app appears as a glass full of beer that as you tilt slowly it empties, as though you are drinking it. Yes it’s gimmicky and yes it’s useless. But it’s awesome.

Continue reading "It’s not just a mint - it’s a really bad campaign" »

Please, don’t regard me warmly. I’m not that nice. And why are you offering your best wishes? It’s not my birthday.  I enjoy ‘cheers’, but it makes me feel like a drink, even in the morning (and that can’t be good).

How you sign off your emails shows more about your personality than you realise.

‘Warm regarders’ tend to be touchy-feely types who used to watch Oprah (but are now ‘turning’ for Ellen), do scrapbooking and believe in reiki.

If aged over 40, she’s an eccentric middle-aged lady, draped in purple, muttering quietly to herself.

Continue reading "Email sign-offs: Cheers, best, farewell, get a mullet up ya" »