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October 30, 2006

Eye troubles for Apple users

Some of those previously proud owners of MacBook Pros must be feeling that somebody has actually poked them in the eye with a lit cigarette, what with having the things spontaneously reboot. (Test over here.) There seem to be quite a lot of Mac Book Pro problems that - very strange - don't seem to be reported by the media. They overheat. They won't go to sleep. Optical drives reject disks. The fans are noisy. And on top of that, the abrupt Core 2 Duo upgrade caught loyal consumers on the hop. Although, as you'd expect, they're being terribly philosophical about it all. Possibly because the 39 per cent power increase Apple has been promoting may be a touch misleading.

Oh. And if you've got a 15-inch 1.67GHz G4 PowerBook, you might want to back up your hard drive.

Posted by cw at 09:05 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Cheezubaagaa kudasai

Hilarious blog article - sometimes, one can abstract the Branding or User Interface concept just that far.

And the lesson I learned at McDonald’s? You can have a bad product and still be extremely successful. As long as you have lots of sugar and an easy to use interface when defining your brand identity.

Source: http://www.informationarchitects.jp/the-interface-of-a-cheeseburger

Posted by Anandasim at 09:04 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 28, 2006

Desperately Seeking Enabling App for Vista

Reading a recent blog entry about how several developers are RSN (Real Soon Now) going to deliver "the best Windows application ever", I got to musing how we've chosen our PCs and upgraded over the years. And still can't see what real or imagined app is set to Enable Windows Vista.

Way back in the old days, it was the Apple ][. Why did the Apple ][ succeed you ask? Was it the first real home PC? It was. Was it the CGA (or worse) colour games? It was. The crunch that enabled it, however, was Visicalc. I remember a fellow civil engineer waited for computers to be supplied by the office, but could not wait any longer, so he brought his own Apple ][ to office, just for Visicalc.

Then, we drifted to CPM/80. Remember that? Wordstar, dBase II, Supercalc (or even Multiplan) were the reasons we went there. If you remember dBase II reading / writing on 143k floppy disks and double sided meant you took the disk out, punched a hole on the other edge and inserted it, you'll remember the agony of the Apple II floppies. Still, they were enabling.

Why did we go MS-DOS and the IBM-PC. Surely one primary answer - Lotus 1-2-3, followed by Word Perfect 5.1, dBase III. And the gee-whiz 10Mb hard disk.

Windows 3.1? We wanted Excel, Word. More importantly, Windows 3.1 motivated full page-at-once laser printers (or was it the other way around). We wanted to move on from mono-spaced font to proportional font and grab some of that modern layout look.

Windows 95? Well, you see Windows 3.1 kept dying and the screen display, (do you remember 640x480 pixels) was a bit on the sparse side? "Not many cells on a spreadsheet, see you can", Yoda would say.

Then Windows 98 - An evolution of Windows 98, but a whole host of technical improvements, USB support, established FAT32 support. But it wasn't a night and day impact. More importantly, it was not markedly expensive or markedly demanding of hardware upgrades - if your machine ran Windows 95 well, Windows 98 was ok. And you know what they say about Microsoft software - it takes them three attempts to get it right?

Windows NT 4 -> Windows 2000 -> Windows XP? Same deal. Three attempts.

And so we come to Windows Vista. What does it have? Well, a big ticket price. Unless they discount a lot.

It could have had a new file system (WinFS) with metadata and database sub-system. It doesn't - it still uses classic indexing of files.

It could have had XAML and Windows Presentation Foundation with all those XML things. But it doesn't. Aah, thanks to Stephen for the correction, WPF *will* be part of Vista. But it appears to be also available for Windows XP and Server 2003 - so will the Vista experience be unique enough?

It has SyncManager - to improve on the notorious ActiveSync for PocketPC / Windows Mobile. That'll do mobile phones too. That might help GTD fans. Only.

It does have the Windows sidebar (hey, but we had that in IE 4 / Windows 98).

Not all versions of Vista will fly with Aero. So you won't be able to Alt+Tab like a pack of cards shuffled sideways. Like huh?

Ok, it has Enhanced Security? Big Beef since Microsoft has an incredibly, nearly indelible bad image in that area - even amongst the general public.  If you use Ubuntu, you'll note that there are huge lists of updates queued to install from time to time. But Linux hasn't got anything near the bad image.  But looking through the eyes of home users, how does UAC (User Access Control) blocking nearly every worthwhile move (making Vista, Ubuntu like) endear Vista to them?

So there you go. I'll keep searching for a cause.

Posted by Anandasim at 11:05 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

It only takes two to ping-pong

I just saw Jeremy's blog post on IE-SPYAD. I could have replied to the post but hey, it is was Friday, I've had a hectic and tiring week, so here's my reply as another post. It's my way of unwinding.

When Tim Berners Lee thought of the webpage idea, with hyperlinks between documents, he was in CERN - a research body. He was inventing a way for document referencing and sharing of information across different machines and distant locations. Which is what the WWW is now.

But along the way, webpages, instead of containing only text and graphic information, have sprouted in-place-activated ActiveX components, Macromedia Flash widgets, Java applets, Pop-Ups and so on. These webpages don't have to be malicious or have malicious intent - even respectable businesses, news organisations, software companies litter their webpages with eyeball grabbing devices - in the interests of generating income.

