Geekzone Blog: latest posts

Best public service advertisement?

dmw — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:25 +1200

Road Safety ads in NZ tend to be gruesome, shocking and trying to scare us into changing our behaviour. Finally someone (Sussex county) have taken a different approach. With dramatically successful results.
Judge for yourselves... (3 million hits, currently).
HT: 37 Signals

EPG, when it works it's a dream. When it dosen't . . .

MrWestie — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:11 +1200

We miss Fireman Sam and Spider. Not cool.
It was 2 months since I last had to to anything about he epg.
Lat time it was changing the router and forgetting to update the HTPC.

Now it's sky's fault.
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=84&topicid=58524

Might have to get a DVB-S.
I will try some of the less involved FREE options in the thread first.

Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Azure New Zealand launch events

MSDN — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:28 +1200

If you're involved in any capacity with software development, or want to understand more about cloud computing, this is a half-day event not to be missed. Come along to the official New Zealand launch of Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Azure. Two international experts, Sam Guckenheimer and David Chappell will deliver two keynote sessions. Plus, to mark the occasion, Microsoft is producing a cool retro t-shirt for all attendees, and there are also some great prizes to be won! Best of all, the event is free to attend!

Visual Studio 2010 Keynote

The event kicks off with the official New Zealand launch of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. The launch of Visual Studio 2010 will help accelerate everything you do, from design to development to deployment. Hear how Visual Studio 2010 helps you find nasty bugs, get better insight into how your project is running, and work better with other people on your team.

The keynote presenter is Microsoft's Sam Guckenheimer, author of Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. Sam is the Group Product Planner for the Microsoft Visual Studio product line. In this capacity, he acts as chief customer advocate, responsible for the end-to-end external design of the next releases of these products.

Windows Azure Keynote

Cloud computing looks like the biggest change to hit our industry in many years. The advent of cheap, scalable computing power available over the Internet will affect almost everybody who works in IT. But taking advantage of this shift requires understanding this new approach and how to exploit it.

In this presentation, David Chappell looks at the Windows Azure platform and what it means for organisations that create, use, or sell software. The topics he'll cover include:

? An overview of the Windows Azure platform: Technology and business model
? Using the Windows Azure platform: Application scenarios
? The cloud platform context: Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, and more

David Chappell is Principal of Chappell & Associates in San Francisco, California. Through his speaking, writing, and consulting, he helps software professionals around the world understand, use, and make better decisions about new technologies.

Xero vs. Quickbooks, from a Quickbooks User

sleemanj — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:13 +1200

I decided I'd better see what the hoopla about Xero is. Is it as good as is claimed? Will it save me huge amounts of time? Will it make me huge amounts of money?

In short. Not really, not yet, I really hope they get there. But for now, I have to continue plugging away with QB.

What I liked about Xero:

API - this is where Xero REALLY stands out, it's API is open, easy, and anybody can get in there and dig about with it. Quickbooks in NZ, is the diametric opposite, clunky, hard, and you need to pay hundreds of dollars to get access, even then it apparently fails, lots. I could see myself doing all sorts of coolness with the API to automate my business processes. Big big plus.

The "Always On" nature, down of course to being Software as a Service. This pays dividends when it comes to things like recurring invoices. With Quickbooks, if you don't have it running, nothing is happening. Combine with API for super goodness.

Not bad support. I had instance to ask a support question, I did it via email, and after only re-explainng the problem one time I got a more or less comprehensive response, it wasn't what I wanted to hear, but at least I got a response. Reckon (the NZ producers of Quickbooks), well, I wouldn't exactly give them marks for support!

What I didn't like about Xero:

Account numbers, no hierarchy. Seriously. Xero still wants you to assign an arbitrary "code" to your ledger accounts. What on earth is that about? Why should I, a business operator who has many more important things to think about have to remember that the "Internet Service" account is "721" or whatever. And why can't I have sub accounts, Communications:Internet, Communications:Mobile, Communications:Landline, so I can see at a glance how much total I am spending on Communications and it's sub-types.

This is stuff that Quickbooks handles with total ease, I don't see account numbers in QB (unless I REALLY wanted to), I can shuffle, reorganise, recategorise, make sub accounts, sub sub sub accounts if I want, it's all so much more organised. I read a blog post at Xero where, I think it was Rod, mentioned he's seen sets of books(I assume he's taking about Xero managed books) with HUNDREDS of accounts. I couldn't imagine dealing 20 accounts in Xero with no hierarchy. It'd drive me BARMY.

No customer “jobs”, in quickbooks, customers have “Jobs” which are sort of like “sub customers” really. This is really important to me. It allows you to deal with different people within the same company for different jobs, it allows you to properly organise the jobs you do for the same company.

Reporting. Very lack lustre. I guess it's early days, and that partly this is down to the "dead flat" accounts structure, but I found the reporting ability of Xero to be very inflexible. If Quickbooks I can filter and modify and generally create reports to show exactly the information I want. If I want to know how some "vertical" slice of my business is doing, "a profit center" if you like, I can easily do this. In Xero, not so much. It's just not there yet.

Ease of use for "common tasks". Perhaps it's just that I don't think in the way Xero thinks, but for me, Quickbooks is easy, and Xero is not. Let's take for example a typical work process, you want to
1. Create some new invoices
2. Receive some cheque and cash payments against already created invoices
3. Record the deposit

Quickbooks

Xero

Conclusion

This report was just from a brief look through Xero, seeing how it would work for the ways in which my processes happen, but what I think are fairly typical processes for businesses using Quickbooks. Businesses using other, less refined systems (cough MYOB cough) probably wouldn't see what I see as flaws in Xero.

I really would love to see Xero up it's game just that little bit more so that it can compete with the ease of use, powerful reporting, and “audit trailability/error fixability” (see the cheque searching above), because the points I like about Xero, I really do like a lot.

The availability of the API for me is so far up the list it's not funny, if it wasn't for the fact that I think Xero would take me so much more time and mental gymnastics to do the mundane task of processing cheque and cash payments (which I have to do a lot of), I'd look very hard at Xero and see if I could overlook it's other flaws, just so I could use the API.

So Xero, you are on the right track, keep plugging away at it, but for the time being, Quickbooks/Reckon still has my business :-(

What to do with a new (old) server?

nzsouthernman — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:09 +1200

I've been given a four year old IBM RS/6000 server under the condition that I scrub the drives of all data before doing anything with it.

That's done, data is well & truly history. Said server came with it's AIX restore CD's so I've rebuilt AIX onto the box, but I'm not an AIX guru and though I know how to do things in SMITTY, that's about where my AIX knowledge stops.

So I've downloaded & installed RHEL 5.4 PPC edition - this went on really well. I've reinstalled it several times so far while playing with the software RAID setup. Now I've got it running on a pair of mirrored 36GB SCSI drives for the / partition, and four 72GB drives in a RAID5.

But what do I do with it now I've got it working? It's a dual-core multi-threaded box with 2GB ram. Dual power supplies. Puts out a fair bit of heat and is capable of running like a cut cat.

I've got webmin installed, and am going to be updating the JAVA VM to one that can run Azureus/Vuze (the 64bit version doesn't like Vuze), but it seems a bit of a waste to use this as a torrent box...

Any suggestions?

Amazing 3D from Panasonic

nate — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:00 +1200

Every manufacturer boasts their product as being superior to all others. When I received an invite to see what Panasonic was bringing to 3D I was a little sceptical at all the hype, having just seen Sony's offerings. One line in the invitation email however did catch my attention:

Winner of Best in Show at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year.

Impressive. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so last Monday I visited Panasonic HQ to see what made this TV so special.

