Google Fast Flip: the new news-worthy revelation in news...

Google has finally unleashed it's latest Google Labs (experimental features) beta. Called Fast Flip, it aims to revolutionize the way people read news. Judging by what I've seen, it will.

The great hallmark of Google News has always been that it was one place where you could read news from just about every reputable source. This is still the case with Fast Flip, which not only increases it's catalogue offerings, but also allows you to filter by not just topic, but also publication.

But here is where the resemblance to Google News ends. Rather than present readers with plain text news on a page under headings. It gives you actual images of the actual stories from their original locations, complete with headlines, bylines, stories, and unfortunately ads. Then, you can simply Flip through all the stories under whatever category/source you're looking at. And in true Google fashion, there ain't no waiting for thumbnails to load here. It's blindingly quick. During our hands-on, I only managed to get to a story without it's thumbnail already loaded once. And I was being pretty demanding.

Then, choose your article with a simple click and it gives you a bigger preview of the story with some more options, including to see the whole article, or "Like" the story, the usual share options, etc. Then, one simple click and you have the whole story, at its original source. Right there.

It's freaking brilliant. It works like an absolute charm, and I have had no problems with the (still experimental) tool yet, so that's a good sign.

It also has a dedicated iPhone page, which is also fantastic. It operates as above, but a bit better because it has all the functionality of the multi-touch interface. First page you see you can choose your category, then flip through the stories with a simple slide. Then, you can either pinch or rotate your iPhone to get a closer look. Tap to get all the usual options in it's own dialog box as well as some more info on your selected article.

But of course, there is a far more sinister side to all this. The two-step process between preview and story means that it has opened a whole new world of options. Options that aren't so great for us, the consumers.

One of the reasons Google put the effort into creating this, and also into changing into a preview-view operation lies in the Internet's very nature. Online press is notorious. It is almost impossible to make money out of online press. More than that, it takes revenue from more traditional sources. Why buy a magazine or a newspaper if you can just jump on your iPhone and look at all for free, on the fly. So far, neither have publishers been able to find a way to successfully monetize the online press, because either your readers run away from costs to someone else who happens to be free, or you can't generate enough money to cover your costs, or that there just isn't an efficient way of visitors paying for their content without too much hassle.

However, it's been reported that much of the Fast Flip architecture has been designed with future options to monetize the story, if you want to move past the article preview. On top of this is the fact that another part of Google Labs ongoing work is the Google Checkout, a payment method similar to PayPal, which we assume forms part of the underlying structure behind Fast Flip.

The implications of this aren't exactly great. It means that soon, not even Internet news will be free. We could all be paying for our news, even from our (almost) entirely free friends at Google.

What is the world coming to when you have to pay to know what the world is coming to.

Google hits back...

Some time ago, I may have said some things on how everyone was beating up on Google and yet, it was all actually a complete waste of time. And now, i get to show you all why!

So, in the last little while, there was Wolfram|Alpha, there was/is Microsoft/Yahoo, there was some piece of forgettable drivel with a crap name like Bing, or Bong, or CRAP or whatever it is. But now, Google has returned to its original famed position at the top of the pile.

Google has done a couple of things. Like Google Squared. Like Chrome. Like Chrome OS. Like Android improvements. Like everything. And so everyone loves them again.

But now lets get into my attitude part of things. All these tools like Wolfram Gamma, or whatever, are a complete waste of everyones time. I'm happy to report that in the interval between its release and now, I've used it once and it failed me. There are also a couple of other bits and pieces that have come along and tried to claim the throne, but lets look at what has actually happened in the meantime. Firstly, and well, lastly too, nothing.

Has any regular Google user actually decided: "yes. I think Bing is better." and actually started using it. And before you all jump on my arse in the comments about god-knows-who, I don't care if your best mate's dog's previous owner's second cousin's ex-girlfriends niece twice-removed's grandmother's parrot's friend's owner's fiance's grandfather's brother's uncle's best friend has started using Bing. Nobody cared. Not even the grandmothers parrot.