The IT community is, as usual, rising to the challenge of keeping this torrent at bay. The easiest way to avoid ads is to make a list of things that you don't want to see.

As a first line of defense, you can install an intermediary, a proxy between your machine and the Internet. Many organisations do this. The proxy can be used for a variety of things - one of which is to maintain a blacklist of domain names and websites. If the website is in the blacklist, then no traffic / data is delivered to your PC from that website.

For home users, I've been keeping an eye out for cleverer made-for-home-use routers. Many routers have Parental Controls - limiting Internet access to specific machines on a schedule. But thus far, there doesn't seem to be a concerted effort by the all-in-one-kitchen-sink Internet security companies (Norton, McAffee,...) to work with the router companies (DLink, Linksys, Netgear,...) in producing routers that have dynamically updateable and subscribed lists of no-nos. Instead, the security companies have been spending time hammering Microsoft about not being let in to the Vista plumbing. Another story.

A second line of defense is to load your PC with a list of IP addresses of "bad" servers via the TCP/IP HOSTS file. This HOSTS file is a plain text file that contains a look up table your PC consults. If you put entries in this HOSTS file that null out a blacklist of servers, then your machine won't be able know where to go to fetch webpages from. Unfortunately, this is a little too drastic - you cannot specify the blacklist to the level of a webpage or a domain - if two domains share the same server, then innocent domains will also be black listed. Also, I've had prior experiences where a large HOSTS file stops the PC from working properly - that's because the HOSTS file not only serves browsing, it serves all TCP/IP networking for your PC.

Jeremy was referring to IE-SPYAD - a setup program that loads lots of blacklist entries into Internet Explorer's Restricted Zones. It protects IE and limits only IE. The problem is though, that the entries live in the Windows registry - that's where IE reads them. Although the IE-SPYAD mechanism used to consistently work for me, I feel nauseous when I push lots and lots of entries into Windows Registry.

IE-SPYAD and the HOSTS file technique are quite blunt tools though. If you are looking to block one file or file extension, rather than a server address or a domain, they are not a good fit for the task.

Some time ago, I came across Privoxy - it is a local proxy that runs on your PC. The documentation is certainly technical and nerdy but the blacklists it uses are plain text files, not Windows Registry. Lacking the ease of use and the user interface of Firefox's Adblock, you could add some of your own blacklist entries. The blacklist entries can describe file patterns as well as domain and address patterns.

Once done, you can nominate that Privoxy to be the intermediary for all Windows Internet Connection Proxy requests. You can ask Firefox or Opera to use Privoxy. Or not.

I'm trying to come up with a closing line to this blog entry. That's witty and entertaining. But can't. Getting some writer's block. Maybe I've been reading too much Darren Rouse. 

Posted by Anandasim at 10:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 27, 2006

IE-SPYAD: Protection from malware

Although IE-SPYAD has been around for a while, I only just came across it:

IE-SPYAD adds a long list of sites and domains associated with known advertisers, marketers, and crapware pushers to the Restricted sites zone of Internet Explorer. Once you merge this list of sites and domains into the Registry, the web sites for these companies will not be able to use cookies, ActiveX controls, Java applets, or scripting to compromise your privacy or your PC while you surf the Net.

For Firefox, there is the wonderful Adblock, but I hadn't found anything similar for Internet Explorer. IE-SPYAD provides some of the same functionality, although it doesn't block non-flash/java ads. Another approach I've used in the past is to install an ad-blocking hosts file, but I've found that it can causes problems with some sites.

Posted by Jeremy at 02:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 25, 2006

Bleeding Edge on TV

If you'd like to see what one of your Bleeding Edge writers looks like in real life, here's two TV segments from Seven's Sunrise featuring yours truely:

Posted by Jeremy at 09:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 24, 2006

Allofmp3 trades punches with Visa/Mastercard

Here's an interesting precedent. The US government - which is almost as friendly to copyright owners as the Howard Government - has been (so far) vainly trying to bully Russia into closing down cheap music site Allofmp3.com. Suddenly the Visa/Mastercard duo have given them a helping hand by suspending credit facilities for the site.

It could turn out to be a case of the music industry blowing off a few of its own toes, however. Allofmp3 has attacked the move - which does seem to elevate the credit card companies to the position of Lord High Executioner - and is looking at alternatives: how about an advertising-sponsored free music download service?

Posted by cw at 05:26 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

PC World - Internet Tips: Drop POP E-Mail for the Freedom of IMAP Servers

This month's PC World has a great tip: Drop POP E-Mail for the Freedom of IMAP Servers . For those of you still using webmail or POP for your email, take a look at this article and give IMAP a go - you'll get access to all of your mail messages and folders from home, work, your mobile phone, and when offline! If you have any questions, please add a comment below, and I'll do my best to help.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:50 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Get your Firefox 2.0 ... early

No doubt when Microsoft released Internet Explorer a couple of days ahead of schedule, somebody at Mozilla thought, "Hmmn. If it's good enough for Microsoft ..." So Firefox 2.0 has made it to the Web a day before it's supposed to.

You can go spelunking for it in Mozilla.org's directories, or grab a copy from Filehippo

Posted by cw at 10:33 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 23, 2006

OpenSearch with IE7 & FF2

Following on from the release of Internet Explorer 7 will be the release of Firefox 2 in the next day or two. I thought I would run through a little about Opensearch and the way it can transform your Internet Browsing search capabilities. OpenSearch is fully supported by both Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7.