Brand new and freshly delivered from the States, we were about to start watching the Panasonic TC-P50VT25 - a 50" plasma (note it's not a LCD) screen that was marketed to give us an experience superior to that of watching Avatar at the cinemas. So, with a handful of other tech enthusiasts, the lights were dimmed in the board room, we donned our futuristic glasses and the demonstration began.

Powered by a Panasonic BluRay player (using HDMI standard v1.4) we were able to see a variety of 3D demo videos, one of which was the Beach Volleyball Tour held at Mt Maunganui. The colours were crisp and bright, and 3D made watching the volleyball a new experience; some of the shots made it seem as though the ball was passing very close as it bounced out of shot. I am looking forward to broadcasters adoption of 3D channels, as live sport in 3D is as close as you can get without actually being there.

Gaming is another application that looks much better in 3D. We watched the new Avatar game played on X-Box. It does take some getting used to, but overall it is much easier to become fully immersed in the game when there is depth to the image. Any military games looks amazing as bullets and other projectiles seem to leave the screen and head towards your.. head.

If you do get tired of 3D, you don't have to watch 3D all the time; a quick and easy change in the menu puts the TV into 2D mode.

The 3D active shutter glasses are half of the clever technology. When first turned on (yes they are battery powered) they synchronise with the TV. As you watch, each lense turns on and off rapidly, which gives you the 3D experience. Light and able to fit easily over prescription glasses, you get full 1080p to both your left and right eyes.

One way to convince your partner/better half of indulging in this plasma is it uses a lot less power than a standard plasma or LCD screen - it meets Energy Star 4.0 requirements so you will save on your power bill.

A 3D plasma is useless without 3D content, so Panasonic are also releasing this year the world's first integrated HD 3D camcorder, the Panasonic AG-3DA1. Expect to see more of these at major sporting events soon.

Overall, a very impressive offering from Panasonic, and not hard to see why it took out CES. After seeing such high definition, clear picture, it's really hard to go back to watching anything else without criticising.

To finish up, some answers to the queries I sent Panasonic following my visit, thanks to Andrew Reid, the Panasonic guru:

How does Panasonic's 3D differ from that seen in the theatres?

With the home experience the glasses are synchronised to the screen. When you turn on the glasses on they control how you see the image.

What are so special about the Panasonic 3D glasses?
To remove the possibility of crosstalk or unwanted after images, Panasonic's 3D glasses close off both eyes at the instant that the images change for the left and right eyes. They have been designed to suit many different face sizes, can be adjusted to fit and also fit over glasses.
Will there ever be 3D without needing the glasses and why?
Unsure. There are several forms of auto stereoscopic screens. Unfortunately the current technology has several major issues e.g. eye strain, severely limited viewing angle and poor resolution to name a few. If they manage to overcome these then perhaps but it doesn't seem likely any time soon.

When will broadcasters start to show 3D content?
Unsure. Overseas 3d broadcasts could be as soon as this year. Locally you would need to talk to the broadcasters.
What advantages does Panasonic have over competitors such as Sony?
Panasonic use plasma as a technology for 3D, more specifically Panasonic uses a new generation of our NEO PDP panel that has been specifically designed to handle the increased demands of 3D meaning our panel doesn't suffer from cross talk. It also offers significant improvements in terms of Contrast, colour and power consumption when in 2D mode.
Rough RRP on the glasses and TV?
Glasses will be approximately US$100, each 3D panel will come with one set of these.

European Parliament throws spanner in secret ACTA works

juha — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:07 +1200

This will make the Wellington ACTA negotiations more exciting - the European Parliament has asked to have full access to ACTA documents, and wants this to be granted to the public too.

Furthermore, the ACTA talks should be limited to counterfeiting, include developing and emerging countries (and not just the rich ones), plus, and this is important, they must not be used to limit access to cheap and safe medicines. That last part is often forgotten in the furore around ACTA, and it's hugely important for people everywhere, including New Zealand.

On the Internet side of things, no "three-strikes" rules to be imposed; only the courts can order that people's Internet access is cut off, as anything else would violate their fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and privacy.

No border searches and confiscations without warrants of laptops, mobile phones and MP3 players by customs to be introduced either.

Interestingly enough, the whole ACTA circus seems to be conducted without any mandate from the European Parliament, which threatens to go to the Court of Justice unless its demands are met before the meeting in Wellington.

We'll see if the different countries involved in the ACTA talks, including New Zealand, can ignore the European Parliament, but its resolution is the strongest message so far to them that they must engage with the public and not ride rough-shod over their rights.

Link to the full text of the European Parliament resolution of 10 March 2010 on the transparency and state of play of the ACTA negotiations.

Here are the main points of the resolution, minus the preamble and background to the current text:

1. Points out that since 1 December 2009 the Commission has had a legal obligation to inform Parliament immediately and fully at all stages of international negotiations;

2. Expresses its concern over the lack of a transparent process in the conduct of the ACTA negotiations, a state of affairs at odds with the letter and spirit of the TFEU; is deeply concerned that no legal base was established before the start of the ACTA negotiations and that parliamentary approval for the negotiating mandate was not sought;

3. Calls on the Commission and the Council to grant public and parliamentary access to ACTA negotiation texts and summaries, in accordance with the Treaty and with Regulation 1049/2001 of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents;

4. Calls on the Commission and the Council to engage proactively with ACTA negotiation partners to rule out any further negotiations which are confidential as a matter of course and to inform Parliament fully and in a timely manner about its initiatives in this regard; expects the Commission to make proposals prior to the next negotiation round in New Zealand in April 2010, to demand that the issue of transparency is put on the agenda of that meeting and to refer the outcome of the negotiation round to Parliament immediately following its conclusion;

5. Stresses that, unless Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, it reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives;

6. Deplores the calculated choice of the parties not to negotiate through well-established international bodies, such as WIPO and WTO, which have established frameworks for public information and consultation;

7. Calls on the Commission to conduct an impact assessment of the implementation of ACTA with regard to fundamental rights and data protection, ongoing EU efforts to harmonise IPR enforcement measures, and e-commerce, prior to any EU agreement on a consolidated ACTA treaty text, and to consult with Parliament in a timely manner about the results of the assessment;

8. Welcomes affirmations by the Commission that any ACTA agreement will be limited to the enforcement of existing IPRs, with no prejudice for the development of substantive IP law in the European Union;

9. Calls on the Commission to continue the negotiations on ACTA and limit them to the existing European IPR enforcement system against counterfeiting; considers that further ACTA negotiations should include a larger number of developing and emerging countries, with a view to reaching a possible multilateral level of negotiation;

10. Urges the Commission to ensure that the enforcement of ACTA provisions - especially those on copyright enforcement procedures in the digital environment - are fully in line with the acquis communautaire ; demands that no personal searches will be conducted at EU borders and requests full clarification of any clauses that would allow for warrantless searches and confiscation of information storage devices such as laptops, cell phones and MP3 players by border and customs authorities;

11. Considers that in order to respect fundamental rights, such as the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy, while fully observing the principle of subsidiarity, the proposed agreement should not make it possible for any so-called "three-strikes" procedures to be imposed, in full accordance with Parliament's decision on Article 1.1b in the (amending) Directive 2009/140/EC calling for the insertion of a new paragraph 3(a) in Article 1 of Directive 2002/21/EC on the matter of the "three strikes" policy; considers that any agreement must include the stipulation that the closing-off of an individual's Internet access shall be subject to prior examination by a court;

12. Emphasises that privacy and data protection are core values of the European Union, recognised in Article 8 ECHR and Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which must be respected in all the policies and rules adopted by the EU pursuant to Article 16 of the TFEU;

13. Points out that ACTA provisions, notably measures aimed at strengthening powers for cross-border inspection and seizure of goods, should not affect global access to legitimate, affordable and safe medicinal products - including innovative and generic products - on the pretext of combating counterfeiting;

14. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission and the governments and parliaments of the states party to the ACTA negotiations.