Since then Google has made many announcements. They launched Google Squared, a new search tool which enables users to compile a lot of information on a number of things in one easy format, all using Google's amazingly freakish technology. They have also announced that Google Chrome will become Google's second OS, alongside the more lightweight Android. Interestingly, both OS's have claimed they're aimed at the netbook market, which already has two OS's vying for control. Bizarre. They have also announced and showcased one of my most anticipated Google features in ages: Google Wave. A form of realtime collaboration, it appears to solve the perpetual problem of there being so many conflicting and co-existing standards and networks by bringing all the mediums (text, images, video, web) together onto one place (the Wave) and allowing anybody to use it (but still allowing control over who joins the Wave). Cool, no? And this is the first time that I think I'm going to find a collaboration tool useful, if not because Google are the people to do it, and this is the first all-in-one solution...

Of course, there have also been a number of controversies. One of the biggest was after Apple rejected Google's Google Voice from its App Store for reasons of "duplicating functionality" which really just means: Google were freaking us out! This little blunder got Apple yet more publicity for its archaic App Store rejection policies and its continual refusal to cite reasons for its many and varied rejections. As well, Google got a lot of publicity for its tribute to HG Wells, which confused most of the interwebs for a long time, complete with bizarre Twitter posts referencing GPS co-ordinates and the iconic "All your bases are belong to us" reference, which should be in every geek joke.

Of course, this series of doodles which had people confused for quite some time, shows exactly what I'm talking about, and what I have been saying the whole time: Google is huge. Just from the Guardian, a fairly respectable publication, a search about Google's little joke returns 96 results. Searching on Google News returns 182 separate publications with articles on the "Google Crop Circles". A comprehensive search on Google News for Google hits me with a staggering 1.66 million results. And that's just the news articles from Google News...

Google is now so large, it actually is a part of our society. If you ask someone on the street for 5 words relating to the Internet, Google is almost guaranteed to come up. And that's my point, if you could find it somewhere in that incredibly difficult to follow, attitude-ridden, information-starved and generally non-sensical stream of absolute nothingness...

What's it all About: iPhone file storage

Welcome to 'what's it all about', the newest section of FerretTech. In these posts, I will attempt to be a bit more detailed than any of myother usual ranting gibberish posts and help you, my dear readers,with something. This week, I've been working on something personally,and it's annoying me, so I thought I'd save you the trouble that I've gone through to his point. That something is this: iPhone filestorage. By the way, a lot of this will be at least a bit applicablefor other applications in your dreary, probably geeky lives.

Most owners will know that Apple has disabled the Enable Disk Useoption in iTunes, or I'm pretty sure they have. So as a workaround,how else can one carry files around on their iPhone. Also note, thebiggest criteria: it's gotta be free...

I'm stingy. Anyone who knows me, knows it. So I don't want to have tofork out my cash for something that my first-gen Nano can do. If I've got a 32GB iPhone, I should be able to use it's space for FREE.

So, there are a couple of options still in the free domain. There aretwo main options: one is to have files on the iPhone accessible by acomputer. The other to have files on the cloud, accessible by the iPhone.

To the first of these, the local files. I have found two very goodapps that make a good solution. The first is Discover. Discover isavailable for the iPhone but also for Android as aFile. It involves afairly simple interface with viewing capabilities for all the major iPhone compatible file types, and a quality feel. Connection is byWebDAV, a relatively new protocol, much better than FTP or manyothers. Simply ensure that you are connected to the same network asyour iPhone, then enter the given IP address into any browser and youget another quality interface with many options and capabilities,right within your browser. This is one of those really good iPhoneapps that everyone should get.(Special Note to fellow BGS attendees: WebDAV doesn't work on schoolcomputers...)

The other good one is FileAid. This app has a slightly differentinterface with separate screens for computer connections, and for fileviewing which can be annoying. But the major difference is that thisone uses FTP for file connections. It has a separate sharing screenfor compute connections, and detailed instructions for connecting toFTP, which is probably a but superfluous consdering that anyone who islooking at this kind of app probably knows their USB from their PCI,and thei IP from their TWAIN… Anyway, this would be great except thatFTP is such an outdated protocol. I tried backing up my venerable USBflash drive and gave up after it gave me so many error messages andthen stopped that I considered punching a hole through my laptop screen. Of course, you can't simply replace a file already on thedrive because you get Error: File exists, or you'll receive an Error:File name too long, or any of a number of other problematic problemsuntil you inevitably become so annoyed you will do what I did and putsuch a curse upon the designer of FTP that he will never restpeacefully again. If it wasn't for this, FileAid would be a great app.You can view documents, sort them by folder, name, type, colour of theflying elephant who wrote it, whatever. But it's FTP, and FTP is crap,so FileAid is a case of 'missed by that much'.