OpenSearch is a set of simple formats for the sharing of search results. Any website that has a search feature can make their results available in OpenSearch™ format. Other tools can then read those search results.[A9OpenSearch]

(I had hoped to include screenshots for both IE7 and FF2 (RC3) and have just gone through the process of trying the similar functions with Firefox 2.0 RC3 and I came across a couple of issues so I will re-visit this when the full release of Firefox arrives in the next couple of days. Apologies to the Firefox Fans.)

1. To start with IE7 you click the link 'Find More Providers' in your search field at the top right of IE7 or Click this link.

IE7 Opensearch 1 of 7

2. Following the instructions in the yellow highlighted box if you open up the Bleeding Edge Blog.

IE7 Opensearch 2 of 7

3. Type in capital letters TEST and click search you will be taken to this URL.

IE7 Opensearch 3 of 7

4. Switch back to your IE7 Search Providers page and paste that URL into the first field and the second field give it a name such as 'BE Blog Search'.

IE7 Opensearch 4 of 7

5. Click on the 'Install' button and you will get a pop-up window asking you to confirm that you would like to add the search provider to your list and/or make it the default search provider for your search window. Click 'Add Provider'

IE7 Opensearch 5 of 7

6. You now have in your drop down menu a new search called 'BE Blog Search' in this case.

IE7 Opensearch 6 of 7

7. Once you use the drop down menu to select the 'BE Blog Search' and type in your query and click the magnifying glass you are instantly using the built in search engine that operates here at Bleeding Edge to find that article you remember reading and valuing so much.

IE7 Opensearch 7 of 7

And there you have it, you can add these links for AllofMP3, a Google eBook search and there are many other combinations of searching functions from within website's or via existing search engine parameters from your favorite search engines that can give you quick and fast access to your favorite websites data archives.

Posted by Stephen at 09:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Why Dell? Why HP?

So Hewlett Packard ships more PCs than Dell. The real news is that so many people are still buying branded PCs. Could we ask why? Long after the PC has become a commodity, and despite the fact that most consumers are well past their first computer purchase and surely have learnt a thing or two - too bad more newspapers don't run our quarterly workhorse PC articles which tell them how to get a better desktop for less - untold thousands of people are continuing to shell out much more money than they ought, for inferior PCs.

Let's try to examine the psyches of these unfortunate people. Obviously they're influenced by advertising. They're bewildered by technical specifications so they don't know what they're buying. They lack a circle of friends who could offer them advice. They are anxious individuals who imagine that a big company like HP or Dell offers them security [chortle, splutter, guffaw]. They have more money than we do. Can somebody tell us why this is allowed?

Posted by cw at 10:44 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Queensland's broadband plan: the good and the bad

It's interesting reading some of the early comments regarding Queensland's plan for super-fast broadband. They range from despair...:

"Fix the basic problems first schools where children actually read and write. Water!!! Roads without potholes!"

...to joy:

"What a wonderful idea! Broadband access in this country explodes the myth that private enterprise delivers the best product at the best price. There is a role for Government in delivering essential services where the private sector is too consumed by control and profit."

Of course, the smart move would have been to separate out the infrastructure (the actual cabling across the nation) from all of Telstra's other assets, so that the government could maintain ownership of the core infrastructure. Could you imagine the government privatizing the entire road system to one company? Of course not! But what they've done with Telstra is much the same thing.

So now governments have to rebuild it from scratch - Queensland's plan to lay a fast fiber-optic network sounds like the right way to go. They get a great competitive advantage in attracting business investment (I know our company for instance may well have located in Queensland if they had this network when we started), consumers get access to new applications (like video-on-demand and video-conferencing), and it can be achieved efficiently by taking advantage of power-lines, railway track sidings, and other public assets.

My main concern is the cost - $550m for coverage of 2-3 million people; if around a third take it up, that's around $500 per person for the network alone (the real cost would probably be at least twice this, due to distribution and other costs). If they just used fiber for the main backbones, and wireless networking for everything else, they'd keep the cost well down, and have the benefit of wireless access for consumers as well.

Posted by Jeremy at 02:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Catch a Bleeding Edge toadling on TV

Sorry for the late notice, but I only just got the news - I'll be appearing on Channel 7's Sunrise program (in Australia) at 7.10am in the morning (Monday 23rd October). The topic is Queensland's plan to create a 'real broadband' network. It's exciting to have a chance to reach a broader audience, in discussing the important issue of Australia's poor broadband infrastructure. Hopefully I won't make too much of a fool of myself during my 15 seconds of fame!

Posted by Jeremy at 02:02 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 19, 2006

Image resizing for email

 Terry Lane's always-informative Green Guide column today discussed how to resize photos for email. At FastMail.FM we regularly hear from customers who are less than thrilled when a "friend" sends them a 10MB email, completely blocking their dialup Internet account for an hour or so (if this ever happens to you, either use the web interface, or use Thunderbird, both of which let you read the email without downloading attachments).

To avoid such bad manners, Terry's advice is to use a piece of software such as Irfanview. I heartily recommend this excellent software, but as cvincent points out on the forum, it's far from the easiest way to resize images for email - the Resizer Powertoy from Microsoft is a really simple and effective approach.