Technorati Tags: ACTA,European Parliament,New Zealand,copyright

Apple just became an MVNO

timmyh — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:00 +1200

Further details have just been released by Apple on how the 3G service will work on the iPad in the U.S. and it represents a paradigm change in mobile network usage. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that with the iPad Apple has effectively become a data MVNO (mobile virtual network operator), at least in the U.S. Whether they take a cut or not on the data plan they are managing the overall experience in a very elegant way from the users' perspective. The 3G service becomes part of the 'Apple' experience rather than an iPad on AT&T.

We already knew that there would not be any contracts on the data bundles meaning that AT&T will not be subsidising these devices to reduce the device cost and lock in customers. That's OK for AT&T given they are the only network supporting Apple products in the U.S.

We also knew the pricing - US$14.99 for 250MB (OK) and US$29.99 for Unlimited (awesome!). I think we are all interested to see if 'Unlimited' will have some sort of cap at say 5 or 10GB.

But what's really new is how the user interacts with their 3G service. All functions (activating, payment, changing plans, deactivating) are managed from the iPad itself using a 3G manager application. You also get usage stats on how much data you have left if you have the 250MB bundle and pro-active usage alerts - excellent!

These functions must have quite a strong tie-in to the network operator to enable payment, provision the service and extract these usage details. So what's incredible is that there does not appear to be any reference to AT&T in this 3G application - the network operator is hidden and the user doesn't need to know who it is! It is not clear who the payment is with as it looks to be via credit card (rather than your iTunes account) but is that settled through Apple or directly with AT&T?

It will be fascinating to see how this model translates outside the U.S. where almost all countries (NZ excepted) have multiple iPhone provider networks. Will every operator that wants to support the iPad need to work with Apple to provide the approved pricing plans and network integration? Will the iPad only work on such approved networks?

Is their any sound or lighting technicians in the house?

thefatmould — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:33 +1200

This blog post is here to gauge the interest and number of sound and lighting technicians (and DJ's?) here on Geekzone. I for one am the sole charge technician at my high school and have been involved in some major productions with other companies including the Telethon last year. I have a basic training at level 2 and 3 NCEA and have been working for 4 and a 1/2 years. As a starting talking point - what is the one piece of equipment you couldn't do your job without and what is the best show you have been involved in? Leave a comment below. I couldn't live without my gaffer tape and enjoyed working on a great school charity production of "Kaiapoi's Got Talent". It was an awesome success and raised over $1000 for UNICEF gift aid? I look forward to your replies.

Tangents of a circle passing through a point

manhinli — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:54 +1200

Our maths teacher recently gave us a question to solve. It was to generate the equation of two lines which are tangents to a circle but also passing through one external point.

An example of this:

(you can ignore the dotted circle)

My friend and I had difficulty trying to solve it at first. Generating a line equation is easy, but finding the gradient isn't.

We spent 3 hours over 3 days at school (we have daily 1 hour long "Study" classes, which most people don't "study" in anyway), and this is pretty much how it ended up:

1st day: I solved the question by using a multitude of trigonometric functions, ending up with the two gradients. But they were not in any particular form, just numbers, so weren't that great as an answer as they would not be exact answers. And it looked ugly (yes, maths can be beautiful at times...)
2nd day: So my friend attempted to get a surd form for this number by working through my method, and he successfully does.
3rd day: He wanders off and discovers a relationship between the answer and original parameters and generates a general form for the gradient for the lines!

So today I copied off all our rough work onto paper and our teacher was most pleasantly surprised!

The equation doesn't involve having to substitute one equation into another, which has significantly made calculating the gradient for any line of this sort a whole lot easier.

But I won't be posting it up. Not yet.

That's because I'm trying to find if this has been generalised before. So if anyone knows of anything which can directly generate the gradients of such lines, please let me know in the Comments section below.

Otherwise... well, you can probably guess what we will do next.

Pacific Fibre cable a bold initiative that the government should support

juha — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:31 +1200

Will the NZ$900 million Pacific Fibre cable mooted by messieurs Drury, Morgan, Tindall, Rushworth, Humphrey and Wiggs succeed? Certainly, the list of founders is impressive with everyone on it not only having an understanding of why Big Fat Pipes with Low Latency are a good thing, but they also have real incentives for the Pacific Fibre cable to succeed - Rod Drury and Sam Morgan especially, with their Internet-based businesses depending on good networks.

John Humphrey is a satellite and cable guy of long standing that I met at the Shin Sat IPstar launch way too many years ago (and, I ended up with a huge dish on my roof as proof that it was indeed possible to deliver decent broadband via birds high up in the sky).

Mark Rushworth and Lance Wiggs get what the Internet is about, and having Stephen Tindall onboard isn't going to hurt Pacific Fibre in the slightest.

Of course, having lots of well-known names onboard doesn't equate success but Pacific Fibre is launching into a market that's difficult to satiate at the moment. It's almost as if you need to dimension networks according to the capacities of their computers' storage and interface speeds - you need to get as close as possible to those two factors to keep customers happy.

The 5.12 Terabits per second that the Pacific Fibre cable is supposed to launch with probably isn't that much over the next decade or so, and it's good to see a 12 Tbit/s upgrade has been factored in.

Having lots of bandwidth for large video, audio, and picture files is one thing but I found it interesting to talk to Rushworth today, and hearing him emphasise low latency as a competitive point of difference. Mark's right of course. NZ and Australia are a huge distance away from everywhere, so the less packet delay, the better. From memory, the best roundtrip you get over Southern Cross is 120 to 130ms to LA, which translates to 160 to 170ms for end users in Auckland. Not disastrously high, but if you can shave 20 to 30ms off that, people with real-time apps are going to be much happier.

Now, the money: $900 million's not chump change, and finding the funding will be a challenge for Pacific Fibre. Given the stated goals of Pacific Fibre, I think this is one project that the government should consider investing in. Morgan's said Pacific Fibre isn't about maximising profits, but to build infrastructure that will benefit the entire country.

Kordia, a state-owned enterprise is said to be teaming up with Pacific Net, but I think a direct investment in the system by the government may be in order, provided the business plan is sound. For starters, it would give our academic network KAREN another less expensive option to Southern Cross for international transit and maybe even get them close to the twin 10GB wavelengths that the Aussie AARnet has.

Some years ago, I spoke to a MED mandarin who said that the then government was given the option of buying a ten per cent stake of the Southern Cross Cable. If that had happened, things may have been very different now, but the government didn't take up that option. Here's a second chance, and Key's cabinet should take it.

Maybe there's a way to micro-finance the cable too, with individuals communities in NZ and Australia chipping in small amounts but in large numbers?

I'm also wondering if Southern Cross smelt something in the wind last year, when its sales director Ross Pfeffer started talking about the possibility of a new cable or upgrading the existing system. The SCCS has been a great success for Telecom, Singtel/Optus and Verizon and it'll be interesting to see how they respond to the Pacific Fibre initiative.

Price cuts on the SCCS could happen, but they won't be much use unless we see some seriously improved pricing on national delivery as well. My ISP contacts tell me that Auckland-Wellington can cost more than Auckland-LA nowadays. Maybe Pacific Fibre needs to have a think about national delivery as well?