There is, as I've mentioned before, also the Web-based solution. I'llbe quick with this, because I've only managed to make one work, andits quite good. Zumodrive is a cloud-based storage service, with 1GBfor free. You can access it from the Internet and you can access it from the iPhone, but since it's on the Internet, you need an Internetconnection, only here you can probably use 3G data. Not that I would,but you probably can.I've tried to make MyDisk.se work, and it does from the web, but notby using an app like Disks. Using MyDisk, you get 2GB free, as opposedto Zumodrive's 1GB. Still, if anyone can make MyDisk's WebDAV work with anything, that would be useful...

Okay, so now for the bit where I pull it all together and tell youwhat you should use. Unfortunately for you, I'm not going to do that.You make up your own mind. I, personally have all three, just so I'mready for any occasion, but I'm personally favouring Zumodrive at the moment.

So, the biggest things that we can take from this is two things: one,there aren't any really good solutions to this problem. The other: I am way too stingy...

The Return: Yahoo and Microsoft evokes flashbacks

Sorry to all my readers for the long hiatus, but I've had a lot of work on, and then I took a 3 week trip to France, and then had more work, but I'm back and hoping to return to my previous semi-regularity of posting.

Now this one is a little out of date, because it's been sitting here waiting to be published for a while. Enjoy anyway ...

But now, to the post proper. As is the buzz on every vaguely tech-interested news service, Yahoo and Microsoft have finally clinched some sort of deal together. While nobody has any strong details, it appears that Microsoft is the big brother in this little relationship, with some speculating that it could be the end of Yahoo. I, for one, believe they won't die out, but it won't be a good omen for Yahoo, who are already struggling against the friendly giant Google, and who are about to have half of their business stolen out from under them by Microsoft.

There is another question that is annoying me, and one that crops up so often i may as well rename the blog: Why?. (But FerretWhy just doesn't have the same ring...) Microsoft is not exactly short of a penny or two with the world's most heavily populated OS smothering the Earth, and they've just gone and put God-doesn't-even-know-how-much effort into creating, broadcasting, publicising and (as Microsoft tends to do) smothering everyone and anyone with "Bing!", which seems to be Live Search but with a new face, a less dorky name, and options to verbify it later. Although I doubt anyone's going to walk around saying, 'Why don't you Bing it', if not for the potential of horridly inappropriate mispronunciations, but more because Google is just sooo good, and soooo everywhere. And works so well as a verb...

So why, then, has Microsoft spent a good part of that fortune on buying a company that is being beaten silly by a certain company with one more letter in its name. And quite a lot larger than 1% of the market. Critics have suggested that its just for the advertising money, but this still just doesn't quite fit. For me, it evokes flashbacks of that wonderful tech match-up between AOL and Time Warner. Wow. I'm not sure I've seen a more woeful sop story from a company other than this one. If you're wondering what I'm rambling on about now, it's creatively discussed here)

As far as anyone can tell, nothings been set out about what's going to happen, or even what is happening. Only that Microsoft and Yahoo are getting together and what odd bedfellows they make

As usual, I could be wrong about all of this (which wouldn't be the first time) and it could just be money-hungry Microsoft trying to grab Yahoo's pathetic little share of the online advertising market. After all, they are feelng more than a little pressure from Google lately...

Is it really necessary?

Everyone. And i mean, everyone feels the need to hate the big guy. It's even more apparent in the tech world. Microsoft. Huge. Hated (although that might be for a different reason, something to do with their products being, i don't know, can't remember, maybe someone can help me in comments...). And the latest casualty to the We Hate the Big Guy Syndrome (WHTBGS) is Google. Everyone was just fine, using Google every day, it had become one of the most used verbs in the English language, and then, BANG, everyone hates it, and everyone should use Bing, because, well, it's not Google.

To the first of Google's new rivals (and probably the worst): Microsoft's Bing.