Easier still, just right-click the image, select 'Send To', and then select 'Email', and you'll see the helpful dialog above, which offers to resize the image for you prior to attaching to your email! This creates an image of around 40-50k, which should be small enough that you won't be placed in the sin bin by the recipient.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In need of a read...

It was far too nice a day to work. So, Evelyn and I headed down to the lovely cafe Kanteen by the river for a bit of relaxation. Browsing through my ebooks on my Jasjar phone, I couldn't find anything I really felt like reading. So, I fired up Pocket Internet Explorer, through my Three broadband connection, and browsed to the Ereader site.

What I really felt like was a bit of comedy - I'd seen a Terry Pratchett book - "Thud!" - at Borders earlier today that looked ideal, so I searched Ereader's site and found it. 2 minutes (and US$7.99) later) I had downloaded it, and started reading on the high resolution display on my phone. Using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (built into Ereader) I didn't have to even turn the pages!

This is consumer technology at its best - easy access to what you want, when you want it. I saved 70% on the list price of the book, didn't have to leave my quiet spot by the river to buy it, and didn't have a big wad of paper to carry around with me. Sometimes, technology can be infinitely frustrating... but sometimes, it really delivers on its promises. That's why all the toads around the Bleeding Edge pond keep working to find you the best products, at the best price, and show you the best way to use them. And if you find things not working the way they should, don't forget that you can drop by the Forum and ask any questions you like.

Posted by Jeremy at 09:45 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Feeding the rich

As one of the links in the previous post from Stephen indicate, we have known for a long time that our Attorney General "Alice" Ruddock, doesn't have a clue. It really doesn't surprise us that after a long review process, with lots of public submissions, he's managed to come up with a law that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

As copyright lawyer Kim Weatherall pointed out (and The Age picked up on) his department have cleverly drafted the new law so that it doesn't deliver what we thought we were getting - the basic right to enjoy the digital entertainment we've paid for.

Spend a little time reading Kim's other posts, however, and you'll emerge thorougly depressed. They indicate that "Alice" and/or his officers seem to have embarked on a campaign to deliver copyright holders benefits that no other country would even contemplate.

Among other horrors, they are now proposing to introduce offences of strict liability in our copyright law - "offences for certain commercial dealings in copyright material which do not require proof that the person knew they were dealing with infringing material" which by the way do not exist in the UK or the US, or Europe . They propose to impose on-the-spot fines of $1320 for copyright infringements ... say, for instance, playing or singing copyright music at a wedding or other function held in a place of public entertainment, or selling your iPod without first removing all the music.

They appear to have compromised our ability to protect ourselves from such things as the Sony root kit fiasco.

And Kim notes that the Nine Network's case against the Ice TV program guide, couldn't have got off the ground in the US or Europe. Only Australia offers such protection to copyright owners, and denies its citizens facilities like TiVo, which the US and UK have enjoyed for years.

There's a consistent thread here, isn't there? That other brilliant minister, Coonan the Barbarian, suddenly discovers that - whoops - that little bit of legislation that completely destroys the pathetic remnants of media diversity in this country just happened to deliver a multi-billion-dollar bonanza to Jamie Packer and other media barons, and has to check to see if it's legal. Of course it's legal, Minister. That's the entire bloody point, isn't it?

Posted by cw at 12:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

'the Little iPod Inquiry that Couldn't',

Following on from Bleeding Edge entries here, here, here and here on the articles of  'Lucky Phil' our esteemed Attorney General in the only thing he has been good for in his 'supposed' stance with Copyright Law to allow us to copy our CD's onto our iPods/MP3 players legally comes 4 months of draft legislation that if passed would still make it illegal.

"It appears the people in the copyright law branch who drafted this legislation do not have iPods. I guess we should have given them MP3 players so they could get used to the technology they were drafting for."

At least our AG has noted that it will be thrown overboard until they get it right.  

"We will make amendments to ensure the legislation passed is effective and achieves the Government's objectives."

Via The Age

Posted by Stephen at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Next: the anti-Internet drug

Be honest. You can't leave your Inbox alone, can you? The very idea of being separated from your browser for more than a day or two brings you out in a cold sweat. You may have even visited your doctor, seeking help for your unhealthy attachment to cyberspace. If your GP has prescribed something, let us know, because like you, we're clearly suffering from what Stanford University School of Medicine researchers call "Problematic Internet Use".

One in eight US Internet users apparently have the affliction -a strong drive to compulsively use the Internet to check e-mail, make blog entries or visit Web sites or chat rooms - which is "not unlike what sufferers of substance abuse or impulse-control disorders experience: a repetitive, intrusive and irresistible urge to perform an act that may be pleasurable in the moment but that can lead to significant problems on the personal and professional levels".

The fact that you spend an average of 30 hours a week pursuing your disgusting habits is a dead giveaway. Maybe you're even trying to hide your addiction, inventing excuses to disguise your real activities, which are, according to the medicos, a form of self-medication. Hmmn. Got any plausible excuses you'd like to share with us?

Posted by cw at 11:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 18, 2006

How to survive at work

First. Never answer emails. It only encourages more of them. Don't attend meetings. Don't answer the phone. Ignore consultants, and if some mad networker presses his business card on you, slip it back to them pretending it's yours. They won't notice a thing. This list of survival tips is hilarious. But we suspect it can be improved upon. Any suggestions?

