When Steve Jobs takes the stage Monday at Apple’s programmers conference, he’s likely to give the world a glimpse of an upgraded Mac operating system that could herald the biggest changes to the machine’s interface in 30 years.

At the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Jobs will probably show off Leopard, a Mac OS X update due in October that he has promised contains “top secret” features. But perhaps the most important feature is one that has been overlooked by many Apple fans: a new set of tools for building program interfaces called Core Animation.

I won’t continue the whole article here, but read the rest of this article on the interesting new features of Leopard at Wired.

Pajago

The battle between Telstra and G9 continues. Below is a table, released on the Now We Are Talking website shows the strengths of Telstra and weaknesses of the G9 plan. Let’s substantiate on each of these claims:

Engineering flaws

• G9 propose Sub-loop unbundling (SLU) which enables other carriers to interconnect with Telstra’s customer access network at any point between the exchange and the customer premises.
• SLU dismantles Telstra’s network - Telstra will be required to go out and physically cut the copper wire from its network and connect it to the competitor’s node that could see service disruptions and a host of potential technical difficulties.
• This type of SLU has never been done anywhere in the world because it doesn’t work.
• Responsibility for maintaining end-to-end service quality is not considered: how would failures be detected and who would be responsible for fixing them?Read what the Communication Workers Union of Australia has to say about SLU (www.cepu.asn.au)

… Read the rest of this article at NWAT (nowwearetalking.com.au)

Looking at this hoo-har from a logistical point-of-view; G9 doesn’t have the work-force, experience nor vision to be feasible. The required work-force and experience -especially- can not just be manufacturer overnight.

If G9 is favoured, which it has been so far, bye-bye to so many millions of dollars that will be NZ and Singapore bound.

Pajago

Check out this cool mobile technology blog. The design is lush!

It’s fashionable; connects to all sorts of wireless connections and is almost as thin as the Motorola Razr mobile phone. Yes, it’s the thinnest notebook in the world. Code-named the Intel Metro notebook.

Most followers of this blog will realise that I am an Apple Mac enthusiast and that aesthetics are semi-important to me. Well, I must say this notebook is freakin’ hot.

Stay tuned as I will be looking at the Intel Metro in a little more detail in a future post.

Pajago

Advertise Here

Photographers are well catered for on the internet. This is especially the case when it comes to displaying ones art. Yahoo and Google both have gallery sites for the happy-snapper, right through to the professional photographer to display their works. Yahoo’s free web gallery is Flickr, a very popular site. Google’s Picasa is also popular.

Read more about free websites for the budding photographer.

“Go at it hard and fast with a pounding drum and bass track or chill with the ambient classic” -the marketing brief for the new iGasm accessory that’s keeping the Apple legal team busy.

iGasm is a device that plugs into any music player and vibrates in sync with the beat. Certain to be controversial at the best of times. iGasm are using ads that look similar to those for the iPod. Copyright infringement looks on the cards.

Pajago

Source: SMH

Finally I did it, I got an Airport Express and I had two first impressions (if that’s possible): aesthetically -crisp; technologically -easy!

Easy is an understatement. I unpacked the unit, had a scan through the manual, realised how much I hate reading manuals, plugged in my cable modem, Airport straight-away picked it up, and ta-dah. I am unsure how to secure my connection at this point but all I was concerned about is getting it up and running.

Signal strength is great. I tried using my iBook around 20-metres from the Airport Express and I was getting all but one bar. Awesome.

Pajago

(will keep ya’ll posted!)

Regulation in the Australian telecommunications environment is currently in disarray. It seems as though it’s growing more and more unbalanced and immoral. I support Telstra through-and-though, simply because I see what they are trying to do, as the right thing.

Telstra announced today, in newspapers across the country, that it has $4.1-billion in its hands to build the FTTN network which will produce high-speed broadband between 24-50MBPS. Telstra will not invest until there is regulation in place to stop competitors pinching it at below cost, like it already does with the ADSL network. Is it wrong to protect the shareholders funds?

Sol Trujillo, CEO recently said to the media: “We have competitors and their companies, in some cases, are bigger than Telstra but they don’t invest capital inside this country. They are foreign owned and they like riding on the investment back of Telstra shareholders.”

Why should these companies be given that ability through poor regulation? Simply, the likes of Optus Singtel absolutely have the finances to invest in a network like FTTN but they choose not to as they prefer to piggy-back Telstra’s efforts. And the Government allows this some how?

Consumers tend to have a sour view of Telstra. Thinking Telstra is a money-hungry, monopoly that doesn’t give innocent “little” companies like Optus a chance to compete. How ridiculous. It’s about time they start spending some of their own revenue on technology. I guess it’s the socialist view of Australians.

The only reason why the Next G network, for instance, seems monopolistic is because no other provider has challenged it. As Sol has also said: “success is about: “who can out-innovate, who can out-deliver, who can out-create partnerships and relationships and bring new services to market”. Telstra is encouraging competition, and why not?

Something else in the telco industry that makes my blood boil at the moment is that Optus advertisement that compares Optus’ $49 3G cap-plan to not even a comparable plan by Telstra. A look at the Telstra website will reveal that Telstra does, in fact have an offering very similar to that of Optus. The advertisement uses a $40 non-cap plan, where Telstra actually has a $49 cap-plan. This is a sign of Optus being afraid of fair competition. Why mislead? Are they so insecure that they have to mislead people into buying their product? talk about lack of integrity. How must someone that’s signed-up with Optus, to that understanding feel.

Pajago

With the birth of Web 2.0 it seems many common applications are being taken over by “open source” or “web based” varieties. Two Microsoft offerings are at the top of the pile: Internet Explorer and the Office suite. The contenders that I’d like to name are Google Docs and Firefox.

Google Docs is a broswer based “office suite” containing spreadsheet program and word-processor. To give Microsoft (MS) its due; these programs are very basic but when it comes to basic word processing (which is what I do) and simple data management, they shine. That’s what they are intended for -word-processing and general spreadsheet duties. Currently, Google Docs is a free service. Not sure how many people use Docs worldwide.

Firefox, on the other hand, has taken over big time. The market share as at April 18 2007 and according to XiTI Monitor, are: 15.1% USA, 24.1% Europe and 24% in Oceania. Firefox is different and cool because of it’s power, it’s add-ons and, because it’s “open source” you can change the programming to suit. I love the tab browsing capablities of Firefox.

Pajago

Over the past few months I have been looking at buying a few websites and/or domain names. To check backlinks, that PR’s (PageRank) are correct and the general valuation of the sites I discovered dnScoop.com.

This is one nifty tool. dnScoop allows you to check domain age, PR, inbound links, traffic rank, indexed pages, site value and estimated Text-Link-Ad value. This is all completed on a cool, Web 2.0 looking website. The site also features a great forum.

To use the the dnScoop domain name value tool you enter the URL in the space it tells you, and a few moments later it will load up all the vitals. Something I love about it is that under, say, the backlink category you can click a hyperlink that will take you to “link:yoursite.com” at Google and show you all the backlinks to your site. Very easy to use, and to get that information that’s so important.

Stay tuned as in the next post we’ll go through what the key terms: domain age, PR, inbound links, traffic rank, indexed pages, site value and estimated Text-Link-Ad value mean to us!