(That name could only have come from a Google wannabe, hoping to have a new verb entered into the dictionary: "to Bing". No chance, mate. Sorry about that.)

Microsoft's first disastrous attempt at a search engine Live Search, failed. No doubt about it. It Failed. The only traffic it received was from people who accidentally typed something in the IE search box, forgetting that they hadn't changed the default yet. That, and people living under a rock for the last 10 years, and/or those who live in the suburbs, have huge armchairs, are over the age of 75, and do crochet for a hobby. They don't know what that Internet thing is, but it scares them.

Anyway, the point is that while for Microsoft they couldn't just abandon the huge search sector of their business, but i think their usage stats are going to be a bit misleading, since everyone will use Bing, just cos they don't want to use Google. It's just not that good...

And now to Wolfram Alpha. I am no huge fan of Wolfram Alpha. There has been no secret hates, or shady commenting. I admit. I don't like Wolfram Alpha. I have near to zero use for a computational engine like this. I like Google. I like Google Squared. There is very little i would use Wolfram for, that i couldn't do in my head, have no use for, or want to know more about (i.e. Google it). When in want to know how fast 5mph is in m/s, Google tells me, followed by links to tell me exactly why. When i enter it into Wolfram Alpha, it accompanies it with 5mph in kilometres travelled per year, and a small series of increasingly useless data. I will admit that Alpha has its uses, but all those idiots claiming it is some kind of Google-slayer are just idiots. Alpha is for a different audience, and a different kind of search, where being limited to a small database, rather than a huge index doesn't matter. It may be good, but it's no Google beater, as much cos it's not even taking Google on (you'd be mad to! *cough* Microsoft *cough*)

There is also no getting around the fact tha Wolfram Alpha was made by some dude in his basement with too much time on his hands.

To the bigger issue here: The need to demolish Google. Google is incredibly useful, and it has transformed the Internet. There is no getting around it, and there probably never will be, just like there probably never will be an engine quite like Google. Do we need to fight it so harshly? Can't we all just get along?!!

To my devoted followers: This (suitably attitude-ridden) post also happens to be my blog's 50th post! Right from the start , through the shaky start , then the 10th post , the 25th , the 40th , and now the 50th.

I hope to continue well into the next 50 and beyond, with similarly high-quality, highly-objectionable, and highly-attitude-filled posts, to maintain my standards of awesomeness (unlike a certain other blog , which turned into absolute drivel, and was suitably rejected). Happy Birthday FerretTech!

The diverse (and often pointless) face of mobile computing...

I'm a pretty big fan of mobile computing and technology. It always seems better to be able to keep doing "stuff" without having to be tethered to your house. And so, i watch mobile computing trends come and go with eager interest. Okay, so i'm not an eager kind of person, but i pay some idle interest, which is a departure from the norm.

At the moment, it seems like there are a couple of different ways into the mobile computing brand:

1. The JTIO mob. (The Just Tack It On Mob). Their ideology is simple. Find a device. Put internet on it. Everything from camcorders to e-book readers. Generally a useless waste of perfectly good internet.

2. The BIFTG mob. (The Build it From the Ground mob). Not so simple. Biggest example is the netbook, which was built as a laptop, but the makers were too lazy to do it properly, so they just ripped some stuff off the internet and made it seem local, and BANG! The netbook is born.
(This whole category is made worse by the fact that whenever you take it away from the Internet, it becomes a useless pile of crap. I've seen bricks with more functionality.)

3. The RATPFMS mob. (The Re-Align the Product for More Sales mob). This is where we have a perfectly good product, but for the sakes of making it better, they suddenly add a whole new dimension, and feature set, just cos its useful. Generally, results in some of the most useful stuff around. Anything from PlayStations to TV's have had this treatment, and all have come out the better for it.

However you want to do it, everyone can see it coming. Some want to embrace it, some won't touch it with a barge pole. But everyone knows it's going to happen. Everything will be connected. The future is with the Internet as the centrepiece of a connected society, or to steal Cisco's ad slogan a "human network".

Me, I'm looking forward to it!

The future of Computing?