Posted by cw at 03:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ipod's shipping Windows Virus

What else can be said... I'll simply quote Apple.

We recently discovered that a small number - less than 1% - of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006, left our contract manufacturer carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus. This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it. So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free. As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.

Because this Windows virus propagates via mass storage devices, we recommend that you scan any mass storage devices that you have recently attached to your Windows computers such as external hard drives, digital cameras with removable media, and USB flash drives.

While this Windows virus does not affect Mac OS X or the iPod itself, Mac customers can use iTunes 7 to easily restore the software on their newly purchased Video iPod to ensure that it does not carry this Windows virus. The Video iPod can then be used on a Windows computer without concern.

Posted by Stephen at 01:01 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

IE7 Cometh

Many of the Microsoft watchers in the IT community are embroiled in debating the licensing issues (perceived vs actual vs interpreted) of Windows Vista. To the extent that the impending release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 barely rates a mention. I don't think this event should be understated or ignored - after all, it will be flagged as a high-priority item in Windows XP Automatic Updates.

It could well be that IE 7 news is old hat. Some early experience adopters have revelled in the joy of multiple tabs, increased security and better w3c web standards compliance. Others, after having encountered some problems have got quite upset in that IE 7 beta actually meant that the installation and uninstallation was also beta and may not have worked.

Undeterred, web developers and their brethren have forged forward with the various pre-release versions and created unauthourised mechanisms that run IE 7 in standalone mode or for that matter any IE version. To an extent, they work enough so that web developers can check out differences in behaviour and rendition of web pages caused by specific changes in the IE 7 vs IE 6.

Microsoft has, to their credit got their ACT together in establishing the Internet Explorer Developer Center (essentially a product portal on MSDN)  which also lists the Table of Contents (alright, they call it Index) which then leads to checklists for everyone.

But, are you ready? Is your [Insert name of financial institution here] ready? Are your websites - HTML, CSS content and browser sniffing hacks - are they ready? Have you tested your corporate and intranet applications (with or without Java launchers) ?

No doubt, some will block IE7 from deploying. Many won't understand what this all means. Do you?

Firefox users take note - unless you have completely shredded IE 6 from your desktop, blocks of IE are embedded in Windows XP. Which IE are you not going to use?

Posted by Anandasim at 01:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2006

The greater your weight, the lower your IQ, say scientists

Sheesh! Now they say fat *is*.... 

The new five-year study of more than 2,200 adults claims to have found a link between obesity and the decline in a person's cognitive function.

The research, conducted by French scientists, which is published in this month's Neurology journal, involved men and women aged between 32 and 62 taking four mental ability tests that were then repeated five years later.

The researchers found that people with a Body Mass Index - a measure of body fat - of 20 or less could recall 56 per cent of words in a vocabulary test, while those who were obese, with a BMI of 30 or higher, could remember only 44 per cent.

The fatter subjects also showed a higher rate of cognitive decline when they were retested five years later: their recall dropped to 37.5 per cent, whereas those with a healthy weight retained their level of recall.

Source: Telegraph | News | The greater your weight, the lower your IQ, say scientists

Posted by Anandasim at 07:03 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Bolt for freedom (of expression)

There they go again, those communists at The Age undermining our beloved standards of fair play and decency with their scare-mongering about ABC censorship.

When you've got Play School promoting lesbian marriages, and the gardening show promoting Leftist nonsense about global warming, why of course you need a director of editorial policies. Of course you need someone who will report directly to the managing director and independently audit individual programs and commission research on editorial issues.

That's the key word right there, of course: "independently". What this nation desperately needs is more independent people - people like Janet Albrechtsen and Keith Windschuttle - running the national broadcaster, so that biased pinko radicals like Dr Karl and Robin Williams are forced to stop answering the wrong questions. And deliberately deploying hypnotic tones and inflections which flagrantly influence voting intentions. One of the first initiatives by the new director will of course be to implement two new departments: the ABC Tone Police, and the ABC Inflection Rangers.

What seems to have been overlooked by the politically correct traitors who are running rough-shod over the community's right to hear all sides of any debate, with the right tone and inflection, rather than what Australian Story is peddling, is that the ABC threatens the people's right to have a democratically elected government by consistently presenting opinion as so-called news.

What is vital, of course, in our Prime Minister's long-overdue move for freedom of speech on the ABC is that we get the right person into the position of Director of Editorial Policies. We think we've found him: Andrew Bolt. Here's a man who's demonstrated his credentials as an independent, authoritative journalistic voice. And when he's not auditing and researching, we can have him read the news. And ask some really probing questions as presenter of the 7.30 Report.

Posted by cw at 09:33 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 16, 2006

Reuters Second Life !

Adam Reuters is the new bureau chief for the Reuters division reporting on and from within Second Life. No doubt Adam will be attending the Sun Microsystems Press Conference in Second Life next week. Adam's real name is Adam Pasick and a technology & media journalist for the Reuters news agency.

Second Life is often referred to as an Online Role-Playing game though it is more in the style of a Virtual World/Social Networking site in which users create virtual identities and as such have 'second lives' within.