Update some industry and academia comment that arrived via Science Media Centre:

Brett O'Riley, CEO of NZICT, comments:
"As New Zealand only has one high-capacity link into the country today, I know major global data centre operators have not considered NZ as a suitable location, despite the fact that we have lower power prices, and greener power, than most of the other countries bidding. But we haven't had redundant capacity and the low cost structures people are looking for.

We can see that international prices out of New Zealand are more expensive than our trading partners, and we've been advocating for a decrease in those prices and we see competition as being the best lever for that.

"From a science perspective, potential projects like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be generating 'astronomical' data sets - it's estimated the SKA will generate more data in a day than the whole world does in a year, currently.

"So we see this new cable and other planned initiatives as being absolutely essential if New Zealand and Australia are to make a compelling case to host the SKA, and clearly there will be many other spin-offs and opp for the science community from this.

"It will also have an extremely positive impact on the ICT sector, given the improved latency which will enable New Zealand companies to offer software as a service remotely to major economies, and will enable New Zealand to continue its growth as a development shop for other digital economies."

Dr Vladimir Mencl, e-research services and systems consultant at the University of Canterbury comments:
"The existing KAREN network has solved the problem of connections between research organisations. But because of tight data caps, universities use a cost recovery model for internet access in their commercial operations, often with costs charged back to the home department of the university. As a result off the KAREN network, I will often spend a lot of time looking for alternative ways to download a file more efficiently.

"The KAREN network has been over-built intentionally so there is a lot of capacity for video-conferencing and it offers low-latency services. So I don't think a new cable would offer much there, there isn't a great strain on the network. He have international collaborations using the BlueFern supercomputer at Canterbury with other countries including Australia and Canada as well as local research organisatons.

"But KAREN doesn't really have the model right yet. It doesn't run purely on a cost-recovery basis, it is still centrally funded by the Government. If cheaper international bandwidth means it is cheaper to run KAREN that's money that could be saved and diverted to other research projects."

Update II Google might want to put some dosh into the Pacific Fibre cable too. Probably a more likely investor than our straitened government.

Technorati Tags: Internet,Pacific Fibre,New Zealand,Australia,broadband,Trade Me,Xero

New Zealand goes live with its nationwide content filtering firewall

inane — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:50 +1200

Currently the NZ interwebs are abuzz with the fact that the DIA is now firewalling in conjuction with ISPs.

but due to the nature of the content they are firewalling one cannot know what sites are being blocked.

yes currently they claim that they are only blocking child porn ( but this claim is unverifiable because noone knows what they are blocking) but once this precident has been set, its very easy for the governent to start blocking other sites, that they might find inconvienient.

I'll not write too much as Freitasms post sums it up all much more succintly...
Techliberty also have a good write up as to why its a bad idea here

I'll just leave you with my quick rip off of "First they came"

... first they blocked the child porn, but i did nothing for I am not a pedophile...
... then they blocked the small breasted women, but i did nothing for fear of being called a pedophile...
... then they blocked all adult sites, but I did nothing as they were "protecting the children".........
.... then they blocked all objectionable writing, but I did nothing as it was in the "general publics best interests"...
.... then they blocked all free music, but I did nothing as it might be copywrite infringement....
.... then they blocked my writing, because i was not sanctioned by the government. and no one did anything because it was too late...

Confidence

antoniosk — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 17:07 +1200

Well, what a february it was, as a start to the new decade.

Telecom suffered the most ignominious of sustained failure, with their shiny new WCDMA 850Mhz network having fallen over several times, with the blame eventually falling on AlcaCent (the supplier) and a sacrificial head from Telecom (Frank Mount, whose contract ended in June 2010 anyway). Add to the woe problems with the sacrosanct 111 emergency call system, and the Telecom must feel like someone has a voodoo doll of Spot furnished away, full of broken fibres (in the stitching). Add the new comments from the former boss Ms G about how things were'nt like this when she was there, and you can't help but feel that someone probably doesn't like you!

But never fear, as Vodafone NZ and 2degrees have invoked the fates and called on the combined forces of Murphy and Sod, taking switching campaigns to market on the back of these failures, inviting customers to join a reliable network. so now it's just a waiting game for their network to fail (as indeed it already has, but not to the same scale).

I'm interested in what is happening inside Telecom, to it's sales staff, support staff, field staff and everyone involved in service delivery. Because it is from these folks that customer's present and future take their lead on purchasing decisions. and there is nothing that has more inertia or destructive force that delivery entity that refuses to supply. A loss of confidence is hideously difficult to turn around - collective memory being a self-healing, reinforcing wall of despair (at least where salesfolk are concerned). After all, who wants to sell something they perceive to be a lemon, and have to deal with the fallout?

It has been my jolly good luck to have taken career roles where a turnaround has been required, coming from high expectations to failure to having to rebuild. and it never quite is the same again. The hubris is gone, replaced by an air of 'whatever', and a market that actively questions what is being said, even if all the elements are fixed. My article on using Telecom Mobile over the Christmas period has been challenged, but I stick with my assertion that Telecom has the better network. especially now that the failures will force people inside the company to sit up and take notice.

Microsoft required Windows 7 to get over the failure of Windows Vista, even though the service packed product is quite usable (I have Vista on one of my machines and it works very well). But markets have long memories, and product quality is so good these days, that customer replacement cycles have extended and people are more selective.

Service providers (like Telco's) can be frustrating to work in at times - you know good stuff is coming but you can't really say anything, because inevitably Sod's Law kicks in and you miss the dates you said. Equally people don't want to hear 'coming soon, we are working on it really really really'. they want solid dates, and they expect them met. Fair enough - but technology is such a complex beast that dates given are almost always under threat, and compromises/workarounds have to be made to get to the dates - or if the above can't be done. you slip. As companies get larger and have more systems, the complexity becomes exponential. so things take longer.

Speaking to some folk I know (none of which are involved with XT), we surmised that somewhere in the deployment of XT a compromise was made. A workaround was introduced to meet a date - "of course we can reuse xxx component, it's a few years old now but it still works" - which is pure poison with technology. Vendors can only backup, within reason, their own kit (and even then they struggle against all permutations), but telco's rarely rip and replace an entire system.

So 'integration' is required - words that are enough to send a shudder down your spine if you've ever had to do it. Integration is a level of joy reserved only for the brave.

But when integration goes right then wrong, products don't work well. When products don't work well, the humans cannot explain, respond or repair fast enough. When response is slow, confidence is lost.

Confidence lost is not a good place to be, personally, professionally or collectively. The YouTube clip of the Downfall/XT mashup is below, which I found quite funny. But the original is very sobering (when reality has struck home, when you have to take responsibility. and the first response is so very human, and so very appalling).

What conversations are being had inside the great Service Providers everyday? at what point are the accusations made of 'lies, betrayal, hiding things etc'?

I wonder how confident the Telecom folk are feeling today?

The Minister should accept the recommendation

jointhedebate — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 05:38 +1200

It's all about money.

Ask any journalist how to get to the source of any story and they'll tell you: follow the money.

So, the options before the Minister of Communications are:

1: Accept the recommendation of the Commerce Commission.

2: Reject the recommendation of the Commerce Commission.

3: Send back the recommendation for more working.

The recommendation the Commission has put forward is to accept the Undertakings offered by Telecom and Vodafone. Unusually there is a comment from one of the three Commissioners objecting to the result, but that’s neither here nor there: the recommendation is to accept the offers.

Why has the Commission done that? It’s simple: follow the money.