I've been having a bit of a think, which is always dangerous, and as i see it, the current model of computing can't last the next decade. My vision: Distributed cloud computing.

to the first part of my divine epiphany: Distributed computing. I think this is definitely going to happen, for two reasons. One, PS3's have got it. PS3's know everything before it happens. Reason Two, Quad-core processors. As most of my readership would probably know, quad-core processors are everywhere. On a more technical side, quad-core processors have no real increase in actual CPU speed. But, can they multi-task or what? They can do everything,at once. They can run multiple different games of Unreal Tournament. They can be editing twenty-five PowerPoints at once. They can even run mutiple OS's (Macintosh, yay!). And yet, nobody actually uses four processors worth of power at any one time. So what are the other three cores doing. Jack all. Why not, in this ultra-connected world, let the freakin huge network that is the rest of the world, have a bit of your processor. This way, if any computer slows down for a little bit, it nicks a bit of power off someone else who's not using it and KA-BOOM everyone's computer goes way faster.

And if everyone's connected up anyway, why store anything locally? Or on a USB disk. Or on a Portable HDD, or even on an iPod (i've seen it happen waaay too many times). Why not just store it on the biggest cloud in the entire blue sky (i'm pretty sure it's the biggest): the InterWeb. What a great place to store it. Drop it off at one place, pick it up again three continents later and it's still good. You don't need software, there aren't any file types. Everything, just, works. So my opinion might be a little skewed by the fact that 80% of the computers i use won't remember me or anything i save on them after i log out, and the other 20% have no veritable means of connecting with the 80% except for a tired old USB key that tends to randomly disconnect and connect again. Not fun. Whereas, the internet can hold anything, anywhere. There is already a bit of work on this front, especially with online documents. Some are brilliant (Google Docs), some nothing short of dismal (Windows Live Workspaces), but there is still a lot of untapped potential there.

I think if tech keeps advancing at the veritably rapid pace it is at the moment, it can only go closer toward the internet...

It's not that my guess is any better than yours, but i've got the blog...

The Google Empire.

Sure, we're all going to die. Google has reported its first quarterly drop in sales. OMG! It is also, however, accompanied by a more-than-pocket-change $17.8billion in cash and equivalents...

But I'm not here to talk about their overly boring financial statements, as interesting as some may find that, I'm here to talk about what I've dubbed the "Google Collective Principle". In my mind, it consists of a series of ever more complex statements effectively summarising people's behaviour with Google through my eyes. For your benefit, here is the biggest foundation of my principle in simpler terms: "Anyone who uses a Google service is incredibly likely to continue using other Google services".

Just to be clear, i'm not suggesting that using Google search will make you into an active Google advertiser. What I'm saying is similar to handing someone one end of a piece of string. Eventually, they're going to get mighty curious about what's on the other end and work their way down the string.
What I'm trying to prove here is that once someone starts dabbling in Google, even just for Gmail (but it's not the best example) they are probably going to wind up heading further into Google products. Who knows whether it is a benign curiosity, an overwhelming desire to have an online presence or what, but someone like Google having services for everything and anything gives rise to an explosion in the services used. Google's dominance over Yahoo! and Microsoft helps, but also the differing approach between Yahoo! (everything on one page, whether you like it or not, and loads of ads) and Google (autonomous services, each with a Google touch, and only minimal ads) stands out.

For example, Yours Truly has had a Google account (but not a Gmail one) since about 2005. Since then, i have replaced that with my current Google profile  and it accompanied an explosion in the Google Services I use from a simple Gmail account and iGoogle page, then Google Reader, then the floodgates opened and suddenly I had almost every service they offer. On my account settings page, I now have icons for :
1. AdSense
2. Blogger
3. Calendar
4. Gmail
5. Picasa Web Albums
6.Web History
7. Alerts
8. Bookmarks
9. Docs
10. iGoogle
11. Reader
12. Webmaster Tools
13. Analytics
14. Book Search
15. FeedBurner
16. Notebook
17. Talk
18. Youtube
19. News

Yes, 19 different services. In case you're wondering, Google has only 4 remaining services, being Groups, Directory, Scholar Search and Code. I even use Google Mobile!

This blog is the perfect example of my Google Collective Principle. First, I saw a couple of other people's blogs, and decided I wanted my own. So, already having a Google account, I chose Blogger. My Blog of course needed some tracking, so after my disastrous attempt using StatCounter, I reverted to Google Analytics, which is truly legendary, then I wanted to track my RSS feed, cue FeedBurner, indexing management, cue WebMaster Tools, picture integration, cue Picasa, and if I could be bothered I would have AdWords on my blog by now.