We have tried previously to grapple with Second Life though it still eluds me and I may have to try a 'third life' at 'Second Life' to add to my 'real life' and existing 'online life' to work out how I should 'Choose Life' [Language Warning]

Source: NYTimes (Registration Required and/or NYTimes Reader)

Posted by Stephen at 11:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dealing with 4WD killers

One of the things you quickly learn when you're trying to stay alive on a motor scooter, is to avoid 4-wheel drives at all costs. It seems the purchase price grants these drivers the right to push everyone else off the road. Some revealing statistics: Four-wheel-drives involved in fatal accidents increased by 85% between 1990 and 1998, while the overall number of fatal road accidents decreased by a quarter over the same period.

Unfortunately they tend to kill other road users, rather than themselves. The drivers of vehicles hit side-on by 4-wheel-drives have a 26 times increase in death or serious injury than if they had been hit by a standard passenger vehicle. Drivers of 4-wheel drive vehicles involved in smashes are more likely to be drunk than drivers of any other class of vehicle. They kill more kids - and presumably two-wheel riders - than other drivers.

According to a segment on Background Briefing:

Their attitude towards other road users was quite appalling. Basically, they felt it was the other person's responsibility to keep out of their way, rather than their responsibility to consider fellow road-users.
They're selfish, unconscious killers, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if they mostly voted for little Johnny Howard. Which is why, no doubt, our spineless politicians of every stripe have done nothing to discourage 4WD use ... instead they actually give them a 10 per cent tariff cut, as a reward for the carnage they cause. So much for the principle of user pays.

They're also chewing up far too much of the world's oil reserves. We just read a piece in the Financial Times , [PAY WALL] which says the fact that one out of every two cars sold in the US in the past five years was an SUV or a light truck – petrol-guzzling monsters that do only 3km or 4km per litre - contributes to the that nation's ever-spiralling consumption of the world's fuel reserves. Despite China’s rapid expansion, it still accounts for only 8 per cent of global oil demand. The US burns 25 per cent of it.

There's a place for these vehicles in rural areas - Bleeding Edge owned one when we we were farming - but 80 per cent of them never leave the bitumen. And while their proliferation is dropping because of the price of petrol, there's still far too many of them on the road. Having ignored all the compelling reasons to discourage these drivers beyond paying lip service to the principle of educating them - sounds good, but doesn't work - we can't expect any leadership from government.

Our proposal is to send them all to Coventry. If they live in the city and don't have a farm, strike them off your list of friends, and tell them why. Here's some clues from US journalist, Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty, quoting the market research which the automobile industry uses to sell these monsters to the misfits who buy them:

They tend to be people who are insecure and vain, they’re frequently nervous about their marriages, and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they’re apt to be self-centred and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbours or communities.
They're selfish, thoughtless clods who endanger other people and the planet. It would be nice to have some stickers to apply to their windscreens. Those tactics worked against the fur industry, but apparently we care more for minks than people.

In the meantime, if you're a pedestrian, or on two wheels - for that matter if you're driving a sedan - for God's sake don't let them get too close.


Posted by cw at 03:19 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

October 15, 2006

Mobile GMaps

After deciding I had finally had enough with the rubbish that is Microsoft Pocket Streets, I went looking for an alternative mapping solution for my Windows Mobile phone. What I really wanted is something that utilizes Google Maps or Windows Live Local. Enter Mobile GMaps:

Mobile GMaps is a FREE application that displays Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Windows Live Local (MSN Virtual Earth) and Ask.com Maps and satellite imagery on Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones, PDAs and other devices. MGMaps can connect to a GPS receiver over bluetooth or use internal GPS features on some phones in order to automatically display the map for your current position.

Because it's a mobile Java app, this works on most modern mobile phones and networked PDAs. It worked just as promised on my I-mate JasJar, and includes satellite imagery as well as vector maps.

Posted by Jeremy at 02:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 12, 2006

Erm, they've dragged out the Kodak Carousel again...

When I used to shoot transparency film, all together now..

Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

We used to regularly torture our friends by making them sit through interminable slideshows in darkened rooms with monotonous narrative. Hang on a minute, there's a whole generation who do that with Powerpoint presentations.....

Anyway, two guys have, Christopher Jaynes and Stephen Webb have figured out how to produce a 27 foot x 15 foot (pardon the Imperial) 60 Megapixel screen in a bigger than IMAX spectacle using 80 projectors (yeah the ones you get on loan from the office to watch footy). The call it the IdeaFest project.

I think I'll stick to my muvees - they're much less intrusive on the elements of friendship.

(Edited - Thanks Shane, Windows Live Writer kept telling me to spell it Kodakchrome with the "k" in the middle)

Posted by Anandasim at 06:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

What is Work 2.0?

Whilst I am struggling with Work 1.0, the IT world is gabbing on about Work 2.0. Personal struggles aside, I've been espousing modern collaboration appendages for a long time like secure, project restricted wikis as more effective replacements for that ping pong of emails and the "**!&^$%" exclamation when files exceed the 1Gb 1Mb per email item limit.

"It's less about spreadsheets and word possessing," and definitely not just about sticking it to Microsoft by using online productivity applications, Esther (Dyson) says.