Here are the alternatives – Undertakings kicking in October 1 this year delivering savings to the industry (more on that below) immediately of around 40% versus sending the report back for more work and hopefully getting a changed recommendation to regulate, coming into effect in about 18 months to two years’ time.

The difference between savings in the two options is negligible. Either you get savings from October or you get the old price for longer and potentially savings after both a reconsideration period (last one took eight months) and a full STD process (where the Commission and the industry gather to talk about the true cost of telecommunications etc which should last about a year).

So the Minister has a relatively simple job ahead of him. He has to look at the certain savings delivered by the Undertakings versus the possible savings delivered should regulation be recommended by the Commission after reconsideration and, given there’s very little difference, it comes down to a timing issue. Should he go in October or wait for regulation that MAY deliver a better deal in a couple of years’ time.

The Undertakings move TXT termination rates to zero (hybrid bill-and-keep) and voice termination rates from 15c/minute (on a minute plus second basis) to 6c/minute (second plus second basis).

The cost to Vodafone is not trivial – we’re expecting an $80m annual revenue hit in each of the undertaking’s 5 years. But that’s better than an uncertain outcome under regulation where the entire drop could take place overnight. At least this way we get to manage the descent and not have to deploy some of the more unpleasant things that have been discussed in this blog.

Our view is clear – the Minister should accept the Undertakings so we can get on. They’re a win for the Commission (it’s got us down into the ballpark of price it likes). They’re a win for the Minister (he gets to deliver on the promise of greater scrutiny) and they’re a win for the consumers advocates who pushed hard for regulation in this space. It’s quasi-regulation, but it’s a regulated outcome that will deliver more certain and earlier benefits for consumers.

What is wrong with TiVo in New Zealand?

freitasm — Sun, 7 Mar 2010 21:33 +1200

What we suspected for some time is real: TiVo sales in New Zealand are disappointing. The New Zealand Herald reports industry sources saying only 2,000 TiVo units were sold in New Zealand since launch, about five months ago. Hybrid TV, the local distributor, of course says this figure is not accurate but won't disclose the real numbers. At launch Hybrid TV planned to sell 120,000 TiVo within five years in New Zealand.

Compare this to Sky TV, which added about 6,700 new subscribers per month for the six months to December 2009. That includes having to pay a subscribption for the services, which are free with TiVo.

Now let's see the problems:

TiVo is only available through Telecom New Zealand stores. People don't buy TV sets or content boxes at Telecom stores - there needs to be a shift of tectonic proportions for this to happen. People go there to buy phones. Until Hybrid TV sells TiVo through HB Hi-Fi, Dick Smith, Noel Leemings, Harvey Normam there will be no chance for them.

Then TiVo offers Caspa, a legal movie download service. The service gives users unmetered download of purchased content. At 1.2GB for a two hour movie the unmetered download is a great idea. But it is only available if you use Telecom New Zealand as your ISP. Hybrid TV should offer Caspa to anyone and everyone. It will use 1.2GB of one's Internet connection to download a movie. Live with it. I do this all the time with Apple iTunes. If they can offer unmetered through Telecom New Zealand, fine. But don't limit consumers to that only ISP.

Next is the lack of Prime and Maori TV EPG. I don't blame Hybrid TV too much on that, it might be the people on the other side playing dead. I mean if I don't see Prime on my EPG I don't watch Prime. As easy as that.

Then comes support. From what read on Geekzone people have very bad experience with their support being inexperienced or not having answers. I can't attest to that, since I never had to use their support.

Lastly their desktop application. What an absolute piece of software (PoS). I have a TiVo review unit here, and I couldn't get any of my own content from my desktop or Windows Home Server into TiVo - either too slow to copy or not copied at all to the box. Worst user experience ever.

The TiVo experience on the TV is quite nice and I am sure users would quickly get used to that. But the whole package is broken and until Hybrid TV fixes these things TiVo won't be a third option between Sky and myFreeview|HD.

UPDATE Another thing that's wrong with TiVo in New Zealand: just read the comments below and you will see someone who doesn't know if TiVo is HD or not, and if it's DVB-T (Terrestrial) or DVB-S (Satellite). A lot of people probably thinks TiVo is a service on its own right, without realising it requires Freeview|HD coverage.

Gadgets galore at the Sony Carnival

nate — Sun, 7 Mar 2010 21:00 +1200

On Wednesday last week I was lucky enough to be invited to the Sony Carnival on behalf of Geekzone. With around 50 other journalists and bloggers from a variety of different newspapers, magazines and TV shows, I was able to preview some of the new product offerings from Sony which included LCD TVs, cameras, camcorders and laptops - basically, I got to go to a gadget geek's heaven!

It was held on the stage in The Civic theatre in central Auckland - massive runs of coloured fabric and multi-coloured lights hung high above centre stage, draped out to the half dozen odd displays they had setup. Each display focused on a different range of products, with the staff dressed up as carnival workers. Popcorn was handed out to add to the authenticity of being at the carnival - my thoughts were Sony really must have the marketing budget to go to such lengths! I have to admit though that it was a refreshing change from the very plain (and now boring) product showcases I've seen in the past.

I could write a very length post on all of the products I saw, instead I'll briefly outline some of the highlights for me from that morning:

Sony Bravia HD 3D TVs - one word: WOW! I saw a very impressive demonstration of watching 3D in your own home played off Blu-ray discs. You are still required to wear special glasses (different from those used in the theatre) which I don't feel is ideal; nevertheless, watching live Rugby or playing PS3 all in 3D is very exciting - whether this will be adopted into mainstream or purely remain as a gimmick, time will tell.
Sony BDP-S570 Blu-ray player - not only a nice and tidy Blu-ray player, this device can be plugged into your home network and you can browse the BRAVIA internet video channels, show your favourite YouTube video in full screen, or watch movies shared from your computer. It has USB ports for plugging in a keyboard (much quicker typing searches in than using the remote) plus an optional wireless network dongle. Having seen the RRP, it sits at a very affordable price point, and I'm hoping to get a unit to do a full review soon.
Sony TX5 - this digital camera looks just like a standard camera, it's very slim at 16.7mm and is an respectable 10.2 megapixels. Its impressive feature is that it works underwater (up to 3m) without the need for bulky waterproof housing. The touch screen on the back of the camera also works while fully submerged.
SD card support! - Sony has (finally) realised that not everyone wants to purchase their proprietary bubblegum-stick shaped memory sticks, so now the cameras and camcorders support standard SD cards as well as the Sony memory stick.
Sony bloggie - marketed as a "snap camera", this device is a small and compact HD camera designed for quick and easy uploading of video files to social media sites (such as YouTube). It comes with a built-in USB arm, and can do up to 5 hours and 20 minutes of HD recording on a 32GB memory stick. A nifty 360? lense can also be attached to it - placed in the centre of a table at a function, it allows you to record everything going on around (would've been very handy at Saturday's Geekzone Pizza!). Sample video here.

Thanks to Melanie Pohl, from Sony PR for inviting me to this event and providing the included photos (in my rush to get to the event I forgot my camera).

Another review of the carnival, specifically the HD 3D TV is available at the NBR - Chris Keall has an article available here (subscriber only) - disclaimer: I don't have access to view this, I've sourced it from Chris' Twitter account.

GeekPost Monthly Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 1

JamesHip — Sun, 7 Mar 2010 20:59 +1200

Geek Post

Volume 2 Issue 1

January 2010

Hippolite Musings

Tena Koutou Katoa,

Last year, I started this newsletter. I managed 11 weeks before year end. This was a bit much, so this year I will probably end up doing monthly. I have two months to catch up on. Here goes.