Feel free to comment and tell me I'm horribly, horribly wrong, but I still think that the Google Collective Principle stands...

A little Off-topic...

This vid is not very technological. Okay, it's not at all, but it is brilliant video anyway.




Truly amazing!

Yeah okay, so it was only a publicity stunt for some reality TV show, but nobody cares, everyone just loves the video, and i'm one of them...

Now for a bit more off-topic rant on that most favoured of philosophical conversations. Internet sociology. And as an example, so-called viral videos are an amazing concept alone. Not only do they implicate that humans are in fact connected to a lot more people than it seems, but they must be, in all honesty, the fastest spreading anything. Like, i'm talking living, or otherwise. Take the 'Rick Roll' phenomenon, one of the longest-lasting, most widespread, and best remembered of the virals. It lasted for many months upon months, caught god-knows-how-many people and introduced a whole new phrase into the lexicon.
This particular one is likely to join some of the other virals, as a short-lived, quickly-forgotten, but much-loved memory. But look at the speeds involved. The actual incident was on the 23 March, less than a month ago, in Antwerp. It is going to take some time for all the various footage to come together and be released, so now we are talking weeks, but coming out of the editing room (which is just as likely to be some guys room in the basement of his mum's house), it would simply be a file floating around the Net. Another couple of days for it to be discovered, it catches on, and then FOOOOOM!! It explodes across every popular channel on the Net and otherwise, and becomes part of the illustrious "viral league".

Quick word on the first issue, which ties into this incredible speed, is the breadth of its expansion. Sure, it takes a lot for a video to make the jump from Internet sensation to cross-media phenomenon, but some have done it. Even if we deal with these Internet-only vids, there is still an incredible amount of people involved. Just looking at the first 6 or so videos, just off YouTube, I have come up with a juicy 2,525,214 views. Yes, 2 and a half million. Admittedly, some will be repeat views, but they would only make a small amount, and on the larger scale, that's a lot of people. More than 10% (12.02% to be vaguely accurate) of the population of Australia, for example...

And that's just the first page of one video host. I would put my guess at the larger side of 5 million, once you have all the main video sites rounded up. And, as such, it deserves the title of viral...

Come on Aussie!

Australia has now slipped to a lowly 4th on visitor rankings for this month! (Mar 17-Apr 17)
We only have 8 more visitors than Romania. Yes, Romania. We are lagging behind the USA, UK, and Canada.

Returning to the full history (since about December last year), Australia maintains its second position, but we are falling behind rapidly.

Yes, my Aussie friends, the Americans are demolishing us by a solid 50%, and Canada is breathing down our collective necks with a miniscule 1.89% buffer.

At least we still have 11.36% on Mexico....

For now...

The Broswer Wars continue...

After some positive starts from Google Chrome, it seems its support is dwindling somewhat. Firefox meanwhile has managed to stay pretty much the same while IE seems to have been gaining support.

At least on Ferret Tech Firefox/Windows still reigns, but we have some very weird setups going, including PS3's, what i think is my PSP, Konqueror (?), and all and every kind of weird Browswer/OS combo

Yes, you poor buggers, Chrome sits on a miserly 8.5% of my visits while Firefox romps home with a solid 55.36% majority. IE has made a big jump forward (BTW, 19% use IE6, 73% use IE7, and a random 7% use IE8. n00bs!) leapfrogging Chrome into second position with 17.6%.

Peculiarly, focusing on just Browsers (rather than Browser/OS combos) sees Firefox pull out 66% of the share, but IE and Chrome staying almost the same.

But of more interest are some of the weird choices. I've mentioned the Playstation 3/Playstation 3 entry but then we get some really odd Apple entries. The typical Safari/Macintosh ones sitting in a lonely 6th behind Firefox/Macinstosh! The we have Safari/Android? Who has an Android phone?

While on the topic of phones, what on Earth is a Danger Hiptop? Don't tell me it's that stupid little Hiptop Slide piece of cr** actually looking at my blog!

There was Firefox/Linux (probably Jackson), but Konqueror/Linux? Who? Why? What's wrong with you?

Safari/iPod. Yay! I have someone reading my blog who also happens to be such an iPod fanboy they couldn't be bothered using a real Web browser.

Camino/Macintosh? What even is Camino?

Mozilla Compatible Agent/(not set). i think that is my PSP there, but not so sure. If you're wondering, yes, the PSP's NetFront browser does run on the Mozilla engine/code.

PS3! Yay! Yay! Lots of Yay! PS3's will rule the world. (as long as we don't begin calling the PS3 the Skynet)

Safari/Windows... You're using Windows so use a real browser, idiot!

And last but not least. Safari/iPhone. oh my god, my life has just lost all colour and meaning....

UPDATE: RSS feeds are now delimited and complete reflections of the posts again.

Breaking news (and associated attitude): the NBN!

(Okay, so it's still breaking for me!)

Our favourite Prime Minister (God help us all) Kevin Rudd has announced that after all the tenders were in... He just ditched the whole thing.

The Government has abandoned all the registered tenders and decided to build their own, supposedly using private investment. Good luck with that, seeing as you kind of sunk us even deeper into a deep Global Financial Crisis....

After several consortiums spent millions upon countless millions putting together proposals, (fine, Telstra saved the cash and went to the pub instead), and then the Government spent countless millions setting the whole thing up, and checking the consortiums, Krudd decided to just ditch them all and "run with it".

So now the Government is somehow going to muster up enough cash from private investors (could've done with those $900 cheques, hey?) to lay fibre optic cable to "90%" of the population.
Hang on! 90% of the population get Broadband?90% of the population also happen to live in all the major coastal cities who happen to have broadband coming out their ears, yazoo, arse and just about every other bodily orifice. So why exactly are we spending all this money on laying fibre optic cable up to houses who don't need it. Hmmmmm...

Technologically speaking, he is promising all kinds of great Nirvana-like improvements, but without anything to really back it up. This plan has been cooking since the Howard days, but nobody has really sussed out how exactly they're going to do it. Now with the Government doing it, there's a bit of a mystery as to who will control, charge, and/or maintain the system. he's claiming up to 100kb/sec, which in the grand scheme of things, isn't that much.

Oh well, at least now i can add another wannabe to the list of people trying to get us to buy their internet connection. Meh...

Stupid twit...

As any of you who actually visit my blog may've noticed, i've added a new widget! An online petition against Labor's proposed internet filter. I first saw the widget on Hugh's Blog, and decided to drop it on mine also.

As for the filter, i first saw it many, many months (probably verging on years) ago, when there was a bit of a flurry with news articles, online petitions, and even public debates. But then it disappeared for a while, until now. ABC's Q&A, SBS's Insight, and countless other publications of every sort have gotten back on poor Conroy's ass.

But ignoring the media circus, i want to deal with the actual proposal. Created under the ideals of cracking down on pedophilia, euthanasia, and anorexia sites, Labor's Senator Stephen Conroy has failed miserably.

Lets look at a couple of unmissable truths:

1. It's pointless. It will not slow down the spread of internet child porn. Think about what it covers. It covers pages on the Web, period. No coverage of peer-to-peer networks, no coverage of FTP, newsgroups, torrents, nothing else. There is no doubting that there is child porn on the internet, the problem is that it is also in so many other areas. And any system that is complaint-based (that is, it is only blacklisted once someone actually complains to ACMA that it should be) will never get any large proportion of inappropriate sites.

2. It's going to backfire. It is technologically impossible to filter out all the nasty websites, but no good ones. You either end up barricading a glass of water with 6-inch concrete, or you hold back a dam with a paper-mache balloon. My bet is on it doing a bit of both. There have already been reports of people's business websites being blocked by the ACMA list without even knowing! Chances are my site could be blocked because now it has the words 'child porn' in it.

3. It's impractical beyond belief. How on earth are you going to place a server-side filter on the ISP feeds and not slow down the internet, or raise costs, or any number of other problems. And you will never be able to effectively stop any and all internet traffic. My estimate is on around 30 seconds for someone like myself, 5-6 seconds for a trained pro, maybe 10 minutes for someone with out any tech experience, and they will have bypassed the filters. Two main reasons for this. One, other filtered countries like China, Korea, Iran etc have already got a nice semi-black market running in unblocking sites.

Second problem, is the legitimate stuff like, secure data connections used for remote access to business servers etc. Given a little time, this could be easily adapted to the task, and thanks to the heavy encryption, and secure transmission methods, there is no way the Govt could know if it's child porn, financial figures, or a Google Image Search.

4. How? Linked to above is the rather large issue of how to do it.

Technologically, there are two options: Regular URL filtering, or content analysis.

First one never works at actually limiting child porn since there are gazillions (yes, gazillions) of pages on the Net, and URL filtering is also fairly easily bypassed.
Content analysis works by checking every page as it loads. Similarly useless for a couple of reasons, such as the speed. If you have to check every page, it's going to get mighty slow. Also, it doesn't know context. It could block the medical sites because they have a bit too much exposed flesh. Or block news pages, blogs etc. because they have the word child porn in it...

That'll do for now, but if you want to have a real debate, e-mail me or check the chat room below. But be warned, it could get very heated indeed if i get into it...

Ha!

I have finally managed the over 18 on Red Square

19.695 seconds, baby! Yeah!

See if you can beat that!, post times in comments, and i'll be wanting proof

The foibles of Google Chrome

Chrome is a very potent browser, it works great, runs well and becomes pretty intuitive, but there are a couple of things that would make it a much better tool 

1. Customisation There has to be some actual customisation somewhere. Firefox's extensions and themes are great, and provide the user with almost unimaginable power over the browser as does the highly usable about:config and tools utilities. Even if they just included more options, it would be better...  

2. Incognito mode This is a great idea and should be on every browser. Similar things are available for Firefix, but they tend to do things like clear your history, disable cookies, scripts, java, passwords, etc etc. while they are enabled and this can be very irritating. The Chrome method of only cleansing when the window is closed is a good idea, but some things need tweaking. I don't want to have to open a new window for private browsing. It should be an option, but incognito tabs should also be an option. Simply changing the colour or the logo of the tab should be enough to identify it and this would be a bit less clumsy.  

3. More Web 2.0 integration Sure, the Google Gears Web App Shortcut works like a charm, but maybe a bit more, like integration with Gmail, Google Docs, or the legendary Google Reader... Don't ask me how, it just should in this new age of Netbooks and Web 2.0, if it wants to be a true Web 2.0 browser... 

It is a good browser, but it's not a great browser, and these little changes would go a long way to propelling it towards greatness...

Yes, this is going to divide the population like a skunk in a lift, but it needed to be said...

Google can't be that old...

Can you believe Google has made it to ten years old already. Google seems like something that has been simultaneously around forever, as well as a real newcomer.

Google has made a pretty big point of their milestone, with their Project 10 thingymabob (its a word now). Some of it is quite interesting in particular their April Fool's Day jokes from their long and illustrious history. PigeonRank has got to be one of their best...

They have also released a copy of their 2001 Search Databases. I haven't had a chance to fiddle yet, but further reading reveals some interesting things:

"September 11" yields a bunch of random dates and places.
"Paris Hilton" goes to the actual Hilton Hotel in Paris
"Kevin Rudd" you've got to go to result #5 to get to our idiotic PM

Any Search engine that relegates Krudd to fifth spot has got to be good...

But on a more serious note, has anyone noticed that not only is google eerily good but it has entered society to such an extent that it is both a common noun and a verb.

If there's one thing Google can be happy about it's that has anybody actually heard someone say "Just go Live Search it".

Anyone?
I Didn't Think So...

The Wide and very confusing world of browsers

Now i was reminded by a couple of friends this week about the ongoing browser war, and this got me thinking. (Hey, I do Geography, i got plenty of time to think)

Has anyone actually tried to count all the browsers available or god forbid, tried to download them all...
Think about it... There's the obvious ones : Firefox, IE7, and Safari.
But then there is your slightly more fringe browsers: Chrome, Seamonkey, Flock, Opera, Konqueror etc etc.
The list never actually seems to end, its like a new day, a new browser. Wouldn't it be easier, if we all just made one or two awesome browsers (did anyone say Chrome and Firefox) and just used them?

Okay so maybe i'm getting off into my own little Utopian world again, but it would make things easier.