Esther sees the benefit of online working in what IBM calls, "activity management," using networked technologies to coordinate schedules, tasks, and to synchronize your work with your colleagues. Online applications also level the playing field -- the little guys are greatly aided by tools that let them collaborate more easily with each other and with customers. Larger companies, Esther says, have more social and political overhead (not as much trust among employees, or company-to-company) and are less able to take advantage of these new tools

Source: What is Work 2.0? | News.blog | CNET News.com

Posted by Anandasim at 06:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Supporting Bleeding Edge

We're pleased to report that after a couple of weeks of gloom around here, we've had a bit more interest in our subscription service, with three people sending us a total of $135 in the past week. It doesn't take much to lift our spirits. It's also been great to have some more posts from Jeremy and Stephen, and hopefully Anandasim will be moved by the muse.

A couple of things: we don't have an email address for one of the new subscribers, Kevin. And we know a lot of you have been thinking about subscribing, but have put it off for some reason or another (we know all about that!). What with trying to pay for a new test bed for Bleeding Edge, any contributions would be very helpful right now. If you're interested, email us, and we'll send the details.

Posted by cw at 01:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 11, 2006

Digital anthropology

If you weren't at TechEd, and you haven't seen the video of Microsoft anthropologist Anne Kirah's presentation, you might not be aware of just why employers are stupid when they discourage employees from browsing the Internet while they're at work, why taking a mobile phone from a young girl could be regarded as child abuse, and why digital immigrants really need to learn more about digital natives. And Hopper Offers.

Posted by cw at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 10, 2006

(Interminably) tweaking Firefox

What with Jeremy's most recent post on a Firefox extension, we thought you might be interested in F. David McRitchie's notes on his compulsion to tweak Firefox. Forever.

Posted by cw at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Browsing under the influence

It turns out that if you drink and browse, you could be a bloody idiot. An impoverished bloody idiot, that is. According to The Age, having a drink or two has been known to impair one's material inhibitions - which is what psychologists apparently call those instincts that protect us from runaway credit card bills - leaving one incapable of resisting the urge to spend up big on eBay or an online store.

Like the 24-hour availability of cable-shopping channels, the growth of at-home internet access has provided a confluence of factors that are alluring to many would-be shoppers. You can order from your favourite shops whenever you like, you don't need cash, and above all you have the privacy to indulge your whims without fearing raised eyebrows from friends or shop assistants.

Add a glass of good cheer and it's easy to lose your material inhibitions, says Kate Hanley, the creator of MsMindBody.com. Last northern autumn she was captivated by a pair of boots on eBay, but had to abandon the auction to attend a party. After a glass of champagne at the party, Hanley says she noticed her host's computer nearby. "I logged back onto the auction and bought the boots," she says. "It took all of two minutes."

Should we install a breath-test kit on our computers perhaps?

Posted by cw at 01:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

mozdev.org - ietab: index

Rob Mueller put me on to  IE Tab, which embeds Internet Explorer in a Mozilla/Firefox tab. Previously I had been using IE View, which works well enough - but a big benefit of IE Tab is that it actually copies all your cookies over to the new window, so you can switch a page from Firefox to Internet Explorer with just one click.

I'm pleased to be able to say that I need to view pages in IE less and less - most web designers seem to be aware of Firefox nowadays... however some of Microsoft's own sites still do not work correctly on Firefox, and of course anything that uses ActiveX controls requires Internet Explorer.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Save now for Vista!

Now that Microsoft Australia has revealed its pricing for Vista, we invite your submissions on how you might plan to gather the necessary to fund your new operating system ... by selling a spare child into slavery, perhaps.

The most basic retail version - the so-called Home Edition - will set you back $382, compared to $299 for Windows XP Home. Home Edition Premium will cost $455, and Vista Business $565. Should you entertain Vista Ultimate, you'll be up for $751 - roughly the price of an entry-level PC.

We'd also be interested in your interpretation of the fact that Bill's imposing a considerable tax on us Aussies, presumably because we're - you know - not Uhmericans. Under the current exchange rate, Windows Vista Ultimate, which costs $US399 in the US of A, should only be $536. Even accounting for GST, it seems quite a mark-up. Should we withdraw our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan?


Posted by cw at 12:08 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Google aquires Youtube = $1.65Billion

The rumour has now been confirmed by Google and are to acquire Youtube for $1.65 Billion in Stock.

Pick your favorite newsource or blogger from Techmeme to read all about it as I think the entire  internet is talking about this.

Posted by Stephen at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

SpyK Property Search

Spyk - Australian Property SearchTim Kremer from SSW Consulting  and Andrew Franklin have written a mashup using Windows Live Local mapping to help you find properties to rent or buy around Australia called Spyk.

You are able to filter the results based on any combination of postcode, suburb, min/max price, property type, bathrooms and bedrooms.

Posted by Stephen at 10:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 09, 2006

Whiteboard Image Capturing Software

I'm not a fan of whiteboards with printers attached. They are expensive, black and white, and produce paper copies rather than easily distributed files (except for some newer ones, which have a USB memory slot and USB color printer connection). I prefer to have a whiteboard in every office, and simply use a digital camera to take snapshots of each screen. The only problem is that these photos can be large, low-contrast files. To fix this, I use Whiteboard Photo:

Take snapshots of any marker or chalk board, flip chart, or document with your digital camera and Whiteboard Photo will convert them into crisp, perfect images in seconds, no matter the angle of the camera, lighting, reflections, or small print.

 To see an example of the output, click the image on the right.