Blessings,
James

Developer News

Grenada Village Online

This is where I continue the saga of documenting my learnings from actually putting a web site "out in the wild" (I usually code within a nice, safe, Intranet).

This month I learned how to actually implement Profile, Membership and Role providers.

The first learning was that there are three providers!
Secondly, put it all in the Web.config (see below).
Point all three providers to the one connection string for your application's database.
Then, create all the objects (tables, views & stored procedures) that the Providers expect to find there.
The code for creating a script to generate the objects is this: aspnet_regsql -S (local) -E -A all -sqlexportonly <filename>

<system.web> <profile enabled="true"> <properties> <add name="FirstName" type="string"/> <add name="LastName" type="string"/> <add name="HomePhone" type="string"/> <add name="CellPhone" type="string"/> <add name="StreetNo" type="string"/> <add name="StreetName" type="string"/> </properties> <providers> <clear/> <add name="AspNetSqlProfileProvider" connectionStringName="GrenadaVillageConnection" applicationName="GrenadaVillage" type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" /> </providers> </profile> <siteMap defaultProvider="default"> <providers> <clear/> <add name="default" type="System.Web.XmlSiteMapProvider" siteMapFile="web.sitemap" securityTrimmingEnabled="true" /> </providers> </siteMap> <membership> <providers> <clear/> <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" connectionStringName="GrenadaVillageConnection" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true" applicationName="GrenadaVillage" requiresUniqueEmail="false" passwordFormat="Hashed" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="7" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="1" passwordAttemptWindow="10" passwordStrengthRegularExpression=""/> </providers> </membership>  <roleManager enabled="true"> <providers> <clear/> <add name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" connectionStringName="GrenadaVillageConnection" applicationName="GrenadaVillage" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" /> </providers> </roleManager> <compilation debug="true"> <assemblies> <add assembly="System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/> <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> <add assembly="System.Xml.Linq, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/> <add assembly="System.Data.DataSetExtensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/> </assemblies> </compilation>  <authentication mode="Forms"> <forms protection="All" ></forms> </authentication> <identity impersonate="true"/>  <pages> <controls> <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> </controls> </pages> <httpHandlers> <remove verb="*" path="*.asmx"/> <add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> <add verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> <add verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" validate="false" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> </httpHandlers> <httpModules> <add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> </httpModules> </system.web>

Telecom News

XT has developed a glitch.

People are working on it.

I'm not directly a cause nor a cure for the problem.

We're all being impacted in some way or other. For example, Production change requests are under closer scrutiny to ensure nothing exacerbates the situation.

That's all I have to say on this subject at this time.

Product News

ReSharper 5.0 for Visual Studio 10

Can't wait to get VS10 RTM, so I can upgrade ReSharper!

Partner News

I met Telecom's new Microsoft Technical Account Manager

His name is Antony Willis.

Situations Vacant

Customer Service Representative- Faults Mobile- 26th April

Requisition ID - CUS020ZB
NZ-Auckland
Permanent - Full-time
Job Posting 08/Mar/10

Complex Billing Specialist

Requisition ID - INF022CU
NZ-Christchurch
Permanent - Full-time
Job Posting 05/Mar/10

Systems Engineer - Networks

Requisition ID - ENG0209K
NZ-New Plymouth
Permanent - Full-time
Job Posting 05/Mar/10

Training News

In January, I sat and passed Exam 70-561

TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ADO.NET Application Development
Should have been easy, but there was a whole lotta extra stuff
e.g. Sync Framework, LINQ and ORM with the Entity Framework

Skills Being Measured This exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below. The percentages indicate the relative weight of each major topic area on the exam. Connecting to Data Sources (12 percent) Manage connection strings. May include but is not limited to: using the ConnectionStringBuilder; leveraging the ConfigurationManager; protecting the connection string; using Security Support Provider Interface (SSPI) or SQL Server authentication; correctly addressing the SQL Server instance; managing "User Instance" and AttachDBfilename Manage connection objects. May include but is not limited to: managing connection state, managing connection pool; implementing persistent data connections; implementing Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS); encrypting and decrypting data Work with data providers. May include but is not limited to: limitations, behaviors, performance, installation issues, deployment issues; ODBC, Microsoft OLE DB, SqlClient, managed providers, third-party providers, native providers Connect to a data source by using a generic data access interface. May include but is not limited to: System.Data.Common namespace classes Handle and diagnose database connection exceptions. May include but is not limited to: implementing try/catch handlers Selecting and Querying Data (22 percent) Build command objects. May include but is not limited to: building Parameters collections; using input and output parameters and return values; selecting an appropriate CommandType action; selecting an appropriate Execute method; using the CommandBuilder class; choosing appropriate CommandBehavior Query data from data sources. May include but is not limited to: writing queries to solve assigned problems; implementing data paging; sorting, filtering, and aggregating data Retrieve data source data by using the DataReader. May include but is not limited to: retrieving data from SELECT statements; retrieving data from stored procedures; working with multiple result sets Manage data by using the DataAdapter or the TableAdapter. May include but is not limited to: retrieving data from SELECT statements; retrieving data from stored procedures; working with multiple result sets; working with JOIN products; creating updatable DataAdapters and TableAdapters; modifying TableAdapter Fill methods Execute an asynchronous query. May include but is not limited to: handling asynchronous events Handle special data types. May include but is not limited to: Binary Large Objects (BLOBs); Filestream, Spatial, Table Value Parameters Query data sources by using LINQ. May include but is not limited to: extended method; CLR delegate; lambda expressions; classes of the System.LINQ.Expressions namespace Manage exceptions when selecting data. May include but is not limited to: identifying and resolving syntax errors; security exceptions Modifying Data (24 percent) Manage transactions. May include but is not limited to: selecting an appropriate transaction isolation level; participating in local transactions; participating in distributed transactions; using declarative transactions Manage data integrity. May include but is not limited to: cascading updates or cascading deletes; auto number management; server-generated value management; client-side data validation; business rules, constraints Update data. May include but is not limited to: update data by using stored procedures; update dataSets to data source; managing concurrency Manage exceptions when modifying data. May include but is not limited to: resolve exceptions from data integrity, constraint, or referential integrity violations; data locking conflicts; data collision issues Transform data by using LINQ. May include but is not limited to: aggregation operators; JOIN operator, QUERY operator, LIKE, etc. Synchronizing Data (15 percent) Monitor event notifications. May include but is not limited to: implement notifications by using SqlDependency or SqlNotificationRequest Cache data. May include but is not limited to: SqlCacheDependency, Local Data Cache Manage update conflicts between online data and offline data. Partition data for synchronization. Implement Synchronization Services. May include but is not limited to: SyncAgent, SyncTable, ClientSyncProvider, ServerSyncProvider, SyncAdapter Working with Disconnected Data (16 percent) Manage occasionally connected data. Programmatically create data objects. May include but is not limited to: DataTable; DataSet Work with untyped DataSets and DataTables. May include but is not limited to: populating a DataSet or DataTable Expose a DataTableReader from a DataTable or from a DataSet. Work with strongly typed DataSets and DataTables. Object Relational Mapping by Using the Entity Framework (11 percent) Define and implement an Entity Data Model. May include but is not limited to: mapping schemas and storage metadata; EDM Generator Query data by using Object Services. May include but is not limited to: querying data as objects and shaping results; working with objects; managing the Object Context; customizing objects Map data by using the Entity SQL Language. May include but is not limited to: manually define mapping files; execute an Entity SQL Query by using EntityCommand Access entity data by using the EntityClient Provider. May include but is not limited to: managing EntityConnection; creating EntityCommand; executing a query by using EntityDataReader; managing EntityTransaction

Trainer News

Nothing new

PASS News

Nothing New

Events Schedule

In this section, I highlight dates, times and venues of events either I am presenting at, or of interest to METTLE. I'm available for bookings.

Date	Event	Venue	Speaker
11-Jan-2010	First day back at work	Telecom Wellington	James
19-Jan-2010	Exam 70-561	Auldhouse, Wellington	James
25-29 Jan 2010	SharePoint 2010 Ignite for Developers	Microsoft, Wellington	Wayne Ewington
22-26 Feb 2010	Exchange 2010 Training	Auldhouse, Wellington	?
22-Mar-10	Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Launch	All Over The World	Various
21-23 April 2010	PASS European Conference	Neuss, Germany	Various
18-May-10	NZ SharePoint Conference	Bay of Plenty	Lots

Humour

Digging Whales

We had recently moved from Tennessee to Mississippi. Our four-year-old son, Jeep, came home from church one Sunday, excited about the Sunday school lesson. "My teacher taught us all about the whales," he announced.
"You mean Jonah and the whale?" my wife asked.
"No," he said, "Jacob and the whales."
"I think it was Jonah," my wife corrected. "He was swallowed by a whale in the ocean."
But Jeep knew his lesson. "No, it was Jacob. He moved out into the desert and when he got thirsty, he dug some whales."

-Pat Apel, Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Christian Reader, "Kids of the Kingdom."

D945GSEJT Motherboard for Small HTPC

LennonNZ — Sun, 7 Mar 2010 20:22 +1200

A few months ago I decided to renew my HTPC with something new. I had a look around and I thought about getting something small. I was thinking about the Zotac Ion motherboard with the same case but I like to be cutting edge and this motherboard with the Video Accelerator Card was best to get and used alot less power compared to the Ion motherboards.

I found it very hard (impossible) to find any of this hardware in New Zealand so I had to buy it from overseas. Motherboard and Case from www.mini-box.com.au and other equipment from various places on ebay. It takes a while for some parts via ebay but there sometimes isn't any other way (when you can't get them locally)

I am running Linux/xbmc at the moment and in the future looking into running mythtv on it when the crystalHD (BCM70012) drivers are available for it. I could also to run it under windows as the crystalHD drivers with this as well.

The amazing thing about it is the amount of power it actually takes to run. With no moving parts in it I have it running on a 12V 1.5A power brick and it runs fine. I am still waiting on the Z-U130 Card and have a 2.5" 80G HDD in it at the moment and the 1.5A power is still fine for running it.

When I get it all going I will give some stats from video playing. I still have some issues (like the latest SVN xbmc runs at 100% CPU for some reason) but I think its a bug in the new Xorg Intel driver which I have reported and hopefully getting fixed soon.

The motherboard doesn't by default come with digital Audio on the back out so I have added a SPDIF socket a the back of the case via the jumpers on the motherboard for it.

- D945GSEJT Fanless, UltraFlat mini-ITX motherboard + Atom 270 @ 1 x 1.6Ghz
- Intel Atom 270 @ 1x 1.60GHz
- 3 rear USB, 4 on-board
- VGA, DVI and LVDSl
- 1 x SODIMM (DDR2), up to 2Gb
- 1 x 1x 10/100/1000 Mbit LAN
- Realtek High Definition Audio
- 1SATA, 1 PATA
- miniPCI-E
- PCI
- Power: 12V on-board
- Standard I/O shield included
- RoHS compliant

M350 Enclosure. Fanless Small Case designed for Ultra-ATX Motherboards. It is one of the smallest cases around and will also allow me to fit a PCI card in with this motherboard as well. Most other MicroATX motherboards such as the Aton Ion Boards will also fit well well in these. (but without the ability for a PCI Card in the same box)

4G Z-U130 eUSB Card.
This will be used for the boot drive and all media will be played via the network via uPNP or alike. Its only 4G in size but is a good size to fix linux or even
windows for a frontend machine.

BCM 70012 Video Accelerator Card.
This Card takes in VC1/H264/MPEG2 and spits out raw video so your CPU doesn't have to decode the data and reduces the CPU needed to play the video . With this card and the motherboard it should be fine displaying 1080i videos via the Atom 270 Chip. This same card can go into an Intel Mac Mini running MacOSX and also allow them to offload to this card the video processing.

Setup of Linux:
------------------------

Just a few stats. With the Z-U130 drive and hdparm speed.
hdparm -Tt
/dev/sdb:
Timing cached reads: 1084 MB in 2.00 seconds = 542.18 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 66 MB in 3.03 seconds = 21.75 MB/sec
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

13/3/10 - Received the Z-U130 yesterday and placed it in. Reinstalled Linux on the Box and found with SSD a few "changes" had to be made as SSD drives are fast read and slow write.

/etc/sysctl.conf
vm.swappiness=10

This reduces the amount of swap the machine does but my machine never uses swap anyway...

/boot/grub/grub.cfg
add elevator=noop in the kernel line so it does no recaching of data from the SSD

/etc/fstab
add noatime so it doesn't need to update (write) the access time everytime you read a file>

I don't know which one did the biggest change but before these changes the filesystem would have mini freezes whilst accessing data.

What mobile device to get?

freitasm — Sun, 7 Mar 2010 09:55 +1200

[ ] Apple iPhone
[ ] Symbian
[ ] Windows Mobile
[ ] Windows Phone 7
[ ] Palm Web OS
[X] Android
[ ] Maemo

Some comments:

- Windows Mobile is on its way out and nothing will really turn it around anymore;

- I haven't personally played with Windows Phone 7 but I don't like anything I've seen so far - Microsoft needs to give us a good surprise because my hopes are low;

- By the end of the year Symbian is going to power low end smartphones, or very high end feature phones;

- Palm is going to die very soon;

- Maemo gives me the impression of being is a good platform, from the little I've been playing with in the last few days - but lack of software will be a problem. MeeGo (Nokia and Intel) should get a lot of attention from the companies behind the effort (Nokia and Intel) but it will take some time to happen;

- Android is where things will be hot, but the fragmentation worries me - the platform may end up going the way of Windows Mobile with so many different models.

What do you see in the future for smart handsets? What platform you think will go up or down, and why?

Brian Tamaki: I AM GOD

sleemanj — Fri, 5 Mar 2010 10:01 +1200

On Nightline (was it on Campbell, I didn't see) a clip with Tamaki loudly proclaiming "I AM GOD".

Clearly, Tamaki has surpassed manipulative, and is now into sheer insanity.

Before, I would write Tamaki off as just a cunning guy who stumbled on a good thing, now though, now he has stepped a line, I have this terrible fear that he has become somebody very dangerous.

The people who still follow him, must now be devoutly doing so, for no clear minded person could continue to accept this sort of proclamation, "I AM GOD", this must be a fundamental problem, surely if you are a follower of the christian faith, a believer in the bible [I'm not, but I respect your choice to be], you can under no circumstances accept for even one moment, when Tamaki says "I AM GOD".

He is not saying that he is the voice of god, no, he is saying, quite literally "I AM GOD". He clearly intends to convince that he is all powerful.

I can only hope this was selective editing out of context... I hope that's what it is.

Nokia Developer Day, Sydney 2 March 2010

ald — Fri, 5 Mar 2010 04:09 +1200

Earlier this week our CTO, Greg Amer, attended Nokia's Sydney Developer Day. This is a great opportunity to meet other developers, hear about new initiatives that Nokia is undertaking and meet people from the Forum Nokia Asia-Pac team.

Gregs top 10 take-away's from this years Developer Day were, in no particular order:

Ovi stats show that in Australasia "fremium" is currently the most successful business model for mobile applications.
The majority of downloads from Ovi today are from touchscreen devices. Nokia's suggestion is that if handling touch and non-touch in the same app is a problem for you, just support touch.
Ovi globally averages 12 downloads per customer.
Be careful about introducing advertising into your applications. Mobile devices are intensely personal to users and they can react strongly to intrusive advertising messages. Advertising should absolutely handle orientation changes.
Eye candy trumps features and functionality. So does useability. So feel free sacrifice features and functionality. Spend money on UI and user experience.
Symbian Signing will get cheaper on June 9. We've never had a problem with Symbian Signed but it was clearly causing problems for some people and Nokia indicated it would be overhauled to become simpler still (June 9 also).
The first version of Meego will be available some time in the 2nd quarter of this year, devices will follow in the 3rd or 4th quarter. QT on Maemo/Meego has a long way to go but Nokia are working really hard on it.
Nokia are planning to bundle data plans with some devices this year (just like it already bundles music with some devices). Sounds interesting but no idea how that will work. Will I be able to buy the same device sans data plan? Presumably not or I could then just immediately work out how much the data bundle is worth to me ...
Home screen widgets are de rigueur - 80% of the time that people spend looking at a device is spent looking at the home screen. If you want their eye-balls then add a home screen widget to your application.
While the S60 UI layer (Avkon) may not ship in Symbian^4 you will be able to bundle it your applications for backwards compatibility.

All of the presentations and slides are apparently going to be made available in due course so will update you with those details when we get them. In the mean time here are a couple of static pics of the presenters and bloggers lounge:

By all reports it was a great day. A long day though since Greg hauled himself to Sydney on the redeye and then back home again on the last flight out!

To finish up, perhaps the coolest thing on the day was the video playing of the N95 power cube solving robot. Perhaps the only think cooler would have been if the robot had actually been there itself. Here's a youtube clip if your interested.

Nokia 5030c FBUS

MrWestie — Fri, 5 Mar 2010 00:19 +1200

Why, yes.
What you get for retail $50 is beyond belief.
Practically identical to the 1202 with the addition of the radio.
Unfortunately it also shares the glued on LCD connector.

The Nokia N900 arrives in Australia, New Zealand waits

freitasm — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 21:16 +1200

Earlier this week I went to Sydney to attend the Nokia Forum Developer Conference 2010, invited by Nokia Australia/New Zealand. I have to say it was my first event with Nokia and it was interesting to see 300 developers discussing the current state and future of Nokia's smartphone strategy.

Present at the event were Emile Baak, Managing Director Nokia Australia and New Zealand, Purnina Kochikar, Vice Pesident Forum Nokia and Developer Community, Jan Ole Suhr, Founder of Mobileways.de and developer of Twitter client Gravitiy for Symbian.

Being a developer conference the push was obviously about creating content and applications that get the customers to enjoy their devices - and buy those little bits of magic called software and content. Nokia says there are more than 1 million downloads every day from their Ovi software store, which is now available in 180 countries, with integrated mobile operator billing in partnership with 60 operators.

It is obvious Nokia is pushing the QT application and UI framework, seeing it's cross platform (Symbian, Maemo, desktop) which would allow developers to scale their efforts even more. The company also said their main commitments are "increase total addressable market", "commit to open source", "combine mobile and web technologies" and "lower entry barrier to developers".

Jan explained how a one man company created one of the most used Symbian software these days, #5 in the top apps in Australia. He recommended developers try their software in different handset models to get the real "feel" - which is interesting because Nokia gave one N97 Mini to a lucky developer, when I thought they should have distributed those to everyone in the room, like Google did at MWC with their Google Nexus One.

Nokia gave some numbers too. For example in the last quarter Symbian represented 44% of smartphone shipments in the world, with BlackBerry behind at 20%, Apple iPhone in third with 12.8%, Android with 7.2%, Windows Mobile 7.2% and then the rest - which I guess is Palm and other Linux-based smartphones we never hear of.

But really, the question in the back of my mind is "will Symbian turn into a entry level smartphone OS, or will it be sold as a upmarket feature phone OS?". Only time - and Nokia's efforts will tell. Nokia counts more than one million daily downloads from their online application store, but how many more people have no idea their phones are actually "smart"?

Here is an update from Nokia on this: "We have multiple platforms to serve different purposes and address different markets. Symbian is more successful than ever in bringing smartphones to the masses: it has more than 40 per cent of the global smartphone market. Symbian is our choice for smartphones and we in fact see it deploying even more widely as the technology required to run it trickles down through the portfolio."

The Nokia Forum is running the Calling All Innovators competition, now in its third year. Prizes are US$30,000 for 1st spot, US$15,000 for second and US$5,000 to third - this is for each of the four categories. So far there are 27 Australian entries and six New Zealand entries.

In the afternoon Nokia hosted a press event to introduce the press to a couple of things. First was the MeeGo initiative with Intel announced last month, that will see joint efforts from these companies to develop a product based on both Maemo and Moblin platforms. And then the Nokia N900 Maemo 5 smartphone/tablet computer release for Australia, which will see the device available in stores soon. There isn't a release date for New Zealand yet though.

Nokia couldn't say which operators would carry the device, but seeing the Nokia N900 is a 900/2100MHz 3G device it won't work on Telstra NextG network. And it won't work on Telecom New Zealand XT network either. This is a bummer because everyone at the press event received a loaner Nokia N900 and I mainly use Telecom XT. I am using the loaner device here in New Zealand with a 2degrees SIM card, and it works really well on that network.

Which also brings us to the "review" side of the thing. I got the device on Tuesday, and Nokia confirmed I have it for a couple of weeks. I can say though so far that it's a very clever device, fast and had quite some fun using it - installing new applications, finding some features, etc. It worked flawlessly with my Microsoft BPOS Exchange account and in a matter of minutes I had my emails, contacts, calendar all synchronised over-the-air.

Because I haven't had that much time with it yet, I suggest you read what other Geekzone users are talking about it - a few people in our community bought the Nokia N900 as soon as it was released in Europe and the U.S. a couple of months ago so there are some knowledge on how it works, what to expect, etc. Check this very good Nokia N900 review, and follow the discussion in our Nokia N900 users thread. I will post my own review later.

Now for the "facepalm" moment... Some "journalist" present at the press event commented after seeing the Nokia N900 is a combined touchscreen and slider device: "You [Nokia] have no presence in the smartphone market at all. It's been proven by Apple that people want touchscreen devices, so why do you enter the smartphone market with this device?"

Is there an App for that Scam

psycik — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 19:20 +1200

I had a thought while riding in this morning about a new potential financial scam.

If you're one of these people with one of those fancy new fangled phones that use apps for everything instead of mobile sites, them how do you know it's not stealing your information and sending it to a third party?

Did you check that app when getting it? Just like domain sitters, that sit on a misspelled versions of a popular site, the same could be done with an app. "Nationa1 Bank app", "A5B Bank app", while they show your all of your financial information faithfully, utilising information pulled from their mobile web sites', the app is, in fact, sending your user name and password to a third party that can then log on and play mischief with your financial details.

Now having not actually ever looked at these apps I assume a safe guard such as never storing login details could be used on the official apps, but again, if it's a non official version (and would Apple's vetting process pick this up?) then the user could blindly add in their login details and then wonder why their bank account is emptying....

Just a thought, you be careful out there....

More Snapr publicity

robscovell — Tue, 2 Mar 2010 23:31 +1200

Mark Webster at the NZ Herald has picked up on Snapr:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10629443&pnum=0