Here is the input file for this photo (click for a larger image):

As you can see, the software automatically deskewed it, and fixed the contrast. The only change I have made manually is to use the Image Resize Powertoy to make the image smaller (800x600). As a result of cleaning and resizing the image, it's file size has been reduced from 1500k to 37k! The only downside of this software is the price: US$249.

A cheaper (in fact free!) option is to use the scanR service. You email the file to them, and they email back to you a PDF. There's a few downsides:

However, since you don't have to pay anything, or install any software, it's a great option for those that only need to take the occasional whiteboard photo. Regardless of whether you use scanR or Whiteboard Photo, there's some useful tips to get the best results:

Posted by Jeremy at 02:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 08, 2006

Make timesheets a snap

Now here's a clever idea: 

TimeSnapper is an Automatic Screenshot Journal It runs in the background of your computer, taking screenshots of your desktop every few seconds all week

All you do is run TimeSnapper and set some basic preferences:

It then takes screen shots of your PC at regular intervals, and at any time you can then "browse day" and it plays back to you what you're screen contained at each snapshot. I can imagine all kinds of uses for this - for example to help fill out your time sheet, or go back and review an audit trail for how you solved some problem, or to summarize for a colleague the steps you took to complete a project. The 'classic version' works well, and is completely free. I haven't tried the 'pro version', which adds a few new features, since the classic version does everything I need.

Posted by Jeremy at 08:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Jeremy's software development blog

Jeremy Howard's dev blog Quite a lot of the interesting things I find around the internet are to do with software development, which I don't think are likely to be of interest to many of those around the Bleeding Edge pond. Therefore, I've started posting articles related to software development to a separate site: Jeremy Howard's dev blog.

You will see that the posts before this weekend are very terse and not always related to software development - that's because previously I had been using this blog just for my own notetaking. In fact, I'll be writing here on Bleeding Edge in more detail about some of the utilities that I've mentioned on the dev blog.

If you have any suggestions or comments, please let me know by posting comments below. Thanks!

Posted by Jeremy at 08:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 07, 2006

Windows Vista RC2 aka Build 5744

Overnight Microsoft have dropped RC2 of Windows Vista. You can grab it from here. There are practically no reviews up at this stage as everyone is still downloading it. There are a few screenshots here and no doubt some reviews will be up here and here later today.

Posted by Stephen at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Its a Google TechMeme Kind of day

Techmeme this morning are full of Googleness headlines.

Posted by Stephen at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What is Trujillo smoking?

So much for the mobile broadband revolution. Telstra fondly imagines that its customers will happily pay $50 a month for a 256kbps service that will allow them to download ... wait for it ... 200MB per month. And $200 a month for downloading 3GB at 1.5Mbps! Honestly. Does Sol Trujillo think that we're all earning $9 million a year?

The problem with Sol Trujillo's management style is that nobody dares to tell him that Australian consumers really aren't the idiots he takes them for. Millions of Australians are not going to mortgage their houses to watch video on tiny screens. The only people using this service will be corporate customers whose employers won't be paying anything like those rates. For the rest of us, it's completely irrelevant.

Posted by cw at 09:42 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 06, 2006

Architect or Bricklayer

The occupation of House Architect is well understood in the Bricks and Mortar world. To the extent that the IT world, forever grasping at metaphors and visualisations, has leapt upon this term and now merrily applies the suffix "Architect" to denote prestige, honour and remuneration. All sorts of candidates put up their hands for this role.

Whilst perusing a very rough draft of an architecture document, I was however, taken back by the fact that the thinking behind it was not so much architecture but more another venerable profession, Bricklaying. How else does one consider travels into "plug compatibility", "open standards" all slanted to choosing software, servers, tools based on making each brick as uniform and uniformly laid as the next one?

Consider this. When you get a House Architect to design a home for you, you are the sponsor, the customer. The Architect is to serve you because you are the one who commissioned this person. What do you want in a house?

Consider what you get when you hire an IT Architect. Well, first of all, this person is hired by the IT Department and paid by them. This person's main role is to protect the IT Department - the end user department is secondary. What criteria should this person work to?

There's nothing in the primary specs about:

  1. End User Live-ability
  2. End User Convenience
  3. Feature Inspiration and Innovation above and beyond what your business competitors practise (how can there be, if everyone is using the same "Open Standards" and "Plug Compatibility")

These are important issues, but secondary to the scope - the whole aim is to prevent user autonomy and chaos by the "I want everything in the Candy Store" approach which is so feared to lead to "a mishmash of incompatible systems in Enterprise architecture"

Sure, a good IT Architect can discern and appreciate the nuances and come up with an "optimum proposal" - that's lingo for "selling out the Standards and allowing some pioneering use of disparate smaller systems". But just as you have good House Architects  and those that create gray square boxes for you to live in, I would suggest there are even more variations in the personal interpretation of an IT Architect.

What's the Smarter Way?

  1. Recognise that not everything is Enterprise Class software.
  2. Apply gradually declining rigidity to smaller, low budget, faster-on-their-feet projects.
  3. Flag and monitor projects that are less compliant and review their usefulness vs their growth in scope vs replacement budget cost and timelines - At the very least, the end users will have, over time, nutshelled their domain knowledge and operational procedures so that formally documenting the system may avoid hair loss in the person of the Business Analyst.

Now, do you have a Brickie near you or a true Architect?

Posted by Anandasim at 11:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack